Nokia Cancels U.S. Launch of X7 Phone

In another setback for Nokia Corp., the Finnish mobile-phone giant has canceled the U.S. release of a smartphone that was slated to launch exclusively this year with AT&T Inc., people familiar with the situation said.

Nokia had intended to debut the touchscreen phone, dubbed the X7, in conjunction with AT&T ahead of the Mobile World Congress trade show next month in Barcelona, Spain, these people said.

The X7 would have been the first Nokia smartphone launched exclusively with a U.S. carrier since former Microsoft Corp. executive Stephen Elop took over as Nokia's CEO last September. The unexpected cancellation leaves Nokia further behind in its effort to correct a major strategic weakness—its poor showing in the lucrative U.S. market, where it lags Apple Inc., BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. and phones powered by Google Inc.'s Android software.

"In the U.S. market, the Nokia platform is at the back of the line behind all these other guys," says Roger Kay, president of tech consultancy Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc. "This is a very fast moving market. You don't want to be sitting around."

Nokia decided to pull the phone because it believed the X7 wasn't going to receive enough marketing and subsidies support from AT&T, said one person close to the company. Nokia still plans to launch the X7 in other markets, this person said.

In the U.S. market, phone companies typically subsidize much of the cost of a smartphone to keep the price down as long as a customer signs up for a two-year contract. Operators also help to pick winners by putting their marketing muscle behind certain devices.

14-year-old's kid video game downloaded two million times

A simple video game designed by a 14-year-old school kid is taking the world by storm. Bubble Ball is a physics-based puzzle game that has been downloaded by more than two million iPhone users.

It became the top free application on the Apple store. But it hasn't been designed by a team of highly paid experts - it is the work of Robert Nav , a teenaged schoolboy.

Nav's game even outsold the adventure game Angry Birds. Since its release on December 29, Bubble Ball's success has become astounding, the Daily Mail reports.

Adding to Robert Nav's glory is the David versus Goliath nature of his victory. While he designed Bubble Ball in his bedroom in Spanish Fork, Utah, Angry Birds was developed by 17 professionals in Finland.

The rules of Bubble Ball are simple - players must move a small blue ball from one side of the screen to the other by steering it around various obstacles.

Robert was encouraged to try his hand at programming by a friend who noticed how much he liked his iPod touch. Robert released Bubble Ball through his own company, Nav Games.

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Two charged over iPad hacking on AT&T network

US prosecutors have charged two men with stealing and distributing email addresses for about 120,000 users of Apple Inc's popular iPad.

Investigators accused Daniel Spitler and Andrew Auernheimer of using an "account slurper" to conduct a "brute force" attack over five days last June, to extract data about iPad users who accessed the Internet through AT&T Inc's 3G network.

Among the possible victims were celebrities, businesses executives and government officials such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and perhaps then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, prosecutors said.

Spitler, 26, and Auernheimer, 25, were taken into custody by FBI agents on Tuesday morning, US Attorney Paul Fishman in New Jersey said in a statement.

Prosecutors said both defendants are associated with Goatse Security, a group of "self-professed Internet 'trolls'" who try to disrupt online content and services. They said Auernheimer bragged in published interviews about his trolling.

"Hacking is not a competitive sport, and security breaches are not a game," Fishman said. "Companies that are hacked can suffer significant losses, and their customers made vulnerable to other crimes, privacy violations and unwanted contact."

One-third of China's population hooked to Internet: Report

One-third of China's population were using the Internet at the end of 2010, taking the total number of people with net connections to 457 million, the China Internet Network Information Center has said.

Over one-third or 34.3 per cent of China's population were connected to the Internet at the end of last year, up 73.3 million from a year earlier, making them the largest net savvy population in the world, CNNIC said in a report.

Chinese netizens spent about 18.3 hours online every week or 2.61 hours each day, it said.

The growth of the net also propelled blogging in China with over 53.11 million bloggers using various Chinese social network sites even though most of the international networks like Facebook and Twitter remained banned in the country.

Microblogging has rapidly increased since Sina.com and QQ.com introduced their applications at end of 2009, said Huang Chengqing, vice chairman of the Internet Society of China (ISC), the country's Internet watchdog.

The number of Internet users in China's rural areas totalled 125 million last year, up 16.9 per cent from the previous year, the report said.

The number of people shopping online climbed the most compared to other online services, up 48.6 per cent year on year, followed by people using e-banking and online payment services, up 48.2 per cent and 45.8 per cent respectively.

Google appeals Spain mandate to take down links

Lawyers for Google are appealing demands by Spanish authorities that the U.S. company delete links to websites containing information that officials say violate Spaniards' privacy rights.

The cases dealt with Wednesday include a surgeon who was absolved of charges of malpractice in a case in 1991, but a Spanish newspaper reference to the original case still crops up whenever his name is keyed into Google's search engine .

Google Inc. says it's the first case of its kind and that a Spanish decision mandating the deletion of the links could hurt freedom of expression.

Spain's Data Protection Agency says it went after Google on the request of the individuals involved and because the original publishers of the links cannot legally be ordered to take them down.

Disclaimer: All information on this news has been compiled from their respective official websites or through public domain sites and leading newspapers. Although, we have taken reasonable efforts to provide you with accurate information, but we assumes no responsibility for the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the Information and would advise you to verify it from the official product provider. We cannot guarantee that the information on this page is 100% correct. If you would like to advertise on our site please contact us

Is Facebook's success a threat to Google's business?

A strong holiday shopping season will help Google Inc beat Wall Street's quarterly targets again, but investors may need more convincing to buy into the Internet giant's longer-term future.

Google, whose shares underperformed the market in 2010, will need to overcome past failures to get onto the social Web and local advertising, twin areas that threaten to siphon off Internet traffic, and advertising dollars.

Now, the world's top Internet company is recruiting and driving an acquisitions spree, aiming to ensure its online products remain popular as surfers turn to new services like Facebook, now the most heavily trafficked site, and wireless gadgets.

It tried to buy fast-growing online local-shopping service Groupon for $6 billion but was rebuffed, Chicago Breaking Business, a Tribune Newspaper website, and other news outlets reported.

"The key opportunity for Google in 2011 is to prove that the transition to mobile, social and local is a graceful one," said Stifel Nicolaus & Company analyst Jordan Rohan. "Google cannot be perceived to be run over by Amazon.com, Apple, or Facebook."

The competitive landscape will be uppermost on investors' minds given recent events at rivals, such as Apple CEO Steve Jobs' medical leave of absence and Facebook's $50 billion valuation. Google stock rose 2.5 percent on Tuesday after the surprise Jobs news.