Monday, June 20, 2011

Facebook and Zuckerberg Label the Ownership Lawsuit to Be a Complete "Fraud"

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, dur...Image via Wikipedia

Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have labeled the lawsuit to be "brazen and outrageous fraud," as they recommended the federal court to immediately discharge the case on Thursday. This new lawsuit is filed be a resident of New York, Paul Ceglia, who claims to own a huge stake in the company. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Buffalo, New York, which Mark Zuckerberg claimed to be totally based on sheer "doctored contract and fabricated evidence." Moreover, it was also asserted that Ceglia is "an inveterate scam artist whose misconduct extends across decades and borders."
Ceglia is from Wellsville, New York, and claims that he had signed a contract with Mark Zuckerberg in 2003, for having a fair 50% share of Zuckerberg's interest, which is now Facebook. Facebook is currently held privately, though many analysts have predicted that if the company goes public, it could gather more than $70 billion for what it’s worth. According to the stats of Forbes magazine published in March, Zuckerberg individually has a total net worth at $13.5 billion. Initially the first lawsuit filed by Ceglia in July last year, stated his allegation of being contracted with Zuckerberg for being the owner of 84% stake in Facebook. Whereas, the lawsuit was amended recently and now the complaint reads Ceglia to be calling himself a 50% stake holder and stats that he can also provide evidence, which he states to be emails between himself and Zuckerberg.

Google Gets Sued by eBay and PayPal for Its New Mobile Payment System


Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase
Both eBay and its online payment partner, PayPal Inc., collaboratively sued Google Inc. and its two executives, on Thursday. The lawsuit claims that these executives stole trade secrets and confidential information of Paypal and eBay, related to mobile payment systems, and illegally passed it on to Google. The alleged executives of Google are Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, who are both former employees of PayPal and eBay, and are also responsible for this new launch of Google on Thursday. This new service of Google’s mobile payment system is launched in collaboration with MasterCard, Citigroup and Sprint.
The lawsuit points out that this battle of launching a better and early mobile payment system is between all the companies, which are attempting to have most of the predicted opportunity of $1 trillion turnover in mobile payments. The idea is to present mobile phones as a digital personal wallet. The filings of eBay mention that Bedier worked has been working at PayPal for nine years, specifically as the V.P. of ‘mobile and new ventures,’ he was hired by Google very recently on 24th of January, 2011. Meanwhile, Tilenius was employed at eBay from 2001 to October 2009 and even served as a consultant afterwards till March 2010. The lawsuit points out Tilenius also joined Google just last year in February 2010 as V.P. of e-commerce.

Toyota designs its network service for new cars, titled “Toyota Friend”


Akio Toyoda, President of Toyota Motor Corpora...Image via WikipediaToyota Motor Corp. is joining forces with cloud computing company, Salesforce.com Inc., giving both the companies the opportunity to design a social network service allowing the owners of the cars to become "friends" with their cars. This system will provide friendly tweet-like reminder notices and calls of maintenance checks. This deal is the second in the line of Toyota Motor Corp., as the world's biggest automaker collaborated with the world’s biggest software company, Microsoft Corp., as they got together last month to announce the strategy of bringing more and better Internet-connected services to new car models of Toyota worldwide.
"Social networking services are transforming human interaction and modes of communication," claimed the President of Toyota Corp., Akio Toyoda, while he was in the joint news conference hosted with the C.E.O. of Salesforce.com, Marc Benioff, in Tokyo on Monday. He added that "The automobile needs to evolve in step with that transformation." Both, intelligence of internet and telematics and the advancements of automobile, are expected to form a key combination in adding value to cars. Both companies join hands to develop an attractive marketing tool as consumers look beyond just their laptops and phones for connectivity. The telemetics service of Toyota is already functional which connecting its vehicle drivers with dealers.

Square Announces It’s New Venture Allowing Users to Pay with Their Name


Square has made a new announcement on Monday, launching its latest venture which will allow the customers using their Square card reader frequently to pay only with their names. The C.E.O. of the company, Jack Dorsey, declared during a press conference at the startup’s San Francisco headquarters, that Square Card Case will be a portable loyalty card holder making the Square application into a complete mobile payment solution.
Image representing Square as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase
Every card put in the case will give the carrier complete access to the entire menu of the venue, highlighting all the trendy products in that particular store. The menu of the venue is updated in real time, as the customer use or view his “tab,” having a digital record of the past transactions made by the customer at that venue. The user will be able to find all the validated venues through the application’s “Explore Places” directory and use just the name to checkout without the requirement of any wallet. The receipt will be attached to loyalty card of user for that particular location.
On the other hand, all the businesses collaborating in Square Register will have their entire user list on a file from which they can select the current user with a point-of-sale screen to charge the transaction to the user’s “tab.” Total of almost 50 merchants all over Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, D.C., will be supporting this new payment method. Dorsey further asserted that Square is the only company worldwide to be linking the customers to places and transactions in such manner. He interprets the Square Card Case to become a complete mobile payments solution, even better than the Starbucks Card Mobile.

Microsoft Completely Upgrades Its Phone Software, Adding New List of Handset Makers

Image representing Windows as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase
This Tuesday Microsoft Corp. released an update of its Windows phone software, this time encompassing numerable new features, aimed to help it catch up with the lead gathered by its rivals like Google Inc. and Apple Inc.  This new software update was code-named Mango before its release and will be debuting in new Windows phones till start of this autumn. The existing Windows phones will also be updated with this software beforehand, though no particular date is provided yet.
Image representing Nokia as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase
This new updated software was initially announced almost eight months after the launch of first Windows Phone 7, promised to be powered with 500 brand new features. Highlighted by the features like Internet Explorer 9 as the default mobile browser, detailed integration of both Twitter and LinkedIn feeds and programmed Facebook check-ins along with the a great market of more than 17,000 downloadable applications. This new updated software is basically going to increase the level of distinctive "live tiles" of Microsoft; this means that the users will be able to see real-time information on their home screen without having to start any application. Moreover, it is also promised to house better processors allowing multi-tasking where many applications can run together simultaneously.

The New Simple Touch Reader of Barnes & Noble Apparently Beats Kindle 3 in New Features


Barnes & Noble made an official announcement on Tuesday, declaring the launch of its latest version in the line of Nook e-readers. This new nook device, called ‘Simple Touch Reader’ is promised to be relatively smaller than its preceding version, housed with a black-and-white E-Ink touch screen device, having a battery life of almost two months.
This new ‘Simple Touch Reader’ is a very large step and a major upgrade from the previous models in the Nook line. It is such an advancement that it even beats the much popular, Amazon’s Kindle 3, in some aspects. Simple Touch Readers simply has a touch screen, making it actually button-less, which saves time for powering the device on/off from backside like in Kindle 3.  Secondly it has almost twice the battery time, added with a 1.5 inches shorter size (5 x 6.5 inches) and it is also lighter in weight by one ounce (7.5 ounces). Lastly, it also promises a less time in page-turning delay. Both the devices are sold at equal price of $139, having the same built-in Wi-Fi capability and display screen of 6-inch each.
Free counters!