Latest Technology News

TiVo was definitely an early adopter with Amazon's movie download service, equipping its Series2 and Series3 set-top boxes with Amazon Unbox more than two years ago. As streaming video-on-demand has gained popularity, TiVo's roster of services has grown substantially.

Today, TiVo's version of the Amazon Video on Demand service gains more than 500 high-definition titles from major studios, including new-release films "Frost/Nixon," and "Twilight," and popular TV shows like "Gossip Girl," and "Californication."

When Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced his acquisition of Sun Microsystems yesterday morning, he didn't mention MySQL at all -- his company's principal competitor in the small systems database space. Maybe that was just for spite: It's no secret that Ellison wanted MySQL; he said so explicitly three years ago. It was one of the key missing elements in the top-to-bottom stack he's been looking for, a way to create a line-up of pre-configured systems with everything customers need right out of the proverbial "box."

But MySQL's place in Ellison's stack doesn't extend to the enterprise, where the Oracle DB still rules -- at least in his mind. Eleven million installed MySQL customers plus a resurgent Microsoft SQL Server aside, Oracle DB is, from Oracle's perspective, an unstoppable juggernaut.

Today, Taiwan's Tatung University became the first university campus to be covered entirely by Mobile WiMAX (802.16e). The wireless broadband network launched today, and is accessible by more than 4,000 students and professors.

Considering analysts' suggestions that WiMAX is best used for fixed networks, and the opinion of industry leaders that it is not a viable mobile wireless standard, Tatung's experimental network could be the first wise and thoughtful deployment of the misunderstood mobile standard.

After a weekend of stability testing, version 3.0.9 -- the latest security update to the Firefox 3.0 browser series -- can now be downloaded. As usual, Mozilla isn't making the new version's release public for at least another day, so if you select Check for Updates from the Help menu, you won't see the new version just yet, though you can download it from Fileforum and install it manually without problems.

When the company releases its list of addressed security issues -- perhaps as soon as tomorrow -- expect a larger than normal list. Among the general bugs the organization is addressing is one we've experienced ourselves, especially since many of us use Firefox for communicating with our Betanews CMS: Submitting data content in large forms can sometimes be a real bear, and we've noticed this since version 3.0.7. This issue, among others, has apparently been addressed and fixed.

German site Netbooknews.de posted a video today displaying a quick demo of the I-Buddie ultra-portable running Android. Though a number of manufacturers have openly discussed the idea of an Android netbook, and testers proved it could be loaded onto a standard Eee PC, none have yet displayed even a working prototype of a purpose-built Android netbook, until now.

There has been a recent spate of rumors about Android netbooks, speculating on a product from anyone from Acer to Nokia, but again, no commitments. The video from Netbooknews.de may show why.

The District Court of Stockholm's judgment against the Pirate Bay has been appealed, say reports. The keepers of the Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracking site were each sentenced to a year in prison and a combined 30 million kronor for violating copyright law and enabling others to do the same.

Legal representatives for the Pirate Bay's Carl Lundström are contesting the validity of the District Court's ruling. Their argument is based upon the notion that Lundström was charged as an accessory to copyright infringement without proof that he was aware of crimes being committed.

For newspapers that have seen their advertising revenue -- especially in classifieds -- cut in half or worse by the rapid acceleration of Internet news as an alternative, publishers are faced with a situation where they must transform themselves in order to survive. Just over the last few days, we've learned that Gannett, publisher of USA Today and The New York Times Co. are posting losses for the last quarter at an annual rate of as much as one-fifth, on account of declining ad revenue. Some may not be able to sustain similar losses through the rest of the year, and the Times Co. is threatening the shutdown of the Boston Globe.

Maybe newspaper publishers can save some form of their print media products, and maybe they can't; but in any event, they will need to find some way to make their online operations workable, because print alone will no longer sustain the newspaper business.

Here's something unusual: A company that actually wants to talk turkey about its financial outlook for the next year or so. That would be IBM, which brought forth on Monday a slightly softer than expected revenue report for Q1, but which is confident of returns of "at least $9.20" for the 2009 fiscal year and between $10 and $11 EPS -- at least -- for 2010.

Earnings per share for Q1 2009 work out to $1.70.

Google Labs today officially announced the "Similar Images" and "Google News Timeline" tools, which have been deepening the well of useful search apps from the number one search provider since late last week.

Similar Images does exactly as its name suggests. When in Google Image search, queries for common or ambiguous terms frequently yield a lot of undesired results. A search for "colt," for example, could return images of a gun, a horse, a car, or an American football player: quite disparate results. By clicking the "Similar Images" tag under an appropriate picture, the search is narrowed to only the pictures that look similar to the chosen result.

There were two business models for the software industry, and now once again, there are two respective champions of those models: In one corner is the undisputed master of the "embrace and extend" principle, perceived worldwide as looking after itself and its own interests, while recently opening up its communications protocols to free licenses, supporting developers with free tools, and giving away the software needed for users to build its platform. In the other corner is a seasoned dealmaker, stalking after prey sometimes for years before trapping it into a deal it can't refuse, preaching the principle of openness while clearly and even transparently acquiring the components for a comprehensive platform where all roads lead through the company and into the company, not even hiding the fact that it rarely creates its own technology.

Pop quiz: Which one's Microsoft and which one's Oracle?

As we mourn the passing of the first great Internet company (into the maw of Larry Ellison), academics are gathering in Barcelona for the eighteenth World Wide Web Conference. Underway already but officially kicking off Wednesday, W3C will look both forward at where researchers believe the Web to be heading, and back at its 20-year history.

In the beginning, of course -- when Sun's sunsite.*.* efforts were supporting the first great explosion of Web creativity -- things were moving so fast they had to have W3C twice a year. (Your reporter was in attendance for the second, "Mosaic and the Web;" for a blast of real nostalgia, check out the best-of-the-Web awards given at the very first W3C, held five months previous.)

There will very likely be some netbooks shipped in the US and other developed markets this year that will feature the Windows 7 Starter Edition SKU announced in February. But this version will have some limitations to it that go beyond the inability to display the Aero front-end using Windows Presentation Foundation -- the direct implication of a statement made by a Microsoft spokesperson to Betanews this afternoon.

But that will not mean that premium editions of Win7 will not be able to run on netbooks, the spokesperson continued, but rather that OEMs may end up choosing to pre-install this limited edition on netbooks for sale.

Starbucks really had its hands full with T-Mobile and AT&T hotspots last year. After the giant coffee seller dropped T-Mobile for AT&T, T-mobile then sued over a breach of contract, and the two mobile carriers ended up effectively splitting their Starbucks hotspot coverage between company-owned stores and franchises, with a goodly amount offering connectivity from both.

Now, more than 650 Starbucks in the UK and Ireland will undergo the same hotspot carrier swap, abandoning T-Mobile in favor of British Telecom. BT broadband, BT FON Wi-Fi, iPass, Boingo, and BT Openzone users will gain access the Internet at any Starbucks location in Britain, additionally, O2 iPhone users will have access included within their contract.

Today, Microsoft announced updates to its "Smooth Streaming," which is a set of technologies for IIS and Silverlight designed to allow consistent full-screen high definition streaming.

Among Web servers, Microsoft's IIS enjoys about 33% market share (and slipping slightly) against market leader Apache, according to Netcraft analysis. Smooth Streaming leverages IIS Media Services (formerly known as IIS Media Pack) and Silverlight 3 to provide on-demand high-def media (720p to 1080p), or live adaptive streaming. The technology was first used with the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

Attendees at the open source database's annual developers' conference in Santa Clara this morning are waking up to the incredible news that their own product, whose value to Sun Microsystems was to have been lauded by none other than Sun co-founder Andreas von Bechtolsheim in a keynote address scheduled for Thursday, is now owned by Oracle Systems.

The initial value of MySQL to Oracle -- up until this morning, its biggest competitor -- was obvious by its absence from this morning's joint press conference featuring Sun and Oracle executives. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz mentioned MySQL along with OpenOffice as part of what he now calls the world's largest supplier for open source software. Until Oracle's SEC filings are made public, we won't know whether MySQL even factored into its valuation of Sun.