Internet giant Yahoo has decided to sue Facebook, for unspecified damages, for the infringement of 10 or more of its technology patents.

Earlier this year, Yahoo warned Facebook that it would seek legal action if it did not license between 10 and 20 patents on various technologies.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court in California makes a case that Yahoo innovated on several fronts that are now common features of the social networking site including messaging, news feed generation, social commenting advertising display, preventing click fraud and privacy controls.

Part of the lawsuit reads, “Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology.” That’s quite an accusation.

The complaint also reads that Yahoo was founded 10 years before the launch of Facebook in 2004 which has since become one of the most “widely trafficked sites on the internet” and that that growth has been based, in large part, on the innovations of Yahoo.

Facebook issued the following statement, “We’re disappointed that Yahoo’s effort to engage with us was limited to a few short phone calls and that we continue to learn of new developments about a long-time partner through the press. We will defend ourselves vigorously against these puzzling actions.”

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Apple is one of those companies that continues to inspire people with their product development, business ethos or latest product offering and has resulted in a number of creative  homages. This stop-motion video is no exception.

First spotted by MacMagazine, this video created by Brazilian Apple fan, Filipe Marcelo, it took 48 hours with 921 shots and an undisclosed number of coloured pencil shavings to complete.

Watch the stop-motion video below:

Source: The Next Web

Insiders have suggested that Nokia will be launching its first Windows 8 tablet toward the end of 2012 in the fourth quarter of the year.

The new tablet, a 10-inch Windows-on-ARM machine using a dual-core Qualcomm chipset is Nokia’s attempt at expanding beyond the smartphone market. The report follows shortly after Nokia’s Lumia 800 received overall positive reviews that finally saw the company making an impact in the high-end smartphone market place.

DigiTimes reports the word from supplier sources that Nokia’s new offering is expected to bolster the company’s position against Android tablet manufactures. At this stage, the tablet is likely to be powered by a Snapdragon S4 “Krait” chipset which has just been introduced in devices like the HTC One S and could also be part of Microsoft’s spec for the next Windows Phone update, codenamed Apollo that will see an overall increase in volume with an aim for business use.

Compal is expected to be Nokia’s manufacturing partner with an expected 200,000 units going out in their first shipment.

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Instagram, the popular photo filtering and sharing app is coming to Google’s mobile operating system, Android.

The announcement was made by Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom on Sunday at the South by Southwest conference, who commented that the Android version is “almost here.”

During his presentation, Systrom said the Instagram team has been “working hard on making this one of the best Android apps you’ll ever see.”

He also said the iOS version has been downloaded more than 27 million times so far, up from 15 million users in December of last year.  The app’s popularity earned it the title of Apple’s iPhone app of the year for 2011.

Naturally, this news will end months of frustration among photographers and other Instagram fans who only carry Android devices and otherwise cannot participate in what Instagram offers. However the estimated time of arrival is unknown and remains simple as “coming soon”.

While Systrom teased the version on stage, unfortunately he did not provide a demo with the Android version currently being tested in beta.

Despite the long turn-around time for Instagram’s Android app, the company may be looking into a Windows Phone 7 version.

Stystrom also revealed that “In some ways, it’s better than our iOS app. It’s crazy.” He also added that the app is fast, works well on large screens and can share photos on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and other networks.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Instagram is rumoured to be raising a new round of funding that could increase the valuation of the company from $25 million to $500 million. However, venture capitalists are hesitant to jump into the funding pool without first knowing what Instagram’s financial potential as a business plan has yet to be figured out.

Source: Mashable, The Huffington Post

Livebids.co.za, a new internet startup that will be launching on the 19th March by local company name Livebids Auctions PTY (Ltd) aims to shake up the SA online retail market and change the way consumers buy and sell online.

Livebids co-founders Rory Vollmer and Paul von Hoesslin from Cape Town, first started creating Livebids.co.za with the idea to develop an online market place that would help buyers and sellers fully connect in trade while being rewarded.

Rory who had been in the online auctioneering game of selling for a few years already, approached Paul, an already close friend for over seven years back in 2009, and the idea grew from there.

This unique online social market place offers three selling and buying formats that include Auctions, Pay Per Bid and Group Buying that that together will differentiate Livebids’s service from other pay-per-bid sites already in SA. While the first model is based on the traditional format where items are sold to the highest bidder and group buying is similar to that currently utilised by Groupon, Pay Per Bid rounds up the service as the only site to offer all three models on one platform.

In addition, Livebids rewards all buyers and sellers that utilise the service via the Pay Per Bid model whereby Livebids pays sellers to sell on the site and buyers earn points that can be exchanged for bids. Pay Per Bid aims to empower online sellers by giving them an opportunity to make massive profits.

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My Broadband has reported that First National Bank (FNB) has confirmed that it will be bringing the new iPad, announced on 7th March, to South Africa and will continue to sell the iPad 2 below retails prices.

Apple announced that the new iPad will become available in the U.S. and 12 other countries on the 16 March at the same price as the iPad 2 and by the end of the month, it will be available in another 26 countries. As with previous Apple product releases, South Africa did not make it into the first two release waves.

FNB, which launched a special deal on tablet PCs and smartphones for some of its customers, has confirmed that it will be bringing in the new iPad.

Ilse Smuts, head of marketing at FNB Core Banking Solutions, said that FNB will be supplying the new iPad at the lowest possible price point and confirmed that FNB will continue to supply the iPad 2 and will do below the recommended retail price.

With regard to the dates, Smuts said that it all depends on when the iPad is made available in SA.

“FNB has a strong relationship with local Apple distributors. When the devices become available in South Africa we will work with the Core Group to ensure that these devices are available to our customers,” said Smuts.

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Popular file sharing service Dropbox has recently introduced and rolled-out the new design of its web-based service, announced on its official blog, that it has been working on over the past few weeks.

Anyone who signs into Dropbox will immediately notice a simpler and more powerful web service that aims to provide a more intuitive layout and better accommodate the increasing amount of images users are choosing to store there. Dropbox engineer Trevor Berg writes, “One of our main goals was to slim down dropbox.com and focus on the star of the page: your stuff.”

To achieve this, Dropbox has begun by putting all the tools needed at the user’s fingertips with a new and more compact action bar which allow them to continue to sort and manage their files. In addition, a new right click menu has been added for a quick and compact way to manage files and optimise window space.

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At the official Apple TV and Apple iPad event that took place on Wednesday, Tim Cook announced in his address that “I’d like to get started by talking about the post-PC revolution” which according to Cook, Apple is at the forefront of leading. But what exactly does the Apple CEO mean by the “post-PC Revolution” particularly when the new iPad is looking more like a new kind of portable computer rather than a simple media player?

Cook offered a fair definition explaining that “We’re talking about a world where the PC is no longer the centre of your digital world, but just another device. The devices you use the most are more portable, more personal and dramatically easier to use than any PC has ever been.” So rather than the iPad and iPhone being an extension of or addition to your PC, they are now becoming, as a group of separate devices, the bulk of where your computing will occur.

For Apple “post-PC” as a device category mentioned above includes three of Apple’s product lines: The iPod, iPhone and iPad. Combined, these three devices make up a majority 76% of Apple’s enormous revenues. Interestingly enough if you take a look back to 2007 when Steve Jobs first spoke about “post-PC” as a device category, the exemplary device in this case was the iPod — a gadget no one would ever mistake for a personal computer. At the time, it was likely considered among consumers as simply a portal media playing device.

The iPad however is different in that it is most similar to those characteristics found on some mobile phones (the base operating system, interface design, long battery life, 4G internet), but it is really a new computing form factor allowing you to compose and send emails, edit photographs, search the internet and create documents.

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