Latest Technology News

In what may very well be an intentional jab at its competitor's survival plan that relies on foreign investors, Intel yesterday began touting its own $7 billion investment plan as an indicator of its "faith in the US."

"When we face a crisis -- let's be honest -- our habit is to hunker down and hold fast to what we have and what we know: the jobs, the businesses, the institutions, and the ways of life we are familiar with and don't want to lose," stated Intel CEO Paul Otellini, in a speech to the Economic Club in Washington, DC yesterday. "It is a perfectly understandable reaction when uncertainty becomes a part of our lives. But I see this economic crisis differently. Our institutions and paradigms have become unfrozen by this economic crisis. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-shape how things will look and behave as growth resumes.

For every wonderful gadget that solves a problem you didn't even realize you had, the universe requires that there exist a gadget that solves a problem nobody has. Apparently TechnoSource is in charge of filling that role this week, and they're using a beloved old toy as their funnel.

The Rubik's Cube an absolutely iconic geek toy; if you remember the original and the craze it inspired, how much did you love watching people lying about their ability to solve a problem in 3D geometry? It also separated the world into theorists (those of us who solved the cube by twisting and turning) and the practical-minded (those of us who solved the cube by breaking it apart and reassembling it in the correct configuration) -- possibly in a way not entirely complimentary to the practical-minded. (Fine. The Gordian Knot told me to tell you to bug off.)

Over one year ago, Southwest Airlines announced its intention of bringing in-flight wireless internet to its passengers.

Yesterday, Yahoo said the tests will take place on a single plane starting this month, with three more equipped by March, all running on the same Row 44 system they noted last year. What does Yahoo have to do with it, you ask?

The Palm Pre may not be in users' hands yet, but the demand for information doesn't seem to let up. Ever. At a Palm event today, CEO Ed Colligan threw the crowd a few bones... and threw the bones crowd some good news.

PreCentral's lively bloggers captured the excitement the blow-by-blow. There were a few confirmations of things we've already heard -- for instance, Palm apps will be available both through an official, curated store and via third-party developers. Colligan also elaborated on plans to bring the phone to other carriers and other countries (yes, all of the above are planned; the US could see the Pre available from other carriers in 2010).

No less than one day after announcing their merger, Live Nation and Ticketmaster have come under investigation by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.

This morning, Justice Department spokesperson Gina Talamona told the Associated Press that the department will be thoroughly investigating the deal between the world's largest ticket seller and the world's largest concert promoter.The resulting entity from the merger would be even further-reaching than extant major record labels.

Hot on the heels of similar lawsuits against Netflix and Wal-Mart in other states, a new court action in West Virginia charges that the two companies colluded over dinner to drive DVD prices "artificially higher."

A newly filed suit by a West Virginia law firm alleges that Netflix and Wal-Mart have broken antitrust laws and caused "damage" to past and current Netflix customers in the US by divvying up various segments of the online and retail DVD market between themselves.

The Grammys, the Oscars... the Shorties? February is the month for awards shows, and this evening in New York the Twitter community will reward its own in 26 categories of excellent at the Shorty Awards, to be held in still-sort-of-hip Brooklyn.

The awards were voted on by the Twitter community, and even the finalists (the winners have already been announced) get recognition for garnering love in the months-long nomination process. As one might expect, winners attending the ceremony (whether in person or via video) will give a speech which may be no longer than 140 characters, in the Twitter fashion.

What was expected to have been a hassle-free affair, with shareholders likely approving AMD's risky "asset-smart" reorganization move, had to be postponed until next Wednesday due to the absence of a quorum.

An AMD spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that the measure to issue new shares of the company -- a measure necessary to effectively create the basis for the entity still being called The Foundry Company -- had to be postponed since not enough shareholders showed up at the Hilton Austin Airport hotel for the meeting.

The double whammy of a rough economy and a weak product lineup is rocking Nokia's Salo plant this week. The company announced on Wednesday that it'll slow production at the last major handset factory in Europe, instituting a system of rotating idle time for staff there.

Juha Putkiranta, a senior Nokia official, said that the plan -- which includes instituting a system of rotating idle time for Salo staff -- will keep things moving there, reducing the impact on employees while addressing...the obvious. "We aim to scale down Salo production to reflect reduced market demand, while operations in the factory continue uninterrupted," Putkiranta said in a company statement.

Major Linux and open source software distributor Red Hat today released JBoss Enterprise Portal Environment 4.3, an update designed to make it easier for Java developers to deploy rich applications and portlets on corporate Web portals. In one new feature, the 4.3 release brings support for JBoss Portlet Bridge, an implementation of the JSR-301 specification aimed at letting developers get JavaServer Faces (JSF), Seam and RichFaces apps up and running quickly without concern over underlying portlet development or the API.

Portal Environment 4.3 is also the first release of the environment to support the Portlet 2.0 (JSR-286) standard for improved management of portal-to-portal communications, caching, and the Ajax frameworks often used for composite applications, or "business mashups," in service-oriented architectures (SOA). At the same time, Red Hat announced that its upcoming JBoss Developer Studio 2.0 will contain portlet plug-ins and wizards geared to simplifying portal development for both Portlet 2.0 and Portlet Bridge environments.

Mozilla contributor Brad Lassey announced on his blog yesterday that a "pre-alpha" (we need another Greek letter for these things, apparently) of his organization's Fennec mobile browser experiment, based on the Firefox engine, has been released for the Windows Mobile-based HTC Touch Pro.

With Nokia scaling back its production of the N810 tablet, the team experimenting with Fennec has been searching for new target platforms, and the Touch Pro may be the one. It's supported in the States by Verizon Wireless and AT&T.

While the main difference between Total Access and Netflilx was the ability for Blockbuster subscribers to return their movies to a physical store if they chose, today the gap between the two services increased.

Blockbuster's Total Access program is the video store's answer to Netflix's by-mail DVD trade. Today, Blockbuster announced it will be renting video games in the Total Access program, putting them in competition with not only Netflix, but Gamefly as well.

Spokespersons for both Sirius XM and EchoStar Communications are declining comment to Betanews this morning after a New York Times story last night cited unnamed sources as saying the two are in business negotiations.

According to the story which only cites sources "involved in the process," the satellite radio broadcaster is considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, after which it may consider being bought out by satellite TV provider EchoStar. The CEOs of both companies, the Times sources state, are personally involved in these talks.

In one of the most dramatic representations yet of the downturn in the global economy, GPU maker Nvidia's entire fiscal 2009 dove deep into the red ink, turning a banner year into a red flag in just one quarter.

If it hadn't have been for the economy, Nvidia's year would actually have turned out okay. But a $147.6 million loss for just the quarter ending last January -- its fiscal Q4 2009 -- dipped the entire year into the red to the tune of $30.

Level 3 Communications, owner and manager of one of the Internet's largest backbone networks, announced in December that it would be laying off 450 of its employees, or roughly eight percent of its total workforce. However, it managed to finish out the year in a better place than it previously was.

Today, the company reported that its full year earnings have improved by 20% against 2007. Level 3 posted a net loss of $91 million in the fourth quarter the previous year, but in 2008 was $44 million in the black.