Sony looks to live shows to boost theater ticket sales
The movie studio is hoping to draw moviegoers to theaters by offering recorded live shows through a new program it's calling The Hot Ticket.
The first two will debut later this summer. Cirque du Soleil's "Delerium" will be the first to come to theaters, followed by the final Broadway performance of "Rent," set to close on September 7.
Bush says he will allow cell phones to be sent to Cuba
In a test of the country's recently instituted economic reforms, the US will now permit cell phones to be sent to the Communist country, despite the continued presence of economic sanctions.
Cuban President Raul Castro has implemented several changes since taking power in February, some of which included the ability to purchase electronic devices including computers, cell phones, and DVD players.
Napster turns its business around with a narrower loss
The music retailer posted a smaller than expected 10 cent-per-share loss as it added about 17,000 new subscribers to its subscription service.
Big strides have been made in efforts to pare losses. The company lost $4.3 million in the three months ending March 31, about half of its $8.5 million loss in the year ago quarter.
iCal bugs can lead to DoS and code execution attacks
Researchers with Core Security have found three vulnerabilities in Mac OS X's calendaring app that could create havoc for users.
The most serious vulnerability deals with a memory corruption issue that is triggered by a specially-crafted .ics file being executed. At the heart of it is a resource liberation bug which is triggered through the file, thus allowing code execution.
AOL Video debuts in India, Canada, and Taiwan
Following the general shift among content providers toward more vertical and geographical content, AOL is expanding its video presence outside of the United States.
AOL Video is already quite successful here in the US: the site averages about 17 million unique visitors per month, and over 96 million page views.
Google looks to be more up front on its search algorithms
The company says that the reason why it's been so secretive is competition. However, at the same time, it realizes questions remain over how it is providing search results.
In a post to the official Google blog, search quality chief Udi Manber said that the company has been purposely quiet on its ranking practices to protect its product. On one hand, knowledge of how Google works could allow webmasters to game the system -- while knowledge of search practices could help competitors.
Red Hat refreshes its Enterprise Linux distro with version 5.2
The latest version of the company's commercial version of Linux for businesses offers new hardware support, several new features, and performance and stability improvements.
The company's Enterprise version is the premium edition of its Linux distribution. Back in 2003, the company split its business up into the Enterprise effort and Fedora, its sponsored open source project.
Friendster launches its mobile site, albeit a bit late
Recently relegated to also-ran status among social networks behind competitors MySpace and Facebook, Friendster launched a mobile version of its site globally on Wednesday.
While the site is among the top 10 largest in the world and the largest social network in Asia, according to comScore Media Metrix, it lags far behind its competitors. The mobile site is obviously an attempt to catch up.
Gartner: Mobile IM making gains against texting
Research firm Gartner says that SMS continues to increase in usage, however the increasing prevalence of IM clients on phones is shifting that balance.
Some 2.3 trillion messages will be sent worldwide during this year, a 19.6 percent increase over the year previous. However, at the same time revenues have leveled off due to increased competition.
NPD: Apple dominates the high-end PC market
Symantec disses Vista, says corporations 'not comfortable'
Microsoft seems to be fighting a losing public relations battle for Vista, as companies continue to criticize the latest Windows operating system.
In an interview with InformationWeek, Symantec's chief operating officer Enrique Salem said his customers in the enterprise sector are sticking with the older operating system.
Google looks to organize health records
Search giant Google has launched in beta a site that allows users to organize their health records online.
The service is much like similar offerings from providers such as Revolution Health. Users can gather their health records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies, as well as use the site to track the latest information on health issues.
Napster challenges iTunes by opening its own MP3 store
With six million tracks accrued in its library, Napster's new online retail venture boasts the largest selection of MP3s of any retailer to date, taking a bold step by marketing itself to iPod and iPhone users.
Songs will be made available at 99 cents, with albums generally retailing for $9.95. Encoding is promised to be at a bitrate of 256 kbps, which should be music to many listeners' ears already. While Napster To Go subscriptions would be still encapsulated in DRM, all download sales will be in DRM-free MP3.
AOL debuts new version of Web-based IM client
Download AIM Express 2.0 Beta from BetaNews FileForum now.
The company's newest release will employ an all new Flash-based front end and tabbed IMs, though for now, AOL wants to know whether the no-frills direction it's taking with design will be acceptable to users.
Nintendo set to launch Wii Fit in US
The highly anticipated game will launch first at its company store in New York City on Monday, and will roll out across its entire retail channel by Wednesday.
Wii Fit has already been a huge hit in Japan, where it launched over the last holiday season, selling 1.4 million units. Nintendo says it expects to sell three million copies here in the US.
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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