Samsung forced to reveal Galaxy sales data to Apple

Samsung (005930) was found to have infringed upon six of Apple’s patents this past August and ordered to pay the company $1.05 billion in damages. Apple (AAPL) is also seeking additional damages after its bid to blocks sales of eight Samsung devices failed. In order to asses the damages, Apple requested that Samsung hand over its sales data for its popular Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets. The company refused, however, in an effort to protect its confidential pricing details and profit margins.
[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh recently ruled that Samsung must file an exhibit listing the total number of units of sold during certain time periods, Bloomberg reported. In a separate order, the Judge granted Samsung its request to delay the publication of part of a sealed document that showed per-unit operating profit for two of its phones.
[More from BGR: Nokia predicted to abandon mobile business, sell assets to Microsoft and Huawei in 2013]
Koh denied most of Apple’s and Samsung’s other requests to seal documents, noting that here isn’t a “compelling reason” that would require them to be sealed.

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Apple may have sold up to 4 million iPhones to businesses in Q4

As we’ve mentioned countless times, it’s a good thing that RIM (RIMM) will release BlackBerry 10 soon, because otherwise Apple (AAPL) and Android will continue to wreck its market share among enterprise users. Benzinga reports that Trip Chowdhry, a managing director at Global Equities Research, has put out a research note estimating that Apple sold between 3 million and 4 million iPhones to businesses over the past quarter, some of whom have switched over from BlackBerry.
[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]
“This figure emerges from a combination of new purchase of iPhones and users switching to iPhones from Blackberry,” Chowdhry writes. “After the two-year contract expiration on Apple iPhone[s], [the] majority of the enterprises have replaced their employees’ current phones with the new iPhone 5.”
[More from BGR: Nokia predicted to abandon mobile business, sell assets to Microsoft and Huawei in 2013]
As for reasons why more companies are switching to the iPhone, Chowdhry says that salespeople for key enterprise apps such as Salesforce, Workday and VMware are increasingly “demonstrating their enterprise offering on iPhones, which is also acting as a trigger for enterprises to purchase iPhones for their employees.” Chowdhry also thinks that the advent of mobile device management software has boosted the iPhone’s security capabilities and has made it less risky for companies to adopt.

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Everything You Need to Know About Steubenville High's Football 'Rape Crew'

In the past 24 hours, the story of an alleged rape in the small, football-driven Ohio town of Steubenville has transformed from a local controversy with a curious social-media angle to an all-out Internet crusade, with potential cover-ups, allegations of prosecutors colluding with coaches, disgusting new video, and hackers to the rescue. Here's a primer on what looks like it may become one of the most emotional and controversial news narratives of the new year:
RELATED: Inside the Anonymous Hacking File on the Steubenville 'Rape Crew'
So there was a rape in this small town?
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Well, it's not that simple, but allegedly yes: Two 16-year-old boys from Steubenville High are each facing a rape charge for the assault in August of a 16-year-old girl apparently from across the Ohio River in Weirton, West Virginia.
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How come we're only hearing about this now?
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Because a lengthy New York Times story on the case last month got lost in the spotlight on the Newtown school shootings, maybe, or because the Anonymous hacking collective started calling major attention to it this week.
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But what makes this rape case different?
You see, Steubenville is the stuff of Friday Night Lights. The 19,000-person eastern Ohio town is a giant football community, and this alleged rape involves member of their storied Big Red team. "Everybody around here goes to games on Friday nights, and I mean everybody — people come for miles," a local told the Times's Juliet Macur and Nate Schweber. "It's basically the small-town effect. People live and die based on Big Red because they usually win and it makes everybody feel good about themselves when times are tough."
So how did this assault take place?
Well, back on the night of August 11, the alleged victim was at an end-of-summer party and had a lot to drink, police said, when Trent Mays and Malik Richmond allegedly approached her: "Richmond was behind her, with his hands between her legs, penetrating her with his fingers, a witness said," reported the The Times.
And how is that different from all the other assaults against young women in this country?
Here's the chilling part: the alleged victim didn't know she was assaulted until she started to find out about it on social media the next day.
Really? That's pretty gross. How did she find out?
Instagram, YouTube, and some pretty disgusting tweets. And the girl's mother told The Times that her daughter didn't even know the full extent of the attack until a local paper wrote about it the next day. On August 22, Mays and Richmond (right) were arrested on charges of rape and kidnapping. (Defense attorneys did not respond to requests for comment from The Atlantic Wire.)
Why only those two? They were at a party, right? And there were all those tweets?
Well, word spread among the students at or around the party quickly, and as the Cleveland Plain-Dealer reported, "Before the 16-year-old girl’s parents reported the crime to Steubenville police, many of the online posts had been deleted — or so students thought."
We live in an age when social media exists as evidence that can't just disappear, and Alexandria Goddard, who runs a crime blog called Prinniefied.com, turned up those deleted pictures from the night in question. Like this one:

What happened when that got out?
Goddard started posting on August 26, and attorneys for Mays and Richmond filed a defamation lawsuit October 25 — it was dismissed on December 27. But the local press had already picked up the story, and Goddard's site now carries the student Instagram photographer's apology:
“I deeply regret my actions on the night of August 11, 2012. While I wasn’t at the home where the alleged assault took place, there is no doubt that I was wrong to post that picture from an earlier party and tweet those awful comments. Not a moment goes by that I don’t wish I would have never posted that picture or tweeted those comments. I want to sincerely apologize to the victim and her family for these actions. I also want to acknowledge the work of several bloggers, especially Ms. Goddard at Prinniefied.com, in their efforts to make sure the full truth about that terrible night eventually comes out. At no time did my family mean to stop anyone from expressing themselves online – we only wanted to correct what we believed were misstatements that appeared on Ms. Goddard’s blog. I am glad that we have resolved our differences with Ms. Goddard and that she and her contributors can continue their work.” – Cody Saltsman
How come the other kids at the party didn't get in trouble? Isn't that aiding and abetting?
It's not like the cops didn't try: "The thing I found most disturbing about this is that there were other people around when this was going on," Steubenville Police Chief William McCafferty told the Times. "Nobody had the morals to say, 'Hey, stop it, that isn’t right.' ... If you could charge people for not being decent human beings, a lot of people could have been charged that night."
So what happened to the social media evidence? Isn't this supposed to be a case of our times?
That's where the investigation — a preliminary trial is scheduled for February 13 — runs into problems. Despite all the Instagramming and social media sharing, Chief McCafferty told the Times that witnesses failed to come forward:
The city’s police chief begged for witnesses to come forward, but received little response. In time, the county prosecutor and the judge in charge of handling crimes by juveniles recused themselves from the case because they had ties to the football team.
And, well, some of the evidence went "missing":
That player told the police that he was in the back seat of his Volkswagen Jetta with Mays and the girl when Mays proceeded to flash the girl’s breasts and penetrate her with his fingers, while the player videotaped it on his phone. The player, who shared the video with at least one person, testified that he videotaped Mays and the girl “because he was being stupid, not making the right choices.” He said he later deleted the recording.
Is anyone questioning the two boys' guilt?
Yes. About half the town of Steubenville, actually. Five months later, local students are still blaming the alleged victim for bringing the attack upon herself — she has been referred to on Facebook as "train whore":

And some, like one of Steubenville High's 19 football coaches, are blaming her for shaming the storied program:
"The rape was just an excuse, I think," said the 27-year-old Hubbard, who is No. 2 on the Big Red’s career rushing list.
"What else are you going to tell your parents when you come home drunk like that and after a night like that?” said Hubbard, who is one of the team’s 19 coaches. "She had to make up something. Now people are trying to blow up our football program because of it."
If not everyone believes the rape happened, aren't the town's football allegiances going to get in the way of a fair trial?
Well, yes, there's this from the Times report: "the county prosecutor and the judge in charge of handling crimes by juveniles recused themselves from the case because they had ties to the football team."
Wait, is this some sort of cover-up?
Well, that's why the hacktivist collective known as Anonymous — and, more specifically, one of its  cells known as Knightsec — got involved. The hackers, and their partners at the site LocalLeaks, are "giving a voice to the victim of this horrible crime" by rounding up new information that the police haven't been able to — or at least that hasn't been made publicly available in advance of next month's trial. They seem to believe that there are more people involved, that there are more victims, that the accused are getting special treatment because they are football players, and that there's a bigger group of boys involved, which Anonymous has dubbed the "Rape Crew." Oh, and they've set up Occupy Steubenville protests too.
Why do they think there's a cover-up, exactly?
For starters, Steubenville High head coach Reno Saccoccia didn't even bench the players involved. The Times wrote:
Saccoccia, pronounced SOCK-otch, told the principal and school superintendent that the players who posted online photographs and comments about the girl the night of the parties said they did not think they had done anything wrong. Because of that, he said, he had no basis for benching those players.
....
Approached in November to be interviewed about the case, Saccoccia said he did not "do the Internet," so he had not seen the comments and photographs posted online from that night. When asked again about the players involved and why he chose not to discipline them, he became agitated.
"You made me mad now," he said, throwing in several expletives as he walked from the high school to his car.
Nearly nose to nose with a reporter, he growled: "You're going to get yours. And if you don't get yours, somebody close to you will."
So is the country prosecutor trying to get her son and his teammates off the hook?
That's one of many new alleged details Anonymous and Local Leaks claim they have evidence of, in a document dump that started Wednesday, which they're calling The Steubenville Files. We detailed the findings already, and we're not sure of their sourcing, but their leaks suggest that the football coach and the country Sheriff are friends. And even though the boys will now be tried as juveniles, they allege that Saccoccia has ties in the juvenile court system.
Wait, how many moer people are involved in the assault?
The hackers allege that there are more than two boys who perpetrated the alleged crime. They also suggest that one of the parties that the unconscious girl was dragged to actually took place at the county prosecutor's house. The leaks read:
When the family of the victim went to file the charges, Jane Hanlin [the prosecutor] was present. She strongly discouraged them from filing. Hanlin frightened not only the victim, but the parents as well. Telling them that her name was going to be dragged through the mud, she will be in and out of court for well over two years, the press wouldn’t leave any of the family alone once the crime was made public. Scared out of their wits, the parents said they didn’t want that and Hanlin then said not to worry just leave it up to her and the detectives on the case.
And the hackers even dug up this video that had been deleted, which we showed and warned you about yesterday, of a former Steubenville student laughing about the attack:
Should we trust this new info?
Anonymous is notorious for doing borderline criminal fact-finding with good intentions. Just by bringing more Internet attention to the case, they've already pushed it forward. They continue to ask for the witness accounts that the town police chief has been asking for.
But the kid in that video up there will have his name attached to this case for years to come. And while he might deserve it, there's also a question of vigilanteism, since Anonymous has already published the personal information of certain other students it's convinced belong to this "Rape Crew":

How emotional should everyone get about all this before the trial?
Well, just this week Congress failed to pass the Violence Against Women Act, which is supposed to help protect women against assault and encourage them to come out in public when assaults do happen. The bill's failure, for the first time since 1994, is sort of poetic.

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Short and social workouts led fitness trends in 2012

NEW YORK (Reuters) - From mud races to sweat parties to CrossFit competitions, workouts turned smarter, shorter and more social in 2012, experts say, as fitness was sweetened with a little help from smart phones and friends.
"Everything is about making fitness fun," said Jenna Autuori-Dedic, senior fitness editor at Fitness Magazine.
Even those grueling indoor cycling classes were a chance to mingle.
"I truly think that spinning was one of the biggest things to come out of 2012," said Autuori-Dedic. "They (fitness studios) made it fun. You can go with your friends, match your workout to the music. When you work out with friends, you don't realize you're working out."
She said 2012 also saw the rise of the sweat party.
"Instead of hitting the bars for that bachelorette party or night out with the girls, women are going in groups to fitness studios," she explained. "You don't have to choose between working out and meeting your friends, you can do both."
Working women have begun treating clients to boot camp classes in lieu of happy-hour, she added, and more co-workers host conference room workouts at lunchtime.
Mud runs were another 2012 trend that Autuori-Dedic expects to grow in the new year, along with fun obstacle-type races in general, during which participants can get blasted with paint or chased by "zombies," often for charity.
Donna Cyrus, senior vice president of programming at the Crunch national chain of fitness centers, said dance classes and short, results-driven workouts dominated group fitness.
"Going into 2012 everybody was looking for the next Zumba," said Cyrus of the Latin-based dance fitness craze. "We find that people are looking for fun easy-to-follow dance moves."
Crunch created 2FLY, a dance class based on music of the ‘80's and ‘90's that strives to feel more like a house party than a workout.
The other big trend from 2012, according to Cyrus, is the 30-minute workout.
"Everybody is realizing that you can get results in 30 minutes," she said, so this year was also about hard core, body-sculpting, CrossFit-type classes.
CrossFit is an intense, constantly varied, strength and conditioning program.
Autuori-Dedic said the CrossFit games, which are competitions that grew out of the workout regimen, mushroomed from only 4,000 participants to nearly 70,000 this year.
Richard Cotton, national director of certification programs for the American College of Sports Medicine, said 2012 signaled a welcome shift back to the basics of training people to be prepared for daily living.
"We're finally getting smart about what functional exercise actually is," Cotton said. "Simpler and basic, easier to do at home, there are fewer silly ball exercises, (such as) balancing on a ball while doing bicep curls."
Cotton said personal trainers increasingly apply troubleshooting, motivational interviewing and coaching techniques to their sessions with clients.
Autuori-Dedic said 2013 will see more trainers displaying their wares online.
"Trainers are live-streaming workouts and putting things on Twitter, iTunes, everywhere," she said.
And sophisticated tracking apps are here to stay.
Autuori-Dedic cited a study showing that people lost an average of 15 pounds and kept it off for at least a year just by tracking their statistics with an app.
"It used to be that stepping on a scale once a week would tell you how far you've come," she said. "Now with our smartphones we can log in at any time and see how we're doing every step of the way.

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Olympics, elections and horsing around in odd 2012

Presidential preening, golden Olympic gaffes, a royal windfall for a skydiving British queen on her diamond jubilee and the endless end of days marked the odd stories in 2012 which pranced across the news in Gangnam Style.
The year opened with a tale that flocks of magpies and bears had been spotted in mourning for North Korea's "Dear Leader", Kim Jong-il who died in December 2011 and was succeeded by his 20-something son Kim Jong-un.
Winter weather was so cold in Brussels that the Manneken-Pis, a bronze statue of a young boy urinating had to stop peeing because of sub-zero temperatures.
There was slightly warming news about Mondays in Germany, where crematoriums are struggling to adapt to an increasingly obese population and a boom in extra-large coffins.
"We burn particularly large coffins on Monday mornings when the ovens are cold," one crematorium said.
In March Polish media reported that kite surfer Jan Lisewski fought off repeated shark attacks and overcame thirst and exhaustion in a two-day battle of survival on the Red Sea with just his trusty knife as protection.
"I was stabbing them in the eyes, the nose and gills."
In other animal news, dairy cows across the world mourned the loss of "Jocko", the world's third most-potent breeding bull and Yvonne the German cow who evaded helicopter searches and dodged hunters landed a film deal: "Cow on the Run".
A Nepali man who was bitten by a cobra snake bit it back and killed the reptile after it attacked him in his rice paddy.
"I could have killed it with a stick but bit it with my teeth instead because I was angry," Mohamed Salmo Miya said.
A scathing resignation letter of a Goldman Sachs executive published in the New York Times inspired a sheaf of online spoofs, including Star Wars villain Darth Vader.
"The Empire today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about remote strangulation. It just doesn't feel right to me anymore," Vader wrote in a published letter.
Austerity in Europe saw a once-thriving Greek sex industry become the latest victim of the country's debt crisis with Greeks spending less on erotic toys, pornography and lingerie.
But lust appeared to be in the rudest of health elsewhere.
Turkish emergency workers rescued an inflatable sex doll floating in the Black Sea and a German disc jockey vowed to press charges against a woman who locked him in her apartment and ravaged him for hours until he rang the police.
"She was sex mad and there was no way out of the flat," Dieter S. told police.
@ROYALFETUS
Britain's Queen Elizabeth celebrated her 60th year on the throne with Diamond Jubilee celebrations that saw a 1,000-ship rain-sodden flotilla sail down the River Thames, a massive party in front of Buckingham Palace, street parties across the country and a spoof incarnation of her majesty on Twitter.
"OK, fire up the Bentley. Let's rock," tweeted "Elizabeth Windsor", the comic online alter ego of the British monarch in a typical tweet from the spoof Twitter account @Queen_UK, a virtual monarch with a razor-sharp wit and a penchant for gin.
And Twitter positively exploded with spoof royal accounts later in the year when Elizabeth's grandson William and his wife Kate announced she was pregnant with a future monarch.
"I may not have bones yet, but I'm already more important than everyone reading this," was the tweet from @RoyalFetus.
Leadership and change was a theme which ran through a year in which socialist Francois Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Mimi the clown to become French president, Vladimir Putin was elected Russian president again and U.S. President Barack Obama won re-election over Republican Mitt Romney.
Amid the tight election race, Obama met a gaffe-prone Romney for an exchange at a charity dinner ahead of the November poll, where America's first black president poked fun at Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood for lecturing an empty chair as if it were Obama during the Republican convention.
"Please take your seats," Obama told the crowd, "or else Clint Eastwood will yell at them."
"THE MODFATHER"
Sporting news was dominated by the London Olympics during the summer, where the opening ceremony included a vignette of Queen Elizabeth being escorted by James Bond before apparently skydiving into the Olympic stadium for her arrival.
"Good evening Mr. Bond," was her only line.
Olympic embarrassments were few, but they began early with organizers forced into apologies for displaying the South Korean flag on a video screen for North Korea's women's soccer team.
British cycling sensation Bradley "the Modfather" Wiggins became the first Briton to win the Tour de France, sparking a craze among fans for cutout cardboard sideburns modeled on his own and shouting "here Wiggo" as he raced to Olympic gold.
London's eccentric and loquacious Mayor Boris Johnson fell rather awkwardly silent when he got stuck dangling from a zip wire, waving two Union flags in drizzling rain.
Olympic chiefs urged youthful athletes to drink "sensibly".
But there was anything but restraint for Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who declared an early night at one point only to be photographed later with three members of the Swedish women's handball team. Early one Sunday morning Bolt also dazzled dancers at a London night club with a turn in the DJ booth.
"I am a legend," Bolt shouted out to a packed dance floor from the decks with his arms raised in the air.
Towards the close of the year, tens of thousands of mystics, hippies and tourists celebrated in the shadow of ancient Maya pyramids in southeastern Mexico as the Earth survived a day billed by doomsday theorists as the end of the world.
"It's pure Hollywood," said Luis Mis Rodriguez, 45, a Maya selling obsidian figurines and souvenirs.
Finally, a chubby, rapping singer with slicked-back hair and a tacky suit became the latest musical sensation to burst upon the world from South Korea, via a YouTube music video that has been seen more than a billion times.
Decked out in a bow tie and suit jackets varying from pink to baby blue, as well as a towel for one sequence set in a sauna, Psy busts funky moves based on horse-riding in venues ranging from playgrounds to subways.
The video by Psy has been emulated by everyone from Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei to students at Britain's elite Eton College, gurning politicians, spotty teens and embarrassing dads worldwide.
"My goal in this music video was to look uncool until the end. I achieved it," Psy told Reuters.

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Ban on demanding Facebook passwords among new 2013 state laws

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Employers in California and Illinois will be prohibited from demanding access to workers' password-protected social networking accounts and teachers in Oregon will be required to report suspected student bullies thanks to new laws taking effect in 2013.
In all, more than 400 measures were enacted at the state level during 2012 and will become law in the new year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
Some of the statutes, which deal with everything from consumer protection to gun control and healthcare, take effect at the stroke of midnight. Others will not kick in until later in the year.
The raft of measures includes a new abortion restriction in New Hampshire, public-employee pension reform in California and Alabama, same-sex marriage in Maryland, and a requirement that private insurers in Alaska cover autism in kids and young adults, NCSL said.
In New Hampshire, a rarely used form of late-term abortion will become illegal except to save the life of the mother - and even then only if two doctors from separate hospitals certify the procedure is medically necessary.
John Lynch, the state's outgoing Democratic governor, had vetoed the measure, saying it would threaten the lives of women in rural areas. But the state's Republican-controlled legislature later overrode him.
In California and Illinois, laws that take effect at 12:01 a.m. local time will make it illegal for bosses to request social networking passwords or non-public online account information from their employees or job applicants.
Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed a similar measure into law earlier this month that took effect immediately. The Michigan law also penalizes educational institutions for dismissing or failing to admit a student who does not provide passwords and other account information used to access private internet and email accounts, including social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
But workers and job seekers in all three states will still need to be careful what they post online: Employers may continue to use publicly available social networking information. So inappropriate pictures, tweets and other social media indiscretions can still come back to haunt them.
Gun violence - in places where it's all too common, such as Chicago, and in places where it's unexpected, such as Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut - was big news in 2012. But only a handful of new state firearms laws are set to take effect in 2013.
In Michigan, the definition of a "pistol" under the law will now include any firearm less than 26 inches in length. The new definition encompasses some rifles with folding stocks and will make the weapons subject to the same restrictions as pistols.
In Illinois, certain guns currently regulated by state law, including paintball guns, will be excluded from the definition of a firearm and participants in military re-enactments will be exempt from some weapons laws.
Another big story in 2012 was the effort by lawmakers in a number of cash-strapped states to put their public employee pension funds on a sounder financial footing.
In California and Alabama, reforms designed to begin to address the unfunded liabilities of those retirement systems will take effect in 2013.
Among the other new laws on the books in 2013:
* In California, prison workers and peace officers will now be prohibited from having sex with inmates and prisoners in transport.
* In Illinois, sex offenders will be prohibited from distributing candy on Halloween, or playing Santa or the Easter Bunny.
* In Oregon, employers won't be allowed to advertise a job vacancy if they won't consider applicants who are currently out of work.
* In Kentucky, residents will be prohibited from releasing feral or wild hogs back into the wild and Illinois will ban the possession and sale of shark fins.
* And in Florida, the term "motor vehicle" will no longer apply to the specialized all-terrain vehicles with over-sized tires known as "swamp buggies" that are popular in some parts of the state.

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Zynga carries out planned games shutdown, including "Petville"

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Social games publisher Zynga Inc confirmed on Monday that it has carried out 11 of the planned shutdowns of 13 game titles, with "Petville" being the latest game on which it pulled the plug.
Zynga in October said it would shut down 13 underperforming titles after warning that its revenues were slowing as gamers fled from its once-popular titles published on the Facebook platform in large numbers and sharply revised its full-year outlook.
The San Francisco-based company announced the "Petville" shutdown two weeks ago on its Facebook page. All the 11 shutdowns occurred in December.
The 11 titles shut down or closed to new players include role-playing game "Mafia Wars 2," "Vampire Wars," "ForestVille" and "FishVille."
"In place of 'PetVille,' we encourage you to play other Zynga games like 'Castleville,' 'Chefville,' 'Farmville 2,' 'Mafia Wars' and 'Yoville,'" the company told players on its 'PetVille' Facebook page. "PetVille" players were offered a one-time, complimentary bonus package for virtual goods in those games.
"Petville," which lets users adopt virtual pets, has 7.5 million likes on Facebook but only 60,000 daily active users, according to AppData. About 1,260 users commented on the game's Facebook page, some lamenting the game's shutdown.
Zynga has said it is shifting focus to capture growth in mobile games. It also applied this month for a preliminary application to run real-money gambling games in Nevada.
Zynga is hoping that a lucrative real-money market could make up for declining revenue from games like "FarmVille" and other fading titles that still generate the bulk of its sales.
Zynga shares were up 1 percent at $2.36 in afternoon trade on Monday on the Nasdaq.

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Judge rejects part of Apple App Store suit vs Amazon

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday rejected part of Apple Inc's lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc's use of the term App Store, ruling Apple cannot bring a false advertising claim against the online retailer.
U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California, granted Amazon's motion for partial summary judgment, which only challenged Apple's false advertising allegations. Apple leveled other claims against Amazon, including trademark infringement.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment, and an Amazon representative could not be reached immediately.
Amazon has stepped up competition against Apple in recent years, launching its cheaper Kindle tablet computer to go after the dominant iPad and trying to lure mobile application developers to its Kindle platform.
One of the first public clashes in their tussle was Apple's 2011 lawsuit.
Apple accused Amazon of misusing what it calls its APP STORE to solicit developers for a mobile software download service. However, Amazon said its so-called Appstore has become so generic that its use could not constitute false advertising.
In a legal filing last year, Amazon added that even Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and his predecessor, Steve Jobs, used the term to discuss rivals. Cook commented on "the number of app stores out there" and Jobs referred to the "four app stores on Android."
In her ruling on Wednesday, Hamilton wrote that the mere use of "Appstore" by Amazon cannot be taken as a representation that its service is the same as Apple's.
"Apple has failed to establish that Amazon made any false statement (express or implied) of fact that actually deceived or had the tendency to deceive a substantial segment of its audience," Hamilton wrote.
A trial on Apple's remaining claims is scheduled for August.
The case is Apple Inc v. Amazon.com Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 11-01327.

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Colleges help students scrub online footprints

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Samantha Grossman wasn't always thrilled with the impression that emerged when people Googled her name.
"It wasn't anything too horrible," she said. "I just have a common name. There would be pictures, college partying pictures, that weren't of me, things I wouldn't want associated with me."
So before she graduated from Syracuse University last spring, the school provided her with a tool that allowed her to put her best Web foot forward. Now when people Google her, they go straight to a positive image — professional photo, cum laude degree and credentials — that she credits with helping her land a digital advertising job in New York.
"I wanted to make sure people would find the actual me and not these other people," she said.
Syracuse, Rochester and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore are among the universities that offer such online tools to their students free of charge, realizing ill-considered Web profiles of drunken frat parties, prank videos and worse can doom graduates to a lifetime of unemployment — even if the pages are somebody else's with the same name.
It's a growing trend based on studies showing that most employers Google prospective hires and nearly all of them won't bother to go past the first page of results. The online tools don't eliminate the embarrassing material; they just put the graduate's most flattering, professional profile front and center.
"These students have been comfortable with the intimate details of their lives on display since birth," said Lisa Severy, president-elect of the National Career Development Association and director of career services at the University of Colorado-Boulder, which does not offer the service.
"The first item on our 'five things to do before you graduate' list is 'clean up your online profile,'" she said. "We call it the grandma test — if you don't want her to see it, you probably don't want an employer to, either."
After initially supplying BrandYourself accounts to graduating seniors, Syracuse University this year struck a deal with the company — begun by a trio of alumni — to offer accounts to all of its undergraduate and graduate students and alumni at no additional charge. About 25,000 people have access to it so far.
"It's becoming more and more important for students to be aware of and able to manage their online presence, to be able to have strong, positive things come up on the Internet when someone seeks them out," said Mike Cahill, Syracuse's career services director.
Online reputation repair companies have been around for at least a couple of years, often charging hundreds or thousands of dollars a year to arrange for good results on search engine result pages. BrandYourself, which normally charges $10 a month for an account, launched two years ago as a less expensive, do-it-yourself alternative after co-founder Pete Kistler ran into a problem with his own name.
"He couldn't get an internship because he was getting mistaken for a drug dealer with the same name," said co-founder Patrick Ambron. "He couldn't even get calls back and found out that was the problem."
An April survey of 2,000 hiring managers from CareerBuilder found nearly two in five companies use social networking sites to research job candidates, and 11 percent said they planned to start. A third of the hiring managers who said they research candidates reported finding something like a provocative photo or evidence of drinking or drug use that cost the candidate a job.
"We want our students and alumni actively involved in shaping their online presence," said Johns Hopkins Career Center Director Mark Presnell. Students are encouraged to promote positive, professional content that's easily found by employers, he said.
BrandYourself works by analyzing search terms in a user's online profile to determine, for example, that a LinkedIn account might rank 25th on Google searches of the user's name. The program then suggests ways to boost that ranking. The software also provides alerts when an unidentified result appears on a user's first page or if any links rise or fall significantly in rank.
Nati Katz, a public relations strategist, views his presence online as a kind of virtual storefront that he began carefully tending while in graduate school at Syracuse.
Google his name and up pops his LinkedIn page with a listing of the jobs he's held in digital media and the "500+ connections" badge of honor. His Facebook account is adorned with Katz smiling over an elegant Thanksgiving dinner table. There are a couple of professional profiles and his Tumblr link, one after another on the first page of results and all highlighting his professional experience.
Before his 2011 graduation, he took the university up on its offer of the BrandYourself account and said it gave him a leg up with potential employers and internship supervisors.
"Fortunately, I didn't have to deal with anything negative under my profile," said Katz, who used the reputation website BrandYourself.com while pursuing dual degrees in public relations and international affairs. "What I was trying to form was really a nice, clean, neat page, very professional."

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Apple’s new manufacturing tech opens the door for a curved iPhone

 Galaxy Nexus/Nexus S and Dell (DELL) Venue Pro had two things in common: First, they were both terrific smartphones that never really lived up to their potential in terms of sales volume, having been overshadowed by more popular phones. Second, they each sported unique curved glass displays — the Galaxy Nexus’ screen is concave while the Venue Pro’s is convex — that added a unique look and feel to the handsets. Rumors that Apple (AAPL) may be working to launch an iPhone with a curved glass face have swirled in the past, but a new patent recently uncovered by Patently Apple confirms that the company is at least toying with the idea of adding a curved smartphone to its future iPhone lineup.
[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas]
The patent describes a manufacturing process that ditches chemicals by combining heat with a molding mechanism that shapes thin glass. The process is simpler and more efficient than current technologies used to curve glass panels, and it is also far safer.
[More from BGR: Mark Cuban: Nokia Lumia 920 ‘crushes’ the iPhone 5]
The fact that Apple is actively working on this technology is hardly a guarantee that we’ll see it implemented in the iPhone 9 or some other future model. Even if the company does put its new patent into practice, it might appear in products other than the iPhone.
Curving glass is a great way to make larger displays more accessible to the user, however, and at the rate the market is shifting, the iPhone 5′s bump to 4 inches likely won’t be the last sizing tweak we see from Apple moving forward.

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Samsung Electronics seeks U.S. sales ban on some Ericsson products

 Samsung Electronics said on Wednesday it had filed a complaint against Ericsson with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), requesting a U.S. import ban and sales ban on some of the Swedish telecoms equipment maker's products.
The action taken on Friday by the world's top smartphone maker, which accused Ericsson of breaching seven of its patents, came after Ericsson requested an ITC U.S. import ban on Samsung products and sued the South Korean firm for patent infringement.
"We have sought to negotiate with Ericsson in good faith. However, Ericsson has proven unwilling to continue such negotiations by making unreasonable claims, which it is now trying to enforce in court," Samsung Electronics said in a statement.
"The accused Ericsson products include telecommunications networking equipment, such as base stations," Samsung said.
With Ericsson suffering a big drop in sales at its network unit, down 17 percent in the third quarter, it is turning to the courts to maintain its patent income, part of a wider trend where big technology names are fiercely protecting intellectual property as global sales of tablets and smartphones boom.
Ericsson is facing a growing challenge from Samsung Electronics, a smaller player in the network equipment market.
"I'm sure that at this point, no one in the industry would underestimate Samsung's ability to become a significant player, if not the leader, in a new segment of the overall market for telecommunications hardware," Florian Mueller, a patent expert, said in a blog posting on Monday.
"This certainly adds a more strategic dimension to the Ericsson-Samsung dispute."
Samsung Electronics and its arch smartphone rival Apple Inc have been also locked in patent disputes in at least 10 countries as they vie to dominate the mobile market and win over customers with their latest gadgets.
The European Commission on Friday charged Samsung Electronics with abusing its dominant position in seeking to bar rival Apple from using a patent deemed essential to mobile phone use.
Samsung Electronics shares were trading up 1.3 percent, outperforming the wider market's 0.7 percent gain as of 0037 GMT.

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Telecommuters Work Longer Hours Than Office-Goers

When I say “telecommuting,” do you picture yourself easing into the workday in a pair of fuzzy slippers? Well, so does your boss. But the reality is, you’re both dreaming. Because a new study shows that folks who work at home at least some of the time put in more hours than those who stay at the office. That’s according to work published in the journal Monthly Labor Review. [Mary C. Noonan and Jennifer L. Glass, The hard truth about telecommuting]
Telecommuting for a portion of the workweek certain has its appeal. Avoiding the time and cost involved in commuting and presumably having a more flexible schedule and a better work-life balance are all potential pluses. But are employees really able to take advantage of such work-at-home perks?
Researchers took advantage of labor information from census bureau surveys and were surprised by what they found. First off, the proportion of people who work remotely remained unchanged from the mid-’90s to the mid-2000s the most recent data available. Second, those who do telecommute are more likely to work overtime, an additional 5 to 7 hours on top of the standard 40.
Which means that people who work from the comfort of home are not slackers in slippers. They’re more likely tech-savvy self-starters—who don’t know when to stop.

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iPad is a Christmas graveyard for ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and ‘Modern Combat’

At the beginning of December, the traditional video game industry attempted another iPad invasion. New versions of “Grand Theft Auto,” “Modern Combat” and “Baldur’s Gate” hit the iOS app market priced between $5 and $10. Over the past years, we have seen repeated attempts by major console and PC industry franchises to tailor their blockbuster games for iPhone and iPad platforms. None have succeeded. As the iOS app market increasingly favors free games with in-app purchases, the old-timers have started failing spectacularly.
[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas]
December is the most important month of the year for the iOS app market and the days around Christmas are the hottest period. As consumers upgrade their iPhones or receive their very first iOS devices, they tend to go on mobile app buying binges. That is why mega franchises like GTA and “Modern Combat” launched their latest iOS products at the beginning of the month. The games were supposed to stay alive for at least three weeks. They did not.
[More from BGR: Mark Cuban: Nokia Lumia 920 ‘crushes’ the iPhone 5]
The lavishly marketed “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” peaked on iPhone app chart at No.2 on December 8th and plunged to No.36 by December 22nd. It rebounded to No.25 on December 25th. On the iPad, the game plummeted to a shocking No.52 by the all-important Christmas Day, when new iPad owners go berserk on iTunes.
Here is the kicker: on the revenue chart for U.S. iPad apps, the new GTA game had tanked to No.75 by December 25th. This is even worse than the No.52 position on the download chart. I find that genuinely fascinating, because it means that a game with a very stiff download price of $5 is showing weaker revenue performance than on raw download volume.
The GTA title is priced at $5 at a time when 80% of the top-grossing iPad games are free downloads. The top free apps have compelling in-game purchase strategies — “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” does not. As a result, it is getting beaten by titles such as “Fairway Solitaire” and “My Little Pony” in revenue generation. Having massive name recognition and hundreds of millions of units in console game sales helps very little in the brutally competitive iOS game market.
“Modern Combat 4″ has also plunged out of top-50 on the iPad revenue chart just three weeks after its high-profile debut. The $10 update of “Baldur’s Gate” is out of top-200, brought low by its ridiculously high sticker price.
The proud console and PC game champions keep repeating the same gambit in the iOS market: price ‘em high and ignore the in-app purchase angle. They keep failing. When are we going to see a major console game franchise finally adapt to the Apple (AAPL) ecosystem and create an iOS game that is free to download but lures users into an in-app purchase trap effectively?

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Selling flak jackets in the cyberwars

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When the Israeli army and Hamas trade virtual blows in cyberspace, or when hacker groups like Anonymous rise from the digital ether, or when WikiLeaks dumps a trove of classified documents, some see a lawless Internet.
But Matthew Prince, chief executive at CloudFlare, a little-known Internet start-up that serves some of the Web's most controversial characters, sees a business opportunity.
Founded in 2010, CloudFlare markets itself as an Internet intermediary that shields websites from distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks, the crude but effective weapon that hackers use to bludgeon websites until they go dark. The 40-person company claims to route up to 5 percent of all Internet traffic through its global network.
Prince calls his company the "Switzerland" of cyberspace - assiduously neutral and open to all comers. But just as companies like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have faced profound questions about the balance between free speech and openness on the Internet and national security and law enforcement concerns, CloudFlare's business has posed another thorny question: what kinds of services, if any, should an American company be allowed to offer designated terrorists and cyber criminals?
CloudFlare's unusual position at the heart of this debate came to the fore last month, when the Israel Defense Forces sought help from CloudFlare after its website was struck by attackers based in Gaza. The IDF was turning to the same company that provides those services to Hamas and the al-Quds Brigades, according to publicly searchable domain information. Both Hamas and al-Quds, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are designated by the United States as terrorist groups.
Under the USA Patriot Act, U.S. firms are forbidden from providing "material support" to groups deemed foreign terrorist organizations. But what constitutes material support - like many other facets of the law itself - has been subject to intense debate.
CloudFlare's dealings have attracted heated criticism in the blogosphere from both Israelis and Palestinians, but Prince defended his company as a champion of free speech.
"Both sides have an absolute right to tell their story," said Prince, a 38-year old former lawyer. "We're not providing material support for anybody. We're not sending money, or helping people arm themselves."
Prince noted that his company only provides defensive capabilities that enable websites to stay online.
"We can't be sitting in a role where we decide what is good or what is bad based on our own personal biases," he said. "That's a huge slippery slope."
Many U.S. agencies are customers, but so is WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing organization. CloudFlare has consulted for many Wall Street institutions, yet also protects Anonymous, the "hacktivist" group associated with the Occupy movement.
Prince's stance could be tested at a time when some lawmakers in the United States and Europe, armed with evidence that militant groups rely on the Web for critical operations and recruitment purposes, have pressured Internet companies to censor content or cut off customers.
Last month, conservative political lobbies, as well as seven lawmakers led by Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas, urged the FBI to shut down the Hamas Twitter account. The account remains active; Twitter declined to comment.
MATERIAL SUPPORT
Although it has never prosecuted an Internet company under the Patriot Act, the government's use of the material support argument has steadily risen since 2006. Since September 11, 2001, more than 260 cases have been charged under the provision, according to Fordham Law School's Terrorism Trends database.
Catherine Lotrionte, the director of Georgetown University's Institute for Law, Science and Global Security and a former Central Intelligence Agency lawyer, argued that Internet companies should be more closely regulated.
"Material support includes web services," Lotrionte said. "Denying them services makes it more costly for the terrorists. You're cornering them."
But others have warned that an aggressive government approach would have a chilling effect on free speech.
"We're resurrecting the kind of broad-brush approaches we used in the McCarthy era," said David Cole, who represented the Humanitarian Law Project, a non-profit organization that was charged by the Justice Department for teaching law to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is designated by the United States as a terrorist group. The group took its case to the Supreme Court but lost in 2010.
The material support law is vague and ill-crafted, to the point where basic telecom providers, for instance, could be found guilty by association if a terrorist logs onto the Web to plot an attack, Cole said.
In that case, he asked, "Do we really think that AT&T or Google should be held accountable?"
CloudFlare said it has not been contacted about its services by the U.S. government. Spokespeople for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, told Reuters they contracted a cyber-security company in Gaza that out-sources work to foreign companies, but declined to comment further. The IDF confirmed it had hired CloudFlare, but declined to discuss "internal security" matters.
CloudFlare offers many of its services for free, but the company says websites seeking advanced protection and features can see their bill rise to more than $3,000 a month. Prince declined to discuss the business arrangements with specific customers.
While not yet profitable, CloudFlare has more than doubled its revenue in the past four months, according to Prince, and is picking up 3,000 new customers a day. The company has raked in more than $22 million from venture capital firms including New Enterprise Associates, Venrock and Pelion Venture Partners.
Prince, a Midwestern native with mussed brown hair who holds a law degree from the University of Chicago, said he has a track record of working on the right side of the law.
A decade ago, Prince provided free legal aid to Spamhaus, an international group that tracked email spammers and identity thieves. He went on to create Project Honey Pot, an open source spam-tracking endeavor that turned over findings to police.
Prince's latest company, CloudFlare, has been hailed by groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists for protecting speech. Another client, the World Economic Forum, named CloudFlare among its 2012 "technology pioneers" for its work. But it also owes its profile to its most controversial customers.
CloudFlare has served 4Chan, the online messaging community that spawned Anonymous. LulzSec, the hacker group best known for targeting Sony Corp, is another customer. And since last May, the company has propped up WikiLeaks after a vigilante hacker group crashed the document repository.
Last year, members of the hacker collective UgNazi, whose exploits include pilfering user account information from eBay and crashing the CIA.gov website, broke into Prince's cell phone and email accounts.
"It was a personal affront," Prince said. "But we never kicked them off either."
Prince said CloudFlare would comply with a valid court order to remove a customer, but that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has never requested a takedown. The company has agreed to turn over information to authorities on "exceedingly rare" occasions, he acknowledged, declining to elaborate.
"Any company that doesn't do that won't be in business long," Prince said. But in an email, he added: "We have a deep and abiding respect for our users' privacy, disclose to our users whenever possible if we are ordered to turn over information and would fight an order that we believed was not proper."
Juliannne Sohn, an FBI spokeswoman, declined to comment.
Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who prosecuted computer crimes, said U.S. law enforcement agencies may in fact prefer that the Web's most wanted are parked behind CloudFlare rather than a foreign service over which they have no jurisdiction.
Federal investigators "want to gather information from as many sources as they can, and they're happy to get it," Sussmann said.
In an era of rampant cyber warfare, Prince acknowledged he is something of a war profiteer, but with a wrinkle.
"We're not selling bullets," he said. "We're selling flak jackets."

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Samsung Smart TVs: The next frontier for data theft and hacking [video]

Smart TVs, particularly Samsung’s (005930) last few generations of flat screens, can be hacked to give attackers remote access according to a security startup called ReVuln. The company says it discovered a “zero-day exploit” that hackers could potentially use to perform malicious activities that range from stealing accounts linked through apps to using built-in webcams and microphones to spy on unsuspecting couch potatoes. Don’t panic just yet, though. In order for the exploit to be activated, a hacker needs to plug a USB drive loaded with malicious software into the actual TV to bypass the Linux-based OS/firmware on Samsung’s Smart TVs. But, if a hacker were to pull that off, every piece of data stored on a Smart TV could theoretically be retrieved.
[More from BGR: Has the iPhone peaked? Apple’s iPhone 4S seen outselling iPhone 5]
[More from BGR: Dell confirms it will exit smartphone business, drop Android]
As if the possibility of someone stealing your information and spying on you isn’t scary enough, according to ComputerWorld, “it is also possible to copy the configuration of a TV’s remote control, which would allow a hacker to copy the remote control’s settings, and remotely change the channel.”
ReVuln told The Register it hasn’t informed Samsung of the vulnerability and plans to sell the details of in hopes of “speeding up” development of a fix. A video of the exploit as proof from ReVuln follows below.

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92K Missourians affected by insurance data breach

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- State officials say the personal information of more than 92,000 Missourians was accessed by potential identity thieves who hacked the computer systems of Nationwide Insurance, which also does business as Allied Insurance.
Missouri's insurance department said Friday the Oct. 3 data breach could affect more than 1.1 million people across the country who did business with Nationwide or Allied.
Missouri's insurance director says the breach affected the records of people who got quotes for auto insurance after August 2011. The department says Nationwide believes the hackers accessed names, Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers and birth dates, among other things.
Nationwide is offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to people affected by the data breach. The insurer says it's not aware that the information has been misused.

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18 million Android devices could get whacked with malware in 2013

One security firm on Thursday claimed that 2013 will be the year of mobile malware for Android users, however no specific numbers had been given. The team at Lookout Mobile Security has painted a similar picture for Google’s (GOOG) operating system. The firm notes that more than 1.2 billion mobile devices are expected to be purchased in 2013 and in the following year users are forecasted to download over 70 billion mobile apps. Due to Android’s popularity, it is estimated that 18 million devices running the operating system may encounter some form of mobile malware. The likelihood that users will encounter malware or spyware, however, is heavily dependent on geographical location and behavior. Research from the security firm reveals that users in the U.S. have a 0.40% chance of seeing malware, compared those in Russia with a 34.7% chance.

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PUC approves writing rules for smart meter opt-out

EL PASO, Texas (AP) -- The Public Utility Commission has decided to develop a set of rules so consumers can opt out of the smart meters installed in millions of Texas homes and businesses.
Consumers have opposed the new meters, citing possible health hazards and privacy concerns. Some have installed steel cages around their analog meters to prevent utility workers from replacing them with the new digital units and one Houston woman held a gun to impede a utility worker from replacing her meter.
PUC spokesman Terry Hadley said Friday that an opt-out would leave already-installed smart meters in place but disable the devices' radio frequency capabilities.
A draft of the new rules will be written and submitted for public comment, Hadley said. After that, the PUC will vote again on whether to adopt them, which means there's still a chance the opt-out will fail. But, he said, "at this point the Commission is leaning toward an opt-out."
It will take several months until the new proposal is drafted and voted, Hadley said.
Smart meters allow for remote metering via radio frequency and are make the billing process cheaper since there is no need to send utility workers to read them. The meters also provide real-time information on energy consumption and help utilities prevent grid overloads during peak times. They also report to the utility when there is a power outage, making reconnection faster.
In websites and meetings organized by PUC, those against smart meters have spoken of possible government snooping and violations of the Fourth Amendment —unreasonable search and seizure — as well as the chance that hackers could access people's information from the meters.
On a petition template that's posted on www.bantexassmartmeters.com , meters are called "surveillance devices" because they record the household occupants' activities and can be used to "gain a highly invasive and detailed view" of their lives. Smart meters record consumption in 15-minute intervals.
Health hazards from the radio frequencies emitted by the meters have also been cited. The Public Utilities Commission says the meters have a lower impact than cellphones and microwave ovens and are well within Federal Communications Commission's standards for radio frequency devices.
It's likely that consumers who opt out will have to pay to have their meters read. As part of the rule-writing process, the Commission will gather information on how much it costs to send employees to read the meters and what disabling the radio frequency device would cost.
Users in California and Nevada pay between $75 and $107 to have the devices replaced along with monthly fees ranging from $8 to $10 to have the meters read. Meanwhile, Vermont legislators decided in May that utilities cannot charge users that opt out.
About 93 percent of the nearly 7 million smart meters in Texas' competitive markets for electricity, mainly in Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth area, have been deployed, Hadley said.

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