Der weltgrösste Computerhersteller Hewlett-Packard rüstet sich für harte Zeiten. Erst zum Jahr 2016 werde das Unternehmen wieder so schnell wie die US-Wirtschaft wachsen, kündigte Konzernchefin Meg Whitman an.

Seit exakt einem halben Jahr ist das von den beiden Bündnern Marco Tscholl und Ivo Frei gegründete Startup "Milkbook" mit einer Softwarelösung für Selbstständige und Kleinunternehmen am Markt präsent, die zu 100 Prozent aus der Cloud kommt und daher keinerlei Installationen oder Datensicherungen benötigt.

In der Affäre um mögliche Aktienkursmanipulationen bei der Telekom Austria hat die Staatsanwaltschaft Wien Anklage gegen Teile der früheren Führungsriege erhoben. Betroffen sind unter anderen der ehemalige Firmenchef Heinz Sundt, Ex-Finanzchef Stefano Colombo und der frühere Festnetzchef Rudolf Fischer.

Die Deutsche Telekom vereinigt ihr schwächelndes Mobilfunkgeschäft in den USA mit dem US-Konkurrenten MetroPCS. Die Führungsgremien beider Konzerne hätten dem Zusammenschluss zugestimmt, teilte die Deutsche Telekom am Mittwoch mit.

Im Mobilfunk-Patentstreit hat Motorola völlig überraschend eine Klage gegen Apple vor der US-Handelsbehörde ITC zurückgezogen. Der inzwischen zu Google gehörende Handy-Hersteller nannte keine Gründe dafür, betonte aber zugleich, dass es keine Vereinbarungen mit Apple gebe.

Apple hat die Produktion seines seit langem erwarteten kleineren iPad-Modells gestartet. Das Gerät habe eine Displaydiagonale von 7,85 Zoll (19,9 cm) und eine etwas geringere Bildauflösung als das aktuelle iPad.

Führende japanische Elektronikkonzerne wollen Verluste im Bereich Unterhaltungselektronik und Mobilfunk durch neue Produkte zum Energiesparen ausgleichen. Auf der Elektronikmesse Ceatec in Japan präsentierten heute Panasonic, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Electric sowie Kyocera unterschiedliche Lösungsansätze für ein „Smart Home“ - ein vernetztes und energiesparendes Haus.

Der wankende finnische Handyriese Nokia erwägt als Teil der angekündigten Sparmaßnahmen, seinen Hauptsitz in Espoo zu verkaufen. Das berichteten die finnische Tageszeitung "Helsingin Sanomat" und das Boulevardblatt "Ilta-Sanomat" übereinstimmend am Mittwoch.

In Grossbritannien werden die Bürger zügiger als erwartet mit einem Smartphone oder Tablet-Computer superschnell im Internet surfen können. Die grossen Mobilfunkanbieter einigten sich am Dienstag nach Angaben der Regierung darauf, den Streit um Frequenzen beim Einsatz des Mobilfunkstandards 4G zu beenden und die Technik schneller anzubieten.

Facebook experimentiert laut einem Zeitungsbericht mit neuen Werbemodellen, bei denen die Nutzer noch zielgenauer mit Anzeigen angesprochen werden können. Dabei komme eine breitere Auswahl an Nutzerdaten zum Einsatz, berichtete das "Wall Street Journal" am Dienstag. So erlaube Facebook seit einigen Monaten einigen Werbevermarktern, die gezielten Anzeigen auch an ihnen bekannte E-Mail-Adressen und Telefonnummern zu koppeln.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google seems determined to press forward with Google Glass technology, filing a patent for a Google Glass wristwatch. As pointed out by CNET, the timepiece includes a camera and a touch screen that, once flipped up, acts as a secondary display. In the patent, Google refers to the device as a 'smart-watch. Whether or not a Google Glass wristwatch ever appears on the marketplace — just because a tech titan patents a particular invention doesn't mean it's bound for store shelves anytime soon — the appearance of augmented-reality accessories brings up a handful of interesting issues for everyone from app developers to those tasked with handling massive amounts of corporate data.For app developers, augmented-reality devices raise the prospect of broader ecosystems and spiraling complexity. It's one thing to build an app for smartphones and tablets — but what if that app also needs to handle streams of data ported from a pair of tricked-out sunglasses or a wristwatch, or send information in a concise and timely way to a tiny screen an inch in front of someone's left eye?"

dcblogs writes "Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman told financial analysts today that it will take until 2016 to turn the company around. Surprisingly, Whitman put some of the blame for the company's woes on its IT systems, which she said have hurt its internal operations. To fix its IT problems, Whitman said the company is adopting Salesforce and HR system Workday. The company also plans to cut product lines. It said it makes 2,100 different laser printers alone; it wants to reduce that by half. 'In every business we're going to benefit from focusing on a smaller number of offerings that we can invest in and really make matter,' said Whitman."

New submitter CelestialScience writes "The heavens have aligned in a way never seen before, with two exoplanets overlapping as they cross their star. Teruyuki Hirano of the University of Tokyo, Japan, and colleagues used data from the Kepler space telescope to probe KOI-94, a star seemingly orbited by four planets. It seems that one planet candidate, KOI-94.03, passed in front of the star and then the innermost candidate, KOI-94.01, passed between the two. The phenomenon is so new it doesn't yet have a name, though suggestions include 'planet-planet eclipse,' 'double transit,' 'syzygy' and 'exosyzygy.'"

eldavojohn writes "A recent peer reviewed paper and survey by Cliff Frohlich of the University of Texas' Institute for Geophysics reveals a correlation between an increase in earthquakes and the emergence of fracking sites in the Barnett Shale, Texas. To clarify, it is not the actual act of hydrofracking that induces earthquakes, but more likely the final process of injecting wastewater into the site, according to Oliver Boyd, a USGS seismologist. Boyd said, 'Most, if not all, geophysicists expect induced earthquakes to be more likely from wastewater injection rather than hydrofracking. This is because the wastewater injection tends to occur at greater depth, where earthquakes are more likely to nucleate. I also agree [with Frohlich] that induced earthquakes are likely to persist for some time (months to years) after wastewater injection has ceased.' Frohlich added, 'Faults are everywhere. A lot of them are stuck, but if you pump water in there, it reduces friction and the fault slips a little. I can't prove that that's what happened, but it's a plausible explanation.' In the U.S. alone this correlation has been noted several times."

jfruh writes "Klout is a new social media service that attempts to quantify how much 'influence' you have, based on your social media profile. Their metrics are bizarre — privacy blogger Dan Tynan has been rated as highly influential on the topic of cigars, despite having only smoked one, decades ago. Nevertheless, Klout scores have real-world consequences, with people deemed influential getting discounts on concert tickets or free access to airport VIP lounges (in hopes that they'll tweet about it, presumably)."

Shipud writes "Bioinformatics science which deals with the study of methods for storing, retrieving, and analyzing molecular biology data. Byte Size Biology writes about ROSALIND, a cool concept in learning bioinformatics, similar to Project Euler. You are given problems of increasing difficulty to solve. Start with nucleotide counting (trivial) and end with genome assembly (putting it mildly, not so trivial). To solve a problem, you download a sample data set, write your code and debug it. Once you think you are ready, you have a time limit to solve and provide an answer for the actual problem dataset. If you mess up, there is a timed new dataset to download. This thing is coder-addictive. Currently in Beta, but a lot of fun and seems stable."

zacharye writes "When Microsoft announced earlier this year that it will launch an own-brand tablet to compete directly with its various vendor partners working on Windows 8-based tablet PCs of their own, there was some backlash. Privately — and sometimes even publicly — long-time Microsoft partners took it as an attack on their businesses and questioned why Microsoft would be so brazen. But with nowhere else to turn thanks to Windows' overwhelming PC dominance, these vendors had no choice but to continue developing Windows 8 devices and compete directly with their software supplier. Though events may play out a bit differently in the smartphone market, where Microsoft has yet to stage the comeback it promised two years ago, BGR has learned that the Redmond, Washington-based company plans to release its own Windows Phone 8 smartphone in the coming months."

CmdrTaco sent in a link to his weblog post looking back on his experience running Slashdot for fifteen years: "For me the story of Slashdot is utterly inseparable from my own life. I built it while still in college: when normal people did their homework or had personal lives, I spent my evenings making icons in The Gimp, crafting perl in vim or writing a new story to share with my friends. I’ll never forget the nights spent tailing the access_log and celebrating a line from microsoft.com or mit.edu with friends like Jeff, Dave, Nate, and Kurt."

jones_supa writes "The Finnish smartphone startup Jolla has revealed the next chapter in their roadmap. The company announced that it is setting up an alliance to license a MeeGo-based OS called Sailfish to other OEMs. The operations, backed by 200M€, will begin at spring 2013. CEO Jussi Hurmola believes that the next big revolution in smartphones will happen in China, and the OS will provide an alternative independent smartphone ecosystem there. Jolla strives for more openness than OHA, by letting the partners design their services directly without needing green light from the alliance. Sailfish is headquartered in Hong Kong and R&D centers will be established in other parts of mainland China, possibly Shanghai and Peking."

Daetrin writes "Last year T-Mobile tried to merge with AT&T but the deal was blocked by the FCC. Now T-Mobile and MetroPCS have agreed to merge in a $1.5 billion deal. There doesn't seem to be much concern that the FCC will disagree with this deal, perhaps because the two companies combined will have a user base of 42.5 million, which will still be smaller than the #3 player Sprint's 56.4 million. Because the two companies have similar spectrum holdings T-Mobile claims the merger will allow them to offer better coverage. They also say they will continue to offer a range of both on and off-contract plans."

ananyo writes "Bucking a trend of cutting science seen elsewhere, the French government has committed to increasing spending on research and development in its draft austerity budget for 2013. France's education and research ministry gets a 2.2% boost under the proposed budget, giving it a budget of just under €23 billion (US$29 billion). Most other ministries get a cut. The upshot of the cash increase is that 1,000 new university posts will be created, no publicly funded research jobs will be cut and funding for research grants will rise (albeit less than inflation) by 1.2% to €7.86 billion. The move to spend on science during a recession is notable and means that French politicians understand that a sustainable commitment to public spending on science is vital for long-term economic growth. The situation is in stark contrast to that in the U.S. and in the UK, where a recent policy to boost hi-tech industries, unveiled with much fanfare, failed to do much for science. Meanwhile, in Australia, there's alarm over proposals to freeze research grants— a step that could jeopardize 1700 jobs."