Ed Oswald

Microsoft fixed a total of 14 flaws across 9 patches on Tuesday, with six of those patches reaching critical status. While the number of patches is far from the Redmond company's record, this month could prove difficult for administrators.

"This month's Patch Tuesday has headache written all over it," PatchLink's Paul Zimski commented. "Although this is not Microsoft's biggest Patch Tuesday in terms of number of patches, the details of the patches indicate a broad-spectrum of exposure."

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YYahoo is moving into favor with consumers, scoring higher than Google in a survey of consumer satisfaction published by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Meanwhile, Apple experienced some growing pains.

Yahoo moved up four points to a score of 79, a sign of good news for a company following what could be considered disappointing financial results. The search engine recently redesigned its site, along with adding new functionality.

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Nokia said Tuesday that about 46 million units of its BL-5C cell phone battery may be at risk of overheating, and is offering to replace them free of charge.

The Finnish phone manufacturer has several companies who produce the battery, and together they have shipped about 300 million units in total. This particular recall would target those produced by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006.

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Google took a shot at Viacom on Monday by calling two of the company's best known personalities from the Comedy Central network to give depositions.

According to court documents, both Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report have been asked to testify. Google has also asked for nearly three dozen others to testify as well.

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XM debuted its latest radio Monday, complete with a full-color screen and various recording capabilities.

The XpressRC features a split-screen color display that shows the currently-playing song title and information to the left, and data on what's playing on up to three other channels to the right. The device, while produced by Delphi, will only carry the XM brand name.

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Apple debuted a new social networking feature for its iTunes Music Service that would allow customers to share their purchases, reviews, and favorite artists through a customizable widget.

Called My iTunes, the service includes three flash-based widgets that use a customers account information to create customized lists of music based on that users purchase history. The widgets can be placed on a user's blog, Web site, or social networking profile.

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AT&T is trying to quell criticism after monitors it hired cut two lines of anti-Bush lyrics from its webcast of a Pearl Jam concert in Chicago earlier this week.

The company said in a statement Thursday that the lyrics should not have been censored. The rock band was singing a cover of the Pink Floyd track "Another Brick in the Wall." Instead of the line "teacher, leave those kids alone," lead singer Eddie Vedder replaced it with his own lyrics.

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Universal said late Thursday that it planned to start selling music tracks from its artists in MP3 format for a limited time, however not through Apple's iTunes Music store. Also a surprise in the announcement: Google plans to begin selling MP3s directly from its search engine, BetaNews has learned.

The move from both Universal and Google is a clear shot across the bow of Apple, which has a near stranglehold on the digital music industry. It also seems to indicate that digital rights management may be on its way out with record executives.

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Vonage is still solvent, although its continued fight with Verizon is hurting the company's bottom line.

During the past quarter, the company only managed to add 57,000 customers, far less than the 166,000 it added in the year ago quarter. Worse yet, Comcast has overtaken it as the nation's largest VOIP provider, and still appears to be growing quickly: it ended the quarter with 3 million subscribers.

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The online joint venture between News Corp and NBC Universal, while still without a name, has received a $100 million infusion of cash thanks to Providence Equity Partners.

The project has attracted its share of skeptics, who doubt that the two rivals could work successfully together. However, Providence has apparently put a $1 billion valuation on the effort, asking for a 10 percent stake in return for its investment.

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Aiming to better compete with Netflix, Blockbuster said Thursday that it had acquired Movielink, a provider of downloadable movie and television content.

Blockbuster has seen increasing success in its battle with the Netflix, adding customers to its online rental service at a faster rate than its competitor. However, Netflix until now was the only one of the two companies to offer an online download component.

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Linspire on Wednesday released the second version of Freespire, the community-based operating system based on Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distribution, enhancing it with its own proprietary software, drivers, and codecs.

The San Diego company's announcement comes a little over a year after the company first announced its plans to split its Linspire efforts into a commercial and free variant. The company hopes the free version will help spur use of Linux.

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The FCC has struck down a proposal brought forth by several technology companies that utilizes unused portions of TV spectrum for high-speed Internet.

Supported by companies such as Microsoft, Dell, and Google, the device uses what is called "white space" to deliver Internet, especially in rural areas. However, the FCC said the products shown did not reliably find unused spectrum, and would cause interference.

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Virgin America took to the skies on Wednesday. While for some it may just be another discount airline, the technology-centric planes could be a geek's dream.

The first flights take off between San Francisco and New York along with a San Francisco to Los Angeles route Wednesday.

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Without much fanfare, Apple silently upgraded its Mac Mini line on Tuesday, adding faster processors and more memory and storage.

Apple enthusiast sites have begun debating the future of the Mac Mini, pointing to slow sales and the scant number of updates the device has had since its January debut. However, Apple still seems to have faith in its entry-level Mac.

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