Articles by David Vranicar

Apple's new map system on iOS 6, which replaced Google Maps, has drawn plenty of criticism from pundits Now, it's the subject of a warning by Australian police. are warning drivers to be wary of Apple's new maps system, which shows their fair town as being in the middle of Murray Sunset National Park....

Foreign telecommunications companies, including China-based Huawei, have helped Iran collect incredibly detailed data on its citizens' telephone and Internet use, Reuters reported According to an investigative report, a partner of Huawei offered to sell the "Huawei-developed 'Lawful Interception Solution'" to MobinNet, Iran's first wireless broadba...

New smartphone regulations in China have caused concern among technology companies, according to The Wall Street Journal The regulations, which would "add a new layer of licensing and testing for smartphones," were filed to a WTO database of technical barriers to trade. They were submitted by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ...

The iTunes store has opened up in Russia and a slew of other countries that were previously left off its coverage map According to Cnet, the 56-country expansion nearly doubles the number of countries in which iTunes is now available. Turkey, India and South Africa were also part of the launch, which Apple says will feature local and international ...

The UN-sponsored World Conference on International Telecommunications, which will feature government regulators from 193 countries, opened Monday, prompting fears that the meeting could ultimately damage Internet freedom According to the BBC, the UN's International Telecommunications Union is trying to allay concerns that the conference will result...

Internet and mobile phone service has been cut off throughout war-ravaged Syria According to the BBC, the Syrian government blamed terrorists for the outage. Activists, on the other hand, have warned that Internet and phone blackouts commonly precede military operations in isolated areas....

Germany's parliament on Thursday began discussing legislation that would allow the nation's news publishers to charge search engines for displaying links to, and snippets of, news articles. Before debate began, Google launched a very public campaign on its German site asking the public to oppose the legislation According to the Financial Times, the...

China's state-run media could be in the early stages of a wave of attacks against U.S. telecommunications giant Cisco, according to Tech In Asia A pair of Chinese media outlets -- China Economy and Informatization and the Caijing National Weekly -- singled out Cisco on the same day, calling for the company to be investigated. According to Tech In A...

In both 2011 and 2012, U.S. authorities seized domains of streaming sites the week of the Super Bowl. The logic, apparently, was that the Super Bowl was the mother of all illegal viewing events, so it figured to be a good time to knock these sites offline The Super Bowl might yet be months away, but something similar has happened....

As many as 10,000 Twitter users in the United Kingdom face the threat of legal action because of their tweets regarding recent sexual abuse allegations According to The New York Times, the tweeters could be in trouble because of comments -- either posted to Twitter or forwarded to other people -- in which they refer to a BBC report that incorrectly...

The committee reviewing applications for dozens of new top-level domains has publicized more than 250 objections to dozens of them, along with the reasons for objecting The Internet Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers' Government Advisory Committee, which represents about 50 governments worldwide, has listed the objections on its website....

Legendary Australian rock band AC/DC, which had long been queasy about digital formats, has released its music on Apple's iTunes store According to the BBC, AC/DC previously asserted that it wouldn't make individual songs available digitally because each song was part of an album. And the band didn't want to break its art into pieces -- or someth...

More than 44 million hacking attempts have been made on Israel's government websites since last week, when it unleashed 20 air strikes and killed Hamas' top military commander, the Israeli government announced Sunday According to Reuters, Israel's finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, said that only one hack was successful, although the affected site w...

Military strikes between Israeli forces and Gazan militants have been particularly intense in recent days, and that aggression has spilled over onto Twitter The verified Twitter account of the Israeli Defense Forces has been tweeting a running commentary about its campaign against militants in Gaza. Militants in Gaza -- both literally and figurativ...

eBay is taking another stab at the Chinese market According to Tech In Asia, eBay's new Chinese site, which is a joint venture with luxury retailed xiu.com, is "low-key but stylish" and focuses on mid-range to high-end products such as clothing, handbags and accessories. Banana Republic, Clinique and Guess are among the estimated 5,000 brands alrea...

A committee of British Members of Parliament laid into executives from Amazon and Google on Monday during a hearing over creative tax accounting practices According to The Guardian, the execs were accused of diverting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of UK profits to "secret tax havens" in an effort to avoid paying British taxes....

Western media's reporting distorts China's image, making it appear less willing to fight copyright piracy than it actually is, China's top intellectual property official said Sunday during the country's Communist Party Congress, according to Reuters China has for years been regarded as a hotbed for intellectual property theft. In April, for instanc...

Kim Dotcom, founder of the now-defunct file-sharing site Megaupload, has long been in hot water with the big, huge United States. Now he's irked the tiny, little nation of Gabon According to the BBC, Gabon has blocked the Megaupload successor, which Dotcom announced last week, and which is supposed to launch on Jan. 20....

The European Commission has decided to accept an e-book pricing settlement, according to Reuters The settlement includes Apple and four publishers -- Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette and Macmillan's parent company, Holtzbrinck. The ruling, which has not yet been confirmed by the EC, is a win for Amazon and its quest to sell e-books more ch...

Google Maps' mobile app is losing market share to local competition in China, according to Tech In Asia Statistics from the third quarter show that Google Maps has lost almost half its market share since the second quarter -- from 17.5 percent to 9.5 percent -- and fell to No. 6 from No. 2 among mobile map apps....