Pro-Obama senators petition FCC to review XM + Sirius merger
The prospective partners in satellite radio may be prompted to consider expediting their deal arrangements, perhaps before November, in light of a letter to the FCC from likely policymakers, should a Democrat take the White House.
A trio of Democratic senators, including two who were early backers of Sen. Barack Obama's (D - Ill.) bid for the presidency, sent an open letter last Friday to US Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, calling on him to, at the very least, impose stricter requirements that XM and Sirius satellite radio produce interoperable radios.
Sony PS3 moves toward an online community, gradually
PlayStation 3 consoles have always had Internet connectivity, but players trying to message one another have found that they're considered "busy" while they're in a game. An upcoming firmware update should change all that.
What's been perceived as perhaps Sony's greatest continuing weakness in its full-feature game console battle against Microsoft's Xbox 360 is the continued delay of its all-inclusive online community. This weakness is only compounded by the perception problem the company created for itself, having announced the PlayStation 3's Home service over a year ago, and having since then delayed its rollout, most recently in search for something that's more "focused" on gaming rather than the virtual bar-hopping experience Home was originally touted to be.
Analysts: Dell reclaims market share, but HP is gaining faster
Somebody needed to tell the world's PC manufacturers there was a recession scheduled for the first quarter of 2008. Anyway, they didn't seem to pay much attention to those warnings, and iSuppli thinks the industry looks pretty healthy.
For the last two years, analysts both with iSuppli and other firms have said that a healthy worldwide PC market had to grow at an annual rate of 12%. Despite what's generally perceived as a global economic slowdown, the annual rate of PC shipments was 12.1% at the end of March, based on numbers released by iSuppli today.
Bye, Bill. A fond remembrance
On this final day of Bill Gates' salaried employ at the company he founded, we recall a period of history way, way back -- an era when Gates was one giant among many, and just as likely to survive the shakeout as any other.
The computing industry was built by brilliant people with colorful personalities and extraordinary talent. We have forgotten most of them. Chuck Peddle, Adam Osborne, Clive Sinclair, Federico Faggin, Les Solomon, Gary Kildall...these are among the names we knew by heart and often knew personally, for those of us who grew up with the dawn of the computing era. We knew these people often because we had met them in person -- during the first computer conferences, they were part of our second family, even if they only showed up in name only.
One more Yahoo reorganization, this time out of necessity
It is an obvious scramble by Yahoo's leaders to reassess a corporate structure that appears to have been shattered in recent weeks, and assemble a template that makes it appear the shards fell into place intentionally.
During the 1990s, Microsoft used to provide its customers and shareholders its vision of where the company was going by updating its running hypothesis for the future of Windows, always three years out or longer. The way Yahoo has performed the same task throughout the last three years has been by reorganizing and reshuffling its divisions.
Final Hyper-V virtualization kit now available
Download Hyper-V for Windows Server 2008 (x86) Release edition from FileForum now.
You will need to have already installed Hyper-V Beta, RC0, or RC1, as this release is an update to that version. See this Knowledgebase article for full details.
Intel isn't saying 'no' or 'yes' to Vista completely
There may not ever be a planned, collective migration of Intel's company clients to Windows Vista. But as Intel told BetaNews today, there doesn't have to be, since IT can make upgrade decisions on a case-by-case basis.
In response this afternoon to an enthusiast news site report last Monday that re-ignited an old rumor that Intel had decided it would be corporate policy not to deploy Windows Vista on its internal company network-linked systems, and that it might even consider a wholesale move to Linux, an Intel spokesperson gave BetaNews a more practical explanation. Rather than move everybody in its various departments from Windows XP or Windows 2000 to Vista in a massive exodus, the company reiterated what it has told us before: It deploys different versions of Windows based on specific user needs.
House subcommittee votes up performance rights bill
In an unsurprising move but during a surprisingly short markup session this morning, the House Subcommittee on the Internet and Intellectual Property voted to recommend the Performance Rights Act to the floor of the House.
That act, if approved, would lift the long-standing exemption on terrestrial radio stations -- the kind you grew up with, that use transmitters and airwaves as opposed to the Internet -- to pay royalties annually to performance rights organizations, with some of the proceeds going to performing artists and musicians whose music the stations play. Stations already pay annual royalties to copyright holders; and Internet-based and satellite radio services currently pay annual royalties to both groups.
Nokia will buy Symbian, but doesn't want to control it
"This is the fastest and the best way [to] go forward," said Nokia's XVP yesterday. "What we are gaining here is the knowledge and the experience from the employee base in Symbian Ltd. For Nokia, this is a good investment."
During yesterday's press conference with soon-to-be members of the Symbian Foundation -- the group being assembled by Nokia after its historic purchase of Symbian Ltd. is complete -- the one aspect of the deal that reporters couldn't quite wrap their heads around was this: Nokia wants to set Symbian free, so it's buying it. Is this how Nokia expects to answer the challenge from Google's Open Handset Alliance with Android?
Adobe issues final release of Acrobat 9 series
It's a more aggressive marketing stance for Adobe as Acrobat branches out into online applications, more and better document collaboration, and Flash animation embedding.
The functionality gap is narrowing between Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat, at least in the category of document production. Granted, Acrobat has no counterpart to Excel. But Office has no counterpart to Flash either, and its integration into the creation of both PDF documents and PDF-based presentations -- a feature greatly expanded in Adobe's Acrobat 9 series, officially released today -- is likely to give customers reason to compare the two suites side-by-side.
Microsoft gets more pro-active against SQL injection attacks
Turning up the volume on its vigilance against perhaps the easiest exploit in the world, Microsoft yesterday unveiled a new beta of an overdue security tool for IIS 7, bolstered by two new SQL injection vulnerability seeker tools.
Download Microsoft UrlScan filter 3.0 Beta from FileForum now.
Google launches beta of media buying tool for advertisers
After a rocky start yesterday, when an announcement of its announcement was un-announced and a conference Web page was taken down, Google has launched an invitation-only beta of an online advertising campaign assistance tool for buyers.
What Google is calling Ad Planner is an extension of the demographic and targeting service the company unveiled just last week in its new Google Trends, but devised for an ad buyer who is looking for the right mix of sites to display his message, along with the available inventory to deliver that message. The basic premise is, if a buyer is interested in targeting a campaign toward a set demographic, Ad Planner can deliver a mix of sites with the impressions and audience makeup that would best suit that demographic.
New Symbian Foundation to take on Android, LiMo
It was an unprecedented and largely unexpected move by Nokia, which had for months allowed speculation that it may join the Open Handset Alliance and back Android. Now it's taking steps to own Symbian, and to put away its competition.
The Symbian platform -- or more accurately, platforms, plural -- already provided the software backbone behind an estimated 165 million deployed smartphones worldwide, at the end of 2007. But despite powering a good one-third of smartphones, by conservative analysts' estimates, many had already declared Symbian a "failure," using that very word, in comparison with Google's upcoming not-really-delayed Android Linux-based mobile platform, and the other mobile Linux platform openly developed by the LiMo Foundation.
Microsoft tries to offset $512 million patent judgment with IMS counterclaim
It's way too early to declare the battle between Microsoft and arch-rival Alcatel-Lucent over. Last week, a judge upheld a big jury decision against Microsoft and tacked on some interest. That just made the defendant a little angrier.
The state of affairs between Microsoft and French telecommunications firm Alcatel-Lucent, the current holder of patents developed by the old Bell Laboratories, remains contentious. Last Thursday, a US district judge in Southern California upheld an April jury verdict against Microsoft for violating a series of patents Alcatel holds for how a user selects a calendar entry from a menu ($357.7 million) and the use of styluses on touch-screen devices ($10.4 million). Judge Marilyn Huff opted to charge interest on both rulings in the interim, raising the award to $512 million.
Can you test this? CA's Internet Security Suite Plus 2009 beta
A spokesperson for CA this afternoon confirmed to BetaNews that it is launching its registered beta program for its upcoming consumer-grade Internet security suite, and is looking for capable testers to help perfect the product.
New on CA's features list with this upcoming version is a firewall that can optionally grant or deny programs' access to the Internet without automatic notification to the user, an in-game suppression mode that stops CA from interrupting you while you're playing, and a mobile notification option that notifies you when you're about to enter a new Wi-Fi hot spot.
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