Tim Conneally

The problem that Palm has been perennially facing is that it now has a very popular phone, the Centro, whose price point is so low that the company can't sustain its margins. Yesterday, we learned that RIM is no longer immune.

Until recently, analysts have been divided on the impact the ongoing financial services upheaval will have on Research in Motion and its BlackBerry line of smartphones. Yesterday, RIM announced it doesn't think the future looks quite as wonderful as it once did, and lowered its outlook for the next quarter. Stock value subsequently plummeted.

Just how capable is your Netflix STB? An enterprising customer discovered there's an unpublished way to make the box stream much faster than any ordinary user can select.

A feature turned on by default in Roku's Netflix set-top box is intelligent streaming, where the bitrate is chosen according to the user's connection speed, thereby assuring the smoothest stream as possible. A user on Roku Forums posted a heretofore undocumented way to override the automatic selection and always stream at a chosen bitrate.

News from Sling Media hasn't been this big in quite a while. The Slingbox Pro-HD is now available -- the company's first device that enables streaming of high-definition content.

Though the device is half a year late, the new Slingbox Pro-HD is fortunately over a hundred dollars cheaper than originally anticipated. Priced at $299.99, the Slingbox Pro-HD can be purchased directly from Sling, or at select stores throughout the country.

The latest Skyfire beta offers a full Web browsing experience to WM5, WM6, and Symbian S60 devices, enabling the consumption of media that's usually off limits to users of the "mobile Web." At least that's what it offers.

Of the three "screens" that the marketers of converged devices say are critical to the consumers' lifestyles -- television, computer, and handset -- it's the third that has been the most neglected in terms of the availability of media. Sure, improved storage has allowed greater volumes of audio and video content to be stored and played back on mobile phones. But with streaming media now a prime focus for content providers, our lowest-power and often most slowly connected screen could often use a little push.

Earlier this summer, Roku, the company responsible for the hit $99 Netflix streaming set top box, said the device would soon support major content providers other than Netflix. With the release of an SDK, that finally looks viable.

Roku CEO and Founder Anthony Wood, formerly of ReplayTV, gave a keynote speech yesterday morning at the Streaming Media West conference in San Jose, entitled "The Future of Internet TV: Primetime Anytime." There, Wood proclaimed that the DVR (which his former company claims responsibility for inventing), is in its death throes, because "Streaming from the Internet to the TV is a much better solution."

EA has been sued in the Northern District of California over DRM software placed in its evolution simulator game Spore developed by Will Wright and Maxis.

Though the game itself is regarded very highly, any praise it has received has been greatly overshadowed by the public's vexation at the SecuROM copy protection that caps installations at three. In the midst of public complaints, EA later increased the install limit to five.

Just as before, the site offers unlimited free streaming of content posted to an artist's profile. But now its system for playlist creation and purchase has improved, especially now that the fourth and final big label is secured.

Social Network MySpace has officially launched its music-dedicated portal after securing EMI as its final partner among the Big Four major labels.

Sony Ericsson's PlayNow Arena has just been given a boost, with a plan for unlimited downloads and an agenda to roll it out to wireless customers worldwide.

PlayNow Arena fully launched in the Scandanavian countries Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden in August, offering mobile entertainment content for Sony Ericsson users. The service uses a "cover flow" type interface to sell music, games, ringtones, and other phone content.

M2Z, major supporters of a "porn-free wireless broadband access for all" plan, have rebuffed T-Mobile's spectrum tests that say it would interfere with the company's cellular signal.

The 2155-2175 MHz band (termed advanced wireless service, or AWS) has been the subject of contention for several years, as chunks of spectrum are the one of the most important commodities for telecommunications operations, and different groups want it used for different purposes.

MySpace, the social network turned music repository, has unveiled the beta of "Promote Your..." a self-service advertising system that allows users to publish and manage banners on its network that click through to musicians' profiles.

The service is geared toward independent musicians and businesspeople, offering audience targeting, efficacy tracking, and an advertising budget range from $25 to $10,000. It also offers an ad creation wizard interface or the ability to upload pre-made 300 x 250 or 728 x 90 .JPG, .GIF, or .PNG banners that are less than 600K in size.

New regulations will tighten security measures around residents' personal data, but the impact of these regulations will affect businesses beyond the two states' borders.

Massachusetts' Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation issued new regulations, called the Standards for The Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth, set to take effect on January 1, 2009. The state already has what are considered by some to be the most far-reaching information security requirements of any US state (see this PDF client advisory from a Mass. law firm for more).

BetaNews spoke with MySpace reps last night regarding the speculation that's been going on since last week about possible antitrust actions, including in Europe, preventing MySpace Music from launching its new, dedicated site.

Much of the talk was fueled by a particular news article, which MySpace told us was "based mostly on conjecture." The article discusses precedents set by indie groups in European courts, most notably the ongoing opposition to SMEI by independent organization Impala, hinting at preferential pricing and discriminative practices by MySpace against indie music producers.

T-Mobile's G1 is without a doubt its most hyped product launch. Practically all the information about the phone was "unconfirmed fact" one month ago, and today's release brings into perspective what the first "open" phone has to offer.

Thanks to FCC regulatory filings, we already know the general design specs and radio arrangement of the G1 (155mm x 55mm, 3.2" 480 x 320 HVGA screen, Quad-band GSM, UMTS, HSDPA 1700/2100, SUPL, 802.11b/g, GPS, non-A2DP Bluetooth). We also found out that at the heart of the G1 is the same CPU that the HTC Touch Diamond carries, the 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7210A.

So we've seen Sprint's Xohm trucks driving around downtown Baltimore during most of September, in anticipation of the service's impending launch. But as the month nears its end, there's still no launch announcement.

BALTIMORE (BetaNews) - Rumors have recently circulated that Sprint's Baltimore Xohm network would be announced as soon as this Friday, with availability beginning on October 6 and with Baltimore, Maryland being an early rollout target. Sprint told Betanews this morning that the September launch for Xohm in Baltimore is still firm, so at most we've got one week before getting Sprint WiMax.

The maker of microSD memory is a highly desirable property for both Samsung and Toshiba right now, and its newly-announced content delivery service slotMusic could almost be useful to either, at a stretch.

Since 2004, a full three years before Apple's iPhone became a reality, pundits predicted that the eventual "iPod killer" would be a phone. At that time, the predictor of things to come was the Samsung SPH-V5400, a music phone with a built-in 1.5 GB HDD. Analysts came to a consensus that the music phone would do for the MP3 player what the camera phone did for the point and shoot camera.