Ed Oswald

Two leading Democrats in the US House, who both chair committees overseeing the FCC, are asking for the Commission to place conditions upon its final approval of any merger between the nation's only two satellite radio providers.

Rep. John Dingell (D - Mich.) chairs the Committee on Energy and Commerce, while Rep. Edward Markey (D - Mass.) chairs the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, part of the Commerce Committee.

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Research firm iSuppli says the high stakes game of "chicken" between memory chip manufacturers is continuing the sharp decline in revenues overall.

While revenues only dropped 7.4 percent sequentially, year-over-year they plummeted 39 percent. Top DRAM producer Samsung padded its market share lead during the quarter, ending at 30.6 percent of the market, but it came at the expense of making a profit.

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Microsoft says anecdotal evidence indicates its version of Grand Theft Auto IV is doing much better than Sony's, although Sony seems to dispute that claim.

So far, there are no hard numbers available, so Microsoft's claims cannot be verified. To its defense Sony is disputing the claims as inconsistent with its own reports, although it will not provide more data until further reports are received.

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Microsoft has hired Mark Hamburg, a 17-year-veteran of Adobe's Photoshop product and most recently its new Lightroom product.

Although Microsoft did not confirm independently to BetaNews at press time, news reports indicate that Hamburg's likely new job is the "Future of OS User Experience" group at the company.

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Creative becomes the second company behind Seagate to settle with consumers over exaggerated drive capacity.

Creative was accused of misrepresenting the number of files and hours of songs that players could hold, as well as inflating capacities by as much as seven percent.

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Less than two weeks after it had agreed to be acquired by the Redmond giant, the small e-mail startup has walked away from the deal.

Negotiations had been ongoing between the two companies over the past few weeks, with an agreement reached in mid-April. Xobni distributes a plug-in for Outlook that shows how contacts are linked to one another.

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Adobe said Thursday it is looking to provide developers with a consistent runtime environment across multiple platforms, which allows for simpler and quicker development.

Adobe has lined up an impressive list of supporters to back the project, including ARM, Cisco, Intel, LG, Motorola, Qualcomm, Toshiba, and Verizon Wireless, among others. It has also gotten the blessing of several content providers including the BBC, MTV, and NBC.

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Fortune cites sources indicating that AT&T is planning to cut the price of the 3G phone to attract new customers. Others say the magazine's got it all wrong. The truth? Nobody may be straight on this one.

The financial magazine's Scott Moritz created some waves Tuesday with a post to his online column this morning stating that when the 3G iPhone takes off this June, it will come with a subsidy to those who purchase it from the carrier.

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Social networking site MOG said Wednesday it had received an additional $2.8 million in funding, some of it coming from Universal Music Group and Sony BMG.

The site has around a million unique users a month according to company statistics, and promotes itself as a destination for music enthusiasts to discover new music and connect with others who may have similar music tastes.

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While consumers are still not able to use the audio-visual features of Microsoft's instant messaging client for Macs, a new version adds support for AV for businesses.

In order for businesses with Mac clients to be running Microsoft's Messenger for Mac 7.0 with video support, an organization must be running Exchange server and Microsoft Communicator. Video and audio chats will be available, as well as multi-party conferencing.

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In a move that may have serious implications on the possibility of a future AOL + Yahoo pairing, Time Warner said Wednesday that it will be spinning off its cable division.

Time Warner owns about 84 percent of the cable provider, and its CEO said in a statement that a "complete structural separation" will be in the best interest of its shareholders.

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Roxio parent Sonic Solutions acquired privately-owned Simple Star for an undisclosed sum on Tuesday.

Simple Star produces PhotoShow, a tool that allows users to assemble their photos and videos into multimedia presentations that can be shared online or through a host of devices.

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After jumping the gun last year in announcing a deal with Apple for the iPhone, Rogers is once again letting customers know it has struck a deal with the company.

Rogers issued press release about a year ago claiming it would be the exclusive provider for the iPhone in Canada -- not surprising since it is the sole major GSM provider in the country -- but later, the statement was retracted.

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Microsoft will cut prices between 5 and 20 percent across four of the five regional markets where it sells its Xbox 360 console..

While the Xbox 360 has generally done quite well outside of Asia, the company has seen its share of struggles in the region. The price cuts are obviously an attempt to reverse this trend.

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Blockbuster has expanded its video game presence, now offering retail video games, hardware, and accessories in all of its company-owned stores.

Previously, the company had only offered game rentals and limited retail gaming items in its stores. In select locations, the company had a shop-within-shop Game Rush operation selling new and used games.

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