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At a media even in the Big Apple, Canon today announced its latest flagship photo printer, the Pixma Pro-1. According to Canon, the Pixma Pro-1 is the world’s first A3+ printer to boast 12 separate inks.

Along with Photo and Matte black inks, there are three grey inks — dark grey, grey, and light grey — and six color inks, including Cyan, Photo Cyan, Magenta, Photo Magenta, Yellow and Red. The printer also comes with a Chroma Optimizer, which is meant to add richness to blacks and add uniformity to glossiness.

Compared to older Pixma models, the Pixma Pro-1 sports 2.5x larger ink tanks to allow for less ink cartridge replacements. The printer features front-opening panels for easy access, and a rear paper tray which takes up to 20 sheets of photo paper. The manual feed slot can handle heavier artsy papers up to 14-inches wide.

Canon has also doubled its input resolution compared to previous models, with 1200 DPI. The printer will feature Canon’s Easy-PhotoPrint Pro software, which can work as its own tool or as a Photoshop plug-in.

The Pixma Pro-1 photo printer go for $999.

Last year, several lawsuits emerged that accused Yelp of extorting businesses to advertise in exchange for positive reviews. Yelp has just announced that a judge granted Yelp’s request to dismiss these suits.

For background, the lawsuits claimed that after declining a request to purchase advertising on Yelp, a number of positive reviews from businesses’ listings on the reviews site mysteriously disappeared, downgrading the company’s rating on the site.

In February of 2010, two law firms, Beck & Lee from Miami and The Weston Firm in San Diego, filed a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court alleging unfair business practices by Yelp. And in 2009, the East Bay Express ran a story basically accusing Yelp of being in the ‘Business of Extortion 2.0′, which covered similar ground. Shortly after reporter Kathleen Richards published the article, Yelp vehemently denied everything and called her piece inaccurate.  A number of similar copy cat suits also emerged.

As CEO and founder Jeremy Stoppelman writes “our automated system applies the same objective criteria to all reviews regardless of a business’s advertiser status. (Just check a Yelp advertiser’s business page — I bet they have a negative review or two; after all, you just can’t please everyone all the time.)

Last year, Yelp made some adjustments to its review process. For example, Yelp removed a feature that allowed businesses that advertised with Yelp to place their favorite review above others. It also let users see reviews that have been removed by its (automated) “review filter,” which is designed to help prevent business owners from posting all too positive reviews of their own company or malicious reviews of competitors.

Yelp also established a Small Business Advisory Council’ whose members have provided the company’s management with “guidance and perspective regarding the concerns of small business owners”.

Stoppelman admits that there are flaws to the system, writing, Additionally, since protecting content integrity is a difficult task, our automated algorithm isn’t perfect: sometimes legitimate content can get caught. This is an unfortunate reality in an environment where some folks are determined to try to game the system, but it is a price we are willing to pay to protect consumers and remain a useful resource.

The dismissal of the lawsuits means that the plaintiffs can’t sue Yelp again. It’s surely a relief to have these allegations dismissed. Now Yelp can go back to focusing on its potential IPO in 2012.

Sorry RIM, but it looks like the promise of free apps and tech support weren’t enough to assuage the masses. According to the Financial Post, RIM is preparing to deal with a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of Canadian users affected by the company’s widespread service outage.

Filed in Quebec Superior Court by the Consumer Law Group, the complaint seeks compensation for all of RIM’s customers that “were unable to access their email, BlackBerry Messenger service (BBM), and/or Internet for the period of October 11 to 14, 2011.” RIM hasn’t received the complaint yet, but representatives have said that the company will “formally respond” to the matter soon.

The lawsuit’s lead complainant was an avid user who used his BlackBerry to communicate with his friends across the western hemisphere. According to the formula laid out in the complaint, he will only be able to collect $1.25 in damages from RIM — not much, but the payouts could quickly add up if the lawsuit picks up steam. The amount of damages owed is calculated on a person by person basis, and accounts for how long a customer was left without service, so some users will net more than others.

It’s tough to put a finger on how much RIM may have to shell out here, as the company has avoided offering estimates of how many customers were affected. Still, co-CEO Jim Balsillie called the outage the biggest in the company’s history in a recent conference call, so RIM could be looking at a sizable number customers itching for some restitution.

Then again, of all the places struck by the outage, North America seemed to be affected the least. RIM may be able to pay off a few thousand customers and move on, but considering their luck, I doubt things will go that smoothly.

Fans of legalese can find the full complaint reproduced below.