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| iPhone's 'slide to unlock' creator Greg Christie to leave Apple: WSJ Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 08:56 PM PDT  (Reuters) - Apple Inc's Greg Christie, who led the company's "human interface" team that designs software for its products, is leaving the company, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an internal email. Apple did not immediately respond to an email from Reuters seeking comment. That patent is one of more than a dozen at issue in Apple's lawsuit against Samsung Electronics, now being heard in a federal court in California. Christie is listed as an inventor on nearly 100 Apple patents and has 31 more applications pending with the patent office, the newspaper said. Full Story | Top |
| Little Internet users can do to thwart 'Heartbleed' bug Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 06:08 PM PDT  Researchers have observed sophisticated hacking groups conducting automated scans of the Internet in search of Web servers running a widely used Web encryption program known as OpenSSL that makes them vulnerable to the theft of data, including passwords, confidential communications and credit card numbers. OpenSSL is used on about two-thirds of all Web servers, but the issue has gone undetected for about two years. Kurt Baumgartner, a researcher with security software maker Kaspersky Lab, said his firm uncovered evidence on Monday that a few hacking groups believed to be involved in state-sponsored cyber espionage were running such scans shortly after news of the bug first surfaced the same day. By Tuesday, Kaspersky had identified such scans coming from "tens" of actors, and the number increased on Wednesday after security software company Rapid7 released a free tool for conducting such scans. Full Story | Top |
| BlackBerry may consider exiting handsets, eyes investments Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 05:26 PM PDT  By Alastair Sharp and Nicola Leske NEW YORK (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd would consider exiting its handset business if it remains unprofitable, its chief executive officer said on Wednesday, as the technology company looks to expand its corporate reach with investments, acquisitions and partnerships. "If I cannot make money on handsets, I will not be in the handset business," John Chen said in an interview, adding that the time frame for such a decision was short. At its peak, BlackBerry shipped 52.3 million devices in fiscal 2011, while it recorded revenue on less than 2 million last quarter. Chen, who took the helm of the struggling company in November, said BlackBerry was also looking to invest in or team up with other companies in regulated industries such as healthcare, and financial and legal services, all of which require highly secure communications. Full Story | Top |
| High-tech U.S. farm machines harvest Big Data, reap privacy worries Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 04:52 PM PDT By Karl Plume MOLINE, Illinois (Reuters) - Steps away from a replica of the revolutionary 1837 steel plow at tractor company John Deere's headquarters sits a combine as big as a tank and packed with computer wizardry that harvests huge volumes of valuable data as it gathers crops. Now, at an unprecedented meeting on Thursday, the national independent farmers' group the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) will try to hammer out guidelines with Deere and fellow industry heavyweights such as Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer - which together control nearly three-quarters of the U.S. corn seed market. "Virtually every company says it will never share, sell or use the data in a market-distorting way - but we would rather verify than trust," farmer Brian Marshall of the AFBF told the U.S. House Committee on Small Business in February. While only around 14 percent of farmers use this kind of precision agriculture technology at the moment, its popularity is expected to soar over the coming years. Full Story | Top |
| CME Group trading outage exposes weakened trading floor Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 04:47 PM PDT  By Tom Polansek CHICAGO (Reuters) - Open-outcry traders sprang into action during an electronic trading halt in CME Group Inc agricultural markets on Tuesday, but a better solution to the outage would have been to close the pits down too, traders and investors said a day later. In chaos following the outage on CME's electronic Globex platform, some orders sent to open-outcry grain pits went unfilled because there were not enough traders to handle the influx. The number of traders, brokers and clerks on CME's cavernous agricultural trading floors has dwindled during the past decade due to the rise of faster and more efficient electronic trading, which now accounts for nearly 95 percent of volume in grain markets. "We should absolutely halt all trading, floor and electronic, if the Globex goes down," he added. Full Story | Top |
| BlackBerry CEO would consider handset unit sale, eyes investments Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 04:44 PM PDT  BlackBerry Ltd would consider exiting its handset business if it remains unprofitable, its chief executive said on Wednesday, as the company looks to expand its corporate reach with investments, acquisitions and partnerships. "If I cannot make money on handsets, I will not be in the handset business," John Chen said in an interview, adding that the time frame for such a decision was short. Chen, who took the helm of the struggling smartphone company in November, said BlackBerry was also looking to invest in or team up with other companies in regulated industries such as healthcare, and financial and legal services, all of which require highly secure communications. The chief executive said small acquisitions to strengthen BlackBerry's network security offerings were also possible. Full Story | Top |
| Facebook to require separate mobile app for messages Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 04:35 PM PDT  By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc will no longer let users send and receive private messages within its main smartphone app, and will require that users install a separate messaging app, the Internet company said on Wednesday. Facebook began notifying users in France, England and several other European countries on Wednesday that beginning in a couple of weeks they will need to install the company's standalone Messenger app in order to send and receive messages. Facebook plans to eventually require that users in all countries install the Messenger app, spokesman Derick Mains said, though he could not provide a specific timeframe for the change. The move is intended to ensure that users have a consistent and high-quality experience, a Facebook spokesman told Reuters. Full Story | Top |
| French government says will pursue telecom market consolidation Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 04:27 PM PDT  By Gwénaëlle Barzic PARIS (Reuters) - The French government will continue to pursue consolidation in the country's telecoms sector after Vivendi's decision to sell its SFR unit to cable firm Numericable, Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg said on Wednesday. The government had openly supported a rival bid from Bouygues, arguing that the number of mobile operators needed to come down to three to end a destructive price war and encourage investment in high-speed broadband. Vivendi finally picked Numericable on Saturday, in a move that keeps the number of operators at four. The deal creates France's second-biggest telecoms player behind Orange, but it weakens smaller operator Bouygues, which could now become a prey for Iliad, the operator that has slashed prices and hurt its rivals' margins since the 2012 launch of its Free Mobile service. Full Story | Top |
| Fairfax's Watsa says BlackBerry a good long-term investment Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 01:56 PM PDT  By Cameron French TORONTO (Reuters) - Struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry Ltd is a good long-term investment that is being unfairly punished by the stock market, the chief executive of the company's top shareholder said on Wednesday. "We think over time BlackBerry is going to do well," Prem Watsa, CEO of Canada's Fairfax Financial Holdings, which holds about 10 percent of BlackBerry's shares, said at Fairfax's annual general meeting in Toronto. Watsa, who has built a reputation as a shrewd value investor through winning plays such as his bet that the U.S. housing market would fall into crisis, has built up Fairfax's BlackBerry stake over the past three years. Fairfax sought partners last year in a $4.7 billion bid to take BlackBerry private, but abandoned the plan after its due diligence showed BlackBerry could not handle the large debt load it would have to take on in such a deal. Full Story | Top |
| Global PC shipments fall for eighth straight quarter Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 01:48 PM PDT  Global personal computer shipments fell in the first three months of 2014, the eighth straight quarter of decline, although the industry got a boost from companies replacing aging computers, according to two market research firms on Wednesday. Hurt by consumers' continuing shift toward tablets and smartphones, PC shipments in the March quarter were down 4.4 percent compared with the same quarter in 2013, IDC said in a news release. Gartner, a rival market research company, said in a news release that PC shipments in the March quarter fell 1.7 percent. "The transition to more mobile devices and usage modes is unlikely to stop, although the short-term impact on PC shipments may slow as tablet penetration rises," IDC said. Full Story | Top |
| HP pays $108 million to settle foreign bribery probes Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 01:44 PM PDT  By Adrian Krajewski and Aruna Viswanatha WARSAW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard agreed to pay $108 million to resolve wide-ranging U.S. government investigations into whether some of its foreign units bribed government officials to obtain lucrative contracts, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. HP's Russia subsidiary pleaded guilty to paying millions of dollars in bribes - some in the form of expensive watches and swimming pool technology - to win business with the federal prosecutor's office in Russia, the U.S. Justice Department said. Polish and Mexican units of the computing giant also resolved U.S. criminal charges related to contracts they had won in those countries, and Polish prosecutors charged a local HP executive with paying related bribes. The Securities and Exchange Commission entered into a related settlement with HP over allegations that its subsidiaries made improper payments to government officials. Full Story | Top |
| E-filing of Canadian taxes shut down because of Heartbleed bug Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 01:34 PM PDT  Right in the heart of tax-filing season, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) shut down access to online tax services on Wednesday because of an Internet bug that has made data on many of the world's major websites vulnerable to theft by hackers. "We have received information concerning an Internet security vulnerability named the Heartbleed Bug," the CRA, the government's tax collector, said. The tax filing deadline in Canada is April 30, 15 days later than in the United States, but the CRA said it would give consideration to taxpayers unable to comply with their filing requirements because of the service interruption. The CRA said later on Wednesday that it anticipated that online services would resume over the weekend. Full Story | Top |
| Facebook to move to fewer but bigger ads on PC website Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 11:51 AM PDT  By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it is switching to fewer but bigger ads on the right-hand column of the desktop PC version of its website because users respond more frequently to them. That will make advertising on Facebook simpler for marketers, since they will no longer need to use different images for different types of ads, Facebook said in a post on its Facebook for Business blog. In tests of the new ad design, Facebook said it has seen up to three times more user "engagement" with the ads. Facebook did not specify how many ads will now appear in the right-hand column, though a sample image on the blog showed a single ad in the right-hand column. Full Story | Top |
| Social networking site Wikia courts brands with new studio Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 11:37 AM PDT  Social networking site Wikia announced on Wednesday a new effort to attract more brands to its platform with the creation of Fan Studio. The idea behind the studio is to help advertisers connect with Wikia's network of users, many of whom go to the site for entertainment and games. As part of the launch, gaming company Carbine Studios is using Wikia to roll out one of its forthcoming multi-player online games, called WildStar, for a large number of players. "One of the things that really struck us the most about Wikia is it's a social universe for fans by fans," said Mona Hamilton, vice president of brands at Carbine. Full Story | Top |
| HP pays $108 million to settle DOJ, SEC corruption probes Wednesday, Apr 09, 2014 11:12 AM PDT  Hewlett-Packard will pay $108 million and agreed to take on certain reporting and compliance obligations to settle a Justice Department and SEC investigation into potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been conducting investigations into HP's conduct in Russia and Poland, among other countries. Full Story | Top |
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