Long before Live 8 began broadcasting around the world on July 2, more than 100 people at AOL Music were busy preparing for the event.

"We've done everything we can," Jim Bankoff, AOL EVP of Programming, told BetaNews in London one hour before U2 and Paul McCartney kicked off Live 8. "I guess we'll see how it goes."

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Infinium Labs, the developer of the Phantom Game Service that has been plagued by claims of vaporware has been granted a trademark for the name "Phantom" by the USPTO. The company remains adamant the service will launch this year, despite only recently showing a working demonstration after years of media hype.

"This trademark preserves the Phantom Game Service brand in the marketplace and protects our service identity," said Kevin Bachus, Infinium Lab's President and Chief Operating Officer. Bachus has said Phantom is not technically a gaming console, but a service, which enables users to purchase and stream PC games on-demand.

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The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team announced on Friday availability of the first beta release of FreeBSD 6.0. The open source UNIX-based operating system is popular for server environments, and version 6.0 is expected to bring incremental improvements over the FreeBSD 5 branch, rather than dramatic changes.

"These changes include streamlining direct device access in the kernel, providing a multi-threaded SMP-safe UFS/VFS filesystem layer, implementing WPA and Host-AP 802.11 features," FreeBSD developer Scott Long said in the announcement. "32bit application support for AMD64 is also greatly improved, as is compatiblity with certain Athlon64 motherboards." FreeBSD 6.0 is also expected to bring the first support for Apple Mac systems using a G3 or G4 processor.

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The Mozilla Foundation marketing site SpreadFirefox.com, which is designed to promote adoption of Firefox, was hacked over the weekend, officials said in an e-mail sent to users on Friday. Attackers exploited a security vulnerability and potentially accessed personal information of the site's registered users.

The breach was not discovered until July 12, and the Web site was subsequently taken offline. Mozilla Foundation officials believe the compromised server was only used to send spam, but opted to err on the side of caution and contact users.

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Roxio is readying a beta test for version 8 of its Easy Media Creator software, formerly known as Easy CD Creator. Although the company has not released any details on the new release, Roxio could add support for the next-generation DVD formats HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

Roxio is currently accepting beta test applications for version 8. "Beta testers will receive pre-release versions of our software to use and test. In return we ask that you provide us with feedback on any issues with ease of use, reliability, or general functionality," the company says. Applicants must be 18 years of age or older, and complete a questionaire.

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Apple late Tuesday released Mac OS X 10.4.2, the second update to Tiger since its launch in April. The release features a slew of reliability and compatibility improvements, along with a new manager for Dashboard widgets. Apple has also fixed an issue that prevented some Web site favicons from displaying.

Airport wireless networking, Finder and Apple Mail have also received a number of fixes in 10.4.2. Apple recommends all users install the 44MB update, which is available from the company's Web site and via the Software Update utility found in Mac OS X.

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As part of its July security bulletin, Microsoft has issued three critical patches for Windows and Office. Each fix covers a vulnerability that could enable remote code execution on an affected machine, and possibly enable an attacker to take complete control over the system.

The vulnerability in Office involves a font parsing problem in Word, which was discovered by iDEFENSE. The two other critical patches correct problems in the Microsoft Color Management Module and JView Profiler, both of which affect all versions of Windows. Windows 98 and Me, however, are not critically affected and will not be patched.

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Dell Computer has tapped Grammy winning singer Sheryl Crow to sing praises about the company's entertainment products. Crow will appear in television commercials, catalogs, and newspaper advertisements to tout a $849 Media Center PC and 42-inch plasma display. In exchange, the ads will promote Crow's new album that is due out in September.

A single from that album, "Good is Good," will be available from Dell's Web site. "Technology has helped me with the writing and recording processes, and it's a great way to reach out to fans of my music," Crow said in a statement. "Dell's combining all these different technologies and making it really easy to enjoy them."

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As Internet users become increasingly threatened with spyware and adware attempting to infect their machines, software vendors and consumers groups have been struggling to answer a critical question: What is spyware? A coalition is now attempting to draw a line between acceptable and invasive advertising.

The Anti-Spyware Coalition, headed by the Center for Democracy & Technology with support from industry giants AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft, and Yahoo among others, has released the first draft of a 13-page document designed to establish definitions that will bring clarity to anti-spyware vendors.

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Microsoft over the weekend told attendees at its annual Worldwide Partner Conference that it has made considerable strides in securing its products since 2003, when company CEO Steve Ballmer pledged to make security a top priority.

Speaking at the conference, Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Security Business and Technology Unit cited Windows XP SP2 as a prime example of Microsoft's progress. Nash said over 218 million copies of SP2 have been installed to date, despite reports that business have been slow to adopt the service pack.

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Microsoft sent invites to a small number of testers over the weekend, announcing the imminent arrival of the much-anticipated first beta release of Longhorn. Beta 1 will be available for download in the coming weeks, giving users the first real look at the next-generation Windows release.

The release of Beta 1 is arguably the first major milestone in Microsoft's Longhorn vision, which also entails upcoming releases of its server products and Office System. Longhorn Server is expected to reach beta alongside the client release - a first for Microsoft.

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As expected, Google has released a version of its toolbar software for Firefox, along with two other extensions that integrate Google functionality directly into the Web browser.

While Google has long supported Firefox across all of its Web searches and services, the company previously only offered a toolbar for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Instead, Google referred people to the open source Googlebar project, which aimed to replicated IE's Google Toolbar for Firefox users.

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Following a long period of network downtime, decentralized BitTorrent client eXeem has returned with an updated beta release. Its developers say they have listened to criticism and removed the built-in adware from third-party firms such as Cydoor, which marred the software's initial reception.

eXeem was first launched earlier this year and is backed by the creators of SuprNova - once the largest BitTorrent hub. The software took a different approach from previous clients by building a "tracker" into the peer-to-peer network and eliminating the need for centralized servers. Recent network kinks essentially rendered eXeem inoperable, but version 0.25 claims to have fixed the problems.

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Opera Software has released a test version of its flagship Web browser that adds an embedded BitTorrent client for downloading content using the popular file sharing protocol. Although Opera has not officially announced the beta, which is dubbed a "technology preview," the release is available from the company's FTP server.

The addition makes Opera the first Web browser to natively support BitTorrent downloads, which normally require a separate external client. Alongside the BitTorrent feature, Opera 8.02 will also introduce a number of bug fixes including an update for Web pages using Flash.

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LG Electronics announced on Wednesday plans to introduce new mobile phones based on Palm OS, the operating system for PDAs that is licensed by PalmSource. LG says it will market smartphones running the software, although set no timetable or specific details for the new handsets.

Palm OS has been used on a number of different mobile phones, but only PalmOne's Treo handset has neared success. LG cites over 29,000 software applications available for the platform and the ability to custom tailor phones for wireless carriers as its reason for licensing Palm OS. "The flexible, open and powerful nature of Palm OS is an ideal match for our industry leading mobile handsets," said Skott Ahn, executive vice president of LG.

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