In an attempt to distance itself from a swarm of negative publicity surrounding security integrity problems plaguing its voting machines and servers, Diebold, Inc. announced this morning it is renaming its Election Systems unit to Premier Election Solutions, and restructuring it to give its new board of directors greater independence from the parent company.

While the news from Premier this morning sounded upbeat and hopeful, that message was indeed independent from that of its parent, which glumly announced it had failed to achieve its principal goal of selling the election systems division outright.

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Sprint reiterated on Thursday its plans to spend $2.5 billion through the end of next year on WiMax, claiming that it will spend an additional $2.5 billion on the technology through 2010.

The company says it has gotten several manufacturers to commit to putting 50 million WIMax devices in consumer's hands through the end of the decade. Sprint had already partnered with Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola on WiMax devices, but this appears to be more extensive.

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This afternoon Eastern time, a key official with IBM and Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz are scheduled to hold a joint briefing with press and analysts. Although they say the subject matter will be "a software agreement," the fact that IBM is being represented by Bill Zeitler - a senior vice president responsible for a critical company reorganization - gives us our best clue as to what the agreement is probably really about.

As first reported by IT Jungle last month, Zeitler led a reorganization in IBM's business systems units that redistributed its System p and System i series into new marketing units focused more on the customer, not the system. That restructuring was completed just a few days ago, as IT Jungle also reported.

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Microsoft has released to a select group of testers the first beta release of Office 2007 Service Pack 1. Dubbed a "Technical Preview," those in Microsoft's TAP program will have 30 days to provide feedback to the Redmond company.

Few details are known about the service pack, such as what new features or fixes it includes, and Microsoft is remaining mum on its release plans for both Office 2007 SP1 and Vista SP1. Typically, Office service packs are simply a collection of fixes and rarely bring major changes to Microsoft's flagship productivity suite.

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Skype suffered a major outage early Thursday morning in what is being characterized as a "software issue" related to users logging into the service. Engineers say it will take them 12 to 24 hours to fix the problem, and in the meantime have disabled all downloads of the Skype client.

The company, owned by eBay, has not specified what exactly caused the outage, but Skype has a strong history of reliability. It's possible there was some database corruption related to user logins, which could explain the lengthy time needed to repair the issue.

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One of the most critically acclaimed games to have premiered in 2006 is Company of Heroes, designed by Relic and published by powerhouse THQ. The game gives you a bird's eye view of realistic World War II ground combat, as you make command decisions that direct the mission of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne. Now, the first expansion pack for Company is undergoing limited beta tests, and now you have the option of leading companies in the British 2nd Army and the German Panzer Elite.

Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts uses Relic's outstanding battlefield engine, first in enabling you to substitute the 101st Airborne for the 2nd Army in a critical mission to retake Caen from Axis occupation. But second - in a surprising divergence that reveals the Relic engine was more capable than at first realized - you can lead the Panzer division that successfully repelled the 1st British Airborne division from taking that key bridge in Arnhem, Holland, depicted in the classic film A Bridge Too Far.

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One of the first government contracts for the nearly $1 billion Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program has been awarded - in a surprise move - to IBM. In conjunction with three of its business partners, the company will receive $119.96 million between now and September 2009 to help educate consumers about the upcoming availability of two $40 coupons per household, good toward the purchase of DTV converter boxes for existing analog VHF/UHF television sets.

IBM said it will also aid in distributing coupons to retail stores for redistribution to customers, as well as in the processing of financial transactions for subsidized equipment. The award was announced earlier today by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and was later confirmed by IBM.

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A company that is aiming to bring free broadband to the entire US is being blocked by the Federal Communications Commission, its CEO claimed Wednesday.

M2Z Networks now plans to take the FCC to court over the rejection, apparently claiming the agency has not given the idea a fair study to determine its viability. M2Z's plans call for vacant radio spectrum to be used to provide high-speed Internet service to 95 percent of Americans within 10 years.

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In the latest stage of a collaboration that's looking more and more like it was planned to work out this way months ago, Microsoft announced today the extent of the intellectual property it's licensing to newly acquired Linux client Xandros. In addition to some systems management protocols, it's getting access to ActiveSync, a crown jewel of Microsoft IP that may come just in time to resuscitate Xandros' newest division.

At the time Xandros was signed on last June, it was only a principal producer of systems management tools for the Linux platform. But since then, it acquired e-mail server provider Scalix. Now, the combined entity will be receiving access to IP that could enable Scalix servers to communicate fully with mobile clients.

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Microsoft said Wednesday that it had licensed its audio watermarking technology to Activated Content in an effort to spur the efforts behind embedding trackable "watermarks" in audio files.

The process of watermarking holds many benefits, as it can potentially be used in the fight against piracy. For example, DRM-less files could carry an identifiable code in them. When these files appear on peer-to-peer networks, labels would be able to identify where they are coming from.

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File sharing company LimeWire has announced plans to open a legitimate music store, which it will eventually integrate into its popular -- and controversial -- P2P software. The company is facing increasing pressure to clean up its business after being sued by the record industry.

While the court case is ongoing and the RIAA is demanding $150,000 for every song illegally shared via LimeWire, the company has kept its business moving forward. The LimeWire store won't have an extensive library to begin with, as it is initially only licensing music from IRIS Distribution and Nettwerk Productions. But the songs will be available as 256kbps MP3s with no copy protection. Both a la carte downloads and subscription offerings will be available to customers, but pricing has not yet been announced.

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Although it appears to be outpacing Blu-ray in turns of actual player sales, HD DVD disc sales are struggling to keep up, with Blu-ray outselling its rival by a 2-to-1 margin in the first half of 2007, according to Home Media Research.

Total sales of discs in Sony's Blu-ray format totaled 1.6 million from January 1 through July 1, while HD DVD sales amounted to only 795,000. Movie rental company Blockbuster says Blu-ray rentals are much higher than HD DVD rentals, leading the company to choose Sony's format for the majority of its stores.

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The former head of Mediaservices has been cleared of any wrongdoing surrounding AllofMP3 after a Russian court threw out charges against him.

EMI, Universal, and Warner Music Group had sued former Mediaservices chief executive Denis Kvasov for $587,000 USD. However, a Russian District Court judge said that he could not be sued under current laws because of a change in the rules.

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Reports in The Inquirer and a separate British technology blog citing OEM sources as saying they've been alerted to expect delays in shipments of its new quad-core Barcelona CPUs in all but the 1.9 GHz "HE" lower-power frequencies, were soundly denied this morning to BetaNews by an AMD spokesperson.

"As per our previous guidance," the spokesperson commented, "production on the 2.0 GHz parts has started, and we are on track to ship them for revenue this month." The official retail release date for Barcelona processors remains September 10, when customers are advised to expect standard edition processors at 2.0 GHz and low-power editions at 1.9 GHz. This corresponds with initial release dates announced in June and confirmed in early July.

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Microsoft this week began rolling out new features to users of its Windows Live Hotmail service, most notably adding increased mail storage of 5GB for free accounts and 10GB for paid subscribers. The company has also add "vacation replies" and the ability to turn off the Today screen.

The updated Hotmail will reach users gradually over the coming weeks, Microsoft says. Other new features coming include better performance, increased mail retention, contacts de-duplication, mail forwarding for combining accounts, meeting requests, and better spam filtering.

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