The next time you find yourself in need of a parking spot in Utrecht (been there!), steer yourself towards this new garage. Not only will you be able to park your car, you’ll also be able to get in a little belaying practice—thanks to its two climbing walls, which run along the edge of the building’s slabs.
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Almost two years after it updated its privacy policy, Google is still facing the wrath of European watchdogs. The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) has just ended a seven-month investigation into the search giant’s practices and, similar to rulings in the UK and France, has deduced that Google isn’t doing enough to inform users about the data it “collects and combines.” The DPA accuses Google of spinning an “invisible web of our personal data without our consent” with its Search, Gmail and YouTube services, which it states in no uncertain terms “is forbidden by law.” It’s another knock for Google, which has found itself under investigation by a total of six European privacy authorities after French privacy regulator CNIL initiated action on their behalf last year. Google has said that it “respects European law,” but its commitment will be tested at the Dutch DPA’s upcoming hearing, after which the authority will decide it wants to take “enforcement measures” against the company.
Via: Techie News
Source: Dutch DPA
This fall, Rotterdam’s new Centraal Station is open for business again, nearly ten years after the project got underway. Thanks to its massive solar roof and its super-compact layout, it’s one of the more efficient train stations in Europe—a building designed for the next century of transit.
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The city responsible for the first solar-powered family car and a building shaped like a UFO is no stranger to creativity. Eindhoven, Netherlands was recently named “most inventive city” by Forbes magazine, probably thanks to the High Tech Campus (HTC) research and development center located there. The HTC is the result of the Dutch government’s initiative to bolster high-tech innovation in the region after rounds of layoffs from companies like Philips. Scads of tech firms are holed up within HTC’s walls including IBM, Intel and Accenture, with a focus on open cooperation and sharing of ideas and resources. Apparently, this has paid off in spades. According to the HTC’s website, the campus is responsible for roughly 50 percent of the Netherlands’ almost 10,000 patents each year. Yowza.
[Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Via: Phys
Source: Forbes
You associate the Netherlands with Tulips and THC, not tax-evasion, but that’s exactly what some tech companies are using the country for. According to Bloomberg, Yahoo, Dell, and Google have set up offices in Holland in order to take advantage of the country’s lenient tax laws and funnel millions and millions of dollars into off-shore subsidiaries. More »
Once again, a decision has been made on an Apple versus Samsung patent dispute. This time, it’s a Dutch court in the Hague, ruling that Samsung does not infringe on a Cupertino patent relating to certain multi-touch commands that the Korean firm implements in some of its Galaxy phones and tablets. This isn’t the first time that the Netherlands-based court has found in favor of Samsung, and Apple had already lost a preliminary injunction on this same patent last year. Reuters also reports that the Hague court’s decision comes in the same week that the International Trade Commission is expected to decide about further patent disputes between the two firms, which went in favor of Apple the last time around. At the very least, this long and bumpy ride isn’t over yet.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile
Dutch court rules that Samsung didn’t infringe on Apple multi-touch patent originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Oct 2012 08:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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