Last week, technology news website CNET reported that an Apple employee lost at a tequila bar in San Francisco in July a prototype of iPhone 5, a new version of the company’s mobile phone expected to be released in September or October.

The San Francisco Police Department said in a press release that after the missing device was tracked using GPS technology to a San Francisco house, four police officers and two Apple employees visited the home.

“Apple employees called Mission police station directly, wanting assistance in tracking down a lost item,” the statement said.

“The two Apple employees met with the resident and then went into the house to look for the lost item,” it said. “The Apple employees did not find the lost item and left the house.”

Police did not say exactly what Apple had lost, but media reports found the file of San Francisco police’s Friday press release about the hunt was named “iphone5.doc” — an apparent hint of the new mobile device.

A 22-year-old resident of the home, identified by SF Weekly as Sergio Calderon, told the newspaper that he has visited the bar where the phone was reportedly lost but he did not have the device.

Calderon said the search of his house took place in July when police had traced the phone to the house using satellite positioning software on the device, but did not find anything in the house.

Apple has declined to comment on the matter.

Last year, an employee of the company lost a prototype iPhone 4 in a Redwood City bar before it was released. The details of the phone ware then unveiled by technology blog Gizmodo.

Criminal charges have been filed against the man who found the prototype and another who brokered the deal to sell it to Gizmodo. Both men pleaded not guilty on Thursday. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2011-09/06/c_131103018.htm

Nintendo chief executive Satoru Iwata unveiled the new system at the opening of the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on Tuesday, saying, “For Nintendo, the goal of innovation is to serve every player.”

Wii U takes up Nintendo’s record innovation with a controller pad that combines a 6.2-inch touch-screen with toggles and buttons.

For the first time, videogames can appear on TV in high-definition with a Nintendo device, and can be displayed simultaneously on the controller pad, but with different points of view. Some games can be played solely on the controller.

The new Wii U is expected to hit the market between April and December in 2012 to battle with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3. The price was not yet announced.

Major videogame studios such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, THQ and Square Enix are already on board crafting games for the Wii U, according to Nintendo North America president Reggie Fils-Aime.

Nintendo first unveiled the Wii console in 2006, opening videogames to moms, seniors, and other “casual” players with the introduction of a motion-sensing controller. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2011-06/08/c_13916540.htm

The security enhancements came on Wednesday immediately after Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s fan page was hacked.

A bogus message was posted on Zuckerberg’s page, calling Facebook to become a “social business” instead of a for-profit company, followed by a link to a Wikipedia page that explains the term.

The message was taken down quickly, but media reports say more than 1,800 Facebook users gave a thumb-up to the post by clicking a “like” button under it.

Facebook announced the new security features include the availability of one-time passwords that U.S. Facebook members could use on public computers.

Users in the U.S. sending a mobile phone text message reading “otp” to 32665 can get a response containing a password that works only once and expires in 20 minutes.

Facebook will also enable members remotely check whether they are still logged onto the service at other computers and then sign out from afar.

Recently Facebook has drawn increasing scrutiny for its security controls. On Monday, French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s Facebook account was hacked with a false message saying he would not run for re-election in 2012. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2011-01/27/c_13709923.htm

The Windows Phone 7 is seen at the Windows Phone 7 launch news conference in New York October 11, 2010. ©Reuters

BEIJING, Jan. 27 — Software giant Microsoft said on Wednesday it sold more than 2 million copies of its new Windows Phone 7 operating system to handset makers in 2010.

That number represents the software units licensed to mobile handset makers such as Samsung, LG and HTC, not necessarily consumers.

A Wall Street Journal report said this figure is neither high nor low enough to declare the product a success or failure.

The new phone software was launched last October, and the company shipped 1.5 million units to phone makers and mobile operators late December.

Microsoft said early research suggested that 93 percent of customers are satisfied with the Windows Phone 7 devices, and 90 percent would recommend it to others.

The handset software is expected to counter Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android system. Last week Apple declared 16.2 million iPhones were sold in the fourth quarter of last year. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2011-01/27/c_13709412.htm

Carol Bartz, chief executive of Internet company Yahoo Inc, is shown in this undated publicity photo released on January 13, 2009. ©Reuters

BEIJING, Jan. 26 — Yahoo Inc.’s quarterly earnings doubled in the last three months of 2010 despite its sales fell 4 percent, the Internet group announced Tuesday.

The company’s revenue fell to 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in the fourth quarter of 2010, but its profit doubled to 312 million dollars.

The results raised the doubt among many investors on whether Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is the right person for the job.

Bartz signed a four-year contract with Yahoo as chief executive in January 2009, after the company’s several years of sluggish results.

Yahoo has struggled to boost earnings through layoffs and other cost-cutting measures, but the company’s revenue has fallen since Bartz’s arrival.

“We just completed a very encouraging quarter and year for Yahoo, where we saw our plans to turn round the company gain momentum,” Bartz defended herself in a conference call on Tuesday.

At the same time, Yahoo also announced that it will lay off 100 to 150 employees, roughly 1 percent of its 13,600 people on the payroll at the end of last December.

With a falling revenue, Yahoo has in fact already laid off more than 700 workers in the past two months.

Yahoo shares fell 38 cents, or 2.4 percent, to 15.64 dollars Tuesday after the results were released. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2011-01/26/c_13708005.htm

The hiring plan was announced on Tuesday by Google’s senior vice president of engineering and research Alan Eustace in a blog post.

Google, which had 24,400 people at the end of 2010, hired more than 4,500 in 2010. The company once added 6,131 employees in 2007.

Analysts say Google are trying to fight off rivals like Facebook by this hiring spree to improve services such as mobile computing, display advertising and video.

Internet social network Facebook has been growing rapidly in recent years. Now about 200 of Facebook’s roughly 2,000 employees used to work at Google.

Google’s expansion was announced on the same day when Yahoo Inc. cut 100 to 150 workers, or about 1 percent, amid pressures from falling revenue.

One week ago, Google announced that its co-founder Larry Page will take over as the company’s CEO on April 4 this year.

Google earned 8.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2010, far more than its Internet peers. The company is expected to see another 22 percent increase in revenue this year. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2011-01/26/c_13707820.htm

David Barksdale, a 27-year-old engineer in Google’s Seattle offices, used his position to break into four teenagers’ Gmail and Google Voice accounts, according to media reports.

Google confirmed that it dismissed the engineer in July, but declined to provide details about the incident.

“We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google’s strict internal privacy policies. We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls,” Bill Coughran, Google’s senior vice president of engineering, said in a statement.

“That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems, if we are to operate them properly — which is why we take any breach so seriously,” he added.

Analysts say the privacy breach comes at an awkward time for Google. Recently U.S. federal regulators and lawmakers are weighing whether to make Internet privacy rules more stringent — a move opposed by Google and other Internet companies that argue the industry can regulate itself.

Google previously said in a white paper that the company’s hiring process includes criminal background checks. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2010-09/16/c_13514935.htm

A man tries out Apple’s new iPad after its launch event in San Francisco, California, the United States, Jan. 27, 2010. ©Xinhua

BEIJING, Sept. 14 — Apple Inc. plans to begin official sales of its iPad tablet computer this Friday in China, the company announced on Monday.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the Wi-Fi models of the iPad will be available to customers through two Apple stores in China and through authorized resellers.

The beginning of the sales will start on Friday at 10 a.m., according to the newspaper.

The iPad’s price will be higher in China than in the United States. It will charge from 3,988 yuan (about 590 U.S. dollars), for the 16-gigabyte iPad, to 5,588 yuan (about 827 U.S. dollars), for the 64-gigabyte model, the newspaper said.

The prices of the two models in the U.S. are 499 and 699 U.S. dollars respectively.

Before this users in China had been buying iPads brought into the country by traders on much higher prices. The Wall Street Journal said they run as much as 1,000 U.S. dollars.

The iPad first went on sale in the U.S. on April 3 this year, and became available internationally in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and Britain on May 28.

On June 21, Apple announced it had sold three million iPads worldwide. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2010-09/14/c_13493792.htm

Setting out from St John’s, Newfoundland, the 30-member crew will spend more than 20 days at sea, hovering above the site where the fabled ship went down almost 100 years ago.

Unlike previous trips to the wreck for the sake of adventure or exploration, this voyage is being carried out for scientific purposes.

Instead of stripping the wreckage, the trip will include archeologists who will carefully document and map the site for the first time as a step toward creating a long-term archaeological management plan for it.

American company RMS Titanic, sponsor of the voyage, said the expedition would use sonar technology and high-resolution optical video and imaging to document the wreck site, in what arguably will be the most technologically-advanced scientific expedition to Titanic ever mounted.

Christopher Davino, president of RMS Titanic, said the goal of the expedition is to “create the most detailed portrait of Titanic’s wreck site to date.”

Davino said the expedition team “will be using some of the most advanced technology available to create a portrait of the ship unlike any that has been created before — virtually raising Titanic and sealing her current state forever in the minds and hearts of humanity.”

The Titanic, an “unsinkable” luxury passenger ship, hit an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage in April, 1912, killing 1,522 people.

After decades of searching, the wreckage of the Titanic was discovered in 1985 some four kilometers deep in the sea. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2010-08/23/c_13457869.htm

Devine, 37, was charged in a federal grand jury indictment last Wednesday with 23 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and accepting kickbacks. Each count may bring him a 20-year prison sentence.

In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Kane objected to releasing Devine on bail, saying there is a risk he will try to flee.

There are no bond conditions that can assure his appearance for trial, Kane told U.S. Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd, who set a bail hearing for Aug. 18.

Both Kane and Devine’s lawyer declined to comment after court.

In a separate civil lawsuit, Apple accused Devine of receiving more than 1 million U.S. dollars in payments and bribes over several years from companies that supplied iPhone and iPod accessories.

An employee at Apple since 2005, Devine has used his position at the technology company to obtain confidential data that he shared with Apple suppliers to help them negotiate favorable contracts with the company, Apple’s lawsuit said.

The alleged scheme began to unravel this April, when Apple launched an internal investigation and found a cache of emails between Devine and the suppliers.

Devine used a chain of foreign and domestic bank accounts, along with one front company, to receive payments, according to court papers. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2010-08/17/c_13448610.htm