Apple has issued a fix for its Airport Extreme product, which it says would prevent attackers from causing system crashes on computers connected to a network. By sending a specially-crafted string of data, Core Duo versions of the Mac Mini, MacBook, and MacBook Pro could lock up. Core 2 Duo versions are not affected by the issue, the company said in an advisory.

To fix the vulnerability, Mac OS X would now perform additional validation of data received in order to prevent the crashes. Although this vulnerability had been fixed in a previous update for the product earlier in the year, Apple said it reissued to fix to address compatibility issues with some third-party access points.

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MovieBeam, a spin-off from Disney that became one of the first movie download services, has been acquired by Hollywood Video owner Movie Gallery for under $10 million. That number is a fraction of the $50 million it was recapitalized with last year after Disney spent a reported $70 million on the project.

Much of MovieBeam's struggle to establish itself can be blamed on its architecture. Instead of relying on broadband to deliver movies on demand over the Internet, MovieBeam receives the content over the air with an antenna connected to a set-top box. A phone line is also required for billing and ordering purposes.

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Scoring a major victory in offering its television services to a broader segment of the population, Verizon disclosed Friday that it had been the first to gain approval for a statewide video franchise in the state of California.

The nation's largest state changed its laws last year, taking the power away from local municipalities and allowing companies to apply to the state's Public Utility Commission to offer services. It went into effect on January 1.

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With the brand-sharing alliance between Yahoo and AT&T - the successor of SBC, which first signed the deal with the then-search giant in 2001 - due to expire in just over a year, AT&T may be reconsidering whether, as it expands its broadband services nationwide this year, it needs or even wants the Yahoo name tagging along for the ride. This according to a story in this morning's Wall Street Journal.

The story cites an unnamed source as revealing that AT&T is reconsidering whether it should be the one paying the search giant, instead of the other way around. Yahoo currently receives as much as a quarter billion dollars of revenue annually, the WSJ states, from a licensing deal that has AT&T pre-installing Yahoo-branded software onto the systems of customers of its DSL and other broadband services.

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Treo smartphone maker Palm has hired a former Apple engineer who developed the foundation for the iPod operating system after he left the Cupertino company in 1996 and founded Pixo. Paul Mercer will help Palm develop future products, the company confirmed to the WSJ.

Palm has been facing increased competition in the smartphone space, with rivals Motorola, Nokia and Samsung all stepping up their efforts. But the company also has a new rival in Apple, which in June will debut its much-anticipated touch-screen iPhone device. In joining Palm, Mercer will be leaving Inventor, a company he founded in 2000 to build mobile phone interfaces.

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Microsoft this week released a minor update for Windows Vista that adds support for Windows Help files, recognized by their .hlp extension. Such help files have been in use since Windows 3.1, and are still found in a number of applications.

"The Windows Help program has not had a major update for many releases and no longer meets Microsoft's standards. Therefore, starting with the release of Windows Vista, the Windows Help program will not ship as a feature of Windows," Microsoft says. Users can download the Windows Help update from FileForum.

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While Microsoft began releasing software patches that take account of the new, earlier shifts to Daylight Savings Time months ago, panic calls from admins everywhere suggest that businesses may be waiting until the last minute to install them.

As a result, an Info-Tech Research Group bulletin this morning describes, Microsoft's technical support personnel only just this week discovered that its various patches for Windows, Exchange Server, Outlook, and other tools should be installed in a precise order, otherwise they may not actually be patching networks.

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It has been "Issues Week" all week for Microsoft, and Thursday, the company took on the dreaded interoperability issue. But its choice of message was called into question a bit yesterday after Microsoft boasted of having signed up its first official customer for its communications and interoperability IP licenses: Quest Software, the manufacturer of the Toad data modeling system.

Microsoft was ordered by the European Commission - the legislative arm of the EU government - to provide software libraries and instructions that can make other software, including other operating systems, fully interoperate with Windows. Microsoft has been licensing some portions of its Windows source code that enable interoperability since January 2006, though it has struggled in recent months to come up with fees for new, key portions that are acceptable to the EC.

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On Tuesday, BetaNews reported on the acceptance by the US Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) of a proposal put forth by a consortium of recording industry representatives, whereby Internet streaming radio sites would be responsible for royalties for the music they play, the total of which would substantially exceed their annual revenue, probably forcing many to shut down.

Our story generated a lot of buzz in the streaming radio community, which prompted prominent members of that industry to share with us some more up-to-date statistics. With these facts in hand, BetaNews is able to make more accurate projections about what major and minor streaming radio providers - including terrestrial radio stations with Internet services - are likely to pay in royalty fees.

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A federal jury has found that Vonage has infringed on three patents owned by Verizon and ordered the Internet telephony company to pay damages of $58 million, in addition to a 5.5 percent royalty on all future Vonage sales.

The award was far smaller than Verizon's requested amount of $197 million, but potentially more damaging to Vonage's business is whether a permanent injunction will bar it from further use of the technologies. Immediately after the verdict, Verizon requested the injunction, and a hearing has been set for March 23.

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After a whopping twelve security updates last month, March will bring Windows users a welcome sigh of relief: Microsoft has no patches planned for next week. The company will, however, release a number of non-security updates; 2 will appear on Windows Update and 4 on Microsoft update.

Because there are no security bulletins for March, Microsoft will not be holding its monthly webcast on TechNet. An update to the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool will be made per usual. Microsoft released six critical security updates last month, correcting flaws in Windows, Office and its anti-malware products.

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Although it won't officially announce Creative Suite 3 until March 27, Adobe said Thursday that it will deliver not one, but two editions of Photoshop CS3, the company's tool for professional graphic and Web designers.

The standard Photoshop CS3, which has been available in beta for Macintosh users since December, will be joined by Photoshop CS3 Extended. The new edition brings integration of 3-D and motion graphics, image measurement and analysis. It also adds new workflow capabilities designed for professionals in architecture, engineering, medical and science.

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The company behind Wikipedia plans to shake up the search market by offering a collaborate search platform allowing users to improve upon the system much like they do with the popular encyclopedia Web site.

At a news conference Thursday in Tokyo, Wikipedia founder and chairman Jimmy Wales said Wikia -- the commercial face of Wikipedia -- plans to take as much as five percent of the search market.

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A beta of a new service launched by Skype Wednesday night will allow any user with the most current version of the popular communications client charge for voice and video calls placed to their account.

Dubbed "Skype Prime," users have the option to either charge by the minute or a single charge for the entire call. Fees would be taken out of the caller's Skype Credit account, and the called party would receive 70 percent of the proceeds collected, payable through PayPal.

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Google on Thursday rolled out a new version of its Picasa Web Albums service, which enables users to upload their photos free of charge. While the service previously focused on private use, the update brings new community features like those offered by Yahoo's Flickr.

A search function now enables users to search for and browse photos from any public photo album. In addition, photos can be more easily linked within e-mails, IMs and Web sites. Storage space has also been increased for users of the free service, who can now upload up to 1GB worth of photos. Those needing more space can pay an annual fee for up to 250GB.

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