Ed Oswald

Scoring a major victory in offering its television services to a broader segment of the population, Verizon disclosed Friday that it had been the first to gain approval for a statewide video franchise in the state of California.

The nation's largest state changed its laws last year, taking the power away from local municipalities and allowing companies to apply to the state's Public Utility Commission to offer services. It went into effect on January 1.

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The company behind Wikipedia plans to shake up the search market by offering a collaborate search platform allowing users to improve upon the system much like they do with the popular encyclopedia Web site.

At a news conference Thursday in Tokyo, Wikipedia founder and chairman Jimmy Wales said Wikia -- the commercial face of Wikipedia -- plans to take as much as five percent of the search market.

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A beta of a new service launched by Skype Wednesday night will allow any user with the most current version of the popular communications client charge for voice and video calls placed to their account.

Dubbed "Skype Prime," users have the option to either charge by the minute or a single charge for the entire call. Fees would be taken out of the caller's Skype Credit account, and the called party would receive 70 percent of the proceeds collected, payable through PayPal.

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Microsoft is aiming to offer a higher-quality alternative to JPEG, saying Thursday that it planned to standardize its HD Photo graphics format. The new format is said to offer better quality, less data loss, and advanced functionality.

Compression with HD Photo is twice that of JPEG with fewer artifacts, the company claims. Due to this, images are clearer and half the size of those saved in the popular format.

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The Windows Live brain drain continues as news sources are reporting that Windows Live Search vice president Christopher Payne will be stepping down shortly.

The Wall Street Journal says sources are indicating that Payne will be leaving the company to start his own business, and that Microsoft has not yet decided on a successor. Microsoft is so far declining to comment on the reports.

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Samsung has begun shipments of the first hybrid flash memory hard drive to its OEM partners. Retail shipments are expected to begin soon, however the company has not specified a date.

The Korean electronics maker first announced its plans for such drives shortly before WinHEC in May of last year. It said that combining flash memory with a traditional HDD had numerous benefits, including faster boot and resume times, as well as increased reliability.

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Sony is betting its latest creation, PlayStation Home, will help to quell criticism that the console falls far behind its rivals in online support.

Executives for the company announced the service at the Game Developers Conference Wednesday during a keynote address. Sony is banking on the new offering, to be available globally in the fall, as a way to differentiate itself from its competitors.

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Access to YouTube from within Turkey was blocked Wednesday after prosecutors pointed out videos insulting the founder of the modern version of the country were appearing on the site.

Laws within the country forbid such comments that place Mustafa Kemal Ataturk or Turkey in general in a bad light, and are punishable by a prison term.

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Microsoft intends to offer a beta version of Office Communicator 2007 to millions of testers later this month. The move will begin an effort to give VoIP click-to-call functionality to some 100 million users of Office in the next three years.

In a keynote to attendees of a VoIP conference in Orlando, Fla. Wednesday, Microsoft Business Division president Jeff Raikes said the cost of VoIP deployment for businesses would be cut in half by the end of the decade, spurring growth in the sector.

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Macrovision said Tuesday that it had signed agreements with several online providers to employ the company's Analog Copy Protection (ACP) system in Internet movie and video distribution.

Deals have been struck with Netflix, BitTorrent, Movielink, and Instant Media. Macrovision claims the DRM technology will actually give consumers more choices in how, when, and where they can view content.

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If the press preview day for Microsoft's annual TechFest research fair is any indication of Redmond's future plans, search will become an increasingly larger part of the company's overall business.

Demonstrations of various search technologies dominated opening remarks by Microsoft Research presenters Tuesday. For many Microsoft employees, the event is the first time they would see technologies being developed by the MSR division.

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Windows Live OneCare has once again come up with a failing grade, as it was disclosed Monday the program had not passed a virus test by the AV Comparatives organization.

The failure means that Microsoft will not receive any type of certification from the group. It was the only antivirus program to fail - two others received a "standard" rating, and 14 received either an "advanced" or "advanced+" rating.

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Amie Street has signed a deal with Nettwerk Music Group that will bring several major bands to a music service without DRM, and where popularity determines the price. But the first order of business appears to be obtaining more bandwidth.

Attempts by BetaNews to connect to Amie Street resulted in waiting times for page loads of one minute or more - and in some cases not at all. Much of the issues could be likely attributed to its Nettwerk announcement.

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Faced with continuing criticism that is increasingly tarnishing the 150-year old company's reputation, Diebold may be preparing to offload its electronic voting unit, say analysts quoted by the Associated Press

What to critics may appear as the company's main business, in reality is a unit that only marginally adds to Diebold's bottom line. For much of the company's history, Diebold's focus has been on providing safes and automated teller machine services.

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The argument that next-generation gaming platforms would expand the video game industry got some added support Monday, as Nielsen reported that it had found video game penetration had increased 18 percent over the past two years.

In the fourth quarter of 2006, 45.7 million households owned a video game consoles, or about 41.1 percent. This compares with about 39.1 percent in 2005, and 35.2 percent in 2004. During this same period, the number of total television households increased 1.6 percent.

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