SAP Admits its Division Downloaded Unauthorized Oracle Materials

Whether it amounts to "corporate espionage" or not (most likely not), the case of Oracle v. SAP may have significant ramifications on how the world's leading information providers guard their information systems. In his company's defense this morning, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann admitted to reporters that, while an SAP division did download some material from Oracle inappropriately, the material was for the division's customers and not for SAP customers or SAP.

The problem is one of boundaries: When a division of one company is licensed to provide customer support for the division of another company, how should those companies keep their distance from one another? TomorrowNow is a leased customer support firm for PeopleSoft, J. D. Edwards, and Siebel business software. It's owned by SAP, and PeopleSoft is owned by Oracle. One of TomorrowNow's services is downloading updates for the software it supports, on behalf of the customers of that software's manufacturers.

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LG Pens Deal to Bring YouTube to Phones

The iPhone's exclusive hold on YouTube on the mobile phone will be short-lived. LG said Tuesday that it had come to an agreement with the social video site to bring videos to its line of phones later in the year. Unlike the Apple arrangement, LG plans to offer its customers an option that allows a user to shoot video on the handset and then upload it to the site.

YouTube had already launched a version of its site formatted for use on mobile devices. However, the agreements such as the ones with Apple and LG tie the site more closely with the phone. LG had previously worked with Google to put applications such as search, maps and Gmail on the company's phones in the past.

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AT&T's Data Network Fails

AT&T data customers across the country were reporting issues in accessing the EDGE network on Monday, although the company was able to restore service by 7pm Eastern. Technicians continue to work on the problem. The exact reason and origin of the outage was not known, but the carrier was quick to point out it was not due to the iPhone. While voice and text messaging remained unaffected, both EDGE and 3G services were down for several hours.

Blackberry users were unaffected as their services pass over a separate network, however subscribers with iPhones and other data-enabled devices reported problems. Within minutes of the outage, threads appeared across the Internet on various Mac enthusiast sites reporting issues. According to those threads, service was out in Dallas, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Hawaii, and Cincinnati among other cities.

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Higher Frequency AMD Barcelona CPUs Slated for Q4

In response to a BetaNews inquiry over whether last Friday's announcement of new Barcelona server-class processors at frequencies up to 2.0 GHz for August release was as fast as we would see for 2007, an AMD spokesperson told us faster models would be made available later in the year.

"AMD expects that its native quad-core processors will scale to higher frequencies in Q407 in both standard and SE (Special Edition) versions," the spokesperson told BetaNews, reiterating from a statement made earlier. "Designed to operate within the same thermal envelopes as current generation AMD Opteron processors, AMD estimates that the new processors can provide a performance increase up to 70% on certain database applications and up to 40% on certain floating point applications, with subsequent higher frequency processors expected to significantly add to this performance advantage."

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Parallels Says Wine Was Given Modified LGPL Code

After public complaints amassed over what seemed to be reluctance on the part of SWsoft's Parallels division to turn over to open source developers modifications it made to their code, Parallels told BetaNews this afternoon it has done just that.

The caretakers of the Wine library for running Windows applications on Mac OS X now have copies of modified forms of their source code, as the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) mandated that modifiers make available, according to Parallels.

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Google Criticized Over 'Sicko' Dustup

Google is being criticized for attempting to monetize health care industry backlash to the Michael Moore movie Sicko, after a post by a Google employee invited the industry to use its ad network to spread its own message.

Google Health account planner Lauren Turner initially made the suggestion that health care providers could use the company's advertising network to fight back against Moore's move and the likely fallout that would result.

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AOL Updates Macintosh Applications

AOL pushed updates to several of its products for the Macintosh platform on Monday, including added functionality that would help its applications work more smoothly with native Mac OS X programs. The enhancements come as part of a recommitment to the Mac platform, including a new AOL Instant Messenger for the Mac platform coming in the next several months.

An update to the AOL Radio client allows users to listen to over 200 channels including XM stations, as well as providing an iChat song title indicator, and integrated screensaver that uses the cover art of currently playing songs. AOL Pictures has received an iPhoto plug-in that enables importing of photos into AOL Pictures, and an improved Service Assistant that configures various native applications to work with AOL services.

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Massachusetts Declares Office Open XML 'Suitable' Format

In what could be Microsoft's most symbolic victory to date in the battle to legitimize the principal formats used by its Office applications, the State of Massachusetts officially declared Office Open XML -- the new standard format set in Office 2007 -- "another standardized XML-based file format specification suitable for office applications."

The declaration, which came as part of a review draft of version 4.0 of the state IT division's Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM), states that the standard document format it refers to by its standards agency designation ECMA-376 is one adequate candidate for use as an open, XML-based format, as well as OpenDocument Format.

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Microsoft Responds to 'Ultimate Extras' Complaints

With a rather lackluster list of the so-called "Ultimate Extras," Microsoft took the step of assuring its user base that it still remained committed to the idea on Monday.

Since Vista's launch in January 2007, only four extras have been released, including Windows Hold'Em, 16 language packs for the Windows multi-language UI, Secure Online Key Backuip, and Windows BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool - not exactly exciting additions to Vista.

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Universal Not Renewing Annual iTunes Contract

Major press sources including The New York Times this morning are citing anonymous executives reportedly with direct involvement in negotiations, as saying Universal Music Group has opted not to renew its annual contract with Apple's iTunes.

The company will instead opt for a month-by-month arrangement, similar to what it has with smaller MP3 distributors, which could give the publisher greater freedom and perhaps more leverage in setting terms.

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Microsoft Looks to Grow HD DVD Title Catalog

Microsoft is beginning to throw its weight around in the HD DVD/Blu-ray battle, announcing Monday it had teamed with Amazon.com to bring independent films to the format.

The two companies provide the filmmakers of up to 1,000 titles free authoring and setup services to allow their movies to be distributed in HD DVD. The service will be spearheaded by CustomFlix, an Amazon company.

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Linspire Joins Microsoft Converter Efforts

Repeating an announcement it made last month when following Novell and Xandros in signing a patent agreement with Microsoft, Linux vendor Linspire said Monday it was working with the Redmond company in building translators for converting documents between Open XML and ODF.

Linspire and Freespire -- a free version of the Linux distribution that does not include certain functionality and technical support -- will now include bi-directional translators moving forward. This means OpenOffice.org users will be able to open and save in Microsoft's Open XML formats, while Office 2007 users can do the same with OpenDocument.

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New Palm OS Delayed Until 2008

Originally slated to debut before the end of 2007, the completely revamped version of Palm OS, which is found in Palm's Treo smartphones and PDAs, has been delayed until sometime next year. The company has reportedly been running into development slowdowns building the new Linux-based platform.

Palm will continue to make devices running both Windows Mobile and the current "Garnet" version of Palm OS. The company last year introduced the Palm 680 with minor improvements to the aging operating system, which were intended to make it more friendly to consumers. By contrast, Palm pitches Treos running Windows Mobile largely to businesses, and new devices running both are due before the end of the year.

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AOL Redesigns Video Portal

AOL on Monday issued an update to its AOL Video service that it says will make it easier for users to find, watch, and share web videos.

The company's video site is one of the fastest growing on the Internet. Its unique visitors have tripled over the past nine months, while the number of page views has grown by 12 times, AOL said.

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Wii Widens Lead Over PS3 in Japan

Sony's PlayStation 3 continues to fall further behind in Japan, data from Japanese gaming magazine publisher Enterbrain indicates. In June, the Nintendo Wii outsold the console by a six-to-one margin, a clear indication that Sony is having serious difficulty in convincing consumers that the PS3 is worth its high price tag.

This follows news in April that the PS3 was being outsold by a four-to-one margin, and a five-to-one margin in May. Even Microsoft's Xbox 360, for the most part a failure in the Japanese market, is being outsold by only a 2 to 1 margin against the PS3. Nintendo's success with the Wii, along with the strength of the DS platform, have propelled the company past Sony in market capitalization value and have made it one the country's top ten companies.

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