PDA Sales Continue to Decline
Handheld devices continued to fall out of favor with consumers, according to a report released by market research firm IDC. In the third quarter of 2005, handheld sales fell 8.8 percent compared with last quarter, and 16.9 percent year over year.
Even with the declines, device manufacturers are continuing to release new products, many featuring some type of wireless connectivity. While IDC expects an uptick in sales sequentially from quarter to quarter, sales will likely miss last year's numbers.
Nokia, MIT to Open Research Center
Nokia will open a research center near the MIT campus in January to study new areas for mobile technology, the company said on Thursday. The center would be a partnership with the university's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
"For Nokia, this is a fresh approach to our research collaboration with universities," said Dr. Bob Iannucci, head of Nokia Research Center. "Bringing together the collective expertise of MIT and Nokia in mobile computing and communications provides a vehicle for rapidly generating new concepts and bringing innovations to the marketplace on a large scale."
IBM 'Blue Gene' Gets New Applications
IBM released new commercial applications for its Blue Gene supercomputer on Friday, which it says will put supercomputing power in the hands of those who may have not been able to afford it previously.
"Clients who need the analytic capability of super-high performance computers can now simply rent time on Blue Gene to run these specialized applications and achieve results never before attainable," said David Gelardi, vice president of deep computing at IBM.
Google's Suit Against MS Put on Hold
Google's attempts at getting Kai-Fu Lee's Microsoft contract voided through California laws prohibiting noncompete clauses has hit another roadblock. A U.S. District Judge in San Jose on Thursday ordered the trial postponed until the outcome of Microsoft's case in a Washington state court is known.
Judge Ronald Whyte said that "Google and Lee fail to explain why they cannot ask the Washington state court to apply California law," making it increasingly likely that Microsoft might prevail in its fight against the search giant. Although a Washington state court did rule in September that Kai-Fu Lee could work for Google, it severely restricted what job functions he could perform.
Level 3, Cogent Agree on Traffic Deal
Level 3 and Cogent announced on Friday that they had agreed to terms that will keep Internet traffic flowing smoothly between customers of the two companies. Earlier this month, Level 3 cut off Cogent, creating headaches for thousands of Internet users and prompting Congress to threaten to enter the dispute.
The new deal puts caps on the volume of traffic each company can send, a sticking point for Level 3; the company had accused Cogent of overloading its servers. Other portions of the "confidential" agreement were not disclosed. "As a result of the agreement, Level 3 will not proceed with disconnection on November 9, as previously announced," Level 3 said in a statement.
Judge Criticizes MS Settlement Progress
At a court hearing to discuss Microsoft's progress in meeting the sanctions imposed in a 2002 antitrust settlement, a U.S. District Judge reprimanded the company over its recent music software flap. Microsoft was also scolded for not moving fast enough in opening its Windows internals to third parties.
Last week, the government disclosed that Microsoft had considered forcing its partners to stop bundling rival music software with their portable players. The plan was apparently proposed in a draft of marketing strategies, but was dropped after a manufacturer complained.
AOL Rolls Out First AIM Ad Campaign
The new AIM Triton may still be in beta, but AOL is already preparing a wide-ranging campaign to promote the service among younger computer users in an effort to regain some ground it has lost to more-gimmicky rivals such as MSN.
"I AM" advertisements will showcase Triton with a new logo that encloses AIM text within an orange speech balloon. AOL hopes to show that online communication can go farther than just the standard instant message.
New Electronic Passports Draw Concern
Beginning in December, United States passports will be issued with an embedded electronic RFID chip that stores personal information and is intended to make the document harder to copy.
But when first announced last February, the passport plan was met with concern from privacy advocates who said not enough was done to ensure the information is kept safe from prying eyes. 2,335 comments, or almost 95 percent of those received from the public, were opposed to the idea.
Apple Relaxes Return Policy on iPod
In what appears to be a preemptive measure, especially considering a recent lawsuit surrounding the iPod Nano's alleged scratching problem, Apple has alerted its partners to accept returns for any video iPod that is experiencing hardware failure.
According to information obtained by Apple enthusiast site AppleInsider, this could even include failures that may have previously been attributed to customer abuse.
EarthLink Wins 2nd Citywide Wi-Fi Deal
Internet service provider EarthLink scored another big win in the large area Wi-Fi industry on Wednesday, announcing it was selected by the city of Anaheim to build out its wireless network. Upon approval of the contract, the 50-square mile network would be completed by the end of 2006.
The contract will run for a period of 20 years, and EarthLink would receive exclusive rights to install, operate and maintain the Wi-Fi network during that period. Unlike other deals, the Anaheim network would be privately owned and operated.
Gates: Microsoft Not Afraid of Google
In an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said that his company sees Google as a threat, but is by no means scared of the growing search giant.
Gates, however, did agree with the assessment that Google is Microsoft's primary competitor. But he said company has plans that will take effect over the next six months, which it hopes will cut into the Google's dominance in the Web search market.
Wine Reaches Beta - After 12 Years
After twelve years of development, the Wine Project announced Tuesday night that its software to run Windows applications within Unix is entering the beta phase. The group acknowledged the program still has bugs, but asked those interested to download and test out the application.
"Wine is available thanks to the work of many people," lead coordinator for the Wine Project Alexandre Julliard wrote to the wine-announce mailing list Tuesday.
AOL Adds RSS Video Partners to Search
AOL has added new RSS feeds to its video search engine product, including content from Blastro.com, EVTV1.com, Forbes.com, GameTrailers.com, PC World and the Time4 Media properties. The company also announced it would continue efforts to add more content to the video search, as well as its Singingfish A/V search.
AOL says it will allow content providers to control the video playback experience while driving traffic back to partners' Web sites. The video search engine includes over 18,000 videos from AOL's own catalog, in addition to 1.5 million videos across the Web indexed by the Singingfish service.
Skype Flaws Open Users to Attack
Two vulnerabilities within Skype were made public on Tuesday and resolved in a new release of the VoIP software. The flaws centered on boundary errors in the way Skype handles URLs meant to trigger an action within the program, and when importing VCARD files. Both issues could be used for a code execution attack when the user loads specially crafted URLs and files.
Web security firm Secunia rated the flaws as "highly critical" and recommended that users of the program download the latest version. "As a work-around prior to updating the Skype software, this bug may be avoided by not selecting Skype-specific URLs and not importing VCARD records," Skype recommended in its advisory. The problem affects all previous versions of the software.
SnapStream Software Goes High-Def
SnapStream announced on Tuesday that it had reached agreements with several HDTV tuner card manufacturers to bundle its BeyondTV personal video recording (PVR) software with their products.
HDTV cards from DS Technologies, KWorld, and VBox Communications will now ship with the next version of the BeyondTV software, version 4, which is due out by the end of the year. SnapStream says this will give users of the cards a complete HDTV DVR solution.
Ed's Bio
Ed Oswald is a freelance journalist from the Reading, PA area. Although he has written across a variety of subjects, Ed’s passion and focus has been on technology and gadgets. His work regularly appears on tech news sites BetaNews, PCWorld, and Technologizer, and has been syndicated to eWeek, Time’s Techland blog, VentureBeat and the New York Times.
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