1st April 2012 Archive

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Apple drops 'thermonuclear' patent bombshell

April Fool What Steve Jobs threatened, Tim Cook delivers

Apple has launched a new patent assault on its competitors, one that appears to unleash the nukes that Steve Jobs reportedly told his biographer Walter Isaacson he was going to drop on Google's Android. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product," the late Apple cofounder told the author of the überpopular …

Law 1 Apr 05:00
RIM retracts denial on consumer devices: Pulls out, spins in circle

April Fool 'We want to target white-collar criminals'

In an unprecedented retraction of a retraction, a RIM press officer has stated that their company is pulling out of the consumer market "once and for all." Acknowledging that they had denied this fact two days earlier, the RIMmer sighed and said that sometimes people in the press office just made crap up. It's time to tell the …

Mobile 1 Apr 09:00
Tweet dreams: Goldilocks, porridge AND the money dance

April Fool How Google's Ideas Bear gave me a huge hug

As a young boy, my favourite story was the one about Goldilocks and the three bears. I'm sure you remember how that fairy tale went: a curly-haired blonde girl greedily gobbles up the porridge from different bowls until she gets to the taste sensation that is "just right". Why do I want to share this with you on such a …

Business 1 Apr 10:00
Angry Birds want to be Donald Duck

Short 'toons start soon as part of Disney emulation plan

Angry Birds short form content is coming to every connected device as creators Rovio move deeper into becoming an entertainment company in the style of Disney. Yes, Disney. Rovio's head of animation Nick Dorra tod the MIPTV conference in Cannes that the company did not want to be viewed as an EA wannabe but more of a …

Music and Media 1 Apr 21:53
Champagne at CSIRO after WiFi patent settlement

US carriers cough up

Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation has won another round of its long-running patent battle with US carriers AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile offering a settlement worth more than $AU220 million. The three carriers had been resisting paying royalties to the agency, and as recently as last Friday …

Networks 1 Apr 21:54
The best April 1 gags … or were they?

Everyone go back to work now

April 1 has come and gone for another year and as usual the technology industry got up to no good. It’s hard not to like Atlassian’s new product: IRKD. The app does for the real world what the company’s JIRA product does for the real world, namely let you list bugs and make them someone else’s problem. Sony slipped out the …

Odds and Sods 1 Apr 22:21
Australians love mobile devices, but not mobile downloads

Fixed net throughput sprints ahead

The next time you queue up to buy an iPad, 3G wireless broadband dongle, or an Android phone or tablet, ask yourself: why are the data plans so expensive, when they deliver so little? The latest broadband study from the Australian Bureau of Statistics tells us that servicing the data needs of mobile broadband users requires …

Networks 1 Apr 23:45