| Tim Cook meets Chinese Vice Premier in Beijing, talks IP law, worker rights Mar 28th 2012, 18:11 Tim Cook's visit to China this week marks his first as Apple's CEO, but what originally appeared to be a casual jaunt to Beijing with possible carrier meetings on the agenda, has turned out to be a carefully orchestrated visit, including appointments with top government officials to talk economic development and intellectual property rights. Xinhua, the country's official press agency (and therefore not the most objective of sources), reported that Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang stated that the country will "strengthen intellectual property rights protection" and "pay more attention to caring for workers." Typical of state-sponsored releases, the report failed to expand on either statement, but even if nothing comes of this particular meeting, Keqiang is in line to take over as Premier next year, making him a solid addition to Cook's rolodex. There's a Chinese-language video of the encounter waiting just past the break. Continue reading Tim Cook meets Chinese Vice Premier in Beijing, talks IP law, worker rights Tim Cook meets Chinese Vice Premier in Beijing, talks IP law, worker rights originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink |  Xinhua | Email this | Comments | | Google+ gives you a few more reasons to Hangout, put mustaches on things Mar 28th 2012, 17:51 So you've started a Hangout on Google+ with some pals. Now what? Are you just going to sit around and talk? Thanks to some new additions to the social network, you don't have to rely solely on your conversational skills anymore. The software company announced today the addition of a number of apps to the Facebook competitor, which should make your Hangout time all the more riveting. Now you and a few close friends can play poker and pop culture trivia, add mustaches and glasses to one another, collaboratively doodle and share presentations on the service. Google+ also announced today that it has taken its Hangouts API out of preview, letting developers share the fruit of their work with the rest of the site's fake facial hair-sporting community. Google+ gives you a few more reasons to Hangout, put mustaches on things originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Google+, Google+ Developers Blog | Email this | Comments | | Motorola Xoom WiFi gets first official dibs on Android 4.0.4 Mar 28th 2012, 17:42  Tales of leaked Android 4.0.4 builds have been told for months, and we've even heard whispers of 4.0.5 coming to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the very near future. We still haven't seen any official firmware rollouts of either version, until now. Owners of the Motorola Xoom WiFi should be getting their hands on an update to 4.0.4 -- also known as build IMM76 -- any time now. According to an email from Moto announcing the update, the latest refresh offers improved stability, quicker screen rotation, better phone number recognition, camera and image quality improvements, enhancements to Microsoft Exchange and even a new setting that lets you choose whether you want the power button to lock the device immediately or not. If you aren't seeing the update hit yet, Droid-Life has reported that the file is available for download thanks to XDA, but it appears that some users have experienced errors when attempting it. So if you're feeling adventurous and don't want to wait for the OTA download, feel free to give it a shot. You'll need to drag the file into a USB stick, plug it in using a USB host cable and boot your Xoom into stock recovery. Motorola Xoom WiFi gets first official dibs on Android 4.0.4 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Droid-Life | Email this | Comments | | Tapose resurrects Courier concept for the iPad, rubs salt in your wounds (video) Mar 28th 2012, 17:26 Did you, like most of us, mourn the death of Microsoft's Courier like it was a relative that you never got to know as well as you would have liked. Well, as long you're willing to settle for just a single screen and are comfortable with Apple products, you might be able to fill that void in your life. Taposé delivers many of the same features as the Redmond concept, but within the confines of the iPad's 9.7-inch display. The $2.99 app, which has been in the works for some time, hit the app store yesterday, delivering the ability to copy and paste content from the web, mark it up with text and doodles then sync your notes online. You get 400MB for free with the purchase of the app, but unlimited cloud storage will set you back $30 a year. The information collecting doesn't end with snapshots of websites either, you can add audio, video and maps and do it in a dual pane layout that mimics the two-panel Courier. Hit up the source link to download it now and see it in action after the break. Continue reading Tapose resurrects Courier concept for the iPad, rubs salt in your wounds (video) Tapose resurrects Courier concept for the iPad, rubs salt in your wounds (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink  SlashGear | Tapose (iTunes), Tapose (blog) | Email this | Comments | | Apple, Samsung, HTC and Sony sued over graphics rendering patents Mar 28th 2012, 16:59  Sometimes, you have to go all-in. Why not sue all the leading smartphone makers at once? That's what Graphics Properties Holdings is doing, channeling the ghost (and intellectual back-catalogue) of Silicon Graphics. Filing six cases against Apple, Samsung, RIM, HTC, Sony and LG, the lawsuits reference floating point calculations for rendering graphics, something that the company received patent approval for only yesterday. GPH claims that several phones, including the iPhone, Galaxy S II and BlackBerry Torch, infringe on its intellectual property. Layman legal types can sniff around the patent in question at the source below. Apple, Samsung, HTC and Sony sued over graphics rendering patents originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Slashdot | TechWorld, USPTO | Email this | Comments | |
