Apple sued over Tiger branding

Computer seller Tiger Direct filed a last-minute lawsuit against Apple yesterday over its use of the word `Tiger`, The Inquirer reports.

The company alleges Apple`s use of Tiger has negatively impacted its ability to market its products to customers since Apple Tiger talk tweaked search engine results.

Tiger Direct says it owns trademarks on the names Tiger, Tiger Direct and TigerSoftware, and claims Apple`s branding of its new operating system is "causing confusion, mistake and deception among the general purchasing public".

Tiger Direct is seeking an injunction against the Apple Tiger, although time is running out.

UK firm DSP Design has made a PC that gets electric power via a network cable rather than through a wall socket, BBC reports.

Before now, power via a network system has only been used for devices such as wireless access points, CCTV cameras and VOIP telephone handsets.

DSP expects its new PC to find uses where it was hard to lay any kind of cable other than computer network cables.

The net-powered PC has come out of a project to create specifications for powering almost any kind of computer hardware through Ethernet cables.

Power-over-Ethernet could end up being a universal power supply for much computer hardware as the cables and connectors for it are the same all over the world. By contrast, power sockets and plugs differ by country.

The migration of the international telecommunications industry to voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) will reach its peak between 2010 and 2014, TechWeb reports.

This is according to a survey conducted by hi-tech market research firm In-Stat, which also found that consumers and small businesses will flock to VOIP over the next four years, with incumbent carriers lagging about five years behind.

The report also predicts that incumbent carriers will increasingly opt for PSTN replacement to lower operating costs, as VOIP competition and demand increases over the next five years. The time frame for each carrier`s move will depend on that carrier`s strategy for migration to the next-generation network.

In-Stat forecasts network migration for each incumbent operator, worldwide, leading to the quantification of global VOIP-enabled lines from 2005-2019.