france

Twitter accounts that were either critical or made fun of French President Nicolas Sarkozy were suspended this past week--causing some to cry censorship. Now Twitter has responded, be it indirectly, by implying that these accounts violated either its parody or spam policy.

This debacle began when Sarkozy created his first Twitter account last week and hours later announced that he was running for re-election. Shortly after, French digital-rights watchdog Internet Without Borders noticed that three accounts, @ForteFrance, @MaFranceForte, and @SarkozyCaSuffit, had been suspended and one account, @_nicolassarkozy, didn't have any new tweets since the president's announcement.

Without … Read more

Twitter has come under fire from a French digital-rights group over claims it censored accounts that parodied the country's president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

The trouble started last week when Sarkozy created his first Twitter account just hours before he announced plans to run for re-election. Afterward, according to the French digital-rights watchdog Internet Without Borders, Twitter censored four accounts that had been in existence for quite some time and that parodied Sarkozy.

Three of the accounts--@ForteFrance, @MaFranceForte, and @SarkozyCaSuffit--have been suspended as of this writing. The fourth, @_nicolassarkozy, is currently still accessible on Twitter but hasn't been updated … Read more

PARIS--Free, a French company that already shook up the Internet service provider business here, just shook up the mobile phone service business, too.

Last week, Chief Executive Xavier Niel took to Twitter to announce a service plan that gets subscribers unlimited calls, unlimited text and picture messages, and data transfer of up to 3GB per month, after which download rates are throttled.

One big departure is the price: 20 euros per month, or $25.45. An even bigger departure: there's no long-term contract. And free international calls (though only to some countries, and not with cheap international roaming) … Read more

Apple has once again reached out to the greener side of our sympathies, this time by implementing its recycling program for iPads and iPhones in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

The recycling program, extended to iPads and iPhones in the United States this summer, allows customers with older-model iOS devices to send them in to Apple and receive an Apple gift card in return for the remaining value of the device.

In Germany, France, and the U.K., customers will get a direct deposit into their bank accounts for the value as opposed to a gift card, according to … Read more

Someone in the home of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, a strong proponent of anti-piracy legislation, has been using BitTorrent to download pirated versions of music and movies, according to a French blog.

An associate of the Nikopik Web site found IP addresses allocated to the Elysee Palace, Sarkozy's residence, on YouHaveDownloaded.com, a Russian-based site that tracks public downloads from BitTorrent.

It appears that copies of movies including "The Tower Heist," "Change-Up," and "Arthur Christmas," as well as the "The Beach Boys Greatest Hits" album were among six downloads linked to … Read more

Just in time for Christmas, France's Aldebaran Robotics has upgraded its Nao humanoid robot, making it better at obeying orders for the big cleanup.

Nao Next Gen is the latest version of the popular research robot, and it's looking more and more lifelike.

The 23-inch droid has been outfitted with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and two HD cameras linked to a field-programmable gate array for faster processing of both video streams. Intel Capital led a $13 million investment in Aldebaran earlier this year.

It also boasts better speech recognition with a program called Nuance, allowing Nao to pick out individual words in a conversation. … Read more

Another day, another ruling in the ongoing Samsung-Apple saga.

This time, French court Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris has denied Samsung's request to ban the iPhone 4S within France. According to Le Figaro newspaper reporter Benjamin Ferran, who was in attendance at the hearing, the judge called Samsung's request "disproportionate." The judge also ordered Samsung to pay 100,000 euros ($134,000) for Apple's legal fees.

"The Paris Court of First Instance has denied Samsung's preliminary injunction request," a Samsung representative told CNET in a statement. "We will review the … Read more

Would you stand next to a 20-foot tower built entirely by flying robots? People in France have been doing just that.

With no apparent fear for the busy little cyber-creatures, visitors to the FRAC Centre in Orleans are craning their necks to take in "Flight Assembled Architecture," an installation that links robotics and architecture and is billed as the first of its kind.

Four quadrocopters have been lifting 1,500 blocks and precisely placing them to build a 20-foot tower, which is a model of a futuristic city that could house 30,000 people. They fly autonomously but place each block according to the blueprints. … Read more

Here we go again. Instead of launching October 7 as has been rumored many times over, Apple's new iPhone may actually debut about a week later on October 15, at least according to the CEO of France's largest telecom.

Chatting with French reporters at a business conference this week, France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard said that he had already gotten the inside scoop on the new phone's launch date, according to tech news site TechRadar.

"If we believe what we have been told, the iPhone 5 will be released on 15 October," Richard proclaimed without … Read more