In total, Apple is being sued by 27,612 people in South Korea. They are suing Apple for privacy violations, related to the collection of location information on the iPhone handset. Each is seeking 1 million won in damages, or about $932. Attorney Kim Hyeong-seok filed a lawsuit against Apple earlier this was and was awarded 1 million won in damages. Apple's devices stored information on nearby cell towers and WiFi hotspots for up to a year, without users' consent and even if location tracking features had been switched off. It was heavily criticized by privacy groups, who said the information could be used to trace the movements of an iPhone user. Apple has not commented on the South Korean lawsuit.

In June, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled plans to build a new 3.1 million square foot "Spaceship" campus in Cupertino. The Cupertino mayor said later that month that there was little to no chance that city officials would reject the plans, and they have not. The building will still be required to pass environmental checks and pass a public hearing, likely early next year. In his introduction in June, Jobs said:
“It’s a pretty amazing building. It’s a little like a spaceship landed. It’s got this gorgeous courtyard in the middle… It’s a circle. It’s curved all the way around. If you build things, this is not the cheapest way to build something. There is not a straight piece of glass in this building. It’s all curved. We’ve used our experience making retail buildings all over the world now, and we know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use. And, we want to make the glass specifically for this building here. We can make it curve all the way around the building… It’s pretty cool.”

This weekend, Cupertino has released the full plans, with pictures, of the Spaceship. The location will house an Office, Research and Development Building, a 1,000 seat Corporate Auditorium, a Corporate Fitness Center, 300,000 feet of Research Facilities, a Central Plant, a 150-acre interior courtyard and be home to 12,000 employees.
 

Hulu, the on-demand video site owned by Disney (ABC), News Corp. (Fox), Comcast (NBCU) and private equity firm Providence went up for auction last week, and initial bids are expected by the end of next week. The owners are currently looking to sell the site and its licenses for $1.5 billion, although some companies have offered to pay more if other conditions are met. For example, Yahoo is willing to pay $2 billion if Hulu guarantees them 4-5 years of exclusive access to the media content. Hulu, on the other hand, seems to be only willing to give 2 years of exclusivity, albeit with 5 years guaranteed access to the content. Additionally, News Corp. has said it would like to keep a stake in the company, which should reduce the auction price. Amazon, Apple, Yahoo, Google and DirecTV have all been said to be potential suitors.
 

Known manufacturer of graphics chips and of lately SOC systems for mobile devices, predicts that it will have better sales than analysts expected. Nvidia said it expects Q3 sales volume to increase for 4 to 6% compared to Q2 figures. This would mean that the volume of sales will jump to the $1.08 billion, while Wall Street analysts expect $1.05$.  There are several reasons for this, starting with the fact that almost all the largest mobile phone are buying Tegra systems for their devices. One of the biggest surprise is Samsung decision to build Galaxy R smartphone using Tegra platform 2. This is especially interesting knowing that Samsung has its own production of SOC systems, with excellent performance and low power consumption, used for their Galaxy and Galaxy II product lines. Reasoning behind this decision is not known, with speculations that it is cheaper for Samsung to use the Tegra line, or that they can’t manufacture enough of its system for all of their devices. Increased volume of sales in the desktop graphics is particularly surprising with and a bit ironic. It was for decades been the core of Nvidia business, but its CEO Jen Hsun Huang wants to reduce the company's dependence on that segment. When you look at the global sales structure, you can see that the fast growing markets of China and India are most responsible for good results in desktop graphics, as the EU and the U.S. have stagnated.
 

While patent war between Apple and Samsung is escalating, Sony Corp. and LG Electronics have made peace. They reached an agreement that settles all their court disputes. For long time two companies  were accusing each other for patent infringement in Europe and US including ones related to TV, Blu-ray players and phones. LG asked the International Trade Commission to ban Sony from importing Playstation 3 and Bravia TV into the US, and Sony complained about some LG’s handsets entering US. Similar situation was in Europe. Now, they signed a cross-license agreement which gives them access to some of the other one's patent portfolio. The companies decided their shareholders don’t need to know financial details of their settlement.

Encouraged by the increasing amount of mobile devices available and incoming, the USB 3.0 Promoter Group has started developing a new power delivery specification which will enable those devices to get charged, via USB, a lot faster. Set to co-exist with the USB Battery Charging 1.2 specification and existing USB bus-powered applications, the new power delivery specs will allow up to 100W to be pumped out through a USB connector, and will work both with USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. Moreover, the specs enable voltage and current values to be negotiated over the USB power pins, and they ensure a switchable source of power delivery without changing cable direction. For example, charging the battery of a notebook PC, or simply powering that notebook PC while actively using the USB data connection, would be possible. Conceivably, a notebook PC could rely solely on a USB connection for its source of power. The USB Power Delivery specification will be reviewed in Q4 and should be offered to USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) for publication in early 2012. This points out to a 2012 arrival of supporting hardware.