Ed Oswald

Sprint Nextel's third quarter profit plummeted 77 percent as the wireless provider continued to lose customers amid concerns over the carrier's future.

Much of the losses come from the company's Nextel division, which has seen its share of troubles after the merger. Some believe that Sprint has turned its back on the division -- which uses Motorola's iDEN technology -- choosing to focus solely on its CDMA wireless business.

Continue reading →

Attackers are going after Macintosh computer users who are visiting pornographic web sites, claiming to offer a plug-in that installs a video codec necessary to play the movie files within QuickTime.

On certain profiles, the links to the Trojan download appear as stills to a supposed porn clip. When a Mac user clicks on the link, they are taken to a page with the message "Quicktime Player is unable to play movie file. Please click here to download new version of codec." From there, the install would proceed like a normal program install.

Continue reading →

Mandriva Linux cried foul Wednesday, saying in an open letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that his company spoiled a deal between Mandriva and the government of Nigeria over Intel's Classmate PC.

Mandriva had agreed to supply the central African nation with an initial order of 17,000 Classmate PCs -- of which it is a partner in with both Microsoft and Intel -- and had apparently signed an agreement with the country that would have meant additional orders in the future.

Continue reading →

Steve Case is at work once again, this time on a music service that is built on top of the Facebook platform and connects to a user's iTunes playlist to stream it to others.

Backed by case's Revolution LLC, Qloud (pronounced "cloud") also has the backing of several labels and music industry luminaries. It intends to help the user share his or her iTunes library with friends through the social network Facebook.

Continue reading →

Intel and Microsoft have shipped out 150,000 low-cost computers to the Libyan government, the companies confirmed on Tuesday.

While it is also said the Libyan government is set to receive a shipment of some 1.2 million of the OLPC's version of the laptop, so far shipments have not started. Thus Intel and Microsoft have beaten their competitor to the punch, so to speak.

Continue reading →

Despite Sony's troubles in selling the PlayStation 3, it was still able to boast the highest software revenues of the big three -- until now.

Data released by iSuppli Tuesday indicates that in the third quarter Nintendo was able to eclipse the long-dominant Sony by some 200 million dollars, posting $1.2 billion in revenues. This was up from $943.6 million in the second quarter, and $611 million a year ago.

Continue reading →

Panasonic said Tuesday that it had introduced the first Blu-ray player to be based on the Final Standard Profile, which adds new functionality that so far has been missing from Sony's format.

For example, picture-in-picture will be available for the first time in Blu-ray; previously it was only offered by HD DVD players and is useful for displaying special feature content alongside a movie. Additionally, other features which made the interactivity superior in HD DVD are now making it onto Blu-ray.

Continue reading →

With behaviorally targeted advertising becoming more and more popular, some Internet users are wishing to remain anonymous. AOL is planning an effort to educate users about the technology, as well as offer new ways to opt out.

The internet company is hoping to educate the public more about this method of advertising in hopes that Internet users will become more apt to participate. Ads using the technology are set to become a large part of the AOL banner ad network by the end of the year.

Continue reading →

Google is expected to announce Thursday that it will release an API that allows developers to create a single application that works across several social networks.

So far the Mountain View, Calif. search giant will "open up" its own Orkut. Ning, Plaxo, Friendster, viadeo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Oracle have also agreed to open their networks to the API.

Continue reading →

US Retailer Best Buy said Tuesday that it would launch an online service where its customers could store and share home movies and videos on the Internet through a partnership with Mydeo.

Best Buy also takes a minority stake in the company, and it is making the move due to rising demand for such services. The service is branded with the retailer's name and offers various plans depending on the user's need.

Continue reading →

Google is apparently close to unveiling its phone platform within the next two weeks, but still has the considerable hurdle of convincing carriers to sign over some of the control of the phone itself.

While Google will provide many of the services which will come on the phone -- such as its search, Maps, YouTube, and Gmail services -- the platform on which those applications are built will be completely open, right down to the operating system itself.

Continue reading →

At nearly the same time, HD DVD is busy hawking a new player under $200, and Blu-ray is attempting to curry favor in the industry and media through a two-day event in Hollywood.

Continue reading →

At the same event where he told Variety that his company only made $15 million off of video sales at iTunes, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker also apparently urged colleagues to follow his company's lead.

Zucker was attending a breakfast hosted by Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Communications on Sunday when he made the comments. He said now was a crucial time to take control of the situation before Apple "destroys" the video downloads like it did the music download business.

Continue reading →

Perhaps it's a bit unusual to be thinking of the Frito-Lay Company as a software developer. But since it officially issued a challenge for developers to create an Xbox Live game that "brings to life the bold spirit of the Doritos brand" was issued, five contest finalists have been working with professional development teams since August to realize their visions.

Available at the Doritos Web Site through November 18, these preliminary versions are playable and subject to user voting to determine the game that will be developed into a full Xbox Live arcade game for release next summer. Once chosen, the release candidate will be finalized at NinjaBee development studio, which is responsible for the current Xbox Live titles Cloning Clyde, Outpost Kaloki X, and Band of Bugs.

Continue reading →

Oracle said Sunday that it was dropping its effort to acquire BEA Systems over disagreements surrounding the valuation of the company.

BEA had insisted on a valuation of about $8.2 billion, or about $21 per share. This was significantly higher than Oracle's offer of $17 per share, which comes out to about $6.7 billion.

Continue reading →