Apple is starting to feel the heat from the customers who bought the new iPod Nano. Apple is faced with a class-action lawsuit which accuses Apple of knowingly selling defective iPods. Apple has been charged with shipping out its iPod Nanos even though it knew that the product was prone to being scratched up easily. Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the scratches make the product unusable as the screen becomes unreadable. The company advices customers to spend some extra dollars and buy cover cases for the Nano to prevent scratches.

This is not the first time that Apple is being sued by its customers. In 2003 the company was hit by plaintiffs who filed a class-action lawsuit regarding its rechargeable batteries that do not charge as well as they claim to. The company settled this year by offering $50 vouchers that can be used to buy Apple products, and it also extended the iPod’s warranty to two years from one.

If you have bought an iPod Nano and want a piece of the action, contact Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro

Tom Edwards, who is Microsoft’s top man in its geopolitical strategy team, revealed how Microsoft managed to offend one of the biggest countries in the world with a software slip-up.

When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds.

Another social blunder from Microsoft saw chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer game and led to great offence to the Saudi Arabia government.

Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between “not specified,” “male” or “bitch,” because of an unfortunate error in translation.

Edwards said that staff members are now sent on geography courses to try to avoid such mishaps. “Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world,” he said.

I know what you are thinking, it is a little late for Microsoft to send these staff members back to high school but it might help the company avoid future embarrassing situations as these.

A secret code embedded in many color laser jet printers allows the US government and any other organization capable of reading the cipher to identify when the copies were made and on which particular machine, according to research conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Among the copiers found to include the secret yellow dots are ones made by Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, HP, Konica/Minolta, Kyocera, Lexmark, Ricoh, Tektronix/Toshiba and Xerox. The dots are yellow, less than one millimeter in diameter, and are typically repeated over each page of a document. The pattern can be seen using a blue light, a magnifying glass, or a microscope.
Do you think they hide something in our coffee too?

Steven Spielberg agreed to develop three original games with EA (Electronic Arts). Work has already started on the first of the three projects, which EA says will be a next generation game which appeals to a broad audience. Spielberg is said to be an avid gamer. In 2000, EA bought DreamWorks Interactive which was the gaming division for the Spielberg’s studio DreamWorks. It would be really interesting to see what he churns out in the videogame space and rumor has it that he may even make movies based on these games.

Scientists in Australia have found a way to slow down a speeding laser pulse and capture it in a crystal. The laser pulse was slowed down from 300,000 kilometers per second to just several hundred meters per second, allowing them to capture the pulse for about a second. This also allowed the scientists to write on the laser and send the laser back on its way. Suddenly, the age of Quantum Computing does not look so far away.
To learn more about Quantum Computing, Click here

Hey everybody, I am back. Just completed my MBA last Friday, took the weekend off and here I am, back in blogosphere. And since I am one of millions who love this console, i thought this post will make the rest of the fans happy. The Sony PlayStation has won an Emmy!!! It won the award for Outstanding Achievement in Technology and Advanced New Media award for its early work on 3D polygon-based gaming. Sony has dominated the console gaming for the past decade and critics say it is a clear winner ahead of the ‘War of the new Consoles’ that is coming up soon. Read more about the award here