Latest Technology News

Hopefully it won't be another HD DVD/Blu-ray situation: Several consumer electronics companies have partnered to develop a technology that could deliver high-definition video wirelessly to television sets, but the technology will compete against another proposed standards.

Sony, Samsung, Motorola, Sharp, and Hitachi have formed a group that will focus on further developing technology known as Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI), the companies announced on Wednesday.

Thirteen record labels have filed for a summary judgement to their two-year old case against peer-to-peer file swapping service LimeWire, seeking to bring a swift end to the drawn-out conflict.

In 2006, the Recording Industry Association of America sued LimeWire seeking $150,000 per occurrence of illicit music sharing, claiming the service participated in "inducement of copyright infringement, contributatory copyright infringement, and with respect to pre-1972 recordings, common law copyright infringement and state law unfair competition."

A patent infringement suit over some of Nintendo's game controllers will enter a Federal Court of Appeals following the $21 million verdict in favor of plaintiff Anascape.

In May, Texas-based Anascape won $21 million dollars from Nintendo in a patent infringement suit filed against the company for its game controller design. At the time, it was not disclosed which aspects were found to be in violation, but Nintendo said the Wiimote and nunchuck (part of its industry-leading Wii console) were safe.

Although Yahoo on Tuesday announced second quarter financial results showing a 19 percent drop in profits, company CEO Jerry Yang contended that his company is making progress on three goals -- around Internet content, advertising, and application development -- stipulated earlier as ways of boosting Yahoo's fortunes.

"You'll recall that we identified three strategic objectives to accelerate our growth and create long-term value for Yahoo shareholders: to become the starting point for the most consumers on the Internet; to establish Yahoo as the "must buy" for the most advertisers; and to deliver industry-leading platforms that attract the most developers," said Yang, during a conference call with financial analysts.

New York Governor David Patterson yesterday approved a bill that will make ESRB video game ratings mandatory, require parental controls in consoles, and fund a study of the correlation between in-game and real-life acts of violence.

The state senate voted 61-1 in favor of the bill (A.11717 / S.6401-A) under the sponsorship of state senator Andrew Lanza (R).

Microsoft announced late Tuesday that it would no longer charge Windows gamers to connect to one another for multiplayer gaming, and this fall will launch an online store for downloading PC games.

All users will be able to access the Games for Windows Live, which is similar to Microsoft's Xbox Live -- service at no cost. Microsoft said that the decision to remove the pay tier came after discussions with developers and fans led it to believe that multiplayer gaming should be free.

In the evolving manner of online ticket scalpers, people are snapping up dozens of Apple 3G iPhones -- now sold out in most states -- and selling them on the Web for prices hovering in the low four-figure range.

While some eBay auctions had reached pricetags above $1,000, most iPhone 3Gs listed early Wednesday were going for between $800 and $900 -- far above the $200 and $300 retail price for the 8GB and 16GB model, respectively.

Microsoft announced today that user-created games will be sold on Xbox Live through a new Community Games section starting this fall, with developers taking 70 percent of the revenue.

Almost two years ago, Microsoft first announced its plans to open Xbox 360 development to the public with the unveiling of its XP-compatible XNA Game Studio Express, and fully-featured XNA Game Studio.

Popular social networking site MySpace said Tuesday it will join the open source authentication platform OpenID, further bolstering the idea of a unified system to carry online identities between Web sites. But for now, MySpace's OpenID accounts cannot be used elsewhere.

OpenID has already been embraced by nearly 8,000 sites, including Yahoo (the largest supporter in terms of users), Plaxo, Wetpaint, Technorati, and LiveJournal. But MySpace is the second largest site to join the network to date, and will nearly double the amount of OpenID accounts to a half-billion. Although, because MySpace doesn't require e-mail verification, many of its accounts may not be legitimate.

The cat is out of the bag before Black Hat. That isn't a passage from a Dr. Seuss children's book, but a description of what happened on Monday when a Web site accidentally posted details about a DNS flaw uncovered by security researcher Dan Kaminsky earlier this month.

Kaminsky, who plans to discuss the flaw at the forthcoming Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas next month, had wanted to keep the details private until then, in hopes of preventing the flaw from being used for malicously redirecting Internet traffic to phony Web sites for large-scale phishing exploits.

A division of cable provider Comcast has struck deals with three other rival cable operators to help them serve online video to their customers.

thePlatform is a Seattle-based digital media company that was acquired by Comcast in 2006 for about $100 million. The folding of its operations under the cable operator's umbrella has allowed thePlatform to invest further in its technologies.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has announced a collaboration with General Motors and 34 North American power companies to speed the integration of electric cars into the grid.

By 2010, there are expected to be a handful of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) available on the United States market, and for them to be properly deployed, a blueprint for an electric fuel infrastructure must be laid out.

Microsoft's Windows Vista is to blame for slowing down the progress -- and, in turn, adoption-- of solid state drives (SSDs), according to Sandisk Chairman and CEO Eli Harari.

"As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid-state disk," Harari said, during SanDisk's second-quarter earnings call on Monday.

Faced with an uncertain future and struggling ad business, AOL is bulking up its AOL Health Web site, adding Caring.com, Health.com and HealthCare.com as three new partners.

HealthCare.com offers a list of more than 1 million medical doctors across the United States, depending on location, medical specialty, and health insurance plan; Caring.com features articles and guides on how to care for elderly patients; and Health.com offers articles, tips, images, videos and health tips for patients.

AOL's social news property Propeller, which began as a part of Netscape.com revamp headed by Internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, has been re-designed and re-launched under the same name.

Besides the nuclear-age design ethic upgrade, the service has scrapped its old ranking system entirely. Formerly, it worked like Digg and Yahoo Buzz, where a story's ranking was determined strictly by the number of votes it had.