In the burgeoning field of social networking, the prominence of the major players' brands is extremely important. But what signal does it send when a sister company of Fox pairs with NBC for its political news coverage instead?

In another curious signal of how warm the mood has been of late between NBC Universal and News Corp. -- normally considered direct competitors in the television space, though they're partners in the online video service Hulu -- the MySpace unit of News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media division has decided to feature political content from NBC News.

Now delayed by almost a full year, Sony has warned that its Home MMO virtual world for the PlayStation 3 is still not finished.

The service was announced in July of last year, and was supposed to release in the fall. However, that never happened and Sony said at the Tokyo Game Show that a release was targeted for the spring.

A simple demonstration of adding access to the OpenSocial API through iGoogle gadgets is the hot topic of discussion among both Web developers and social network aficionados today, as Google looks more poised to take on the social net leaders.

A new tool for skilled and amateur developers to build social networking gadgets using version 0.7 of the OpenSocial API, launched by Google last October, looks very conspicuously like a way to populate the service's iGoogle personalized home pages with features that could put it in competition with social networking sites like MySpace.

Under indictment for tax evasion, Samsung CEO Lee Kun-hee said he is stepping down from his position, claiming full responsibility for the affair. Lee Hak-soo, Vice Chair also departed, as well as heir apparent Lee Jae-yong.

An investigation into the South Korean electronics giant's business practices began early this year with a January raid of Samsung offices. A former lawyer for the company tipped off the government to suspicious practices, including allegations of a slush fund for bribes related to protecting the transfer of power between Lee and his son.

Personal information on the state's citizens cannot be released without a court order, the state Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

New Jersey's constitution provides greater protection on unreasonable searches and seizures than the US Constitution does. Anyone looking for the data, including law enforcement, needs to obtain a subpoena.

A $500 million investment by Intel, announced in Taiwan today, is geared mainly to gaining greater interoperability between other equipment and Intel's own mobile WiMAX chips, which are slated to ship later this year to OEMs for use in Centrino PC notebooks, said a US-based Intel spokesperson.

In a new memo of understanding (MOU) with the Taiwanese government, Intel has promised to invest half a billion dollars from 2008 to 2013 in "across-the-board procurement and investment in Taiwan, including WiMAX," according to a written statement that crossed the wires today, but only in the Chinese language. Intel provided BetaNews with a copy of the statement translated into English.

A letter from US House Republicans to the Speaker and Majority Leader of the House of Representatives urges yet another serious look at the current H-1B visa situation that plagues tech companies each year, which they describe as a fiasco.

The letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D - Calif.) and Leader Steny Hoyer (D - Md.) was scribed by Jeb Hensarling (R - Texas) and signed by 30 members of his House Republican Study Committee, a leading conservative caucus. It requests new legislation "within the next few months of 2008" aimed at increasing the number of high-skilled, legal immigrants into the United States to fill high-tech job roles.

Linux expert Linus Torvalds announced in his blog on Wednesday that Linux kernel version 2.6.25 has been publicly released, with changes to WiFi support, file system management, and virtualization.

"It's been long promised, but there it is now," Torvalds wrote in the official Linux kernel release.

Corel Corp. CEO David Dobson is leaving his job to take a new position with an unidentified corporation in the US. He leaves behind a company that continues to struggle to define its identity in a metamorphosing software market.

Dobson, who came to Ottawa-based Corel after 19 years as an IBM executive, has resigned effective sometime in June. In a statement released by Corel today, Dobson did not say whether a current bid by San Francisco-based Vector Capital, the current owner of 60% of Corel's stock, to buy out other shareholders and take the company private again played into his decision to leave.

The telecommunications company said Monday it would look to Cisco's expertise in communications to create a high-end solution for the enterprise.

Cisco already has had a videoconferencing solution available for about two years called TelePresence, which features large high definition screens and is easy to use. However, the company lacks a sales force.

Microsoft's manager for security response communication told BetaNews this afternoon that a pledge made by a company representative at a security conference was not, as some sources reported from the scene, a change in policy.

"Microsoft did not announce anything new at ToorCon Seattle regarding its position on responsible disclosure, but we did mention our industry leading online services acknowledgement, which went public in July of 2007," stated Microsoft's Bill Sisk to BetaNews this afternoon. "Because we will not pursue legal action against researchers who report vulnerabilities to us responsibly, we hope to encourage those who want to help us protect customers to feel free to do so without fear of repercussions."

Some cable providers, most notably Comcast, are receiving even more flak over the quality of their high-def programming. The problem has been getting HD signals to fit in the given bandwidth, and now it may be taking a toll on quality.

While it may not be noticeable to the average television viewer's eye, some home theater enthusiasts are saying that Comcast's picture quality is not up to par. Now, recent tests by enthusiasts are backing up those observations with hard evidence.

In a post to Microsoft's TechNet Forum minutes ago, a Microsoft official announced that Service Pack 3 of Windows XP has released to its manufacturing channels, in order to reach OEM and enterprise customers by the late-April deadline.

Microsoft's XP SP3 release manager Chris Keroack wrote that Web availability of the final service pack for Windows XP will begin on April 29, through the Microsoft Download Center. Confirming many users' suspicions, the company will wait until "early summer," Keroack stated, before enabling SP3 to be downloaded through Automatic Updates, perhaps in light of the company's recent debacle with Windows Vista SP1.

Microsoft and Novell announced extensive plans to convert "unsupported Linux users" in China to combined implementations of Windows/SuSE Linux, just as Red Hat admitted to delaying its release of an international Linux desktop.

Today's announcement with Novell represents the extension of a highly controversial interoperability pact first rolled out in late 2007 in the US, this time with "a particular emphasis on the Chinese market." According to the headline of the oddly worded statement, the intent of the extended agreement is to move "unsupported" Linux users to "supported" use of Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise server software.

Paramount Pictures, MGM, and Lionsgate have formed a joint venture that will plan to distribute a premium television channel as well as a video-on-demand service.

The group project could fundamentally change the current status of premium cable television, where a third-party would sign deals to distribute content through its network rather than the studios directly.