Yahoo!Tech reports that “China issued long-awaited third-generation mobile phone licences Wednesday, a move that will pour billions of dollars into new networks as consumers buy video- and Internet-enabled handsets. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued licences covering the three major standards in China, Europe and North America, in a move that could fundamentally alter the way telecom operators do business. ‘Telecom operators used to provide only access to network and did not care much about content. But now they'll rush to develop content,’ said Tang Mingjun, a Shanghai-based analyst with Shenyin and Wanguo Securities.”
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the “tech chiefs
The International Herald Tribune writes that “Technology companies may have wooed rivals with alluring, high-priced takeover offers in 2008, but this year, nothing says sexy like safe deal-making. With no signs of imminent economic recovery, executives in the technology sector are focused on producing decent earnings as they try to cope with slumping stock prices and thrifty customers. When they assess opportunities to buy rivals, companies will be more cautious, preferring deals that do not use up all their cash and where the target company has a profit-generating business that can be digested painlessly. That means 2009 could well be the year of small and midsize deals, bankers and venture capitalists say.”
Internetnews.com warns that “[j]ust one day after hackers broke into the accounts of 33 Twitter users, including President-elect Barack Obama, spammers have launched attacks using fake profiles of celebrities. One attack is on the LinkedIn social networking site for professionals, where the spammers put up a nude picture with a celebrity's name and a fake profile and links supposed to take visitors to three nude videos of the celebrity. Security software vendor McAfee posted an example on its Avert Labs blog.”
CNetNews.com has an article on a new study from the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center which finds that “[r]eports of data breaches in the United States increased 47 percent in 2008 from the year before, mostly as a result of lost or stolen equipment, and accidental exposure of data online.”