New Zealand Geek - news page 59

SEATTLE - Sensing the start of a personal computer revolution, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard University in 1975 to start Microsoft and pursue a vision of a computer on every desk and in every home.

Three decades later, Gates is set to step down today from what is now the world's largest software company to work full-time at the charitable organization - the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - built by his vast fortune.
June 27, 2008

NEW YORK - The internet's key oversight agency relaxed rules to permit the introduction of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new internet domain names to join ".com," making the first sweeping changes in the network's 25-year-old addressing system.

The internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers unanimously approved the new guidelines on the final day of weeklong meetings in Paris. ICANN also voted unanimously to open public comment on a separate proposal to permit addresses entirely in non-English languages for the first time.
June 27, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook agreed to pay an undisclosed amount of cash and stock to settle a long- running legal battle over whether founder Mark Zuckerberg stole ideas for the site from fellow Harvard students, according to freshly-released court documents.

The parties in the case - which pitted Zuckerberg, a shy 24-year-old entrepreneur now worth billions of dollars, against former Harvard classmates and one-time US Olympic team rowing hopefuls Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss - agreed to a tentative settlement deal in February, according to the court papers.
June 27, 2008

Those attending the Tel.Con9 telecommunications talkfest were left in no doubt there is an election looming.

As the event's first speaker, Communications Minister David Cunliffe was on his political game, selling Labour's $500 million Broadband Investment Fund and the emerging positive results of the Government's recent regulatory overhaul of the telco sector.
June 26, 2008

Yahoo's steadily sinking stock pulled out of its descent yesterday on reports that the internet pioneer is reconsidering its recent decision to fall into the arms of online search leader Google instead of Microsoft.

The prospect of Yahoo spurning Google in favour of an alternative deal with Microsoft cheered investors still disillusioned with Yahoo's rejection of a US$47.5 billion ($62.7 billion) takeover offer from Microsoft.
June 26, 2008

Local technology company SmartPay says its retailer customer base is becoming increasingly comfortable using broadband-based services, prompting it to offer a new phoneline-replacing, voice-over-internet (VoIP) service.

NZX-listed SmartPay has about 4500 retailers using its networked services, which include Eftpos connectivity over the internet, on-selling customer access to the country's largest wi-fi network, mobile phone top-up payment processing and in-store audio visual promotional systems.
June 26, 2008

Ernie Newman never shies away from giving his colleagues in the telecommunications sector a serve if he thinks they deserve it.

At the moment, however, the chief executive of the Telecommunications Users Association lobby group is upbeat about where the industry is headed.
June 26, 2008

NEW YORK - Chester Santos has been training his brain for seven years.

At 32, he's not worried about losing his memory. He's taking advantage of a growing market in "brain fitness" spurred by aging baby boomers.
June 25, 2008

LONDON - What do you do if you are stuck in a field at a pop festival but there's trouble ahead because your mobile phone's battery is about to run out?

Thanks to a new gizmo, you now just need to face the music and dance.
June 25, 2008

TOKYO - Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial is finalising plans to mass-produce 37-inch organic light-emitting diode TVs in three years, aiming to overtake rivals in the next-generation flat-TV race, the Sankei Shimbun daily reports.

The newspaper said that Matsushita would be the first to mass-produce OLED TVs of over 30 inches, and that the company aimed to challenge Samsung Electronics for the top share in the global flat-TV market.
June 25, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO - Mobile phones under development by Google and its partners face slipping delivery schedules, with the first phones not likely to arrive until late 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Google had said eight months ago that the first phones to be built under the Android partnership umbrella would come out in the second half of 2008 and commitments from various handset makers and carriers appear to support this initial commitment.
June 25, 2008

A teenage hacker has been suspended from school until the end of the year, after he was found to have broken school rules by accessing other people's emails.

The Westlake Boys High School Year 13 student will be out of class for more than two terms but will remain on the roll and be "supported" with school materials.
June 25, 2008

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO - Shares of Yahoo rose as much as 11 per cent yesterday, reversing earlier declines, after contradictory reports on whether buyout talks with Microsoft were heating up again.

"People are attributing huge outcomes to very small pieces of information," said Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, referring to a flurry of thinly detailed stories citing unnamed sources that caused Yahoo's stock to spike.
June 25, 2008

HELSINKI - Nokia will buy all remaining shares it doesn't already own in British software firm Symbian Ltd. and establish a joint, open Symbian platform for mobile phones together with other handset makers.

The initiative will compete with Google's mobile operating system Android and similar systems from Apple and Microsoft.
June 25, 2008

The number of personal computers in use around the world has surpassed one billion, with strong growth in emerging markets set to double the number of PCs by early 2014, research firm Gartner said.

Mature markets accounted for 58 per cent of the first billion installed PCs, but would account for only about 30 per cent of the next billion, Gartner said.
June 25, 2008