Can Yahoo! Messenger 9 Topple AIM?
Yahoo on Tuesday rolled out a beta version of Yahoo! Messenger 9.0, cleaning up the client's user interface and making it easier to call contacts and send text messages. But more interesting is news that Yahoo! Messenger saw its user base grow 19% over the past year, which pulls it closer to overtaking AOL in the US.
AOL, which owns both AIM and ICQ, has dominated instant messaging for a decade, but both Yahoo and Microsoft have chipped away at AOL's lead, taking advantage of the company's dial-up business collapse that left AIM largely stagnant. MSN -- now Windows Live Messenger -- counts the most users worldwide, but AIM still reigns supreme in the United States.
AT&T US Mobile TV Delay Renews Concern About Viability
A move by AT&T last week to delay the planned initial rollout of its US mobile TV service, based on the MediaFLO platform, until "early 2008" at the earliest, is bringing up old questions about not only whether American consumers are ready to embrace the technology, but whether the infrastructure is there to support it.
The news was first reported by RCR Wireless and later confirmed by Reuters, and comes as bad tidings for Qualcomm, the key stakeholder in mediaFLO. When all is said and done, that company could have spent close to a billion dollars since 2004 on the establishment of an infrastructure for streaming full-length, broadcast quality TV programming to cell phones. For all that investment to make sense, customers have to want it, and not having it this holiday season won't help them to conjure a want for it.
Microsoft Follows Google Into Geospatial Standards Group
A scant few months after the Google Earth's KML was deemed a best practice by the Open Geospatial Consortium, Microsoft has joined the OGC as a principal member.
The Open Geospatial Consortium consists of 345 companies, government agencies, and universities. Their aim is to build a consensus around the development of the OpenGIS Specification.
Best Buy Stakes in Social Video Site
US Retailer Best Buy said Tuesday that it would launch an online service where its customers could store and share home movies and videos on the Internet through a partnership with Mydeo.
Best Buy also takes a minority stake in the company, and it is making the move due to rising demand for such services. The service is branded with the retailer's name and offers various plans depending on the user's need.
Hackers Open Up Mac OS X Leopard for PC
Apple has a new set of hackers to contend with: a group of developers on the OSx86Scene forum have published instructions on how to install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on a standard PC. The move will no doubt bring Apple's legal team a knocking very soon, but for the time being, the instructions are still available on the organization's website. Not all features are available to those who install the OS, however it is apparently stable.
Apple is not only fighting hackers who wish to bring the company's OS to the PC, but also those who are trying to break into the iPhone and iPod Touch. An application called Jailbreak has been released, and Apple in updates have specifically tried to fight back through "bricking" hacked devices.
House Approves 2014 Moratorium on Internet Taxes
With a motion by Rep. Linda Sanchez (D - Calif.) to suspend the rules, the US House of Representatives agreed today to accept Senate language approved last week, extending the ban on both state and federal taxes on Internet use until November 2014.
"The seven-year time frame will allow Congress to revisit the moratorium and consider developments in the States or in technology," stated Rep. Sanchez on the House floor this morning. "It will also provide businesses sufficient time to plan, and ensure that consumers benefit from tax-free access to the Internet."
WSJ: Google Phone Within Two Weeks?
Google is apparently close to unveiling its phone platform within the next two weeks, but still has the considerable hurdle of convincing carriers to sign over some of the control of the phone itself.
While Google will provide many of the services which will come on the phone -- such as its search, Maps, YouTube, and Gmail services -- the platform on which those applications are built will be completely open, right down to the operating system itself.
Adobe's Vulnerability Fix May Have Triggered Trojan Outbreak
A mere day after Adobe made available a patch for its Reader and Acrobat software that plugs a vulnerability in how that software is leveraged to exploit Windows XP and Internet Explorer 7, technicians at Symantec and elsewhere noticed active exploits in the wild.
"So far we have seen a fair number of emails containing this new Trojan in the wild," wrote Symantec engineer Hon Lau last week. "It is likely that Trojan.Pidief.A has been spammed out in targeted attacks on specific business organizations."
Manhunt 2 Greets Halloween with a Less Violent Release
Rockstar's controversially violent game Manhunt 2 finally hits shelves on Halloween, with toned-down violence and some scenes removed.
Controversy surrounding Manhunt 2 has gone on for several months, with Rockstar Games having suspended its July release in attempt to ensure a rating that would allow the game to be sold by North American retailers.
Blu-ray Looks to Curry Favor with Insiders
Course Change for OpenDocument Developers Seen as Emerging Rift
A presentation made two weeks ago by two members of OASIS' OpenDocument technical committee, and founding members of the OpenDocument Foundation, made it clear that the foundation would be turning its attention away from developing the ODF format and translators for it. Instead, in a course change instigated as far back as last May, the Foundation is steering back toward a project launched in 1995 by the World Wide Web Consortium, in hopes of recapturing the momentum toward document interoperability for all existing word processor users.
"This conversion to XML must be non-disruptive," reads a memo circulated early this month among attendees of the Government Open Source Conference, which included Linux World reporter Brian Proffitt. The memo's author is Gary Edwards, co-founder of the OpenDocument Foundation and one of its earliest contributors, who now believes it has been steered away from its original goals by vendors in the interest of competing with Microsoft.
NBC Chief: Apple Destroying Video Biz
At the same event where he told Variety that his company only made $15 million off of video sales at iTunes, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker also apparently urged colleagues to follow his company's lead.
Zucker was attending a breakfast hosted by Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Communications on Sunday when he made the comments. He said now was a crucial time to take control of the situation before Apple "destroys" the video downloads like it did the music download business.
Leopard Sales Top 2 Million in First Weekend
Apple said Tuesday that it sold over two million copies of Mac OS X 10.5, known as Leopard, on Friday when the operating system went on sale and over the weekend. That tally makes Leopard the most successful Mac OS release - at least if looking only at the first weekend.
Available for $129 individually and $199 for a five-user license, Leopard introduces over 300 new features, according to Apple, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Most critics say it's faster and easier to use than Windows Vista thanks to additions like Time Machine for backups and a single retail version compared to Vista's four.
Senators Use Comcast Blocking to Revive Net Neutrality Debate
As first reported by the Associated Press, two key sponsors of legislation that would effectively codify the meaning of "net neutrality" asked the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee to hold public hearings into the motivations of Comcast and other broadband service providers in filtering certain categories of traffic.
"The phone and cable companies have previously stated that they would never use their market power to operate as content gatekeepers and have called efforts to put rules in place to protect consumers 'a solution in search of a problem,"' reads a citation from a letter to Chairman Daniel Inouye (D - Hawaii) co-authored by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D - N.D.) and Olympia Snowe (R - Maine).
NBCU: We Made Only $15 Million Off iTunes
No doubt in an effort to build up its own recently launched Hulu service, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker criticized Apple yet again over its unwillingness to work with the company.
At a Syracuse University benefit, Zucker claimed that NBCU had only made $15 million off of its video deal with iTunes, and said it was unfair that Apple had made millions off of iPod sales and was not sharing any of the revenues with content providers.
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