Ed Oswald

Adobe's dominant Flash video technologies are seeing their first legitimate challenge from HTML5 and its video tag, but don't expect YouTube to be joining the ranks of video sites making the transition to the standards based media format any time soon.

The popular social video site said that HTML5 video does not yet meet all of its needs, although it called the format "a big step forward for open standards." Parent company Google just last month launched its own open source video codec WebM, a possible candidate for the final video standard.

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Documents recently unsealed in a three-year old court case against Dell Computer indicated that the company sold millions of computers with faulty parts, knowing full well that the components inside were faulty.

First reported by the New York Times, the computers were sold in a two-year period from 2003 to 2005, and were sold to educational institutions, large companies such as Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo, organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, and others.

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A mobile digital television service test underway in Washington, D.C. is going well, signaling that a more widespread launch of the technology is not too far off. The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) started the test in May with 23 channels, and so far has received about 2,800 comments on the service.

Included in the test are the major local broadcast networks, several radio station rebroadcasts, and some retransmissions of secondary and tertiary over-the-air digital channels. OMVC is also testing out premium content, and has included several cable stations including Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC, MTV, and E!, among others.

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Intel has announced a partnership with Best Buy to bring its line of solid state drives (SSDs) to the consumer market. The drives will be sold at retail in about 800 stores as well as online.

Two drives will be initially available for brick and mortar customers -- a 40GB model which will retail for $129.99, and an 80GB version for $229.99. Best Buy will also sell a 160GB model for $449.99, but it will only be available online, representatives told Betanews.

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News Corp-owned subsidiary Fox Mobile Group launched late Wednesday its fee-based Bitbop mobile entertainment service, aiming to compete with the likes of Sling and FloTV in offering entertainment on the go.

Bitbop has launched exclusively on the BlackBerry platform, although company representatives told BetaNews that versions of the application will be made available for the iPhone and Android platforms in the near future. The company declined to offer any specific time frame.

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Microsoft's introduction of a new platform will allow media center PC manufacturers to support premium channels, which the television industry mandates must be covered by copy protection.

Known as Protected Broadcast Driver Architecture (PBDA), the technology builds on the company's work on Broadcast Driver Architecture (BDA). BDA is the standard for digital video capture on Windows systems that Microsoft has used since Windows 98.

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3:20 pm EDT September 12, 2008 - Apple has released an updated version of iTunes 8 to correct the BSOD problems some users have been experiencing after installing the software. The issue relates to a driver that conflicts with Windows Vista.

In a support posting, Apple said: "After installing iTunes 8 for Windows, some users may see a blue screen error message when connecting iPhone or iPod to a Windows Vista computer. In some cases, the computer may immediately restart when connecting iPhone or iPod to the computer."

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In a rare moment of clarity for a company known for secrecy, Apple has detailed the changes and security fixes that come with the iPhone's 2.1 software update, released Friday.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised during an iPod event Tuesday that the new iPhone firmware will fix some of the device's most egregious issues, including call drops and truncated battery life. In addition, security watchers note the update patches 8 security vulnerabilities, including a code execution risk for mobile Safari and the previously disclosed passcode flaw.

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After agreeing to allow access to Live Messenger and Hotmail in May, Microsoft's addition of search to its RIM partnership further signifies the company's embrace of Blackberry.

Under the terms of an extended agreement announced this morning, Microsoft's Live Search will be given prominent placement in the Web browser and mapping applications of RIM BlackBerry handsets.

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A shareholder lawsuit accusing Apple and its executives of improper accounting as a result of its stock options practices will yield a $14 million payout to the plaintiffs.

As a result of a settlement in a shareholders' derivative action, liability insurers will pay Apple a total of $14 million, effectively restoring to the company -- and, in the "derivative," to its shareholders -- what executives of the company allegedly took for themselves through options backdating practices.

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It didn't even take 24 hours for Apple and NBC to begin arguing again. The latest dust-up? NBCU's claims that it only came back to iTunes after the Cupertino company agreed to variable pricing.

Many news outlets -- including BetaNews -- took Tuesday's announcement as an indication that Apple had agreed to allow NBC Universal to use a variable pricing structure like it had been demanding.

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Starting this week, New York City residents will be able to send in pictures and video to the authorities, which could aid not only law enforcement, but city services.

New York City's $11 million Real Time Crime Center, launched in 2005, is now equipped to handle pictures and video sent via computer or cell phone, city officials announced this morning. In addition, New York's city services number 311 will also be receptive to pictures and video.

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Microsoft is debuting new mouse technology called BlueTrack which it says offers better tracking on virtually any surface, it says -- even carpet.

The blue beam produced by the new laser in Microsoft's Explorer Mouse series is about four times as large as the beam used in current laser mice, according to a Microsoft statement yesterday. This, coupled with better tracking technology, can make its new model usable even on surfaces such as carpet, it said.

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There's a mountain of evidence to support the theory that T-Mobile will be the first US carrier to feature RIM's eagerly awaited BlackBerry 8220, the manufacturer's first clamshell phone.

Although neither Research In Motion nor T-Mobile are confirming the news, clues point to the BlackBerry 8220 "Flip" making its way to the nation's fourth largest carrier. The first clue comes from RIM itself, which in a statement this morning listed UMA support. T-Mobile is the only carrier in the US thus far to fully embrace the technology.

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The departure of one of America's leading antitrust attorneys from his law firm, and his subsequent hiring by the US Dept. of Justice, suggests very strongly that the DOJ may be preparing for its most serious antitrust offensive in years.

Sanford Litvack, who was antitrust chief during the Carter administration and former Vice Chairman of the Walt Disney Company, has reportedly been hired by the US Justice Dept., apparently to look over Google's ad deal with Yahoo. This follows weeks of depositions and subpoenas in the DOJ's investigation of the deal, which began last April and which recently became a formal inquiry.

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