Prospects for DVB-H mobile TV dimming even with EU mandate
There is one standard for digital mobile TV in Europe, as the European Commission decided five months ago. Despite that, service providers are still opting for their own methods instead, and even the EC is already planning an alternate route.
Even though the European Commission formally decided last March that DVB-H will be the single mobile digital television standard for Europe, private operators charged with the task of determining how to build a business model around DVB-H services may be drawing a blank, and are believed to be considering quitting altogether.
Are lower priced apps in Microsoft's future?
Microsoft has told its shareholders and the SEC that it is developing products "with basic functionality that are sold at lower prices than the standard version." But today, the company indicated this may not be anything new.
Whether Microsoft's plans for low-priced, general-purpose applications extend beyond its already acknowledged pilot of Works SE 9 is a question still hanging in the air this evening.
More Linux promotion than Linux adoption evidenced at LinuxWorld
While open source phones have been the talk of this year's LinuxWorld, a majority of attendees and vendors we saw were typing away on their iPhones and BlackBerrys -- neither of which is nearly as open as, say, OpenMoko's NeoFreerunner.
SAN FRANCISCO (BetaNews) - Although LinuxWorld is one of Moscone Center's smaller events, especially compared to the Apple's Macworld or Oracle's OpenWorld conference, it's typically a good place to gauge the state of the Linux community. One look around the place will tell you that there's more talk about Linux adoption than there is actual adoption.
EFF looks to protect developers from legal threats
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched the Coders' Rights Project at the annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, aiming to give protection to those developers who may be hindered in their research by threats of legal action.
Most of the group's work seems focused on protecting researchers' rights to reverse engineer software to see how it operates, as well as continuing to allow security researchers to publicize vulnerabilities in today's software.
No more delays: SQL Server 2008 released to manufacturing
With two of Microsoft Windows Server product lines, due for release on November 12, completely dependent upon this product's having been released to manufacturing, SQL Server 2008 is at last on its way.
Microsoft officially announced its release to manufacturing of SQL Server 2008 this afternoon. MSDN and TechNet subscribers will find the product officially available for download in the Servers section, BetaNews has confirmed. And the company's Web site for the product has officially been updated.
Open 3D graphics standard backed by Sony, Intel, Nvidia gains kinematics
You might prefer for the game console of your choice to be distinct or superior in some well-defined way. But as a developer, you might prefer to develop toward a more open, portable standard, such as the one being advanced this week.
In advance of a major demonstration at a graphics industry convention in Los Angeles next week, the Khronos Group coalition of graphics developers announced they will be demonstrating an improved open standard for representing 3D graphics assets that adds the ability for objects to have movable skeletons with skin and other objects attached.
Open source mobile platforms converge on LinuxWorld
During this year's LinuxWorld, it was more obvious than ever before that open source technology is finding a place in mobile phones. But some hurdles stand in the way, including the sheer number of competing platforms in this space.
SAN FRANCISCO (BetaNews) - A major problem standing in the way of mobile developers is the wide variety of different companies competing in the mobile platform space. Although this may sound like more of a blessing than a problem, some of these platforms' supporters find themselves allied with some projects and opposed on others -- which has already led to some friction.
Google's MP3 search engine debuts in China
Confirming about six months of speculation, the search giant said Wednesday it had launched a music search feature on its Chinese site with partner Top100.cn.
Rumors of a tie-up first appeared in early February in The Wall Street Journal, and later it was rumored that Top100 had signed a deal with Google. Wednesday's news confirms that speculation.
Oracle boosts its own Linux with 'templates' to aid virtualization
In a realm where a "server" is no longer one box with one processor, it isn't always practical to keep reinstalling the same applications for multiple servers. Today, Oracle is proposing a unique solution, involving "templates."
Oracle's server virtualization software, known as Oracle VM, is targeted at supporting server consolidation and systems integration by enabling Oracle and non-Oracle applications, designed to run on different operating systems, to share the same underlying operating environment.
Three new IBM / Linux partnerships aimed at a 'Microsoft-free' world
At the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco this week, IBM strengthened its ties with the open source community by announcing partnerships with Canonical, Red Hat and Novell.
SAN FRANCISCO (BetaNews) - IBM hopes adding its software to distributions of Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Suse Linux will help consumers transition to become "Microsoft-free."
Adobe, Kaspersky warn of botnet worm spreading via social networks
The maker of Flash and the leading security lab said earlier this week that a worm first discovered last Thursday is being spread through social networks disguised as a update to Flash Player.
Adobe says there is no update. The worms, dubbed Koobface.a and Koobface.b by security firm Kaspersky, spread themselves through leaving comments and messages on Facebook and MySpace, which are sent to friends of an infected user.
Pioneer now says it can add four more layers to its Blu-ray disc
With the optical disc industry upping the ante last month, raising its goals for optical disc-based storage to a half-terabyte, Pioneer returned to testing a possible multi-layer BD, and now says it can squeeze more capacity onto one disc.
During a symposium on optical storage in Hawaii last month, Pioneer Electronics showed off its latest permutation of multi-layer recording using the DVD form factor, unveiling its draft specifications for a 16-layer Blu-ray Disc with as much as 400 GB capacity. But apparently, the company was surprised to find that the symposium had set forth a little higher goal: 500 GB by no later than 2012.
Huge correction: More opposition to Yahoo's Yang than first tabulated
In an error literally akin to finding the "0" key stuck on your typewriter, a major securities service admitted it had problems adding values ranging into the hundreds of millions, in its tabulation of Yahoo shareholder votes last Friday.
The provider of securities processing services to seven of the US' top ten brokerage firms, according to an SEC filing, admitted late yesterday that it did indeed make a serious error in the tabulation of shareholder votes for Yahoo board members during its shareholders' meeting on August 1.
AOL to split its access and advertising businesses next year
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes confirmed yesterday that his company will split its Internet division into two components, while stopping short of spinning either off or selling them as was expected.
The split, expected to be completed by early next year, may make it easier for Time Warner to sell either or both units, or to spin off those units into separate entities. While AOL's dial-up business has been the target of most of the sell-off speculation, AOL may also get rid of its advertising business as well.
Mozilla: Tell us how you see the future of Web browsing
With new versions of Firefox adding welcome features but no radical changes to the way people live and work, its producers are wondering whether the general public may have better ideas about Firefox' future than their own engineers.
After the production of a new and not-so-fanciful proof-of-concept video for Mozilla Labs by San Francisco-based software design consultants Adaptive Path, the Mozilla organization has put out an open call for anyone and everyone to create similar videos that could offer glimpses into a future browser, unlimited by the confines of its operating system.
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