Microsoft will cut prices between 5 and 20 percent across four of the five regional markets where it sells its Xbox 360 console..

While the Xbox 360 has generally done quite well outside of Asia, the company has seen its share of struggles in the region. The price cuts are obviously an attempt to reverse this trend.

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Download Windows XP Service Pack 3 from FileForum now (316 MB).

1:20 pm EDT April 29, 2008 - As expected, the self-extracting .EXE version of Windows XP Service Pack 3 was made available to the general public by Microsoft this morning. However, due to a last minute problem, the official release to Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center was delayed.

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In what could be a precedent-setting case, recording companies are alleging that the Project Playlist Web site is guilty of infringement by enabling its own members to give other users access to unlicensed music files hosted by other sites.

Ostensibly, Project Playlist purports to be a site where users can share lists of their favorite music. But lists alone do not a business model make, as indicated by the fact that songs chosen by members can be made to play in sequence, in Windows Media, RealPlayer, or Flash.

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Blockbuster has expanded its video game presence, now offering retail video games, hardware, and accessories in all of its company-owned stores.

Previously, the company had only offered game rentals and limited retail gaming items in its stores. In select locations, the company had a shop-within-shop Game Rush operation selling new and used games.

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Dutch Personal Navigation Device company TomTom posted a dramatic 83% first quarter drop in European earnings thanks to a number of factors; many of which could add up to the commodification of GPS.

TomTom warned of its diminishing revenue first when it lowered its full-year guidance from €2.14 billion to €1.8-2.0 billion in the beginning of April as stocks dropped 13% in value internationally.

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Verizon today announced the addition of 1.5 million new wireless customers and 263,000 new FiOS TV customers, on a net basis, in delivering financial results showing a 5.5% rise in revenues to $23.8 billion.

"Results for the first quarter were strong and demonstrate that we weathered the economic uncertainty," said Verizon CFO Doreen Toben, in a conference call with financial analysts today.

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With the company's purchase of Macromedia and the changing design needs of the Web, the decade-plus old WYSIWYG HTML editor took a backseat to Dreamweaver, and fell out of favor with developers.

The multimedia company acquired the rights to GoLive from German software developer GoLive Systems in 1999, where it started its life as CyberStudio, However, with its purchase of Macromedia in 2005, GoLive took a backseat.

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Microsoft is blaming its disappointing third quarter client software sales on factors that exclude Vista. Meanwhile, though, a variety of evidence indicates that many Windows XP users aren't upgrading, but switching to Mac or Linux.

"With respect to [the] third-quarter in particular, there's really no Vista-related issues at all," said Microsoft CFO and Senior VP Chris Liddell, during a conference call on Thursday. There, Microsoft reported a year-over-year drop in sales of 24% for Windows desktop operating systems in the third quarter of Microsoft's fiscal year.

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In an open letter to customers today, Amazon's Jeff Bezos reported the availability of fresh shipments of its popular Kindle e-book reader, after having been in short supply since its November debut.

The Kindle device was officially launched in November 2007, but sold out in less than six hours due to a combination of high demand and major supply issues.

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How much should a TV network be experimenting with social networking in its effort to establish its brand presence on the Web? While US networks build up their video content, Canada's national broadcaster is experimenting with this question.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is working with social media site Pluck to add more personally interactive features in a Web site normally devoted to the mundane task of show promotion. CBC users will be able to participate in voting contests, forum discussions, photo sharing and commentary exclusive to certain shows.

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It should have been a fairy tale come true for an entrepreneurial wireless provider with top-notch leadership. But the FCC's D Block option kept Frontline Wireless out of the picture; and today, an FCC report points the blame at no one.

Last year, the US Congress granted the Federal Communications Commission the authority to conduct an auction of portions of the public airwaves currently devoted to UHF television, with the condition that it devise the means for some of that spectrum to be used by public safety officials and first responders. Without federal funding available to secure the project, though, the FCC came up with a unique plan that would involve entrepreneurial corporations cooperating with a non-profit public safety organization, enabling the corporations to establish profitable services while at the same time helping the public firm maintain the public safety network, presumably at reduced costs.

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The much anticipated, 8.9-inch, Intel Atom-powered ultra-low-cost PC from motherboard manufacturer Gigabyte, expected to hit the market in June, now has a name: M912.

Unfortunately, that's still all it officially has. As DigiTimes reported this morning, The M912 is reportedly being both designed and manufactured in-house so the company can release it in a timely fashion. If Gigabyte's current UMPC/MID offerings are any indication, the device could take on the "slider" form factor instead of the traditional "clamshell" laptop/notebook design.

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The year 2008 is shaping up to be a time of cutbacks on overall enterprise IT spending, according to a new study from IDC, which also points to infrastructure improvements and application modernization as the focus of IT.

In interviews with 27 CIOs and senior IT leaders, IDC found that many IT
organizations are already reducing spending. About half of the survey's participants pointed to "an existing negative impact on the budgets from the economy." The other half said their organizations haven't felt a negative impact yet, but are anticipating a negative impact in the future.

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An apparent rash of SQL injection attacks on Web sites was reported by a Finnish security firm late last week, though a case of "guilt by implication" led to speculation that a privilege escalation vulnerability was the cause.

Last Friday, the Web site of security engineering firm F-Secure noted what appears to be another outbreak of successful SQL injection attacks on database-driven Web sites that use Active Server Pages to generate results. In what appears to the firm to be a twist on a classic attack scheme, an uncleansed SQL query into a database reformulates the contents of every record in its tables so that certain text fields contain hidden, malicious JavaScript code.

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Apple's consumer desktops have received faster processors and better graphics cards, which may only add momentum to a product line analysts are saying may finally be stealing market share from Vista.

In fact, Apple credits the iMac as contributing to the ability for the company to grow its overall computer business at a rate of almost three times the industry average: Apple reported a 51 percent increase in computer sales last quarter.

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