Ed Oswald

Any hope from Sony that its fortunes were turning around with the PlayStation 3 were dashed Tuesday as data showed it was falling further behind the Nintendo Wii in sales on its home turf.

Japanese gaming magazine company Enterbrain said that the PS3 had only managed to sell 45,321 units in May, far less than the Wii's 251,794 units during the month of May, a five-to-one margin. In April, the Wii was outselling the PS3 by a four-to-one ratio.

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Although it stops short of an all-out ban like some wildlife activists are looking for, eBay said Tuesday it will no longer allow cross-border sales of ivory.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) accused the site in mid-May of not following its own wildlife policies, and in some cases aiding the illegal trade of the material in as many as nine out of every ten listings.

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eBay will begin to sell radio advertising time through its auction site thanks to a partnership with Bid4Spots, which holds inventory from 2,300 radio stations in the top 300 markets.

The auction site typically offers unsold ad inventory, according to Bid4Spot's website.

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HTC shot back at Apple on Tuesday, introducing the Touch mobile handset that boasts many of the innovative features of the iPhone in a similar package.

The Taiwanese phone maker, which typically sells its phones directly to carriers that are then branded as that company's own phones, is betting highly on the product. It believes the Touch could contribute significantly to the company's financial performance.

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Web log software company Six Apart said Tuesday it had released a beta of the newest version of its Movable Type software, as well as announcing the platform would go open source by the end of this quarter.

The release of Movable Type 4.0 returns the software "to its roots," with the company relying heavily on its users to shape the next version of the software. Although many have treated the software like it was open source, in reality it was not.

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Acer is showing strength in the global PC industry, becoming the world's third largest PC maker in the first quarter of 2007, according to data from research firm iSuppli.

The Taiwanese company posted a 42.7 percent increase in shipments over the same quarter last year. That was enough for Acer to take the third spot from rival Lenovo. The Chinese PC manufacturer still leads in desktop PC shipments, but Acer's widening lead in notebooks gave it the number 3 spot overall.

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Ask.com on Tuesday launched its redesigned website, complete with new search technology, a three-panel design, and other new features aimed at differentiating itself from its competition.

Technology called 'Morph' provides the basis for most searches. Through algorithmic content-matching and ranking technology, Morph takes the results from several different sources and transforms the page layout to accommodate it.

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Apple updated its MacBook Pro line of laptops Tuesday, giving the computers slightly faster processors, more memory, and better graphics capabilities across the board.

The actual feature set of the MacBook Pro has not changed, and it still includes the 15 and 17-inch models with built in iSight, MagSafe Power Adapter, and 802.11 capabilities.

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Four new unpatched vulnerabilities have been published for Internet Explorer and Firefox, with two coming for each browser. The flaws were discovered by security researcher Michal Zalewski who published them to the Full Disclosure mailing list on Monday.

The most severe of the bugs is an issue in IE that could lead to cookie stealing and/or setting, page hijacking, and memory corruption. Zalewski referred to it as the "bait and switch vulnerability."

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation is criticizing Apple over its practice of encrypting user data into purchased tracks from its iTunes music store, saying it poses a security risk to its users.

Information such as customer name and e-mail can be found within the files of an iPod, and the data can apparently be culled from a stolen iPod rather easily, the technology lobbying group said.

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Microsoft has teamed with Verizon's business arm to provide consumers with one-click phone calls to businesses found on its Live Search listings, the telecommunications company said on Monday.

"Windows Live Call for Free" will be powered by the Verizon Business IP network, and gives consumers a way to immediately contact businesses they discover through using Windows Live Search and other products.

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Microsoft is launching a new program that will give new music artists an opportunity to get discovered by 30 million Zune, MSN, and Xbox users through a program it calls "Ignition."

Participants in the offering will receive a month's worth of prominent placement on Zune Marketplace, Zune.net, MSN's entertainment Web site, and Xbox Live Marketplace. The first band to participate is UK based Maximo Park.

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Palm said Monday that it had received $325 million in funding from Bono's Elevation Partners, and would shuffle its board -- including the addition of a former iPod exec from Apple -- to make itself more competitive.

Shareholders will receive $9 per Palm share they own as part of the restructuring. In turn, two board members will resign and be replaced by the co-founders of the private equity firm making the strategic investment in the portable electronics maker.

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Sony on Monday said it is lowering the cost of its upcoming Blu-ray player to $499 USD. Although it claims the $100 price drop is due to falling production costs and growing demand, Sony's move is likely more in response to rising sales of HD DVD players.

Data indicates that player sales for HD DVD have increased by five to ten times depending on the retailer following its price drop to $299 USD. Sony had originally planned for the BDP-S300 player to retail for $599 USD.

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Highlighting the struggles that mobile virtual network operators face to break into the highly competitive cellular marker, Amp'd Mobile filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection over the weekend.

Amp'd claims the bankruptcy was due to the fact its infrastructure could not keep up with demand, and it was "a necessary and responsible action to sustain and strengthen our momentum in the marketplace."

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