Remember that time you owed your buddy for the take out and then you found $20 in the couch? This is kind of like that. Except instead of “take out” we’re talking “accusations of anticompetitive practices and stolen IP,” and instead of “$20″ we’re referring to the $1.25 billion check that Intel just shot into the arm of AMD, as per agreement. Intel certainly isn’t out of the woods yet with this anticompetitive stuff, but with the biggest CPU monkey off its back and some fancy patent cross-licensing between the companies, we should hopefully see the benefits of this in better and faster chips from both chip giants in the somewhat distant future.

Intel forks over the $1.25 billion settlement to AMD, apparently had it ‘just laying around’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So much for making nice. Apple just announced that it’s countersuing Nokia for infringing thirteen of its patents — slightly upping Nokia’s claim that Apple’s infringing ten. We haven’t seen the case yet, but we’ll post it up for you as soon as we find it — and as we predicted in our breakdown of Nokia’s complaint, this is shaping up to be a long and costly nightmare of a suit. Hey, do you think Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell might have a crazy lightning rod of a statement about the case for us?

“Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” said Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel and senior vice president.

Cool, thanks. We’ll be in the corner under a Nomex blanket for the next few months.

Update: Here’s the PDF of the reply — we’re still reading all 79 pages of it, but it’s what we expected: Apple says Nokia’s patents aren’t actually essential to GSM / UMTS, denies infringing them, and says they’re invalid and / or unenforceable anyway. Apple also says Nokia wanted unreasonable license terms for the patents, including a cross-license for Apple’s various iPhone device patents as part of any deal, which Apple clearly wasn’t willing to do. That’s in stark contrast to what Nokia says it wants in its lawsuit — all it’s asked the court for is past due license fees on its patents. (Which is odd, if you think about it: Nokia wouldn’t come to terms on a license that didn’t include iPhone patents, but it’ll spend the cash on litigation for past due fees? That seems silly.) Oh, and if you’re just in this for the bitchy quotes, here you go:

As Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s executive Vice President and General Manager of Multimedia, stated at Nokia’s GoPlay event in 2007 when asked about the similarities of Nokia’s new offerings to the already released iPhone:”[i]f there is something good in the world, we copy with pride.” True to this quote, Nokia has demonstrated its willingness to copy Apple’s iPhone ideas as well as Apple’s basic computing technologies, all while demanding Apple pay for access to Nokia’s purported standards essential patent.

We’ll let you know if we see anything else of interest, but we’d say we’re in for a long, bumpy ride here.

Apple countersues Nokia for infringing 13 patents originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tired of being badgered by your contemporaries over in the Northwest Angle about having to deal with those silly “three-year contracts?” Buck up, ’cause a new player has just been cleared to go head-to-head with the likes of Telus, Bell and Rogers in the Great White North. In a surprising reversal of an October CRTC ruling, the federal government in Canada has cleared Globalive to begin operations as a wireless cellphone operator in the country. The most amazing part? No changes are required in the outfit’s debt structure or ownership hierarchy. You see, Canada generally requires that its wireless carriers be Canadian-owned, but as it stands, the majority shareholder in Globalive is Egypt’s Orascom. Whatever the reasoning, we’re just stoked to hear that the company can kick open the doors “effective immediately,” and we’re hoping to hear that it’s doing just that in short order.

[Thanks, Martin]

Update: Whoa, that was quick! Looks like WIND (the brand this will all fall under) already has a site ready to rock. No sales or anything yet, but it looks like they won’t be taking this reversal of fortunes lightly. Thanks, Leon!

Reversed decision enables Globalive to enter Canada’s cellphone market ‘immediately’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Flip Video may be pocket-sized and ludicrously easy to use, but it’s got nothing on Exemode’s SQ28m Pocket Digital Camera when it comes to charm. This thing is small enough to fit on a keychain and, though the footage is recorded at a mere 320 x 240 and 8fps without audio, the inclusion of a number of color filters make results look more “retro 8mm” than “cheap digital” (see for yourself below). It starts shipping next week at ¥5,985 ($65), a bit too far above impulse-buy territory for us, but we’re certainly more into this than the company’s previous efforts.

Continue reading Exemode SQ28m Pocket Digital Camera fits on a keychain, takes charmgingly low-quality footage (video)

Exemode SQ28m Pocket Digital Camera fits on a keychain, takes charmgingly low-quality footage (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Concerned for a long-suffering Pandora pre-orderer in you life? Well, you might want to keep them away from sharp knives and their dormant SD card full of rare ROMs for the next few weeks. The device has seemed tantalizingly close in recent months, but new word from the front lines means that we won’t be seeing the final devices ship out until well into the new year. Luckily, the list of tweaks sounds pretty minor, including an adjustment to shoulder button action perfection that we can all get behind, but we suppose it also serves as a sobering example of just how hard it can be to actually get good hardware (or even the crappy stuff) built. Cough, CrunchPad, cough.

[Thanks, Steve]

Pandora hits some production snags, will miss the holidays originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s already selling in Europe with one of AT&T’s 3G bands, but the prospect of a US-friendly Acer Liquid A1 just got real, governmental-involvement style. The FCC has approved a 850 / 1900MHz version of the Android device, and while this is no guarantee of an AT&T berth — much of Canada is crowding in on this spectrum, not to mention the possibility of selling the phone unlocked and unsubsidized — we’re massaging our temples this very second with the appropriate good vibrations to get this thing out and about in the States and on the cheap.

Acer Liquid A1 hits the FCC with AT&T’s HSDPA flavors originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, well here we go. Michael Arrington says he filed a lawsuit yesterday against Fusion Garage over the CrunchPad / Joojoo situation, and he’s helpfully provided a copy of the complaint, which alleges false advertising, breach of fiduciary duty, misappropriation of business ideas, fraud, and unlawful business practices. You’ll notice that list doesn’t include any breach of contract or intellectual property claims — a fair departure from what Michael said he’d be suing over, but not entirely surprising since it doesn’t seem like there was any contract here at all. Let’s take a quick skim through the rest of the complaint, shall we?

Continue reading TechCrunch sues Fusion Garage over the Joojoo — we break it down

TechCrunch sues Fusion Garage over the Joojoo — we break it down originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Call it a pent-up demand for WVGA Android devices, call it Droid jealousy, call it an unnatural love for the sweet, doughy goodness of a just-baked Eclair — but whatever it is, early indications suggest that the British love their Milestones. Retailer eXpansys (which is big enough to actually produce some meaningful sales trend data, we suspect) is reporting that the just-launched Droid clone for GSM became “the fastest selling gadget in the website’s 11 year history, even more successful than the iPhone” when it sold out inside of three hours on its site on top of the roughly 1,000 preorders they had taken prior to the 10th. This might be a case of double-speak — we’re trying to establish just how many phones were sold during those three hours, because what we really need is a sales rate, not a time span alone — so we’re cautioning Moto not to bust out the champagne glasses just yet, but it’s certainly looking like a promising start. Schaumburg hasn’t had a lot of success in Western Europe in recent years, of course, but if we can use eXpansys as a barometer here, we’d say that a little cautious optimism is well justified.

Motorola Milestone becomes eXpansys UK’s ‘fastest selling gadget’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today’s bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the holiday season.

Continue reading Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide: Video Cameras

Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide: Video Cameras originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We had a chance to sit down and talk with Chandra Rathakrishnan of Fusion Garage yesterday for a more in-depth discussion than our previous meeting provided, and we learned a few interesting tidbits about both the Joojoo, as well as the company’s highly public troubles with Michael Arrington (before the latest move). Amongst the more juicy items discussed, we got further technical info on the Joojoo itself, including the fact that the system has 1GB of RAM, a separate GPU for graphics processing (which Rathakrishnan says is capable of at least iPhone level gaming), and an interesting slot along the side. Just what kind of slot, you ask? Well apparently there are plans for a 3G equipped version of the Joojoo on the horizon. Chandra says we won’t see it in Q1 2010, but the second version will appear on the market during the next calendar year. Additionally, the company is supposedly in talks right now with media publishers — an interesting note considering that the Joojoo looks surprisingly like those Time Inc. and Condé Nast digimag demos we’ve seen recently. Chandra also claims that the company is working on deals that could lead to subsidized versions of the tablet, even without the inclusion of 3G. Of course, given the current legal status of the device, you can add all this speculative talk to a growing list of question marks.

There’s plenty more in the video, including some further insight into the confusing situation with Michael Arrington over the creation and ownership of the device, and more clarity on how exactly that rumored Atom CPU is handling 1080p playback without stuttering. It’s pretty darned interesting, actually. Check out the full chat after the break!

Continue reading Engadget talks Joojoo, Arrington, 3G, and more with Fusion Garage’s Chandra Rathakrishnan

Engadget talks Joojoo, Arrington, 3G, and more with Fusion Garage’s Chandra Rathakrishnan originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook hat seine Datenschutzeinstellungen überarbeitet und vereinfacht. Nutzer haben jetzt die Möglichkeit einzustellen, wer welche ihrer Daten sehen kann. Voreingestellt ist jedoch ein sehr niedriges Datenschutzniveau, zudem sind einige Einstellungen verschwunden. US-Datenschützer kritisieren die Anpassungen. (Soziales Netz, EFF)

Die Unterwasserstadt Rapture lädt bald wieder ein: In Bioshock 2 stapft der Spieler als Big Daddy durch Artdeco-Gänge und kämpft mit kleinen gegen große Schwestern. Golem.de unternahm einen Ausflug in eine der Missionen und sprach mit Creative Director und Autor Jordan Thomas über das Spiel. (Bioshock, Rollenspiele)

Der Microsoft-Deutschland-Chef freut sich, denn weltweit kommt Windows 7 nach seiner Aussage nirgends besser an als in Deutschland. Doch wie sich der Umsatz mit dem neuen Betriebssystems entwickelt hat, bleibt geheim. (Windows 7)

Mit der Version 6 der Java Enterprise Edition und der entsprechenden Serversoftware Glassfish 3 bringt Sun Microsystems die Java-Spezifikation auf den aktuellen Stand. (Programmiersprache, JavaFX)

Die Telekom baut ihr IPTV-Angebot Entertain aus und bietet ihren Kunden neue Funktionen wie einen vernetzten Videorekorder. Damit lassen sich mehrere Media Receiver miteinander verbinden, Serienaufnahmen einfacher verwalten und Fotos mit Verwandten und Freunden über Entertain teilen. (IPTV, Telekom)

Zend aktualisiert seine PHP-Entwicklungsumgebung, so dass Zend Studio mit der Version 7.1 die Unterstützung für taskorientierte Programmierung und PHP Archive (PHAR) sowie eine Remote-Server-Synchronisierung mitbringt. (PHP, Programmiersprache)

Die Wireless Gigabit Alliance hat ihren Zeitplan eingehalten und die erste Spezifikation für ihre Technik zum Kurzstreckenfunk vor Ende des Jahres 2009 fertiggestellt. Vorgesehen ist eine Anlehnung an WLANs nach 802.11n und größere Distanzen als die ursprünglich angekündigten zehn Meter. Auch zwei weitere IT-Schwergewichte sind der Allianz beigetreten. (AMD, Netzwerk)

Die Groupware- und CRM-Lösung Tine 2.0 ist in der Version 2009/11, Codename “August”, erschienen. Tine 2.0 lässt sich ab sofort als OpenID-Server verwenden. (CRM, Groupware)

Die Piratenpartei lehnt nicht nur jede Rundfunkgebührenpflicht für internetfähige Computer und Mobiltelefone ab, sie will auch die archivierten Beiträge der öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender allen Nutzern zur Verfügung stellen. (GEZ)