Ed Oswald

In two separate deals announced late Monday, both CBS and NBC plan to offer on-demand versions of their hit shows through cable provider Comcast, and satellite provider DirecTV, respectively. Both will charge 99 cents per episode to access the recorded versions of programs.

In the CBS deal, commercials will remain intact, however NBC's offering will cut out the commercials much like the agreement ABC has with Apple's iTunes for its programming.

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McAfee and Symantec warned on Monday of a new worm that is targeting PHP and CGI scripts stored at certain locations on vulnerable Web servers. Called "Lupper," the worm will install and execute itself, allowing a hacker to gain access to the system.

From there, an attacker could potentially link the server with other infected machine to launch attacks elsewhere, according to an advisory issued by the antivirus maker on Sunday. The recommended fix is a complete OS reinstall.

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Motorola announced that it plans to add four new RAZR phones to its lineup, including versions available in pink and blue, the first RAZR for CDMA networks, and an update to the original V3 phone that will include iTunes in some markets.

The RAZR has proven to be a huge success story for the company, with sales expected to top 10 million units worldwide before the end of this year. Motorola has also regained a lot of lost market share; in the third quarter, it led all GSM phone manufacturers with a 39 percent share, ahead of former first place Nokia with 22 percent.

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The FCC on Monday changed its stance on VoIP E911 service, saying companies did not have to disconnect existing users even if they do not provide the feature. However, in areas where E911 is not available, VoIP providers are no longer permitted to market service or accept new customers.

Several providers, most notably Nuvio, had filed suits in federal court to nullify the November 28 cutoff date. The Kansas-based company had been the most vocally opposed to the ruling since it was introduced in May of this year.

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Macromedia has finally warned of a serious security flaw that was a patch as soon as possible. The flaw has been rated as "critical" by Macromedia and "high" by eEye Digital Security, which discovered the problem earlier this year.

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As many as one million Windows users may have switched to Mac OS X, according to a note released on Monday to clients of financial firm Needham & Co. Analyst Charles Wolf disclosed the estimate and said Apple's current stock price of $61 has met the company's price target.

Due to this, the company is downgrading the stock to "hold," although with reservation.

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The two largest search engines are set to offer new services aimed at mobile phones with feature sets that make them similar to their desktop equivalents, according to press reports.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Yahoo is working on its own cell phone with SBC Communications, and Google is planning to make its services more accessible through wireless devices and smartphones.

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After months of delays, Nokia on Monday announced that its highly-anticipated Linux based Internet Tablet is available for purchase in Europe on the company's Web site. Nokia says it expects to make the device available in the U.S. next week. The Internet Tablet 770 will retail for 349 euros ($421 USD).

At launch, the device will feature Web browsing, e-mail, Internet radio, an RSS newsreader, file manager, and a media player supporting MPEG, AVI and RealVideo formats. "During the first half of year 2006 we will launch the next operating system upgrade to support more presence based functionalities such as VoIP and Instant Messaging," said Nokia's vice president of convergence products Janne Jormalainen.

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Qualcomm announced on Monday that it had filed a lawsuit against competitor Nokia, accusing the company of infringement on 12 patents related to the manufacture of devices that adhere to the GSM standard. The suit seeks a halt to Nokia's phone sales in the United States, as well as monetary damages.

Nokia along with five other manufacturers had complained last week to the European Commission over Qualcomm's business practices. The companies alleged that Qualcomm was attempting to shut out competitors in making chips for 3G mobile phones.

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TiVo users will soon be able to schedule television programs to record directly from the Yahoo TV Web site, under a partnership announced Monday. Customers with a Series 2 TiVo and a Yahoo account can utilize the service immediately.

Previously, users had to go through the TiVo Web site in order to remotely schedule programs on their receivers. Benefits of the partnership will also extend to other areas of the TiVo service, including photos, traffic, and other Yahoo content that will soon be available directly from the TiVo interface.

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Cingular last week quietly dropped the price of Motorola's ROKR iTunes phone by nearly 40 percent, possibly indicating that reports of disappointing sales may be accurate. The price for the music-enabled phone alongside a two-year contract with Cingular was lowered from $249.99 to $149.99 USD.

According to analysts, sales may be meeting expectations, but customers are not happy with the ROKR. A research note released by financial analyst firm Piper Jaffray in October indicated that the return rates for the phone were unusually high. In the last three weeks of the third quarter, Cingular sold only 250,000 ROKRs; however, it's unclear how many of those phones were returned.

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Not to be left out of the party, Microsoft joined the online book movement Friday by announcing a deal with the British Library to digitize 25 million pages of content from the library's collection during the next year. The two organizations also plan to continue the process after the first phase is complete.

Google announced early on Thursday that it was going ahead with plans to digitize books as part of its Google Print initiative. The news was followed Thursday afternoon by Amazon unveiling a program that would allow consumers to purchase portions of and entire books for viewing online.

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Mozilla has put out a call for developers to help extend the features of its Firefox browser through a new program called "Extend Firefox." The company hopes that the contest will bring hundreds of new extensions to the browser, and further solidify its role as the de facto alternative to Internet Explorer.

Three grand prize winners of the contest will receive a special edition Firefox PC and a prize pack, while eight runner-ups win an iPod Nano and O'Reilly books. The contest is scheduled to end on January 6, 2006. Interested developers can learn more about the categories at the Extend Firefox Web site.

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A California man was arrested by federal authorities on Thursday, accused of running a 400,000-computer network for illegal activities. This network, called a "botnet," contains systems that have been compromised by a hacker who can upload files or control them remotely through an IRC channel.

20 year-old Jeanson Achenta spread a trojan horse application called "rxbot" to the machines, which most notably infected government computers in the Weapons Division of the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center. He also is accused of uploading adware onto the compromised systems.

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The FCC on Thursday unanimously voted to begin an investigation into local video franchise rules, and to decide if some municipalities may be unreasonably delaying the availability of new video services -- such as Verizon's FiOS TV -- by refusing to award franchises to applicants.

The commission will now seek comment from the public on the matter through a Notice of Proposed Rule Making. Telephone companies say that the franchise process is more difficult than it should be, takes too long and some municipalities are making unreasonable demands.

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