PayPal might defecte to Google
Here’s a phrase PayPal might want to keep in mind as it wages a civil battle against two former executives who defected to Google: Location, location, location.
Because when it comes to employment breach of contract and trade-secret cases, California can be a much pricklier state for a spurned employer to prevail within than many others.
“California law is very hostile to these types of suits,” said Jason Shultz, acting director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the UC Berkeley School of Law, “I’d say over at PayPal, they have a little bit of uphill battle.”
While much of PayPal’s allegations against Stephanie Tilenius and Osama Bedier revolve around alleged breach of employment contract and non-compete violations, provisions within the California Business and Professional Code actually limit the enforceability of non-compete disclosures that companies like Pay Pal make employees sign.
The result — regardless of whatever contracts an employer forces a worker to sign when they start a job — is that contracts often fall apart when they get in front of a judge.
“California is very pro-competition, especially here in the Silicon Valley. Think of startup culture. We like to entice employees to jump ship and compete with former employers,” Shultz said. “This state has a very free-trade approach to labor markets. You can’t lock in your employees forever. You have to compete to keep them.”
PayPal filed suit in Santa Clara County Thursday, accusing former employees Stephanie Tilenius and Osama Bedier, as well as Google, of misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, and a host of other claims related to the recruitment of PayPal employees and the alleged improper use of PayPal’s confidential information.
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Sony is taking a swing at Apple by launching some sleek new laptops
Sony is taking a swing at Apple by launching some sleek new laptops based on the newest chips from Intel.
The Sony Vaio F series laptop is the Windows-based equivalent of Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops. The machines are targeted at multimedia enthusiasts who want to watch movies, listen to music or play games while on the run.
The F series (pictured right) features a Blu-ray movie player that can play full high-definition movies in the 1080p screen format on a 16.4-inch widescreen display. It also has S-Force front surround 3D speakers and Dolby Home Theater audio. It uses Nvidia’s stand-alone GeForce GT540M graphics chips, has a backlit keyboard, and an HD web cam with an Exmor sensor for good low-light images.
Sony’s S series is aimed at business travelers who want mobility, performance and power in a thinner and lighter laptop.
The S series (pictured right and below) have magnesium and aluminum materials and come in burnished brown, jet black or platinum silver colors. They have a built-in battery that can be coupled with a long sheet battery (as a paid option) for an operational life of up to 15 hours. With a solid state drive, the battery can last 16 hours.
Sony made the charger smart so that you can charge the optional sheet battery separately, attach it to the system, and have that sheet battery drain its charge first.
The laptop is 0.95 inches thin and weighs only 3.6 pounds with a standard battery. It has a 13.3-inch screen and uses the second-generation Intel Core i7 microprocessor. It has AMD Radeon HD 6630 1GB hybrid graphics, which delivers decent graphics performance without killing battery life.
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Google Apps for Business is a paid suite
Google and Microsoft are the major players in so-called "cloud" suites designed for a mobile, always-online workforce. The flexibility, portability, and low maintenance of their services appeal to a growing number of small businesses. In a best-case scenario, either Google Apps for Business or Microsoft Office 365 can improve productivity and reduce such costs as software licenses and paid IT help. Both packages include e-mail, calendars, live chat, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, collaborative editing, and much more.
Google Apps for Business is a paid suite--an expansion of the lineup found in the free Google Apps for consumers. Office 365, by contrast, builds on Microsoft's Business Online Professional Services (BPOS). But it also has a desktop component in the Office 2010 suite. Office 365 opened for public beta testing in April, with a final release set for later this year, while the full Google Apps is available now. Here's a comparison of the features and pricing of Google Apps for Business and Microsoft Office 365.
Some 3 million businesses use Google Apps--which includes "millions" of Apps for Business paid users. Google doesn't share a breakdown about how many customers are smaller companies. Microsoft counts "millions" of BPOS customers and hundreds of millions of desktop Office users.
Companies that use Google Apps enjoy more than a 300 percent return on investment (ROI), at least according to a November Forrester report sponsored by Google. And productivity gains enabled by features such as swift e-mail searches lead to even greater savings. Microsoft Office 365 also promises impressive ROI for small companies.
Although Google appears to be ahead in this strictly online race so far, the competition is just heating up, and there's no clear winner; businesses can choose the option that best fits their needs. However, in the small-business case study below, Google Apps was the right choice for moving away from a mix of Microsoft Office and other tools.
Serious considerations remain before your company abandons local apps and physical serversfor the cloud. But for many organizations, Web services win out for convenience and mobility.
The consumer group lists Apple's MacBooks as the best
Across the board, the consumer group lists Apple's MacBooks as the best, The Loopreports. Access to the recently refreshed rankings and scores requires a subscription.
According to the report, the 11-inch MacBook Air scored a 62 out of a 100, besting Gateway's second-place score of 52. HP came in third in the small laptop category with a score of 49.
Apple took an impressive five of the top seven spots in the 13-inch category. The 13-inch MacBook Air led the pack with 76 points, while Sony and Asus took the final two places. The Mac maker took three of the top spots in the15-inch category, though the competition lagged by just three points.
In the 17-inch category, Apple took the top two spots with scores of 80 and 81. However, it should be noted that Apple did not win the 14-inch category, since it doesn't make a laptop that qualifies for the size class
Consumer Reports declared the late 2010 MacBook Airs best in their respective classes last year shortly after their October launch.
Apple released the latest batch of MacBook Pros in February, adding Sandy Bridge processors and the new high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology.
Last month, the group rated the iPad 2 as the best tablet on the market. "So far, Apple is leading the tablet market in both quality and price, which is unusual for a company whose products are usually premium priced," said Paul Reynolds, Electronics Editor at Consumer Reports. "However, it's likely we'll see more competitive pricing in tablets as other models begin to hit the market."
The organization sparked a controversy last year after it rescinded its recommendation of the iPhone 4 after testing the device for signal-loss problems. The research group had previously stated that there was "no reason" to forgo buying an iPhone 4 over reception concerns.
The current MacBook Air line relies on Intel's Core 2 Duo processors, making it one of the last two Apple systems to use that aged CPU: So far this year, Apple has transitioned both the MacBook Pro and iMac to the dual- and quad-core Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors with the Sandy Bridge architecture.
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Why the Asus EeePad Transformer not a tablet
When is a Honeycomb based tablet not a tablet? When the Asus EeePad Transformer is docked into its keyboard, turning it into a 10-inch laptop, that’s when. Asus have just announced that the new tablet/laptop hybrid thing will be landing in Australia tomorrow, with prices starting at $599.
There are two versions launching tomorrow, a 16GB Wi-Fi version that doesn’t include the keyboard dock, which will cost $599, and a 32GB Wi-Fi version that does include the keyboard, which will sell for $799. The dock peripheral will be available as a separate purchase in July, and although pricing isn’t set, an Asus rep told us they expected it to sell for around $199.
As far as Android tablets go, it’s on par with many of the current players. A Tegra 2 chip powers Android 3.0, with HDMI and USB connectors combining with the 1280 x 800 10.1-inch LED Gorilla glass screen. There’s a 1.2MP front camera and a 5MP rear camera, SRS sound and the Transformer will come with preloaded Asus apps.
But it’s the keyboard attachment that really separates it from the competitors. The tablet docks into the matching keyboard via three clips, with the centre one offering the connection to the keyboard. The keyboard itself holds a secondary battery, which boosts the expected battery life from eight hours to 16, and will charge the tablet should it be running low on juice.
Asus has promised a 3G version of the Transformer at the end of Q3 this year, but will be offering it through the open channel rather than partnering with a carrier to start with. The Taiwanese company is also testing Android 3.1, and expects to deliver it as an OTA update around August/September.
Given that using a tablet’s onscreen keyboard is one of the biggest criticisms of the technology, Asus seem to be on a winner here. The pricing’s pretty good and the keyboard connector is relatively comfortable to type on, as well as having the benefit of converting the tablet into a laptop for the more serious workaholics out there.
It would be aimed initially at small merchants, but Square had already received interest from larger retailers and was working on a technology interface that would let them link the transaction data to their existing retail systems, he added.
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Apple's little shocker also hinted his platform
Just last week we presented a report about Apple advancing the design of a possible future Post-PC hybrid system. We also noted that it was Steve Jobs who made this term of "Post PC era" extremely popular within the tech community. A recent Forest Research related blog presented an interesting overview of what they feltthe term Post-PC era really meant and this week a new patent application from Apple had a surprising revelation that they were working on a new platform independent word processor application. Whether this will be represented by their already standing Pages App is not yet known but it would stand to reason that it would be. Apple's little shocker also hinted that their platform independent code could go far beyond just word processing. This could be Apple's new internet strategy that thrusts more of us into the next phase of what is now known as the Post-PC era. In my view, this breakthrough could be a game changer.
The Problem to Solve
The recent proliferation of web browsers and computer networks has made it easy to display the same document on different computing platforms. However, inconsistencies in the way fonts are rendered across different computing platforms could cause the same document to be rendered differently for users of different computing platforms. More specifically, for a given font, the way in which metrics for various font features are interpreted, such as character height, width, leading and white space, can differ between computing platforms. These differences in interpretation could cause individual characters in a document to be rendered at different locations, which could ultimately cause the words in a document to be positioned differently between lines and pages on different computing platforms.
This inconsistent rendering could be a problem for people who are collaborating on a document. For example, if one collaborator points out an error on a specific line of a specific page, another collaborator viewing the same document on a different computing platform may have to first locate the error on a different line of a different page.
Hence, what is needed is a technique for providing consistent rendering for documents across different computer systems and computing platforms.
Apple's Solution
Some embodiments presented in Apple's patent application describe a system that typesets and renders a document in a platform-independent manner. During operation, the system first obtains the document, wherein the document includes text content and associated style information including one or more fonts. The system also generates platform-independent font metrics for the one or more fonts, wherein the platform-independent font metrics include information that could be used to determine the positions of individual characters in a rendering of the document. Next, the system uses the platform-independent font metrics to determine how the document is divided into line fragments and pages. Finally, the system uses the determined division while rendering the document, so that the division of the document into line fragments and pages is the same across different computing platforms.
In some embodiments, the system operates within a platform-independent word-processing application that operates within a web browser.
In some embodiments, the system operates within a web browser.
In some embodiments, while using the platform-independent font metrics to determine how the document is divided into line fragments and pages, the system determines the locations of individual characters within the line fragments in the rendering of the document.
In some embodiments, rendering the document involves performing a high-fidelity rendering, which uses the determined division of the document into line fragments and pages and renders individual characters at the determined locations within the line fragments.
In some embodiments, rendering the document involves performing a lower-fidelity rendering, which uses the determined division of the document into line fragments and pages. However, unlike the high-fidelity rendering, this lower-fidelity rendering does not use the determined locations for the individual characters, but instead allows the renderer to use platform-specific rendering mechanisms to determine the locations of the individual characters within the line fragments.
In some embodiments, rendering the document involves first generating code in a platform-independent markup language, which specifies the rendering for the document, and then executing the generated code to render the document.
In some embodiments, rendering the document involves rendering only a visible portion of the document.
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