Google cuts 10 operations

Google CEO Larry Page continued shedding marginal operations from the Web giant, shuttering 10 different businesses, including everything from social search to desktop software to Web security, notes Cnet.

In revealing the news, Google senior VP Alan Eustace called it a “fall spring-cleaning”. Since taking over as CEO in January, Page has moved to streamline Google's operations, pulling back from niche businesses in order to focus on the biggest bets. Eustace wrote that the new cuts reflect that strategy.

“This will make things much simpler for our users, improving the overall Google experience,” Eustace wrote. “It will also mean we can devote more resources to high-impact products.”

A former teacher turned radio commentator and a math tutor who lives with his mother sit in a prison in southern Mexico, facing possible 30-year sentences for terrorism and sabotage in what may be the most serious charges ever brought against anyone using a Twitter social network account, says the Associated Press.

Prosecutors say the defendants helped cause a chaos of car crashes and panic as parents in the Gulf Coast city of Veracruz rushed to save their children because of false reports that gunmen were attacking schools.

Gerardo Buganza, interior secretary for Veracruz state, compared the panic to that caused by Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of 'The War of the Worlds'. But he said the fear roused by that account of a Martian invasion of New Jersey “was small compared to what happened here”.

Some of the biggest names in the technology sector have been sued by a Canadian-based holding company over claims the firms are violating its wireless patents, reports V3.co.uk.

WiLAN has filed suit against nine firms including Apple, HP, Dell, Alcatel-Lucent, Kyocera and HTC America claiming the companies are in violation of a pair of patents the company holds for wireless broadband communications.

According to WiLAN, one of the patents covers HSPA and CDMA networks while the second addresses WiFi and LTE communications.

Self-confessed tweeting fanatic, All Blacks winger Cory Jane, said he was suffering severe withdrawal pangs after the team management imposed a Twitter ban until the end of the Rugby World Cup, says AFP.

Although he's stopped sending messages, Jane said he's constantly checking his account.

“I'm battling. I'm checking it like every 10 minutes just to see what people are writing and what's going on. It's starting to hurt but rules are rules,” he said.