First PlayStation Phone, Xperia Play, Is Totally Unaffected By the Data Breach – Official Claims

Sony Ericsson made an announcement this Tuesday, separating itself completely from the enormous data breach which stole uncountable PlayStation user accounts and their information. It said that their upcoming PlayStation phone, Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play, is as good as it would be without the security breach. According to a Sony Ericsson’s spokesperson, he said reported very confidently that the problems will never affect the handset maker in any way; he reminded that Sony Ericsson is a joint venture of both Sony and Ericsson. He also declared that the "Sony and Sony Ericsson data reside on different servers."

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PlayStation Suite, in which the mobiles connected with PlayStation network, will be released later this year as Sony Ericsson plans to start selling Xperia Play, the first PlayStation phone, in March 2011. Nell Mawston, a Strategy Analysts, portrayed his analysis saying that "Sony's PlayStation fiasco will be both an opportunity and a threat for Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play. It is a threat because a wave of negative headlines is tarnishing the valuable PlayStation brand." He went on explaining ”But it is also an opportunity to upgrade further the back-end security of PlayStation Suite over the next few months and to make sure the new service launches with improved security for financial transactions and the like.”

Facebook and Google Silently Battle Each Other for Striking a Deal of Buying Skype

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Facebook and Google have very frequently come across in competition with each other on considerate occasions. According to our sources, another such event has event has arrived, as both the internet giants hunt for Skype acquisition. It was also reported by Reuters that both Facebook and Google are silently competing each other in their attempts to secure a deal for Skype. This little war has begun since the web video-conference which fir gave the public announcement that the company will be available for sale, which was scheduled in the first half of 2011, but ended up being delayed till the end of this year.

Reuters has also mentioned that the C.E.O. of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has been personally interested and is on-going with company officials having "internal discussions" for their move to buy Skype. On the other hand, some sources also indicated that Facebook might also attempt to convince having a business deal with Skype. Same was the case with Google, which is also rumored to be trying very hard in order to work out terms for a collaborative operation of the company.

Skype is actually owned by an investor group, under Silver Lake, who also holds the companies including eBay, Joltid Limited. Skype brings along with itself a large number of international users and a whole VoIP telephony infrastructure. This could easily be positioned strategically very well in Facebook or Google. According to the principal analyst of Sterling Market Intelligence, Greg Sterling, he said that "There's an extremely good fit with Facebook, and it could provide assets the company doesn't already have, as well as a couple of potential new revenue streams." He further added that the "The issue would be the acquisition price," elaborating his point he went on stating "But it's not inconceivable that Skype could work with both in a joint-venture capacity. But given the rivalry between Google and Facebook, I would be skeptical that would happen."

Skype was founded way back in 2003, and soon acquired by eBay after two years, in the early days of eBay for a large amount of $2.6 billion. This particular deal was aimed to gain more profit for eBay's global marketplace and benefit from its payments platform, however it did not work out as well as expected. After a long run with the company, eBay announced in April 2009 that it will be selling of Skype declaring that the initial public offering will take place in the first half of 2010. eBay had almost spent the last whole year considering if any way Skype was suiting its potential but it after all decided that letting go was the best choice.

Related articles

• Skype's Rollercoaster History [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
• Skype for Android Found With Scary Security Flaws Making It Vulnerable For Sensitive User Data (samiurrehman92.blogspot.com)
• Google Defends Its Methods of Collecting Users Location Data through Android Phones, While Apple Remains Silent (samiurrehman92.blogspot.com)

Novell Inc. Wins the Appeal to Sue Microsoft for Their Old Antitrust Lawsuit

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The Software Company, Novell Inc., has just recently regained the authority to pursue with its former long-running antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. The appeals court has reversed the previous decision of the lower court which had awarded the judgment in respect to Microsoft.

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Novell Inc. was actually acquired by Attachmate Corp back in the start of this year, and since then it has been laying stress that its operating system products along with few other software applications were wrongly constricted out of the market by Microsoft back in the 1990s. Novell Inc. has had an agreement signed which gave it the complete rights for suing Microsoft, through a separate company named, Caldera, back in 1996. Hence the company went on to sue Microsoft for their incorrect practices of competition in the OS market, this consequently went in the favor of the company and it received a total sum of $280 million to settle the case. Four years have passed now since the settlement.

AOL Demonstrates That Its Advertising Can Still Improve

AOL Inc. has started to demonstrate its development overtime as a 

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competitive company, especially in the aspect of display advertising revenue. Just this Wednesday, AOL Inc. declared its revenue of first-quarter for the display advertising. For the first time since even more than three years, it has shown a better curve of the graph, i.e. 4% to $130.5 million. This is a huge deal for the company considering its recent conditions it has went through in past. According to an analyst, Ross Sandler, who also works with with RBC Capital Markets shared that, to him "It looks like they are starting to turn the corner on revenue.”

It is not unnoticed that it has been only a year and half back that AOL separated itself from the flagship of Time Warner Group. It is since then, that AOL Inc. is working tirelessly to regain its potential and bring the company back to its feet. Surprisingly AOL Inc. was one of world’s most popular destinations, dominated by its email, but that glory is now around a decade old. Since the recent parting of ways from Time Warner, AOL has been pulling their socks, specially focusing at acquiring much-successful media-related websites which are already profiting largely. This strategy also including the acquisition of the large $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post dated back to February, 2011.