HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.

LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.

Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.

HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.

“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.

“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.

Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”

Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.

LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.

HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.

The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.

HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.

WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.

(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)

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HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.

LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.

Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.

HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.

“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.

“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.

Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”

Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.

LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.

HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.

The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.

HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.

WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.

(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)

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LG reportedly hedges Android bet with webOS acquisition

Try though it might, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) just can’t seem to kill Palm’s legacy. With Samsung (005930) dominating the Android market and Google (GOOG) getting ready to finally make serious use of its $ 12.5 billion Motorola buy, LG (066570) is seemingly looking to hedge its Android bet. CNET on Monday confirmed that LG has acquired the webOS source code along with ”related documentation, engineering talent, and related webOS websites” from HP. The vendor reportedly only has plans to use the operating system on smart TVs, but as we’ve learned numerous times in the past, nothing is set in stone when it comes to webOS.

[More from BGR: Did Barnes & Noble just kill off Nook?]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Woman, 104, forced to lie about age on Facebook

GROSSE POINTE SHORES, Mich. (AP) — Facebook is apologizing for a problem that makes a 104-year-old Michigan woman lie about her age on the social media website.

Marguerite Joseph‘s granddaughter says Facebook won’t let Joseph list her real age.

Gail Marlow says when she tries inputting her grandmother’s birth year as 1908, Facebook changes it to 1928. So for the past two years, the Grosse Pointe Shores centenarian has remained 99 — online, anyway.

Joseph is legally blind and can’t hear well, but Marlow reads and responds to all her Facebook messages.

Marlow tells WDIV-TV (http://bit.ly/Y7HQM2 ) she’d “love to see” Joseph’s real age posted and chalks it up to “a glitch in the system.”

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told The Associated Press on Wednesday that it’s working to fix a problem limiting used of pre-1910 birthdates.

___

Information from: WDIV-TV, http://www.clickondetroit.com

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Samsung looks past Apple, takes aim at BlackBerry

While BlackBerry (BBRY) lets its enterprise guard down to focus more on wooing the consumer market, Samsung (005930) appears poised to attack the enterprise market and pick up where BlackBerry left off. The Wall Street Journal on Friday followed up a Reuters report from last month, stating that Samsung is readying a full-scale attack on businesses using momentum from its massive success in the consumer market.

[More from BGR: The insane pricing of the new HTC One]

The paper states that Samsung has “hired dozens of executives and salespeople from rivals and from mobile-security companies, while investing in other smaller, mobile security and data firms.” An earlier report suggested that Samsung plans to unveil its own enterprise platform next week that will compete with BlackBerry 10, however the Journal claims Samsung is focused on convincing companies that its Android-powered smartphones are already just as secure as BlackBerry devices.

[More from BGR: ‘Anonymous’ becomes latest victim in Twitter hacking spree]

According to the report, Samsung bosses in South Korea have made enterprise sales a ”top three priority.”

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Sony confirms PlayStation 4 will play used games

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U.S. seeks to tackle trade-secret theft by China, others

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Faced with the growing theft of U.S. trade secrets, the White House said on Wednesday it was stepping up diplomatic pressure and mulling tougher laws to stem the threat to American businesses and security from China and other nations.

The plan includes working with like-minded governments to put pressure on bad actors, using trade policy tools, increasing criminal prosecutions and launching a 120-day review to see whether new U.S. legislation is needed.

“A hacker in China can acquire source code from a software company in Virginia without leaving his or her desk,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a White House event to unveil the strategy.

Although the White House report did not cite China by name, many see the Asian giant as the main threat. A study released this week by a private security firm accused the Chinese military of orchestrating numerous cyber attacks against U.S. businesses, a charge Beijing has denied.

The Obama administration said its strategy aims to counter what Holder called “a significant and steadily increasing threat to America’s economy and national security interests.”

“As new technology has torn down traditional barriers to international business and global commerce, they also make it easier for criminals to steal secrets and to do so from anywhere, anywhere in the world,” Holder said.

Last week, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said U.S. companies suffered estimated losses in 2012 of more than $ 300 billion due to theft of trade secrets, a large share due to Chinese cyber espionage.

The White House report listed 17 cases of trade-secret theft by Chinese companies or individuals since 2010, far more than any other country mentioned in the report.

U.S. corporate victims of trade-secret theft have included General Motors, Ford, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Motorola, Boeing and Cargill. A target company can see the payoff from research investment evaporate as a result of corporate espionage and lose market position, competitive advantage and efficiencies.

“We have repeatedly raised our concerns about trade-secret theft by any means at the highest levels with senior Chinese officials and we will continue to do so,” said Robert Hormats, an undersecretary of state.

Those cases cited mostly involved employees stealing trade secrets on the job rather than cyber attacks.

Victoria Espinel, the White House intellectual property rights enforcement coordinator, said the effort aims to protect the innovation that drives the U.S. economy and job creation.

MIXED RESPONSE

Cybersecurity and intelligence experts welcomed the White House plan as a first step, but some said much more needed to be done.

“You’ve got a nation-state taking on private corporations,” said former CIA Director Michael Hayden. “That’s kind of unprecedented … We have not approached resolution with this at all.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobby, offered a lukewarm statement of support, while other industry groups expressed more enthusiasm for the effort.

“We strongly endorse and applaud the administration’s focus on curbing theft of trade secrets, which poses a serious and growing threat to the software industry around the world,” said Business Software Alliance President and CEO Robert Holleyman.

The report that laid out the strategy repeated a 2011 White House recommendation that the maximum sentence for economic espionage be increased to at least 20 years, from 15 currently.

Another part of the solution is promoting a set of “best practices” that companies can use to protect themselves against cyber attacks and other espionage, Espinel said.

The report also said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation was “expanding its efforts to fight computer intrusions that involve the theft of trade secrets by individual, corporate and nation-state cyber hackers.”

In an interview, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the problem of trade-secret theft in China was a factor in the decisions of some U.S. companies to move operations back to the United States.

The companies have “had very frank conversations with the Chinese, (saying) ‘You know it’s one thing to accept a certain level of copyright knock-offs, but if you’re going to take our core technology, then we’re better off being in our home country,’” Kirk told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Deborah Charles; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Eric Beech)

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Yahoo takes cue from Facebook in website revamp

(Reuters) – Yahoo Inc is rolling out a revamped look for its website aimed at making the Web portal more modern and attractive to users.

“We wanted it to be familiar but also wanted it to embrace some of the modern paradigms of the Web,” Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said on NBC’s “Today” show on Wednesday.

“One thing that I really like is this very personalized newsfeed, it’s infinite and you can go on scrolling forever,” she said.

In a blog post, Mayer said the company will begin introducing the changes over the next few days, with more changes and improvements expected in the coming months. The endless newsfeed containing stories, pictures or video is similar to feeds on Facebook Inc as well as Twitter.

Mayer also said in her blog that the website would feature newly designed applications, allow users to log in with their Yahoo or Facebook IDs and would work well on smartphones and tablets.

Yahoo is one of the world’s most-visited online properties, but revenue has declined in recent years amid competition from Google and Facebook.

Yahoo has also been beset by internal turmoil that has resulted in a revolving door of CEOs.

Mayer, 37, took over after a tumultuous period at Yahoo in which former CEO Scott Thompson resigned after less than six months on the job over a controversy about his academic credentials, and during which Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the board and cut his ties with the company.

Yahoo’s 2012 revenue was $ 5 billion. It has been flat year over year, off from some $ 6.3 billion in 2010.

(Reporting By Nicola Leske; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

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Apple will reportedly launch a MacBook Air with a Retina display in Q3

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Cuban dissident blogger met by small protests in Brazil

RECIFE, Brazil (Reuters) – Cuba‘s best-known dissident, blogger Yoani Sanchez, was greeted on Monday by a small group of protesters calling her a CIA agent upon arriving in Brazil, the first stop on a whirlwind tour that will take her to a dozen countries.

A smiling Sanchez brushed off the student demonstrators who sympathize with Cuba’s communist government, saying she wished Cubans had the same freedom to protest back home. Sanchez’s arrival in Brazil kicked off her first trip abroad since the Cuban government finally granted her a passport after more than 20 refusals in the past five years.

The protesters, about eight leftist students from a local university, shouted “Sell out” and “CIA agent” as Sanchez arrived in the northeastern Brazilian city of Recife, according to a Reuters photographer who was at the airport.

“Viva la democracia! I want that democracy for my country too,” she responded.

The Cuban government labels dissidents as mercenaries on the payroll of the United States, its decades-old ideological foe. Sanchez, a 37-year-old Havana resident, has incurred the wrath of Cuba’s government for constantly criticizing its communist system in her “Generation Y” blog, www.desdecuba.com/generaciony, and using Twitter to denounce repression.

Sanchez, who was starting an 80-day tour, was granted a passport two weeks ago under Cuba’s sweeping immigration reform that went into effect this year. She has won several international prizes for her blogging about life in Cuba but has been unable to collect them until now.

“I am so happy. It has been five years of struggle,” Sanchez told local media.

“Unfortunately, in Cuba you are punished for thinking differently. Opinions against the government have terrible consequences, arbitrary arrests, surveillance,” she said in an interview with GloboNews television.

Sanchez’s visit touched a political nerve in Brazil, where the left-leaning government of President Dilma Rousseff is often criticized for not taking a more critical stance with Cuba’s one-party system and the repression of political dissent there.

According to local news magazine Veja, Cuban diplomats recently met with militants from Brazil’s ruling Workers’ Party in Brasilia and asked them to organize protests against Sanchez during her stay in the South American country. One junior official in the Rousseff administration was present at the meeting, Veja said.

The report prompted some opposition legislators in Congress to accuse the Rousseff government of tacitly endorsing a Cuban-led smear campaign against Sanchez. One senator, Alvaro Dias, said he would demand that the government formally explain its role in what he called the “unacceptable monitoring” of Sanchez.

In the interview with GloboNews, Sanchez said recent reforms undertaken by President Raul Castro have been positive but minimal, such as the lifting of bans that prevented Cubans from buying new cars and other goods.

“There is a difference between the reforms we dream of and the reforms that are being carried out,” she said. “We dream of freedom of association, freedom of expression, but it does not look like we will get this too soon.”

Sanchez, considered Cuba’s pioneer in social networking, told Reuters earlier this week in Havana that she planned to travel to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, and visit the headquarters of Google, Twitter and Facebook in the United States.

(This story has been refiled to fix a typo in the first word.)

(Reporting by Helia Scheppa; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Todd Benson and Sandra Maler)

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Cuban dissident blogger prepares “victory” tour

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba‘s best-known dissident, blogger Yoani Sanchez, says she plans to make good use of “my victory” when she leaves on an 80-day-tour of more than a dozen countries on Sunday.

Sanchez, under Cuba’s sweeping migration reform that went into effect this year, was given her passport two weeks ago, after being denied permission to travel more than 20 times over the past five years.

Sanchez, considered Cuba’s pioneer in social networking, told Reuters on Thursday that she would visit the headquarters of Google, Twitter and Facebook, and travel to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, the United States, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic and other nations.

“This is a victory after fighting five years for my right to travel, using patience, energy, legal and journalistic tools, and most of all the solidarity of many people,” she said, as she left her home Thursday morning to pick up a visa at a local embassy.

“I feel like a runner who has run the 110 meter hurdle. Tired, exhausted but happy to have met the challenge,” she added.

Sanchez, a 37-year-old Havana resident, has earned the wrath of Cuba’s communist government for constantly criticizing the system in her “Generation Y” blog, and using Twitter to denounce repression.

Sanchez, one of the world’s best known bloggers, has tens of thousands of followers abroad, but few in Cuba where the Internet is severely restricted by the government.

Her blog is named after the penchant of Cuban parents during the Cold War era of Soviet backing for the island to choose names for their children starting with “Y,” in a nod to the many popular Russian names starting with that letter.

Cuba’s leaders consider dissidents traitorous mercenaries in the employ of the United States and other enemies, and official bloggers regularly charge Sanchez’s international renown has been stage-managed by western intelligence services.

Sanchez, who has won a number of international prizes for her blog but was denied permission to collect them, said she would now do so during her travels.

‘VARIOUS OBJECTIVES’

“I have various objectives. I am going to give conferences at various universities, present my book (a collection of her blogs), receive the prizes I wasn’t given permission to collect before and meet my readers, many of whom have followed me for six years,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez’ case is viewed as a test of the Cuban government‘s commitment to free travel under reforms that require only a passport, renewed every two years, to leave the country.

Other leading dissidents have also received passports, though two less well known government opponents, Angel Moya and Gisela Delgado, have been denied.

The old travel law was put in place in 1961 to slow the flight of Cubans after the island’s 1959 revolution.

The new law got rid of the much-hated need to obtain an exit visa and loosened other restrictions that had discouraged Cubans from leaving.

It was one of the wide-ranging reforms President Raul Castro has enacted since he succeeded his older brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008.

There are still travel restrictions, mainly for reasons of national security and for those with pending legal cases, which may affect a number of dissidents like Moya, who is on parole after being jailed in a 2003 crackdown on dissent.

“It’s sweet-and-sour news. Yoani will travel to Mexico, Spain, Germany, and visit New York and Washington, DC., and that’s ‘sweet’ for Cubans everywhere. But, as with most things emanating from official Cuba, it’s also ‘sour,’” said Marifeli Pérez-Stable, Interim Director at Florida International University’s Latin American and Caribbean Center in Miami.

“That she was given a passport and others have been denied underscores the arbitrariness of the migration reform,” she added.

Sanchez said the travel reform fell short of “granting to anyone born on this island the inherent right to come and go,” but nevertheless was a step forward that will have an “incalculable political and social impact,” including for the government.

“In a way I am the flag bearer of this new era that’s beginning, where civil society is going to have access to international spaces and an international microphone and return with more information, knowledge and contacts,” Sanchez said.

(Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by David Adams and Vicki Allen)

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Facebook says it was a target of sophisticated hacking

SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Facebook Inc said on Friday hackers had infiltrated some of its employees’ laptops in recent weeks, making the world’s No.1 social network the latest victim of a wave of cyber attacks, many of which have been traced to China.

It said none of its users’ data was compromised in the attack, which occurred after a handful of employees visited a website last month that infected their machines with so-called malware, according to a post on Facebook’s official blog released just before the three-day U.S. President’s Day weekend.

“As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day,” Facebook said.

It was not immediately clear why Facebook waited until now to announce the incident. Facebook declined to comment on the reason or the origin of the attack.

A security expert at another company with knowledge of the matter said he was told the Facebook attack appeared to have originated in China.

The attack on Facebook, which says it has more than 1 billion members, underscores the growing threat of cyber attacks aimed at a broad variety of targets.

Twitter, the micro blogging social network, said earlier this month it had been hacked and that about 250,000 user accounts were potentially compromised, with attackers gaining access to information, including user names and email addresses.

Newspaper websites, including those of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have also been infiltrated. Those attacks were attributed by the news organizations to Chinese hackers targeting coverage of China.

Earlier this week, U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order seeking better protection of the country’s critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.

“INFILTRATED”

Facebook noted in its blog post that it was not alone in the attack, and that “others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well,” although it did not specify who.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment, while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

In its blog post, Facebook described the attack as a “zero-day” attack, considered to be among the most sophisticated and dangerous types of computer hacks. Zero-day attacks, which are rarely discovered or disclosed by their targets, are costly to launch and often suggest government involvement.

While Facebook said no user data was compromised, the incident could raise consumer concerns about privacy and the vulnerability of personal information stored within the social network.

Facebook has made several privacy missteps in the past because of the way it handled user data. It settled a privacy investigation with federal regulators in 2011.

According to one person familiar with the situation, the type of information on the employee laptops that were compromised included “snippets” of Facebook source code and employee emails.

Facebook said it spotted a suspicious file and traced it back to an employee’s laptop. After conducting a forensic examination of the laptop, Facebook said it identified a malicious file, then searched company-wide and identified “several other compromised employee laptops”.

Another person briefed on the matter said the first Facebook employee had been infected via a website where coding strategies were discussed.

The company also said it identified a previously unseen attempt to bypass its built-in cyber defenses and that new protections were added on February 1.

Because the attack used a third-party website, it might have been an early-stage attempt to penetrate as many companies as possible.

If they followed established patterns, the attackers would learn about the people and computer networks at all the infected companies. They could then use that data in more targeted attacks to steal source code and other intellectual property.

Another fear for such a popular website is that hackers could use central controls to infect wide swathes of its user base at once.

In January 2010, Google reported it had been penetrated via a “zero-day” flaw in an older version of the Internet Explorer Web browser. The attackers were seeking source code and were also interested in Chinese dissidents. Google reduced its operations in China as a result.

(Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Tim Reid in Los Angeles; Editing by Paul Tait)

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Facebook wins German court fight on fake names ban

BERLIN (AP) — Facebook has won a court battle against a German privacy watchdog that challenged the social networking site‘s policy requiring users to register with their real names.

Schleswig-Holstein state’s data protection body said Friday it will appeal the court decision. It argues the ban on fake names breaches German privacy laws and European rules designed to protect free speech online.

The administrative court in northern German Schleswig argued in its ruling Thursday that German privacy laws weren’t applicable because Facebook has its European headquarters in Ireland — which has less far-reaching rules.

The California-based company argues its real name policy protects users.

Germany’s strict privacy rules have posed a legal headache for Facebook, Google and others in recent years, giving consumers significant rights to limit the way companies use their information.

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Xbox founder: Apple TV gaming could ‘simply kill PlayStation, Wii U and Xbox’

The Xbox is one of the best things that Microsoft (MSFT) has going for it right now, but one of the console’s founding engineers thinks the company is in grave danger of getting its hide handed to it by Apple (AAPL)… again. Nat Brown, a former Microsoft engineer who worked at the company until 1999 and who was one of the founders of the Xbox project, has written a long post on his personal blog making the case that Microsoft has only been winning the console wars over the past couple of years because Sony (SNE) and Nintendo (NTDOY) have been screwing up so badly. He also tears apart the company’s strategy for allowing independent game developers to create games for the platform, saying that the process for developing and distributing games on the console is far too cumbersome.

[More from BGR: Every 10 years, a cataclysm kills off most phone brands – the next one is almost here]

“Xbox’s primary critical problem is the lack of a functional and growing platform ecosystem for small developers to sell digitally-/network-distributed (non-disc) content through to the installed base of Xbox customers, period,” he writes, while detailing how Microsoft has thrown up all sorts of red tape to prevent small gaming developers from easily selling their games on the Xbox platform. “Microsoft, you are idiotic to have ceded not just indie game developers but also a generation of loyal kids and teens to making games for other people’s mobile devices.”

[More from BGR: Apple iWatch: People are getting excited for all the wrong reasons]

Brown wishes that Microsoft had the foresight to adopt the model for game and app distribution that iOS and Android have used to create enormous mobile gaming ecosystems and made fortunes for formerly unknown gaming companies such as Rovio. And to make things worse, Brown thinks that Apple could make a big move into the gaming sphere if it adding a gaming ecosystem to its Apple TV platform that made it just as easy to develop independent games for the big screen as it is to develop games for the iPad.

“Apple, if it chooses to do so, will simply kill PlayStation, Wii U and Xbox by introducing an open 30%-cut app/game ecosystem for Apple TV,” he writes. “I already make a lot of money on iOS — I will be the first to write apps for Apple TV when I can, and I know I’ll make money. I would for Xbox if I could and I knew I would make money.”

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Intel’s Streaming TV Box Will Bundle Cable Channels to Cut Your Cable Bill

Intel has finally confirmed its much rumored revolutionary TV gadget and, as expected, it will not offer à la carte cable channels. But after a CES letdown the chip-maker has said its Silicon Valley star-studded Intel Media group will build a potentially game-changing set-top box — one that might just end up slashing your cable bill. At an AllThingsD conference this afternoon, Intel VP Erik Huggers not only detailed that this as yet unnamed magic box will combine DVR, live TV, and apps, but also explained how it will provide a cable alternative. Instead of requiring a subscription from a standard pay-TV provider, Intel will offer its own different bundles. So, for example, someone who wants the ESPN/Disney package might get all the ESPN channels they love, plus ABC Family, the Disney Channel, A&E, the History Channel, and other stuff owned by Disney, suggests Business Insider’s Steve Kovach.

RELATED: Google Fiber TV Just Jumped into the Cable TV Business

Intel has not confirmed how its bundles will look, or the pricing options therein. But if Intel offers non-Disney/ESPN packages, those should theoretically cost a lot less — the rates of ESPN and other sports-bound networks push up the price of basic cable. And for all those people out there who don’t at all care about sports, it might be nice to stop subsidizing it for everybody else. Again, Intel’s Huggers didn’t specify whether the company’s new device, set to debut sometime this year, would break that contractual dilemma that gouges TV package prices. But he did mention a more “flexible environment,’ which sounds promising:

I agree that consumers want choice and convenience, but I think there is value in bundles. If bundles are bundled right, I think there’s real value in that, and opportunities to create a more flexible environment where end-users have more choice than they do today. I don’t believe the industry is ready for true à la carte.

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Australia to grill Apple, others on pricing

CANBERRA (Reuters) – Apple Inc has been ordered to appear before Australia‘s parliament with fellow technology giants Microsoft Inc and Adobe Systems Inc to explain why local consumers pay so much for their products, despite the strong Aussie dollar.

Broadening a row between the world’s most valuable company and Australian lawmakers over corporate taxes paid on Apple‘s operations, Apple executives were formally summonsed on Monday to front a parliamentary committee in Canberra on March 22.

“In what’s probably the first time anywhere in the world, these IT firms are now being summoned by the Australian parliament to explain why they price their products so much higher in Australia compared to the United States,” said ruling Labor government MP Ed Husic, who helped set up the committee.

High local prices and soaring cost-of-living bills for basic services are hurting the popularity of the minority Labor government ahead of a September 14 election it is widely tipped to lose, giving political momentum to the inquiry.

All three companies have so far declined to appear before the special committee set up in May last year to investigate possible price gouging on Australian hardware and software buyers, despite the Australian dollar hovering near record highs above the U.S. currency around A$ 1.03.

A 16GB WiFi iPad produced by Apple with Retina display sells in Australia for A$ 539, $ 40 above the price in the U.S., despite the stronger local currency. Microsoft’s latest versions of office 365 home premium cost A$ 119 in Australia versus $ 99.99 in the United States.

IT firms and other multinationals have blamed high operating costs in Australia including high local wages and conditions, as well as import costs and the relatively small size of the retail market in the $ 1.5 trillion economy.

Failure to appear before the committee as ordered could leave all three firms open to contempt of parliament charges, fines or even jail terms.

“For some time consumers and businesses have been trying to work out why they are paying so much more, particularly for software, where if it’s downloaded there is no shipping or handling, or much of a labor cost,” Husic told Reuters.

Adobe and Microsoft have previously provided separate written statements and submissions to the inquiry. But executives have been reluctant to explain their pricing before a public inquiry.

Apple executives in Australia declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

“The companies have blamed each other for not appearing. One will say ‘we’re not going to appear if the other is not going to appear’. So we’ve cut straight to the chase and said we’ll just summons you,” Husic said.

Price gouging in IT for hardware and software, Husic said, could be costing Australia’s more than 2 million small and medium businesses as much as $ 10 billion extra.

Husic took aim at Apple last week over local taxes paid by the company, telling parliament that Apple generated A$ 6 billion in revenue in Australia in 2011, but paid only A$ 40 million in tax – less than one percent of turnover.

“While they generated A$ 6 billion in revenue, they apparently racked up from what I understand A$ 5.5 billion in costs. How?” Husic said. “They do not manufacture here. They have no factories here.”

He accused Apple executives of maintaining a “cloak of invisibility”, while dodging scrutiny of operations. Apple has been criticized elsewhere for its zealous secrecy.

“Ask anyone who has sought answers from them about their Australian operations and you will hear a common theme. They will not talk,” he said.

(Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

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Metro’s electronics retailer to boost online business -report

BERLIN (Reuters) – German group Metro’s Media-Saturn consumer electronics retailer aims to step up its online business to compete with the likes of Amazon.com Inc,, newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung said.

Media-Saturn, operator of Europe’s largest chain of consumer electronics stores, wants to more than double the share of total sales generated by the online business to 10 percent next year and double it again in the years to come, unit chief Horst Norberg said in an interview with the newspaper published on Sunday.

“We’re stronger than Amazon,” the newspaper quoted Norberg as saying.

The company also aims to add between 40 and 50 stores per year to its current global tally of 942, according to Norberg.

(Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

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PlayStation 4 pricing will reportedly top $400

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Facebook Broke the Internet

A weird thing happened on Thursday night. Anytime you clicked on a link — or most of the time anyways — some strange Internet force directed you to an error page on Facebook. The URL is full of weird randomly generated code, but it’s definitely a Facebook page. You can even check your notifications even though you didn’t even want to visit Facebook. No, this is not a conspiracy. In all likelihood, it’s a bug that will be fixed within the hour. (Unless, it’s not, in which case things will get very interesting.) If you need to use the Internet before then, simply log out of Facebook, and you should be good to go.

RELATED: Are Facebook Users Higher Class?

Folks that understand how these Internet things work have quickly surmised that the bug must be related to Facebook Connect, the ubiquitous, one-click log-in feature that you’ve been using much more than you though you were. If true this would mean that every time you’re redirected by this bug or whatever it is, you’re heading to a site that’s controlled by Facebook. We couldn’t have said anything so dramatic yesterday, but today it’s become painfully apparent. Facebook rules the Internet. There are few corners that it does not touch, and whether you read your News Feed or not,  Facebook can ruin your Thursday night of Internet surfing any time it wants to. 

RELATED: Happy Hour Vid: Mashable CEO Sees Society Growing Tolerant of Less Privacy

This is a developing story, so check back soon for more details.

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