CA Schools to Offer Music, Movie Downloads
The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that Colorado-based Cdigix has struck a deal with both the University of California as well as California State University to offer a legal music and movie download service.
About 600,000 students would have access to the service across 36 campuses, which would be the largest contract ever for legal digital content. According to the report, the universities also are negotiating with Napster, Sony and Mindawn on similar deals to give students more choice.
Plug-In Raises Firefox Security Doubts
Plug-ins have become an integral part of many applications, but allowing third-party code to execute always poses security risks. ActiveX controls in Internet Explorer have been blamed for many of the browser's vulnerabilities. Now, it appears that Firefox -- vaunted for its security -- may be affected by similar problems.
A serious vulnerability has been discovered in a popular extension for Firefox, leading the developer to recommend Tuesday to either install a crippled version of the plug-in or uninstall it altogether.
HP Lays Off 10 Percent of Workforce
As expected, HP will lay off 10 percent of its workforce in an effort to cut costs in the IT, sales and service divisions. The moves could save the company some $1.9 billion per year. Analysts are expecting as many as 25,000 job cuts as new HP CEO Mark Hurd moves to reorganize the company, so more layoffs could be on the way.
"I think this will make us simpler, nimbler and quicker." Hurd told analysts in a conference call. He had been pushing internally to make these cuts, as HP's costs are higher than rivals such as Dell. Any savings from the layoffs will be reinvested into the company, and Hurd said some pink slips might add to the company's bottom line and boost profit margins.
PC Sales Up 17 Pct, Apple Grows Most
Two firms said that PC shipments in the second quarter of this year outpaced expectations, with IDC reporting a 16.6 percent increase and Gartner 14.8 percent. Driving the demand was strong sales of budget PCs, laptops and corporations upgrading company computers.
The difference in the totals comes from different methodologies that the two companies use in calculating PC shipments.
DSL Growing Faster than Cable Internet
Financial research firm Morgan Stanley released data that shows telecom companies are signing up new broadband users by a wider margin over cable services. Analysts expect 1 million new DSL lines during the quarter, which would constitute 55 percent of all new broadband subscribers.
Morgan Stanley analyst Simon Flannery wrote in a research note to clients Monday that the fight for market share was critical to telecoms as a way to recoup possible losses from the rise of VoIP services, and to add revenue in the near term.
HP Slashes Jobs, Pays CIO $15.3 Million
A source close to Hewelett-Packard indicated over the weekend that the company plans to cut at least 15,000 jobs from its workforce, with the biggest cuts coming to the IT, sales and service divisions. The news comes as HP said in a filing that it planned to offer new CIO Randall Mott a $15.3 million pay package.
Sources said that the job cuts would save the company an estimated $1 billion per year and were being done to improve cost efficiency compared with HP's competitors. The official word on the layoffs could come as early as this week; company representatives said they would not comment on the speculation.
Napster To Go Comes to Palm
Napster on Monday announced that it had certified a new set of devices to work with the company's Napster To Go subscription based music service, including a new option for users of some Palm OS handhelds through third-party software.
Massachusetts company NormSoft on Monday introduced Pocket Tunes 3.1, which allows users to play files protected by the digital rights management in Windows Media version 10, code-named "Janus." Version 3.0 released in June 2004 first allowed Windows Media to be played on Palm devices.
EA Pens Deals with Verizon, Sprint
Video game maker Electronic Arts on Monday announced deals with both Verizon Wireless and Sprint to bring mobile versions of EA titles to subscribers of the two carriers. Some of the titles to be ported include: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, Madden NFL 06 and Pogo.com games Poppit!, Tri-Peaks Solitaire and Turbo 21.
The games will be available in the Game Lobby on the Sprint service, and through the Get it Now! Games section of Verizon. Pricing for the games was not announced. "With our extensive line-up of 3D games, EA is using state-of-the-art technology to deliver the most powerful line-up of hit games available," John Batter, vice president and general manager of EA Mobile, said.
TiVo Gets New Interactive Advertising
TiVo announced on Monday it was making available a new advertising format that would allow a company to trigger a customized "call to action" on the the DVR device that would pop up when the unit detects a participating advertiser's commercial.
The first companies to participate in using the technology will be General Motors and the WB Television network.
iTunes Sells 500 Millionth Song
Apple announced on Monday that a Lafayette, Indiana woman had downloaded the 500 millionth song on iTunes Sunday, Faith Hill's "Mississippi Girl." Amy Greer will receive ten iPods of her choice, as well as a 10,000-song gift card and an all-expenses paid trip to see Coldplay. Apple is now selling some 1.5 million songs per day.
Along with the announcement of the contest winner, Apple said that subscriptions to podcasts from its directory had reached five million just three weeks after support had been added with the launch of iTunes 4.9. Apple's podcast directory includes some 6,000 free audio programs, making it one of the largest on the Web, the company said.
Report: Apple Video iPod in September?
Apple has been holding talks with the major music companies and an iTunes Movie Store as well as a video iPod could be launched as early as September, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
It had long been rumored that Apple was planning a video iPod as a way to keep device sales up and woo new customers. The Cupertino company sold 6.15 million iPods last quarter.
Blog Software Fights Comment Spam
Blog software maker Six Apart this week released a beta version 3.2 of Movable Type that includes improvements to the administration of multiple blogs, easier installation and upgrading. The most notable enhancement in the beta are new features to combat spam, which has become an increasing problem on blogs based on Movable Type.
Comments are now ranked through something called a Feeback Rating System. "Our feedback rating framework scores comments and TrackBacks in real-time as they are received, and the system has the ability to take action on the basis of those scores," Six Apart wrote in a post explaining how the feature works. The company said that it expects a final version of Movable Type 3.2 to be released within a month.
UN: US Should Not Control Internet
A United Nations panel tasked with how to govern the Internet in the future came up with four different plans, although the panel did agree that the United States could not continue holding complete control. The U.S. government, however, said it had no plans to give up control of the computers that handle Internet traffic.
World leaders will consider the options put forth by the panel at an "Information Society" summit in November. One of the proposals does keep the current method as is for the most part, with ICANN maintaining control of how Internet address are used.
Sprint to Boost Corporate Data Services
BetaNews has learned that Sprint PCS will announce on Monday plans to expand its Data Link service starting in August. The service allows corporate clients to make a VPN connection to their networks and access applications securely over Sprint's wireless network.
Some of the enhancements planned are static IP addresses. In the past, Sprint PCS would only give dynamic IPs, which caused problems for companies with applications that required a non-changing IP. Although customers have long asked for the feature, it was not possible until network upgrades were complete.
IBM Says So Long to OS/2
IBM this week has made official what many have suspected for years - OS/2 will be discontinued at the end of 2005. Company officials pointed to the fact that no new version of the operating system has been released in nine years, and are suggesting customers move to Linux instead of sticking with the aging OS.
IBM released the first version of OS/2 in April 1987, but it never took off due to a lack of applications compared with Microsoft's Windows. According to a notice on the IBM Web site, support for the operating system will end on December 31. After that date, support will only come through a paid service contract. Any products associated with OS/2 will be discontinued a week earlier, on December 23.
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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