Although the Netherlands allows all sorts of illegalities (that we enjoy) to get a legal license, that’s not the case when it comes to ruling against Pirate Bay.

The Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has just won a court against the infamous domain. BREIN’s lawyer argued that Pirate Bay is responsible for millions of copyright infringements every day and therefore the site should be blocked to visitors from The Netherlands. The owners of Pirate Bay however did not receive any summons regarding the case nor were they aware of such kind of a development. As a consequence, they have asked the Amsterdam court to quash the case and impose damages against BREIN. What though ensued was the case decided in favor of BREIN.

The Pirate Bay has been ordered to stop all their activities in the Netherlands within ten days and in case there is non compliance- all defendants will be ordered to pay 30,000 euros ($42,300) per day in penalties up to a maximum of 3 million euros ($4,231,000).

What’s ironical though, is that BREIN never filed the case against the Pirate Bay when it used to be an illegal domain, yet they thought of doing it when it became legal…

[via TorrentFreak]

Apple has removed all Google Voice-related application from the iPhone App Store this week and formally rejected Google’s app for the Internet phone service. This bold move could of only been urged by Apple’s iPhone carrier partner At&T,

So you’d expect the company to at least offer some of the apps’ makers — its business partners — an explanation, right? Keep dreaming.

When apple employees were asked to comment, they vowed an oath of silence…

There were so many rumors of a business amalgamation between the two Internet giants, rumors which we thought would materialize some day — and yesterday the deal became official. Microsoft and Yahoo have in reality joined forces in a search deal for a future endeavor that could finally challenge the mighty Google Search.

As per the new agreement, Microsoft will power the Yahoo search engine and Yahoo will be the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both the companies. The search experience is sure to get enhanced for users and advertisers as there will be more innovation in search, better value for advertisers and real consumer choice for a market currently dominated by a single company — Google.

Here is what Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz had to say about the venture:

“This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo!, our users, and the industry and I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of Internet innovation and development.”

The only problem is that the back-end infrastructure required to power the two companies’ operations will have to be revamped and the data centre requirements will have to be re-thought.

Do you think anything will change in the search business? Will Bing get even more exposure now? Is Google scared?

[via DeviceMag]

The Google request to run Google Voice as an application on the Apple iPhone has been rejected by the App Store. Surprisingly the big G isn’t disappointed by the development as they will continue to work to bring the services to iPhone users — for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.

Except GV Mobile, all third-party applications that use the service have also been pulled out by Apple. The reasons that can be cited for such a development is that Google is a direct competitor to the iPhone OS with its Android which is fast conquering the market share. The official reason is that the application had “duplicating built-in iPhone features” — which we think it’s bull …

A ‘spicier’ reason could be that AT&T is behind the whole deal as Google Voice offers free texting whereas AT&T is still charging minutes for texts. Also, international calling plans for AT&T can suffer a severe setback given the advantages offered by Google Voice. If the latter one has got more to do with the development, the future of Google Voice on the iPhone is very much over.

[via AppleInsider]

Just like Google, Apple have enjoyed the privilege of registering a profit in the third quarter of the year proving that the recession hasn’t had much of an impact on the growth of the company.

Apple posted a $8.34 billion revenue along with a net quarterly profit of $1.23 billion.

The year-to year comparison also sees Apple ahead from the same quarter last year where it registered a profit of $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share.

The Gross-Margin was also up at 36.3 percent compared to 34.8 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales contributed 44% to the overall revenue.

Talking about the growth from sales perspective Apple sold 2.6 million Mac computers during the quarter, a four percent increase over the year-ago quarter.

In the same period 10.2 million iPods were sold which is a 7 percent increase over the quarter year ago. Also, 5.2 million iPhones were sold representing 626 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Not to forget the 1.5 billion applications downloaded from the App store in the first year.

Looks like a very good year for Apple don’t you think?

[via Tuaw]

We have never thought that a name other than Google (form the “world” of the internet) will ever find more admiration with the Media, but, against all odds, Twitter managed to get more popularity than the G-all-mighty.

If we’re to believe the news-monitoring service VMS, in the last 30 days Twitter generated $48 million of media coverage and appeared everywhere from news programs to magazines and even daytime talk shows. And just for the curious, in the last monthTwitter received 2.73 billion impressions. Out of this, TV channels contributed 57% of the PR Value, newspapers stood at 37%, while magazines amount for 5% of the value.

However, the number of impressions does not include smaller newspapers across the country which means that if calculated, these impressions could actually double in number. In June alone, Twitter’s unique visitors totaled almost 21 million with the traffic growing 14% over May.

It’s a fact that hot social-media properties slowly tend to fade away after “success” but with Twitter the story could be different as it has more sizzle than any name every had. Care to disagree?

Also, would that trigger a red bulb at Google HQ and lead them to a buyout?

[via AdAge]

Rumors have swirled about Apple readying a new version of the iPod Touch with a camera and microphone, which, combined with a Skype account, would pretty much obviate the need for a home phone line once and for all.

A well-connected source tells us those rumors are on the money, and that Apple’s factories in China are already manufacturing iPod Touch models with integrated cameras and microphones. An Apple spokesman declined to comment when reached by phone.

If iPod Touches with cameras and microphones go on sale “in two to three months,” as our source expects them to (and which corresponds with our expected timeframe), they will transform the entertainment-oriented iPod Touch line into a voice communications tool wherever WiFi is available.

In addition to these voice-over-IP capabilities, which should have telephone providers quaking in their boots, the microphone (and camera) would enable the iPod Touch to understand voice commands, capture video and images, and work with a wider variety of programs in the App Store.

(Via)

Bandwidth blog just got wind that the biggest blogging platform in South Africa (likely Africa) is about to get a major face lift. The revamp of 24.com blogs has been under works for the past year and will bring the platform’s functionality on par with global players. Alistair Fairweather, social media manager of the newly formed 20fourlabs (24.com’s innovation unit) had this to say -

We’re very proud to be launching our long awaited revamp of 24.com blogs. Not only have we given SA’s biggest blogging platform a much needed facelift, we’ve also added a lot of features based on what our user have asked for most often. So personalisation is a big focus, and things like friendly URLs and better stats systems. And this isn’t the end – we’ve got quite a few more crunchy bits in the pipeline for the next few weeks. Under the hood we’re thrilled to have implemented the first fully MVC product in the 24.com stable, and we’ve done some much needed optimisation in the data and logic layers. All in all it’s just a much, much better product now.

Congrats to Alistair and his team!

Some screen shots of the revamped blogging platform and its themes

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