Latest Technology News

Today, IBM announced a $300 million investment around building upon its 154 existing data centers in 2008, with the addition of 13 new "Business Resilience" service delivery centers in ten countries, including the US.

The new data centers will be located in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area in the US and in emerging markets elsewhere in the world, said Brian Reagan, IBM's director of business continuity and resiliency strategy, in an interview with BetaNews.

Bloggers have uncovered paperwork for two possible applications from Microsoft having to do with keeping the details of a user's browsing session private.

Critics of what could become a critical feature for Internet Explorer 8 have derided the idea of a built-in privacy feature for erasing histories and other trace elements, as nothing more than a "porn mode," allowing for surfers to cover their tracks if they are viewing questionable content. However, Mozilla -- which was set to include the feature in Firefox 3, but later pulled it -- argued for its legitimate uses.

Apple is apparently set to release a fix for an issue which is locking some iPhone users out of their installed third-party applications.

Users have been complaining about the issues in Apple support forums since earlier this month. With the first post coming before the 2.0.1 update, its not unreasonable to believe some have been experiencing this problem nearly from the start.

Following a BetaNews article indicating that Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin suggested the company's finances were in bad shape, the company shot back that it was not the case.

A spokesperson for the satellite radio provider contacted BetaNews late Tuesday refuting the original article's premise that Karmazin had admitted that Sirius XM's finances were not healthy.

In its latest Stop||Watch commercial rankings, TiVo found that, while viewers fast-forward through most paid advertisements, movie trailers are among the least skipped.

Stop||Watch has been measuring this trend for months. In May, the top three most-watched commercials were promoting movies. Now, the results for June show the top four commercials in total viewing were for movies.

To remain competitive as user activity levels off, eBay has announced that Buy it Now sales will incur a reduced flat fee for an extended listing period.

Online auction service eBay charges its sellers twice for each transaction: once for listing the item (called the insertion fee) and once after the item has been sold (or the final value fee). Effective September 16, sellers will be able to insert 30-day Buy it Now auctions for 35¢, a 70% reduction in listing cost, according to eBay.

In a series of announcements this afternoon, Sony says its preparing to distribute a wide array of new gaming system features well for the holiday season, including a new hard disk capacity for its upper-tier PlayStation 3.

As of last February, Sony was bundling its $499, upper-tier PlayStation 3 as an 80 GB console with Metal Gear Solid 4 and a DualShock 3 controller. Then last month, the new CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America announced an 80 GB Core package for $399 in lieu of an actual price cut.

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Two new AIM updates geared toward keeping the mobile user connected, were launched by AOL this morning: AIM Express (IE6 & 7, Firefox 2 & 3, and Safari 2 & 3) and AIM for Windows Mobile (5 & 6).

After leaking and then retracting information about its new phone twice in four days, Palm released a written announcement for the Treo Pro this morning which has remained on its Web site for several hours now.

As anticipated from all the hype circulating over the past week, Palm's latest phone differs from the consumer-oriented Centro by targeting the enterprise. Capabilities intended to support that objective range from a Windows Mobile 6.1 operating environment to high-speed UMTS/HSPDA network functionality.

Three of American Airlines' routes out of New York will get in-flight Wi-Fi: Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco. The service will be available on all Boeing 767-200 planes in the fleet.

Starting Wednesday, AA's new Gogo service will be available to customers, and will be run by aviation telecommunications company Aircell. Passengers will pay $12.95 for access during flights longer than three hours.

In what could be dire news for the world's #2 search provider, as Nielsen Online reports, Yahoo in July lost a full 11% of the US-based search traffic it had the previous year, down to only 17.4% of the nation's searches, or about 1.4 billion.

If you're thinking all the rhetoric against Yahoo since Microsoft's public takeover bid in February may be the cause, the problem is that Microsoft isn't the beneficiary. The number three US search provider on Nielsen's list this morning lost 10% from July 2007 to July 2008, down to under 1 billion searches. Google literally grabbed all of that traffic, with share of US searches rising 16% for the period to 4.8 billion, eclipsing the 60% mark. At about this time last year, Google was just rising past 55%.

According to an apology Microsoft has issued to Japanese consumers, the demand for Xbox 360 consoles has far outstripped supplies in Japan, and inventories will remain totally sold out until new shipments arrive in September.

Reports began surfacing early this month of major consumer electronics retailers such as Yodobashi Camera and Bic Camera running out of Xbox 360s at metropolitan locations.

After reviewing the merits of the case, Judge George O'Toole has denied the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority's motion to issue a five-month injunction to further prevent three MIT students from talking about their subway hack.

The restraining order against the students expired on Tuesday. Judge O'Toole explained that the transit agency had no likelihood of success on the merits of the case under federal computer intrusion laws. In addition, the MBTA in filings yesterday admitted that its fare collections system did indeed have flaws and would take approximately five months to fix.

Typically a "recession" is defined by two successive periods of negative growth. But wherever that recession may be taking place must be another planet, from HP's perspective, as it has yet to see even one such period in the Mark Hurd era.

It's the type of quarterly report that makes one ask the increasingly pertinent question, "Carly who?" In an unequivocal validation of its re-invention strategy under CEO Mark Hurd, Hewlett-Packard last night posted fabulous numbers, earning way more than it has before on seasonally weaker, though still very strong, revenue.

Music "mixtape" sharing site Muxtape has been pulled offline, with a notice saying it has to "sort out a problem with the RIAA." Its blog today contains the glib but equally nebulous statement, "No artists or labels have complained."

The message on Muxtape's main page predicts Muxtape will only be down "for a brief period." But the message contained in the site's Tumblr blog is slightly more foreboding, saying, "The site is not closed indefinitely."