Apple just dodged a bullet.
A New York federal judge dismissed a potential class action lawsuit which alleged that Apple propagated their popular iMac screens without disclosing certain manufacturing defects to its customers, saying that the allegations were too general to be considered.
The cable companies suck. All of them. Some suck less than others. But they all suck. We need someone to whip them into shape. And that someone may be Apple.
Apple may be on the verge of gaining two key television network agreements, according to The Wall Street Journal. Specifically, CBS and Walt Disney (which runs ABC) are said to be considering a proposal by Apple to offer a subscription-based TV service over the Internet. Presumably, this would work through iTunes like all of Apple-based content, but also presumably it would work over Apple’s Apple TV device (though maybe a new version of it) to bring this content into the living room, where people are used to consuming it. Simply put: This could be huge.
Video language learning website EnglishCentral recently raised a total of $3.5 million, according to an SEC filing. Part of that funding was $1.38 million from a previous convertible debt round, making the amount raised in the current series A financing $2.1 million. EnglishCentral is backed by Google Ventures and Atlas Venture. The fact that Google Ventures was the lead investor in a seed round last October was reported, but the amount invested was never disclosed. Based on the information in the filing, it is possible that that the seed round was in the form of the $1.38 million convertible note and is now converting into equity with the additional $2.1 million investment.
The filing does not say who the invested in the new round, but Rich Miner of Google Ventures is listed as a director of the company. Google Ventures is Google’s venture arm which launched last April with an initial $100 million and can invest in pretty much anything, although mostly it’s been putting money into clean tech startups.
You didn’t expect it to rain Pine Trail netbooks without MSI dropping a new Wind, did you? Come January the $330 10-inch Wind U135 will replace the older Diamondville U100 with its new 1.66GHz Atom N450 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, Windows 7 Starter and a six-cell battery. But the U135 gets updated with more than just new netbook specs — the Taiwanese netbook pioneer has slightly tweaked the chassis with a new keyboard, touchpad and lid design. Read on for our thoughts.
Gallery: MSI Wind U135 hands-on gallery
When Facebook bought FriendFeed a few months ago, no one was really sure what would happen to the service. The acquisition was mainly for FriendFeed’s talent, so there was much concern that FriendFeed would wither. And to an extent it has. But, as it’s proving today, it still can serve some purpose for Facebook: A testing ground for new technology.
As Facebook’s David Recordon writes today on the Developer Blog, the development team has implemented a prototype version of the new OAuth WRAP specification on FriendFeed. One of FriendFeed’s co-founders, Bret Taylor, who is now Facebook’s Director of Product Management for Platform, also writes at length about it on his own blog. The basic gist is that Facebook decided to test out implementing it in FriendFeed so that they could get feedback from the developer community who want to try it out.
Here’s something that’ll fix a bit of your 27-inch iMac ails. Apple just released a graphics firmware update 1.0. Order of the day? To “address issues that may cause image corruption or display flickering.” Download away, and let us know if you troubled souls have seen some relief.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
The NookDevs team hasn’t wasted any time poring over the recently-released Nook 1.1 update, and there’s good news: 1.1 can still be rooted, and rooted 1.0 devices will stay that way after the update. In other news, nookdevs team member robbiet480 just sat down with Nookaholic for an interview, and he dished a few tidbits: the Nook’s Android build is called “Bravo,” the internal WiFi had to be tweaked to stop turning itself off every three hours, and Bravo itself is basically Android 1.5. Nothing major, but we’re definitely getting the feeling the Nook is going to be leading a double life as both a mom-friendly ebook reader and a happy-hacker hardware playground from here on out, you know?
[Thanks, Cameron]
Facebook has just released its list of top status updates for the year, and they’re pretty interesting. This is a new feature that Facebook plans to release yearly called “Memology,” the study of how memes are spreading on Facebook. Specifically, the Facebook Data Team looked at status updates in the U.S. for this year’s list.
For this list, Facebook grouped together similar items to make it a more comprehensive one. As such, the first item on the list should be a surprise to no one: “Facebook Applications.” The specific words that Facebook grouped together here include Farmville, Farm Town, and Social Living, they note. The fact that Farmville has 72 million month active users who update their statuses with info from the game was probably enough to give Faceboook Applications the top spot.
Facebook has just released its list of top status updates for the year, and they’re pretty interesting. This is a new feature that Facebook plans to release yearly called “Memology,” the study of how memes are spreading on Facebook. Specifically, the Facebook Data Team looked at status updates in the U.S. for this year’s list.
For this list, Facebook grouped together similar items to make it a more comprehensive one. As such, the first item on the list should be a surprise to no one: “Facebook Applications.” The specific words that Facebook grouped together here include Farmville, Farm Town, and Social Living, they note. The fact that Farmville has 72 million month active users who update their statuses with info from the game was probably enough to give Faceboook Applications the top spot.
We hope this will provide holiday relief for many iMac owners: Apple just released a firmware update for the graphics chipsets in 27″ iMac models, intended to fix display issues. Apple states this download
Updates the graphics firmware on ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 graphics cards to address issues that may cause image corruption or display flickering.