Technology News Gallery: July 12, 2011

- Facebook offers Skype-powered video calls
  Facebook’s new Video Calling service is powered by Skype; perhaps because of that, it’s simple and straightforward to use. You’ll first need to download a plugin by going to www.facebook.com/videocalling, clicking on the Get Started button, then on the Setup button. At that point, you’ll download and install a Java plugin.

- TouchPad enters the tablet wars
  HP’s launch of the TouchPad was relatively quiet compared to the iPad or PlayBook. Active apps are represented on the home page by a row of large rectangular icons (looking a bit like playing cards) that can be arranged in a horizontal row (where you see one full card and a half card on either side) or stacked. You swipe across the row to get to the “card” you want and tap on it to bring it to full screen. If you want to close the app, you can swipe toward the top to dismiss it.

- Lies in 140 characters
  The Twitter account of @foxnewspolitics was apparently hacked on July 4, 2011. Messages were posted to the account announcing the assassination of U.S. President Barack Obama.

- Take that, Turkey!
  Hacker group Anonymous said late Wednesday that its Antisec movement hacked and defaced Turkish government websites, in protest against new Internet filtering rules that come into force in the country in August. The group said it released data from about 100 websites in Turkey, and put up its logo and message on some 74 websites, criticizing what it described as greater control over the Internet in Turkey, including blocks on thousands of websites and blogs.

- Facebook and Twitter at your fingertip
  Acer announced Gateway laptops with keys that give one-touch access to social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Pressing the social-networking hot key on the new Gateway NV and ID series laptops activates an integrated widget through which customers can update their status, post messages or upload multimedia, or see updates from the feeds of friends.

- Yes, you can call it an App Store
  A California court denied Apple’s motion for a preliminary injunction on Amazon.com’s use of the term “Appstore” in a trademark infringement case on Wednesday. Apple has not established that its “App Store” mark is famous, in the sense of being “prominent” and “renowned,” and there is also evidence that the term “app store” is used by other companies as a descriptive term for a place to obtain software applications for mobile devices, District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California said in an 18-page order.

- It’s the end of the News of the World as we knew it
  James Murdoch, an executive with News Corp., closes the U.K.’s weekly News of the World admit allegations of staff members there hacking into mobile voice mail accounts of celebrities, the British royal family, and crime victims.

- Fight the PowerPoint
  Switzerland’s Anti-PowerPoint Party is seeking support for a national referendum to ban the use of PowerPoint and other presentation software in presentations throughout Switzerland. It also plans to present candidates for national elections in October. Anti-PowerPoint Party founder and president Matthias Poehm demonstrates his preferred alternative to presentation software: the flipchart.