Tag archive: france

Google has been ordered to pay a fine and damages to French mapping company Bottin Cartographes because it makes Google Maps available for free, undercutting companies that offer similar services for a fee. Bottin Cartographes had filed an unfair competition complaint against Google, claiming the search giant was abusing its dominant position in the Internet search market to achieve a leading position in the digital mapping market. The Paris… Read More

Europe's getting a fancy counterpart to New York's Fifth Avenue flagship Apple Store. The building will be erected in southern France, and will be almost transparent. The new Apple store will be coming to Aix en Provence in France, and will be occupying the spot where a tourism building currently exists; near the Place du General de Gaulle. A large portion of the see-through structure will consist of glass. The rendering of the… Read More

Racking up over one million views on YouTube in approximately two weeks, photographer Kien Lam created a time-lapse video (embedded below) comprised of 6,237 photographs documenting his year long trip around the world. Lam quit his job as a securities finance analyst at Blackrock during August 2010 and decided to spend 2011 visiting 17 different countries over a period of 343 days. To start the journey, Lam packed up his Panasonic Lumix GF-1… Read More

Forget playing games on your giant HDTV, your laptop, or even your minuscule smartphone. This massive game of pinball has been taken to a whole new level and is played the way games were meant to be played…projected onto the side of building. You read correctly. This monumental project is part of a demonstration at this year’s Fête des Lumières (Festival of Lights) at the Celestins Theater in Lyon, France. The gigantic game of pinball, called… Read More

Despite a few false starts, Apple has started its international rollout of iTunes Match, their cloud-based music-matching service. The UK was among the first countries to report the service's activation, and it was soon joined by users from Ireland, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. iTunes Match scans your music collection and matches titles found in its own iTunes music database, then makes them available for… Read More

Google's Android OS is currently the only dominant smartphone platform that isn't exclusive to one hardware maker (BlackBerry and iOS are owned and controlled by RIM and Apple). About half of all smarpthones now run Android, and this is making manufacturers like Samsung nervous. In 2011, the company renewed its attention to its Bada OS and has made headway in turning it into a competitive platform in many regions around the world.… Read More

After 31-year-old Loromin Sar was informed that his local Best Buy in Aurora, Colorado ran out of copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, his first thought was to inform store employees that he would be back to blow up the store with some sort of explosive device. He also informed several Best Buy employees that he would return as they got off work in order to shoot them. Sar had preordered the game earlier in the day and was expecting to… Read More

Kicked off in the pilot program during the first half of the year to start collecting photographs, Google has officially launched an interior version of Street View for buildings. The program sends a Google photographer to a business to take 360-degree photos and allow a potential customer to walk through the store. For instance, a user could navigate through a retail department store to find the exact location of the housewares department and… Read More

Less than 24 hours after Apple's new chief executive Tim Cook unveiled the iPhone 4S, the company's business nemesis, Samsung, has announced that it aims to block sales of the new handset in Italy and France due to patent violations. Samsung says that, in each market, it would claim violation of two patents that pertain to the Wideband Code Division Multiple Access standards for mobile devices. “The infringed technology is essential… Read More

The international legal scuffle between Samsung and Apple continued this week with the Korean technology manufacturer firing off the latest volley against its Cupertino rival. This time around, Samsung has filed a complaint in France alleging that Apple infringed upon three of its patents in its iPhone and iPad products, according to AFP. Originally filed back in July but announced on Monday, the complaint claims that the latest iPhones and… Read More

If you needed any more reassurance that Android stands as a major threat to Apple's iOS dominance, ComScore has a present for you: According to the digital research firm's new study of European cellphone usage, use of Google's mobile operating system has skyrocketed over the last year, jumping over iOS to become the second most-used mobile OS, after Nokia's Symbian OS, in the five leading European markets.  As of July… Read More

Radio and television news anchors may no longer say the words “Facebook” and “Twitter” on air, unless the terms are part of a news story. This prohibits French news organizations from urging their audience to “follow us on Twitter” or “check out or Facebook page,” or other such promotions. The ban actually stems from a decree issued by the French government on March 27, 1992, which forbids the… Read More

The leaders of the G8 countries joined with leaders of the increasingly essential Internet economy this week for the first-ever eG8 conference in Paris, France, to discuss the future of the Web and its role in the offline world. The eG8 was organized by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who today delivered the opening keynote and discussion at the conference. Other speakers at eG8 include Google chairman Eric Shmidt, Facebook co-founder and CEO… Read More

More than twenty Internet companies conducting business in France have put their names behind a complaint brought to France's State Council by the French Association of Internet Community Services (ASIC). At issue is a new French law that mandates the companies retain customer information—including name, address, phone numbers, email addresses, as well as usage records and passwords—for a year. The idea behind that law is to… Read More

Forget Apple TV, Roku, and Google TV – Freebox 6 puts them to shame. Freebox 6 is the product of Free, a thriving independent ISP in France and one of Europe’s most prestigious Internet companies, so the device has some legs to stand on. The box, which also goes by the alias “Revolution,” was revealed today in Paris and made its company the only one in the world to offer broadband Internet, television access, and full phone capabilities in one… Read More