The compromise legislation will enable a court to decide on a case-by-case basis whether telcos that cooperated with the US government will be granted immunity from prosecution. Prominent Democrats were among those voting for the compromise.

By a final vote of 69 - 28, with three senators not voting, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 passed the US Senate yesterday afternoon. With all three major amendments offered to the bill having been soundly defeated, the provision enabling a FISA court to grant immunity from prosecution to telecommunications companies that may have participated in surveillance activities in the wake of 9/11, remained intact.

To help make more of a dent in the Google-dominated search and ad markets, Yahoo is rolling out an initiative that will open the door wider to its search service, but mainly for developers and ISVs willing to host Yahoo ads on their sites.

"BOSS [Build Your Own Search Service]...is an API to tap into Yahoo's prized search infrastructure. It allows developers, start-ups, and established consumer Internet companies to leverage the power of Yahoo," contends a BOSS API Guide newly posted on Yahoo's developers site.

Now that the iTunes App Store is officially open, BetaNews has pushed aside the dozens of card games and social network companion programs to look at those apps that best take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities.

A viral video which was immensely popular not long ago featured two iPhones and a Nintendo DS creating improvised ambient music, the first "iBand." Of several apps available adding to the quiver of instruments for the budding iMusician, the most comprehensive is Band from Moocowmusic. This app offers touchable drums, piano, guitar, bass, and even applause which can be recorded, mixed and sequenced into full songs. This $9.99 app is already among the top ten most downloaded.

Okay, I'll admit it. The iPhone makes me giddy with excitement. It's been a year since I first opened its box, feeling like a boy on Christmas morning. Looking at the 2.0 firmware file on my Desktop, all those feelings came rushing back. Except this time around, the software is what I'm most interested in.

This day has been promised by Steve Jobs for over 6 months, and the global release of the iPhone 3G ensured that the new firmware and App Store would be available to US consumers one day early. A direct link to the iPhone 2.0 software, not yet officially available, has enabled early adopters to test out the newly opened platform and the third-party applications it brings with it.

The status code for the ISO's publication of OXML as an international standard has been on hold since four countries appealed the outcome of a ballot resolution meeting. That roadblock may now be lifted as soon as next month.

A spokesperson for the International Organization for Standardization confirmed this morning that, should the recommendations of the ISO Secretary-General and the International Engineering Consortium be agreed upon, the process of publishing the already approved Open XML document format suite as ISO/IEC 29500 will resume where it left off.

The carrier has sued by several consumers nationwide over its early termination fees. While VZW admits no wrongdoing, this week's payout settles those cases.

A total of $21 million would be split among the plaintiffs and cover attorney's fees. In addition, it would cap the amount that Verizon Wireless would have to pay to settle individual early termination fee (ETF) claims.

A little bit of digging has turned up the 2.0 version of the iPhone software on Apple's servers, while both the AppleTV and and iTunes see updates to support new functionality.

The file, marked version 2.0.5A347, can be downloaded via this link to Apple's download site. The release version is slightly higher than the last known beta version, 5A345, which was also known to be shipping on some iPhone 3G models.

Despite Apple's official Web page continuing to state its iPhone 2.0 firmware is "coming soon," iPhone users everywhere have already discovered its existence, thanks in large part to MacRumors.com. Build 5A347 is directly available from this link, as an unofficial release.

With Apple's new iPhone App Store launching today, users need the iPhone 2.0 firmware to be able to take advantage of it. And how can they do that unless it's available? -- thus, the unofficial release of the firmware.

Diane Greene, CEO of industry leading virtualization firm VMware, has lost her job to Paul Maritz, a former Microsoft executive who arrived at EMC -- VMware's owner since 2004 -- with its buyout of Pi Corp. last year.

In issuing an announcement that stunned the software industry, EMC Chairman Joe Tucci applauded Greene -- who co-founded the $1.3 billion virtualization software company 10 years ago -- for guiding "the creation and development of a company that is changing the way that people think about computing."

Giving itself a little more wiggle room, company representatives stated at a conference today that the new database server would be "priced" in August, leading some to conclude that's when SQL Server 2008 would be released.

After having promised that the eventual release of SQL Server 2008 would take place within a six-month timeframe from when it was originally scheduled -- during the "Heroes Happen Here" launch last February -- the latest Microsoft could possibly extend the product would be late August. Of course, once again, that depends on what you call "release."

In an effort to improve the open source contribution and distribution processes, the openSUSE project released Build Service 1.0, a new code repository service with several key improvements.

Although many Linux distributions have code repositories and libraries open to the community, they can sometimes be difficult to navigate, especially when trying to view older code samples. Matters become even more complicated when multiple teams are working on the same project, sometimes updating the same package, resulting in multiple simultaneous versions within a given repository.

A federal appeals court decided to put off a ruling on a challenge by the wireless industry of rules that would ensure cell towers stay on in the event of a power loss.

In May 2007, the Federal Communications Commission proposed regulations that would mandate all cellular transmission towers have at least eight hours of emergency power. The decision followed a study of cellular service following the Katrina disaster.

Today at the SINO Consumer Electronics show in Qingdao, China, a set-top box was launched by WhereverTV promising over 2,000 channels of international programming.

Content that can be watched on Wherever.tv, which consists of simulcasted regional stations and broadband-exclusive TV channels, can be watched through the WhereverTV receiver with just a high speed connection and a television.

A Senate committee heard testimony from the online advertising industry on Wednesday, as it attempts to address worries that some practices may violate users' privacy.

Among those who testified Wednesday before the Senate Commerce Committee were representatives from Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. However, the majority of the Committee's ire seemed targeted at NebuAd. This Redwood City, Calif.-based firm offers technology that uses data culled from packets provided by ISPs, which offer clues as to browsing habits. In turn, this data is used to deliver more relevant ads.

Common sense might tell you that Comcast's pledge to stop throttling Internet customers for the protocols they use would immediately help Vonage. But a new agreement may make sure Comcast's alternative doesn't end up hurting it.

In a remarkable agreement announced this afternoon, VoIP service provider Vonage and the US' largest Internet service provider Comcast will work together to improve the "network agnostic" management techniques that Comcast announced last March it would develop. Those techniques may help Comcast to regulate network traffic without implementing throttling techniques that, while benefitting Comcast, would hurt Vonage.