A Luxembourg official has spoken out against a recent investigation into Apple's tax avoidance strategies. In a letter to the editor of the New York Times, an executive director at the Luxembourg Trade and Investment Office defended Apple and the country, saying they are applying EU tax law correctly.
The New York Times Media Group revealed some changes on Tuesday regarding its digital subscription packages and offers. Although spun by the company, a shift in April will see it reduce free access from 20 articles to 10 on the New York Times website. The success of the service is likely what drove the change, with the outfit also developing exclusive mobile and digital products for subscribers.
Customer experience developer RightNow took Lodsys to task on Thursday after it quietly moved for a new declaratory judgment (below) to invalidate the company's patents. The motion would have the Eastern District of Wisconsin-based court rule that RightNow's chat support system, as well as customers like Bass Pro, not only aren't violating four of Lodsys' key patents but that the patents themselves are untenable. Lodsys has been 'threatening' all of RightNow's customers with boilerplate infringement claims, RightNow said.
The New York Times has updated its iPad and iPhone apps to support in-app subscriptions, reports note. Three options are available: the first is $15 a month, and grants full access to the Times website and iPhone app. $20 covers the website and iPad app, while $35 opens up all digital content.
Lodsys faced the consequences of its actions again Monday after the New York Times Company and OpinionLab both sued Lodsys (below) to invalidate its patents. Similar to the lawsuit from ForeSee, both of the plaintiffs are seeking a declaratory judgment that would at least absolve them of guilt and also nullify the patents themselves. OpinionLab's complaint alleged that Lodsys was violating Illinois fair competition laws and was committing tortious interference by scaring investors away.
Barnes & Noble joined Amazon today by giving bonus web access to New York Times subscribers in light of the newspaper's new paywall. Anyone who subscribes to the paper on a Nook device will get unfettered access to the web version. On the Nook Color, this means color images and an overall experience much more like that of a tablet.
Amazon on Monday landed a deal to give Kindle readers a route around the newly active New York Times paywall. Those who already subscribe to the Kindle Edition of the newspaper will get free access to all of the website at no extra charge. The timing wasn't outlined in the update.
(Updated with iTunes app changes) The New York Times on Thursday outlined its long referenced plans to put up a paywall and start offering subscriptions. Everyone will get their first 20 articles per month for free, but further reading will need a monthly subscription. A $15 per month plan offers full web access as well as a smartphone app; $20 per month swaps out the phone for the iPad, and an unusually steep hike to $35 is required to get both phone and iPad use.
The New York Times iPad app will eventually switch to the planned pay model, says the newspaper's chairman, Arthur Sulzberger. When a revised app was released last October, the Times initially promised that a paywall would be put up early this year. Content continues to be freely accessible however, and Sulzberger did not get into timing or other specifics in a talk at the Financial Times Digital Media Conference on Wednesday.
The New York Times today gave an early look at its rough parallel to News Corp.'s imminent The Daily iPad app. News.me, co-developed by betaworks, would take more of its cues from Flipboard and curate content from Twitter. Along with formatting articles from the reader's own feed, the iPad reader alternative would see recommendations for those being followed and show what they might like, not necessarily what they're already reading.
Google today formally launched the Chrome Web Store, its portal for web apps on both the Chrome browser and Chrome OS. The section lets users buy apps that they can access from a central launcher and which behave more like traditional apps, in some cases working offline. Many work with Flash but can use strict web standards and work for all platforms.
The New York Times today planned to run a bestseller list just for e-books. The list will be separate from the paper list but will appear in the Book Review both online and in print versions of the newspaper. An independent tracker, RoyaltyShare, will monitor sales from a collection of digital bookstores and will help validate the data to ensure that it's accurate, an issue which the Times said was currently a problem in the e-book field.
Boxee at its Brooklyn launch event revealed that the Boxee Box and the software platform would be getting a handful of key launch partners. Hulu Plus is the highlight and will see Boxee offer the $10 monthly streaming service on its media hub. The company didn't say if the free web version will be blocked outright, but it said free wouldn't be an option and promised a "real" Hulu designed for TV rather than just the browser.
Samsung's Galaxy Tab is expected to be the reference point for news on Android tablets as companies reduce their dependence on the iPad, sources said Friday. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are both said to be developing apps for the seven-inch device with the hope of launching the same app elsewhere. One WSJ tip had the NYT app coming preloaded on some devices and available for free until the site's paywall goes up in January 2011, while the WSJ app itself would follow a typical subscription model.
Oracle CEO Lawrence Ellison has criticized HP for ousting its chief executive, Mark Hurd, over allegations of sexual harassment. Ellison, a friend of Hurd's, sent an e-mail to the New York Times suggesting HP's board did not act in the best interest of shareholders and employees.
Barnes and Noble pushed hard in the mobile arena on Thursday, starting with the launch of Nook for Android. Apart from a name change to drive home the importance of the Nook badge, the app provides all of the widely available features of the existing iOS app, including LendMe book borrowing and syncing of purchases and page counts across devices. Highlights, notes and library searching should come with a summer update.
Having only been absent since late Monday, Pulse is already back on sale at the App Store. The iPad app displays RSS feeds in a graphical grid, and had been a popular download prior to its disappearing. It was temporarily pulled following a complaint by the New York Times, alleging that the app infringed on the newspaper's rights.
A popular news reader for the iPad, Pulse, has been pulled from the App Store despite being featured in yesterday's WWDC keynote, reports note. Pulse displays a graphic grid of stories, making for a sometimes easier and more visually appealing presentation of RSS feeds. Since its release, the app has been downloaded over 35,000 times, and occasionally topped the list of paid titles at the App Store.
Apple fired a shot at Adobe on Thursday by posting a list of iPad ready sites. All of the pages support HTML5 for video when seen on the iPad and either show a special site without Adobe Flash or have already dropped Flash in favor of the plugin-free option. In addition to known sites like Vimeo and Virgin America, it also confirms that CNN, Flickr, the New York Times and several other major sites have made the switch.
Apple may be agreeing to give out subscriber info to get magazines in the iBookstore and on the iPad, a rumor on the latest episode of TWiT suggests. Controversial Mahalo head Jason Calacanis heard from a "major publisher" that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has acquiesced to giving out an unspecified amount of customer data after the publisher refused to offer subscription content without circulation info. It's not known if any other publishers put down a similar ultimatum.
The New York Times today launched a unique Times Reader deal to drive its online subscriptions. Those who subscribe to a $179 one-year subscription to Times Reader get $100 removed from the price of a Samsung Go netbook bought at the same time, lowering it to $280. The Times Reader app itself will also come preloaded on the portable and will push news whenever the PC is online.
