eBay's plans to create an online television ad sales market seems to be faltering as the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau said Thursday that it would no longer participate in the auction site's trial.

"We appreciated the opportunity to test the system - throughout our review it became apparent that the Media Exchange was too narrow an application, had clear connectivity issues related to cable's emerging end-to-end e-business platforms and lacked the provisions necessary for capturing critical strategic and idea-driven intelligence during a buy," CAB president and CEO Sean Cunningham said.

Continue reading →

Yahoo's Australian arm launched a beta of a new search engine named "Alpha," which aims to bring together results from several different search engines. While many multi-source search sites combine the results together, Alpha would compartmentalize results into widget-like boxes. In the default set up, the main widget is Yahoo! Search, but the layout can be changed to the user's liking.

Currently in addition to Yahoo search results, widgets containing results from Flickr, YouTube, Yahoo! News, Wikipedia, and Yahoo Search Marketing are also included. A user can also add their own sources, as long as they know the base URL for search results.

Continue reading →

Joining a growing trend of tech industry executives blogging publicly, new McAfee CEO David DeWalt published his first entry on the company's Security Insights Blog this week. DeWalt joined McAfee at the beginning of April, and says his blogging represents a changing culture at the company.

"McAfee has been through some difficult times recently, and I know it’s been hard on the people here who don’t deserve what they’ve been through. But things are going to be different now," DeWalt wrote. "I’m personally committed to providing the honest and transparent leadership that our customers, employees, shareholders and partners deserve." DeWalt even published his e-mail address for customers to contact him.

Continue reading →

6:45 pm CT April 6, 2007 - Late Friday, VoIP service provider Vonage announced with some relief that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued a temporary stay of a judge’s order imposed earlier today. Were that order to take effect, then Vonage would be prohibited from signing on new customers beginning next Thursday.

The temporary stay gives Vonage time to assemble its plea for a permanent stay, but probably not much more time – maybe a matter of days.

Continue reading →

A spat between Agence France-Presse and Google over the use of news and photos on the Mountain View, Calif. search engine's news site has been settled, the companies said Friday.

Google was sued in March 2005 by AFP, which claimed that Google never obtained permission to link to use its content, and asked for $17.5 million in damages.

Continue reading →

When VeriSign renegotiated its domain contacts for .com and .net, many feared the company would begin raising rates. It appears as if some of those fears are being realized.

The company said later Thursday that it would raise the fees for .com domains to $6.42 from $6, a 7 percent increase, and from $3.50 to $3.85 for .net domains, a 10 percent increase. The changes would take effect on October 15.

Continue reading →

Wireless communications company Qualcomm fired back at Nokia Thursday afternoon, calling the phone maker's $20 million payment "nominal" and filing an arbitration demand requesting that Nokia be forced extend a royalty agreement set to expire on April 9.

In announcing its payment, which involves WCDMA/UMTS patents granted to Qualcomm, Nokia said it believed the sum was fair and had no intention of extending the previous agreement, which would cost the firm much more than $20 million. Nokia added that it would make future payments, but offered no further details.

Continue reading →

While actual sales numbers may suggest otherwise, a new study from Harris Interactive seems to suggest that consumers are increasingly deciding to hold off on upgrading to Windows Vista.

The poll was initially taken in December 2006, preceding the software's consumer release. At that time, only 47 percent of respondents were aware of Vista. Of that group, 20 percent said they would upgrade, 31 percent said they would wait, and half were unsure.

Continue reading →

As part of its regular monthly update cycle, Microsoft plans to release five security fixes next Tuesday, of which at least two would be rated "critical." Four patches would be aimed at Microsoft Windows, while the remaining fix would be a critical patch for Microsoft Content Management Server. Still unpatched is a code-execution hole in Microsoft Word that the Redmond company has known about since mid-February.

That bug, along with a PowerPoint bug reported to Microsoft in July 2005 still remain unpatched, according to security firm FrSIRT. Aside from the security patches, two non-security updates would be issued through Windows Update, and four through Microsoft Update.

Continue reading →

Microsoft could very well be barred from collecting royalties on technical information provided under a settlement with the European Commission, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

According to a document obtained by the paper, Microsoft has been informed that it could collect either zero or one percent of sales of software based on that technical data. The Redmond company has been asking for 5.95 percent.

Continue reading →

Although Beta 3 of Windows Server "Longhorn" was expected sometime this month, Microsoft has instead issued a new Community Technology Preview.

The update is available to beta testers, and the build number remains in the 6001 series, according to the Windows Connected weblog.

Continue reading →

Yahoo this week disclosed a security vulnerability in its Messenger software, issuing a patch for those running versions dated before March 13. Yahoo has since released two updates to Messenger, and will begin prompting users to upgrade at sign-in.

The flaw involves Messenger's audio conferencing feature, which makes use of an ActiveX control that contains a buffer overflow. A user must be tricked into viewing malicious HTML, which could come from a Web site or e-mail, Yahoo said. "Some impacts of a buffer overflow might include being involuntarily logged out of a Chat and/or Instant Messaging session, the crash of an application such as Internet Explorer, and in some instances, the introduction of executable code," the company explained.

Continue reading →

Google has introduced a new feature to its maps service that aims to make the process of map notation easier, by allowing the user to add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed content.

Called My Maps, the service will support drag-and-drop functionality and would give each unique map a public URL and make it searchable within Google Maps.

Continue reading →

A YouTube user responsible for creating a 44-second clip mocking Thailand's king Bhumibol Adulyadej removed the clip sometime Thursday, however a ban on the site within the country still remains. According to the Thai government, two offensive images were still on the popular social video site, and until those are removed the ban would stay in place.

Adulyadej is revered as near-divine in Thailand and criticizing or offending royalty is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. However, the country has also been criticized for its shaky commitment to democracy, and has seen 18 separate coups in just the past 75 years. In responding to the Thais, YouTube said it would look into the matter, although it aims to provide a community where users are free to express themselves.

Continue reading →

Although it means essentially nothing to the ongoing litigation between the two companies, Nokia said Thursday it had made a $20 million payment to Qualcomm for the use of its UMTS patents.

The company also plans to make future payments and would announce them as necessary. Nokia said the payments do not extend an agreement over patents that partially expires on April 9.

Continue reading →