Analysts map Google Street View's legal challenges
Nearly half of the 60 worldwide legal or criminal investigations faced by Google relate to the company's Street View service. It is facing around 28 actions against the mapping service, 11 from inside the US. Although the information commissioner last week lifted some of the heat on Google's suspected breach of the Data Protection Act in the UK, the search giant still faces lawsuits or criminal investigations in every continent except the Antarctic. Its products have been the subject of bans or threatened bans in at least 23 countries, and Google faces 33 lawsuits in the US alone, according to new estimates by the analysts Aqute Intelligence.
Minority Report-style advertising billboards to target consumers
Researchers at IBM have revealed they are working on technology which will lead to consumers being shown tailor made adverts that reflect their personal interests. Digital advertising screens are already appearing in train stations, on bus stops and on the sides of buildings, but currently they only show generic adverts for a handful of products.
The technology behind the London bicycle hire scheme
London's bike hire scheme launched on Friday and saw some 6,000 technology-packed bicycles fill the capital. The number of bicycles sent out into London has raised concerns over vandalism and safety. However, the bikes make use of the latest technology to try and combat any risk of damage of theft.
Malware mania
Google harbours double the amount of malware than Bing, Twitter and Yahoo! combined. Google was found to harbour the most malware by security firm Barracuda Networks' Barracuda Labs 2010 Midyear Security Report, which investigated search engine malware, Twitter use and crime rate over a two month period. The report probed 25,000 trending topics and 5.5m search results across Bing, Google, Twitter and Yahoo! in a bid to identify the types of topics used by malware distributors and the scope of the problem.
Dodgy security puts apps users at risk
The Black Hat Security Conference in Las Vegas majored on mobile apps security – or the virtual lack of it. Whatever mobile camp you belong to does not seem to matter. John Hering and Kevin Mahaffey of Lookout, a mobile phone security firm, introduced their App Genome Project which will highlight any security threats in smartphone apps. On the face of it, it would seem that unmoderated Google Android apps would be riskier than those for Apple iPhones which are vetted before appearing on iTunes. According to the data from Lookout, it looks like a close run thing.
Intel close to buying Infineon - report
Rumours that Intel was hoping to snap up Infineon surfaced some weeks ago but now it seems that a deal is imminent. According to the Wall Street Journal, "people familiar with the situation" have told it that such a deal may come within days, with Intel paying as much as $2 billion for the company. Infineon is a major player in the baseband interest - it divested itself of its memory unit some time ago.
Aussie broadband is slower than a slow thing in a slow town
Australia is building a superfast fibre to the home (FTTH) national broadband network and not a minute too soon. Last week's survey from Akamai, a company that charges clients hefty sums for making their websites run faster, shows the country ranked a dismal 50th place in the global broadband speed league with an average speed of 2.6Mbps, behind even New Zealand (42nd and 2.9Mbps).
Disney throws $763m at social gaming
Disney has thrown over three quarters of a billion dollars to bring it up to Goliath status in the online gaming world, acquiring two and a half year old Playdom, which offers games for social networks – the new buzzword in gaming that has all the VCs on the planet hopping onto investments. Playdom offers Social City, Sorority Life, Market Street and Bola, and reckons that it has 42 million active players each month.
Internet kills lunchtime TV favourite
ight about now, the BBC is broadcasting its very last edition of long-running news and personal finance programme Working Lunch. The show, which has been going for 16 years, has finally run its course thanks to changes in broadcast media - but also, say its producers, the growth of the internet as an information source.
Firms Downloading Details Of 100m Facebook Accounts
Big companies like Apple or BBC have started to download the goldmine that is the huge database comprising of the public profiles of more than 100 million Facebook accounts compiled by a security expert. A Gizmodo reader used an IP checker application to identify the IP addresses of other users downloading the now infamous 2.6GB file on Bit Torrent and it turned out that, as expected, major companies ARE interested by such files.
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