Apple iPhone owners now have the ability to make low cost international phone calls using an existing Web-based "Virtual Mobile Network," whose proprietors hope there's a market out there for iPhone users on a budget.

Morodo's MO-Call iPhone users are able to place calls to other phone numbers using the Safari browser. Each international call is redirected through the MO-Call network, eliminating international roaming charges for mobile phone users.

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At a holiday CE show in NYC yesterday, BetaNews learned TomTom is readying a mid-range GPS device called the XL 330 that will offer most of the features of its high-end GO 930, at a much lower list price of $299.95.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) -- IQ Routes and European maps are just about the only features of the GO 930 -- which sells for around $500 -- that won't appear in the XL 330, said Tasia Hurt, a TomTom in a meeting with BetaNews at this week's Holiday Gift Guide Show.

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A member of Internet piracy group Apocalypse Production Crew (APC) under the handle Dextro (nee Barry Gitarts) has been found guilty of piracy, and now faces criminal charges of up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and more.

Gitarts, 25, was convicted of "conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement" and found guilty by a jury in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia yesterday for his 2003-2004 participation in a release group that provided pirated content on the Internet.

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Faced with competition, and more likely lack of traffic, Microsoft has stopped scanning books and will shutter is public Live Search Books site next week.

According to Microsoft, it has scanned some 750,000 books and indexed about 80 million journal articles since its launch two years ago. It is not clear what will happen to the content that the company had already scanned.

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Given the fact that the next changes to Microsoft Office will enable consumers to choose which native format it uses, the European Commission may find itself with no alternative but to reconsider its investigation into unfair competition allegations.

In a statement this morning from Brussels, the European Commission said it will consider whether Microsoft's move on Wednesday to embrace OpenDocument format addresses a complaint raised January 14 that the company continues to unfairly make it difficult for others to compete.

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Now-defunct movie sharing sites Cinematube.net and Showstash.com were ordered by Los Angeles judges to pay $1.375 million and $2.7 million, respectively, to the MPAA for linking to movie downloads.

Like the $110 million case against TorrentSpy.com, Showstash and Cinematube were cited for "actively searching for, identifying, collecting, organizing, indexing, and posting on their websites" links to pirated copies of Hollywood films and TV shows.

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This summer, Sony and JBL are both slated to ship new iPod-compatible HD Radio devices, joining a growing list of other consumer electronics device makers that are starting to combine HD Radio with Apple's iTunes tagging.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - At the Holiday Gift Guide Show this week, HD Radio gave sneak peeks of Sony's upcoming XDR-S10HDiP and JBL's On Time 400IHD, while also displaying an already available iTunes tagging-enabled, self-contained HD Radio system from Polk.

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Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten says Microsoft is spending time on building out the infrastructure for the service and will skip over its regular bi-annual update.

Typically in the past, Microsoft has pushed an update in the spring and fall. It does not plan to release a comprehensive update this spring, however, because it is preparing a DRM change that would allow users to take their games with them if they change consoles.

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What began as paid Wiki hosting service JotSpot, was bought by Google in 2006 and re-launched a year and a half later as Google Sites. Finally, this service is open to the public, not just subscribers.

Google Sites is an addition to the company's suite of online tools, and as such, is intended to be used in tandem with them.

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Despite the rumors, AT&T's CFO said Thursday that no pricing has been set for the upcoming 3G iPhone, which is expected to be announced next month at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference. Rick Lindner, speaking at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York, said that no decisions had been made on pricing or availability.

Lindner's comments follow a Gizmodo report on Tuesday that claimed the launch date for the 3G iPhone as June 9. Previous rumors also speculated that pricing of the device would fall from $299 to $199. AT&T has only said that it expects the new model to arrive in the coming months, but Lindner noted it's entirely up to Apple.

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At this rate, the time is within sight when the question of whether combining the smaller players in the search space to make one bigger one, may become moot.

According to comScore's report of US search engine traffic released this morning, Google's share of what are called "core searches" -- everyday queries from the main page, from US-based homes, offices, and universities -- rose 1.8% in a single month, leaping over the 60% milestone from March to April.

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GameStop says insufficient demand and business considerations are behind its decision to stop selling Microsoft's iPod competitor.

While Microsoft reached its one million units sold goal last June after just over 7 months, sales of the Zune have slowed since. The company only reached the two million sold mark earlier this month.

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Microsoft plans to follow the Live Search Cashback service announced this week with a series of other new features designed to draw more traffic, to be rolled out every spring and fall.

"'Cashback' will be the major new release for this spring," a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews today, during a press event in New York City.

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An existing tool which enables pools of users to share a single desktop from any location, and individuals' desktops to be centralized through servers and distributed to thinner clients, will become part of Microsoft's growing virtualization arsenal.

The strategy Microsoft has taken with regard to virtualization technology has been to be able to offer corporate clients and Windows Server customers at least one option in each category. In recent months, a new option for virtualization has emerged: the ability for a server to host a single desktop that can be pooled and run by multiple clients, from any remote client.

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It's one of Microsoft's most innovative products, creating a new market for consumer level server management. But Windows Home Server has recently suffered a few setbacks -- problems which may very well be addressed by a forthcoming beta.

Among the growing number of customers using Windows Home Server are consumers who aren't afraid to use multiple disk drives. Though Microsoft continues to recommend against the use of RAID redundant storage, WHS does offer a feature that automatically pools multiple physical storage devices into a single logical device, appending the storage space from one onto the end of another.

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