The co-founder of Microsoft, who is also one of the wealthiest American billionaires despite recently pledging to donate half his worth to charity, is suing over patent violations. A breakdown via Engadget:

Allen is suing Apple, Google, AOL, Facebook, ebay, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube (which is a subsidiary of Google). The claims involve four separate patents, most of which cover integral parts of how the companies named do business. For example, one patent allows site suggestions for consumers based on things they’re currently viewing, while another allows related articles to be delivered while reading news.

Interestingly enough, no amount was specified and the patents seems to cover many essentials in today’s web operations.

A couple weeks ago, Vinay Deolalikar’s proof that P ≠ NP set off a mass of interest in the topic of P = NP and a rush to verify the answer. Since then, the proof has been picked apart and analyzed by many of the top mathematicians and theoretical computer scientists and found ultimately to be flawed. Despite this, New Scientist believes he has changed how math is done:

His prospects of answering one of the biggest questions in mathematics may be fading, but Vinay Deolalikar of Hewlett-Packard Labs in Palo Alto, California, may still have made his mark. His proposed proof of the “P versus NP” problem led to a flurry of online activity that points to a new way of doing mathematics – via blogs and wikis.

I have to disagree with the notion that this is a “new way of doing mathematics”. I’ve met graduate students who’ve used wikis to discuss mathematics, and I’ve personally worked in a lab where wikis were used to collaborate on and verify the statistical analysis of our research. More than anything, the examination of Deolalikar’s proof is an example of how quickly and effectively a problem can be reviewed if many minds work collaboratively at it using a wiki as a platform.

Dr. Jon Wahrenberger, a cardiologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., is an avid user of Dragon Medical Mobile Search App for the iPhone – a voice search app that mines medical keywords for definitions from various sources. Speaking with Computerworld, he states:

“It’s been a great little tool to have,” he said. “The beauty of the app is the speed with which you launch it, speak a term and get results from a drug database or about medical nomenclature. It’s particularly helpful looking up drugs or catching up on pharmacology.” Seeing up to 30 patients a day means that having such a shortcut becomes valuable. “It might take half a minute to type ‘pulmonary hypertension,’ but I can say it in a second,” he said. “And it doesn’t tax your fingers or hands.”

Quite understandable as I’ve seen some doctors having to search through thick medical dictionaries for a term. As for the iPhone and iPad’s adoption by others in the medical field:

Wahrenberger said he is finding doctors in his medical center using iPhones and iPads because they see the value of easily documenting patient exams into electronic records and then interacting with the electronic records. With the recent ability to connect iPhones and iPads to a Microsoft Exchange Server, “people are loving this,” he said.

Personally, I haven’t seen many doctors in Toronto using iPhones or iPads in hospitals, but that could very well change as the push toward electronic records grows stronger.

In a surprising move, Intel executives announced an agreement to acquire McAfee, most widely known for its anti-virus software, for a whopping sum that represents a 48% premium on McAfee’s share prices. What do they plan to do with it? According to the WSJ:

Intel has no plans to build McAfee’s anti-virus software or other products into Intel chips, Intel executives said. Rather, they plan to draw on the expertise of McAfee’s engineers to design features that can be built into microprocessors that could be exploited by both McAfee and competitors like Symantec, they said.

Not a bad idea at all, but they really overpaid for McAfee. Transaction aside, if the technology makes its way to desktop hardware and helps in decreasing the bloat of anti-virus software by increasing performance and decreasing start-up time, this could be huge for Windows users.

UPDATE (20/08/10): Since striking the deal, Intel’s share value has taken a beating and fallen by almost $4 billion, making this transaction even more expensive than it already was. Seems like shareholders don’t see the value that Intel executives saw in buying out McAfee.