Kodak Rumored To Be Starting Its Own Patent Auction

Cleve Nettles

 

 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Kodak has started the process of auctioning off some or all of its lucrative patents. Kodak’s demise is well documented as the once $30B company has seen its market cap slide to around $800m as the digital imaging company has continuously lost share to competitors. According to the WSJ one potential bidder is “a large, strategic buyer in the wireless industry looking to use the patents for defensive protection.”

This news comes on the tails of this past Monday’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google for a whopping $12.6B in cash. Google has long been rumored as potential suitors of multiple patent-holding companies such as InterDigital, Kodak and of course Motorola Mobility. If these Kodak patents do sell, they will not gather nearly as high of a price as the Motorola deal, but could likely see Kodak’s stock take a nice move up.  This morning’s news of one analyst saying Kodak’s patents could be worth 5x the company’s market cap sent shares up more than 25% and are currently up more than 5% in after hours trading on the latest Wall Street Journal news.  Meanwhile, InterDigital saw a pop in its shares today as another rumor was swirling that an auction will take place after Labor Day weekend and that there are multiple interested parties. Read more

Chrome OS update brings instant Netflix, Citrix Receiver app, Google Cloud Print, and more to Chromebooks

Jordan Kahn

Some rather nice new updates have begun rolling out to lucky Chromebook/Chrome OS users this week with a number of welcomed features including a 32% faster resume (in most cases), instant Netflix streaming, Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader app, Print to Docs with Google Cloud Print, and various business-related features.

While the update of course brings the usual “bug fixes and improvements”, it also includes features aimed at education and business users. One of the more notable features is the Citrix Receiver Tech Preview app which is now available to Citrix users via the Chrome Web Store. This will allow you to “access desktop software such as Adobe® Photoshop® directly from your Chromebook”.
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Google engineer claims Adobe hid “embarrassingly high” number of Flash Player bugs

Jordan Kahn

After sending out the usual laundry list of bug fixes for its Flash Player yesterday, Adobe is coming under pressure from Google security engineer Tavis Ormandy who claims the update only listed 13 of the approximately “400 unique vulnerabilities”… A number he describes as ”embarrassingly high”.

Ormandy claims he sent the bugs to be fixed “as part of an ongoing security audit” and, according to a report from Computerworld, was “upset that he was not credited for his bug reports”. After noticing he hadn’t received credit in the patch, he took to Twitter to address his concerns, prompting Adobe’s senior manager of corporate communications to tweet the following:

“Tavis, please do not confuse sample files with unique vulnerabilities. What is Google’s agenda here?”

Ormandy responded, also in a tweet, saying:

“I don’t know what Google’s agenda is, but my agenda is getting credit for my work and getting vulnerabilities documented.”

Hours before the patch officially rolled out, Google launched the latest version of Chrome 13 and 14, which included the Flash Player patch in question, and was accompanied by the following statement from Google:

“The Chrome Team would especially like to thank Tavis Ormandy, the Google Security Team, and Google for donating a large amount of time and compute power to identify a significant number of vulnerabilities resolved in this release of Flash Player.”

Adobe did credit 10 other researchers in the report accompanying the update, but had only this to say about Google and Ormandy’s work:

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Chrome OS running on a tablet (video)

Jake Smith

The above video is reportedly Chrome OS running on a tablet, looking very unfinished, but hey, at least it’s something. This isn’t an official video by any means, but put together by web developer Francois Beaufort. You’ll notice that icons look much different, being bigger and more tablet optimized. The QWERTY keyboard looks very familiar, almost Honeycomb-like as well.

We don’t expect this to be close to even the final build of the Chrome OS that will ship on a tablet — if it ever does. It’s cool nonetheless. Check out a few shots after the break. (via Lilputing)

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Chrome Canary build adds native fullscreen mode in Lion

Jake Smith

Macstories has discovered the latest build of Chrome Canary adds native fullscreen support in Lion. The fullscreen in the Canary build is definitely much better than the current Chrome’s botched fullscreen. In Canary, fullscreen feels native and has earned a spot in mission control and three finger swipe. You’ll also notice there is a curtain button to toggle the tool bar on and off. Interested? We expect this feature to come to the next Chrome update, but go ahead and download the latest Canary build. Check out a few more images after the break.

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