Microsoft's MSN division said over the weekend that its online simulcast of Live Earth had broken all previous records for online events with over 10 million streams served, surpassing the previous record held by AOL's Live 8 coverage in 2005.

That number is expected to increase as viewers come back and watch highlights of the concerts over the next several weeks on MSN's Live Earth Web site. Videos of the performances from about 100 artists will be included along with interviews, photos, and community features on the site, remaining available for "several weeks," MSN said.

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Despite comments to the contrary from the company president just a week ago, Sony on Monday cut the price of the 60GB PlayStation 3 by $100, while also introducing the 80GB version to North American consumers.

The announcement comes days before the annual E3 gaming event in Los Angeles, where competitor Microsoft may announce its own price cuts in response to Sony's moves. Nintendo, meanwhile, is widely expected to leave its own pricing untouched.

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Symantec is looking for beta testers for two of its newest products, Norton Internet Security 2008 and Norton AntiVirus 2008. Both are slated to ship later this year, but the company has opened up the beta process to iron out the bugs before its final release. One of the major new features included in both applications is SONAR, which stands for Symantec Online Network for Advanced Response.

SONAR adds behavior-based protection to Symantec's applications in order to detect emerging spyware and viruses even before they are included in traditional signature-based definition files. The new versions of the company's software should also provide performance enhancements and make installation over a home network easier. Those interested in trying out the products can visit the Symantec Beta Web site.

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AMD said Friday that it would invest $7.5 million in Transmeta in order to support its work in developing efficiency technology for microprocessors. In turn for cash infusion, AMD would receive preferred stock in the company. The move continues Transmeta's transition away from producing chips to a licenser of chip technology that it develops.

The deal also has a indirect connection to AMD's chief rival Intel. The larger chipmaker and Transmeta are currently involved in a patent dispute over energy efficiency technology. AMD is currently fighting a antitrust lawsuit against Intel as well. AMD may be hoping that aligning itself with Transmeta could end up helping it to compete better with its rival, although the eventual decision in the patent case may impact those plans.

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PERSPECTIVE Regardless of whether or not you bought into the flash and hype that accompanied the iPhone's launch, Apple's newest device is important not for what features it brings, but for what it makes obsolete. The death knell has been rung for the mobile Web.

Since the late 1990s when cell phones began doing more than just making calls and sending text messages, the concept of easily browsing the Web while on the go has loomed large. But despite the efforts of numerous companies and support from the W3C Web standards body, the effort has largely failed.

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A new auction site is making a business out of selling security exploits, saying the current methods of rewarding researchers for their work is broken.

Called WSLabi, the company behind it hopes that it will end the practice of researchers being forced to give away their work for free or sell it to cyber-criminals. They also hope that it will increase the number of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities.

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Forget about a price cut for the PlayStation 3 in the near future. Sony's president Ryoji Chubachi said the company currently has no plans to reduce the price of the console in an interview with Reuters.

Analysts had long been speculating that the company would cut the price of the PS3 by at least $100 to become more competitive here in the US. At a price tag of $599, it is $200 more expensive that the premium Xbox 360, and $120 more expensive than the Xbox 360 Elite.

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A video download site that had been exposed as a front for the MPAA to catch those who download copyrighted content, as well as those who may have already downloaded it, has been taken offline.

The site, called "MiiVi," contained whole downloads of movies as well as links to a program that would apparently speed downloads from the site. However, there's a catch: the site is owned by a anti-piracy company and the software is actually a Trojan horse of sorts.

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Microsoft shot back at the open source community Thursday, saying it would not provide support for software licensed under the GPLv3. The third version of the GPL -- a license used for open source software -- was officially launched a week ago by the Free Software Foundation.

"Microsoft has decided that the Novell support certificates that we distribute to customers will not entitle the recipient to receive from Novell, or any other party, any subscription for support and updates relating to any code licensed under GPLv3," the company said in a statement.

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Microsoft on Thursday pushed its biggest update to Virtual Earth in the history of the mapping service, adding 26 terabytes of 3-D and birds-eye imagery. A large amount of the data is for a new feature the company calls "hill shaded," which displays the topography of a location.

Microsoft has additionally added new cities to its list of aerial imagery, with most featuring textured 3-D buildings and cityscapes. Canadian cities Hamilton, Quebec, Toronto have been added (Montreal will arrive next month), along with Toulouse France, Eastbourne UK in Europe. In the United States, a slew of cities have received updates, including New Orleans, Brooklyn and Nashville.

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Microsoft admitted that failure rates for Xbox 360 consoles were an issue, saying it would extend the warranty period for any consumer that had experienced a general hardware failure.

Known by users as the "three red lights of death," as many as 3 out of every 10 consoles were experiencing some type of problem, according to sources. In turn, Microsoft said it would take full responsibility for the issues.

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Sprint is attempting to rid itself of customers who frequent its customer service lines by informing them that it would cancel their service effective July 30.

In letters that were apparently sent out on June 29, the company indicated to these users that "the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs."

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Microsoft is taking the guesswork out of Patch Tuesday by detailing the type and severity of patches in its new Advance Notification bulletins. The first of these is being used for July's Patch Tuesday. From the bulletin, it appears that Microsoft will issue six patches, three of which are be critical, two moderate, and one important. Patches will repair issues in Office, Windows, and the .NET Framework, including a specfic patch for Windows Vista.

Of the critical updates, remote code excution flaws in Excel, Windows, and the .NET Framework will be fixed. Both important patches will also fix remote code execution vulnerabilities in Publisher and Windows XP Professional. The final patch, rated moderate, will fix an information disclosure vulnerability within Windows Vista.

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Separate from Microsoft's efforts to create a translator that supports Office 2007's Open XML formats and OpenDocument, Sun has released the final 1.0 version of its own ODF plug-in for Office. However, Office 2007 is not yet supported due to what Sun calls a bug in Microsoft's newest suite.

Sun ODF Plugin 1.0 works with Office 2003, Office XP and even Office 2000. It fully supports Word, Excel and PowerPoint files - something the Microsoft-backed plug-in does not yet do. Office 2007 is not supported due to an issue in Word 2007 in which the application ignores installed filters and only opens documents with its own. And, of course, Word does not natively support ODF.

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With AT&T reportedly having activated over 600,000 iPhones as of Monday, it's no surprise that European carriers are eager to jump on Apple's bandwagon. Numerous reports have pointed to wireless carrier O2 being chosen as Apple's exclusive iPhone partner in the United Kingdom, but little concrete evidence has surfaced.

The BBC seemed to back the speculation this morning, saying the iPhone should arrive in the UK before Christmas. However, the story, which has been since referenced worldwide, pointed to unspecified "press reports" as its source.

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