Latest Technology News

Apple has reportedly released a beta of its next significant release of the iPhone software, activating background push notifications, as well as enhanced GPS functionality.

iPhone 2.1 should not be confused with 2.0.1, another firmware update reportedly in testing. The latter is essentially a maintenance release intended to fix some of the more serious bugs that have appeared with iPhone 2.0.

A July 14 email from AOL Executive Vice President of Products and Marketing Kevin Conroy was uncovered by TechCrunch this week announcing the eventual termination of AOL Pictures, Xdrive, Bluestring, and MyMobile. Many in AOL's Blog network also report being put on hiatus as a result of budget overages.

News of AOL's recent budgeting efforts range from the equable and calculated to the panicked and slapdash. Kevin Conroy's internal email represents the logical approach being taken by AOL. At this point, Conroy says, "every product makes a direct impact on the bottom line."That is to say, AOL can no longer afford to carry the burden of products that don't "effectively contribute to the financial health of [the] company."

Verizon has scheduled a webcast for Monday, where it will officially announce rollout plans and pricing for FiOS in New York City, which has over 8.2 million residents, providing a huge boost for the service that counts only 1.8 million customers.

Thus far, Verizon's FiOS television and Internet service has been largely relegated to the suburbs, where the company could more easily dig down to install fiber optic lines. Major metropolitan areas have seen only spotty FiOS coverage, making the New York City launch an important milestone for Verizon. The company was granted approval from the city last week to offer its television service. Verizon also plans to host an event at Grand Central Terminal.

Operation and maintenance of Sprint's cellular network towers will be taken over by TowerCo, freeing up capital for the cash-strapped company.

TowerCo paid $670 million for about 3,300 CDMA and IDEN towers. In exchange, the company has signed a long-term lease with Sprint for their use. The deal is expected to close within 90 days.

Hewlett-Packard's Voodoo business unit -- which produces HP's Blackbird, Omen, and Envy 133 gaming PCs -- is going away, although HP is expected to continue selling the Voodoo line-up.

HP said this week that the standalone business unit -- created upon HP's buyout of the Voodoo gaming PC start-up two years ago -- will now be merged with the same division within the company which also produces the Pavilion and Compaq Presario line-ups of consumer PCs.

Like Microsoft before it, Yahoo is ending digital rights management (DRM) support for an old music service. Beginning on October 1, users who downloaded songs from Yahoo Music will no longer be able to play them back on new computers or operating systems.

In a recent e-mail, Yahoo alerted customers that it will stop distributing keys for unlocking DRM on Yahoo Music tunes.

Microsoft and Facebook strengthened their existing partnership Thursday with the announcement that Microsoft would be powering the social network's Web search and sponsored links.

The announcement was made at Microsoft's annual financial analysts meeting in Redmond. Sources indicate the search services will be integrated into Facebook without many changes to the overall site design.

Hitachi today announced the third version of its Blu-ray camcorder that is able to record and store video directly on a disc so it can be later viewed on any PC or TV with a Blu-ray drive -- but not a PS3.

The new Blu-ray camcorder, DZ-BD10H, has a 30GB hard drive and CMOS image sensor along with an optional 32GB SDHC memory card that is able to store up to five hours of video in 1920x1080 AVCHD resolution.

Despite reducing power consumption by 35 percent, Western Digital's new 10,000 RPM 2.5-inch hard drives won't be making an appearance in laptops. The updated VelociRaptor line, with capacities up to 300GB, are designed for 1U and 2U servers.

The new VelociRaptor drives sport a SATA 3 Gb/s interface with 16 MB cache, technology that optimizes the drive if there is vibration, and a reliability rating of 1.4 million hours MTBF. WD is going after a new market for smaller drives in servers, where 3.5-inch drives were previously the norm.

Game maker Hasbro, just weeks after the release of a properly licensed Scrabble Facebook beta, have filed suit against the creators of the unauthorized, and apparently too-popular Scrabulous, asking for removal of the game in addition to unspecified damages.

At the beginning of the year Facebook was contacted about Scrabulous by Hasbro, owner of the game's rights in the United States, asking that it be taken down.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced an updated version of Windows Live for Windows Mobile, the company's client software for cell phones. But some users were still lamenting the lack of calendar syncing.

The mobile Windows Live client enables users to synchronize their Live contacts (such as those in Live Mail and Messenger) with their device, sync e-mail from Hotmail, respond to e-mails with voice recordings, and upload photos to Windows Live Spaces.

Sony announced today that its Reader e-book will support the EPUB and Adobe PDF/A formats with the device's next firmware upgrade.

The PRS-505 (or Reader) currently has a selection of about 40,000 titles available from Sony's eBook Store. But next month, new models and those with upgraded firmware will be able to load IDPF/EPUB, and PDF/A files. The device previously supported BBeB (Marlin) Books, PDF, TXT, RTF and Microsoft Word files (converted with Sony's CONNECT software).

At Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting Thursday, Bill Veghte, who heads up the company's Windows and online services division, said that Windows 7 is progressing well and confirmed that Internet Explorer 8 will ship before the end of the year.

Beta 2 of IE8 is slated for release next month, with a focus on new features for consumers and IT professionals. The first beta -- released in March -- was focused largely on developers, and Microsoft said the long delay between betas was due to the heavy feedback it received.

If you live in England and download a lot of copyrighted music, check your mailbox. The British government said Thursday that the recording industry and the country's largest ISPs have agreed on a deal to cut down on piracy through warning letters.

ISPs will identify and send postal letters to the most prolific downloaders, warning them of being detected. What the companies would do next is not yet known, as procedures have not been finalized.

In its Beta 3 release of Zimbra Desktop today, Yahoo has added free IMAP access and other new features to its crossplatform software, geared at competing against e-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird by working as both a standalone desktop application and an online e-mail interface.

Based on technology obtained through Yahoo's Zimbra Software buyout in 2007, Zimbra Desktop can now provide e-mail access and offline synchronization to Yahoo Mail users on a choice of Windows, Linux, or Mac OS.