Tim Conneally

Yesterday, the New York Attorney General's office announced a settlement effectively closing the investigation of McAfee's and Symantec's automatic antivirus subscription renewal practices. Several New Yorkers complained that they had purchased the software online, only to later have their subscription automatically renewed without their knowledge or consent.

In the settlement, McAfee and Symantec have to pay a combined $750,000 to the state of New York, and improve the visibility of their subscription terms and renewal policies so customers won't be caught unawares by recurring charges on their credit cards. This will involve notifying customers both before and after renewal of the subscription and offering a 60 day grace period for refunds.

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Download Fedora 11 from FileForum now

Community is key with Fedora. As the free, open-source, home-oriented version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Fedora Project relies on the developer and tester community to keep the operating system to its semiannual release schedule. A new version of the OS, Fedora 11, was released today and is available for download.

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Your first car is as special as your first love. Whether you purchased it after years of working after-school jobs, or it was a graduation gift from thrilled parents, that otherwise soulless piece of machinery takes on the characteristics of a beloved pet. You name it, we dress it up, you let it become an inextricable part of our personality, and you have trouble letting them go. Even after the thing has become a leaky, noisy, smelly hazard to the health and safety of everyone around it, you still hold onto it for long after it should have been retired.

As we endure the Next Great Recession and are forced to make our possessions last longer, I wonder if the same sort of attachment will apply to home video game consoles.

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The Cult of Mac's rumor maw out-talked Apple and has made the 3G S look even more like a lame incremental update than it actually is. Yes, it rocks a faster processor, faster data connection, improved camera, includes video recording and magnetometer, but the new product is disappointing. After all, prior to the keynote, Mac rumors included a new tablet, an "iPhone Nano," an iPhone on Verizon, a 64 GB iPod Touch, and of course, the return of ailing Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Expectations were high, and were left unfulfilled.

However, behind the smokescreen caused by the new device and its "battle" versus the Palm Pre, the only one year-old iPhone 3G with its new $99 price tag casts an ominous shadow over the entire handset business.

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With a goal of doing no less than rebuilding human civilization as we know it, Sweden's small but vigorous left-wing Pirate Party earned enough votes in elections held there over the weekend to secure at least one seat in the European Parliament.

Rallying support through the well-publicized Pirate Bay trial, the Pirate Party was able to secure 7.1% of Sweden's popular vote, which guarantees it one of the 18 seats in EU Parliament allotted to the country. Based on a platform of copyright and telecommunications reform, the Pirates have become Sweden's largest party among voters under the age of 30, securing more than 20% of voters in that demographic, defeating both the Social Democrats and the Moderates.

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AT&T subscribers who purchased an iPhone 3G and wish to upgrade to the 3GS early can do so by renewing their 2-year agreement and paying $399 or $499 for the 16GB or 32GB for the new device plus an $18 upgrade fee, the mobile operator said today.

In today's WWDC presentation, Apple listed the new handsets as costing $199 and $299, and did not include the unsubsidized price.

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After a lengthy presentation about the free iPhone 3.0 update (which will cost $9.95 for iPod touch users on June 17) and software support from third party companies such as Line6, Planet Waves, Zipcar, ngmoco:), gameloft, Pasco, and TomTom; Apple unveiled its show-closing announcement, the iPhone 3G S, "the fastest iPhone ever made."

The unit will differ from the previous iPhone generations in that it will support 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, include an Autofocus 3 Megapixel camera with a 30 fps video mode, an internal magnetic compass, improved battery life, and hardware encryption and come in 16 GB and 32 GB varieties for $199 and $299 respectively. Outwardly, the device looks identical to its predecessors, and offers a similar 3.5" multi-touchscreen, volume rocker, sleep/wake, and single home button.

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Among today's announcements at Apple's WWDC, iPhone Software Senior Vice President Scott Forstall presented many of the new updates coming with the iPhone 3.0 software upgrade, which will endow the popular iPhone with more than 100 new features. Among these will include the highly demanded support for MMS and bluetooth data tethering, which the popular device has lacked.

Unfortunately, though, the United States' exclusive iPhone carrier AT&T was not listed among the launch partners supporting these updated services, which elicited boos from the audience this morning. The new 3.0-enabled tethering feature was simply listed as being available "later this summer," from 22 carriers worldwide, but with no mention of AT&T.

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Sporting new displays, a new non-removable Lithium Polymer battery with a promised 7-hour charge, an SD card slot in place of ExpressCard slots, and offering a new 13" option, Apple's 2009 notebooks comprise its "most affordable lineup ever."

At the bottom of the revised lineup is the new 13" aluminum unibody MacBook Pro, with a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB and SD card slot for $1,199. This can be upgraded to a 2.54 GHz Core2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, and 250 GB of storage for $1,499.

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Last March the world got its first look at Opera Mobile 9.7, and its upgraded server-side optimization technology called Opera Turbo working in tandem with the Presto 2.2 rendering engine.

Today, the public beta of Opera Mobile 9.7 has been made available for download for touchscreen Windows Mobile devices.

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BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has reportedly acquired former connected navigation device maker Dash, which left the hardware business in late 2008.

PND maker Garmin showed off its nuvifone concept in the beginning of 2008, and a year later re-announced that it would be launched as a joint project with novitiate smartphone maker Asus. Also in 2008, leading mobile phone maker Nokia completed its acquisition of navigation company Navteq which was announced in 2007.

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In just a matter of hours, accused file sharer Joel Tenenbaum and his Harvard Law legal team will appear in the Boston Federal Courthouse for a hearing to decide the outcome of all his constitutional counterclaims against the Recording Industry Association of America.

Tenenbaum is being sued for more than one million dollars by the music industry for illegally downloading seven music files over P2P service KaZaa more than six years ago, when Joel was a teenager. Now a Boston University grad student backed by Charles Nesson of the Berkman Center and a legal counsel of nine Harvard law students, Tenenbaum stands at the center of a trial that has come to represent the "average David [versus] the corporate Goliath."

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In April, Vivendi and Google teamed up to create a new premium music video site called Vevo, which would be fully owned by Vivendi subsidiary Universal Music Group, and built upon the technology Google employs in YouTube. Some consider the project an attempt to create "The Hulu of Music Videos."

Yesterday, Sony announced that is the first of the remaining major labels besides Universal to sign up to provide content for the forthcoming site, which Sony describes as being "built for consumers, advertisers and content owners."

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Late last night, The Windows Mobile team made the Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit available, which is not a standalone Software Development Kit, but an add-on component for the Windows Mobile 6 SDK.

The Toolkit includes emulator images, new touch and gesture APIs, and code samples for developing software for Windows Mobile 6.5. The team is most excited about widget development, and in its blog today provides a step-by-step guide for widget creation (essentially "write the code, package it, run it.")

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The popularity of the netbook is undeniable. In just two years it has risen from a product of uncertain necessity to a killer gadget that makes up as much as thirty percent of all notebook sales for its leading manufacturers.

But where is the form factor headed?

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