Technology
Latest stories
Facebook Plans to Expand New Headquarters

The first Facebook employees are just getting settled at the company's new Menlo Park, California headquarters, but the online social network is already talking about expanding. The San Jose Mercury News reported Monday (http://bit.ly/nOtBTW ) that Facebook has filed plans to build a second campus across the street from the complex it acquired from Sun Microsystems.

Menlo Park development services manager Justin Murphy tells the newspaper that the move suggests Facebook will quickly outgrow the 1 million square foot (0.09 million square meter) Sun campus, which can hold up to 3,600 workers. Facebook has had 1,500 people working at its old Palo Alto headquarters.

W140 Full Story
Skype Buys Messaging Startup GroupMe

Skype, the Internet communications group set to be acquired by Microsoft, announced plans Sunday to buy the mobile messaging startup firm GroupMe for undisclosed terms.

GroupMe was founded in 2010 at the Techcrunch Disrupt Hackathon and is headquartered in New York.

W140 Full Story
Osram Files New Patent Complaints in South Korea

German lighting manufacturer Osram is filing new patent infringement complaints against South Korean companies amid a global wave of intellectual property disputes in the technology sector.

Osram GmbH and unit Osram Opto Semiconductors GmbH said Monday in a statement that they have recently filed new complaints and legal actions against Samsung and LG units. They include LG Innotek's alleged infringement of LED, or light emitting diode, patents.

W140 Full Story
Texting, Grand Theft Auto Style; Alarms Pose Risk

Texting and driving don't go well together — though not in the way you might think.

Computer hackers can force some cars to unlock their doors and start their engines without a key by sending specially crafted messages to a car's anti-theft system. They can also snoop at where you've been by tapping the car's GPS system.

W140 Full Story
German Privacy Watchdog Dislikes Facebook's "Like"

A German data protection authority is "unliking" Facebook's "Like" button.

The state of Schleswig-Holstein's data protection commissioner, Thilo Weichert, on Friday ordered state institutions to shut down the fan pages on the social networking site and remove the "Like" button from their websites, saying it leads to profiling that violates German and European law.

W140 Full Story
Internet Takes "Distance-learning" into the Amazon

The Internet is letting a school sprout in the Amazon where teachers tend not to linger due to harsh living conditions and a scarcity of students.

Teachers in Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, conduct lessons streamed to students in the village of Tumbira using an Internet connection made possible with a generator-powered radio signal.

W140 Full Story
HP Surrenders as Post-PC Era Beckons

The stunning announcement by Hewlett-Packard, the world's top personal computer maker, that it is taking steps to exit the business is the surest sign yet the post-PC era is here.

"We tend to throw the 'post-PC era' term around a lot, but it's clear that, in the wake of HP's announcement, we’re closer than ever to that reality," said independent technology analyst Carmi Levy.

W140 Full Story
Match.Com Ordered to Show it Screens Sex Offenders

A California judge ordered dating website Match.com Friday to show evidence it screens customers to exclude sex offenders.

The order by Superior Court Judge Carl West came in a case that saw a woman sue the popular matchmaking website after she was sexually assaulted by a man she met through the site last year.

W140 Full Story
Hong Kong Arrests Man over Stock Exchange Hacking

Hong Kong police said on Friday they had arrested a 29-year-old man over a cyber attack on the city's stock exchange website which halted trading in the shares of seven companies.

Police said they detained the man on Thursday, seizing five computers, two mobile phones and other items, a police spokesman told Agence France Presse.

W140 Full Story
Report: RIM Set to Launch BlackBerry Music Service

Canada's Research in Motion (RIM) is developing a new service that would allow subscribers to play music on their BlackBerry smartphones, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The option is "designed to work with RIM's BlackBerry Messenger," the newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources who had discussed the service with RIM executives.

W140 Full Story