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We've been hearing quite a lot from every browser manufacturer, including Microsoft and Mozilla, about the incredible speed increases that eventually, pretty soon now, right around the corner, will be realized the moment one of them bites the bullet and installs a new, faster JavaScript interpreter. Well, consider the bullet officially bitten. Betanews tests of Apple's new beta of Safari for Windows, using a freshly cleaned Windows Vista SP1 virtual machine "white box," demonstrates significant speed improvements even over previous Safari versions, which were already quite fast.

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If you like fresh new algorithms, dream of hanging sticky notes in mid-air, or have always wished your e-mail looked a little more like a beach ball, Microsoft Research's annual TechFest event will restore your faith in technology -- or, at least, the benefit of giving smart people room to run with ideas that aren't immediately profit-center-ready.

The yearly gathering of researchers from Microsoft's six research labs (Beijing, Bangalore, Mountain View, both Cambridges, and Redmond) is mainly a chance for the far-flung members of the group to present their ideas to colleagues at the mothership, but for a few hours, journalists are allowed to venture in.

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Like most current and former children, the lawyers at Verizon presumably have nothing against the Velveteen Rabbit. They do not, however, care for the Utah-based telemarketer that apparently made nearly half a million calls to Verizon Wireless subscribers on behalf of Family 1 Films, which is distributing a movie version of the beloved book.

The suit, filed in US District Court in Trenton, NJ, states that a Utah telemarketing outfit called Feature Films for Families made nearly 500,000 calls over several days in early February -- an average during some one-hour periods of a call every .32 seconds. Calls consisted of either a prerecorded voice message or a live human reading a script promoting the movie. (An IMDB commenter wasn't wowed by that script, describing it as "it's about a wonderful rabbit who goes on an adventure....blah blah blah....for every dollar you spend at the box office we will give you a credit for a DVD in our video library.")

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Before January 1, 2010, Congress must reinstate SHVIA (the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999), the pro-competition law that lets satellite television companies carry local broadcast TV stations, so a rare opportunity has been presented to change the law in its period of review.

Congressman Bart Stupak (R-Michigan) proposed a bill this month that would ultimately require satellite TV companies to provide local TV signals in all of their markets. Stupak proposed H.R. 927, or the "Satellite Consumers' Right to Local Channels Act," because two of the thirty satellite markets that cannot receive local TV broadcasts are in his district. Satellite coverage in the U.S. is comprised of 210 market areas.

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While Microsoft continues to maintain that Windows 7 will launch "3 years from Vista," or early 2010, a Microsoft ODM partner says otherwise. The president of Compal, a Taiwanese manufacturer that builds laptops for HP and Acer, told Bloomberg that Microsoft may begin shipping Windows 7 in late September or early October of this year.

Ray Chen made the statement at an investors' conference in Taipei on Wednesday, adding that he hoped Windows 7 would help boost sagging PC sales due to the global economic crisis. Microsoft, for its part, didn't say Chen was incorrect, but repeated its January 2010 timeframe to Bloomberg. Who to believe? It's hard to say, although some signs have pointed to Microsoft fast-forwarding its release roadmap.

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Not only have sales of Nintendo products continued to rise, but so has piracy of those products. In a report to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the body specializing in international trade agreements, Nintendo listed six countries where piracy of the Wii and DS are out of control.

The Special 301 process looks at the adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights worldwide, and countries are then classified according to the frequency and severity of their violations of IP rights.

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One of the most repeated and memorable quotes from the tech world in the last six months was Steve Jobs referring to Blu-ray as a "bag of hurt," not for any consumer end shortcomings, but rather for its complex licensing process.

Today, Sony, Phillips and Panasonic issued a joint press release announcing the creation of a "one stop shop" for Blu-ray licensing that will seeks to simplify and cheapen the process. The idea has been discussed numerous times since 2007, well before Blu-ray had even won the high-definition format war.

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Everyone in the digital music "value chain" needs enough compensation, said Ted Cohen, managing partner of TAG Strategic and a long-time observer of the music scene. Cohen spoke today on a topic that's becoming an ongoing theme at the Digital Music Forum East in New York City.

Taking the stage soon after the conference opened this afternoon, Cohen divided the digital music constituency into several groups: artists, content owners, and service providers. Artists "want music to be their day job," said the music industry veteran.

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In just one week's time, tack two more wins onto Rambus' column. After what appeared five years ago to have been potentially company-crushing scrutiny into its intellectual property practices -- truly the heart of the company -- the US Supreme Court decided Monday not to review last year's ruling of a DC Appeals Court panel that cleared the company of charges from the US Federal Trade Commission of unfair monopoly practices.

Specifically, the FTC, using evidence supplied by Rambus' competitors, had accused it of participating in memory technology standards committee JEDEC, while at the same time deceitfully withholding disclosure of having applied for patents for the same technologies JEDEC was standardizing. An FTC panel unanimously came to that conclusion in 2006. But the DC Court of Appeals unanimously overturned that conclusion, on the basis that JEDEC's bylaws didn't exactly specify that members must disclose their patent interests...and that if Rambus behaved the way competitors say it did, it may not have been alone.

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In keeping with Google's habit of giving its search fields multiple purposes, the new Google Toolbar 6 beta for Internet Explorer is just a little more than its name lets on.

Packaged with the toolbar is what is known as the Google QSB (quick search box) which appears as a Google logo next to the Windows Start Menu when it is installed. Clicking on it opens a search field that doubles as an application launcher which remembers your most frequently used apps.

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It's a tough game job creating a new search engine. Trying to break into the market with Google, Yahoo, and MSN is sort of like trying to start your own baseball league to draw fans away from MLB. Three-month-old search engine LeapFish isn't trying to start a new league, it's just trying build a better stadium.

LeapFish takes the indexed results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and does what what CEO Ben Behrouzi calls "the heavy lifting." That is, it gives a selection of results that include web entries, related statistics, videos, and other such relevant information rather than the same information you'd find if you were to use those individual search engines.

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A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that the first release candidates (without numerals) for Service Pack 2 for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 will be released to the general public for testing next week. This after private testers with the MSDN and TechNet services receive their copies first.

For the first time, the SP2 standalone package will be delivered to users not according to operating system build, but to byte length. So the 32-bit standalone service pack (302 MB with the basic five languages, 390 MB for multi-language) will update both 32-bit Vista and 32-bit Windows Server 2008. Then there will be two 64-bit standalones, including one which covers x64 architectures (508 MB / 622 MB) and one for Itanium 64-bit (384 MB / 396 MB). The RC will represent a kind of dress rehearsal for this new method of distribution.

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While the PlayStation 3 continues to be regarded as the runner-up in online console gaming, the system's growing library of free to play online titles has helped PlayStation Network (PSN) grow to double every year, and the growth continues.

Last year, Microsoft said it had reached the 17 million subscriber mark for Xbox Live, but more recent numbers are not yet available. The company made a strong push early this year to attract more users to the online gaming service by dropping the price of an annual subscription to $30 from the customary $50.

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The company responsible for Second Life, the once-fashionable-now-beleaguered virtual realm, has gotten an F from a Bay Area branch of the Better Business Bureau. In its writeup, the BBB cited the number of complaints filed against business, the business' failure to respond to complaints, and the length of time the business has taken to resolve complaint(s).

According to the BBB, Linden has received 43 complaints in the past three years, 25 of them closed in the last 12 months (and 31 in all). Ten were administratively closed by the BBB, and 2 went unaddressed by Linden.

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I've always been a fan of technology that makes it easier for me to consume media. I bought the Diamond Rio PMP-300 the day it came out in 1998, was an early customer of TiVo, and can't imagine renting movies from a physical store after being a Netflix subscriber for over 8 years.

That's why I pre-ordered the first Kindle the moment it was announced in 2007. I had previously tried out electronic book readers from companies such as Sony, but they all lacked the complete ecosystem that makes it actually worthwhile to switch to digital books. The Kindle seemed to have it all: a fairly slim form factor, great screen, and a huge library of books easily downloadable with a single click.

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