Twitter faces trademark infringement lawsuit from podcast network

TWiT, aka This Week in Tech, is suing Twitter. The well-known tech netcast says Twitter has broken a number of written and oral agreements and is infringing on its trademark. The two companies started up around the same time in the mid-2000s, with Twitter co-founder Evan Williams telling TWiT’s Leo Laporte that Twitter was simply a “text-based microblogging service”. The two informally agreed that, despite the similarities in their names, their platforms were fundamentally different and were happy to co-exist on the condition, the lawsuit alleges, of “each company continuing its own unique distribution platform.” As far as TWiT is concerned, that’s no longer the case.

According to the lawsuit, in 2009 Laporte became concerned that Twitter was going to develop audio and visual content that could challenge TWiT’s. Williams allegedly then told Laporte “we’re not expanding to audio or visual under the Twitter brand.” But fast forward to May 2017, and Twitter announces its plans to basically do exactly that, delivering original, premium video content exclusively from its platform.

TWiT’s attorneys have since ordered Twitter to stop expanding on its trademark. “Since that time, the parties have engaged in communications with the goal of informally resolving this dispute,” the lawsuit states. “These efforts have not resolved the dispute, and Twitter continues its expansion into TWiT’s business in breach of its agreement with Plaintiffs, refuting its representations and promises made, and infringing on Plaintiffs’ intellectual property rights, all to Plaintiffs’ injury.” Engadget has reached out to TWiT and Twitter for comment.

Via: Techcrunch

Source: Scribd

YouTube taps Kevin Durant for more sports-focused video

Kevin Durant’s YouTube channel is extremely popular; it’s a place his fans can go to learn more about the basketball star through fan Q&As and take a peek inside his workout sessions. That’s why it’s not a huge surprise that, as CNET reports, YouTube has struck a deal with Durant’s startup Thirty Five Media in order to create more sports-centered video content for the service. Details about the deal, including financial terms and length, aren’t available.

In a crowded media landscape, sports are a clear way to attract viewers to a platform. Just last month, Facebook said its eventual budget for sports could be “a few billion dollars,” while Amazon recently snagged the rights for NFL Thursday live streaming. As these deals are snapped up (and increase in price), agreements with individual star athletes, like Durant, can fill in the gaps.

Facebook has previously signed deals with individual stars, including the Balls, a popular family of basketball stars (no pun intended). That series has amassed quite the viewership for Facebook, in part thanks to patriarch LaVar Ball’s antics, and it’s likely YouTube is looking for similar results with the sports stars that it signs.

Source: CNET

Amazon renews ‘The Tick’ for a second season

Amazon decided to take on the quirky superhero spoof The Tick in 2016 despite the fact that the last live-action version of the comic was cancelled before it could complete a single season. But that risk seems to be paying off because Amazon has now greenlit a second season of the show even though the first season isn’t yet finished.

“I am so excited that Amazon wants to continue this wildly fruitful collaboration and that this amazing cast gets to stay together, and that we get to build this mythos further, wider, deeper, and taller,” series creator Ben Edlund said in a statement. “We got a good ball of mud spinning with the right tilt of axis, I’m very happy we have this opportunity to keep peopling it.” Naturally, The Tick also had something to say about the series renewal. “You feel it too, don’t you? Destiny’s warm hand in the small of your back, pushing, pushing. She’s on a roll,” he said.

Series leads Peter Serafinowicz and Griffin Newman will be be returning for season two and additional casting will be announced later on. The 10-episode second season is scheduled to debut in 2019 and production will begin this year. The second half of season one kicks off on February 23rd.

Source: Amazon

Bitcoin tumbles below $10,000, half of its peak value

Bitcoin has crashed to as low as $9,500, falling below $10,000 for the first time since November and neatly halving its December 19th peak of $19,000, according to Coinbase. It has declined steadily since CES 2018 started, thanks to reports that South Korea planned to clamp down on the cryptocurrency. If you hedged your bets with Ethereum, Ripple or Dogecoin, then that didn’t help either, as most virtual currencies have fallen precipitously since yesterday.

Analysts, and nearly everyone else with common sense, have been expecting a correction. “The market was very overheated and had significantly dislocated from trend,” CryptoCompare’s Charles Hayter told CNBC. “A large percentage of investors were expecting this correction and reversion to mean.” He added that the panic was “leading the herd to sell with no other justification than fear.”

Adding to the tension is the fact that China’s central bank reportedly said that the government should ban the centralized trading of the currencies. The nation is reportedly trying to (gently) push crypto-miners out of the country because the energy used by tens of thousands of computers creates pollution. China is also concerned it could spawn an economic crisis — something that a lot of investors are no doubt experiencing right now. (Another unexpected consequence, as Techspot points out, is that graphics card and memory prices have skyrocketed.)

Some investors aren’t too concerned, saying that bitcoin went up way to fast, and is now returning to something of a mean. “All in all, this drop has brought us back to the prices that were traded about a month ago for most coins,” said eToro senior market analyst Mati Greenspan.

Another way of looking at it, however, is that bitcoin, as a currency with an unchangeable limit, is highly susceptible to bubble-type economics. As Engadget noted in a 2013 explainer, the tendency for folks to hoard the currency rather than spending it will almost always cause a boom, followed by a crash. In other words, bitcoin is highly volatile, and it’s just as plausible that it’ll get back to its peak or even exceed it.

Via: CNBC

Source: Coinbase

Google opens an office in China’s Silicon Valley

Google’s often fractious relationship with China may be softening on the news that the search giant is opening a new office in the country. The company already has two facilities in China, located in Beijing and Shanghai, but will now rent space in a building in Shenzhen, the Chinese equivalent to Silicon Valley. The province, which borders Hong Kong, is the home of Huawei, Tencent, ZTE, OnePlus — not to mention the massive Foxconn plant that is also situated there.

As TechCrunch explains, Google Shenzhen is currently based out of a serviced office block, and will start out as little more than a glorified employee co-working space. An internal email, obtained by our sister publication, explains that “a number of Googlers in China […] travel to the Shenzhen area for business.” Consequently, it makes sense to cluster workers in one place, rather than leaving them to work in hotel rooms or elsewhere.

The move could be interpreted as another sign that Google wants to move beyond its decade-long feud with the country. Back in 2010, Google shut down its Chinese search engine in protest against the country’s heavy-handed censorship, which blocks references to anything the Communist Party dislikes. That includes references to pro-democracy campaigns, documents of internal corruption, police brutality, the Taiwanese independence movement and the Tiananmen Square massacre.

But the company can’t ignore such a vast potential market forever, and it’s thought that other pro-China initiatives are laying the groundwork for a return. It doesn’t hurt that Shenzhen is home to key hardware partners, and now that it owns a big chunk of HTC’s business, the need for face-to-face communication is key. And if Google is planning to make nice with China, it’s going to need to make plenty of new friends in a very short amount of time.

Source: TechCrunch

A new ‘Fable’ game is reportedly in the works

A brand new Fable game is in the works, or so says a number of sources close to the rumored project. According to Eurogamer, UK developer Playground has been given the job of creating a new, big-budget revisit to the fantasy world of Albion, and while franchise owner Microsoft said in a statement that it does not comment on rumor or speculation, all signs seem to give the reports credibility. For a start, November 2017 saw Playground openly reveal its plans for its first ever non-racing game, described only as an open-world action RPG. Meanwhile, Xbox boss Shannon Loftis has made no secret of Microsoft’s fondness for the franchise.

According to Eurogamer, the new Fable will be something of a clean break from the previous iterations developed by former studio Lionhead. Original assets exist, but it’s likely that Playground will start again from scratch. Don’t expect its arrival any time soon, either. Sources say it’s still early days for the project, but the pay-off should be massive. Around 200 people have been drafted in to work on the game at Playground’s UK-based Warwickshire offices, which suggests Microsoft is throwing significant investment at the endeavour, and that Albion will return more fantastical than ever before.

Source: Eurogamer

Apple Earns Sixth Place on ‘Top 100 Global Technology Leaders’ List

Thomson Reuters today published its first “Top 100 Global Technology Leaders” list, designed to pinpoint and celebrate “the industry’s most operationally sound and financially successful organizations.” The list’s top five companies are Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, IBM, and Alphabet.

Apple sits in sixth place, followed by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, SAP, Texas Instruments, and Accenture. Thomson Reuters explained that it assessed each company using a 28-data-point algorithm to “objectively identify organizations with the fortitude for the future in today’s complex business environment.”

Specifically, each company saw its performance in eight categories measured before being ranked: Financial, Management and Investor Confidence, Risk and Resilience, Legal Compliance, Innovation, People and Social Responsibility, Environmental Impact, and Reputation.

“Tech companies operate at warp speed confronting competitive, regulatory, legal, financial, supply chain and myriad other business challenges. Oftentimes, their financial success overshadows their operational integrity, making it difficult to identify those organizations with true longevity for the future,” said Alex Paladino, global managing director of the Thomson Reuters Technology Practice Group. “With the Top 100 Global Tech Leaders, we’ve identified the unique data points that embody technology-industry leadership in the 21st century; congratulations to the companies that made the list.”

Outside of the top 10, companies like Amazon, Facebook, Mastercard, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Pegatron made it onto the list. These remaining 90 companies on the list are not ranked, but were measured and added based on the same 28-factor algorithm as the top 10. The entire list was restricted to companies that have at least $1 billion in annual revenue as well.

The full report goes into greater detail and breaks down how each individual category was researched for the companies. For example, the number of granted patents that are issued each year factored into Innovation, and an overall news sentiment and global media score measured a company’s Reputation. For Legal Compliance, Thomson Reuters measured the amount of litigation where the company was a defendant “in the areas of employment/labor, intellectual property, commercial law and contracts, civil rights, and unfair competition.”

The researchers didn’t go into Apple’s performance statistics for each of the eight categories, but they did provide a few tidbits about the overall rankings. In total, 45 percent of the 100 companies are headquartered in the United States, followed by Japan and Taiwan tied in second place with 13 companies each, and then India with five. In terms of continents, North America led with 47 companies, Asia followed closely with 38, Europe had 14, and Australia had one (stock transfer company Computershare).

Apple topped a few lists over the past year, including Interbrand’s “2017 Best Global Brands,” Fortune’s “World’s Most Admired Companies,” and climbing to become the World’s Most Profitable Company on the Fortune Global 500 list. Conversely, in December Apple dropped to 84th on Glassdoor’s annual list of the best companies to work for in the United States, after earning the 10th spot on the same list years prior in 2012.

Tag: reuters.com
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BMW Plans to Turn CarPlay Into Subscription-Based Service Next Year

BMW plans to offer CarPlay as a subscription-based service beginning next year, rather than charge a one-time fee, reports The Verge.

The automaker will charge $80 per year for access to CarPlay starting next year, with no fee during the first year of ownership of a new BMW, according to Don Smith, technology product manager for BMW North America.

BMW currently charges a $300 upgrade fee to drivers who want CarPlay, available in its 2017 model year and newer vehicles.

Smith believes switching to a subscription-based pricing system will provide BMW owners with more flexibility. “This allows the customer to switch devices,” he said, while mentioning Android as a specific example.

BMW doesn’t currently support Android Auto, although Smith said Google Assistant is coming to new BMW models later in 2018.

Smith also argued that the annual fee could actually work out to be cheaper for somebody with an average length lease, as the total cost after four years after the free first year of access would be $240, cheaper than the one-time $300 charge.

Of course, those who don’t trade in their BMW once every four years can expect the CarPlay subscription fees to add up significantly over the long term. All the while, many other automakers now offer CarPlay as a standard feature.

BMW may ultimately decide against this idea if it receives enough negative feedback from customers, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Related Roundup: CarPlayTag: BMW
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HomePod Should Launch ‘Soon’ as Inventec Begins Shipments to Apple

HomePod supplier Inventec has begun shipping the smart speaker to Apple, with an initial shipment “of about 1 million units,” according to industry sources speaking with the Taipei Times. Apple is said to have sent out a shipment notice to companies in the HomePod supply chain in early January, and now that the first supplier has answered the notice one source stated that HomePod should be launching “soon.”

As the first batch of HomePods makes its way to Apple, a release date for the delayed smart speaker has yet to be confirmed by the company, although it did state HomePod will debut in “early 2018.” Traditionally, Apple’s definition of “early” is January through April.

Inventec’s revenue from the HomePod is expected to be “limited” this quarter due to the low quantity initial shipment. This falls in line with Inventec’s own statement from last August, when it warned that supplies for HomePod might be limited at launch, similar to most Apple product launches. Following the launch, HomePod shipments for all of 2018 are expected to grow to between 10 million and 12 million units.

“The Taiwanese company has begun HomePod shipments. However, revenue contribution from the product to Inventec is expected to be limited this quarter, as the initial shipment is not large,” a source in HomePod’s supply chain told the Taipei Times by telephone on condition of anonymity.

Industry sources said that Inventec and second HomePod supplier Foxconn will fulfill an even half of these orders. Furthermore, the HomePod’s delay was said to be caused by “fine-tuning of software and hardware integration.”

When it does launch, HomePod will be Apple’s first entry into the smart speaker market, currently dominated by Amazon Echo and Google Home. During its unveiling of the product, Apple said that HomePod is more music-focused than its rivals with high-quality sound and microphone technology, spatial awareness, touch controls, and more, all powered by an A8 chip.

Related Roundup: HomePod
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Siri’s news bulletin feature goes live in the UK and Australia

Brits can now ask their iThings to give them a brief update on what’s happening in the world with the command: “Hey Siri, give me the news.” Siri doesn’t actually read the news, though, and instead will automatically play the latest podcast from a trusted source of your choice. I was treated to a 2-minute bulletin from BBC News when I said the magic words to Siri this morning, which also offered Sky News and LBC up as alternative sources.

As Apple prepares Siri for life inside its HomePod smart speaker, it first added the news briefing feature to the beta version of iOS 11.2.5 — limiting it to the States at that point, too, where The Washington Post, Fox News, NPR or CNN provide the updates. In a matter of weeks, however, it’s now graduated out of beta to become a standard Siri feature in iOS 11, whilst rolling out to new territories. So far the UK and Australia are confirmed, but there could be other countries the feature is also live in.

Via: 9to5Mac