01 April 2012

Tech companies new lobbying force in DC

Editorial:  The one thing about Washington, D.C.--money talks. Tech companies would prefer to be left alone and allowed to innovate freely.  But the Washington bureaucracy has other things in mind--as Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and others have found out.  The only way to control the governmental bureaucratic mind-set is to fight fire with fire--hence hire lobbyists and "play the Washington game." No wonder the average American distrusts Washington . . . 

Tech companies new lobbying force in DC
New York Post
By GARETT SLOANE In the last few months, the tech industry has won some of the biggest debates and legislative battles in Washington, from protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act to last week's passage of the JOBS Act. With SOPA, Google led the charge to ...Advocating bills like SOPA and JOBS cost the tech industry $125 million last year, according to OpenSecrets.org.
This is just the beginning of tech’s influence, said one source, who sees all of K Street looking to woo Silicon Valley dollars.Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/flexing_muscles_tezyRbXXee4BuGpqV9StUK#ixzz1qp8HqDM5 

New York Post 

Foxconn chairman pledges to raise pay in China, invest in Hainan
Reuters
By Lee Chyen Yee and Jeanny Kao | BOAO, China (Reuters) - Foxconn Technology Group will keep on increasing worker salaries in China and cutting the hours of work, Chairman Terry Gou said on Sunday, after it came under fire for poor working conditions ...

Technology Focus: Why Apple's Cook Went To China
International Business Times
What are the outcomes of the Cook trip and its implications for the Cupertino, Calif.,technology developer, which at Friday's values, remains the world's most valuable company, with a market capitalization nearing $560 billion? Creating "Guanxi.

International Business Times

O'Brien: Russian tech revolution plants a flag in Silicon Valley
San Jose Mercury News
Aside from attracting the ideas and energy necessary to spur innovation, backers hope the money will buy something even more valuable: Credibility in Silicon Valley. with a legion of Russian techies attending the ninth annual Global Technology ...

Beware Apps Bearing Unwanted Gifts
Wall Street Journal
By STEVE JONES As companies increasingly allow workers to use personal smartphones and tablets on the job, they are confronting a potential new security threat: malicious software embedded in games and apps. App stores, the online marketplaces where ...

Titanoboa once slithered the planet
USA TODAY
By Monika Joshi, USA TODAY A snake stretching longer than a school bus and too thick to fit through a doorway may sound like a creature in a Hollywood bio-horror flick, but this one actually ruled the roost on part of the planet millions of years ago.

USA TODAY

April Fools' Tech Roundup: Kodak Kittens, Gmail Tap, and More!
PC Magazine
By David Murphy Enjoying April Fools' Day yet? A day when all legitimate tech reporting grinds to a standstill, for what company would be foolish enough to make a market-changing announcement on a day reserved for jokes and pranks?

Leader of Disputed Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Experiment Resigns
PC Magazine
By Damon Poeter The leader of the research team that shocked the scientific world last year with findings that seemed to show that neutrinos can travel faster than light quit his post this week. After further experiments cast grave doubts on the ...

Are you kidding? April Fools' Day on the Internet
msnbc.com
Google again took the lead Sunday for impressive April Fools Day pranks, with its introduction of a self-driving car to compete in stock car racing, and announcing a change to Gmail that gets rid of the pesky keyboard by "taking 26 keys to just two.

How the Retina Display Gave an Android User iPad Envy
PCWorld
By Peter Smith, ITworld I live in a tech bi-lingual household. My girlfriend uses an iPhone and an iPad, I use an Android phone and tablet. It worked for us. We were both content with things the way they were. She had her stuff and I had mine and we'd ...

TweetDeck back up after bug
CNNMoney
By Laurie Segall @CNNMoneyTech March 31, 2012: 3:04 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Twitter's popular TweetDeck client was back up Saturday after it was temporarily taken offline over a glitch that allowed some users to access other users' accounts.

Apple's Chinese iPhone plants employ forced interns, claim campaigners
The Guardian
Apple's factories in China are employing tens of thousands of students, some of them on forced internships, according to campaigners lobbying for better labour conditions at Foxconn plants, which assemble iPhones. Some students could be as young as 16.

The Guardian

'Angry Birds' migrate to 'Space'
Boston Herald
By Garrett Martin / Video Games “ANGRY BIRDS SPACE” By Rovio for iOS, Android, Mac and PC. Appropriate for all ages. : B It makes sense that the “Angry Birds” would eventually head out into space. Rovio's portable block-buster is the “Super Mario” of ...

Pesticides tied to bees' decline
Northwest Herald
By Marc Kaufman - The Washington Post New research has begun to unravel the mystery of why bees are disappearing in alarming numbers worldwide: Some of the pesticides most commonly used by farmers appear to be changing bee behavior in small but fatal ...

Developer defends Girls Around Me app
CNET
Russian developer says the controversial app only used publicly available data and is being made a privacy scapegoat. by Steven Musil April 1, 2012 9:17 AM PDT Follow @stevenmusil The Girls Around Me app showed the location of women near users of the...

US Senator on Facebook, Google: Privacy is a casualty
ZDNet (blog)
By Emil Protalinski | April 1, 2012, 12:22pm PDT Summary: US Senator Al Franken gave a speech recently in which he attacked both Facebook and Google. Franken explained how both companies are in the business of disregarding your privacy.

After Threats, No Signs of Attack by Hackers
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
By SOMINI SENGUPTA / The New York Times A threat to attack a crucial part of the Internet on Saturday by members of the mercurial, leaderless hacker collective called Anonymous appears to have had no discernible impact so far.

Apple Invents a Killer 3D Imaging Camera for iOS Devices
Patently Apple
Apple has invented a killer 3D imaging camera that will apply to both still photography and video. The new cameras in development will utilize new depth-detection sensors such as LIDAR, RADAR and Laser that will create stereo disparity maps in creating ...

OMGPOP CEO responds to criticisim of his tweets about former employee
VentureBeat
Early this morning, GamesBeat reported that Porter (whose company developed the Pictionary-clone Draw Something), publicly called out the only employee not to join Zynga after the $180 million-plus buyout. In two different updates (which have since ...

Cellphone buyers continue moving toward smart ones
Appleton Post Crescent
The smartphone continues to edge out traditional cellphones as the mobile device of choice, but there are holdouts among buyers. Nearly half of US mobile phone subscribers (49.7 percent) now own smartphones capable of streaming video, texting, ...

Apple's Tim Cook Ranked First Among Top 25 Highest Rated CEOs of 2012
ValueWalk
By Sheeraz Raza It's not even an year that Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AAPL) new chief Tim Cook has taken charge of the company, and yet he has been rated as the most popular chief executive officer (CEO) in any US companies as measured by employee approval.

Amazing! Google's self-driving car allows the blind to drive
Fox News
"This is some of the best driving I've ever done," Steve Mahan said the other day. Mahan was behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius tooling the small California town of Morgan Hill in late January, a routine trip to pick up the dry cleaning and drop by the ...

Apple Says It May Offer iPad Refunds to Customers in Australia
Washington Post
March 28 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. said it's prepared to offer iPad refunds to Australian customers after the nation's consumer commission accused the company of misleading people that the new tablet is compatible with local 4G networks.

Venus and Pleiades Star Cluster Shine in Celestial Show Tuesday
Space.com
by Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist As the bright planets Venus and Jupiter go their own separate ways after their spectacular tryst in mid-March, Venus continues to grow ever-brighter as the northern spring evenings warm up.

squabbles delay Sim card ruling
BBC News
By Dave Lee Technology Reporter A decision regarding the next format for mobile Sim cards has been delayed after negotiations over patents ground to a halt, French media has reported. Apple and Nokia, along with other manufacturers, are locked in ...

BBC News

No Foolin' -- Find Tablet Bargains in April
PCWorld
By John P. Mello Jr., PCWorld Mar 31, 2012 1:19 PM April may be the cruelest month for poets, but it won't be for deal seekers on non-Apple tablets, large HDTVs, desktop computer replacements, and ultrabooks. Apple's decision to chop $100 off the price ...

Lights out for Earth Hour
Washington Post
Hundreds of landmarks around the world, including Washington's National Cathedral, Big Ben in London, the Great Wall of China and Tokyo Tower planned to dim their lights at 8:30 pm local time Saturday as part of a global effort to shine a spotlight on ...

Fus Roh Dah! This Kinect Setup Puts You In Skyrim
PCWorld
By Joshua Schnell , PCWorld Mar 28, 2012 3:22 PM Want to take the awesomeness of Skyrim to a whole new level? How about playing it in virtual reality? That's right, a setup now exists that allows you to fully immerse yourself in the world of the the ...

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