The Instinct phone has been one of Sprint's bigger success stories of 2008, a year of struggle and at least an attempt at a comeback. But now, Verizon looks poised to pull the rug out from under Sprint here too.

The original formula for an "iPhone killer" in the marketplace has been a device which really does look like Apple's model on the surface, really does slide those tiles around the main screen, and really does present Web pages that look like Web pages. With 2009 around the corner, the formula is diverging into something less like a work-alike and more like real competition: How can a high-class phone address the customer who wants something that the iPhone and AT&T cannot provide?

Paul McCartney this week released a new album on to iTunes, and he wants the Beatles' entire music back catalog to be up there, too. But will Apple Inc., Apple Corps, and EMI ever be able to just "Let It Be?"

Paul McCartney still wants The Beatles' legendary rock tunes to be available on Apple's iTunes, but talks have reportedly gotten bogged down. After a trademark dispute of several decades between Apple Inc. and Apple Corps, negotiations are now going on between Apple and EMI, the Beatles' former record label.

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Many consumers are now spending less time watching TV, reading, and talking on the phone, preferring Web-based video, gaming, and social networks for entertainment instead, says new research by Magid Associates.

Consumers are shifting quickly and dramatically from TV to the Internet for "leisure time entertainment," and the transition is most apparent among under 35-year-olds, according to new research from Frank N. Magid Associates.

The beginning of Blockbuster Video's convergence into the service it needs to be to survive in this evolving video market, has finally begun this morning with the announcement of its streaming media system and its player of choice.

Add to your growing list of Questions People Forgot to Ask, the one where DVR and streaming media device manufacturer 2wire is asked who, exactly, it expects to provide streaming media for that device. Two weeks ago, 2wire premiered its MediaPoint device, with the promise of providing "a fully-converged experience of Internet video and local media on the television."

There are some significant and some insignificant aspects of YouTube's adjusted main screen. The service's "embrace" of widescreen today, we discovered, doesn't change much besides what you see on the surface.

A number of videos with 16:9 widescreen ratio have already been featured on YouTube, and long-time users with widescreen monitors know that YouTube already supported that ratio whenever a video is expanded to full screen mode. Movie trailers are among the content that YouTube has supported in their native aspect ratios.

Have chat accounts on Myspace? Facebook? Bebo? OkCupid? Userplane, the engine behind the chat functionality at those sites and many others, announced Tuesday that users of any site's Chat App portals can talk to users on any other site.

Userplane, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, operates its Web-based chat service on social networks and, in a smaller no-login fashion, on any site that wants to offer a chat option. It reaches about 50 million users in more than 15 countries each month -- or, if you like, over 275,000 communities.

Crackle, Sony Pictures Television's streaming Web TV service formerly known as Grouper, has announced a new programming lineup that will begin on Monday, December 1.

Six new shows will have an increased emphasis on production values, while retaining the five-minute-or-less webisode timestamp, and will be "aired" at specific times of the week, adopting more of a broadcast television schedule. This moves Crackle even further away from its roots as a viral distribution platform, and more toward the pattern of a traditional broadcast network.

A patent described in a WIPO filing as a "method, apparatus and system for interfering with distribution of protected content" over peer-to-peer networks is now being pitched to businesses large and small as an ad-delivery device.

The patent, filed in 2006, is held by Bernard Trest, currently president of PeerMatrix. The technology travels under the trade name of "AdMorph," and the software was announced on Saturday.

The public comments period has officially ended for the NTIA's consideration of requiring domain name servers within the Internet's root zone to, at long last, encrypt their communications. Could there really be any opposition?

For well over a decade, the Internet has had available to it a security measure called DNSSEC, that would enable DNS hosts to request that communications between each other be encrypted, using public key cryptography. That way, all DNS messages could be traced back to a verifiable source, conceivably thwarting any possibility of a cache poisoning nightmare on the order of the one that security research Dan Kaminsky warned about last summer.

A thorny barrier to development of low-cost, high-use OLED displays may be out of the way at last, if reports from South Korea pan out.

OLED (organic light-emitting diode) systems promise crisp displays, lovely illumination, truer blacks, wider production-tech options, thinner materials, faster refresh rates, world peace, six-pack abs, and smarter power consumption all around. The problem is that the technology requires lights in all three primary colors of the additive-color model (red, green, and blue), and moreover requires them to last roughly the same amount of time whatever color they are. Though scientists have long since unlocked the secrets to cheap, long-lasting green and red lights, blue has been elusive.

Less than a week after Jerry Yang announced his departure as CEO, Yahoo on Friday sold European shopping service Kelkoo to UK-based start-up Jamplant, apparently taking a large loss.

Although Yahoo hasn't announced the terms of its deal with Jamplant, Kelkoo CEO Pierre Chapaz reportedly wrote in his blog that Yahoo sold Kelkoo for less than 100 million euros ($125 million) in contrast to the 475 million euros ($588 million) that Yahoo paid for Kelkoo in 2004.

The Department of Defense has allegedly responded to an infection by a variant of the elderly W32.Silly worm by banning the use of removable media -- thumb drives, flash memory cards for cameras, and all.

SillyFDC, to give it perhaps more attention than it's worth, installs itself in the Windows registry and watches for removable storage to infect, copying itself to "Lcass.exe" and dropping a file called "autorun.inf" on the removable drive. The version affecting Armed Forces machines, however, is rumored to be a variant of Agent-EMB, which also installs itself in the registry but has no particular interest in removable drives -- a hint that SillyFDC might merely be the delivery device, not the true problem.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is now under court order to testify in a case charging Microsoft with deceptive marketing, despite his protests that he knew nothing about the "Vista Capable" mess.

Ballmer has been compelled by a court to testify in a class action suit accusing Microsoft of providing misleading information about the ability of some Intel-based PCs to run Vista. But Friday's ruling in the case by US District Judge Marsha Pechman places a time limit of three hours on Ballmer's deposition.

February 17 may not be the absolute end to analog TV transmission in the US, should the House follow the Senate's lead in passing legislation enabling analog broadcasters to continue serving public service messages for one month.

Last Thursday, by unanimous consent, the Senate passed a bill introduced by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D - W.V.), that will allow local television stations to continue a limited form of broadcasting on analog channels for 30 days following the February 17, 2009 transition date.

Anyone not carrying an HTC Touch Pro over the next few months is hard-pressed to blame their mobile provider, as Verizon Wireless becomes the latest major mobile telco to offer the slider-style touchscreen handset.

The Windows Mobile-based Touch Pro's already headlining the holiday offerings at Sprint Nextel, which was the first company to announce support, and Alltel (also a CDMA-based service) carries it as well. There's also a GSM model, and AT&T has that traveling under the name of "HTC Fuze."