Ed Oswald

Trend Micro has announced that it will be opening up its beta of its anti-spyware product for businesses to the public, and is now accepting applications through its Web site.

Those who meet the criteria that the company is looking for will be e-mailed with a link to download the test version of the software closer to the beta release date. The beta test will run from June 6 to June 23, Trend Micro officials told BetaNews.

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A group of academic publishers earlier this week sent a six-page letter to Google voicing their opposition to the search giant's plans to catalog books for its Web searches, and said that the project "appears to involve systematic copyright infringement on a massive scale."

Google Print for Libraries will allow users to search through books and periodicals that the company has added to its database. Upon its launch in December, the project had support from several academic libraries -- Harvard, Michigan, and Stanford -- who will allow the company access to digitize its book catalog.

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Mobile phones saw record sales through the first three months of this year, with over 180 million phones sold, an increase of 17 percent over last year. However, the three top phone manufacturers are gaining ground on the rest of the industry, controlling 60 percent versus 57.7 percent last year.

Nokia continued to hold onto the top spot, with 30.4 percent of the market, up 1.6 percent, according to research firm Gartner. One out of every ten phones sold last year was in China, where the company has recently begun to strengthen supply lines and market itself more aggressively in the country.

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Personal video recorder (PVR) shipments nearly tripled in 2004, thanks to the broader knowledge of the technology through products like TiVo and the addition of the feature to most cable provider's product lineups.

Altogether, nearly 11.4 million units were shipped - up from 4.6 million the year before according to research firm In-Stat.

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Hackers have found a new way to terrorize computer users - by finding your documents and putting a lock on them, refusing to remove it unless you pay $200.

The new ploy was discovered by WebSense, a San Diego based security firm. To get in, the hacker tricks a user into visiting a Web site that downloads a Trojan horse onto a victims machine. If executed, the Trojan searches for all text files on a user's computer and replaces the text with gibberish.

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Samsung says it has developed a way to store up to 16GB of data using Flash memory, a development that could lead to extended battery life for notebook and tablet PCs. Flash memory has a power consumption that is five percent of today's hard disk drive, according to the company.

These solid-state disk (SSD) Flash-based drives will also provide faster access to data, at about two-and-a-half times the speed of current notebook hard drives. In tests, Samsung was able to read data at 57 megabytes per second (MBps) and write at 32MBps.

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palmOne announced on Tuesday that it will be buying back the rights to the "Palm" brand name in a $30 million transaction with sister company PalmSource. As a part of the deal, the company will change its name to Palm, Inc. by years end, as well as rebranding its products with the Palm brand name.

The two companies have jointly owned the rights to the brand name since 2003, when they were split from Palm Computing. As part of the deal, PalmSource will license the Palm name from palmOne during a four-year transition period. It is unclear at this time whether or not PalmSource will re-brand the Palm OS to a different name upon expiration of the deal.

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A leading British futurologist says that by mid-century, the technology may be available where someone could actually "download" himself or herself to a computer, allowing virtual immortality. Ian Pearson, head of British Telecom's futurology unit, used the release of the PlayStation 3 as an example of things to come.

The new PS3 is one percent as powerful as the human brain. "It is into supercomputer status compared to 10 years ago. PlayStation 5 will probably be as powerful as the human brain," Pearson told the paper.

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MCI revealed on Monday that a burglary at a financial analyst's home resulted in the loss of a laptop with approximately 16,500 names and social security numbers of current and former employees. According to MCI, the laptop was password protected, but the company did not say if the data was encrypted.

MCI says it has not received any reports of cases of identity theft related to the data theft that occurred last month. All employees whose data was lost in the theft have already been notified. However, the company would not rule out disciplinary action against the employee if company policies were violated.

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Microsoft has until the end of this month to comply with the European Commission's 2004 anti-trust ruling or face sanctions, a spokesman said on Monday. The EU has threatened to fine the company up to 5 percent of its daily global sales if it does not comply, and says that time is running out.

"We will take stock after the end of the month," EU Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said. He refused however to say at what stage the talks were at, or if the EU will actually go through with fining Microsoft, only telling the Associated Press that "contacts were continuing."

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The Wall Street Journal on Monday said that Apple is in talks with Intel over using the company's chips in its Macintosh line of computers. Both companies, however, denied that any discussions are taking place. The report says that a move towards Intel chips is very close to becoming a reality, at least on paper.

Theoretically, if Intel chips were used in Macintosh computers, Mac users could install Windows without Virtual PC or a similar application, and vice versa. It is unclear whether this move is an actual switch by the company, or just being used to gain leverage in future talks with IBM, which produces the PowerPC chip. In any case, at least one executive told the WSJ that an announcement could come as soon as June 6 at the Apple World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco.

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Just a week after palmOne selected a new CEO, PalmSource CEO David Nagel announced that he was resigning as CEO effective immediately. The company announced that Patrick McVeigh, who was the company's senior vice-president for worldwide licensing, would take over in the interim.

PalmSource is the result of a 2001 spinoff where Palm Computing split itself into two parts: palmOne, which is the company's hardware and manufacturing arm, and PalmSource, which is responsible for the Palm OS and related software.

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs made an appearance at the Wall Street Journal "D" conference Sunday night and, in normal Jobs style, managed to stay mum on what exactly the Cupertino company is planning to do next. He did, however, detail some coming updates to Apple's software lines.

Chief among the new products is iTunes 4.9, which will be released within the next two months. The latest version of Apple's music software will feature podcast support that will allow users to subscribe and download pre-recorded content without a third-party application.

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INTERVIEW Should the United States Army be in the business of developing combat video games that target youths? Should the Army even be developing video games with tax dollars? BetaNews sat down with representatives from the U.S. Army at E3 in Los Angeles to learn about the mission of America's Army.

BetaNews: What is the basic premise of the game itself?

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Apple announced this week that it would take pre-orders for Coldplay's newest album "X&Y" due out June 7. This is the first time iTunes, or any online store, has taken pre-orders for digital music. Upon the release of the album, Apple said it would send out an e-mail when the tracks were available for download.

The new Coldplay album will cost fans $11.99, but will include two exclusive bonus tracks, "Proof" and "Things I Don't Understand." Those who wish to get the bonus tracks will have to pre-order the album, as they will not be available to purchase after June 7. Coldplay's first track off the new album, "Speed of Sound," was released on April 19.

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