With music sales on its iTunes Store continuing to grow and sales of physical CDs continuing to fall, Apple has become the second largest music retailer in the United States, only trailing retail giant Wal-Mart.

The number-two position was bestowed on Apple by research firm NPD Group, which counted the music sold during 2007. Because iTunes sells music as individual tracks while stores like Wal-Mart do not, the firm counted every 12 tracks as a single CD sold.

Continue reading →

Domain registrar Network Solutions was sued over the practice of "front-running" by a Los Angeles law firm representing domain name trader Chris McElory.

ICANN had already been investigating Network Solutions due to its actions, where it was putting holds on domain names after a user searched for them but did not immediately register.

Continue reading →

Sun Microsystems today confirmed it has completed its acquisition of MySQL, and announced all MySQL products are now part of the Sun worldwide sales and support network.

In addition, MySQL CEO Marten Mickos officially joined Sun as the new senior vice president of the company's database group.

Continue reading →

Security company Core Security Technologies discovered a major flaw in several VMware virtualization products that could unintentionally leave companies exposed to hackers.

The exploit allows malicious users on the Guest operating system to eventually get full control of the Host system, including enabling them to "create or modify executable files." This is possible by bypassing security controls in VMware's shared folder feature, which enables users to quickly copy documents between host and guest systems.

Continue reading →

Topping the MacBook Air in features but not price, Lenovo has announced its answer to the ultra-portable laptop, the ThinkPad X300.

At 0.75-inches thick, and 2.9 pounds in weight, Lenovo's Thinkpad X300 shaves a tremendous amount of girth from the company's traditionally boxy laptops. Precisely what class this model belongs to is somewhat mysterious because of this.

Continue reading →

Explaining that the site was only an "experiment," DivX said Monday that it had shut off uploads to its Stage6 video site, and would be closing the site completely on February 28.

The official reason states that DivX simply ran out of money to keep the site going, and it was requiring an "enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to provide."

Continue reading →

After announcing it is being discontinued, Microsoft is offering the HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 for under $50 - an amazing deal or a waste of cash depending on where you stand.

While HD DVD will no longer continue as a format after Toshiba's withdrawal, and no new movies will be released, there are over 500 titles already available at discount prices. That could make the $50 investment very worthwhile, especially with Blu-ray players priced at least 6 times higher.

Continue reading →

A new group comprised of six companies including Google publicly revealed plans to build an undersea fiber-optic cable that will link Japan to the west coast of the United States.

The ultimate aim of the cable is to be able to allow companies to send large amounts of data across the world at a lower price. Consortium companies will utilize a five fiber pair cable system, which can be upgraded to eight fiber pairs later down the road.

Continue reading →

Sony pressed ahead with its Blu-ray plans Tuesday, announcing two new players coming this year, but still at prices above what most consumers are willing to pay.

The BDP-S350 will ship this summer for $400 USD, and the BDP-S550 in the fall before the holiday season for $500 USD. The S350 will ship with Blu-ray Profile 1.1, also known as BonusView, but will include an Ethernet port so it can be upgraded to Profile 2.0 -- or BD-Live -- when the new firmware is ready.

Continue reading →

Apple on Tuesday updated its entire laptop line with faster processors, more storage and memory, along with adding its Multi-Touch trackpad to the MacBook Pro.

All MacBook models now include the latest Intel Penyrn processors. The MacBook Pro is available in standard 2.4GHz and 2.5GHz options with a 2.6GHz upgrade, while the MacBook ships with 2.1GHz and 2.4GHz options.

Continue reading →

"Hacktivist" group Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) began offering a software tool that scans for security flaws in Web sites by exploiting Google's omnipresence.

Goolag Scanner was developed by John Long, who is a published author and early pioneer in the Google Hacking tehnique. He is also a self-proclaimed "Christian Hacker" that often does his work for charity.

Continue reading →

To help prevent the problem of advertising-spawned "Web site abandonment" among consumers, Burst Media is using a new video ad channel to roll out a video ad technology dubbed "InBanner."

At the same time, Burst has also been working with partner Quattro on enabling some Web sites for mobile advertising, said Chuck Moran, Burst's director of marketing, in an interview with BetaNews.

Continue reading →

On display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from February 24 to May 12 is a nanotechnology-equipped concept mobile device.

The Morph is the result of an ongoing partnership between Nokia and the University of Cambridge, and illustrates their ideas of how future devices will look and function. It's a multipurpose unit with context-dependent shape; so whatever its intended use may be at the time, it can be structurally modified to fit the user's needs.

Continue reading →

As the world's principal standards body re-examines Microsoft's key applications standards format, one of ODF's chief proponents suggests the world will be better off if OOXML were to co-exist with ODF.

It may yet be approved as an international standard, but first, Microsoft's Office Open XML data format will need to withstand its most critical test to date: Beginning today in Geneva, and continuing on until Friday, 120 representatives of the world's national standards bodies will convene as ISO Subcommittee 34 to debate an estimated 1,100 separate issues, filtered from thousands of comments ranging from concerns to reservations, regarding whether Microsoft has done enough to bring OOXML up to their expectations.

Continue reading →

Continuing the trend among LCD TV makers to pool their resources, Sony said it will buy panels from competitor Sharp in order to keep up with demand.

Neither company is commenting on the report, which first surfaced in the Japanese media on Friday. However, Sharp is already working with another LCD TV manufacturer, using Toshiba's computer chips in its own sets.

Continue reading →