IBM has taken the wraps off of new middleware designed to allow businesses to deposit product information into a central repository where data can be accessed, managed and shared internally and across retail supply chains. The software arrives just four months after IBM agreed to acquire Trigo, but comes as no surprise to analysts who predicted a rapid turnaround.

Trigo enables its customers to synchronize product information such as locations, trading partner, organization, pricing, and promotion from multiple information systems, including legacy. Information could then be shared with partners through a portal site or linked to point of sales systems.

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Industry giants Intel and Oracle have placed their support behind the Sun-backed Liberty Alliance project, putting pressure on Microsoft's Passport as the identity standards battle heats up. By federating identities, users are able to log in to numerous sites with a single username and password. Sun's Liberty Alliance currently boasts 157 affiliated companies, including AOL and Vodafone.

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Apple on Monday will unveil a new design for the iPod, which removes its four control buttons and instead utilizes the pushbutton scrollwheel found on the iPod mini. The next-generation iPod features a battery life of 12 hours, new menus, additional playlists, the ability to change song speed, and a slightly thinner case. Apple will keep the largest iPod at 40GB for now, but is expected to drop the prices of all models by $100 USD.

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In its third quarter conference call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer confirmed the company's plans to launch new iMacs in September based on the 64-bit G5 processor. Apple was set to unveil the rejuvenated iMac at last month's WWDC, and blames the delay on production problems at IBM, which manufactures the chip.

Apple expects the G5 shortage to affect sales through the quarter, but Oppenheimer said the company was confident IBM would resolve the issue come September. The problems stem from a switch to 90-nanometer scale production.

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Microsoft has rolled out the first of its initiatives to fend off recent competition from rival e-mail services, offering Hotmail users free antivirus protection. "By using MSN Hotmail, you have the only free global e-mail service to both scan and clean incoming and outgoing e-mail for viruses and worms," Microsoft wrote to customers. The company will announce additional Hotmail upgrades in the coming weeks, including increased e-mail storage as a response to moves by Yahoo! and Google.

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The Mozilla Organization has updated the roadmap for Firefox, placing the major 1.0 milestone release on September 14. Three release candidates are scheduled, with RC1 set for August 10. Mozilla's Ben Goodger notes that the final release may slip, but says "it gives us a near term goal to target and then slip from, rather than wait for things to fall into place." Firefox 0.9 was issued last month, being billed as a faster and more secure alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

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Microsoft expects over 1 billion PCs running Windows by 2010, with the number currently eclipsing 600 million, according to Microsoft Watch. Will Poole, head of the Windows client group, made the remarks at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, citing enterprise demand for upgrades. Poole also demonstrated a "Zero Touch" deployment tool for Windows XP and the upcoming Windows Marketplace offering drivers, software and peripherals.

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Apple has reached what it calls a "major milestone for online music," announcing the sale of 100 million songs from the iTunes Music Store. 50 20GB iPods will be given away to celebrate, and the lucky downloader of the 100 millionth song will receive a 17-inch PowerBook and 40GB iPod, along with a certificate for 10,000 free songs. More than 700,000 tracks are currently offered via iTunes.

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Clive Owen will be pleased; BMW and Apple today unveiled the first adapter that directly interfaces the iPod with a car stereo system. By simply attaching an iPod inside the glove compartment, BMW drivers can control their music libraries through the car's audio system and steering wheel. The BMW iPod Adapter can be installed in 2002 or later models, including the Mini Cooper. It supports up to five unique BMW playlists, which simulate the car's CD changer.

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Apple has issued the second iteration of its Remote Desktop tool, used to manipulate Mac OS X computers from afar. The new release includes software distribution features to simplify administration of Mac networks, as well as support for custom install packages. Remote Desktop 2 also adds VNC support, meaning it can now connect to Windows and UNIX systems. Pricing starts at $299 USD for 10-clients, while the unlimited-client edition is offered at $499 USD.

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Exclusive In response to rival e-mail services enticing customers with high capacity storage, Microsoft's MSN unit will soon announce its intentions to follow suit, BetaNews has learned.

Redmond executives have been mulling over how to respond to the storage frenzy, and are set to unveil a plan that will go into effect in July.

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Microsoft has finalized the second release candidate of Windows XP Service Pack 2, signifying the long-awaited upgrade is nearly complete. Numbered build 2149, RC2 is currently available to testers and will soon be offered for public download.

Although a final release of SP2 could be months away, RC2 is a significant milestone that Microsoft hopes will correct numerous bugs and software incompatibilities discovered after the preview release of RC1 in March.

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RealNetworks and Starz Encore Group have dusted off a 2002 agreement to serve movies over the Internet using RealVideo 10. The new service, dubbed Starz! Ticket on Real Movies, is subscription based with no restriction placed on the number of flicks that consumers can watch for the flat monthly fee of $12.95 USD.

100 movie titles will grace Real's film library at any given time, and can be downloaded to up to three PCs. Each downloaded movie weighs in at roughly 500MB, and can be viewed for six weeks, but not transferred to DVD or a portable device. 25 new movies will become available each week, replacing 25 others.

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Microsoft has made available a release candidate of Virtual Server 2005, which enables businesses with large server clusters to reduce the amount of physical machines by running multiple virtual servers on each. The final version of Virtual Server 2005 will be available later this year in two editions: Standard and Enterprise. The evaluation release candidate may be downloaded free of charge, and will expire on January 1, 2005.

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The United States Patent and Trademark Office has agreed to a request that it reexamine a patent granted to Microsoft covering the FAT (File Allocation Table) file system used in Windows.

A non-profit group called The Public Patent Foundation asked the USPTO in April to revoke the patent on grounds that FAT has become a ubiquitous format found in numerous devices. FAT is also used by the open source community to provide communication between Windows and UNIX-based systems.

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