france

Google is making Google Play's music and movies available in Europe later this month.

From November 13, owners of a Google TV set-top box or enabled television in the U.K., Germany and France will be able to download movies and music from the Google Play store, the company said in a Google+ post.

The movies and music -- previously only available in the U.S. -- won't, however, be available for download to other Google devices such as Nexus smartphones or tablets, but its availability is unlikely too be far behind.

Due to licensing restrictions by Hollywood … Read more

Google and the French government are engaged in an on-going battle over news results displayed in Google searches.

The French government is proposing a law that would require search engines to pay for news articles if they wanted to include them in query results, according to global news agency AFP. And Google has said that rather than complying with the law, it will simply omit French media sites from search.

In a letter sent by Google to a handful of government offices this month, which was obtained by AFP, the search giant said it "cannot accept" the law'… Read more

Is there anything more blissful than escaping gravity's grip by jumping on a trampoline? What if you could do that while going from point A to point B?

Paris architecture firm AZC has come up with a crazy way to cross the Seine River -- huge inflatable trampolines. Just hop from bank to bank. … Read more

We are all guided by our influences, even if sometimes we don't want to admit who they really are.

Just as Mark Zuckerberg would never admit to being moved by Dr. Ruth and Genghis Khan, so Larry Page would surely never concede to the subconscious influence of "Mork and Mindy" and the early novels of John Le Carre.

However, a Reuters report is now suggesting something so beautifully preposterous, so life-affirmingly unnatural that it will lift the spirits of the most downhearted.

For this report claims that Steve Jobs was influenced by the French. Yes, the French, … Read more

Reversing the trend of recent court upsets for the Web giant, Google had a notable success in French Court today. Siding with Google in its battle against French broadcaster TF1, the court ruled that the Internet company is not liable for filtering out pirated content on YouTube, according to Reuters.

The French media company brought the case against Google alleging that copyrighted sports and movies were easily accessible on YouTube, according to Reuters.

In this case, TF1 sought more than $176 million (141 million euros) in damages, but the French court ended up ordering the broadcaster to instead pay Google'… Read more

On the up and up, Rdio music streaming service continues to grow. Now it looks like the company is expanding into two new countries, the U.K. and France, according to The Verge.

"Just launched in the U.K. and France apparently," Rdio developer Ian McKeller tweeted earlier today. "Happy now?" He was responding to another Twitter user who apparently leaked the news.

According to The Verge, there are other reports of Rdio moving into the U.K. and France and that initially it will offering people an unlimited listening free trial for seven days. However, … Read more

We have all lived through phases when we wished our mothers weren't around.

Few of us, though, have ever issued a press release asking Twitter to ban the very woman who suffered nine months so that we could suffer the slings, the arrows, and all of life's outrageous fortune.

It's true that not all of us are the progeny of rock stars. But Frances Bean Cobain is surely extraordinary for being the daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love.

Momma, it seems, gained the impression that Kurt Cobain's former bandmate, Dave Grohl, had impure intentions toward … Read more

A 32-hour standoff between a French SWAT team and 23-year-old Mohamed Merah -- who was wanted for killing three French paratroopers, three Jewish schoolchildren, and a rabbi -- ended today with a dramatic firefight and the death of Merah who claimed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, according to the Associated Press.

Shortly after the confrontation, Reuters reports, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced he was making it illegal for citizens to visit Web sites that encourage terrorism or hate crimes.

"From now on, any person who habitually consults Web sites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence … Read more

Flipboard tonight unveiled a new version of its popular iPad app, an update led by the inclusion of Cover Stories, a feature that gives users a one-stop feed for the articles the service considers most relevant based on their social connections and what they've already read.

The new feature was introduced originally with Flipboard's iPhone app, and until now it hasn't been available for the iPad. But this new release makes Cover Stories a key component of the company's plan to make its app the best place for users to go to catch up on the … Read more