Ed Oswald

Despite the best efforts of privacy advocates, Wal-Mart pressed forward with its plans to use RFID, saying it planned to roll out the technology to another 500 stores during this fiscal year. The expansion would mean over a quarter of the company's 3,900-plus stores, including its Sam's Club subsidiary, would use RFID to manage its inventory.

Wal-Mart's moves have not been without controversy. When the company's plans were first detailed in 2003, there was a near-immediate negative reaction from privacy advocates. Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation claimed RFID threatened privacy and civil liberties, possibly allowing Wal-Mart to track its customers without their knowledge.

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Two of the nation's largest CDMA-based wireless providers elaborated on their plans for the next version of their high speed networks, known as EV-DO Revision A. Verizon said it had tapped Motorola to help deploy the technology across its network, while Sprint announced two new mobile broadband cards that are Revision A-capable.

Both Verizon and Sprint currently use CDMA 1x RTT as the initial version of EV-DO across their networks. While the technology offers average download speeds of 400-700 kbps, Revision A gives a slight speed bump to as much as 850 KBps, with a 300-400 kbps upload speed.

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Adobe debuted updates to both its Adobe Photoshop Elements photo editing software and Premiere Elements video editing suite on Tuesday, which it billed as major upgrades to both products. The applications are consumer versions of the more comprehensive professional products offered by Adobe.

The company offers Abobe Photoshop CS2 for the professional photographer, and Premiere Pro for the advanced and professional videographer.

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TiVo on Tuesday introduced its highly anticipated Series3 digital video recorder, its first standalone HD-compatible unit. CableCARD functionality allows the box to act like a cable box, and dual-tuner functionality would allow up to two programs to be recorded and/or watched at the same time.

The Series3 box records up to 32 hours of high-definition or up to 300 hours of standard-definition programming. An OLED display on the front of the unit would allow the user to see what is recording on either tuner. TiVo said that the device will support its TiVoCast feature later this year, which allows consumers to download content over a broadband connection.

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HP's chairman will step down following the company's January 2007 board meeting as a result of the press leak investigation she launched and the techniques used, which both the state of California and the U.S. Government are investigating as possible breaches of law.

Patricia Dunn has agreed to step down after the board apparently decided to ask her to do so. Dunn on Friday rebuffed shareholder calls for her to resign, but had indicated she would leave HP at the request of the board. After two days of meetings, it is apparent that was what the board decided was in the company's best interest.

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The Justice Department has launched a probe into Hewlett-Packard's methods to uncover the source of press leaks, the company disclosed in a filing Monday. The announcement marks the second government investigation of the company following a similar announcement by the California Attorney General last week.

Besides the legal inquiries, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is also requesting information on HP's actions as well. At issue is the company's use of "pretexting," which dupes companies into divulging personal information.

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The German public prosecutor's office raided seven ISPs late last week in an attempt to crack down on child pornography. Ten servers were seized, all of which were running a program called Tor, distributed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and billed as a way to protect user privacy by anonymizing Internet traffic.

Services that anonymize traffic have been around for a long time, first becoming popular as a way to download and post to Usnet newsgroups without revealing one's identity. However, with anonymizing comes certain risks: some users could be involved in illegal activity, such as the trade of child pornography.

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The prevalence of adware and spyware is increasing at an exponential rate, and only one out of every 33 Web users can correctly identify a 'safe' and 'unsafe' site, security firm McAfee said in a report first released Monday. The study's results are troubling and indicate work to stop the spread of these applications must be intensified.

While from 2000 to 2002 only about 40 adware families existed, over the following four years, that number increased over ten times to over 450 different families. In addition, these programs had some 4,000 variants, the company found.

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Amidst questions surrounding the reporting of its financial results, Dell said Monday that it would delay the filing of its 10-Q report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The failure to file the required detailed quarterly financial filing with the agency could set the company up to be threatened with a delisting by NASDAQ in the coming days.

While NASDAQ has threatened Apple and other companies with a delisting over their delayed 10-Q filings, those warnings surrounded the reporting of stock option grants. In Dell's case, the problem relates to an investigation into the misstatements of prior financial results.

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In an effort aimed at accelerating adoption of mobile broadcast television, Motorola and Nokia said Monday they had agreed to work together on interoperability among their DVB-H devices and services. The companies will also collaborate with carriers interested in deploying solutions based on open standards.

DVB-H technology promises that up to 50 channels of television content can be delivered at low cost over a single wireless network, supporters say.

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AOL said Monday that it had reached an agreement with NBC to stream two of its new fall series to AOL users, the second time the network has turned to unconventional means to promote its shows. In July, NBC tapped Netflix to offer a DVD containing the pilot episodes of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "Kidnapped" beginning in August.

"Studio 60," a drama about the behind the scenes wrangling at a late night comedy show, would again appear in the AOL promotion. Joining it would be "Twenty Good Years," a comedy about to two friends in New York City who both think they have 20 years left to live and are determined to make the best of it.

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Security firm Websense warned this week that attackers had apparently broke into the Web site of telecommunications company Samsung, infecting certain portions of the site with a Trojan horse. The firm said it was likely that the site had been infected for some time.

"The most current code, which is still available for download, is a Trojan Horse that attempts to disable anti-virus programs, modify registry keys, download additional files, and log keystrokes when connecting to banking websites," Websense said in an advisory.

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IBM said Friday it had begun shipping the first processor chips to Nintendo intended for use in its next-generation "Wii" gaming console. The chip, code-named "Broadway," is said to offer a 20 percent reduction in energy consumption.

Big Blue's processors can now be found in every next-generation console. The Wii sports a processor based on the PowerPC architecture; Microsoft's Xbox 360 is a triple-core PowerPC processor running at 3.2GHz; and Sony's PlayStation 3 includes a cell processor that IBM co-developed with Sony and Toshiba.

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While the Xbox 360 has been fairly successful here in North America, in Japan the console has been largely a flop. Data from research firm Enterbrain indicates that only about 158,000 units of the next-generation console have sold, a tiny fraction of the five million consoles sold worldwide.

Part of the reason may be Microsoft's decision to only sell the premium Xbox 360 version in Japan, so on Thursday the company said it would also begin to offer the Core model, which does not include the external hard drive and wireless controller, in an effort to boost sales.

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The school bell rung for the first time Thursday at the School of the Future, a joint project between the School District of Philadelphia and Microsoft. The two groups say the school is the most advanced high school in the nation, with technology deeply integrated into the curriculum.

Construction began in November 2004, and the project was billed as an integral part of a $1.5 billion plan by the city to reform the city's schools. Mismanagement and low test scores even prompted the state to take over the school district in early 2003.

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