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Google Settlement Paves the Way for Stock Split June 18, 2013 
Google has settled the class-action shareholder lawsuit that had been blocking a stock split it originally announced last year, the company said Monday, paving the way for it to move forward with the split as planned. The suit's settlement was an eleventh-hour development in this 14-month storyline, which included the imminent prospect of a trial in Delaware chancery court over the issue.
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Spotify Gets Pink Floyd to Break Down Wall June 18, 2013 
Honoring a previous agreement, legendary British rock group Pink Floyd has given the green light to music streaming outfit Spotify to host the band's catalog. Pink Floyd announced earlier this month that it would resist releasing its music on Spotify until the 1975 classic "Wish You Were Here" hit 1 million streams. Well, the song hit 1 million, and Pink Floyd's tunes are now unlocked.
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Weighing the Importance of Google's Waze Win June 18, 2013 
After months of courtship, social navigation app Waze ultimately chose to partner -- for $1 billion-plus -- with Google, rejecting Facebook and Apple. The price tag shows how valuable Waze has become, and that's to say nothing of the overtures it received from the world's tech giants. "I think what's really surprising is that Facebook allowed the deal to die," said tech correspondent David Shamah.
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Netflix, DreamWorks Team in Huge Original Content Deal June 17, 2013 
Video streaming service Netflix on Monday announced a new, multiyear partnership with DreamWorks Animation whereby it will bring many of the studio's beloved characters to the TV market via a branded collection of shows. Marking the largest deal for original first-run content in Netflix's history, the partnership will include more than 300 hours of new programming.
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The Ghost of SCO Dogs IBM Again June 17, 2013 
Like Carrie, whose hand emerged from the grave to grab Sue by the ankle in Sue's nightmare, SCO has reemerged from its grave to revive its lawsuit against IBM, 10 years after the case was first filed. A court has granted SCO's motion for reconsideration and reopening the case. SCO originally had sought $1 billion in damages from IBM, but it was soundly defeated in court.
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Tech Giants Dump Data in Trust-Rebuilding Bid June 17, 2013 
In the wake of recent revelations that the government has been tapping their networks to monitor users, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft in recent days have all published more information about those monitoring requests. Facebook, for example, reported that for the six months ending December 31, 2012, the number of user-data requests it received from U.S. government entities was between 9,000 and 10,000.
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Google to Pit Technology Against Child Pornographers June 17, 2013 
Google is spearheading an initiative to build a picture-sharing database aimed at ridding the Web of child pornography. The company's new database will rely on "hashing" technology; once an image has been flagged as offensive, it uses an algorithm to identify that photo elsewhere on the Web. Despite widespread efforts to combat it, child pornography online is only growing.
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Hackers Find WordPress Easy Pickings June 17, 2013 
Adobe Reader and Oracle Java aren't alone in having a bull's eye painted on their code. WordPress also is becoming a popular target for Internet outlaws. It's quite a large target, too. About 18 percent of the sites on the Web -- about 60 million of them -- use WordPress. One reason WordPress is attracting hacker attention is that it's so easy to write plug-ins for it.
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Apple Exec Points Finger at Publishers in E-Book Trial June 15, 2013 
Apple SVP Eddy Cue gave testimony Thursday in the e-book price-fixing trial under way in the New York U.S. District Court. Cue, who was Apple's primary negotiator with most of the publishers during the run-up to the launch of iBookstore in 2010, told the court that it was not surprising that publishers began increasing pricing for e-books after Apple entered the market.
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Best Buy Clears Floor Space for New Windows Shops June 14, 2013 
Microsoft is the latest product manufacturer to follow the retail trend of setting up shop within a big box store. Best Buy and Microsoft on Thursday announced plans to open the Windows Store only at Best Buy in 500 retail locations in the U.S. and more than 100 in Canada. The stores will range in size from 1,500 square feet to 2,200 square feet. Microsoft specialists will staff each shop.
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From the Inevitable Files: Lawmakers Scrutinize Snowden-China Connections June 14, 2013 
Well, this was bound to happen. U.S. lawmakers said Thursday that the House Intelligence Committee -- the same House Intelligence Committee that trashed Chinese telecommunications companies last year -- will conduct a "thorough scrub" of connections between China and Eric Snowden. Snowden -- a "traitor," according to Committee chairman Mike Rogers, R.-Mich. -- is now believed to be in Hong Kong.
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Patenting Future Cures - or Not June 14, 2013 
The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously decided that some of Myriad Genetics' patent claims were invalid for claiming products of nature. However, the Court also held that other Myriad patent claims were perfectly valid. In short, Myriad discovered the location and DNA sequence listing for two human genes that pertain to breast and ovarian cancer.
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No Patents on Human Genes, Supreme Court Rules June 13, 2013 
In a decision that could make it more affordable for women to be screened for breast cancer, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that human genes cannot be patented. The court's rationale is that human genes occur in nature, making them unpatentable. Complementary DNA, on the other hand -- a synthetic DNA that's also used in genetic testing -- can be patented, the court ruled.
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Time Warner May Erect a Walled Content Garden June 13, 2013 
Time Warner Cable appears to have come up with a strategy to help stem the flow of cord-cutters: offering incentives to content providers to withhold certain properties from online entertainment platforms. Limited distribution is clearly an entrenched practice in the entertainment industry, but it seems TWC is trying to keep some content off the Internet permanently.
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New Drive Aims to Stamp Out Smartphone Crime June 13, 2013 
A coalition of United States officials, institutional investors and consumer advocates on Thursday launched the Save Our Smartphones Initiative nationwide. With smartphone-related crimes, some of which are shockingly brutal, on the rise in the U.S., law enforcement officials have cranked up the pressure on the cellphone industry to come up with technologies to deter theft.
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2 Years Later, HP's Botched Palm Acquisition Still Stings June 13, 2013 
Former Palm CEO and webOS creator Jon Rubinstein is apparently still brooding over Palm's acquisition by HP. Two years later, he looks back at what HP did with webOS -- or rather what it didn't do -- and he is very disappointed, he said in a recent interview. When HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion in 2010, it did indeed look as though webOS was destined for great things.
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Google Outs Iran for Pre-Election Phishing Expedition June 13, 2013 
Google announced it has been tracking and disrupting "multiple email-based phishing campaigns" in Iran. The campaigns, which have been going on for nearly three weeks, are targeting the accounts of tens of thousands of Iranian users. Google posits that the phishing is related to the Iranian presidential elections, which will be held Friday.
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Pandora Fights Fees with Terrestrial Acquisition June 13, 2013 
In an effort to manage acquisition fees, Pandora Radio has acquired a terrestrial radio station based in Rapid City, S.D. The move enables Pandora to be subject to licensing fees and royalties for broadcast radio stations rather than streaming stations. Internet radio services such as Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody and Last.fm have struggled for years to balance acquisition costs with revenues.
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X2 Marks the Spot for Comcast's Cloud TV Initiative June 13, 2013 
Comcast's new set-top box software opens a window into how cable TV companies hope to retain customers tempted to move their eyeballs to online-only alternatives. Comcast X2 blends cable offerings like on-demand movies, program guides and digital video recording with online-only content and social media. It's an example of where the cable industry is going with its services.
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Tech Titans Speak Out for More PRISM Transparency June 12, 2013 
After initially denying involvement in the U.S. National Security Agency's highly controversial PRISM program revealed last week, Google and other tech giants that were named as participants now admit their involvement and are calling for greater transparency. Google, for instance, is requesting that it be allowed to publish more data about the NSA requests it receives.
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