Ed Oswald

Google is making efforts to allay criticism over its YouTube video site by implementing new video identification that would help to find copyrighted content.

As in the past, the Mountain View, Calif. search company is framing its fight against copyrighted work on its site as going "above and beyond our legal responsibilities." Google itself will not use the application to identify videos: rather, the content owners need to use it themselves.

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Apple has finally set a date for the next release of its Mac OS X operating system, said to include some 300 new features.

Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" will go on sale through Apple retail stores and resellers on October 26 at 6:00pm local time. Additionally, the company will accept pre-orders for the new OS beginning Tuesday.

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Possibly sensing that it would be an uphill battle, Microsoft said Tuesday that it planned to drop its appeal of an anti-trust ruling in South Korea.

The Redmond company had lost a similar appeal in Europe in mid-September. A request to dismiss its appeal was sent to the Seoul High Court last week.

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Analysis from NPD indicates that the iPhone has had the biggest negative effect to carriers T-Mobile and Alltel, and to phone manufacturer Palm.

The survey was taken by a sample of 13,000 consumers who had purchased a phone over a 30-day period. 200 of these purchased an iPhone.

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California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed on Saturday a bill that would have put in place strict laws governing data privacy, arguing that the costs to comply with the law would have put unnecessary strain on small businesses.

Supporters of the legislation said its intent was to ensure consumer data was adequately protected from potential security breaches. It would have been more strict than current polices put in place by the payment and credit card industries.

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The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Microsoft and Best Buy, which clears the way for a class-action fraud lawsuit against the two companies to go forward.

The suit stems from accusations from customers that a subsidiary of Best Buy had signed up customers for a trial of MSN Internet Service without their consent. The two companies had previously signed a $200 million marketing agreement surrounding MSN.

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All of Universal's jockeying with iTunes may make sense now: the label may be planning a subscription music service of its own with other big record companies. But will the labels' own service be used simply to retain a stranglehold on the market rather than giving consumers more choice?

Universal has its own catalog, and is apparently taking to Warner Music Group about putting that label's music on the service. It has reportedly already signed up Sony BMG. Business Week reported Friday that the move is aimed at taking more control over the distribution of digital music, which Apple has a near stranglehold on.

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In a sure sign of trouble for the concept of legal peer-to-peer downloading, Snocap disclosed Thursday that it was laying off 60 percent of its workforce. The rumor, first reported by Valleywag, was confirmed Friday by CNET.

The company also confirmed blog reports that it may be pursuing a sale, saying it had received some interest from several possible suitors. It was not immediately clear from where the layoffs would come.

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Microsoft took a page from Evite's playbook late Thursday, announcing Windows Live Events, a free event planning service.

The latest free ad-supported addition to the Windows Live family allows the user to send invitations to events much like Evite already offers. The company is also allowing those who may not have a Windows Live ID to respond to invitations.

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Malware on mainstream Web sites are becoming an increasingly larger problem as hackers are finding ways to infiltrate them, and place code that infects whomever visits the site.

StopBadware.org co-director Jonathan Zittrain called the trends worrisome, especially considering many webmasters are doing little -- if anything -- to stop it.

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Recent data compiled by one of Wikipedia's larger contributors seems to indicate that after a long history of rapid growth, interest in contributing to the effort seems to be waning.

Unfortunately, a truer idea of how Wikipedia is doing is not possible because the statistics page has not been updated in over a year. However, one Wikipedia contributor has taken it upon himself to analyze the data to gain some perspective on the state of the project.

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Madonna has become the latest artist to buck the record industry by signing a $120 million record deal with concert promoter Live Nation.

While it does not involve selling records directly to the public as other bands have decided to do, it does mark the largest act yet to turn its back on the record industry. Live Nation gains exclusive rights to three new studio albums, all merchandise, tours, and licensing of the Madonna name.

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Microsoft quietly began offering its Windows Home Server in the US this week, with the operating system appearing on electronics retailer Newegg.com for $190 USD.

Microsoft released the OS to manufacturing back in July of this year, but the Windows Home Server code wasn't intended to be sold individually. Instead, devices are built around the OS, and that is how the end consumer would get their hands on the product.

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The WiMedia Alliance, the controlling group for Ultra-wideband (UWB), said earlier this week that it had certified the first products compatible with the standard.

UWB is a short-range wireless technology that is essentially the successor to Bluetooth, after the WiMedia Alliance and Bluetooth SIG penned an interoperability agreement in May 2005. The technology offers higher rates of data transfer than Bluetooth, which is becoming more essential with tech devices demanding bigger chunks of data.

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After successfully changing the game in desktop web browsing, Mozilla now has its sights set on the mobile market with a version of Firefox to appear for mobile phones as early as 2008.

Mozilla is taking mobile browsing seriously, and has already hired at least two high profile mobile developers for the project. Former Openwave browser chief Christian Sejersen has joined Mozilla to head up engineering and development of the browser, and France Telecom researcher Brad Lassey would also join the team.

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