Microsoft refutes a Times article on Zune's 'copyright cop'
A New York Times article purporting that Microsoft is working with NBC Universal to create a "copyright cop" -- or anti-piracy filter -- for the Zune that will prevent playback of unauthorized videos, was refuted by Microsoft today.
In the article which appeared on a Times blog, Saul Hansell, a Times reporter, quotes J.B. Perrette, president of digital distribution for the movie studio, as saying there are two reasons why NBC chose Microsoft's Zune over Apple's iTunes for content distribution.
OpenOffice 3.0 beta natively supports Mac OS X
Download OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 Beta for Mac OS X from BetaNews FileForum now.
The latest beta of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the first to support Mac OS X without the need for X11.
iPhone inventory in Europe appears to be dwindling
It seems to be getting harder to find the iPhone in Europe these days, a possible sign that the 3G version is close to release.
For a period of time on O2's Web site Thursday, a message stating the iPhone was "no longer available" greeted users. This had changed by midday US time, when the 16 GB was shown to be again in stock.
Vietnamese Firefox 2 users were given malicious content
About 17,000 users of Vietnamese-language Firefox may have been wondering why their systems keep pulling up these video game cheat Web sites at random, for the past two months. But Mozilla didn't know what was up until last Tuesday.
The executable code for a Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was the apparent victim of a virus located on the hard drive of its sole author. As a result, Windows Firefox users with the Vietnamese language pack have been victims of malicious page redirects, apparently since last February.
TorrentSpy ordered to pay $111 million
A Los Angeles federal judge has delivered a default judgement against the BitTorrent site finding it guilty of copyright infringement and forcing it to compensate studios.
It may be difficult for the labels to ever collect, as the company that owned the site as well as its creators are broke, having filed for bankruptcy. The ruling also includes a permanent injunction preventing further infringement.
Photoshop Express update halted before release
An update to Adobe's online-only Photoshop Express beta was expected to be pushed out yesterday, but was removed just before launch due to a last-minute bug that was discovered.
Photoshop Express was launched in beta recently, allowing users to edit photos that users uploaded or cross-loaded from their Facebook, Photobucket, or Picasa albums.
Dell plans a new set of artistically customized laptops
Dell has touted the concept of personalized PCs ever since it began business as "PCs Limited." But now, it's experimenting with taking that philosophy to new levels, offering a peek at new laptops with custom artwork on their cases.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - "'One' is the number we eventually envision," said Anne Camden, during a Dell press event in New York City yesterday. Dell's senior PR manager was referring to plans by Dell to use the Special Art Edition Inspiron 1525 laptops rolled out this week as a launchpad for offering totally customized, build-to-order laptop covers at some point down the road.
Opera browser now has its own alternative to Firefox' Firebug
Recently, Opera's developers have been touting it as the most compliant browser with Web standards. Now they're using that as leverage to help introduce Dragonfly, a tool they hope will promote Opera as a kind of standards watchdog.
Easily among the most useful and well thought-out extensions to Mozilla Firefox has been Firebug, an add-on by independent developer Joe Hewitt which instantly converts any active Web site into a fully-fledged JavaScript/XHTML/CSS/DOM diagnosis studio. You can see why an element is parsed and laid out the way it is by pointing at it, and letting Firebug take you to the code in question. Up until now, no tool with similar functionality and reliability has existed within the browser context; Microsoft's Web development tools are centered around Visual Studio and Expression.
Qtrax nabs Universal for its legit P2P music service
Universal Music Group has confirmed that it has agreed on terms with file-sharing site Qtrax to make its catalog available at no charge to the site's users.
Qtrax originally had hoped to launch in January, and claimed it would carry legal downloads from the major labels. However, the content owners pulled back on the reins and said that while in negotiations, no deals had been reached.
Report: Comcast considers usage caps and overage fees
Broadband Reports posted information yesterday provided by an "insider" claiming that Comcast is in the early development stages of a 250 GB-per-month bandwidth cap that will charge users a fee when passed.
For every 10 GB over the 250 GB limit they consume, Comcast would charge $15, says the source. Early tests could begin in as little as one or two months, and would have an appreciable effect only the top one percent of downloaders. This one percent amounts to about 14,000 customers of Comcast's 14.1 million.
New Word add-in helps convert documents into 'talking books'
Last year, Microsoft reaffirmed its support for DAISY, the "talking book" standard developed for the visually impaired. Today, the ability for Word to save files in that enabling format has been unveiled.
Developed as an open-source collaboration project on SourceForge.net, the "Save as DAISY XML" add-in allows any Open XML-based file to be saved into the standard. It can be downloaded for free on Sourceforge.
Fake music, video files spread malware on P2P, says McAfee
McAfee is warning file-sharers that they may be at risk due to a Trojan horse posing as an MP3 or MPEG file.
The security firm said Tuesday that it had detected a half million instances of the malware since Friday, dubbed "Downloader-UA.h." It is calling the incident the most significant malware outbreak in three years.
Sony says PS3 outselling Xbox 360 in Europe
Sony is touting European sales figures which have surpassed those of Microsoft, even though the Xbox 360 was released some 16 months before the PS3.
About five million PS3's have been sold in the region, with the console consistently outselling the Xbox on a month-by-month basis since October of last year. The news is somewhat shocking, considering the significant lead time Microsoft enjoyed.
Iomega gets ready for war with its rugged, quarter-terabyte Camo
Adding another product to the ever-growing mix of portable hard drives, Iomega Corporation today introduced its new eGo USB 2.0 Camo, designed with a military camouflage theme and a promise of withstanding punishment.
The 250 GB 2.5-inch HDD measures .91" x 3.84" x 5.56", weighs just 0.6 lbs., and is compatible with Windows 2000 and later, and Mac OS X 10.1.5 and later. Iomega chose to make the HDD powered by USB only, so no power supply is required, thus radically increasing portability -- you don't have to lug around a power adapter.
Red Hat releases software for Windows, Linux management
In an effort to scale middleware from its $420 million JBoss buyout upward to the enterprise, Red Hat this week released its JBoss Operations Network (JBoss ON) 2.0 management platform for applications running on Linux and other clients.
First announced earlier this year as part of Red Hat's Enterprise Acceleration initiative, JBoss ON 2.0 is being enthusiastically embraced by some developers.
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