Gadget and Techno Updates
Posts tagged it’s
Nokia to use Windows Phone: ‘it’s now a three-horse race’
Feb 11th
Nokia during its financial meeting today confirmed a historic deal with Microsoft to switch primarily to Windows Phone in return for key deals. The phone maker will use Windows Phone as its “principal” smartphone strategy for the future, including the use of mobile Office and Xbox Live. Bing will be primary search engine across all of Nokia’s platforms, and Microsoft’s adCenter will provide mobile ads.
The apps and content from the Ovi Store will be subsumed into the Windows Phone Marketplace, the two companies added. Apps will have to be made with Microsoft’s tools and won’t work with Nokia’s cross-platform More >
Court reaffirms: fourth amendment rights not violated if the police install a GPS device on your car when it’s not in your garage
Aug 28th
Back in January, a court in Portland, Oregon ruled that the Fourth Amendment rights of one Juan Pineda-Moreno had not been violated by the police when they tracked him using various GPS devices they installed on the underside of his Jeep with magnets. You see, the police suspected that Pineda-Moreno was growing Marijuana somewhere, and they really didn’t like that. Eventually, Pineda-Moreno was arrested and convicted of crimes involving the growth of said Marijuana — but he appealed the decision because he thought that his Fourth Amendment rights (the one which guards against unreasonable search and seizure) had been violated. More >
MPEG-LA makes H.264 video royalty-free forever, as long as it’s freely distributed
Aug 27th
The H.264 codec that makes a good deal of digital video possible has actually been free to use (under certain conditions) for many years, but following recent controversies over the future of web video, rightholders have agreed to extend that freedom in perpetuity. Whereas originally standards organization MPEG-LA had said it wouldn’t collect royalties from those freely distributing AVC/H.264 video until 2016, the limitless new timeframe may mean that content providers banking on WebM and HTML5 video won’t have an expensive surprise in the years to come. Then again, patent licensing is complicated stuff and we’d hate to get your More >