Ed Oswald

Musician Moby joined forces with net neutrality supporters Thursday, demanding alongside Massachusetts Democratic Representative Edward Markey that Congress pass some type of legislation that would ensure the free flow of data through the Internet.

Other musicians, including R.E.M., Q-Tip, the Indigo Girls, Jill Sobule, Wilco, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, the Roots, the Dixie Chicks and Moby have formed a new group called Artists and Musicians for Internet Freedom.

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Creative may have opened a can of worms with its lawsuit against rival Apple. On the same day it sued the Cupertino company over the so-called "Zen Patent," Apple countersued in a Wisconsin District Court claiming Creative's digital players infringe on four of its own patents. Apple holds nearly an 8-to-1 margin in sales of its player over its smaller rival.

While Creative remained tight-lipped about its own suit, it said it was shocked by the countersuit by Apple. "Creative proactively held discussions with Apple in our efforts to explore amicable solutions," Phil O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for Creative, told the International Herald Tribune. "At no time during these discussions or at any other time did Apple mention to us the patents it raised in its lawsuit."

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Symantec filed suit against Microsoft on Thursday, accusing the Redmond company of infringing on its patented technology in Windows Vista and Longhorn Server. The suit asks for damages, as well as an injunction that would halt the sale of both operating systems.

The complaint involves technology in Symantec's Volume Manager program, which allows an operating system to store a large amount of data. Microsoft had licensed a basic version of the software from Veritas in 1996, and used it in its Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 operating systems.

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Intel's hold on Dell is about to come to an end. The Round Rock, Texas based company announced its plans to offer AMD chips in high-end servers by the end of the year. The news came inside the computer maker's fiscal first quarter earnings, which ended May 5. Although the company did not specify a reason to adopt AMD processors, Dell may be looking for a way to cut costs in order to boost profit margins.

Dell posted an 18 percent drop in profits, amounting to a $762 million gain in the quarter. This compares with a profit of $934 million in the year-ago quarter. Revenue growth also seemed sluggish; the company reported $14.22 billion in revenues, up 6.2 over a year ago. Dell did not say if the move to AMD in its server line would eventually trickle down into its consumer products. Those PCs are currently exclusively built on the Intel platform.

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AOL has plans to offer a custom domain service, BetaNews has learned. The offering, called AOL MYeAddress, will begin as a beta test later Thursday, with an official launch coming this summer.

Users would be able to select a custom domain to use in place of their regular aol.com address. From there, the user could link up to six additional screen names to use the new domain. The service would only be open to AOL subscribers, and the screen names could be across multiple accounts, an AOL spokesperson told BetaNews.

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will review Amazon.com's claims to a patent that covers its one-click buying option after a New Zealand actor successful raised a "substantial new question of patentability," according to a ruling by the agency.

Peter Calveley, whose film credits include being a motion capture performer behind the computer-generated characters in the The Lord of the Rings, claims that he had record of prior inventions in the field. He refers to a 1998 patent filed which discussed a single action that would be used for purchasing.

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IBM said Thursday it had acquired Swiss-based Rembo Technology, a company that produces software to automate the process of installing or upgrading operating systems on thousands of computers simultaneously. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Rembo's technology would help IBM extend its virtualization software portfolio, which has become big business for the Armonk, N.Y., based company. According to research firm IDC, spending on virtualization is expected to reach $15 billion by 2009.

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Apple will open its highly anticipated Fifth Avenue store in New York City on Friday evening, and has plans to operate it 24 hours a day year round. The store, which is located near to popular shopping destinations FAO Schwartz and Bergdorf Goodman, is Apple's second in New York.

The centerpiece of the store is a 32-foot glass cube that serves as the entrance to the store itself. It has been widely rumored that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was behind the design of the store's visually stunning entrance, however the company has never confirmed it.

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Sony Ericsson announced its holiday mobile phone lineup on Thursday, including two new Walkman models, two new flip phones, and a phone that is capable of recognizing handwritten Chinese characters.

The mobile phone manufacturer has been releasing new models at a blistering pace. Last year, it introduced 30 phones, and already this year it has introduced close to two dozen new models. The joint venture has also begun to take advantage of Sony's well known brand names in the past year, like the "Walkman" and "Cybershot," in a play to increase the company's worldwide market share.

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In what seems to be a growing trend among telcos with wireless businesses, Sprint Nextel said on Thursday it had completed the spin-off of its landline business. The new company, called Embarq, would be an independent, publicly traded company.

Sprint said the move was intended to allow it to focus on its mobile product line. The company has several large projects in development, and needed to focus its resources where the company is increasingly making a larger portion of its revenue.

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AOL said Thursday that it had acquired broadband video advertising company Lightningcast in an effort to cash in on the growing online advertising industry. The Washington, D.C. company specializes in broadband video and audio ad insertion and campaign management.

Lightningcast would operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Advertising.com, which is an AOL property. The company would continue working with its clients, AOL said.

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Samsung said Wednesday that it plans to demonstrate a prototype of the first commercially available hybrid hard drive (HHD) at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle next week. The drive integrates NAND flash memory with the standard magnetic storage in today's hard drives.

The benefits, especially in the mobile space, are numerous. HHDs will be able to boot or resume operation up to twice as fast as a traditional hard drive, and are five times as reliable. Additionally, the drives provide an extra 20-30 minutes of battery life over their predecessors.

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Firefox users may be vulnerable to a denial of service attack after researchers looked into reports of a new vulnerability within Firefox 1.5.0.3. The flaw exists in how the browser handles image tags. The SANS Internet Storm Center first wrote off the problem, but continued research has shown that the flaw could be used maliciously.

The exploit was initially believed to only be a joke, as a hyperlinked "image" when opened would launch the media player and play a .wav file. However, researchers now say the same flaw could be used in conjunction with JavaScript to open a mail client and open up multiple windows using the "mailto:" command.

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Linksys on Wednesday announced the first of its wireless VoIP phones to work over an 802.11g network. The company says that it plans to introduce more phones in the coming months with the capability that would help spur the burgeoning VoIP industry.

"Voice over IP has clearly emerged as the future of telephone communication and Linksys is leading the way," said Tarun Loomba, director, product management, Linksys. "With the launch of our family of WiFi phones, we can take the technology to a whole new level."

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Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled new search tools for the enterprise market in an effort to better compete with competitor Google. The products would make it easier for employees to search and locate information in the vast stores of documents that businesses often amass, the company says.

"Information workers tell us they need more than an Internet search box," explained Kevin Johnson, co-president of the Platforms & Services Division of Microsoft. "They want simple tools that help them effectively manage information stored in multiple locations and that give them quick access to relevant data and people through actionable results, not just lists of links."

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