THE WRAP: Tech firms feel the chill

03 Oct 2008
00:00

This week tech firms felt the first impacts of the financial crisis, and Chinese spooks got fingered snooping on Skype.

AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson said the company had had difficulty in securing short-term funds. Thanks to the recent turmoil, it could only access cash in overnight commercial paper.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer warned the economic downturn could hit IT investment.

Chinese authorities have been caching and apparently censoring online chats between Skype users, a University of Toronto study revealed.

Nokia unleashed its free(ish) Comes With Music service in the UK - but without the support of the local operators. It also took the wraps off the 5800, its first touchphone since the iPhone hit the streets.

Market research firm TNS said the mobile music services from Nokia and Sony Ericsson could cut music piracy.

Microsoft will continue to charge licensing fees for Windows Mobile in competition with open source offerings from Symbian and Google.

As a dispute with music publishers escalated, Apple threatened to shut down its iTunes store. The National Music Publishers group is demanding an extra six cents per download.

Major movie studios sued RealNetworks over its new software that allows people to make digital copies of DVDs.

Google released details of its data centers that it said showed they were way more efficient than the average. Google also offered up a $4.4 trillion plan to wean Americans off fossil fuels.

HP acquired storage networker LeftHand for $360 million. Nokia bought Canadian messaging firm OZ. Freescale Semiconductor put its wireless division on the sale block.

Major telcos and IT firms threw their weight behind a $1 billion campaign to promote "ready to run" mobile broadband.

Telcos finished building the 18,000-kilometer Trans-Pacific Express cable linking the US, China, South Korea and Taiwan.

Sprint launched its first mobile Wimax service, Xohm, in Baltimore.

Nokia and Nokia Siemens struck a cross-licensing agreement with Huawei covering W-CDMA, cdma2000, Wimax and TD-SCDMA. Verizon and Nokia Siemens delivered 100 Gbps along a single wavelength over 1,000 kilometers.

British spy service MI6 began recruiting on Facebook. Secret MI6 documents and photos of Al-Queda members were found in a digital camera bought on eBay.

US transport investigators found a Los Angeles train driver had sent 29 text messages while on duty on the day of a crash in which 15 people died.

And an Aussie online poker player uncovered a $10 million scam by two poker sites, setting off a $75 million lawsuit.

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