Google snaps up GrandCentral

Google has acquired GrandCentral Communications, a California-based start-up firm that provides services for managing users' voice communications, reports The Money Times.

With its latest move, the Internet powerhouse is apparently boosting its aim to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful by adding GrandCentral's communication services.

On its official blog, posted by Google's product manager Wesley Chan, the search giant confirmed its acquisition of GrandCentral. However, it did not specify the financial terms of the deal.

AllOfMP3.com, the long-time bane of the music industry, has finally had its operational rug pulled out from beneath it, reports the BBC.

Self-proclaimed as the second-biggest provider of music downloads beyond the massive pull of Apple's iTunes, the contentious service maintained its legitimacy under Russian law despite being targeted by several copyright lawsuits issued by music companies in the US and UK, says Monsters and Critics.

"AllOfMP3.com violated copyright law in Russia and internationally by ripping off artists and creators, taking music that it had no right to reproduce and selling it worldwide," commented John Kennedy, president of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries. "If this is the end of AllOfMP3.com, this is good news."

With Hollywood studios still split over competing formats for high-definition DVDs, Warner Bros will delay the launch of a dual-format disc until next year, reports Forbes.

The studio, a unit of Time Warner, introduced its Total HD disc earlier this year as a compromise between the incompatible Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats. Total HD discs contain a Blu-ray copy of a movie on one side and an HD-DVD version on the other.

But the concept has yet to gain traction because only two studios produce DVDs in both formats - Warner Bros and Paramount Pictures, a division of Viacom.

In what could be a victory for Microsoft and a blow to the open source community, the state of Massachusetts has added Microsoft's Office Open XML to its list of potential standards it will allow for government use, says Tech News World.

The inclusion of Office Open XML came in the latest version of Massachusetts' Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM), a regularly updated state list of permitted standards. The new ETRM includes "Ecma-376 Office Open XML Formats (Open XML)" as a potentially acceptable open format.

The "Ecma" refers to Ecma International, an industry standardisation organisation that standardised Office Open XML in December.