Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

[UK] Brits can now get their hands on Google’s so-called ’superphone’ for an upfront cost of “free”. Kinda.

Available from today for pre-order on Vodafone UK, the Android-powered Google Nexus One can be had for £35 per-month on a 2 year contract, including a bundle of minutes and texts, and the much needed 1GB monthly data allowance — this is a Google Phone after all (see TechCrunch review). There are a number of other tariffs available too. Customers who pre-order can expect deliveries to go out on April 30th.
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Remember Floppy discs? In case you haven’t noticed (like I didn’t), Sony is actually still making and selling those discs. But soon it’s time to say goodbye, as the company now said [JP] it will stop production in March next year. Sony rolled out the world’s first 3.5-inch floppy disc back in 1981. And believe it or not, even in 2008, the company could still sell 8.5 million units in Japan alone.
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Rhapsody, the digital music service, has released an updated App for the iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone. It’s free to download but requires a subscription to use. The big deal here is that not only can you listen to your Rhapsody playlist while connected to the Internet, but you can also download individual songs to local storage. Yes, that means you’ll be able to listen to your favorite song—Rhapsody has a catalog of more than 9 million songs—while in areas without Internet access, such as the subways of New York. It marks the first time that Apple has allowed a third-party music subscription App to be able to download songs in the U.S. Yes, it’s a reasonably big deal.
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Wildfire, a platform for building viral marketing campaigns, has received $4 million in Series A funding led by Summit Partners with additional investors, including Jeff Clavier, Aydin Senkut and Gary Vaynerchuk, participating in the round.
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Brands are trying to figure out this whole social marketing thing, but the success stories are still few and far between. “I think everyone is grappling with how to use digital these days,” says Judy Hu, who is in charge of advertising and branding for General Electric. She oversees one of the world’s largest advertising budgets which spans TV, print, and the Web. I spoke with her last week about one early success GE is seeing with an online video campaign organized by Howcast that is generating millions of video views on YouTube as part of its larger Healthyimagination branding effort.

The key to the campaign was to get YouTube video personalities such as Smosh, iJustine, Alphacat, Rhett and Link, and Brittani Louise Taylor to take a physical challenge and make original videos about getting healthy. So far, all together these videos have been viewed more than 8.5 million times, rated more than 250,000 times, and attracted more than 110,000 comments.
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First Apple goes after Taiwanese cell phone maker HTC over infringement of no less than 20 of its patents, and now the man who invented the PDA (personal digital assistant) is targeting the company.

Entrepreneur and inventor Judah Klausner, or rather his company Klausner Technologies, has filed suit against HTC for patent infringement under its U.S. Visual Voicemail patents.

The lawsuit is based on the unveiling by HTC of its MyTouch 3G mobile phones, which Klausner Technologies claims alleges uses its patented Visual Voicemail technology. The company adds that various other HTC models with the Visual Voicemail feature are already covered under Klausner Technologies Visual Voicemail patent licenses granted to certain mobile operators for their Visual Voicemail services.
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Video advertising company FreeWheel has raised $16.8 million in funding from Disney’s Steamboat Ventures, and existing investors, including Turner Broadcasting System, Battery Ventures, and Foundation Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to nearly $30 million.
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As I mentioned in Sunday’s post, Blippy’s founders were hammering out a new security plan to assure users that all their information, especially their credit card numbers, would be safe. They delivered this morning, in their latest blog post, issuing new details about the blunder, how it worked with Google, and the framework for a go-forward plan. In addition, Blippy sounded more contrite about the situation. On Friday their post said, “it’s a lot less bad than it looks,” this Monday the tone is less defensive and more apologetic: “However, this is a very serious issue and simply apologizing is not enough. We’ve spent the last 48 hours working around the clock to dissect the issues, reach out to affected users, and put together a plan to ensure this never happens again.”
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Last week, the newly renamed Google Places added a ton of features to help local businesses create a directory page right on Google. Today, Google’s Street View is joining the partyby showing links to local business listings right in Street View. As you turn around in Street View, names of local businesses and other “Google Places” will show up overlayed on top of buildings. As you hover over those names, a small pop-up window shows some of the listing details such as business name, phone number, and ratings.
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