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A student who sued Amazon for deleting George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from his Kindle ebook, rendering his notes useless, has won $150,000 along with protection for other Kindle users.

The agreement (pdf), which was spotted by Seattle’s TechFlash, effectively prevents Amazon reaching out and deleting or modifying works in future. However, as a negotiated agreement it doesn’t carry a legal precedent; and Amazon isn’t admitting that it broke the law, or even the terms of service, by deleting the work. Continue reading…

Computer maker Dell will acquire information-technology company Perot Systems for $3.9 billion in cash, as the PC giant looks to expand beyond its core hardware business, the companies said Monday.

The move marks a strategic shift for Dell, which has stuck with its personal computer and server sales even as its rivals like Hewlett-Packard (HP) and IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) continue to diversify amid slumping hardware sales.

“We’ve seen this coming, but I’m surprised it took as long as it did,” said Gartner analyst John Enck. “This path is a necessary ingredient to future success, which being a hardware-only provider would have limited.” Continue reading…

Advanced Micro Devices Inc ships a lower-power version of its Opteron server chip on Monday as it tries to expand its offerings for Web hosting companies. The company declined to give its projections for revenues from the new chip.

AMD said the new chip is aimed at companies that use servers for tasks like cloud computing, and are looking to cut power and costs related to things like air conditioning. Continue reading…

Picture this. You’re the world’s second largest mobile phone manufacturer and do not have one Mobile OS of your own. Not a very impressive thing to have on your CV, right? Samsung is facing the same problem as we type this. It does not have its very own smartphone OS and looks like it has finally decided to do something about it. Continue reading…

So the Apple Mac tablet has more or less been confirmed by Jobs, and the rumours are still coming thick and fast – the latest that we can expect 13- and 15-inch models alongside the 10-inch tablet we’ve heard so much about.
Gizmodo got the news from a source, who it says has always been “100% reliable”, that the two other sized touchscreen prototypes had been spotted in a factory in China. Continue reading…

Sony’s new line of Alpha DSLRs appear to have fallen short of their expected launch date of 28 August, after three new models have found their way on to the internet.
German site digitalkamera.de has outed both the Sony a850 and a500 after a tip off, the former set to be a small full-frame entry level DSLR with 24.6 megapixels, 3-inch screen and a shooting speed of 3fps, and the latter a cheaper option with 12.3 megapixels, Live View and a faster shooting speed of 5fps. Continue reading…

Steve Jobs’ legendary eye for detail has led to two Apple Mac Tablet designsbeing scrapped. According to the Wall Street Journal, Jobs just wasn’t happy with the finalised versions and shelved them.  The first Apple Mac Tablet was binned because of poor battery life while the second attempt was killed due to a lack of memory. Continue reading…

Samsung is holding a Widget Developer Camp from Sept. 11-13

If you have been a lover of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface seen on most of its high end phones,  rejoice! Samsung has announced the availability of its Mobile Widget SDK, which means that the UI is now open to third parties who can develop widgets for it.

Samsung’s TouchWiz UI runs on a variety of smartphone platforms including Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android and Samsung’s own proprietary OS. Continue reading…

A Chinese court has jailed four people for spreading their bootleg “Tomato Garden” version of Microsoft’s Windows XP program, in what the Xinhua news agency called the nation’s biggest software piracy case.

Hong Lei, the creator of the downloadable “Tomato Garden Windows XP” software, was jailed for three and a half years on Thursday by a court in Suzhou in eastern China, Xinhua reported, citing local media. Continue reading…

Gene Munster, Senior Analyst at US-based investment bank Piper Jaffray, has predicted that Apple will launch a branded telly with integrated DVR and support for film, music and game downloads.

The Apple-branded set – not to be confused with the existing Apple TV set-top box – would wirelessly sync with iPods, iPhones and Macs, and “command a premium among a competitive field”, Munster said in a recent note to clients. Continue reading…

Analysts, hey? You’ve got to love them and their exciting but unsubstantiated claims. The excellently named Gene Muster of Piper Jaffray says Apple is set to introduce a TV subscription service for Apple TV. 

Munster predicts that Apple TV’s subscription service will set you back between £18 and £25 for all-you-can-eat access to a Apple’s library of TV shows. 

But Munster’s predictions don’t stop there – he’s also pointing his future stick in the direction of new Apple TV hardware. He predicts the next generation of Apple TV will pack in a digital tuner and DVR. Continue reading…

A new playlist can be created in the iTunes 9 and shared with a Facebook account.

Almost a week back, buzz about upcoming iTunes 9 integrating Blu Ray Discs, Social media and App organization support had surfaced. Now, screenshots of purported iTunes 9 beta build software depicts Facebook playlist integration and third party device support. The images showed that a new playlist can be created in the iTunes 9 and shared with a Facebook account. Continue reading…

We may all have been looking out for the PS3 Slim announcement at Sony’s Gamescom press conference, but the PSP has certainly not been left out of the loop, with a digital reader, mini games and new colours to look forward to before the end of the year.
The first thing PSP owners will see from the announcements is the whole host of new games called “Minis on PSP”, launching on 1 October.Aimed at developers who haven’t made games for the PSP before, they will be – as the name suggests – ”smaller, downloadable games at low prices”. Continue reading…

Sony is set to delay its plans for a large-size OLED TV until next year at the earliest, it’s been reported. The successor to the rather lovely but pricey 11-inch XEL-1 launched in 2008, has been put on hold according to sources close to the company. Continue reading…

It may have been one of the worst kept tech secrets this year, but Sony has now officially confirmed the PS3 Slim will be on our shelves in just a few weeks.

At 32 per cent smaller, 36 per cent lighter and consuming 34 per cent less power than the original PS3, we’ll see the Slim on shelves across the world in the first week of September as expected. Continue reading…