By Stefano Rebaudo and Alberto Sisto MILAN/ROME (Reuters) - Telecom Italia is mulling spinning off its mobile unit along with its fixed-line network from the rest of the company to bring new investors on board, three people, including a senior political source, told Reuters on Tuesday. "The three-way split would allow the company to reduce debt and staff costs and favor the entry of new investors," the political source said. "It is a strategy that will allow the company to confront the market in the future more freely. ...
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Call of Poochie: Woof!
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As rumors of Apple readying fingerprint scanning technology for a future iPhone continue to swirl, a new report suggests another company is working on similar tech for future versions of its smartphones: Samsung. SamMobile reports that files uncovered in a leaked firmware build for Samsung’s Galaxy S III included a number of images of fingerprints and other related items. The presence of these graphics suggests Samsung is indeed testing some type of fingerprint scanning technology internally, but they give no indication of exactly what kind of functionality Samsung might have planned. The leaked images pulled from Samsung’s firmware file follow below.
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PARIS (Reuters) - France Telecom plans to invest between 30 and 50 million euros ($64 million) in its video-sharing website Dailymotion and begin a fresh search for a partner in the autumn, its chief executive said on Tuesday. Stephane Richard also said in an interview with RTL radio that "the door is not closed" to Yahoo Inc, which had been in talks to buy a 75 percent stake in Dailymotion in a deal that would have valued Europe's largest video website at $300 million. ...
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REDMOND, Washington (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp gave the world the first look at its new game console on Tuesday, hoping the Xbox One will attract existing video game fans while also becoming a hub for living room entertainment. The third-generation Microsoft console, coming eight years after the Xbox 360, was unveiled by games unit chief Don Mattrick at an event at the software company's campus near Seattle. The Xbox One is an "ultimate all-in-one entertainment system," Mattrick said. The console will launch worldwide "later this year," the company said without providing an exact timeframe. ...
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By Alistair Barr SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - PayPal, the online payment operation owned by eBay Inc, announced a new partnership on Tuesday with RadioShack Corp that will introduce PayPal into all of the electronics retailer's stores starting this month. PayPal has been testing a way for customers of smoothy store Jamba Juice to order ahead using PayPal's smartphone application and pick up their drinks at a separate line. PayPal has been testing this at seven Jamba stores in the San Francisco Bay area, but will roll it out at more Jamba stores across the United States. ...
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The U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had some tough questions for Tim Cook, CEO of computer giant Apple which stands accused of tax avoidance to the tune of billions of dollars. Questions like: "Why the hell do I have to keep updating my apps on my iPhone all the time and why you don't fix that?" That was a query from Sen. John McCain, and while Cook didn't have time to play AppleCare rep for the Arizona Republican, it wasn't the first or last time a Senator wanted to talk about his own Apple products. 
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REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft thinks it has the one.
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HAVANA (AP) — The meeting on a sunny Havana square was a little bit revolutionary for Cuba's revolution. And for U.S. diplomacy as well.
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We all know that Apple shares have been taking a beating over the past several months but is that really a reflection of a drop in the company’s underlying value as a brand? The latest brand value rankings from MarketingWeek suggest that the answer is “no,” since the publication found that Apple’s brand value has actually increased year-over-year and that it remains the best in the world. MarketingWeek says that a company’s brand value is calculated by multiplying its earnings by the “brand contribution” percentage that “is determined by the proportion of financial value that is generated by the brand’s ability to create loyalty.” From this perspective, MarketingWeek says that Apple has held onto the top spot in brand value
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REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft thinks it has the one.
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MADRID (Reuters) - More than half a million Spaniards switched mobile phone operator in March to take advantage of the cheap deals on offer from competitors, with the market's main players Telefonica and Vodafone the biggest losers. In the first three months of the year more than 1.8 million consumers moved to another mobile company, data from telecoms regulator CMT showed on Tuesday. ...
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Microsoft on Tuesday announced a redesigned Kinect motion sensor at its Xbox One press event in Redmond, Washington. The accessory comes bundled with the new gaming console and delivers faster performance, improved gestures and voice recognition, and more. The sensor will allow for gamers to use a variety of voice commands to control the console, such as turning it on, watching tv, listening to music or searching the Web. Users can also navigate the Metro interface with pinch and swipe hand gestures. The Kinect can analyze a whopping 2GB of data per-second and is now equipped with a 1080p camera, a significant boost from the VGA sensor in the original model. Microsoft’s Xbox One gaming console is expected to be available this
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REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft thinks it has the one.
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BOSTON (Reuters) - Several U.S. power utilities say they face constant cyber attacks on critical systems, according to a report by two Democratic lawmakers amid warnings from the Obama administration that foreign hackers are seeking to attack the electric grid. Congressmen Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California disclosed their findings on Tuesday as the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on cybersecurity. In preparing the report the two asked some 160 utilities to describe their experiences fighting cyber attacks over the past five years. ...
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REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft thinks it has the one.
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By Noel Randewich SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp's new chief executive, Brian Krzanich, has launched a sweeping reorganization of the world's top chipmaker and created a unit aiming to retake the top chipmaker's lead in mobile and semiconductor innovation. The shakeup, announced internally just days after the 30-year veteran took the helm, places most of Intel's main product groups directly under his supervision and hands its sprawling global manufacturing operation to new president Renee James, said a source close to the company, who declined to be identified. ...
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Microsoft on Tuesday finally took the wraps off its highly anticipated Xbox One, the successor to its Xbox 360 gaming console that will launch in time for the holidays this year. Earlier rumors have indicated that the new console will run on the “core” version of Windows 8 and will feature an 8-core 1.6GHz processor, 8GB of RAM, an 800MHz graphics processor, a 50GB 6x Blu-ray Disc drive and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, but Microsoft finally put all of the speculation to bed on Tuesday during its big Xbox event. Click here to find out how to watch the live stream of Microsoft’s Xbox event. Developing… Microsoft is billing the new console as an all-purpose cloud-based entertainment system that isn’t just for games but also for movies,
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By Euan Rocha TORONTO (Reuters) - BlackBerry no longer owns the fast-paced, innovative smartphone world but the company, whose email-on-your-hip devices once revolutionized the industry, now aims to run it. The change in focus was hard to miss at the company's well-attended annual conference in Florida last week, even as news of a new smartphone model and its plans to offer the popular BlackBerry Messaging (BBM) instant message service on other platforms grabbed the headlines. ...
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By Sinead Carew (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp raised its buyout offer for wireless service provider Clearwire Corp to $3.40 per share, but the new bid was not high enough to impress some investors. Clearwire shares almost immediately traded around the new offer price, having consistently traded well above the old $2.97-per-share bid. Sprint announced the revised price just hours before Clearwire was due to hold a special meeting for shareholders to vote on the original offer. ...
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After years of leaks, rumors and speculation, Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox will finally be unveiled on Tuesday during a press conference in Redmond, Washington. Recent reports suggest that the new “Xbox 720,” “Xbox Infinity” or whatever else it might be called will feature vastly improved specs such as an eight-core processor, 8GB of RAM, an 800MHz graphics processor, a 50GB 6x Blu-ray drive, gigabit ethernet connectivity and enhanced TV features. The new console may also require an always-on Internet connection to play games, though reports on that front have conflicted. We’ll know all there is to know shortly, however, and here’s how to watch all the action live from your computer, Xbox or smartphone: UPDATE: Microsoft has unveiled the Xbox One — read
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BERLIN (AP) — German software giant SAP AG says it plans to recruit hundreds of staff with autism to make full use of their talents to process information.
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It has been reported that Apple’s next-generation MacBooks will support gigabit Wi-Fi connectivity, evidence of which was discovered in a recent OS X developer build. The 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard, also known as “5G Wi-Fi,” is capable of delivering theoretical speeds of up to 1.3Gbps and is considered a major leap forward. An earlier report claimed Apple was teaming up with Broadcom to bring the technology to its 2013 Mac lineup, and now Tonymacx86.com points us to a leaked image of a Broadcom BCM94360CD PCI-E mini custom combo WLAN and Bluetooth card that supports IEEE 802.11ac, the same standard Apple is reportedly looking to incorporate into future computers. The card is similar to those found in current Mac models and is expected to be the
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Apple's CEO is disputing assertions by a Senate panel that the company avoids billions of dollars in U.S. taxes by shifting profits to foreign affiliates.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A new poll finds that teens are sharing more about themselves on social media. They're also moving increasingly to Twitter to avoid their parents and the "oversharing" that they see on Facebook.
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