Real Networks' Rhapsody has opened an MP3 store that works independently of the subscription-based service, bringing Rhapsody ever closer in design (but not execution) to the venerable iTunes.

United States customers today can access the new Rhapsody.com digital download store which offers DRM-free music for 99¢ per track, or $9.99 an album. Like Rhapsody's subscription service, users can preview up to 25 full-length tracks per month, and then all subsequent previews are pared down to 30 seconds, the same as iTunes.

A report from a well-known TV psychologist in the UK is having an impact on the way that country's regulators rate video games there, and Microsoft and EA are now leading a counter-offensive.

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has been the target of heavy criticism lately from game publishers, about proposed changes to one of two game ratings classification systems for the United Kingdom. That proposal is being backed by popular support due to the popularity of its author, a well-known presenter there.

PlayStation 3 consoles have always had Internet connectivity, but players trying to message one another have found that they're considered "busy" while they're in a game. An upcoming firmware update should change all that.

What's been perceived as perhaps Sony's greatest continuing weakness in its full-feature game console battle against Microsoft's Xbox 360 is the continued delay of its all-inclusive online community. This weakness is only compounded by the perception problem the company created for itself, having announced the PlayStation 3's Home service over a year ago, and having since then delayed its rollout, most recently in search for something that's more "focused" on gaming rather than the virtual bar-hopping experience Home was originally touted to be.

Somebody needed to tell the world's PC manufacturers there was a recession scheduled for the first quarter of 2008. Anyway, they didn't seem to pay much attention to those warnings, and iSuppli thinks the industry looks pretty healthy.

For the last two years, analysts both with iSuppli and other firms have said that a healthy worldwide PC market had to grow at an annual rate of 12%. Despite what's generally perceived as a global economic slowdown, the annual rate of PC shipments was 12.1% at the end of March, based on numbers released by iSuppli today.

Centro manufacturer Palm Inc. announced that despite record high sales, its fourth quarter revenue was well below forecasts, reporting losses of $43.4 million.

The Centro is proving to be the flagship device for Palm, that is to say, it's been just enough to buoy the company through flagging Treo sales until the 800w ships.

Select users are now being treated to the next version of the company's portal, which integrates social networking characteristics into the site.

As things currently stand with iGoogle, users cannot do much more other than add widgets and customize the look of the page. This essentially makes Google's offering no more compelling than the dozens of other available portal sites out there -- and some may argue from the page's bland design any more appealing.

Professional short form video's longest-running site AtomFilms has merged with user-generated content partner AtomUploads.com into what is now simply called Atom.com, and has shifted its focus exclusively to comedy.

With the site change, Atomfilms' partnership with sister company Comedy Central takes a more central role. The cable comedy network recently began airing a late-late-late show called AtomTV that airs much of the Atom's content and serves as a showcase for the weekly winner of the site's Upload Showdown contest. Its champion is determined by audience voting, and participants are amateur video makers who get a chance to sign a "professional" contract (a nonexclusive licensing agreement for their video) and earn a $500 prize.

On this final day of Bill Gates' salaried employ at the company he founded, we recall a period of history way, way back -- an era when Gates was one giant among many, and just as likely to survive the shakeout as any other.

The computing industry was built by brilliant people with colorful personalities and extraordinary talent. We have forgotten most of them. Chuck Peddle, Adam Osborne, Clive Sinclair, Federico Faggin, Les Solomon, Gary Kildall...these are among the names we knew by heart and often knew personally, for those of us who grew up with the dawn of the computing era. We knew these people often because we had met them in person -- during the first computer conferences, they were part of our second family, even if they only showed up in name only.

An Apple enthusiast blog claims it has seen an internal AT&T memo intended for its customer service representatives, stating that picture and video messaging are part of the new iPhone's feature set.

As iPhone Atlas mentions, AT&T's employees are not known for their accurate information. However, if verified, the emergence of this memo would mean the carrier is adding one of the missing features that the device has received some flak for failing to include.

After two years of development, Altec Lansing finally plans to ship the M812 -- the latest addition to its line-up of digital speaker systems for iPod, Zune, and other MP3 players -- on July 15.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) -- "Actually, the M812 won an innovation award at CES 2007," pointed out Patrick Beck, marketing manager, talking with BetaNews this week at Pepcom's Digital Experience show. "But then, it got shelved," he acknowledged.

Both Rogers and its smaller wholly-owned subsidiary Fido announced plans for the iPhone 3G -- along with the longest mandated contract length so far of any iPhone carrier: three years.

Rogers is Canada's largest wireless provider, serving some 7.1 million subscribers. Fido is the fourth largest, serving 1.3 million subscribers, and has been a subsidiary of Rogers since November 2004.

On a week when ICANN's decisions were headlining hundreds of tech news sites, several of the group's pages were defaced by a group of hackers, and a phishing scam spoofing the group's page hit inboxes across the country.

Yesterday, a Turkish group known as "NetDevilz" -- which is linked to a reported 31 perpetrated attacks just this year, as tracked by site Zone-H -- hijacked icann.com, icann.net, iana.com, and iana-servers.com, all sites belonging to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

BlackBerry users worldwide will one day be able to use DataViz' Documents to Go to create Microsoft Office files on their phones. Yet so far, only a couple of ISPs have provided their customers with this update to BlackBerry services.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) -- At this week's Digital Experience show in New York City, DataViz gave demos of Documents to Go, its software suite for creating, viewing and editing Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files and attachments on smartphones.

Google recently launched what it's calling a media server gadget, a new Windows-only application designed to send videos and images from a user's computer to any universal plug and play (uPnP) device.

Typical uPnP devices include the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, and the number of uPnPs available to consumers is growing dramatically. Google Media Server should auto detect all uPnP devices connected to the computer, so users should only have to install and briefly configure the gadget before it works on its own.

The quickly growing company will soon have plasma displays as cheap as $599, and is showing an interest in breaking into the high-end market with its XVT models.

Plasma TVs have traditionally been more expensive, which has fueled the growth of LCD TVs as the primary driver of the HDTV market. However, with Vizio's two newest entrants -- the 32" VP322 for $599 and the 42" VP422 for $799 -- that could begin to change.