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EU competition regulators have carried out unannounced inspections into various companies that sell online digital books. The companies, in several different European countries, were not identified.

The biggest business in the global digital book market include Amazon, Google’s eBooks and Apple’s iBooks.

European Union competition law is one of the areas of authority of the European Union. Competition law, or antitrust as it is known in the United States, regulates the exercise of market power by large companies, governments or other economic entities. In the EU, it is an important part of ensuring the completion of the internal market, meaning the free flow of working people, goods, services and capital in a borderless Europe.

SimpleViewer is a free, customizable image gallery that allows you to display your images on any web page in a professional and intuitive way. supports Universal Playback and can be viewed on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android.

SimpleViewer is avaiable as a free download to use on websites or in a premium versions with advanced customization options, no branding, unlimited images.

Features:
Universal Playback. Displays on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android.
Intuitive image navigation and Smart image pre-loading.
Resizable interface and Fullscreen mode.
Automatic International Language Support.
Optional right-click to open image in a new window.
Load images locally or from Flickr.
svBuilder desktop app for easy gallery building.

More info: www.simpleviewer.net/simpleviewer/

Windows 7 SP1 is now available for download available from Microsoft’s download Website, or via Windows Update,

Microsoft says Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is an update that does the following:

Helps keep PCs supported.
Provides ongoing improvement to the operating system, by including previous updates delivered over Windows Update as well as continuing incremental updates to the Windows 7 platform based on customer and partner feedback.
Makes it easy for organizations to deploy a single set of updates.

You need to uninstall any pre-releases of SP1 before installing

Download: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/service-packs

Microsoft has accidentally banned its own licenses from the App Store according to Techdirt.

Microsoft got itself in some hot water lately, when some people realized that the rules for Microsoft’s phone app store appeared to ban certain types of open source software. The specific claim was that it said certain types of licenses were to be excluded. Among the excluded:
“Excluded License” means any license requiring, as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of the software subject to the license, that the software or other software combined and/or distributed with it be (i) disclosed or distributed in source code form; (ii) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (iii) redistributable at no charge.
The only problem? This appears to cover a few of Microsoft’s own licenses. As Simon Phipps points out, both Microsoft’s Reciprocal License and its Public License appear to violate those terms.

Full article; http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20110218/12280313166/microsoft-accidentally-bans-its-own-license-app-store.shtml

Microsoft has upset the open source community with its Windows Marketplace licence by specifically refusing to allow software covered under an open licence to be distributed, reports Thinq.

The full Microsoft Application Provider Agreement can be downloaded directly from the Microsoft Developer Network.

Read more: http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/2/17/microsoft-bans-open-source-marketplace/#ixzz1EEZVwQtB

At Humboldt University in Berlin today, Eric Schmidt announced Google One Pass, a service that lets publishers set their own prices and terms for their digital content. With Google One Pass, publishers can maintain direct relationships with their customers and give readers access to digital content across websites and mobile apps.

Readers who purchase from a One Pass publisher can access their content on tablets, smartphones and websites using a single sign-on with an email and password. Importantly, the service helps publishers authenticate existing subscribers so that readers don’t have to re-subscribe in order to access their content on new devices.

More info: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/simple-way-for-publishers-to-manage.html

Google has announced Contracts for Java, aimed at saving time debugging Java code.

Contracts for Java is a new open source tool. Preconditions, postconditions, and invariants are added as Java boolean expressions inside annotations. By default these do nothing, but enabled via a JVM argument, they’re checked at runtime.

The interface is now precise and every class that implements it can be checked at runtime.

Contracts are a powerful language feature and can provide great benefit if used correctly.

Contracts for Java is based on Modern Jass by Johannes Rieken. Rather than being a full time project it was conceived and developed in the 20% time of two software engineers and then developed further through an internship.

More info: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/02/contracts-for-java.html

On Monday 24th January 2011 the BBC announced that it would be restructuring its online department – with 360 job losses and the deletion of 200 of its top level directories (including the websites that live under them – eg http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast). 172 of of those top level directories are due to be deleted within the coming 12 months.

The purpose of this project is to show how the entire 172 public facing websites that are earmarked for deletion have been copied, archived, distributed and republished online – independently. Download: http://178.63.252.42/

Martin Bryant writing on the Thenextweb.com says; ” The BBC is set to close down 200 of its websites in the near future as part of cost-cutting measures. Hearing that 172 of these sites would be deleted from the Web entirely, an anonymous (and possibly even “Anonymous”, judging by the picture on the website) individual has taken matters into his or her own hands.

The result is a BitTorrent file that anyone can download to store a backup of these “lost” websites forever. The cost of the project? Apparently no more that $3.99 for a VPS server to crawl and retrieve all the sites.”

Full article at: http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/02/10/172-doomed-bbc-websites-saved-by-one-geek-for-3-99/

Facebook pages are getting an updated layout and several new features.

New Features:

Notifications when fans interact with your page or posts

A place to showcase photos along the top of your page

A news feed for your page

The ability to Like and post on other pages as your page

All pages will automatically be upgraded on March 10.

The owner of Plagiarisma.Net noticed that most students could copy and paste any text coming from the Google books because they are not included in most of plagiarism tools available in the internet. This theft and copyright violation has been rampant because most software is not able to detect the copied text. “Well, it is high time that we push on adding more script to existing plagiarism checker tools and help students and other writers polish their talents by writing their articles and their thesis in their own words and understanding. We need to raise awareness about intellectual property to maintain integrity and credibility of the scholars. This would also encourage other people to be original in writing thesis and content.”

Plagiarisma.Net has gained its customers’ trusts for years now since it has been proven that its plagiarism checker work with Google, Bing, Yahoo, Google Scholar and check url, plain text, html, rtf, doc, odt, docx and pdf files. It also includes synonymizer and similarity checker for premium members with promisingly fast services and no annoying ads. The new tool is added with a big intention to help in preventing plagiarism activities done by book plagiarists. Plagiarisma.Net is a company that tries to keep the balance between accurate scanning software and monthly cost.

Years ago, many people tried to copy and paste content from books because it is so easy and most plagiarism software cannot detect it. Plagiarisma.Net is actually a good plagiarism checker tool to check for any similar phrases or sentences in two or more books. With more than thousands of millions of printed pages in databases, it is possible that the sentence’s duplication can be scaled down drastically. The plagiarism activities can be detected easily with a little effort being carried out to crosscheck for any similarity and duplication of all the published works by using a perfect plagiarism screening tool. People can make choices since there are many good plagiarism detection tools available, regardless whether it is online or offline. Some plagiarism detection tools requires a start up payment fee before the tool can be used but some can be used for free. Plagiarisma.Net is one of the best plagiarism checkers that offers sufficient services required for plagiarism checking purposes and it is free!

Website: http://plagiarisma.net

The Central Intelligence Agency launched several enhancements to CIA.gov to improve its functionality and refresh the site’s design. Among the updated features, visitors will find new ways to connect to a broad array of Agency content, including through social media sites.

“The idea behind these improvements is to make more information about the Agency available to more people, more easily,” Director Panetta said. “The CIA wants the American people and the world to understand its mission and its vital role in keeping our country safe.”

The CIA.gov homepage now includes links to a CIA YouTube channel and Flickr site. The CIA YouTube channel features current and historical videos about the Agency, including speeches by Director Leon E. Panetta and a CIA Overview video. The CIA Flickr site links to copyright-free pictures from CIA.gov for easy access. Both features, which are used by many Americans, will enable the Agency to more easily share information on its mission and history. They can be found under “Quick Links” on the homepage.

The improved CIA.gov homepage also includes a new “CIA Interactive” section that highlights some of our most popular, fun, and educational interactive content. Visitors who regularly use this content will find it much more accessible. In addition, the CIA added new photos on the homepage, broadening the public’s glimpse into the Agency.

More enhancements are planned in the next few months, including content that is mobile-friendly and in foreign languages. These features also will improve the Agency’s ability to reach new audiences. Because more than half of Internet users browse with mobile devices, CIA.gov is developing a truncated, text-based version of the full site. Offering content in foreign languages underscores the global nature of the CIA’s mission and highlights Director Panetta’s emphasis on language excellence at the Agency.

The changes to CIA.gov aim to improve visitors’ experience with the site, increase connections to those using popular Internet sites and tools, and share even more information on employment opportunities with the CIA.

ACS Law closed down on 31 January, along with its sole piracy client, Media CAT according to PC Pro, just days before a key court decision.

ACS Law solicitor Andrew Crossley confirmed to the BBC that both firms have ceased trading, and ACS Law’s phone number is now disconnected. Crossley said the firm was leaving the piracy litigation business, after threats to his family.

Read more: File-sharing lawyers ACS Law shuts down | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/365029/file-sharing-lawyers-acs-law-shuts-down#ixzz1D5zTMElz