Ed Oswald

Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker suggested Thursday that its Thunderbird e-mail client be spun off, but is soliciting the opinions of users before making any final decision.

Baker said in her blog that Thunderbird is being "dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it." By spinning it off, she believes that the project would allow the application to thrive.

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Aiming to stay competitive with Sony, Microsoft cut the price of its HD DVD add-on for Xbox 360 by 10 percent, as well as including five free movies through a mail-in offer.

The free disc offer is similar to an offer that Toshiba has been using to promote its own set-top HD DVD players. The price will be dropped in the United States from $199 to $179 USD beginning August 1, and the promotion will run from that date to September 30.

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Apple posted another strong quarter of revenues, with record profits that nearly doubled over the year ago quarter, as well as setting a new record for quarterly Mac shipments.

1,764,000 Macs were shipped during the company's fiscal third quarter, up a third over the year ago quarter and 150,000 more than its previous record. iPods were also up 21 percent to 9,815,000 units sold during the quarter.

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The problem of sex offenders on MySpace now appears to be much larger than the company initially suggested.

The social networking site said earlier this week that it had deleted 29,000 sex offender profiles, far more than the 7,000 it had initially said it found in May of this year. The site holds about 180 million profiles.

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Netflix took a double hit on Tuesday, as its Web site outage moved into a second day, and it reported the first quarterly customer losses in its history.

The online rental firm's site had been down since Monday evening due to "unanticipated problems," although the company declined to elaborate on the issue. A message on the site said the company expected the site to return by 4pm Eastern Time Tuesday.

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AOL said Tuesday it had entered into an agreement to acquire Tacoda, a company that specializes in offering behavioral targeted advertising.

Tacoda, which was founded in 2001, will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of AOL. It follows the Dulles, Va. based company's acquisition of ad serving company AdTech earlier this year.

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Raids in the southern region of China have exposed a 2 billion dollar global software piracy syndicate, believed to be one of the largest in the world.

The FBI and China's Public Security Bureau led the investigation. Microsoft, as well as its customers and partners, also assisted in providing information, which led to the arrests and confiscation of the software of those involved.

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RIAA said Monday that it had sent out 408 letters offering to settle with students from 23 universities across the country. The letter offers those who receive it a discounted settlement for staying out of court.

Among the universities receiveing the most letters were the State University of New York at Morrisville with 34; Georgia Tech and Penn State with 31; the University of Central Arkansas with 27, and the University of Delaware with 23.

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Forget another five-year wait for the next version of Windows. Microsoft has shared a few details of its next-generation operating system, tentatively named "Windows 7," due in 2010. The next version will come in both 32 and 64-bit versions, and include both business and consumer versions. Microsoft is also looking into the concept of subscription service as a way to extend the functionality of the operating system.

More importantly, the company is now focusing on Windows Vista Service Pack 1, which some news sources are saying may be available by the end of the year. "As part of our ongoing outreach to enterprise customers and partners, Microsoft has begun sharing plans for how they will continue to deliver value to businesses in the future, including Software Assurance customers in particular," Microsoft said in a statement.

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The Copyright Board of Canada has given the go ahead for a tax to be placed on iPods and removable memory storage cards for private copying.

The tax was opposed by both the Canadian Storage Media Alliance and the Retail Council of Canada, who claimed that previous court decisions had already struck down any kind of fine. The board disagreed.

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Ask.com will soon give its users the option to decide whether or not their search history is retained by the site.

Called AskEraser, the feature can be turned off and on, and its status is indicated on all search results pages. The move comes in response to increasing consumer concern over how search engines retain user data.

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Google has said that it will commit to spending at least $4.6 billion in the upcoming 700MHz wireless auction if the FCC commits to greater competition and consumer choice as a requirement for using the spectrum.

Television broadcasters will vacate the frequencies in early 2009 when the switch from analog to digital television takes place. It is considered highly valuable spectrum as the characteristics of the frequencies allow signals to travel at long distances.

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Microsoft said Thursday that it had surpassed $50 billion in annual revenue, while saying quarterly profits were up seven percent on brisk Vista sales.

For the quarter ending June 30, 2007, the company posted a net income of $3.06 billion, up from $2.83 billion a year ago. Profits would have been much higher, but its $1.06 billion charge-off for Xbox warranties cut into the company's profits.

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Firefox continues to grow in Europe, with the browser share now approaching 30 percent. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer has gone below 70 percent.

According to data released Wednesday by XiTi Monitor, 27.8 percent of Web users now surf with Firefox, up nearly 4 percent from March. Slovenia holds the browser's highest market share at 47.9 percent, followed closely by Finland at 45.4 percent.

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Both IDC and Gartner reported worldwide shipments of PCs were up strongly in the second quarter, thanks to surge in demand in the Far East and surprisingly brisk sales in the US.

IDC said that shipments were up 12.5 percent to 58.8 million units, while Gartner said 61.1 million PCs were shipped, resulting in 11.7 percent increase. The methodology used differs from company to company, resulting in the different figures.

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