Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Software : Facebook sued over Timeline feature

Software : Facebook sued over Timeline feature

Facebook sued over Timeline feature

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Facebook sued over Timeline feature

A Chinese web company is suing Facebook, claiming it copied its Timeline feature.

Cubic Network is a Pinterest-style start-up, founded four years ago. It launched its Timeline feature - which shows videos and pictures in chronological order, much like Facebook's - back on February 9, 2008.

Harvard graduate Xiong Wanli started Cubic Network, and held a talk at Stanford university about the Timeline feature. Mark Zuckerberg attended the talk, according to the China Youth Daily.

Facebook's own Timeline

Facebook launched its own Timeline feature in 2011, three years after Cubic Network's. It was made available to everyone in December of last year.

Cubic Network knew of the potential patent infringement when Facebook announced the feature, but only decided to bring about the action after consulting US lawyers.

Wanli also claims the logo of Facebook's F8 developer conference is too similar to Cubic's own logo. He notes Cubic Network's R&D centre was called F8 before Facebook named its annual conference.

Previous lawsuits

Facebook's very founding was the subject of a legal dispute between Mark Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss brothers. The dispute was the basis of the film The Social Network.

A Chinese company tried to sue Apple recently over the iPad name. Proview launched its iPad desktop PC back in 2000. Ironically, it actually looked quite a lot like an old iMac. Apple bought the iPad trademark prior to launching its tablet, but Proview claimed it committed fraud by concealing its identity.

Apple settled the case for $60m last month.

Via The Register

Judge says Google failed to comply with writer disclosure order

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Judge says Google failed to comply with writer disclosure order

Last week, Oracle revealed they had paid FOSS Patents writer Florian Mueller as a consultant during its patent infringement trial against Google.

The disclosure was the result of an August 7 court order asking both companies to provide a list of any and all persons whose coverage of the case may have been influenced thanks to payments from either party.

Google didn't report any payouts, claiming they hadn't issued payments to "journalists, bloggers, or other commentators to write about this case."

However, the presiding judge disagrees.

"In the Court's view, Google has failed to comply with the August 7 order," U.S. District judge William Alsup said in a statement.

Alsup is now seeking a complete list from Google of all possible commenters that "have received payments as consultants, contractors, vendors, or employees."

Deadline to comply

The court's order came about after Alsup expressed concern over financial relationships having a direct impact on online coverage of the case.

Google will have until 12 p.m. (PST) on August 24 to provide the court with the requested documentation.

According to Alsup's statement, Google hasn't responded to this point because the company says they've paid so many people it will be too difficult to track them all.

Alsup isn't buying Google's excuse, stating the court "wasn't asking the impossible," and pointed out Oracle was able to comply quite easily.

While no discussion of penalties for not complying with the order a second time are mentioned, it will be interesting to see if Google does hand over a list of paid contributors, and what the judge does in the event Google tries stonewalling the court again.

BBC iPlayer unlikely to land on Windows Phone 8

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BBC iPlayer unlikely to land on Windows Phone 8

The BBC says the prospect of its iPlayer application landing on Windows Phone is remote due to the development tools Microsoft requires app developers to use.

Then app, which has been long-awaited on Windows Phone 7, hasn't materialised because Microsoft uses different technologies to Apple and Android, which the BBC can't reuse on other platforms.

The Beeb points out, in a response to questions from a WPCentral reader, that Microsoft has once again changed the tools for Windows Phone 8, so a release on the forthcoming platform is unlikely also.

, the BBC's on-demand chief, says: "This is completely bespoke to Windows Phone 7, and is the costliest option because Windows Phone uses technologies unlike those used on any other platform. While Android and Apple also use their own app technologies, the TV and radio programmes themselves can be created once and used across both, so much of the investment is reusable. Sadly this is not the case for Windows Phone.

"Unfortunately Microsoft have also announced that Windows Phone 8 apps will be different yet again, so any Windows Phone 7 app we make would have to be rebuilt from the ground up for the next version of Windows Phone."

Option two

The second option for Windows Phone fans would be to use the IE browser stream the content from the iPlayer website.

However, that's also unavailable because of "bug" that Microsoft has apparently known about for a year, which prevents the content from working within browsers on WP7.

Darker adds: "We can encourage Windows Phone users to access our mobile web site by opening bbc.co.uk/iplayer from their phones. Unfortunately today there's a bug in Windows Phone that prevents our standards-based media from being played on those devices.

"Microsoft has been aware of the bug for over a year now, and we're hopeful they'll address it (on Windows Phone 7 as well as Windows Phone 8) so our Windows Phone audiences can access iPlayer."

Darker says he hopes both of these situations are resolved in the near further so Windows Phone users can enjoy the Beeb's on-demand content, but until they are, it's unlikely that we'll see the iPlayer come to Microsoft's smartphone platform.
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