At the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, Microsoft joined with mobile phone manufacturer Flextronics in announcing a new low-cost platform for cell phones called "Peabody." Peabody is based upon Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform and offers over 18,000 applications for music, video, pictures, and gaming.

OEMs will be able to tailor the Peabody devices to their needs, and deliver feature-rich phones to consumers without charging high-end prices that normally accompany Windows Mobile devices.

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After months of discussions, MCI has chosen a suitor. Verizon announced today it will acquire MCI for $4.8 billion in stock and $488 million in cash. Qwest, which had been in buyout talks with MCI for months, was pushed aside last week when market leader Verizon expressed interest in the long distance company.

In the deal, MCI stockholders will receive 0.4062 shares of Verizon for each share of MCI, which is equivalent to $14.75 per share. MCI shareowners will also receive $1.50 per MCI share in cash. In addition, MCI plans to pay its stockholders quarterly and special dividends totaling $4.50 per share.

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From Internet domains to Web browsers, Google seems to have its hands all over the Web these days. But the search giant shows no signs of slowing its reach, and has offered to host the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Wiki Media Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, says Google has volunteered to supply servers and bandwidth to the project.

Wikipedia is an open online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone who volunteers. The project has become immensely popular on the Web, and is having problems sustaining its growth.

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The European Commission said Friday it will reopen its review of a deal in which Microsoft and Time Warner plan to jointly acquire digital rights management provider ContentGuard from parent Xerox. But the impact of the review remains uncertain now, as French electronics company Thomson has since joined the deal.

ContentGuard offers technology to prevent copying of protected files and has created eXtensible rights Markup Language (XrML), which it is pushing for industry adoption.

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Just one week after Qwest submitted a $6.3 billion buyout offer to MCI, Verizon is eyeing a deal of its own. According to reports, Verizon has begun talks with the long-distance company and recently made an informal acquisition offer in stock and cash that matches the one made by Qwest.

Purchasing MCI would enter Verizon into a highly competitive corporate market, but a deal is far from assured. The Wall Street Journal reports that Qwest's talks with MCI have cooled off as speculation grew regarding Verizon's interest. With Qwest sitting on over $17 billion in debt, Verizon could easily come in with a higher offer.

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In yet another sign of the growing support behind Mozilla's Firefox, Yahoo has released a beta version of its toolbar for the open source Web browser. Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox closely mirrors its companion for Internet Explorer, only lacking the company's Anti-Spy feature and support for International Yahoo IDs.

Although Firefox runs on Mac OS X and Linux as well, Yahoo says the toolbar has only been cleared to work on Windows. "We are working on fixing known problems, so please check toolbar.yahoo.com again in the future for Mac and Linux support," the company says.

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Instead of tediously thumbing out a text message, consumers will soon be able to send short voice messages to fellow mobile users if Nokia has its way. With just a few clicks like standard SMS, "Nokia Xpress audio messaging" instantly records and sends a short message.

The company says the service adds a personal and creative touch to normal texting.

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One day after Microsoft's Fat Patch Tuesday, Apple has released a number fixes of its own for Mac OS X. The cumulative update, which brings Apple's flagship operating system to version 10.3.8, addresses issues related to the PowerBook G4 and corrects a problem on Power Mac G5 systems that causes a fan to cycle erratically at unexpected times.

Mac OS X 10.3.8 additionally includes a fix for an issue that could cause network-based applications such as iChat and Mail to stall while opening. Mac users who experience a "jumping cursor" when using the trackpad will also want to upgrade. Apple is offering a standalone 10.3.8 download; however, most users can simply visit Software Update to obtain the latest Mac OS X release.

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Closing in on a scheduled April release, Microsoft has delivered to beta testers Release Candidate 2 of Windows XP x64 Edition, along with RC2 of Windows Server 2003 SP1. A new addition to the Windows family, x64 is designed to operate with the AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron processors, as well as the Intel processors with EM64T.

"This is our second major milestone and highest quality release to date
for the beta," Microsoft beta coordinators wrote in an e-mail to testers. "However, please keep in mind that it is not final release quality and you should limit your installations to test machines."

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For two days, MSN Messenger has been experiencing outages that are frustrating millions of users who are finding themselves repeatedly disconnected from Microsoft's instant messaging network. The company told BetaNews it has identified the issue and is in the process of remedying the situation.

Adding to user concerns, MSN's network status page has been frequently inaccessible, returning "Server too busy" errors. The problem started late Monday, and is a result of an "isolated issue" within Microsoft's datacenter.

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Beta testing firm Centercode is seeking out testers located in Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Hong Kong to trial a new conference phone designed to work internationally. According to Centercode, the small business phone provides "unparalleled audio quality and ease of use" and "comes from a world leader in communications." More information, as well as application instructions, can be found on the Centercode call out.

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Following the launch of its local search, which provides address information for nearby businesses, Google has gone one step further: telling you how to get there. Google Maps was quietly unveiled in beta form today, further building up the company's ecosystem of search related utilities.

Even in beta, Google Maps offers a few advantages over competitors. Maps can be dragged to view adjacent areas, which means users do not have click and wait for graphics to reload. Zooming is also instantaneous with the help of a slider placed atop the map.

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Furthering efforts to attract fresh users to its services, America Online has opened beta testing for its standalone AOL Browser and Desktop Search to anyone with an AOL or AIM screen name.

Initially available only to internal testers, the AOL Browser beta utilizes Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine, but packs on additional features such as tabbed browsing and advanced pop-up blocking. The browser also integrates AOL's Desktop Search to scour local files, including Microsoft Office, PDF, HTML, and WordPerfect documents. BetaNews has learned that AOL plans to expand its search to index previously viewed Web pages and AIM chat logs saved as text.

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At the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco this week, Intel is expected to unveil the design plans behind its upcoming dual-core Itanium chip, which runs cooler than current iterations. Sony, IBM and Toshiba, meanwhile, are making headlines by finally detailing the much-hyped "Cell" processor.

The new addition to Intel's Itanium server processor line, called Montecito, packs in 1.7 billion transistors, while keeping power output limited to 100 watts. Previous chips from Intel topped out at 1 billion transistors and 130 watts. More efficient power means the Montecito will remain cooler, even as it runs faster than current Itaniums as 2 GHz.

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Google's Gmail service may be preparing to leave its beta auspices for the first time since launching in April 2004. Some account holders of the search giant's Web mail have been granted the ability to invite 50 friends to the free service, indicating Google is preparing for an expansion.

Previously, each Gmail beta user was given only a handful of invitations to pass along. Google has been slowly ramping up its Gmail efforts as competition heats up from rivals MSN and Yahoo, which followed Google's strategy to attract customers by removing storage limitations. In November, Gmail was opened so users could retrieve mail using an external client such as Outlook.

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