Gadgetory

I'm Bridget Carey and this is your CNN update sad news to report today on Friday Internet activist Aaron Schwartz committed suicide the 26 year old computer programmer had helped build the website reddit he faced charges for his alleged role in stealing 4 million academic documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and from JSTOR an archive of scientific journals and academic papers he faced the possibility of 4 million dollars in fines and more than 50 years in prison a friend of schwartz noted on a blog post that he had battled depression for several years schwartz was a champion of open access to documents on the internet and founded a non-profit group that fought the battle against SOPA legislation MIT is currently conducting an investigation of the school's role in the events that led up to him taking his life some critics have said that the feds were unfairly trying to make an example out of him and researchers online have begun paying tribute to Schwartz by posting PDFs of copyright-protected research documents on Twitter to honor his campaign for open access to documents on the Internet hundreds have been participating on Twitter using the hashtag pdf tribute Samsung's Galaxy S smartphones have crossed the 100 million sales mark since the first model launched back in May 2010 Samsung announced that the galaxy s3 is selling at a much faster rate 1 million units were sold after 50 days it's biggest rival Apple reportedly is cutting back on screen orders for the iPhone 5 possibly due to weak demand that's according to a story from The Wall Street Journal but it could be because the iPhone just isn't as cool to kids anymore marketing agencies are saying that teenagers are telling them that Apple just isn't as cool as it was years ago Forbes reported that Apple has remained flat or has fallen in some teen brand opinion polls when asked what phone they'll upgrade to iPhone is still on top that Samsung is pulling in a strong second audiobooks dot-com has canceled its unlimited all you can hear plan of $25 a month instead the audiobooks website has a new cheaper subscription price of $15 a month to listen to one audiobook each or you could pay $23 for two audio books a month the company says offering just one or two book options at a lower cost makes it more appealing to casual readers who may only have time for one book a month the site offers more than 25,000 different titles and it syncs with multiple devices through its Apple and Android apps the competing service audible.com offers the same prices that's your tech news update you can get links to all of the stories I mentioned on our blog cnet.com slash to do Zinn New York I'm Bridget Carey