The US Postmaster General issued a report to the Postal Service recommending it either change its First Class mailing standards to disallow Netflix mailers, or start charging the company a 17 cent handling fee per envelope.

Apparently the two-way Netflix mailers were brought up in audit because approximately 70 percent of them have to be processed by hand. Automatic processing was found to damage either the DVDs or the sorting equipment, and the design of the envelope was reported to cause obscured return addresses and missorts.

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A company known more for its digital rights management technology, and which just last month purchased not only the BD+ DRM scheme outright but also a larger stake in set-top boxes, is about to become the publisher of TV Guide.

Macrovision, whose history extends back to the famous "Macrovision stripe" that made copying of VHS tapes such a pain in the 1980s, announced this morning its intent to purchase Gemstar, the technology company that happens to publish TV Guide. It's probably not the magazine that Macrovision is interested in, but instead the nation's leading brand in program scheduling -- a brand that's found on many STBs today, and will now likely be found on more.

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A carrier-agnostic platform for sending music over the phone, has launched a beta in the United States. If it all works out, it could convert the cell phone into a music promotional tool.

Kadoink says it gives fans "the ability to evangelize their favorite band or new music...instantly to their own group of friends through the phone."

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Diego Inc, has announced the beta of Moxi TV for PC, at long last putting those computer things you read about to use in recording and playing back scheduled shows from your television...without a TiVo.

Diego's Moxi TV for PC is a video software application that provides all the features of a set-top DVR. It offers a menu of upcoming programs reaching as far as two weeks into the future, search and filtering, pause, rewind, and fast forward functions during both live and recorded TV programming, Web-based scheduling, personalized channel lists, and parental controls.

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Last night, Yahoo opened the pre-beta preview version of Yahoo Messenger for Vista, with graphic features that appear to be more at home in the Vista environment than with XP.

Yahoo's newest version of its Messenger client has been designed from the ground up for Vista, with an interface different from all prior incarnations, built upon the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

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Adding to its TiVoCast repertoire, the on-demand video service provider announced immediate availability of its new Music Choice Network.

When the broadband Series2 DVR was rolled out two years ago, TiVo included support for the Live365 internet radio community, and this year added even more music with
support for Rhapsody. Now, Series2 and Series3 users will have on-demand access to the video aspect of the music industry, just short of one year following Music Choice and TiVo's partnership announcement.

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During a recent press event, Nokia announced its "Comes With Music" service, which provides unlimited downloads for subscribers with Nokia music phones, but with DRM.

Nokia's "Comes With Music" will initially give users access to a large catalog of Universal Music recording artists, with more major labels to be added in the future, Nokia says. Subscriptions will be offered to customers upon purchase of a new Nokia device. A deal reported to take place in the second half of 2008 will even offer one year of the service for free.

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Adding to the canon of DRM-free music, a Universal Music Group subsidiary has made a large portion of its catalog of classical performances available online free from digital rights protection.

Today, a label in Universal Music Group's classical division, Deutsche Grammophon, announced that it would be making the majority of its catalog available as DRM-free downloads on DG Web Shop.

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Over a two-week period, over 278,000 e-mail addresses of Red Cross workers were swiped by a malicious user who found a back-door into a certain brand of non-profit fundraising software.

Convio Inc., an Austin, Texas-based software company that exclusively serves the needs of non-profit groups, admitted today that its GetActive software had been hacked and user data from 92 groups were stolen between October 23 and November 1.

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Apple and French carrier Orange are launching the iPhone at 6:30 pm (1830 h) local time, with twelve stores opening after hours to accommodate the expected rush of customers.

The price for a fully unlocked iPhone in France is €749 ($1105 USD). With a two-year service contract, the iPhone is slated to cost €399. The Orange division of France Telecom reportedly has 63,000 individuals registered on its site receiving updates about the device.

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Google announced its RE<C ("Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal") project yesterday: a research and development project aimed at bringing alternative energy sources closer to affordability.

With the spotlight recently turned upon data centers, which US Assistant Secretary of Energy Alexander Karsner termed "centers of enormous waste" yesterday, Google is asserting its intentions to change this reputation, and wisely so, as the company's tremendous need for energy-hungry server facilities only continues to grow.

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TiVo's Stop||Watch, an advertisement system especially suited for time-shifted viewing, has received its first major supporting content provider: NBC Universal.

Lately, the corporation's NBC network has been adopting many new media formats in the apparent hope of finding the next source of big ad revenue. Its rush seems to include everything short of offering to tag logos on the side of passing trains.

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Environmental watchdog group Greenpeace believes this holiday's top-selling consumer electronics devices are produced by the least environmentally conscious companies.

Today, Greenpeace released its updated "Guide to Greener Electronics" which ranks the top 18 manufacturers of PCs, game consoles, phones, and TVs according to their policies regarding toxic chemicals and clean recycling. This holiday's top-selling consumer electronics devices are produced by the list's least environmentally conscious companies.

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On December 4, Microsoft will roll out an update to the Xbox Live Dashboard that adds a social networking type of feature to the service.

Citing the popularity of Facebook and MySpace, Microsoft believes that social networking tools have come to be expected in online communities. And with over 8 million subscribers interacting with one another on a daily basis, the ability to view who is friends with whom and make new friends accordingly seems like a logical feature to add.

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It's not a reference to the eagerly awaited Wii title Super Smash Brothers Brawl. "We cannot smash them all." is a quote from a Nintendo spokesperson regarding unauthorized third-party modification devices for the DS.

The R4 is a microSD reader that fits into the Nintendo DS' Slot-1 port and bypasses all of the handheld's security functions, allowing a host of uses: playing music and movies, reading text files, creating homebrew software, and playing "backed up" - or copied - games.

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