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Read Shelly’s commentary on the first networked, broadband election and how Senator’s Obama and McCain shape up against each other.
Watch Shelly’s commentary on APPLE’s (NASD: AAPL) 3G iPhone, which is expected to be unveiled today at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco.
The six major technology companies which joined together behind WiMAX are expected to form a coalition to jointly license WiMAX-patents. CISCO (NASD: CSCO), INTEL(NASD: INTC), SAMSUNG, SPRINT(NYSE: S), ALCATEL-LUCENT (NYSE: ALU) and CLEARWIRE (NASD: CLWR) will announce the development of the Open Patent Alliance today via conference call, who will license the rights to all WiMAX related products to tech manufacturers. The goal of the organization is to expand the reach of WiMAX, while limiting royalty rates that could push consumers away.
CARL ICAHN sent another heated letter to YAHOO (NASD: YHOO), this time urging the search company to sell to MICROSOFT (NASD: MSFT) for $34.375/share, or $49.5 billion, a nearly $2 billion increase from Microsoft’s last offer. If that doesn’t work out, Icahn advised Yahoo to resume negotiations with GOOGLE (NASD: GOOG) regarding a potential search-ads deal that could significantly boost Yahoo’s cash flow, and make the company more attractive to Microsoft.
COMCAST (NASD: CMCSA) was slapped with three Class Action lawsuits over its decision to throttle the internet connection of customers downloading BitTorrent files. The lawsuits in California, Illinois and New Jersey claim that Comcast misled customers who were promised “unfettered access to all the content, services and application that the Internet has to offer.” This is a major issue that isn’t going anyway any time soon, expect more law suits in the not so distant future.
The MPAA is lobbying the FCC to allow Selectable Output Control (SOC) to be used in order to block the function of digital video recorders on HD movies broadcast prior to their release on DVD. The FCC currently restricts the use of SOC, however the MPAA claims that SOC’s could help deter “illegal copying and redistribution” of Hollywood films. The MPAA is looking to release new films via multichannel video programming distributors “significantly earlier than DVD release”, but is only willing to do so if the DVR function is blocked.