Latest Technology News

AT&T is now offering Palm's budget-priced Centro, but is a small price tag enough to break through in what is becoming the preferred carrier for smartphone users?

Palm has been struggling lately, recently settling a class action lawsuit filed by Treo owners faced with repeatedly failing hardware, closing down its retail stores, and seeing an overall unfavorable 2007.

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Somehow, Intel has skillfully avoided use of the metaphor "two-by-four" to represent its latest ultra-high-end CPU platform rollout this morning at GDC in San Francisco. But AMD might be feeling like it's been hit by one.

It is probably analogous to the Ford GT compared to the Ford Mustang, and thus serves a purpose more as a platform designed for more consumers to envy than for them to actually buy. But Intel's new enthusiast platform, previously code-named "Skulltrail," looks like it will produce plenty of envy, along with the requisite smoke and energy burning that also come from top-tier automobiles.

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Mozilla launched Tuesday a company that is completely focused on its alternative e-mail client, while also announcing features planned for the next version of it.

Operating as a subsidiary, Mozilla Messaging will focus on development of Mozilla's e-mail strategies, chiefly Thunderbird. Like its predecessor, the client will still remain open source.

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With the news early Tuesday that Toshiba is ending the next generation optical disc war by pulling the plug on HD DVD, the manufacturer said it has no plans to support or manufacture Blu-ray players. Likewise, Microsoft said it has no plans to announce.

The companies, who were the sole hardware vendors for HD DVD, are clearly going to be re-evaluating their position on the matter, but at this time they are not ready to shake hands with Sony. Microsoft on Monday said Toshiba's decision will have little impact on the Xbox 360, because games are what drive console sales. In January, Microsoft told BetaNews that it could certainly build an external Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360 if the market conditions made sense.

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Britons were already able to enjoy a limited selection of American television content through iTunes, BBC is now the first British content provider.

The deal was announced Tuesday, and programs will be available for 1.89 pounds per episode. Programs to be offered include Life on Mars, Little Britain, and Spooks.

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Whether Microsoft intends to take its case to Yahoo shareholders, and maybe raise its offer in so doing, remains well within the company's rights. Nonetheless, Bill Gates said, at the very least, that a price hike wasn't necessary.

A multitude of press sources presented conflicting reports on Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' comments following a speech at Stanford University yesterday. What Gates apparently said was that Microsoft has no plans to raise its $31 per share cash/stock bid for Yahoo, and that's the part that Reuters, the Associated Press, and The New York Times agreed upon.

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Responding to market changes, Apple on Tuesday dropped the price of its entry-level iPod by $30.

At $49, the Shuffle is the cheapest iPod yet. The price also gives it more of a competitive advantage against its rivals, who are now selling their 1GB basic models at or around that price.

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At just after 3:00 am Eastern Time, Toshiba officially pulled the plug on its efforts to promote and manufacture HD DVD home theater consoles and disc drives, announcing its intention to cease all manufacturing and promotional operations by the end of March.

However, the company left open one very small door: the possibility that HD DVD may have a future in notebook PC drives.

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No matter what Toshiba decides to do about HD DVD, Microsoft says the decision will have little bearing on the Xbox 360 game console, for which the Redmond company sells and HD DVD add-on.

Microsoft had aligned behind HD DVD from the beginning. The company helped create the HDi interactivity platform used by the format, and offered an external player hooked to its flagship game console. Sony, in contrast, built a Blu-ray player into the PlayStation 3 and used the format for its game discs.

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Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 is slated for widespread availability on March 1, after a gala launch on February 27. But when will it enter widespread usage? A major report released today seems to present an overly rosy picture.

With Windows Server 2008 to be widely available to everyone in March, how many businesses and other organizations are really going to migrate to the new OS, and when? Technology retailer CDW Corp. today released survey results claiming that 68% of all organizations are going to adopt the new Windows Server, with 18% already in the planning stages.

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The Motion Picture Association (MPA) -- the international representative of the movie industry -- has filed a civil suit against Shenzhen Xunlei Networking Technology, which operates a a peer-to-peer file sharing service based in China called Xunlei that's part-owned by Google.

The MPA, comprised of six different movie studios based in the United States, accused Xunlei of copyright infringement, and is seeking $975,000 in damage reimbursement and legal fees. Further, the MPA wants an Xunlei to pledge to stop offering a method for alleged copyright infringement in the future.

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In light of the recent string of outages of RIM's e-mail system for BlackBerry users, Vodafone UK has announced that it will be using a third party's solution to prevent future BlackBerry outages, and package it as a premium service.

Vodafone UK has reached a deal with Neverfail -- a company which provides data protection and recovery solutions with such clients as Microsoft and VMware -- to deliver "guaranteed coverage" for BlackBerry users.

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Fox and Apple have joined to provide access to content from the hit television show's current season. Starting with the top 24 semifinalists this week, music performances will be on sale for 99 cents per song, and beginning March 11, videos of the performances will be available for $1.99.

Fans of a particular contestant will be able to pre-order performances starting Monday, and the content will be downloadable automatically the day after the show airs. In addition, Fox is giving iTunes exclusive access to direct links of streaming media from the American Idol official website. If users want to download the performances for local use, a link will be provided.

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According to a decision set forth in 2002, mobile telecommunications companies are allowed to shut down their 1G Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) starting today.

AMPS was introduced in 1983, and operated in the 800 MHz Cellular FM band. With the explosive growth of cellular traffic, it was expanded to the upper 800s frequency range in 1989. It was at this time that analog cellular communication began to impinge upon analog television, as this frequency was occupied by UHF TV channels 77-83 (849-869 MHz.)

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Despite reports to the contrary spreading like wildfire around blogs and mainstream news sources Monday, Toshiba said it has not made any decision to halt production of HD DVD players, while acknowledging it is evaluating its strategy moving forward.

The hubbub over HD DVD's demise began on Friday, when a brief article published in Hollywood Reporter cited an anonymous source claiming that Toshiba was making plans to exit the HD DVD business, spelling an end to the format that has been locked in a bitter war with Sony's Blu-ray format. Reuters spread the story around the world due to its syndication agreement with the Hollywood paper.

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