In Skype 5.8 adds support for video calls in Full HD (provided that the webcam is supported by this permission). The connection speed and there must be no less than two megabits per second. Previously, the maximum possible resolution in Skype was 720p.   Users were able to call your friends izFacebook who are not registered in Skype. In addition, the program entered the function Push-to-Talk. It allows you to assign a “hot key” that will enable and disable the microphone during a call.   Subscribers paid service Skype Premium allowed to “share” the image with a personal screen with all members of the group call. To participate in the conference call can be up to 10 people.   Download the latest version of Skype is possible on site service.

In 2011, users “talked” with Skype more than 300 billion minutes. Over the past year, service was replaced by the owner (new owner of Skype has become the corporation Microsoft) and has provided its technology social network Facebook to launch domestic service video.

Sanctions in the case, which ran from 2006, supported by the Paris Court of Appeal.

Also in the list of penalty Clinique, Estee Lauder, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Issey Miyake, Clarins Fragrance Group, Hermes, Guerlain, LVMH Fragrance Brands, Sisheido Europe and Yves saint Laurent. The penalty imposed on distribution network Sephora, Marionnaud and Nocibe. Each of the companies to pay a fine of 90,000 euros to 4.1 million euros, depending on the length of participation in the cartel.

Company agreed with retailers, setting a fixed price and the size of the maximum discount from 1997 to 2000 in order to keep retail prices at the highest level, indicated prosecutors and the court found this assertion is proved.

The Case of the perfume cartel was considered the third time in the appellate court: the two previous decisions were appealed to the appeal, but in both cases, judges were asked to return it to the appellate authority.

In the original court decision, which concerned the conspiracy perfume companies, the representative of the court said that “concerns with the distributors conspired … to end any competition between sellers of their products.”

During the trial, documents were found in which the perfumers’ actions so threatened by commercial distributors who refused to accept their terms. ”

The largest fine – 10 million euros – imposed on the company LVMH Fragrance Brands, which owns Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Guerlain, Kenzo, Chaumet, and other famous brands. In the summer the company LVMH acquired a large manufacturer of jewelry Bulgari.

Ads on the penalty did not affect the investor sentiment LVMH: the day of announcement of court resheniyaaktsii rose by 0.61%, to 124.25 euros price. From the beginning, the paper companies rose by around 12 euros. The capitalization of the company – 61.84 billion euros.

Antimonopoly Service of the French are often faced with cartel collusion between companies in spring 2011 office was investigating collusion between the French and German manufacturers of flour, that set fixed prices in order to restrict trade between the countries.

Also, under the supervision of the French antitrust authorities got internet company Google. The service has accused the search engine in a dominant position in the national market of online advertising.

In 2010, France imposed a fine of eleven banks, including BNP Paribas and BPCE, to 384.9 million euros. Banks have agreed among themselves to charge illegal interest from consumers.

In 2008 the French exposed the cartel between steel producers: the 11 largest steel companies, including ArcelorMittal and Klöckner, paid 575 million euros for price fixing.

France’s anti-monopoly legislation applies some of the harshest penalties. The service has the right to impose a fine of up to 10% of worldwide turnover of companies for violations of competition law.

Price Range stake in Facebook is not declared. Earlier, sources close to the company and its advisors, was told that it could be worth $ 75-100 billion Underwriters accommodation – investment banks Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. Also in the prospectus does not reveal who the shareholders of the social network to sell its shares on the Stock Exchange and in what amount.

Facebook has two types of shares – shares of Class “A” (one vote per share) and Class «B» (10 votes per share). The main shareholder of Facebook – its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg – owns 28.2% shares of Class «B». But he also has a power of attorney to vote on other investors, so that the combined share of his “voices” – 57%. We co-founder Dustin Moskovitz social networks – 7.6% of the shares of class «B», an early investor in Facebook Peter Thiel of – 2.5%. 11.4% of the shares of class «B» – from James Breyer, a partner fund Accel Partners.

One of the major shareholders Facebook – Digital Sky Technologies Yuri Milner and Alisher Usmanov. Funds have DST – 5,4% of shares of class «B» and 31.4% of the shares of class “A”.

Facebook unveiled its prospectus in its financial results, which were impressive, but more modest projections, previously dubbed by analysts. So, Facebook in revenue in 2011 totaled $ 3.71 billion compared with $ 1.97 billion a year earlier. Analysts had expected earnings of $ 4.27 billion, a profit of Facebook in the past year amounted to $ 1 billion, up 65% more than in 2010 The main driver of revenue growth – advertising (banners and pages of the major brands). The number of advertisements in 2011 increased by 42%, and the price of one ad – 18% should be from the company’s prospectus for the IPO. Nevertheless, in the last year Facebook was able to diversify their income a bit. If in 2010 the company brought the ads 95% of revenue, in 2011 – already 85%. The rest – wages that bring the social network of its partners – the developers of games and other applications. Selling virtual items within the application brought Facebook $ 557 million revenue last year.

In the category of business risks Facebook brought it to compete with large companies such as Google, Microsoft and Twitter. In addition, Facebook has recognized that in some countries, its position is not as strong as we would like. In particular, according to the prospectus of the company, Facebook is competing with strong players – Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan, Orkut (owned by Google) in Brazil and “Twitter” in Russia.

According to its own data from Facebook is now around 845 million users worldwide, which is 39% more than in 2010 Every day, social networks go to the website 483 million people (an increase over the year by 48%), they upload photos to 250 million day and put 2.7 billion “Laikov” to the messages of his friends.

The site PocketNow, on mobile electronics, revealed details about the new mobile operating system of Microsoft, which will replace Windows Phone 7.

Editors of the site called “OSes” Windows Phone 8, stating that it will be code-named Apollo. It is, in contrast to WP7, the device will support multi-core processors, as well as four different screen resolution.

Apparatus for WP8, presumably, will have chips NFC (c Smartphone you can pay for goods and services), as well as slots for cards microSD.

Between 8 and Windows Phone Windows 8 will be a lot of similarities. Blogger Paul Tarrott (Paul Thurrott), regardless of PocketNow published a story about the new operating system, pointed out that the two systems will be common core. Note that the current WP7 core based on Windows CE.

However, applications written for WP7, will be run under WP8, writes Tarrott. It is also likely that the developers of applications for Windows 8 will be able to easily “transferred” their programs to WP8.

Windows Phone 8 will be supplied with the browser Internet Explorer 10. PocketNow said that it will be a function of data compression, as in Opera Mini, which will speed up loading of pages and save on the cost of mobile Internet. In addition, the OS will include Data Smart tool for monitoring the consumed bandwidth.

To synchronize the phone with your PC will be used by the client is not Zune PC, in Windows Phone 7 as another program whose name is unknown. Application of Skype sources give conflicting information: PocketNow believes that it will be built into WP8, and Tarrott believes that it will be released regardless of the OS.

And the site PocketNow and Paul Tarrott received information about the WP8 of the same video, recorded Vice President Joe Belfiore Microsoft (Joe Belfiore). Roller was designed for leaders Nokia; how he ended up in foreign hands, it is not clear. TechCrunch points out that the Windows Phone 8 will be released in the last quarter of 2012.

Mobile Windows Phone 7 was introduced in 2010 and in 2011, Microsoft released its updated version, code-named Mango. Apparatus for producing WP7 several companies, including Samsung , HTC, LG and Nokia. The latter entered into an agreement with Microsoft and elected WP7 “basic” system for their devices. The share of the operating system on the market, according to various estimates, ranging from 1 to 2 percent.

Internet giant Google after service Twitter will be able to block access to individual blogs created on the service Blogger, at the request of governments around the world, writes the BBC.

To introduce this innovation possible changes in redirection service. If the user tries to enter a blog that does not relate to its current location, determined by IP-address, servers Blogger redirect it to a domain associated with the country where it is, Google wrote in a memorandum. For example, a user in Australia will be redirected to the blog address [blogname]. Blogspot.com.au.

In this regard, Google will be able to lock users to a single country access to a specific blog, if the government of this country will do a formal request to the lock. At the same time other users around the world will still be able to read such a blog.

Last month, the microblogging service Twitter announced a similar innovation. The site is now able to hide certain content – tweets, or entire accounts – for users in certain countries at the request of the authorities of these countries. Administration’s decision drew sharp criticism of Twitter users and market experts, who accuse the service of censorship.

At the same time, Google reserves for the blog readers the ability to disable call forwarding. To do this you need to format a link to your blog by adding initials NCR (No Country Redirect – English. “Cancel redirect to the country”). In formatted as a link to your blog should look like “Error! Invalid object hyperlinks. ” And it will always direct the user to the American version of the service.

According to the BBC, the changes take effect in Australia, New Zealand and India, however, says the publication, Google plans to introduce them all over the world. Google believes that this measure will allow the service to operate in accordance with local legal requirements, while maintaining access to content in those countries where it is lawful. Previously, Google had already applied a similar approach to its other services – for example, the version of the search engine for the pro-Nazi Germany Google.de hide content from search results.

In the first half 2011 net loss amounted to 136.15 Panasonic billion yen (1.7 billion dollars). Thus, the daily losses of close to 10 million dollars. As the Panasonic 2 February, over three quarters of the loss of the corporation amounted to 333.8 billion yen.

The Japanese company’s negative financial results explain the consequences of the earthquake in March 2011 and led to the catastrophe at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, as well as last year’s floods in Thailand, where there are many plants of large corporations in Japan.

In the video, which advertises Samsung tablet with wireless internet access Wi-Fi from Hot, four actors from the popular television show Asfur women dress up and come to Iran. In one of the cafe, they meet an agent “Mossad,” Israel’s political intelligence. Bored agent fun that watching TV series on his plate. He begins to show the tablet disguised actors, and at this moment one of them opens one of the applications on the tablet, and detonates a nuclear station behind them. At the end of the video voice-over says: “How? Another mysterious explosion in Iran?”

Head of the Committee on Energy Iranian Parliament (Majlis) Fathipur Arsalan said that Iran is in the video is presented as a primitive society, and Israel – “a powerful state that can easily destroy Iran’s nuclear power plants or kill the nuclear scientists of the country.” The official also said that Samsung has decided to forget about his extensive trade with Iran and has released this video in favor of Israel. He added that the formal apology from the company will not be enough, and that the company must answer for the offensive video.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that in response to accusations by Iran, Samsung said it has no relation to the shooting of this movie. The company has condemned the ad appeared and stated that the responsibility for its creation lies with the company’s Hot, and the Israeli division of Samsung.

January 11 in Tehran, an Iranian terrorist was killed by a physicist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who worked on the country’s nuclear programs. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei accused of involvement in the explosion of American and Israeli intelligence services.

A group of Japanese researchers from the Bureau of Igarashi Design Interface Project provided stereo earphones, “Ear” with no distinction between “right” and “left” ears, reports New Scientist.

One of the “ear” is equipped with a sensor that measures the distance to the edge of the auricle user. Based on the measurements it is concluded that, in any of the ear (right or left) is one liner, and the audio channels are distributed accordingly.

The device is also able to detect a situation where a pair of headphones used by two people. In this case, the channels are combined, and each user hears the “full” version of the musical work.

The development is called Universal Earphones (“Universal headphone”). Tell you more about it, the authors are planning a conference Intelligent User Interfaces, to be held in mid-February in Lisbon.

The plans also include production of the founders of headphones equipped with conductivity detector of the skin. When the user removes them from the ears, the music will be put on pause.

In late January, Google announced that the first of March to bring together different services, privacy policies into one document. It will include an item that allows corporations to use the data provided by the user of one service in its other products.

For those who remained dissatisfied with these changes and looking for a alternative, Microsoft described the benefits of its products. Thus, the mail service Hotmail and “cloud” office suite Office 365 does not use the contents of the letters and documents for the selection of advertisements specified in a statement. Similar products of Google, by contrast, are based in the selection of advertisements on the email correspondence and other data users.

Microsoft also offers a look at your search engine Bing and the browser Internet Explorer. The latter, according to the blog, has the function of protection against tracking of user actions by third-party Internet resources. This “sin”, in particular, the social network Facebook, which collects information by clicking “Like” on the sites.

In addition to writing a blog, Microsoft has decided to publish relevant advertisements in several newspapers, indicated in a statement. The ads, in part: “Each item of data that Google collects and connects with you, increases your value to advertisers.”

Google innovations have caused Internet users a mixed reaction. Some have expressed concern about this tendency to “personalize” services of the company. In response, the company said that the use of a large part of its products is not necessary to enter into your account, and in addition, users can use separate accounts for each of the services.

Britney Spears will not make music in 2012. Indeed, the young woman decided to take a year off to enjoy family life. It is her manager, Larry Rudolph, who announced the news on his Facebook. However, again with the singer in 2013. After traveling the world for six months with the Femme Fatale Tour, the young woman pulled out a live DVD for a souvenir of his shows. A gift season for his fans.

Britney Spears is going to rest in 2012. The young woman has just become engaged to her partner Jason Trawick and should prepare for marriage in the coming weeks. The couple will unite probably later this year. Meanwhile, they will be able to spend Christmas and New Year together with their families. On December 10, the singer gave his last concert and is now free to do what she wants. A year that ends in style for Britney Spears. See you in 2013!