Latest Technology News

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.

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.

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.

The beta period for Nokia's navigation software has ended, and now the company's answer to Google Maps is available to the public.

Nokia Maps 2.0 beta saw over 400,000 downloads, and the company is expected to ship 35 million GPS-enabled handsets this year. With the sales of PNDs dramatically dropping off, analysts are expecting cellular handset navigation systems to dominate the market in the next two years.

The movie studio is hoping to draw moviegoers to theaters by offering recorded live shows through a new program it's calling The Hot Ticket.

The first two will debut later this summer. Cirque du Soleil's "Delerium" will be the first to come to theaters, followed by the final Broadway performance of "Rent," set to close on September 7.

In a test of the country's recently instituted economic reforms, the US will now permit cell phones to be sent to the Communist country, despite the continued presence of economic sanctions.

Cuban President Raul Castro has implemented several changes since taking power in February, some of which included the ability to purchase electronic devices including computers, cell phones, and DVD players.

The music retailer posted a smaller than expected 10 cent-per-share loss as it added about 17,000 new subscribers to its subscription service.

Big strides have been made in efforts to pare losses. The company lost $4.3 million in the three months ending March 31, about half of its $8.5 million loss in the year ago quarter.

Orb Networks, who produce remote PC access/place shifting software naturally called Orb, have announced a partnership with BitTorrent which will bundle the filesharing client into the free Orb PC application.

Since Orb makes users' PCs accessible through most Wi-Fi connected devices equipped with a browser, the new partnership looks to expand the BitTorrent experience. Perhaps in doing this, it will also expand the consideration given to the protocol by content providers.

Apparently Microsoft is fine with not earning any money at all in a lucrative market where it finds itself no better than second place, and where its competitor has a dominant stake, if Microsoft can gain a foothold. Sound familiar?

Yesterday's announcement from Microsoft that it will give consumers sizable refunds on purchases they make from participating online retailers, on products they purchase through its Live Search service, has analysts split this morning. It was a big deal on Wall Street yesterday, with Microsoft shares dipping a tad, and the company targeted by this move -- Google -- following suit.

Researchers with Core Security have found three vulnerabilities in Mac OS X's calendaring app that could create havoc for users.

The most serious vulnerability deals with a memory corruption issue that is triggered by a specially-crafted .ics file being executed. At the heart of it is a resource liberation bug which is triggered through the file, thus allowing code execution.

Following the general shift among content providers toward more vertical and geographical content, AOL is expanding its video presence outside of the United States.

AOL Video is already quite successful here in the US: the site averages about 17 million unique visitors per month, and over 96 million page views.

Sugar Laboratories, Inc. is now in informal discussions with four ultra-low cost laptop manufacturers about the possibility of running its Linux software on their hardware, according to the new company's founder.

As Walter Bender, who left One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) last week to help establish OLPC's new software spinoff -- told BetaNews yesterday, his new non-profit software organization is very much interested in working with Intel, and is already talking with Pixel Qi, another organization with OLPC roots.

The wireless industry has proposed a plan to the US Federal Communications Commission giving consumers a chance to cancel their cellular service without any penalty.

That opportunity would begin for consumers either 10 days from receipt of their first bill, or 30 days after signing their contract. There's a catch, though: If the proposal goes through as written, the FCC will take away the right to states to regulate the wireless charges, which are called "termination fees."

Beyond its work in designing the just rolled out, $75 XO 2.0 laptop, Pixel Qi -- an OLPC 'spinout' launched in January -- now plans to design the screens of some of the commercial laptops slated to debut next month in Taiwan.

As Mary Lou Jepsen, Pixel Qi's founder, told BetaNews yesterday, the OLPC's new XO 2.0 laptop will be a dual-touchscreen model geared toward kids in remote areas who walk to school. It will lack both keyboard and trackpad, it will take up about half the room of the XO 1.0, and it will require only 1 watt of power.

"We feel we are achieving parity in how Office treats the format, by making them all part of just one simple list of formats supported by Office," said Microsoft Office Product Manager Doug Mahugh, in an interview with BetaNews.

For the history of applications up until now, the specification of the format used to encode documents was defined largely and almost inescapably by the functionality of the programs which utilize them. A format represented what an application was designed to do, and that format changed when the application changed.