Apple and HTC settle patent cases

11 November 2012 Last updated at 06:01 ET

Apple and Taiwanese phonemaker HTC have settled all their outstanding disputes over patents, ending a fight that began in March 2010.

The two firms also signed a 10-year licence agreement that will extend to current and future patents held by one another.

HTC competes with Apple, Samsung and others in phones and tablets.

Apple has been embroiled in a series of "patent wars" with phone makers and with arch-rival Google.

Unlike its rivals, HTC's sales have been in decline since the second half of 2011, despite having become a major global phone company by aligning itself to Google's Android platform.

The firm has upgraded its HTC One flagship phone and introduced two new models running Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 software.

"HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation," said Peter Chou, the head of HTC.

The firm said recently it expects sales will be lower than had been expected at the end of the year as the Taiwanese smartphone maker has been finding it hard to emulate the success of its rivals.

HTC and Apple were fighting more than 20 cases in the world, according to the AFP news agency.

Apple won an order almost a year ago from the US International Trade Commission, which issued a "limited exclusion order" directing that HTC stop bringing offending smartphones into the US from April.

And in May, the US mobile carrier Sprint had to delay the introduction of a smartphone using Google's Android operating system after the devices were blocked by US customs due to an Apple complaint.

Ongoing cases

Apple and its rivals have been suing and countersuing for the past several years, accusing each other of copying designs and ideas in the lucrative smartphone space.

Apple and Samsung, for example, have filed legal cases against each other in more than 10 countries, each accusing the other of violating its patents.

A California court earlier this year awarded Apple $1.05bn (£652m) in damages against Samsung, after ruling several of its software and design technologies had been infringed, but the Korean firm is calling for a retrial.

And last week, a US judge dismissed Apple's case in which it alleged that Google's Motorola unit was seeking excessive royalty payments for patents.

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Twitter resets 'hacked' passwords

8 November 2012 Last updated at 12:48 ET

Thousands of Twitter users have received emails warning their account has been compromised by a third party.

Some accounts had been compromised, but other users had received the emails after Twitter had unintentionally reset unaffected passwords, the company said.

The mass email coincided with incidents involving several high-profile accounts, including at least one account belonging to the BBC.

Other media organisations, such as the TechCrunch blog, reported being warned.

Twitter gave no indication of the cause or source of the compromise, and would not share details of the size of the issue.

In a statement, it said: "When we believe an account may have been compromised, we reset the password and send an email letting the account owner know this has happened along with information about creating a new password. This is a routine part of our processes to protect our users.

"In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised.

"We apologise for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused."

Deletions and spam

Some users who received the email noticed that some of their tweets had been deleted, while others said spam links had been posted without their knowledge - a typical characteristic of a compromised account.

The Twitter account belonging to BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier told followers it was "trying to get to the bottom" of problems relating to their feed.

Other BBC accounts have received the warning email - but it is not yet clear if any more were compromised.

Comedian David Mitchell tweeted that he had received the email, and that a tweet he had written publicising his column in the Observer newspaper had been removed.

Some users criticised Twitter's email, suggesting it looked like a "phishing scam" - a message that impersonates an official email in an attempt to trick users into giving up personal details.

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Blackberry 10 expected in January

12 November 2012 Last updated at 10:05 ET

The next Blackberry smartphone, which manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) hopes can revive its fortunes, will be introduced on 30 January.

RIM, once a leading name in smartphones, has struggled to keep up with the likes of Apple and Google in recent years.

The new range will run on Blackberry 10, an upgraded operating system.

RIM has not said when the smartphones, which have been set back by multiple delays, will be available to buy.

The devices were set to be launched late this year, but in June the company announced a delay - which means it will miss the critical holiday shopping period.

However, news of the January launch has buoyed investors - shares in the Canadian company rose 5.5% ahead of trading on Monday.

The company said that it will release two models: one with a touchscreen, the other with a Qwerty keyboard - seen as a key benefit among Blackberry fans.

Plummeting shares

In its more successful years, RIM's Blackberry products were considered pioneering devices due to their email capabilities and strong security.

Among young people, Blackberry Messenger - known to many as BBM - was very popular.

However, handsets from the likes of Apple, Samsung and HTC has seen the Blackberry fall way behind - blamed in part on its poor support for many of the most popular apps.

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RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins talks through the Blackberry 10 system

Since 2008, the company's share price has dropped by 90%.

"In building Blackberry 10, we set out to create a truly unique mobile computing experience that constantly adapts to your needs," RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins said.

"Our team has been working tirelessly to bring our customers innovative features combined with a best-in-class browser, a rich application ecosystem, and cutting-edge multimedia capabilities.

"All of this will be integrated into a user experience - the Blackberry Flow - that is unlike any smartphone on the market today."

According to the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, Blackberry Flow is designed to allow users to move seamlessly between a whole range of apps, heading from an email to calendar to a social network without returning to a home screen.

In an interview with the BBC last month, Mr Heins said users should not "underestimate" the new handsets' potential in the market.

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Bin Laden unit punished for leak

8 November 2012 Last updated at 23:40 ET

Seven US Navy Seals have been disciplined for revealing secrets during work as paid consultants on a video game, officials say.

They received reprimand letters and had half of their pay docked for two months for work on Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

The active-duty commandos reportedly include one member of the team that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

The game, published by Electronic Arts, does not recreate the Bin Laden mission but purports to show realistic raids.

Those punished were two Senior Chief Special Operators and five Chief Special Operators.

They were charged with violation of orders, misuse of command gear, dereliction of duty and disclosure of classified material.

The seven soldiers worked for two days during the spring and summer on the recently released video game, according to CBS News.

The game's maker has boasted that real commandos, both on active duty and retired, were involved with the process of designing the game to make it as realistic as possible.

Continue reading the main story

We do not tolerate deviations from the policies that govern who we are and what we do"

End Quote Rear Adm Garry Bonelli Dep Cmdr of Naval Special Warfare Command

It is not clear what classified secrets were divulged by the soldiers while they were consulting for Electronic Arts. But they reportedly used material from the US Navy.

"We do not tolerate deviations from the policies that govern who we are and what we do as sailors in the United States Navy," Deputy Commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, Rear Admiral Garry Bonelli told the Associated Press.

He added that the disciplinary action would "send a clear message throughout our force that we are and will be held to a high standard of accountability".

Four other Navy Seals are also under investigation, US reports said. They are said to have left Team Six but are still said to be on active duty.

Unit in demand

The Navy Seals usually respect an unwritten code of staying out of the public eye.

But the BBC's Jane Little, in Washington, says Seal Team Six is now a household name, celebrated on T-shirts and immortalised in film.

The unit was the subject of a recent TV movie about the Bin Laden raid in Pakistan and will feature in another film, about the rescue of a ship's captain kidnapped by Somali pirates.

Meanwhile, another member of the team on the Bin Laden raid wrote a book, No Easy Day, giving his account of that operation.

Some details of Bin Laden's death offered in the book differed from the official version of events.

The content of the book was not reviewed first by the Pentagon, and officials warned that criminal charges could have resulted from the improper disclosure of secret information.

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Microsoft demos speech translator

9 November 2012 Last updated at 06:10 ET

Software that can translate spoken English into spoken Chinese almost instantly has been demonstrated by Microsoft.

The software preserves intonation and cadence so the translated speech still sounds like the original speaker.

Microsoft said research breakthroughs had reduced the number of errors made by the instant translation system.

It said it modelled the system on the way brains work to improve its accuracy.

Details about the project were given by Microsoft research boss Rick Rashid in a blogpost following a presentation he gave in Tianjin, China, in late October that had, he said, started to "generate a bit of attention".

In the final few minutes of that presentation the words of Mr Rashid were almost instantly turned into Chinese by piping the spoken English through Microsoft's translation system. In addition, the machine-generated version of his words maintained some of his spoken style.

'Dramatic change'

This translation became possible, he said, thanks to research done in Microsoft labs that built on earlier breakthroughs.

Continue reading the main story

The results can sometimes be humorous"

End Quote Rick Rashid

That earlier work ditched the pattern matching approach of the first speech translation systems in favour of statistical models that did a better job of capturing the range of human vocal ability.

Improvements in computer technology that can crunch data faster had improved this further but error rates were still running at about 20-25%, he said.

In 2010, wrote Mr Rashid, Microsoft researchers working with scientists at the University of Toronto improved translation further using deep neural networks that learn to recognise sound in much the same way as brains do.

Applying this technology to speech translation cut error rates to about 15%, said Mr Rashid, calling the improvement a "dramatic change". As the networks were trained for longer error rates were likely to fall further, he said.

The improved speech recognition system was used by Mr Rashid during his presentation. First, the audio of his speech was translated into English text. Next this was converted into Chinese and the words reordered so they made sense. Finally, the Chinese characters were piped through a text-to-speech system to emerge sounding like Mr Rashid.

"Of course, there are still likely to be errors in both the English text and the translation into Chinese, and the results can sometimes be humorous," said Mr Rashid in the blogpost. "Still, the technology has developed to be quite useful."

Many different technology companies, including AT&T and Google, have similar projects under way that are attempting to do simultaneous translation. NTT Docomo has shown off a smartphone app that lets Japanese people call foreigners and lets both speak in their native tongue.

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US finance staff in data blunder

9 November 2012 Last updated at 07:04 ET

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has spent $200,000 (£125,190) investigating security blunders made by staff.

The SEC, which oversees US financial markets, was forced to investigate when it found out that staff were not encrypting sensitive data.

It feared that data had gone missing after realising unencrypted laptops were taken to a hacker conference.

The probe suggested no data had been lost as a result of the mistake.

The unprotected computers at the heart of the investigation were being used by staff in the SEC's Trading and Markets Division, Reuters reported.

One of the responsibilities of that division is advising US financial exchanges about dangers from hackers and ensuring they follow guidelines to steer clear of cyberthreats.

Hacker chat

The employees were found to be flouting standard procedure within the SEC that demands that data on laptops be encrypted to protect it in the event of that device being lost or stolen. The laptops contained sensitive information about the inner workings of many US financial markets.

To compound the mistake, the unprotected laptops were taken when some SEC staff travelled to the Black Hat convention which gathers security hackers together to talk about the latest security threats.

The $200,000 bill was run up as the SEC paid a security firm to carry out forensic tests to ensure that the data had not been tampered with or booby-trapped.

The report into the security lapse was co-ordinated by the Jon Rymer, the SEC's interim inspector general. The SEC has declined to comment on Reuter's findings.

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US army builds its own 3D printer

9 November 2012 Last updated at 07:52 ET

The US military is developing its own 3D printer that it can use to produce spare parts for spacecraft.

By putting 3D printers behind the front line it hopes to be able to produce spares more cheaply and quickly than it can get them from manufacturers.

The army embarked on the project to produce its own printer as commercial devices were too expensive.

Early versions of the printer cost $695 (£436) compared to $3,000 (£1,880) for a commercial model.

The 3D printer has been developed by the Future Warfare centre at the US Army's Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) in Alabama.

3D printers are gadgets that form objects by melting and shaping plastic into a design dictated by a data file. They are becoming increasingly common and many engineering and research firms use them for rapid prototyping.

"The ability to replicate parts quickly and cheaply is a huge benefit to the warfighter," said D Shannon Berry, an operations research analyst at the Future Warfare office, in a statement. Eventually, it is hoped the printer will find a larger role with US forces deployed overseas.

"Instead of needing a massive manufacturing logistics chain, a device that generates replacement parts is now small and light enough to be easily carried in a backpack or on a truck," he said.

The key reason to develop the printer, said Mr Berry, was to produce cheap spare parts for the sensitive instruments it develops. SMDC systems are typically deployed in space, but prototypes are tested terrestrially on drones and other small aircraft.

"Parts for these systems break frequently, and many of them are produced overseas, so there's a long lead time for replacement parts," he said. By developing its own 3D printer it could end reliance on manufacturers and speed up the replacement process.

SMDC engineers have already used the device to produce custom sensor housings and casings.

Even better, said Mr Berry, the device can even be used to fix itself if it breaks as many of its parts are built to be duplicable by 3D printers.

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Space net used to control robot

9 November 2012 Last updated at 09:33 ET

The interplanetary internet has been used by an astronaut at the International Space Station (ISS) to send commands to a robot on Earth.

The experimental technology, called Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol, could be a future way to communicate with astronauts on Mars.

Currently, if there is a problem when data is sent between Earth and Mars rovers, information can be lost.

The DTN could offer a more robust way to send data over the vast distances.

The European Space Agency (Esa) and Nasa conducted the experiment in late October.

ISS Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams used a laptop with DTN software to control a rover in Germany.

The DTN is similar to the internet on Earth, but is much more tolerant to the delays and disruptions that are likely to occur when data is shuttling between planets, satellites, space stations and distant spacecraft.

The delays can be due to solar storms or when spacecraft are behind a planet.

"It's all about communicating over large distances, because the 'normal' internet doesn't expect that it may take minutes before something is sent for it to arrive," Kim Nergaard from Esa told the BBC.

The work on the DTN was first proposed a decade ago by Vint Cerf - one of the creators of the internet on Earth.

The technology was first tested in November 2008, when Nasa successfully transmitted images to and from a spacecraft 20 million miles away with a communications system based on the net.

Space network

The system uses a network of nodes - connection points - to cope with delays. If there is a disruption, the data gets stored at one of the nodes until the communication is available again to send it further.

This "store and forward" mechanism ensures data is not lost and gradually works its way towards its destination.

"With the internet on Earth, if something is disconnected, the source has to retransmit everything, or you lose your data," said Mr Nergaard.

"But the DTN has this disruption tolerance, and that's the difference - it has to be much more robust over the kind of distances and the kind of networks we're talking about."

Currently, to communicate with Curiosity, the latest rover that landed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet on 6 August, Nasa and Esa use what is called "point-to-point communication".

"Normally, the rover on the surface of Mars is commanded directly from Earth, or in some cases using spacecraft orbiting Mars as data relay satellites - but it's still considered single point-to-point communication," said Mr Nergaard.

"It's not built-up as a network. There are several rovers on the surface of Mars, many spacecraft orbiting Mars, but they are all seen as individual items.

"But the idea is that in the future rovers on Mars and spacecraft orbiting it will be treated as a network, so that you can send things to the network just as you send things using the internet on Earth.

"It will still be via radio waves, but over different frequencies, to allow you higher data rate communication than the ones used today."

Nasa's Badri Younes said that the test was a success, and it demonstrated "the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a surface robot from an orbiting spacecraft and receive images and data back from the robot".

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Ofcom outlines 4G bid timetable

12 November 2012 Last updated at 05:31 ET

New fourth generation (4G) mobile services in the UK could be launched by next June, under a timetable set out by the UK communications regulator.

Ofcom said firms interested in bidding for 4G mobile spectrum must submit their application by 11 December.

Bidding for the spectrum will start in January, with licences expected to be granted in February and March. Services should go live in May and June.

Ofcom said the reserve price for all the spectrum being auctioned is £1.3bn.

The regulator said the 11 December date was "provisional" and said it would confirm the date by 26 November once the final regulations for the auction came into force.

Although bidding would begin in January the whole process could take "a number of weeks", said Ofcom. Auction winners and losers would be told about their fate in February or March, it said.

Members of the public interested in the auction process can follow developments via a 4G consumer webpage.

The watchdog said that once 4G services were operating those using laptops, tablets and phones while on the move should get browsing speeds comparable to those they enjoy at home on fixed lines.

As a comparison, it said that downloading a music album via 3G can take as long as 20 minutes but on 4G would only take a few minutes.

Mobile operator EE, formerly Orange and T-Mobile, is already offering 4G services. Ofcom gave it permission to use its existing spectrum after assessing whether the launch would affect competition among operators. The services were launched on 30 October.

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Blizzard sued over security aid

12 November 2012 Last updated at 07:07 ET

Diablo creator Blizzard is being sued over the security tools it sells to players worried about hack attacks.

Players can buy an "authenticator" from Blizzard which helps to secure accounts on its Battle.net gaming service.

The authenticator is electronically tied to an account and regularly generates random numbers that must be typed in to play.

Forcing players to use Battle.net and the authenticators is "deceptive and unfair", alleges the lawsuit.

Blizzard said it would "vigorously defend" itself against the legal claims.

In 2009, Blizzard revamped Battle.net to make it the over-arching system people must use when playing any of the company's games. It lets players manage payments and subscriptions for games such as Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft.

The class action lawsuit filed by Benjamin Bell said it was "unfair" of Blizzard to force people to use Battle.net to play its games. Mr Bell alleges that it has made millions of dollars in profit by selling authenticators to players after they have bought its games. In Europe, the authenticator costs £8.99 (9.99 euros). It also produces a free software app version for smartphones.

'False information'

Instead of making gamers buy extras to improve security, he said Blizzard should do more to protect accounts itself. The court papers mention several incidents in which the personal details of players were stolen from Battle.net.

Blizzard had not taken the "legally required steps" to tell players about these problems, the lawsuit alleges.

Mr Bell seeks damages from Blizzard, an injunction to stop the company charging extra for its security gadgets and wants it to drop the requirement to use Battle.net.

The lawsuit was "without merit and filled with patently false information", Blizzard said in a statement given to game news site IGN.

It denied that it did not do enough to let players know about attacks on Battle.net. It said the allegation that an authenticator was mandatory to use Battle.net was "completely untrue" and stemmed from a misunderstanding about the gadget's purpose.

Blizzard branded the lawsuit's claims "frivolous" and said it would take appropriate legal action to defend itself.

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