Ed Oswald

Corel has announced it would offer its new e-mail client as a standalone product in a bid to offer a viable alternative to Outlook. The client was part of the WordPerfect Office suite, but Corel decided to offer WordPerfect Mail on its own and competitively price to win converts from Microsoft Office.

"The addition of WordPerfect Mail to the Corel product family supports WordPerfect Office's position as the only truly viable alternative to Microsoft Office," said Richard Carriere, General Manager for Office Productivity at Corel. "With the addition of a world-class email client, Corel is advancing its commitment to consumers and small businesses."

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Yahoo said on Tuesday that it would provide live video of the Discovery space shuttle mission available to both users of its Web site, as well as the NASA site. The video will be in Windows Media Format, and will be promoted throughout the site during the shuttle's 12-day mission.

In a separate agreement, Akamai will provide the same video in RealVideo format on the NASA site. Discovery's mission is the first space shuttle mission in over two years. The entire program was halted after a hole in the protective heat shield of the space shuttle Columbia caused it to disintegrate during reentry over Texas on Feb 1, 2003.

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Macromedia has publicly released the first public beta of its Flash 8 player, code-named "Maelstrom," hoping to ensure that the program is stable and doesn't break currently existing Flash content. The newest version of the player boasts better performance and more artistic freedom in creating Flash images.

Also, FlashCast, a content distribution platform, and Flash Lite, a version of Flash for mobile devices are a major part of the new software. The company has said it already has at least two wireless carriers interested in the technology. In April, Macromedia previewed some features of Flash 8 at a conference in San Francisco.

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CBS on Tuesday announced a new strategy for its news department to make the Internet a critical part of its news operation. Company executives announced that CBS would turn its Web site, CBSNews.com, and its news operation in general into a 24-hour on-demand news service, providing broadband video and a blog, as well as launching a new 24-hour online only news network.

The setup will be very similar to ABC News Now, which ABC launched in 2003. The ABC News Now service offers a subscription-based 24-hour news network online and on cable; however, AOL users and digital cable subscribers are able to watch content for free.

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A technical glitch exposed what could possibly be a new download service from online DVD rental service Netflix. The glitch has appeared on some users' account information pages under a section for a "Netflix Player" with the option to register a player and name the "box."

TiVo, meanwhile, has begun to show off a beta version of a new movie download service at recent community gatherings, and it had signed a deal with Netflix in late September to bring movies on-demand to its subscribers.

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In a bid to attract subscribers, DVR manufacturer TiVo said on Tuesday that through August 20, it would offer a $100 instant rebate on all players that previously had mail-in rebates. This would bring the price of a new 40-hour TiVo unit to $99, the lowest price ever without a rebate requirement.

Also, if customers activate the box before July 31, TiVo will give two free months of the $12.95 USD per month TiVo service. Prices with the promotion will range from $99 for the 40-hour DVR, to $399 for the Humax 80-hour DVR with DVD recorder. Katie Ho, vice president of marketing for TiVo says the promotion is in celebration of the summer season of television programming.

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Rio announced on Tuesday that its Carbon and ce2100 lines of MP3 players will now add "Janus" compatibility, allowing customers to use newer subscription music services such as Napster-to-Go and FYE's Dowload Zone. The company also expects more subscription services based on Janus to surface by the end of the year.

The capability can be added to existing players through a downloadable firmware upgrade from the company's website. All new Rio players will ship with built-in Janus support.

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AOL, XM Satellite Radio and AEG, a worldwide sports and entertainment presenter, have formed a joint entertainment venture with Kevin Wall, who most recently served as the executive producer of Live 8. The venture, to be called Network Live, will produce live programming for both the AOL Music service and XM.

"This is a network of the future, delivering digital programming to consumers who are hungry for live programming," Kevin Wall said. "We're thrilled to enter this market with the unique opportunity to immediately tap into AOL's vast audience, AEG's relationships with the most popular performers in the music industry, and XM's growing subscriber base."

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The European offices of Intel and several PC companies that deal with the American chipmaker were raided at dawn Tuesday as part of an investigation into the company's antitrust practices.

In recent months, Intel has gotten into hot water with Europe and Japan for alleged anti-competitive practices, as well as being sued by rival AMD in both Japan and the United States.

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Microsoft on Tuesday debuted two new wireless hardware products aimed at the entertainment functions of Windows PCs, including a control center for Media Center PCs and a keyboard that is aimed at digital photographers.

"We create hardware for how and where people use their PC," Tom Gibbons, general manager of the Hardware Group at Microsoft said. "With this in mind, we designed two new devices to enhance the digital entertainment activities people are now enjoying, such as playing movies on their Media Center and editing digital photos."

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Saying it will be "twice as fast as DSL," Comcast on Tuesday announced that it would increase the speed of its cable Internet service to 6Mbps and 8Mbps starting this month in certain locations. Comcast expects nearly its entire coverage area to be upgraded by the end of the summer.

The first areas to receive the speed boost will be eastern and central Pennsylvania, New England, New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan and Washington, D.C. Comcast claims that it has "built a network that has virtually unlimited capacity to deliver higher speeds." However, in recent months it has been plagued by outages. Time Warner has offered 5Mbps and 8Mbps cable Internet service since January.

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Zombie PCs, or computers that have been infected with software that allows the machine to be used to spread viruses and software, have increased at an astronomical rate in the last quarter according to research by antivirus company McAfee.

The jump may signify that a large chunk of computer users are either not using some form of antivirus protection, or may be too careless in their Internet activities. The number of PCs infected jumped 303 percent in the second quarter from the first three months of 2005.

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Nokia told the Finnish daily newspaper the Helsingin Sanomat Tuesday that it is not interested in purchasing the Blackberry wireless device manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM).

According to the head of the company's Enterprise Solutions unit, Mary McDowell, Nokia feels that it could tap the lucrative mobile e-mail industry with its own products.

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Boingo and Skype joined forces on Tuesday to launch a new mobile Internet telephony service aimed at business travelers. The new service will offer Skype users Wi-Fi access at Boingo's more than 18,000 hotspots, called Skype Zones.

The Skype Zones service will allow users to make calls at any Boingo hotspot for a $7.95 USD monthly access fee. The two companies will provide software that will connect the user automatically to a hotspot and make a call.

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IBM has announced that it will develop a dual-core version of its PowerPC 970FX, the chip that is used in Apple's G5 Power Macs. The initial versions of the processor will run at speeds of 1.4 to 2.5 gigahertz, and are made for smaller, entry-level systems.

Each of the CPU cores will carry a dedicated 1-megabyte L2 cache.

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