Panda has released NanoScan, an online virus scanning service that is able to perform a full sweep of a computer in less than one minute. The speed is a vast improvement over current virus scanners, which take as much as an hour or more to complete.

The company isn't giving specifics on how the software works, only saying that it will require a small 400KB ActiveX download. No software is installed on the user's computer, and is hosted on Panda's servers. This would ensure that the signature files were continually up-to-date.

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Nintendo's Wii outsold all other next-generation consoles in February, the NPD Group reports, further solidifying its second place market share among new consoles in the US. Meanwhile, PS3 sales continue to lag.

It was not all bad news for Sony, however. Sales of its PS2 are still strong, selling 295,000 units during the month. This was about the same as its performance in January, when it sold 299,000 consoles.

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In a short span of time, Microsoft's new OneCare anti-virus service has been faced with a barrage of reports and blog posts remarking about how it failed a Virus Bulletin test that several of its competitors passed, along with consumers' complaints that OneCare deleted their Outlook e-mail files in the act of disarming viruses they may have contained. Now, a key engineer on the company's anti-virus team finds himself in the awkward position of defending the reputation of a firm he's only worked with for a few months, after having spent ten years at McAfee, and some time at Symantec before that.

"When we think about priorities we put our customers first and in doing that we ask ourselves, 'What do our clients want? What do they need?"' writes Jimmy Kuo, a respected anti-virus engineer who joined Microsoft last September along with some McAfee colleagues, in his inaugural blog post for the Anti-Malware Engineering Team yesterday.

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With claims that Toshiba's HD-E1 HD DVD player was the first on the market for the European consumer just last November (claims that a BetaNews reader tonight pointed out was wrong; see update below), and Sony's European edition of the PlayStation 3 with built-in Blu-ray player only emerging from its long launch delay a week from tomorrow, the Toshiba-backed format is already well ahead in the European market. Taiwanese industry analysts (on behalf of parts suppliers for high-def players) estimate HD DVD has already captured an 85% market share in Europe in just the first four months.

Now HD DVD supporters are working to cement the format's presence in the European mindset. Today, those supporters announced the formation of that continent's edition of the HD DVD Promotional Group, to be led by Toshiba, Microsoft, Universal, and French movie producer Studio Canal.

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Sony is allowing Internet-connected PlayStation 3 owners to participate in a program created by Stanford University that would employ unused processor power in the console to research protein folding.

The program -- Folding@Home -- already has been operating on PCs since 2000, with over 1,000,000 computers participating during the life of the project. The addition of the PS3 would mark the first time a non-PC device would be used for such a project.

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Vodafone showed off an application it is working on code-named "Starfish," which would allow its users to chat with their buddies via MSN, Yahoo, AOL, and Skype, as well as make VoIP calls through the popular chat network.

Like the Skype service being offered by Vodafone competitor 3, which is owned by Hutchison Whampoa, Starfish uses a voice channel to place the VoIP call. Once the base station receives the call, it is then routed through the Internet.

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Throughout its history, Cisco has built its vast portfolio talents through mergers and acquisitions. Indeed, startups in the networking field intentionally developed business plans and product portfolios designed to attract a Cisco buyout. But with two new Cisco buyouts this week -- storage appliance producer NeoPath Networks on Tuesday, and collaboration software developer WebEx this morning -- Cisco appears not just to be building up but building out. And today, analysts believe Microsoft may be on notice.

Thousands know WebEx as one of the first live, online conferencing services, and its obvious FedEx-like approach to doing business in the virtual space isn't lost on anyone. It launched the pay-per-use services model online years before its competition would pretend they came up with the idea first.

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Clients of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield can breathe a little easier as a CD earlier reported missing has turned up in Philadelphia, the New York Times reports.

Magellan Behavorial Services, a third-party contractor that deals with mental health services for Empire disclosed that it had received a phone call from a Philadelphia resident Wednesday who reported he had mistakenly received the CD in January.

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4:50 pm March 16, 2007 - For largely unexplained reasons, an edition of Microsoft's Windows Defender anti-malware package numbered 7.0 - way out of sequence - was made available for a brief period late Thursday, and continues to make the rounds through cached databases, including our own FileForum. Late this afternoon, BetaNews located an active link to it on Microsoft's downloads section.

While "version 7.0" appeared to be a legitimate version of Windows Defender, in fact, it's just a refreshed build. Many press sources, including BetaNews, were informed it was a significant update, and we reported it as such. But knowledgeable readers after having downloaded it from us and elsewhere spotted something fishy, and once again, they were right: The "new" Defender is really just a new build, version 1.1.1593.

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Verizon on Thursday announced the availability of Novatel Wireless' V740 ExpressCard for EV-DO wireless networks, which brings support for Revision A. Verizon recently began rolling out the faster Rev. A technology across its wireless broadband network.

The V740 card, which works in ExpressCard capable notebooks such as Apple's MacBook line, will run $179.99 USD with a two-year contract and $229.99 USD with a one-year contract. EV-DO Revision A promises average download speeds of 600 kilobits per second to 1.4 megabits, and average upload speeds of 500 to 800 kbps.

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NAVTEQ, the leading provider of mapping data for GPS devices and services such as Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, announced Thursday a new Visual Content suite that adds three-dimensional models of cities and major landmarks.

While services like Windows Live Local currently offer such capabilities in a handful of cities, NAVTEQ's content is more widely utilized around the globe and could easily bring the feature to online maps that use its database. The company says the 3-D city models and landmarks are available for major cities in Europe, North America and Asia.

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In a significant change to company policy, Google announced late yesterday it will begin systematic purges of personally identifying data from its search logs at least 18 months after it's collected. The move could quash some consumers' -- and some governments' -- concerns about its intentions to harvest its now-colossal database of personal information.

"We had previously kept the logs data for as long as it was useful," reads an FAQ about the policy change published by Google yesterday (PDF available here). "When we implement this policy change, we will continue to keep server log data so that we can improve Google's services and protect them from security and other abuses, but we will anonymize our server logs after 18-24 months, unless legally required to retain the data for longer."

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In its lawsuit against Google and its YouTube subsidiary which came to light yesterday, Viacom not only alleges that YouTube is guilty of massive copyright infringement by allowing its users to post unauthorized content without restrictions or filtering, but the corporation goes one step further: It accuses YouTube of actually reproducing and posting some unauthorized content itself.

"YouTube itself publicly performs the infringing videos on the YouTube site and other websites," Viacom's lawsuit proclaims. "Thus, YouTube does not simply enable massive infringement by its users. It is YouTube that knowingly reproduces and publicly performs the copyrighted works uploaded to its site."

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A small San Diego startup has big plans for an online music service that, if successful, could compete with industry giants like Apple and XM Satellite Radio. Slacker, which launched in beta Wednesday, aims to take Internet radio beyond the Web.

Founded by former CEOs in the online music industry, including Dennis Mudd from MusicMatch, Jonathan Sasse from iRiver and Jim Cady from Rio and Altec Lansing, Slacker is taking a new approach to an old idea: personalized streaming radio stations. The company plans to launch a software application, a hardware player and even a car kit.

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WellPoint, a health insurance company that handles coverage for Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield disclosed Wednesday that a CD containing medical records and other personal data may have been lost.

Approximately 75,000 members of the insurer have been affected after a company called Magellan Behavioral Services had apparently lost the disc, the New York Times reports.

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