Is it possible that the Recording Industry Association of America is afraid of listeners? Their pleading to a US appeals court to forbid the Webcasting of arguments in RIAA v. Tenenbaum is starting to sound like the excuses from a kid seeing monsters under the bed.

The latest round of entertainment up in Boston came last week, when 14 news organizations filed an amicus brief with the appeals court explaining that contrary to RIAA's claim, allowing cameras in the courtroom for the February 24 hearing falls in line with usual and customary camera access for similar hearings.

Continue reading →

An agreement negotiated in secrecy among governments and industry representatives and known to the public only through leaked documents and the efforts of privacy activists may sound so 2008.

But unless concerned citizens and a federal court intervene, a number of intellectual property laws may get a very "retro" cast to them.

Continue reading →

Verizon launched its Hub "family communications command center" today, a desktop touchscreen device endowed with VoIP functions and the ability to share information with multiple wireless handsets.

The Hub is similar in concept and design to the Samsung HomeManager which AT&T announced in September. Both devices offer a broadband-connected 7-inch touchscreen computer that manages all incoming communications and acts as portal to various Web services, and both units also act as a VoIP terminal with an associated cordless handset.

Continue reading →

Despite a rash of reports to the contrary, Dell isn't necessarily about to take a long rumored step into the smartphone market any time soon, and here are five reasons why.

Evidently, Dell's been internally eyeing the mobile phone space since at least 2005, when an article in CNET cited a company roadmap as indicating plans to debut a smartphone by mid-2006. Although that didn't happen -- and no phones have emerged for Dell since then -- the phone specter has arisen around Dell again in multiple places over the past couple of weeks.

Continue reading →

Download Google Toolbar for Firefox 5.0 for Windows from Fileforum now.

One of Google Chrome's signature features is a "New Tab" page that shows thumbnails of favorite Web sites. The latest IE has a similar feature, though now, Google Toolbar 5 for Firefox retrofits that browser with a similar feature.

Continue reading →

Ongoing efforts to modernize the Department of Defense's thinking about tech issues brought the Defense Information Services Agencies (DISA) to the cusp of launching forge.mil, DISA's own version of the SourceForge open source model.

It may seem a little surreal to have the IT support team for the Department of Defense working closely with a company with the motto, "Where subversion meets the enterprise," but here we are: DISA last year took up talks with CollabNet, which bought SourceForge Enterprise Edition from sourceforge.com back in 2007. The company already works with a number of government entities (including the US Air Force and the State of New Mexico Department of Corrections).

Continue reading →

Sagoon is a newly-launched search engine that joins the race to provide a semantic search with the elegant screen layout made famous by Google. The company calls its semantic technology the "Random Vector Model," where traditional keyword searches are paired with algorithms and formulas that analyze content between sites, finding their hidden similarities.

Sagoon is based out of Washington DC, but the underlying technology comes from New Dehli, India's Elixir Web Solutions

Continue reading →

Facing the prospects that US broadcast stations may make the switchover to all-digital on February 17 regardless of what Congress does, the acting FCC chairman told an advisory panel last week it may be too late to undo the damage.

The state of chaos regarding the US' national switchover from analog to digital TV broadcasting may not be something a delay can remedy. This from the man currently heading the FCC while a permanent chairman -- one emerging from an administration said to be favoring a delay -- has yet to be appointed, despite the likelihood of a nominee.

Continue reading →

In a crafty bit of coding, TringMe has unveiled a demo of a Silverlight widget that allows outgoing VoIP calls to be made. The India-based IP telephone software company says that Silverlight does not provide microphone support, so this widget uses Flash to access the microphone for the exchange taking place in Silverlight.

Continue reading →

With the as yet unannounced test of Wi-Fi at 100 commuter rail stations in New Jersey, Comcast follows Cablevision's lead into testing Wi-Fi among commuters in areas adjacent to New York City.

A spokesperson for Comcast today acknowledged that the company is in "early, early beta" with a Wi-Fi test at rail stations in New Jersey, while San Francisco's BART announced plans to expand its own recent trial into a full commercial rollout.

Continue reading →

Download the new Google Earth from Fileforum now.

Google today announced new additions to Google Earth which include Ocean, Historical Imagery, Touring, and Google Mars 3D.

Continue reading →

Based on its second-by-second Stop||Watch audience metrics, DVR maker TiVo has released its figures ranking the most watched television commercials during yesterday's Super Bowl.

TiVo found that the highest viewership spikes in the first half of the game actually took place during the commercials; while in the second half it was during crucial moments in gameplay. In descending order, the top ten highest rated commercials were:

Continue reading →

A site celebrating the 40th anniversary of the invention of Pong, pongmuseum.com, has opened. With the museum comes a rare gem: a video directly from inventor Ralph H. Baer featuring himself and chief engineer Bill Harrison playing a demonstration model of their invention in 1971.

In addition to explaining the origin of the home video game console (which even goes into the basic schematics of the General Instrument AY-3-8500 chip, the common "pong" chip), Pong Museum includes a collection of international pong machines, from the breakthrough Magnavox Odyssey to the rare Heathkit GD that required users to open up their TVs to connect the game's wires directly.

Continue reading →

In the face of a gloomy financial report expected on Tuesday, some analysts are voicing concerns that Motorola's previously announced strategy of focusing more on high-end phones can remain viable. Last fall, then recently appointed Co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha rolled out a company restructuring that cut Motorola's number of supported smartphone platforms to two: Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Google's Android.

But as recently reported in Betanews, Motorola recently added 70 workers at its Windows Mobile unit in Plantation, FL to a tally of 4,000 job cuts announced earlier in January. Pink slips also went out in January to long-time Mobile Devices vice presidents Yvonne Verse and Tracey Koziol, according to a report today in The Wall Street Journal, which cited "people familiar with the situation."

Continue reading →

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen spoke yet again of the company's continuing interest in porting Flash to the iPhone.

"It's a hard technical challenge, and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating," Narayen said to Bloomberg Television, "The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver."

Continue reading →