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By acquiring all the shares of Symbian, Nokia enables the creation of the Symbian Foundation, an initiative to unify all variations of the platform into a single system and open, able to fight against better competition.

These are major reorganization maneuvers in the universe Symbian. Anxious to maintain its leadership, its representatives, primarily Nokia, Symbian launch Foundation, a group of industrialists open to all to make a Symbian platform unified open and free of royalties with a common development environment to all.

Currently, Symbian is divided into several elements: Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and POP (S) (used in Japan) that meet the needs of different markets, but each with its ecosystem. Before the rise of competing platforms, the hour is to unite all these components.

That is why Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, but AT & T, LG, Samsung, ST Microelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone will participate in the creation of the Symbian Foundation, in which everyone will share its resources to create a mobile operating system common open and free rights for its members.

Nokia architect, actor and contributor to the Symbian Foundation
With this in mind, Nokia, the principal shareholder of Symbian, will buy back the shares of other contributors (or 52%, representing 264 million euros) and share with the foundation’s resources on Symbian OS and S60 interface. For their part, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, holding equal shares of UIQ, will share this resource with other members, while DoCoMo will do likewise with POP (S).

This package will set up a unified platform with a common user interface, that members agree to improve. The aim is to provide a complete open source system by two years (2010) licensed 1.0 EPL (Eclipse Public License).

The Symbian Foundation will formally start its activities from the first half of 2009 with an initial offer of mobile resources open source and a first catalogue of using the terminals. The platform will remain compatible with current versions, Symbian OS v9 and S60 3rd Edition interface, and therefore with corresponding services and applications.

The world therefore Symbian exchange model to adapt to the constraints of new players, including Linux Mobile, which is preparing to land in force. Using a similar development model, its players hope to retain a share of their comfortable advance (over 200 million terminals, a market share of over 60%) while using the same weapons that are the strength of Linux Mobile: joint development and open sharing of resources, contributions.

Less than two weeks after the official end of negotiations with Microsoft, and the signing of an advertising partnership with Google, Yahoo! continues to lose its leadership.

The house Yahoo! does not decidedly so that, and the recently signed a partnership of advertising with Google has not stopped the bleeding currently afflicting the leadership of the group, quite the contrary. The Wall Street Journal and spoke of some fifty officers who left the firm in Sunnyvale last 12 months, and the meter does not seem ready to stop with a dozen freshly made hotel.

Yang pointed flee their leaders!
For more familiar to the general public, these departures concern founder of the couple sharing website Flickr photos, bought by Yahoo! in March 2005 and who turned to the videos there is little. Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, also the couple lives, have decided to slam the door and to stay in the family’s social network, Joshua Schacter who founded the site sharing bookmarks goes Del.icio.us also.

This wind of revolt is not the prerogative of the precursors of Web 2.0 since there are almost at the same time, the departures of vice-president, an official of Yahoo! abroad, one of the architects of the highly popular Yahoo! Mail or Qi Lu who had been placed at the head of the advertising platform Yahoo!, Panama.

In short, very difficult time ahead for Jerry Yang, the current CEO of Yahoo! whose position looks increasingly fragile. It is within this context that an inevitable reorganization is expected to be announced this week, while the next general meeting of shareholders on 1 August 2008, promises to be bumpy for the co-founder of Yahoo!.

The fine imposed on Microsoft in April to one of the opponent to trial Alcatel has been confirmed. $368 million for having violated two patents in technology, plus some interest.

In April this year, a court of San Diego, CA Microsoft was sentenced to a fine of 367.4 million dollars. As often involved the violation of technology patents, claimed by the Franco-US group Alcatel-Lucent. Four patents were concerned, but finally the court had upheld the offense for only two of them, the Redmond company and beyond to 1.75 billion dollars in damages.

In this case, these patents relate to technology for recognition of handwriting used in the operating system Microsoft Tablet PC, and how to select the dates of a timetable for a menu with some applications, including Outlook OS and Windows Mobile. Microsoft had decided to try to reverse that decision but was not heard.

Taking into account the interests since the original sentence, a federal judge has just bring the total sum to be paid by Microsoft to 511.6 million in damages. The U.S. giant has clearly expressed its disappointment, regretting that the judge has not decided to open a new trial, but nevertheless intends to call for a procedure that has now lasted for 5 years.

In any event, Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent know they will still cross on many occasions in the courts, always on substantive violations of technology patents.

The famous site launches video sharing platform Screening Room to accommodate independent films that can last more than 10 minutes, the limit imposed on the common Internet.

For Mr. everyone, YouTube imposes some limits on online videos, including a time limit being content that can not last longer than 10 minutes, in order to contain piracy. This limit will be abolished under the newly launched service Screening Room.

New initiative YouTube
Because, with this service YouTube is designed to accommodate independent films to offer them a wide audience to which they have probably not been right at the whim of various festivals where they were presented. More than 10 minutes per film, but still no more than 1 GB per file shared.

The directors and producers who accept the offer YouTube will benefit through profit-sharing revenue from advertising. They will also be able to attach their video with a button “Buy Now” so that the user can order a DVD or digital copy.

Every two weeks, a committee drafting YouTube decide on the distribution of new films 4. The former are already proposed and in the coming months, films from various countries will be online.

Go to YouTube Screening Room

To cope with the high demand for Yahoo! Mail, the Sunnyvale firm will propose a new area of e-mail: Ymail.

Inaugurated in 1997, Yahoo! Mail webmail is the most popular across the world, claiming more than 260 million users. Under these conditions, and the game of duplication, not easy to please everybody and number of Internet users must rely on an e-mail address that does not finally they like.

To meet them and meet a real demand, Yahoo! decided to open new areas of e-mail which Ymail for Europe, the USA also have the right to Rocketmail. This openness with the rule of first come, first served basis, must be done in the day the country of Uncle Sam and most probably tomorrow for the Old Continent.

It will probably go quickly!
For faster, it’s the end of the addition of numbers or other frivolity to address their mail in government Yahoo! Mail, they may have en@ymail.com address of their choice. For the rest nothing changes, and even en@ymail.com storage unlimited remains of harshness. The creation of such an address can also be used sesame the multiple services offered by Yahoo! whose sharing website Flickr photos.

In addition, the opening of this new area of e-mail does not ring the death knell addresses en@yahoo.com ou@yahoo.fr whose establishment will always be possible.

Yahoo offers Ymail for its webmail and Google is Gmail. The cronyism between the two giants of the Internet appears on several levels.