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However, these professional services are not core business activities for Nokia, so since the introduction of the LGPL license for Qt in 2009 we have been actively working to grow the number of companies providing Qt services. In 2010 we began the search for a company we could work with to serve the commercial licensees in the Qt community. We have now concluded that search and chosen to work with Digia. As a consequence, Digia will acquire the Qt Commercial software licensing and professional services business from Nokia, with the transaction expected to close by the end of March 2011.

Employing hundreds of Qt experts, Digia has 7 years experience in providing top-class Qt competence, and is dedicated to continue and grow Qt Commercial relationships as well as to contribute innovation to the overall Qt LGPL and commercial community.

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As a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel, McAfee will become part of the company's Software and Services Group, run by senior vice president Renee James. McAfee president Dave DeWalt will report directly to James.

McAfee will continue to offer its own branded line of security products and maintain its own customers. The two companies said they're prepping the "first fruits" of their partnership to hit the market later this year.

The need for greater security across a greater array of devices was the driving force behind Intel's bid to pick up McAfee.

Pointing to the growing number of connected devices, from PCs to mobile phones to TVs to medical devices, the two companies have said that today's approach to security isn't enough. And with the mounting threat of cyberattacks, a new security framework that combines hardware, software, and services is needed.

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The rental company announced yesterday that it will be holding a special auction to sell off its operation to the highest bidder. The company decided to hold an auction after a "stalking horse" bidder, Cobalt Video Holdco, came along and offered management $290 million for its U.S. and international subsidies, Blockbuster said. That $290 million fee, which Blockbuster agreed to in an asset-purchase arrangement, will be used as the minimum amount that management will accept from any bidder.

However, there are several factors at play before Blockbuster can hold an auction for its sale. For one, the company is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, for which it filed a petition in September. It now needs to receive authorization by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York to hold an auction. Along the way, it is also trying to "accelerate" its movement through bankruptcy.

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The flaw, said to affect 5 to 15 percent of all Cougar Point motherboards, results in a performance degradation for storage devices connected to the motherboard's SATA II data inputs. Devices that use those inputs are typically either hard drives or optical disk drives. If the inputs were affected, connected drives would eventually slow down to the point of becoming unusable.

To protect a PC from experiencing that issue, a system vendor could simply use the newer, faster SATA III inputs. Most Cougar Point desktop motherboards we've seen have four SATA II ports and two SATA IIIs. Laptop boards tend to have fewer inputs, but it's not hard to imagine that in a closed laptop or all-in-one chassis a vendor could simply use the SATA III inputs for the hard drive and the optical drive and ship without risk.

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Facebook said that if a person currently checks in at a respective company's store or "likes" a brand page, the action often gets lost amid all the other content that a user's friends may see. Sponsored Stories solves that problem for advertisers by plucking valuable content from user news feeds and making it more readily noticeable to others.

The Sponsored Stories, which kicked off yesterday for Facebook's "premium" advertisers, will be labeled and viewable only to the content creator's friends, Facebook noted. The service will respect a person's privacy settings. However, Facebook users won't be able to opt out of the service. That's somewhat surprising, since Facebook users can modify their inclusion in the company's existing Social Ads by letting their social actions be includedin a marketer's ad on the site and be shown to friends--or opt out.

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Here's how it works. Simply take any Starbucks gift card you've ever received - or get a new one at any Starbucks store - and then register that card online. That card then becomes your primary source of payment for all your Starbucks transactions. Online, you can use a credit card to refill your Starbucks card. You can even have it set to auto-refill after it dips below a certain amount. Then, download the Starbucks iPhone app. When you go to your neighborhood Starbucks, simply load the app, click "touch to pay," and then scan the phone at a custom scanner at the register. The purchase will be deducted from your Starbucks gift card.

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The online retail giant had owned a minority stake in Lovefilm since 2008 when the latter bought Amazon's DVD rental business, which covered the U.K. and Germany. Fully acquiring Lovefilm is an interesting move for Amazon. The rental company is essentially Europe's answer to Netflix, offering DVD-by-mail rentals, as well as a streaming service available on PCs, the PlayStation 3, and some HDTVs. Lovefilm, which was founded in 2004, currently operates in the U.K., Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. The company states that it has over 70,000 titles available to its 1.6 million customers. Amazon didn't say what it has planned for Lovefilm, but the acquisition will expand Amazon's video on demand service, which offers streaming or downloading of films in the U.S. Greg Greeley, Amazon's vice president of European retail, did take note of Lovefilm's streaming service in particular in the acquisition announcement.

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This time around, the 55-year-old Jobs did not give a time frame for his return. Here's the text of his e-mail to employees, provided by Apple this morning:

Team,

At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple's day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.

Steve

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NPD Group says that for the first time, movie rentals from standalone kiosk have a larger market share in the United States than those from brick-and-mortar stores. "Netflix and other subscription services comprised 41 percent of video rental turns in the third quarter of 2010," NPD wrote, "followed by kiosk rentals at 31 percent, and in-store rentals at 27 percent." NPD, a research firm, said today that its study found the share of kiosk rentals grew 10 percent from the same quarter in 2009. The data only accounts for disc rentals and does not include movies streamed over the Web. The findings come four months after Blockbuster, the former No. 1 video rental outlet, filed for bankruptcy protection. The company is now pursuing its own kiosk strategy.

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An Amazon spokeswoman said via an e-mail to Computerworld late Monday that the new Kindle for the Web will "enable users to read full books in the browser and [enable] any Website to become a bookstore offering Kindle books."

The spokeswoman didn't elaborate. The Kindle for the Web concept first surfaced in September and the Tuesday announcement could be a "natural evolution" of Amazon's e-book strategy, said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner.

Amazon first launched Kindle for the Web as a beta application in September to allow customers to discover new books by sampling first chapters of the books directly through Web browsers without the need for a software download. Based on the spokeswoman's statement on Monday, the new version would allow book purchases of Kindle books through various Web sites offering them. It also would also allow reading of the full book, not just samples.

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Apple Inc. is challenging a jury verdict last week in which the computer maker was ordered to pay as much as $625.5 million to Mirror Worlds LLC for infringing patents related to how documents are displayed digitally.

Apple asked U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis for an emergency stay of the Oct. 1 verdict, saying there are outstanding issues on two of the three patents. Apple said patent owner Mirror Worlds would also be “triple dipping” if it were able to collect $208.5 million on each of the patents.

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The 25-year-old company filed for bankruptcy yesterday in New York after losing sales to Netflix Inc.’s Web and mail-order movie service and Coinstar Inc.’s Redbox DVD rental kiosks. Revenue dropped 20 percent to $4.06 billion last year, when Dallas-based Blockbuster reported a $558.2 million net loss.

As of Aug. 29, Blockbuster had about 5,600 stores worldwide, including 3,300 in the U.S., according to court papers. Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles, said the company may have to cut U.S. locations to about 2,000 to increase annual sales per store to at least $1 million. In 2002, that figure stood at $1.1 million, he said.

“No one can predict what the market will look like for them going forward as Netflix and Redbox continue to take market share, so they are shooting in the dark,” Pachter said. The company will also face pressure to cut stores from “a new class of shareholder wanting to see cash increasing in a hurry,” he said.

In the past two years, Blockbuster has closed 1,061 U.S. company-operated stores, according to a court document. All its U.S. operations, including stores, DVD vending kiosks, mail and digital, will continue to operate normally, the company said.

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Apple today filed a lawsuit against HTC for infringing on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone's user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The lawsuit was filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

"We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."

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Potential backlash from failed Sun-IBM negotiations could include a distraction by Sun's management and board in justifying their decision to reject an offer with a high premium, rather than focus on their struggling business, Sacconaghi noted.

The IBM-Sun buyout talks durig the last two week of March, the end of Sun's quarter, could make its fiscal third quarter challenging, given that up to 40 percent of Sun's revenue is generated in the last two weeks of a quarter, Sacconaghi stated in his report, noting customers are likely to have lingering concerns about Sun's future.

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For AMD, the 2001 Intel agreement allows it to manufacture chips using Intel's X86 design and rely on chip foundries for up to 20 percent of their total manufacturing capacity. Intel, meanwhile, receives royalties from AMD, under the deal. The companies, despite their heated legal battles over antitrust matters, have had a long-standing patent and licensing relationship, going back to 1976. But this latest turn of events could result in a change in that relationship. AMD, in its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, said Intel sent it a letter that alleges AMD: Committed a material breach of the Cross License through the creation of the company's Global Foundries joint venture and purports to terminate the company's rights and licenses under the cross license in 60 days if the alleged breach has not been corrected.

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Talk about adding insult to injury. Apparently Microsoft has inadvertently overpaid severance to some of its recently laid off employees, and is now asking for some of the money back. It’s unclear how many of the 1,400 employees laid off last month were affected, but we’ve confirmed that it wasn’t a single isolated incident (we’ve contacted Microsoft for a response). We’re also hearing that some employees may have been underpaid as well.

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For Intel, that means a $7 billion, two-year investment in existing factories in New Mexico, Arizona, and Oregon to manufacture silicon wafers with 32nm process technology. The investment is expected to support 7,000 high-wage jobs at those factories and support thousands of contract jobs for technicians and construction workers. The investment is Intel's largest ever in a single process technology. "As a global company, we have made a conscious decision to expand these factories here because we believe that investing in the future of American discovery isn't just the right thing to do," Otellini said, "it is an essential business decision if we want the United States to continue to be the engine of new ideas and technical leadership."

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The Intel Developer Forum in Taiwan typically takes place in October, while China IDF is in April. The IDF in the United States in September will not be affected, Intel said Monday. The Beijing IDF will be shortened to a one-day event. It is typically two days. Intel uses IDF to launch many of its products and technologies. For example, the new Core i7 chip was launched at the U.S. IDF last year. "It's the economy," said David Dickstein, an Intel spokesman. "The reaction we've gotten from exhibitors and sponsors when we told them about the scale-back in Beijing and cancellation of Taiwan, actually was overwhelmingly positive. They're saying it helps with their bottom line."

Said By Blorge

Microsoft recently announced that the company would be laying-off 5,000 employees due to a drop in profits. This is the first mass layoff in the history of Microsoft. However, news has trickled out that the Xbox division will be suffering the brunt of the job cuts.

Word has been trickling out that the Entertainment and Devices Division (EDD) will receive the brunt of the mass layoff. The EDD division consists of the Zune, PC gaming and the massive Xbox division. The EDD is headed up by the well known faces: Shane Kim, Don Matttrick, Phil Spencer and the friendly Aaron Greenberg.

• Its getting rather close to time to start developing a 360 successor. What are the odds the Microsoft delay it for a while?
• After the partial failure of Vista (as well as the total failure of unifying PC gaming with the Games for Windows Program and XBox Live on PC), will we see Microsoft start to ignore the gaming division entirely to instead worry about making Windows 7 a success (remember, that is the part of Microsoft that actually makes money)?

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The software maker said it will cut 5,000 jobs, or 5 percent of its workforce, over the next 18 months. About 1,400 jobs were eliminated immediately. The software maker is also paring other expenses, such as delaying salary increases and cutting back on vendors and contractors.

Amid slow PC sales, revenue for the quarter came in at $16.63 billion for its fiscal second quarter that ended December 31, up just 2 percent from a year ago and roughly $900 million less than the company previously projected. Per-share earnings came in at 47 cents, also below forecasts.

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The company expects to make the bulk of its job cuts in the fiscal fourth quarter and take a charge between $16 million to $18 million during the quarter. Overall, Logitech expects to take a $20 million to $24 million charge over the next 12 months. Logitech, a peripherals giant, sells to both retail stores and computer manufacturers and is facing a challenging time as its customers struggle, as well. Retail store Circuit City, for example, filed for a Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy in November but last week said it would have to liquidate after failing to find a buyer.

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"This company made massive mistakes," he said, citing a decision to get rid of sales people and other mismanagement. What's more, given the credit market freeze, Whalin added that no manufacturer wants to sell to any retailer who doesn't have money to pay for the merchandise. At the same time, Whalin said there's still a very slim chance that one or more firms that have expressed an interest in buying Circuit City could still buy it out of bankruptcy over the next few days. "I wouldn't say it's completely over yet for Circuit City, but it's almost over," Whalin said.

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The startling admission that Apple and Jobs knew several weeks ago that health concerns had become his number one priority calls into question the company's handling of Jobs' absence from Macworld. There are no hard-and-fast guidelines that dictate how companies are supposed to handle health concerns, the way strict guidelines dictate the handling of material financial information.

But it's clear to anyone with a pulse in the tech industry that a health-related reason for a Jobs-less keynote would be a huge blow to Apple's stock. Apple representatives refused to answer questions about Jobs' health when the news first surfaced in December, insisting that the only reason Jobs would be absent from the keynote was because the company was done with Macworld.

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Yang patted himself on the back for moving the company in a new direction during his recent CEO tenure. His full statement:

From founding this company to guiding its growth into a trusted global brand that is indispensible to millions of people, I have always sought to do what is best for our franchise. When the board asked me to become CEO and lead the transformation of the company, I did so because it was important to re-envision the business for a different era to drive more effective growth. Having set Yahoo on a new, more open path, the time is right for me to transition the CEO role and our global talent to a new leader. I will continue to focus on global strategy and to do everything I can to help Yahoo realize its full potential and enhance its leading culture of technology and product excellence and innovation.

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Chapter 11 allows a company to hold off creditors while it attempts to restructure its finances. Circuit City said Monday that it has has negotiated a commitment for a $1.1 billion debtor-in-possession revolving credit facility to supplement its working capital. Circuit City announced earlier this month that it would shutter 155 stores and lay off 17 percent of its workforce. The retailer said Monday that it will eliminate an additional 700 positions in addition to the reductions resulting from the store closings, bringing the total layoff projection to around 20 percent of its employees. According to the company's FAQ, in February it had approximately 45,900 employees, not including workers taken on during peak selling periods.

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That rationale makes some sense to me as well, in part because getting into the video game business in and of itself doesn't sound terribly well aligned with Google's mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Steam is an online foundation for selling and distributing games, updating patches, enabling multiplayer online chat, and using digital rights management to control who has permission to use elements like game versions or game terrain. While a lot of that is specific to games today, I see no reason why it might not apply more broadly. Google, of course, likes to be the clearinghouse for online activity, and this could add some expertise. Steam Powered shows 448 games available now, and in February, Valve said Steam had 15 million account holders. But this is the more telling statistic: During peak hours, online activity crests at about 1.2 million users every day. That's clearly a lot of activity.

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In Napster, retail heavyweight Best Buy is getting itself a one-time contender in the field of online entertainment. A decade ago, Napster was virtually synonymous with digital music--a notoriety that earned it the wrath of the music industry. That contributed to its demise, along with the rise of alternatives such as Kazaa and LimeWire. Napster eventually reinvented itself as a subscription service, and it says it now counts 700,000 subscribers. Best Buy plans to use both Napster's technological capabilities and its subscriber base to reach consumers looking to explore digital music and other forms of entertainment "beyond music subscriptions" over a variety of electronic devices. The acquisition, Best Buy contends, will give it extra oomph in dealing with record labels, movie studios, and hardware makers.

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This is due to Vista's design. "The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls," he said. "Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we'll start sampling end of this year, early next year," Harari said. Harari said this challenge alone is putting SanDisk behind schedule. "We have very good internal controller technology, as you know...That said, I'd say that we are now behind because we did not fully understand, frankly, the limitations in the Vista environment," he added.

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Texans who shop Amazon.com to avoid paying sales taxes may not have that luxury for long. The Texas Comptroller's Office is investigating whether the Internet retail behemoth, with sales last year of $14.8 billion, owes Texas possibly millions of dollars in uncollected sales taxes on purchases made by its customers in the state. Seattle-based Amazon.com has been operating a distribution center in Irving since 2006, giving it a "physical presence" in Texas, a longstanding litmus test for when sales taxes must be collected by an online or mail-order company. The issue came to light last month after Amazon.com Inc. sued the state of New York over whether it should begin charging customers state sales taxes, citing the federal law it appears to be breaking in Texas.