The hidden winner from the Apple vs Samsung decision

Apple walks away with a ruling that Samsung copied the iPhone. Samsung will appeal and look to have the decision mitigated as much as possible. And over in the corner, Microsoft and Nokia look at each other, nod their heads, and smile. This was a good court verdict for Windows Phone.
Round one of the Apple/Samsung patent dispute is over, with Apple in the ascendancy. The public perception is not going to be over certain models of older Samsung handsets, the exact patents and software methods used, or the differences between Samsung’s UI layer TouchWiz and Google’s default Android UI layer.
It’s going to be ‘Android copied the iPhone’.

Apple triumphs over Samsung in landmark patent case

Apple Inc scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung on Friday as a U.S. jury found the Korean company had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded the U.S. company $1.05 billion in damages.

The verdict -- which came after less than three days of jury deliberations -- could lead to an outright ban on sales of key Samsung products and will likely solidify Apple's dominance of the exploding mobile computing market.

Apple's victory is a big blow to Google, whose Android software powers the Samsung products that were found to infringe on Apple patents. Google and its hardware partners, including the company's own Motorola unit, could now face further legal hurdles in their effort to compete with the Apple juggernaut.

Samsung lawyers were grimfaced in the quiet but crowded San Jose courtroom as the verdict was read, and the company later put out a statement calling the outcome "a loss for the American consumer."

How to Block Useless Websites from your Google Search Results

Block Websites from appearing in your Google Search Results

Google has been getting better at identifying and removing spam websites from their search results pages but sometimes not-so-useful sites do manage to slip through the Google filters. What can you do to prevent such sites from appearing in your Google results?

Approach #1: Block Sites at the Browser Level 

Google offers an easy-to-use Chrome add-on called Personal Blocklist that lets you block entire web domains from showing up in your Google search results. If you spot any irrelevant website in search results pages, just click the block link (screenshot below) and all pages from that website will be hidden from your Google results forever.

The Chrome add-on implements client-side filtering – the blocked websites

are still getting served in Google search results as before and the add-on

simply hides them on your screen using CSS.

A limitation with this approach is that it works only inside Google Chrome. That is, if you are searching Google inside Firefox or maybe on your mobile phone, the site filters that you have created in Chrome won’t be available to you.

Animation firm brings C7 Chevrolet Corvette conjectures to life

There have been some exciting versions of the current C6 Corvette, including the Z06, ZR1, and for us regular workin’ Joes, the Grand Sport. But anticipation for the next-generation C7 Corvette has been running high, as evidenced by the off-the-charts pageviews we got from some spy shots of a mule testing a few months ago. Well, Trinity Animation, a graphical animation firm based in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, did one better by combining all the publicly-available knowledge, photos and renderings of the upcoming C7 and synthesizing all the information into a two and a half minute video giving us an idea of what it might look like in the flesh.