A team of experts headed by security guru Ira Winkler was hired by an anonymous power company to test the security of a power grid's network. The door was practically held open for them.

In a matter of hours, the team infiltrated the grid's supervisory, control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks using simple phishing tools: social engineering and browser exploits.

The online video provider from Fox Interactive Media is looking to take its Web-based shows to TV screens internationally with a newly announced deal with Shine.

Quarterlife, a short-form program featured prominently on MySpaceTV, made an attempt at breaking into the US broadcast television schedule last February on NBC. To say it was a catastrophic failure would be generous; the series not only ranked last among other shows in its 10 pm time slot, but received the lowest ratings NBC has seen in that slot for 17 years.

The FCC has begun the process of establishing a nationwide emergency SMS alert system, laying down the foundations yesterday of technical standards that participating cell phone carriers must observe.

While participation is purely voluntary, AT&T, Verizon, Alltel, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile have reportedly all contributed favorably to discussions toward the formation of a system similar to the US' current Emergency Alert System for broadcasters, though which would relay national emergency warnings to cell phone users.

Microsoft has released its first preview of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, a re-named and re-designed version of its 2006 robotics studio software.

Microsoft Robotics Studio 06, according to the company, had over 200,000 copies downloaded and over 50 companies in the partner program. Today's update was unveiled at the Robobusiness Conference and Exposition in Pittsburgh, the same conference that hosted the premiere of the earlier version.

The horribly overused "2.0" tag has made its way to the authoring community in a new online book publishing community called WEbook, which launched in public beta today.

Claiming to be a sort of open source approach to authoring literature, WEbook is a forum where new books can be composed by an individual wishing to "sandbox" his work, or by communities who submit content on a given subject which can then be voted into a book. The site's founders say they hope it does for publishing what Linux did for software and Wikipedia did for information.

Yahoo's Flickr photo sharing site has added the ability for users to upload videos to their photo collections, but only if they're "pros."

Flickr users paying $24.95 a year for the Pro account upgrade have gotten the additional privilege of uploading their videos to the site. Videos must be under 90 seconds in length and under 150 MB in size to be converted to Flash and hosted on Flickr. Acceptable original formats include AVI, WMV, MOV, MPEG1, 2, and 4, and 3Gp, with various proprietary codecs unconfirmed.

TiVo has announced its deal with Gemstar-TV Guide to allow international TiVo deployments to offer Gemstar's interactive program guide.

Gemstar's TV Guide channel and interactive programming guides have found a home in set top boxes from Comcast, Time Warner, DISH Network, Cox, and more. In fact, it's an onerous task to find a place where the new Macrovision subsidiary hasn't licensed one of its properties.

Samsung today unveiled its new HSUPA slider, the M470, in the company's Korean homeland.

Having blazed the way with its first High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) device, the W200 -- which promised download speeds 1.8 Mbps -- as early as May 2006, Samsung showed off today the M470, its first device to use HSUPA...and in so doing, claimed upload speeds of 2 Mbps.

Embarq, formerly the local division of Sprint Nextel, has introduced its eGo home phone, a DECT 6.0 IP handset manufactured by Vtech that looks to challenge VoIP leaders Comcast and Vonage.

The company was formed under the leadership of Dan Hesse, who saw the future in converged communications, and was escalated to Sprint Nextel's CEO position late last year. The company offers triple (and quadruple) play service bundles in 19 US states, maintaining its alliance with Sprint and partnering with DirecTV.

Today, imeem confirmed earlier reports that it had acquired content licensing and DRM company Snocap. No financial terms were disclosed.

After Snocap saw a major downsizing, laying off 60% of its workforce, the company made it known it was pursuing a sale. Four months later, reports started to circulate that social network for artists and musicians imeem had entered into an acquisition of the suffering company.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (I3C) has released its annual report of online misconduct, with 2007 showing a huge increase in the amount of money lost to theft.

Though the number of complaints has been steadily decreasing since its peak in 2005, the total losses were the highest yet at $239.09 million. This is an increase of $40.65 million over 2006, or about 20.5% year over year.

After years of legal struggles over the two Harvard-rooted social networking sites and their respective origins, ConnectU and Facebook appear to be finally settling.

The suit dates back to 2004 in Boston's Federal District Court, when ConnectU's founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra sued Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly illegally using source code in his site that he had written for ConnectU's predecessor, called HarvardConnection.

Intel, Phoenix Technologies, Fujitsu-Siemens, Lenovo, and McAfee have announced their collaborative effort to create a remote access solution that allows a laptop to be locked down in the event of a theft or loss.

Precisely how Intel's Anti-Theft Technology (ATT) will function was not fully elucidated today at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, but it has been said that it will be added to the Active Management Technology present in Centrino vPro systems, which enables remote management functions.

Citing troubles in setting up backhaul connections, Sprint said its XOHM WiMAX service will not see widespread commercial availability until "later this year."

As the first company attempting a major WiMAX deployment in the United States, Sprint's service has seen its share of doubt from analysts and consumers alike, citing the company's budget problems in operating three separate networks, and instability in upper management.

The U.S. Census Bureau has been trying to upgrade to a paperless filing system to collect population data, but it announced this week it will return one aspect to paper forms after PDAs proved to be too complex.

The Bureau is responsible for collecting population data every 10 years so the government may appropriately tailor budgets, congressional representation and voting power of the United States.