WANTED FORTUNE TECHNOLOGY

Court decision allows imminent termination of RegisterFly

Under a preliminary injunction issued on Thursday 26 April 2007, ICANN now has the right to terminate RegisterFly’s accreditation as soon as possible. RegisterFly failed to meet the conditions of a temporary restraining order (TRO) which the Court issued on 16 April. ICANN is immediately inviting statements of interest from accredited registrars to act as a transfer provider, so domain name registrants can gain full access to their domains. The registrar handling the transfers will temporarily hold the names and help registrants transfer to any ICANN accredited registrar of their choice.

“Registrants are our first concern. ICANN is following a very determined approach to returning access to domain name registrants impacted by the collapse of RegisterFly,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN President and CEO. “ICANN knows that many registrants are anxious for a transfer to occur. We are committed to making sure this process is put in place as quickly as possible. While we understand that this process may be frustrating for some RegisterFly customers, it is the first time that ICANN has had to intercede in such a way and these steps are being taken to ensure that the system introduced works as effectively as possible.”

More information on the RegisterFly situation can be found on this dedicated webpage on ICANN’s public participation site.

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News source: ICANN Blog

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Americans Spend $1,200 A Year On Tech Gadgets

In their annual survey, the Consumer Electronics Association has found that U.S. households are spending an average of $1,200 a year on electronic gadgets; the average home has 25 consumer-electronic devices, with the top five growth sectors being digital video recorders, network routers or hubs, MP3 players, cable modems, and digital cameras. "It's interesting to note here that two of the fastest movers and shakers in the CE industry are devices that enable home networking. The other three products enable consumers to create, shift or transport digital content,” said CEA research analyst Elena Caudle. Teenagers spend about $350 a year, which is about half of their total discretionary income, while adults with children and teens spend up to $500 more on CE purchases than the national average.

30% of U.S. households owned a router or hub (8% more than last year), 62% owned a cable modem (6% increase), digital video recorders were in 25% of U.S. households (8% increase) while MP3 player ownership was up 7% to 32% and digital-camera ownership rose to 62% of households. The five most owned products were televisions, 92% of households; DVD players, 84%; cordless phones, 82%; and cellular phones, 76%. Other product categories with significant growth included high-definition TVs, which are in a quarter of U.S. homes.

News source: InformationWeek

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Spammers Are Due For A Surprise

Unspam Technologies has taken the first steps in tracking down spammers in the United States, with help from the ISPs. The company has filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia seeking the identities of spammers under the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act and the state of Virginia's own anti-spam statue. The suit seeks damages that could potentially reach $1 billion, but Unspam said it would be happy with driving spammers out of business.

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Taiwan's Acer net profit up 40.8% in Q107

Taiwan's Acer Incorporated has announced a 40.8% increase in net profit for the quarter ending in March. In the three month period, Acer registered a net profit of 5.66 billion Taiwan dollars (170 million US), compared with 4.02 billion dollars a year earlier. Acer, which claims to have replaced China's Lenovo Group as the world's third largest PC vendor, posted $99.51 billion in sales in the quarter, up from $83.00 billion a year ago.

According to information and technology research and advisory firm Gartner Dataquest, Acer's PC market share in the first quarter stood at 6.8% compared to Lenovo's 6.3%. Of Acer's first-quarter sales, notebook computers accounted for 62%, followed by desktop PCs at 17% and displays at 16%. Other products, including servers, projectors and IA (information appliance) devices took the remaining five percent. Company chairman and chief executive officer JT Wang said that looking ahead, Acer is optimistic about the PC market over the remainder of the year.

News source: Physorg

MySpace makes belated entry into China

News Corporation has launched a test version of their popular social networking site MySpace in China, making a late entry into the intensely competitive Chinese Internet market. MySpace China will be a Chinese-owned company with backing from MySpace Incorporated – spokespeople for the company refused to give an ownership breakdown or say which investor would control it. "Based on the MySpace global brand and technology platform, we will develop products and features that are tailored to today's Chinese citizens. MySpace China is not yet optimized to fully meet the needs of Chinese users and we continue to improve products and services based on the feedback and recommendations from our test and trial users," said Luo Chuan, who is to lead the venture.

News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch said in September the company was looking for a way to enter China without running into political obstacles and "heavy weather" faced by Google and Yahoo. Murdoch said his Chinese-born wife, Wendi Deng, was playing a key role in helping to launch the China-based service. China has the world's second-biggest population of Internet users after the United States, with 137 million people online. Web logs and bulletin board services are immensely popular, with 7.7 million blogs and 17.5 million active bloggers, the government's Internet agency says. MySpace will face competition from established Chinese networking sites – the biggest being WangYou.com, with 11 million users.

News source: CNN

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Gigabyte Loses $5 Million in Fraud

Gigabyte has announced losing roughly $5 million USD due to an internal scandal committed by Chang Chaosong, factory manager at Ningbo Gigabyte Technology in China. Chang allegedly listed Gigabyte as a guarantor for a bank loan towards a third party loan, meaning Gigabyte would be liable to repay the loan if the third party did not repay it. Surprise, surprise, the borrowed money was not repaid and Gigabyte was held accountable for the loss. What shocked company officials however, was the fact that Chang, who is no longer with Gigabyte, did not request company permission before setting up the transaction. Gigabyte is currently investigating Chang's actions and where and why the transaction was setup in the first place.

News source: DailyTech

Acer Strikes Back at HP Lawsuits

Acer Incorporated has hired intellectual-property lawyer Chris Ottenweller of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, who helped win a big patent case against Hewlett-Packard Company two years ago, to help fight two HP patent lawsuits. The Taiwanese company is being accused by HP of infringing on 10 HP patents related to PCs. HP is seeking jury trials and compensation from Acer, as well as treble damages for alleged intentional violation of the patents and payment of its legal fees. HP, the world’s largest PC-maker, filed two lawsuits against Acer this year in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Acer has said it is investigating the claims internally and that it respects the intellectual-property rights of others. It may also be planning legal action of its own. "Acer is looking into the unlicensed use of its own intellectual property," Acer Chairman J.T. Wang said, without referring to any companies by name but noting that Acer owns approximately 1,000 PC-related patents worldwide. In any case, he argued, Acer is protected by indemnification clauses in agreements held by its contract manufacturers. "The agreements are there, and the agreements are valid."

News source: PC World

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