Hasta La Gadget!

San Francisco may have signed cellphone radiation labels into law, but the stickers won’t stick without a fight — the Cellular Telephone Industries Association (CTIA) just filed a complain in federal district court, claiming the new law supersedes the FCC’s authority to regulate radio emissions and misleads consumers into believing some phones are safer than others. As we’ve discussed previously, the CTIA does have something of a point. Every phone that makes it to market is rigorously tested for cell phone radiation levels, and those that pass fall below a specific 1.6 watt per kilogram threshold already. But hey, we’re all for bombarding our brains with that much less radiation, as long as our calls stay connected and our text messages arrive on time. If only there were a label for that… Read the CTIA’s full complaint at our more coverage link.

CTIA sues San Francisco over cellphone radiation law originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like Dell might finally be at peace with the US Securities and Exchange Commission — for now at least. The company has announced that it’s reached a settlement for “alleged omissions prior to Fiscal 2008” regarding both its relation with Intel and some accounting this-and-that. In a nutshell, Dell was receiving payments from Intel (who had some nasty payouts of its own) to not use AMD chips, which the company didn’t disclose to investors, and then failed to explain why profitability dropped once the payments stopped coming in. Remember that $100 million set aside in June for such a civil monetary penalty? Yep, this is exactly what it was for, and it’s exactly what Dell is paying out. Additionally, CEO Michael Dell is paying $4 million out of pocket. Lesson learned, right guys?

Dell settles with SEC for $100 million, moseys off into sunset originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Per usual, it seems as if this deal has happened in the dark of the night, but thankfully for the curious among us, it’s a bit difficult to disguise a caravan of humans escaping Québec and fleeing to Cupertino. According to a report in The Sun as well as an independent confirmation on our end, Apple has picked up a small Canadian firm by the name of Poly9. As of now, every last employee has been relocated to California, with the couple who declined left to find other work in the Great White North. Poly9’s official website is also blanked out, but in the past, the company has been credited with developing loads of web-based mapping programs (primarily in Flash, crazily enough) as well as APIs for a handful of monolithic clients like Microsoft, Yahoo!, NORAD and MSNBC. Generally speaking, Apple tends to integrate its purchases into the workflow at a rather rapid clip, so we’re actually expecting something to come of this in the not-too-distant future. What, exactly, remains to be seen.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Apple acquires web mapping firm Poly9, probably has something up its sleeve originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Australian government just found the infrastructure for its A$43 billion national broadband project and eliminated its largest competitor in one fell swoop — pending shareholder and regulator approval, Telstra will receive A$11 billion of that money in exchange for its entire landline network. Telstra will decommission its monopoly of copper cables to make room for the government’s fiber and migrate its customers to the resulting 100Mbps National Broadband Network (NBN) as those light-bearing threads roll out. While Telstra might become a smaller player in the internet and cable business without a land network of its own, it may get even larger in the wireless space — the company says it’s received “written confirmation from the Prime Minister” that it can bid on a chunk of precious LTE spectrum should the deal go through. Press release after the break.

Continue reading Australia to pay Telstra A$11 billion for entire copper network

Australia to pay Telstra A$11 billion for entire copper network originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to a report in the Financial Times, Google is making a full-throated move away from Windows PCs for the company’s workforce. Apparently the big G is now giving staffers the option of a Mac or Linux rig as an alternative to a Windows computer. The FT article suggests that the move is spurred on by security concerns — some specifically related to a flurry of attacks against the company which emanated from China, a country Google has recently been at odds with over censorship. Although security could be at issue, some of the employees interviewed for the article seem to suggest the changes — which mean staffers require CIO approval for a Windows PC — might actually be geared towards bringing Chrome OS into the Googleplex full-throttle. “A lot of it is an effort to run things on Google product,” said one unnamed source, “They want to run things on Chrome.” Another employee is quoted as saying that, “Before the security, there was a directive by the company to try to run things on Google products. It was a long time coming.” Regardless of the reasoning behind the move, if Google is moving the company to Macs and Linux instead of the world’s most popular computing platform, it’s certainly notable. We’ve reached out to both Microsoft and Google for comment, and will update you if and when we have word.

Google said to be moving away from Windows internally, Mac and Linux systems on tap instead originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 May 2010 22:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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