Ed Oswald

America Online launched a new version of the AOL Instant Messenger Web site and a revamped AIM Today screen on Wednesday, focusing on making more of AOL's content easily accessible to the company's AIM users.

AOL has also begun to roll out a new version of AIM 5.9 that notably adds AOL Explorer as part of the download. The IE-based browser features tabs and easy access to AOL services including the new aol.com and AIM Mail without taking over the user's default browser.

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San Francisco has asked nonprofit groups and businesses to begin submitting their ideas on how to make the city a free or low-cost Wi-Fi hotspot -- all 49 square miles of it.

The city government wants to "ensure universal, affordable wireless broadband access for all San Franciscans," and issued guidelines on Tuesday for submissions. The city has also secured deals from computer manufacturers such as Dell to ensure that thousands of computers would make it into low-income neighborhoods, a hallmark of the plan.

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IBM on Wednesday announced that it would develop a plan with the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory to allow researchers around the world to request time on its Blue Gene system, the second fastest computer in existence. Blue Gene has a capacity of 91 teraflops, or 91 trillion calculations each second.

The computing power would augment Argonne's pre-existing capacity for the DOE's INCITE program. Some of the accomplishments of the initiative include detailed three-dimensional combustion simulations of flames that have assisted in pollution research, and studies on how newly formed stars and black holes grow among others.

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VoIP phone provider Nuvio will challenge the rules making 911 emergency calling services mandatory for Internet phone providers by November 28 of this year, the company said on Monday. Nuvio is arguing that the deadline is unreasonable and traditional telcos and wireless providers had years to develop their services.

The ruling was issued in May of this year after testimony from users who were affected by the lack of 911 services. Several cases have occurred where emergency assistance was delayed due to the system not routing calls correctly, or failing to work at all.

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The Bush administration may have helped to successfully put a stop to the approval process for the .xxx domain, which was expected to complete Tuesday. Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, formally asked for a delay on Monday.

"The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children," Gallagher said in a letter to the governing body that control's the world's domain names, ICANN.

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Amazon's A9.com search engine on Tuesday began to offer a street-level photo mapping service it hopes will compete with similar services from MSN and Google. The company says that using street-level views of city blocks instead of satellite images will give it an edge over other services.

In January, A9.com began to offer photos within its Yellow Page listings. A picture would be shown of the business, as well as a block view that would display adjacent storefronts.

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Dell was slapped with a lawsuit on Monday from software maker InterVideo over patent infringment regarding DVD technology that allows a DVD to play immediately after inserting it into a drive. InterVideo makes DVD copying and playback software, including the popular WinDVD suite.

As with most companies, Dell does not comment on litigation it is involved in, however representatives for the company said that InterVideo's statement announcing the suit was the first they had heard of the issue.

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The record industry, fresh from its legal victories against peer-to-peer networks, has now turned its sights on another method of obtaining music: homemade CDs.

Mitch Bainwol, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America told the Associated Press before appearing at the National Association of Recording Merchandisers conference that "CD burning is a problem that is really undermining sales."

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IBM on Monday announced that it was donating software to the Mozilla Foundation in order to make the next version of Firefox handicap accessible. The software would add the capabilities for Web pages to be automatically narrated or magnified, and allow navigation through keystrokes.

IBM would also donate technology to enhance the DHTML capabilities of the browser. Big Blue said its moves are to support its work for the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, as well as strengthen its commitment to standards and open source.

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Yahoo's claims that its search index now doubles Google's are being refuted after two separate tests were conducted by researchers at Google and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, located at the University of Illinois.

Last Monday, Yahoo developer Tim Mayer claimed in the company's search blog that the most recent update to the search engine included "just over 19.2 billion web documents, 1.6 billion images, and over 50 million audio and video files."

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Microsoft is ramping up efforts to take on rival Adobe by relesing on Monday a second beta of Acrylic, a program intended to ease the process of creating graphics for Web pages. Microsoft initially released a preview of Acrylic in June, and since that time the application has been downloaded close to 200,000 times.

Microsoft has described Acrylic as the "codename for an innovative illustration, painting and graphics tool that provides exciting creative capabilities for designers working in print, web, video, and interactive media."

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America Online has launched a new mobile-focused Web site where users will be able to purchase mobile phones, as well as learn about and register for mobile services offered by the company. AOL also announced on Monday it had re-launched the mobile version of its AOL.com portal.

The company has joined with InPhonic to allow it to sell phones and service plans through AOLMobile.com. Users will be able to compare phones and see what AOL mobile features the phones are compatible with.

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Microsoft's Internet Explorer has gained back some lost ground during the month of July according to NetApplications.com, a California-based host of site usage monitoring services.

The slight drop in the alternative browser's popularity marks the first time it has lost market share since its introduction last year.

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A Florida man who stole personal information from a consumer database company in what federal officials say is the largest case of data theft ever was convicted on Friday. In total, over 1.5 billion data files were stolen from the company's servers.

Scott Levine of Boca Raton stole the data files in order to use the personal information contained within to benefit his company. Levine ran Snipermail.com, Inc., a bulk e-mail service. The theft occurred over 16 months from April 2002 to August 2003.

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A British executive for Sun said on Friday that the release date for the company's StarOffice 8 suite would now be September 12, almost two months later than originally anticipated. The office productivity software sees wide use in the Linux community, and includes word processing and spreadsheet applications.

However, news surfaced late Thursday that the Microsoft Office alternative lost a large contract, striking a blow to Sun's efforts and raising questions as to the suite's viability outside of the Linux and open source community.

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