IDG News Service, Nancy Gohring, Robert Mullins

At the request of Computerworld UK the story headlined "ICO received 10,000 data protection complaints in 2011" and posted 04/25/2012 has been removed from the wire. Online editors are asked to immediately remove the story from Web sites and print editors are asked to not use the story in future editions. Questions regarding the story should be directed to John E Dunn, Security Editor, Techworld and Computerworld UK.

In an unusual case, a U.S. judge ruled on Wednesday that Motorola cannot enforce an injunction that would prevent Microsoft from selling Windows products in Germany, should a German court issue such an injunction next week.

Microsoft asked the judge for the ruling in anticipation of an injunction that a German court is expected to issue related to a patent infringement suit that Motorola filed against Microsoft in Germany. The suit centers primarily on Motorola licenses that have been declared essential to the H.264 video standard. The German injunction is expected on April 17.

Microsoft plans to build a new data center, this time in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

It won't be considered a "mega data center," but it will cost US$112 million to build. Microsoft said initially it will employ 17 people to work there but ultimately it will need 40 people. The facility is expected to open in the spring of 2013.

Google CEO Larry Page published a long public letter on Thursday that gives an update on the company's strategy and highlights some of the conflicts he faces after a year at the head of the company.

The letter talks about some of Google's successes, but also points to challenges it faces as it tries to maintain its momentum as a large public company. Page took over as CEO a year ago from Eric Schmidt, who is now executive chairman.

The latest version of the cloud operating system OpenStack, known as Essex, will be released on Thursday, and supporters say that its stability should encourage larger deployments.

Essex, the fifth OpenStack release, includes 150 new features and enhancements, said Jonathan Bryce, co-founder of Rackspace Cloud and chairman of the OpenStack Project Policy Board. Fifty-five companies and 200 developers contributed code to Essex, he said.

Citrix has abandoned its Olympus OpenStack distribution and will focus instead on its open-source CloudStack operating system, which it has contributed as a project under the Apache Software Foundation.

As part of the announcement, Citrix said CloudStack will continue to support Amazon's APIs (application programming interfaces) and believes such support is crucial to the success of cloud platforms. It implied it has Amazon's blessing.

Terremark is offering enterprises a new private cloud service that includes the option to burst onto a public cloud.

The private offering, introduced Tuesday, should appeal to customers in industries like financial services or government agencies that are interested in a cloud service but aren't comfortable with the shared approach, said Ellen Rubin, vice president of cloud products for Terremark, a subsidiary of Verizon.

Oracle and Google have failed to settle their intellectual property dispute and appear headed to court on April 16.

On Monday, the magistrate judge overseeing talks between the companies said that the parties won't meet again to try to settle their issues in the runup to the trial over whether Google infringed on Oracle patents and copyright in the Android OS.

Revenue continues to shrink at Research In Motion, and the company reported a loss for the fourth quarter as it struggles to stay relevant before launching a new smartphone platform.

Thorsten Heins

On Thursday, the company reported results for its fiscal fourth quarter ended March 3. It also announced additional personnel changes, including that Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO of the company, has given up his board seat. Balsillie and company founder Jim Lazaridis recently handed over their positions as co-CEOs to Thorsten Heins, who had been chief operating officer.

Revenue and sales continue to shrink at Research In Motion as the company struggles to stay relevant before it launches a new smartphone platform.

On Thursday, the company reported results for its fiscal fourth quarter ended March 3. It also announced additional personnel changes, including that Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO of the company, has given up his board seat. Balsillie and company founder Jim Lazaridis recently handed over their positions as co-CEOs to Thorsten Heins, who had been chief operating officer.

In the runup to the trial date for their dispute over whether Google's Android mobile OS infringes on Oracle's Java patents, Google and Oracle are negotiating over potential damages.

In a document filed on Tuesday, Oracle responded to a number of proposals Google set forth aimed at speeding up the trial, including a suggestion to cap patent-infringement damages at around US$2.8 million.

DotCloud has become the latest platform-as-a-service provider to add features typically associated with infrastructure-as-a-service offerings, this time by enabling vertical scaling, the company said Tuesday.

Typically, PaaS providers allow horizontal scaling, where customers deploy code on multiple servers and add more servers as they need them, with traffic distributed across the servers.