Apple: Oops, some MobileMe e-mail lost forever
In its recently created status blog for MobileMe, which has struggled with downtime since its launch earlier this month, Apple admits it lost some e-mails during a four-day period at the height of the outage.
A poster identifying himself as "David G." continued to stress that restoring full e-mail access to the 1% of users who had lost connectivity was Apple's first priority. Web access for 40 percent of that 1% was turned on Saturday, and feedback was said to be "positive."
FCC likely to punish Comcast for blocking P2P file sharing traffic
On Saturday, the Associated Press cited "an agency official" reporting that the majority of FCC commissioners had voted in favor of punishing Comcast for blocking subscribers from engaging in certain activities -- namely, peer-to-peer file sharing.
The likely punishments were first reported to be sanctions, but at a press conference shortly thereafter, Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin said a policy change will be the outcome.
Sirius+XM is official as FCC approves merger
On a 3-2 party-line vote, the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger of Sirius and XM, although the satellite radio companies had to make some key concessions.
The final commissioner to vote on the deal was Deborah Taylor Tate, who held her vote pending XM and Sirius agreeing to certain limitations. The two sides did so late last week, and Tate gave her blessing late Friday.
After pirate lands in prison, software group hints at eBay lawsuit
After convicted software pirate Jeremiah Mondello pulled a 48-month federal prison stretch on Wednesday, an industry anti-piracy group announced six more lawsuits against individual piracy suspects -- also reportedly hinting that eBay could be the next one to get hauled into court.
"Mondello is a whiz-kid who used his smarts and savvy to rip off software makers and consumers. We are fortunate that he has been stopped, but there are hundreds more like him running illegal operations on eBay and other sites," according to Keith Kupferschmid, SVP of intellectal property policy and enforcement for the Software Industry Information Association (SIAA).
Microsoft cozies up to open source, donates $100,000 to Apache
As part of a renewed embrace of open source, Microsoft will contribute $100,000 annually to join the Apache Software Foundation, as well as pledging new protocols to the Open Specfication Promise and contributing a patch for ADOdb.
The annual investment in Apache will bring the company on board as a "Platinum" sponsor, the foundation's highest level. At that level, it joins competitors Yahoo and Google in supporting the effort.
Scientists turn car exhaust into electricity, twice as efficiently
Scientists from Ohio State University have created a new material called thallium-doped lead telluride, which has been designed to convert car engine exhaust heat into electricity.
The research team led by Joseph Heremans said the material could also be used to help power generators and heat pumps. The new material is reportedly able to convert the wasted heat into energy without causing pollution, and do so more efficiently than was previously possible.
Nearly 7 years after original, a new Windows XP goes gold
On August 24, 2001, Microsoft released to manufacturing the final version of Windows XP. 6 years and 11 months later, a new version of XP has gone gold, this time for the OLPC XO computer, also known as the "$100 laptop."
Originally designed to run Linux, the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) XO laptop is targeted at developing nations and those too poor to afford proper computers for education. The device, which went on sale publicly in November for $200, features wireless connectivity, a built-in camera and a keyboard designed to change languages.
After legal fight, 11-year-old ordered to turn over Narnia.mobi domain
An 11-year-old Scottish boy who received a dream birthday present that later turned into a legal quagmire must now turn over his narnia.mobi domain name back to the estate of C.S. Lewis.
Comrie Saville-Smith, who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, is a fan of the C.S. Lewis Narnia novels, and his parents decided to give him the narnia.mobi dobmain once it became available in September 2006.
Beta release of Office Outlook Connector adds calendar syncing
A beta release of Office Outlook Connector 12.1 adds syncing between Windows Live Calendar and Microsoft Outlook.
As with previous versions, the connector will sync a user's Hotmail account and contacts with Microsoft's Office productivity suite. The addition of calendar support rounds out the service, and offers functionality akin to Apple's MobileMe (although its more meant for desktops in this case, not mobile phones).
China now counts more Internet users than the US
Even though the government places heavy restrictions on the Internet with censorship and routine crackdowns on cyber dissidents, China has finally surpassed the United States for the most online users in the world.
The China Internet Network Information Center compiled the numbers that indicate China now has 253 million total Web surfers, with the United States coming in at an estimated 223 million users. China has a total population of more than 1.3 billion people, compared to the United States' 301 million.
Video service RedLasso folds under legal pressure from networks
RedLasso, a digital video re-syndication service, has closed its controversial site after threats of copyright lawsuits from NBC Universal and Fox.
The service digitized live audio and video content, which users could edit and re-arrange into embeddable clips.
Microsoft buys DATAllegro in high-end enterprise quest
In an ongoing quest to push its SQL Server database further into the high-end enterprise space, Microsoft on Thursday unveiled plans to purchase DATAllegro, a maker of business intelligence (BI)-enabled data warehouse appliances.
"DATAllegro provides a very, very high-capability scale-out data warehouse that we will move onto the SQL Server platform and Windows platform. And with this we will have a scale-out data warehouse that will scale into the hundreds of terabytes in size, and be able to compete for the highest-end enterprise data warehousing solutions. We've never been able to do that before," contended Bob Muglia, senior VP of Microsoft's Server and Tools, in a talk during Microsoft's Finacial Analysts Day on Thursday.
Any deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is probably off - so then what?
Microsoft said Thursday it's "done" trying to acquire Yahoo, but while some might be cheering yet another interruption Microsoft's relentless pursuit of its rival, others are pointing to a compelling need for the company to start making money from its online operations.
"I think the chances of our buying Yahoo [are] so small that they are essentially negligible," said Microsoft CFO Christopher Lidell, at a Microsoft analysts meeting yesterday.
Blockbuster beta testing movie download service
Blockbuster's download-on-demand service based on Movielink is approaching readiness, as the company has pushed out a beta version to select Total Access members.
500 Total Access subscribers have been chosen to beta test Blockbuster's pay-per-view movie download service that it acquired from Movielink in 2007.
Escaped spammer found dead in murder-suicide
"Spam King" Edward Davidson, who recently disappeared from the Colorado minimum security facility where he was serving 21 months for tax evasion and e-mail fraud, was found dead yesterday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Davidson ran a company called Power Promoters from 2002 to 2007 that, among other things, promoted penny stock companies by sending out thousands of spam e-mails with falsified headers. When he was indicted in June 2007, the IRS reported that Davidson had collected over $3.5 million without paying taxes.
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