Warner begins aggressive Blu-ray Disc pricing strategy
The home video arm of the studio will cut the prices it charges retailers to order its titles in the holiday quarter, which translates to significant savings for consumers.
With Blu-ray player prices likely to sink further in anticipation of the holiday buying season, and a weakening economy cutting down on consumer spending overall, Warner Home Video's decision to cut its wholesale prices for Blu-ray movie titles may make sense.
YouTube agrees to share viewer data, without IDs and IPs
Litigants trying to get data on what the video site's users were watching have backed off somewhat, although YouTube will still have to share some data with Viacom.
Plaintiffs Viacom and a class-action group led by the Football Association of England agreed to accept a watered-down version of YouTube's viewer logs. That version will not include the IP addresses nor the YouTube usernames of the viewers.
Users allege MobileMe lacks true 'push'
While it appears that information between Apple's new service and the iPhone are syncing as advertised, users are finding that push services between the computer and MobileMe don't work the same way.
Indeed, Apple has advertised the service using words such as "immediate," which would lead most to believe its service is exactly that fast. But even after applying an update said to enable computers for MobileMe, immediacy doesn't appear to be happening.
Indian media company acquires MovieBeam assets
Mumbai-based Valuable Group acquired the video-on-demand service last week for what could be considered pennies on the dollar, according to reports.
MovieBeam promised a push video-on-demand service which delivered ten movies per week to customers using a special set-top box that receives content wirelessly. As it was not an Internet service and required an antenna to receive content, Moviebeam was only available in 31 markets.
Some iPhone app devs game the system for higher placement
Taking advantage of the way iTunes sorts applications alphabetically, some developers have found loopholes to put their apps at the top of the list.
Spaces, symbols, and numbers are treated alphabetically before letter A in ASCII code. Thus by using these characters, a developer can ensure his or her application a high placement when iTunes sorts the titles alphabetically.
First Look: MobileMe promising, but limps out of the gate
In my three plus years of covering Apple, its MobileMe product is probably the most exciting concept, in my opinion.
I've often longed for a viable "push" solution that wouldn't break the bank, and would operate much like Exchange does. In concept, MobileMe does everything I need it to do, pushing information from my PC and Mac to my phone and vice versa.
Several security fixes included in AppleTV update
While the upgrade to the company's set-top box was advertised as adding support for remote control of iTunes and MobileMe, it also fixed some potentially serious flaws.
All six of the issues addressed with this last batch of patches deal with the potential for arbitrary code execution, with all but one also possibly leading to crashes of the device. Three of the flaws can be exploited through movie files, two through QuickTime, and the last through PICT images.
FCC to push for Comcast sanctions over throttling
Chairman Kevin Martin says that the cable provider has run afoul of regulations that guarantee open access to the Internet, and should be punished.
Martin used a September 2005 policy statement from the Federal Communications Commission as the basis for his position, which was intended to ensure that broadband networks were open and affordable. It did however allow for "reasonable network management."
Apple runs into troubles with MobileMe
After briefly going online this morning, Apple's replacement for .Mac has gone down yet again, with tests showing just about the entire service as unresponsive.
Visitors to the MobileMe site are being redirected to a maintenance page that says the service is "unavailable." Apple says that the transition is taking longer than expected.
German ruling may clear victims of legal liability for Wi-Fi theft
A court in the country has ruled that Internet users who are victims of Wi-Fi theft cannot be held responsible for illegal P2P activity if it occurs as a result of that incident.
The development could lend support to efforts elsewhere to clear victims of any liability when it comes to copyright infringement. The argument that router owners are indeed liable, has been used by Davenport Lyons in its work with the industry in the UK.
Japan gives up on efforts to tax digital music players
Known locally as "the iPod tax," the Japanese government has been pushing for the levy since at least 2005. But now it appears as if the idea will be permanently shelved.
A tax of anywhere from 1 to 3 percent of the total media player purchase price would be tacked onto purchases. The measure is similar to proposals in Canada and elsewhere, where levies or taxes are used to compensate for losses due to piracy.
Nielsen: US leads in mobile internet usage
A study released today shows 15.6 percent of mobile Internet subscribers use the mobile Web -- the highest penetration of any country. With 40 million users, the firm believes the mobile Web has reached 'critical mass' for mobile ads.
Mobile Web usage expanded from 22.6 million users to 40 million here in the US since 2006. There is room for much growth: as many as 95 million may be paying for mobile Web services but not using them.
Verizon Wireless settles its early termination fee suits
The carrier has sued by several consumers nationwide over its early termination fees. While VZW admits no wrongdoing, this week's payout settles those cases.
A total of $21 million would be split among the plaintiffs and cover attorney's fees. In addition, it would cap the amount that Verizon Wireless would have to pay to settle individual early termination fee (ETF) claims.
Software updates for iPhone, AppleTV, iTunes go live
A little bit of digging has turned up the 2.0 version of the iPhone software on Apple's servers, while both the AppleTV and and iTunes see updates to support new functionality.
The file, marked version 2.0.5A347, can be downloaded via this link to Apple's download site. The release version is slightly higher than the last known beta version, 5A345, which was also known to be shipping on some iPhone 3G models.
Court puts off decision on backup power for cellular towers
A federal appeals court decided to put off a ruling on a challenge by the wireless industry of rules that would ensure cell towers stay on in the event of a power loss.
In May 2007, the Federal Communications Commission proposed regulations that would mandate all cellular transmission towers have at least eight hours of emergency power. The decision followed a study of cellular service following the Katrina disaster.
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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