With the impending launch of the Apple iPad, the Cupertino-based company's shunning of Adobe Flash technology has been brought to the forefront of technological discussions. While it was one thing to forgo Flash on a small, mobile device such as the iPhone or iPod Touch, some are questioning whether lack of Flash support is going to be a make-it-or-break it feature for the new slate devices arriving next month - devices which, if you believe Apple CEO Steve Jobs - are "better than netbooks." On
alphadogg writes "Forrmer CEO of Sun Microsystems Jonathan Schwartz has taken to his personal blog, provocatively titled "What I couldn't say...," to dish some industry dirt and tell his side of the story about the demise of Sun. He has already hinted at plans to write a book, and a new post suggests a tell-all tome could indeed be in the offing. "I feel for Google — Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too," Schwartz writes, apparently referring to Apple's patent lawsuit against HTC, which ma
AdamR was the first of a few of you to point out that the FTC (along with 35 state attorneys general) has fined Lifelock $12 million for a variety of misdeeds, starting with bogus advertising. This should be no surprise to Techdirt readers, as the discussions around LifeLock have always raised a lot more questions than were answered. It kicked off with the fact that LifeLock's CEO, who proudly places his Social Security Number on ads to "prove" how convinced he is that LifeLock will protect hi
An anonymous reader writes "'Alien' and 'Star Wars' art director Roger Christian was given £25,000 by George Lucas in 1979 to make a 25-minute medieval B-feature called 'Black Angel.' This spiritual tale of a knight on a strange quest was inspired by Christian's near-fatal fever when he fell ill in Mexico making 'Lucky Lady.' 'Black Angel' made a huge impression, not least because it shared the dark tone of 'Empire Strikes Back.' John Boorman showed it to the crew of 'Excalibur' as a templ
Google and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage have reached an agreement to digitise up to a million out-of-copyright works at the national libraries in Florence and Rome, including some by Galileo.And it's just two weeks after an Italian court gave three Google executives suspended prison sentences over a video of bullying on YouTube that had been removed once the company was told about it. Google is not only to work closely together with the Italian libraries, but also with the Italian m
"The fact of the matter is that newspapers have never made much money from news," wrote Google’s chief economist Hal Varian on the Google Public Policy blog.
Print newspapers traditionally "made money from the special interest sections on topics such as Automotive, Travel, Home & Garden, Food & Drink, and so on. These sections attract contextually targeted advertising, which is much more effective than non-targeted advertising." But as newspapers lost their grip on advertiser
Zordak writes "Amazon's infamous '1-click' patent has been in reexamination at the USPTO for almost four years. Patently-O now reports that 'the USPTO confirmed the patentability of original claims 6-10 and amended claims 1-5 and 11-26. The approved-of amendment adds the seeming trivial limitation that the one-click system operates as part of a 'shopping cart model.' Thus, to infringe the new version of the patent, an eCommerce retailer must use a shopping cart model (presumably non-1-click) alo
