Hasbro asking Facebook to remove Scrabulous app

• Mattel requires the American social safety net to prevent use of their game among Internet users.
• The conflict concerns Scrabuluous, an application that users can add to their Facebook profile.
• The online game is as popular as the original table game and has an average of half a million active users.

The creators of Scrabble crosswords game have asked Facebook social network administrators to remove its Web application Scrabulous, an online unauthorized adaptation of one of its most popular products.

As the name suggests, Scrabulous is an online version of Scrabble that has become one of the most popular Facebook apps - even founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recently admitted in a 60 Minutes interview that he enjoys playing the game with his grandparents.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote on his blog about the aquisition.
MySQL AB and Sun have announced that MySQL has been bought by Sun.

"Sun Microsystems today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately USD 1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the USD 15 billion database market. Today's announcement reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor."

More info here:
http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/winds_of_change_are_blowing
Sun Picks Up MySQL For $1 Billion; Open Source Is A Legitimate Business Model
http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/sun-acquires-mysql.html/

Matt Cutts, software engineer at Google writes:

For several years Google has used something called “host crowding,” which means that Google will show up to two results from each hostname/subdomain of a domain name. That approach works very well to show 1-2 results from a subdomain, but we did hear complaints that for some types of searches (e.g. esoteric or long-tail searches), Google could return a search page with lots of results all from one domain. In the last few weeks we changed our algorithms to make that less likely to happen in the future.

This change doesn’t apply across the board; if a particular domain is really relevant, we may still return several results from that domain. For example, with a search query like [ibm] the user probably likes/wants to see several results from ibm.com ... Read the full article here

• Google launched a new interface for the Apple phone.
• It unifies all its services on a single site for its users.

The iPhone owners will no longer have to visit different pages to access all online services from Google. The company has launched a new interface designed specially for this mobile, which unifies services such as e-mail, search and calendar.
With this announcement, Google reinforces its commitment to iPhone, which already includes default maps service Google Maps and the video sharing page YouTube.
The search engine has boosted its mobile telephony business in 2007. In November it launched in cooperation with 30 other companies the Android platform, a software package that will allow access to services of the browser from any mobile phone with an Internet connection.

In addition, last week Google announced that it would participate in the forthcoming 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction in the USA, in competition with mobile providers like Verizon and AT & T.

Apple has already sold more than a million iPhones in the USA and has  recently put up for sale in several European countries.

• Will not be associated with any operator.
• It will be an expensive terminal, like the iPhone.

The mobile phones manufacturer Motorola plans to build the terminal in April, ROKR E8, its global alternative to Apple iPhone, which includes MP3 player, telephone, digital camera and Internet access, according to sources at the company. Initially, Motorola has set targets for limited sales because the ROKR E8 terminal will be expensive, in line with the Apple device, which aims to 'steal' market share. In addition...