I think my iPhone is a great invention, made even greater by the many software applications that you can download for it.  But as 95 percent of my cable channels demonstrate, even the greatest inventions can be put to utterly stupid uses. Some of the best-selling iPhone apps fall into that category...

The Motion Picture Association of America is claiming RealNetworks "willfully destroyed relevant evidence" in the studios' high-profile lawsuit that seeks to kill the Seattle-based company's DVD copying software. "The evidence here is that Real actively destroyed documents," the MPAA wrote (.pdf) U....

I have my moments of being a gadget geek … oh hell, I’m always a gadget geek, though the current economy hits this brand of geek pretty hard. Recently Amazon put out its upgraded Kindle product, Kindle 2, which I’d been eying since it was hinted at a while back. The Kindle 2 is an ...

Simulated guitar? Gibson gets carried away, but the law wins. Photo/bento creation (CC) Sakurako Kitsa.(Yup, this is a Fender Strat, but this is my kind of simulation of a musical instrument - in cheese form!) Gibson, the guitar company, has been on an utterly absurd campaign against music games, br...

I was involved with AC/DC in the early days of the band, when Bon Scott was the singer – I ran the Albert Productions label back then. So I take a continuing interest in the evolution of the band… At Perceptric we are preparing a report on the content and technology sectors to be released someti...

In recent weeks, we’ve heard through the grapevine that many companies, looking to avoid costly and drawn-out litigation battles in this era of economic uncertainty, are looking to get rid of their litigation portfolios through any means possible. And that largely means settling. But this does...

Facebook has been back in the news again (in a not-so-positive light) for recent changes to their terms of service. Specifically, the new terms no longer allow for a user to remove his or her Content and revoke Facebook’s license, prompting Consumerist headline, "Facebook: We can do anything ...

Seeing as Facebook has decided to claim that they own rights to any content on a website that has a “click to share on Facebook” style button (along with all the rest of their new claims over User Content), nearly everybody will be removing that particular button ASAP while they leave th...

Opening arguments have begun in the trial of four men behind the Pirate Bay BitTorrent site this morning in Stockholm. They stand accused of assisting copyright infringement. The trial is generating tremendous amounts of interest, and even if you don't speak Swedish, it's easy to follow the proceedi...

Some time ago, I reported that Novartis had adopted a wikinomics approach to its diabetes research. After investing millions of dollars trying to unlock the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes, the company released all of its raw data on the Internet, for free. Hardly typical behavior for a pharmaceuti...