In separate announcements today, Microsoft and its former nemesis, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, are said to be making investments of undisclosed amounts into development firms that are active in the mobile video space.

Microsoft is now putting money into Move Networks, an already heavily backed provider of high-definition video that claims an ability to eliminate the need for video buffering. Move's customers so far include the likes of ABC, ESPN, and Disney.

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Shouldn't a Web browser eventually be capable of responding to natural-language commands -- not the Web site, but the browser? Today, the son of legendary developer Jef Raskin launches a project to explore that question.

One of the most lauded additions to the latest edition of Firefox is how its new "smart" address bar (called the "awesome bar" in early betas) can resolve some incomplete or indirectly descriptive entries into URLs. Sometimes, it even throws the text over to Google when it can't quite resolve the text into a history entry or a URL that Firefox has seen before.

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Google has launched Suggest, a search feature that offers query suggestions as the user types in the search field.

A full year after Yahoo's Search Assist was launched, Google has its own brand for a very similarly behaving predictive text search tool. Granted, the Google Toolbar already had a similar feature, and it has existed in Google Labs for a considerable period of time, but it is now a default feature on Google's main page.

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The new N85 and N79 smartphones for European high-speed mobile networks will be followed by a North American edition of the N96. Each will offer a 5 Mp camera with Zeiss optics, integrated turn-by-turn GPS navigation, and N-Gage gaming.

Nokia today rolled out three high-end multimedia and gaming smartphones: the Nokia N85 and N79, slated for release for European 3.5G mobile networks this October; and a new North American edition of the existing N96, retooled to run on 3G networks in the US and Canada starting in the fourth quarter.

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Attorneys for the makers of Mac OS X-compatible computers told reporters Tuesday they plan to argue that Apple's EULA violates provisions of the Sherman and Clayton antitrust laws.

Lead Psystar counsel Colby Springer of Carr & Ferrell said at a press conference this afternoon that his firm plans to raise questions of improperly tying Mac OS X to Apple-labeled hardware under the Sherman Antitrust Act, and claims of attempted monopoly and exclusive dealings under the Clayton Antitrust Act.

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Adobe has launched Photoshop Elements 7 and Premiere Elements 7, the company's hobbyist-level photo and video editing suites which are now more closely tied into the company's growing online toolkit.

The major innovation in these releases in their tie-in with a soon-to-be-revised Photoshop.com, that is expected to divide its service into basic, "plus," and mobile tiers. In fact, the announcements regarding Adobe's online service alone practically outnumber the new features in Elements series 7.

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Not one week after music sharing site Muxtape was pulled down at the request of the RIAA, a clone service called Opentape has arisen in its place, with a single pivotal change: Users must host their own tapes.

Muxtape let its users upload as many as twelve MP3s to a user-assigned Muxtape subdomain ("username.muxtape.com") that was publicly searchable and "tradable." In hosting all the MP3s, Muxtape established itself as the responsible party if artists, labels, or the RIAA had complaints.

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If you do the math, using the best estimates available to you about text messaging (SMS) usage in the US, the results could be staggering: A single news announcement may mean a small windfall for telcos.

If Sprint's early estimates are accurate and if they're reflective of other carriers' traffic on the day Sen. Barack Obama announced his running mate, the resulting flow of text message traffic on the nation's networks could theoretically have generated more than $118 million in extra revenue for the nation's cell phone carriers.

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Amid charges from LibraryThing of planting blog comments, social networking site Shelfari now belongs 100 percent to Amazon.com. Yet so, too, does AbeBooks, a partial owner of LibraryThing.

Amazon.com today acquired Shelfari, a social networking site for book lovers, less than a month after buying AbeBooks, an online retailer of used and rare books. AbeBooks holds an equity stake in LibraryThing, Shelfari's chief rival.

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The two companies have signed a confidentiality agreement which should keep the details of the talks secret.

Take-Two would only discuss its future product plans with EA if it had some type of assurance that such discussions would be held in private. EA agreed, and took its hostile bid for its smaller rival off the table.

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After having lost complete access to iTunes for nearly a week, for reasons that may have had to do with the music store featuring an album supporting Tibetan freedom, users in China report they can download music once again.

The first reports of connectivity issues surfaced on Monday, in timing that seemed to coincide with iTunes' release of a pro-Tibet album. While access to that particular album still appears to be restricted, the rest of the store returned this week.

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The concept of privatizing the browsing experience has been the impetus for an entire segment of the anti-malware industry. Now, Microsoft has confirmed it will be claiming that segment for itself in the next version of Internet Explorer.

In a post to the Internet Explorer development team's blog yesterday afternoon, Microsoft IE8 program manager Andy Ziegler confirmed news that reporters anticipated after last week's discovery of a series of trademark filings: The new browser will contain a prominent feature enabling users to switch off any kind of permanent or long-term storage of their history or activities.

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Fresh analysis indicates that Amazon's popular Kindle device may eventually serve a second purpose: as a provider of college texts and other materials for students. For that reason, Amazon may be marketing the device towards students.

For many college students, a walk between classes is the equivalent of ROTC basic training. The reason, of course, is textbooks. They're too numerous, they're too heavy, and they're too expensive.

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The Finnish phone maker is expected Tuesday to take the lid off the two newest additions to its N-Series line of smart phones.

Nokia appears to be replacing two phones in its lineup, the earlier released N78 and N81. The N78 has been out since the 3GSM conference earlier this year, just recently making its way to the US: the N81 since late summer of last year.

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Although Google might not have much to fear from Microsoft, on the whole, could a new promotion in Google Checkout represent a response to Microsoft's Live Search Cashback feature?

In a new back-to-school promotion, Google is now offering a $5 to $10 discount on purchases made at partner sites that use its Checkout Service.

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