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 Nortel, once one of the biggest telecoms company in the world but now in the death throes of bankruptcy, has selected Google's $900 million bid for its patent portfolio as the stalking horse bid. This doesn't mean that Google will automatically win Nortel's massive array of telecoms patents, but it does mean that Google is the preferred buyer. Google, which has a history of lobbying for patent law reform, has been the target of many patent litigation suits. Google's relative infancy means that it has a lot less patents in the vault than big-hitters like Microsoft, Oracle and IBM, and buying Nortel's portfolio of 6,000 patents could provide better protection against patent litigation in the future. It's worth noting that both Apple and RIM have showed interested in the portfolio, too. Mashable speculates that the patents -- which are nearly all telecoms-related -- will be used to defend against Oracle's attacks on Android's use of Java. We reckon that Google is simply looking to cover its future endeavors in the world of networking. In the absence of patent law reform, and continued threats to net neutrality, owning a bunch of telecoms patents sounds like a very sensible move. Google bids $900 million for Nortel's patents to protect against litigation trolls originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/04/google-bids-900-million-for-nortels-patents-to-protect-from-li/ GOOGLE LAWSON SOFTWARE VIRGIN MEDIA FINISAR ALLIANCE DATA SYSTEMS Pastebin is a very popular website aimed at coders and other nerdy types, which allows them (or should I say, us) to paste and share snippets of code with lovely syntax highlighting. It has recently undergone a major overhaul which includes the release of a brand new Windows client. The new client lets you create new "pastes" and manage your existing ones. It joins a host of other tools from Pastebin, such as the Google and Chrome extensions, OS X widget and the mobile apps. If you're currently using Pastebin, the new client is a great addition. And if you haven't tried it before, next time you have a piece of code you want to share or get some feedback on, you could do worse than try out Pastebin. [Thanks, Jeroen!]Pastebin updated to V3, releases Windows app originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/04/pastebin-updated-to-v3-releases-windows-app/ MICROSOFT SHAW COMMUNICATIONS TRIMBLE NAVIGATION LIMITED INTUIT MCAFEE  Social gaming is on the rise and knowing that, AT&T and NGMOCO have just announced a new agreement to bring social gaming to all AT&T Android users through the Mobage platform. The agreement of course will bring Mobage enabled games to AT&T customers and allow for plenty of growth “Games are consistently among the most popular entertainment apps for smartphones,” said Ted Woodbery, vice president, Wireless Data, Voice and Ancillary Services, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “We are pleased to be the first U.S. wireless carrier to work with ngmoco and look forward to giving our Android customers access to the rich Mobage gaming catalog later this year.”
Mobage will serve as a hub for AT&T Android users to discover and play games, and connect to users across the globe. Mobage is still running under beta terms within North America but this new agreement will further help expand their position in social gaming. You can find the full press release after the break. Source: AT&T read more 
 Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/6XgHJLh8R5g/att-and-ngmoco-bringing-social-gaming-platform-mobage-att-android-users NETGEAR NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS QUANTA COMPUTER PRICELINECOM FEI COMPANY Zen Coding made quite a splash when we first covered it almost a year ago. For those who aren't familiar, Zen is a fantastic form of shorthand for quickly hand-coding HTML. And today, a new version is out! Here are some of the goodies version 0.7 brings to the party: - Text nodes: Writing something like a[href=/]{Click here} now works, and puts "Click here" within the link.
- New actions added: Increment/decrement number under cursor, evaluate math expressions, and more.
- Wrap with Abbreviation was upgraded.
There are several other improvements but they're all rather technical. If you use Zen Coding (or are intrigued by the concept) go ahead and read the release notes for this new version. Zen Coding has official implementations for a ton of editors, including TextMate, Apatana, Coda, E2, Komodo, Notepad++, PSPad, and more. It also has unofficial builds for Vim, UltraEdit, Visual Studio and more. If you want to play with Zen Coding without installing it, you can use the online demo to see some of its magic in action. Zen Coding high-speed HTML shorthand plug-in updated originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/15/zen-coding-high-speed-html-shorthand-plug-in-updated/ EMC TIBCO SOFTWARE INSIGHT ENTERPRISES LAM RESEARCH LAM RESEARCH How much is that tablet in the window? The one with the 7-inch screen and Android 3.2? Hard to say, but it might be the Sharp Galapagos A01SH you're looking at. The slate, announced in earnest today, should fit comfortably betwixt the 5.5- and 10.8-inch variants of the lineup that are also expected to arrive sometime before the end of the year. The A01SH is accompanied by an NVIDIA Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core CPU with 1GB of RAM, a WSVGA display with 1,024 x 600 resolution, 8GB of internal memory alongside microSD support, 5MP / 2MP cameras along the back and front, and 7.5 hours of battery life. At a thickness of 12.9mm, it's not as thin as the Galaxy Tab 10.1, but it's no Toshiba Thrive, either. The tablet should reach stores in Japan by the end of the month, but the only timeframe given for a US release is before the ball drops in Times Square -- perfect timing for anyone who wants to ring in 2012 snuggled up to a new gadget. 7-inch Sharp Galapagos A01SH tablet sees formal introduction, hitting the US 'this year' originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink  Engadget Japan , PhoneArena |  eAccess (translated) | Email this | Comments 
 Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/WImlW8BvZaU/ EMULEX MOODYS BHARTI AIRTEL RED HAT SRA INTERNATIONAL Over the last few days, a mass SQL injection attack has been quickly gathering speed. Just three days ago only 28,000 URLs were affected, but at the time of writing, there could be up to 3.8 million infected URLs.
Websense has a complete write up the attack, dubbed 'LizaMoon,' but here's the basic gist: it looks like someone is exploiting a vulnerabilty (or vulnerabilities) in hundreds of thousands of websites running on Microsoft SQL Server 2003 and 2005. It's not yet known whether this is a vulnerability in SQL Server, or simply a case of outdated, unmaintained, and easily-exploitable CMSes. The attack takes the form of an SQL injection, which then inserts a link to a JavaScript file hosted on the attacker's server. This is repeated over and over until every Web page in the SQL database has been infected -- and considering 3.8 million URLs have been infected, you can see that this is a very easy, and automated, attack. Fortunately, the JavaScript isn't particularly malicious: it pops up a rogue AV program called Windows Stability Center, but that's it. Better yet, the rogue antivirus is already recognized by a bunch of real antivirus suites, including Avast, Panda and Microsoft Security Essentials. The real problem with SQL injection attacks is that there's nothing we surfers can do about them. There will always be old and unmaintained websites, and thus SQL injections will remain one of the easiest and most lucrative tools of hackers and spammers alike. All you can do is keep your antivirus and anti-malware software up to date, and pray. Gargantuan SQL injection infects 3.8 million URLs, installs rogue antivirus originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 05:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/01/massive-sql-injection-infects-3-8-million-urls-installs-rogue-a/ LINEAR TECHNOLOGY RF MICRO DEVICES SAIC WESTERN DIGITAL UNITED ONLINE The developer of iCab Mobile, a feature-rich alternative to the Safari Web browser on iPad and iPhone, has been ordered by Apple to remove its ability to download and install JavaScript modules. Presumably it's not the fact that iCab can execute JavaScript that's causing Apple to apoplectically puff and splutter, but rather its ability to download modules. Both Apple and Google frown upon apps that contain market-like functionality, and someone at Apple probably thought that iCab's JavaScript modules looked like a bit too much like discrete apps. Alexander Clauss, iCab's developer, has rather a lot to say on the matter. "Maybe if I would have called the modules 'smart bookmarks' and would have made installing them much more complicated, Apple would have never asked to remove the ability to download them from the internet. The great user experience of installing modules has probably created a suspicion that these modules are more than just a piece of JavaScript code. From a pure technical point of view, if Apple does not allow to download modules (JavaScript code), Apple would also have to disallow to load web pages in general, because these do also contain JavaScript code." In conclusion, to circumvent Apple's draconian decree, iCab Mobile now simply comes bundled with some 20 JavaScript modules. The ability to download modules made by third-party developers has been disabled, however -- but even then, Clauss says that you can simply contact him and ask for your module to be bundled with the next version of iCab. Download iCab Mobile for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch ($1.99) Apple orders iCab iOS browser to cripple JavaScript modules originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/08/apple-orders-icab-ios-browser-to-cripple-javascript-modules/ MAXIMUS SI INTERNATIONAL NETWORK APPLIANCE CISCO SYSTEMS SAIC Google, as part of its ongoing and much-needed overhaul of its popular Blogger platform, has just enabled five dynamic, HTML5ish, AJAXy 'Dynamic Views'. There's a video introducing the new layouts after the break. The five new views provide fresh and interesting ways to explore your favorite Blogger blogs. The Mosaic view, for example, creates a wall of thumbnails -- click one, and it zooms to fill the screen; click it again and it minimizes. Flipcard is similar to Mosaic, but not quite as eclectic. Sidebar, Timeslide and Snapshot round off the new views, with each one obviously targeted at different types of content, from photo blogs, to text-only philosophy blogs, and everything in between. For now, you have to visit a Blogger blog and add /view to the URL to enable the new Dynamic Views. If you own a Blogger blog, you can disable the new views -- and really, why weren't they disabled by default? If feedback is positive -- which we're sure it will be -- these Dynamic Views will soon be enabled by default. You'll also be able to edit the views in much the same way as current Blogger templates. Continue reading Google's Blogger platform adds five new HTML5 Dynamic Views Google's Blogger platform adds five new HTML5 Dynamic Views originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/31/google-blogger-platform-introduces-five-new-html5-dynamic-views/ INVENTEC SKYWORKS SOLUTIONS INFOCUS SYNOPSYS ACCENTURE So this professor comes up with a new toilet cleaner that works by "eating" the dirt; or so he thinks. That's how the plot starts for Tasty Planet. You play the role of the toilet cleaner, but you're not really a toilet cleaner after all -- you're a blob of gray goo that can eat anything that's smaller than yourself. As you chomp away, you grow -- and as you grow, you can eat bigger and bigger stuff. The first level pits you against microscopic particles; by the time I stopped playing, I got all the way to eating cats and dogs. I know that sounds disturbing, but it's a really cute game, and there's no gore or anything like that. Supposedly you keep growing and growing until you're able to eat whole planets (hence the name). The challenge factor comes when you realize you can't touch any critter larger than yourself - you'll get "bitten" and become smaller. In the beginning you're so small, that a single touch can kill you. Later on, you're big enough that touching larger animals doesn't kill you on the spot, but it does reduce your size. Each level is timed, so if you're not large enough by the time your clock runs out, you need to start again. As long as you don't touch the larger animals, you should be fine. All in all, a fun, addictive little game. It's available for iOS, too. Tasty Planet is a fun flash game where you eat everything in sight originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/08/tasty-planet-is-a-fun-flash-game-where-you-eat-everything-in-sight/ SI INTERNATIONAL NETWORK APPLIANCE CISCO SYSTEMS SAIC TEXAS INSTRUMENTS Those benevolent armchair philanthropist Redditors are at it again! Four days ago a 'self' post extolling the potential virtues of a Backup Day exploded with 2500 upvotes and 1000 comments -- and now World Backup Day 2011 is actually happening. On March 31, as part of the global data-saving initiative, you are encouraged to back up all of your cherished photos and videos, and important documents. If you've ever had a hard disk fail, and not had a backup to fall back on, you'll know that it's a bit like losing a sizable fragment of your soul. If you've never backed up your important files -- or if you only back up sporadically -- do it on World Backup Day! It's not hard to back up your data, either. A 2TB drive costs only a fistful of dollars, and it takes just a few minutes to set SyncToy for Windows, or Time Machine for Mac, to mirror your data every night. If you prefer a cloud-based solution, there's always SugarSync and Dropbox. Finally, don't forget that Bundlelytic has a charity giveaway for three excellent data-backup-and-recovery tools -- $160 of software for only $25, and 100% of the proceeds to go the Japanese Red Cross. For even more backup options, for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, check our list of 13 great backup programs. March 31 is World Backup Day 2011 originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/28/march-31-is-world-backup-day-2011/ CDW NOVELLUS SYSTEMS FISERV NOKIA TOTAL SYSTEM SERVICES Today's Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 event in NYC wasn't just about software -- okay, it was mostly about software, but the company also unveiled a slew of accessories for its slick Android tablet. High atop the list is a number of new docks for the slate, including a $50 Multimedia Dock, which props the device up in landscape mode while charging it and offering HDMI out. The $80 Ultra Productivity Tool, meanwhile, also charges the device and includes a full-sized keyboard with Android shortcut keys. The $150 Premium Protective case turns the Tab into a makeshift notebook with a full-size Bluetooth keyboard and a hinge that lets the user adjust the tab's viewing angle. A new $40 HDTV adapter gives the tablet full 1080p HDMI output. The company also announced a $40 SD card adapter and a USB adapter for easy accessory input. For $60, Tab owners can pick up the Premium Book Cover, a high end case for the device that lets you prop it up for typing or viewing movies. And somewhere in the distance, you could hear Steve Jobs audibly shudder when the company unveiled a pen stylus for the device. The stylus has an aluminum body and a silicon tip, for when you need to give your fingertips a break. It'll run you $20, and sadly won't include meat. Samsung reveals new Galaxy Tab 10.1 accessories: multimedia dock, HDTV adapter, case, and more originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | | Email this | CommentsSource: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/03/samsung-reveals-new-galaxy-tab-10-1-accessories-multimedia-dock/ YAHOO YAHOO COGNIZANT TECH SOLUTIONS TELETECH HOLDINGS IKON OFFICE SOLUTIONS When someone tells me about a "platformer", my first thought is that it's probably a simple game that mainly revolves around running and jumping around, with a minimal plot. [Play a Zelda game! -Ed] Elephant Quest is one platformer that managed to prove me completely wrong. Yes, you do run and jump around, and you also shoot at stuff. But the game has much, much more going for it. Basically, as you run, jump and shoot, you gain experience points and level up. Hitting Space brings you into an interface where you can convert your experience points into Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Dexterity points. Once you've "specialized" your points, you then get to pick what exact skills you'd like to enhance in each field. For example, you could use your dexterity to enhance your weapons or increase your swiftness. The game is played in a huge maze; you go through rooms using doors, and there's a large map. As the name implies, there are quests you can take, too. For example, one quest had me searching all over the place for ten balloons. The bottom line is that this is a surprisingly deep game that just might ensnare you for a good bit longer than you intended to play. Beware! Elephant Quest is an addictive, deep platformer originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/25/elephant-quest-is-an-addictive-deep-platformer/ LAWSON SOFTWARE VIRGIN MEDIA FINISAR ALLIANCE DATA SYSTEMS DIEBOLD |
