Ed Oswald

Bad news for soon-to-be owners of Toshiba's HD DVD players: there will be no high-definition movies to play on those units for at least three weeks. This is due to a delay by Warner Home Video, which was widely expected to provide the first discs.

Blaming the delay on technical issues, the studio said the first titles would not appear until April 18, rather than March 28 as previously announced. Also, its list of launch titles has been scaled back as well to three: "Million Dollar Baby," "The Phantom of the Opera" and "The Last Samurai."

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A faulty update sent to users of Norton AntiVirus and Norton Internet Security prevented them from signing into America Online for several hours Wednesday. According to Symantec, the problem was traced to a part of the software that prevents attackers from accessing a computer through open ports.

Traffic from AOL was mistakenly marked as malicious, which caused the connections to drop, and blocked them from reconnecting. An update was pushed to users approximately seven hours after the faulty one was released, the company reported.

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Cable provider RCN said Friday that it would begin offering ultra-high speed cable Internet access in two of the markets it serves. Called MegaModem Mach 20, the service would provide up to 20Mbps downstream and up to 2Mbps upstream. The move is a bid to stay competitive in light of new offerings from competitors like Verizon.

The first markets to be eligible for the new service will be Falls Church, Va., and Woburn, Mass. The service is twice as fast as cable Internet access from Comcast or Time Warner, and faster than DSL services in the same market.

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Sony introduced its first Blu-ray products on Thursday, offering the cheapest solutions so far to employ the technology. However, the price point still remains at about $1,000 or more, twice the cost of entry-level HD DVD players.

Pricing has become one of the major sticking points of Sony's next-generation optical disc format. With Sony announcing the lowest cost Blu-ray player to date, it may signal the company's concern that consumers may opt for the cheaper HD DVD format.

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Microsoft will spend $500 million this year alone to spread its latest marketing message called the "People-Ready" business vision. The effort will be used as a backdrop to promote a series of products the Redmond company plans to bring to market over the next year.

Upcoming versions of its Windows Vista operating system, Office 2007, Windows Mobile software, and Microsoft Exchange Server would be promoted. Additionally, the company plans to highlight its offerings in infrastructure software, such as Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005.

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Japan's Fair Trade Commission plans to ask a district court in the country to extend a deadline to hand over documents gathered in its case against Intel. According to sources within the agency, more time is needed to sort through the multitude of data collected, most of which was seized in spring 2004 raids of Intel's offices.

Last year, the JFTC had recommended the process of giving rebates for limited use of competitor's processors be halted. Intel has attempted to keep the documents secret in an effort to prevent rival AMD from using them in its own civil antitrust case against the company. The JFTC likely needs up to three more weeks to organize the evidence, say sources; the agency was ordered to disclose the documents in a hearing last December.

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EarthLink said Thursday that it would expand its packaged DSL and phone service to eight additional markets in an effort to give consumers an alternative to local phone companies. First announced in January, the service is made possible through a partnership with Covad.

Where EarthLink's service differs is at the phone company's central office. Until the phone call reaches that point, it acts as a POTS, or "plain old telephone service." This means users can place a call using their standard phoneline.

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In the midst of criticism over its .com deal with ICANN, VeriSign this week disclosed what it says was a major DoS attack aimed at about 1,500 organizations two months ago. According to the company, the attacks started January 3 and stopped suddenly in mid-February.

In the attacks, bots were directed to send packets containing a query and the return address of the Web site they were flooding to the organization's name servers. According to VeriSign research, more than 32,000 name servers may have been involved.

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MSN's communication services vice president Blake Irving is expected to outline the communications strategy for voice and video services within Windows Live on Thursday, saying it would work with its partners to bring "a complete presence- and contact-centric communications experience."

In comments to be given at a afternoon keynote at the Spring 2006 VON Conference and Expo in San Jose, California, Blake will outline how the company plans to integrate voice and video into the various Windows Live properties.

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Microsoft chairman Bill Gates derided the $100 laptop being developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Wednesday, criticizing its lack of features. Gates has been described as privately bitter over MIT's decision to reject using Windows on the device.

Gates met with then MIT Media Lab chairman Nicholas Negroponte in November. According to reports, Negroponte told Gates he was only interested in using open source software on the device. He had also rebuffed an offer from Apple to use free copies of Mac OS X for a similar reason.

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Radio chips being marketed as a replacement for the barcode threaten consumer privacy and are able to carry a virus, Dutch university scientists revealed on Wednesday. An infected radio frequency identity (RFID) tag is able to disrupt the database that reads information on the chip.

Scientists at Amsterdam's Free University were able to create a chip infected with a virus, and then use it to infect the database. Before this study, supporters of RFID assumed that the technology could not modify the back-end software that reads it.

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Mountain View, Calif.-based Java hardware company Azul filed for declaratory relief in order to "protect the interests of the company" from Sun Microsystems, the company said in a statement Wednesday.

Azul says Sun is attempting to force the company into paying an "exorbitant" sum of money to settle patent infringement allegations, as well as demanding part ownership of Azul and high up-front fees and royalties on the hardware the company sells.

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Microsoft announced Wednesday it had filed lawsuits against eight eBay sellers in an effort to curb counterfeit software sales. The company alleges the sellers auctioned off illegal copies of its software to unsuspecting buyers.

The lawsuits were filed against sellers in Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York and Washington.

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AOL on Wednesday announced that it was diving into sibling company Warner Bros.' deep library of classic TV shows to launch In2TV, the first broadband television network.

At launch, thousands of episodes from 30 television shows would be offered in both Windows Media and AOL's Hi-Q video format. From there, the company plans to expand the list of available shows and episodes throughout the year.

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Microsoft on Wednesday said it had begun to test ads across its Microsoft Office Live, Windows Live Mail and MSN Spaces services with the help of 20 global marketers. The company said the effort is an extension of a strategy first revealed in November of last year.

At that time, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said the company was moving into an era where services would be supported by advertising and subscriptions. Microsoft said Wednesday that the revenues generated through this new advertising program would follow that pledge.

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