Ed Oswald

Apple's lead software engineer Avadis "Avie" Tevanian will leave the company at the end of March, it was confirmed Monday. Tevanian followed Steve Jobs to Apple after the company's acquisition of NeXT in February 1997.

Initially, Tevanian served as vice president of Software Engineering, however he received a promotion to chief software technology officer in 2003. No reasons were given for his departure, and Apple said he would "pursue other interests."

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Bertelsmann is close to selling its stake in the music venture Sony BMG, the Financial Times reported on Monday. A sale would help finance a buyback of shares owned by Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL), which owns a 25 percent stake in the company.

Sony BMG is most remembered in the technology industry for placing rootkits on its music CDs as a copyright protection mechanism. Fallout surrounding the discovery resulted in several lawsuits -- including one from the state of Texas -- and a public relations nightmare for the music giant.

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The delayed launch of Windows Vista will have a limited effect on PC shipments in 2006, and may actually help to boost sales slightly in 2007, research firm IDC said Monday. Overall, PC shipments should grow at a ten percent or higher rate through 2008, the firm said.

IDC's comments came as part of its Quarterly PC Tracker forecast of the industry. The firm is now more optimistic about sales through 2008, saying growth should remain above 10.5 percent. Previously, IDC had expected growth to fall below 10 percent beginning in 2007.

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Microsoft this month joined the INCITS/V1 Technical Committee, according to press reports. While on the surface the news sounds rather benign, the group is responsible for the reconciliation of votes to make the OpenDocument Format a worldwide standard.

The Redmond company is currently pushing its response to ODF, called Office Open XML, through the ECMA. It is also expected to look to receive International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification.

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Lycos announced Monday that it would offer a VoIP product that would combine IM, Video Chat, Video-on-Demand, and an MP3 player. The application will provide free PC-to-PC phone and video calls, and allow the user to receive free incoming calls from landline and mobile phones.

Customers would also receive 100 free PC-to-Phone minutes, with the opportunity to earn more through special promotions, Lycos said. The service is being offered through a partnership with VoIP company Globe7.

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For the third time, Apple Corps, the company that represents the business interests of the Beatles, and Apple Computer will meet in court. Apple Corps is accusing Apple of breaking a 1991 agreement by selling music online, and will argue its case in London this week.

Apple Computer says the agreement allows for the sale of online data transfers. Thus, through the way iTunes works, it can sidestep that provision, it claims.

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Microsoft said on Monday that it had filed an appeal in the Seoul High Court against a decision by the South Korea Fair Trade Commission. In the ruling, the KFTC ordered Microsoft to unbundle both its messaging and media player software from the Windows operating system.

The KFTC also fined Microsoft $33 million USD, and gave the company 30 days to appeal.

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Microsoft slammed an article by Australian technology publication Smart House on Friday, calling it "speculation." The retort came as a result of a story that cited sources within the company saying as much as 60 percent of Vista code needs to be rewritten.

The article claimed that the Redmond company had to transfer developers from the Xbox team to the Windows division in order to ensure the Vista makes it to a CES 2007 release. Much of the article centered on issues with the Media Center and multimedia functionality, and claimed Intel was assisting Microsoft in rushing out the new code.

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Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told attendees of the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif., that they must break out of the mold Thursday, and challenged them to create bold new games. The company will provide the tools for them to do so as Revolution draws closer to launch, he assured.

Iwata has said previously that game developers were focusing too much on sequels of popular games, rather than creating innovative new games.

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Saying it wanted to focus on businesses "core to its future growth," Yahoo alerted subscribers of its Yahoo Plus service earlier this week that it will be discontinued April 23. The add-on provided extra storage, premium video, commercial free Internet radio, security features, and a broadband portal for a $5.95 USD monthly fee or $47.40 USD yearly. Yahoo claimed that a majority of its users saw such a service was not "essential," likely meaning it failed to generate enough interest among Yahoo users.

The company said it would issue a refund to yearly subscribers, but not to those on a monthly plan. Yahoo stopped billing those customers March 20. All features would revert back to those given to users of the free service. Customers wishing to retain some of the benefits would have to subscribe to them on a per-service basis, the company said.

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The U.S. government lent its support to protests by Apple Computer over a French law that would require the company, along with the digital rights management platforms of others, to interoperate with each other. U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez made the comments as part of an interview on the CNBC cable television network Thursday. While saying he needed more time to look over the law, he felt Apple's intellectual property rights were being violated and the company is right for speaking against the proposal.

Apple has called the law the equivalent of "state-sponsored piracy," however its supporters say it would better protect the rights of artists whose work is sold online. The policy is part of a bigger law designed to combat piracy. "I would compliment [Apple] because we need for companies to also stand up for their intellectual property rights," Gutierrez said in the interview. The law passed the lower house of the French legislature Tuesday by a 2-to-1 margin.

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The high-flying shares of search engine Google are flying even higher Friday following news of its addition to the highly regarded Standard & Poor's 500 stock index. Google is set to replace Burlington Resources, an oil and gas company, at the close of business March 31.

In late morning trading, shares were up $26.11 to $368.00, a 7.64 percent increase. This follows a nine percent rise late Thursday after the news was first announced. The move is sure to also spark a flurry of stock buys in the company, say analysts.

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A day after confirming a delay of Windows Vista until 2007, Microsoft late Thursday said there would be a similar delay in the launch of Office 2007.

While the code for the productivity suite is expected to be completed this year, a consumer launch will occur in conjunction with Windows Vista, expected in January. Members of Microsoft's Volume Licensing Program would be able to get Office code in October, however, a month ahead of Vista's business launch.

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Microsoft has confirmed the existence of a critical Internet Explorer flaw that could put millions of IE users at risk of code execution just by visiting a malicious Web site. The flaw was first reported this week by Danish security firm Secunia.

According to the firm's advisory, the flaw exists in how Internet Explorer interprets the "createTextRange()" method used for radio button controls in HTML forms. From there, the flaw can be exploited to allow program flow to be redirected to the heap.

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Sling Media on Thursday released a public beta of its SlingPlayer Mobile application, allowing Slingbox owners with Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs to access television content while on the road.

The application is available for both Windows Mobile 5.0 and Pocket PC 2003 Second Edition, with a version for non-touch screen smartphones due in April. While the beta is currently free, Sling Media said it would begin charging $29.99 USD on April 26.

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