Nope, Bill didn’t go overboard downloading the entire iTunes catalogue. Instead, news has just surfaced that Microsoft has lost a case to Alcatel-Lucent over licensing of MP3 technology and is now faced with a $1.5b USD (£750m UKP) payout.
Apparently, one of Alcatel’s labs was involved in the creation of the MP3 format, alongside a German company called Fraunhofer. Microsoft stated it had already payed $16m USD (£8m UKP) to Fraunhofer in order to license the MP3 rights, but a San Diego court has found in Alcatel’s favour. Microsoft is of course appealing the court’s decision, and we imagine that Fraunhofer’s other licensees‘ lawyers might be a tad busy right now.
(Via BBC online)
Most Pocket Picks readers will know and love Flash memory - used as it is to store our favourite video, music and image files on our phones. And you’ve probably noticed how the MB per dollar/ pound/ whatever rate just seems to be getting better by the day. Well, Samsung has just confirmed just how popular larger-sized Flash sticks have become: in 2006 it shipped 117 million pieces of its 512MB Flash chips, up 130% over 2005. That’s enough to hold nearly 20 billion 3MB MP3 files; just over two songs for every person on the planet. Which is a lot. Obviously.
According to New Media Age, ITV is planning to launch a social networking service which will combine Internet and mobile platforms, allowing viewers to chat, blog and share video and images - all based around their favourite ITV programmes. The idea, of course, is to build communities around key series’ thereby ‘enhancing’ the experience. I’m not sure exactly how much your experience of Emmerdale is going to be enhanced by reading someone’s blog about which is the most annoying Dingle but each to his own.
The headline says it all, really. BlackBerry Web Video Generator is an application that downloads, converts and optimises YouTube videos for your BlackBerry handset. It’s been tweaked for the new BlackBerry Pearl and BlackBerry 8800 models, and makes the process quick and simple. You simply fire up the application, paste in the URL of the YouTube video you want to download, and it does the hard work for you. The application costs £12.59 from Handango.
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And Nokia isn’t kidding when it says ‘Special’. This quite spectacular handset is being launched to coincide with Paris Fashion Week and combines the sartorial influences of Nokia’s own 
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