Oracle said Thursday that it had acquired performance management software provider Hyperion in a transaction valued at $3.3 billion. The company says that the acquisition would help it to offer and end-to-end solution for those customers who are looking for a complete performance management and business intelligence solution. The transaction will close next month, Oracle said in a statement.

"Hyperion is the latest move in our strategy to expand Oracle's offerings to SAP customers," said Oracle President Charles Phillips. "Now Oracle's Hyperion software will be the lens through which SAP's most important customers view and analyze their underlying SAP ERP data."

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Electronic Arts on Thursday began offering soundtracks to its video games on iTunes, but it took a unique approach: instead of actually publishing albums, the company simply created iMixes that link to the already-existing songs on Apple's music download service.

EA says the offer, dubbed EA Trax, comes in response to customer demand for the music it embeds in its games, which ranges from popular rap and pop to obscure indie rock. The game maker says 55 percent of "Need for Speed" players say they have purchased music after first hearing it in the title.

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Microsoft late Wednesday released the March Community Technology Preview of "Orcas," the code-name for the next release of Visual Studio. Orcas will focus on development for Windows Vista and Office 2007, and the March CTP is available with or without VS Team Foundation Server.

Microsoft says it is looking for "early feedback" on the technologies it is planning to include in Orcas, which the Redmond company began talking about in late 2005. "Orcas will make it a whole lot easier for people to build Vista applications through easy to use designers and the like," said Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Developer Division. With Vista already out the door, Microsoft is working hard to complete Orcas and will surely discuss the release at its MIX '07 conference next month.

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Microsoft disclosed Thursday that it planned to release an update to the firmware of its Zune music player in mid-March, remedying several issues that users of the device were experiencing. Still missing is direct video download support or support for podcasting; Microsoft has so far declined to give any guidance on a timeframe for that functionality.

Included in March's patch would be a fix for a skipping issue some were experiencing with content purchased from the Zune marketplace; improved device and software reliability, which Microsoft says would offer better device detection and improved syncing; and changes to the FM tuner to prevent it from draining the battery during sleep mode. According to Zune team member Cesar Menedez, Microsoft hopes to have the update out by March 20.

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Blockbuster is said to be talking to movie download service Movielink over a possible acquisition, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

If the transaction goes through, it will carry benefits for both companies. Blockbuster will gain a leg up on larger competitor Netflix, who it has been locked in a tight battle with in the online movie rental business.

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In what could be an historic first, the European Commission's new statement of objections to Microsoft for alleged non-compliance with its March 2004 antitrust ruling forwards a novel theory: not that the interoperability information the EC demanded is incomplete, but instead that the communications protocols it describes are not innovative enough for Microsoft to deserve charging royalties for its use.

In Microsoft's draft copy of the royalties it proposes to charge for licensing its interoperability protocols, as the EC has directed, it divides its intellectual property in categories based on the degree of confidentiality of IP information licensees would be receiving. Certain protocols which may fall outside the realm of patentability are given a separate classification, and for those, Microsoft wants to charge a flat fee; but for technologies for which it claims patent rights, the company proposes either US dollar rates per server or percentages of revenue.

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A copy of the early draft language of the revised H.R. 1201, sponsored by Rep. Rick Boucher (D - VA) and introduced on the floor of the US House of Representatives yesterday, shows the revised legislation would add six new exemptions to US Code section 1201, which had been amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

But the language in the new draft is shorter and simpler, and perhaps more prone to broader interpretations.

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The RIAA said Wednesday that it had sent some 400 letters to individuals at 13 universities offering an opportunity for students accused of piracy to settle with the recording industry. Although the RIAA is not specifying the settlement amount, it is said to be significantly less than what the group would sue for in court.

Over the next several months, the organization expects to send hundreds more settlement offers. According to the RIAA, letters this month were sent to students at schools such as Arizona State University, North Carolina State University, Ohio University, Syracuse University, Amherst, University of Southern California, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and University of Texas, Austin, among others.

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In a curious decision on the part of a security software company, a white paper released today on the Web site of Symantec - whose opinions of Microsoft's implementation of PatchGuard protection on 64-bit Windows Vista are well known - contains the address of an independent research paper which includes a demonstration of defeating PatchGuard, complete with source code, in an early Vista beta.

The address of the PDF white paper entitled "Bypassing PatchGuard on Windows x64" -- which was released in December 2005 and has since acquired a modicum of fame and respect -- is located in Symantec's 16-page analysis of Microsoft's security technologies, in a footnote to this sentence: "As demonstrated during the development process of Windows Vista and during its release, hackers can and will subvert PatchGuard."

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When AMD acquired graphics card producer ATI last year, the immediate expectation was that the two companies would converge toward a common platform - specifically a notebook CPU/graphics/networking platform that could hold its own against Intel Centrino. But whether the combined entities would propel AMD into the integrated desktop chipset market was uncertain, especially with Intel both leading that market and languishing in it - it's not that company's major revenue-producer by a long shot.

This morning, AMD took its own long shot by announcing its introduction of a desktop-level integrated chipset that will combine its designs for systems and peripheral bus controllers with ATI's graphics logic, all in one package. AMD's announcement this morning specified only one chipset, the 690, though enthusiast sites everywhere with sources in the motherboard community are actually expecting two versions: the 690G which uses ATI's X1250 logic, and the 690V to address the value market with X1200 graphics logic.

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Verizon Wireless is set to launch its mobile television service on Thursday, according to both the company's Web site and mobile news site RCRWirelessNews.com. The service will be called VCAST Mobile TV and will be available in "select markets" at launch. Qualcomm's MediaFLO technology will power the network, which will be available on two handsets, the Samsung SCH-u620 and LG VX9400.

In announcing the service last month, Verizon Wireless indicated that content would be available from CBS, Comedy Central, NBC, and MTV, among others. The nation's second largest wireless network is not the only one to use Qualcomm's mobile television technology: Cingular announced recently that it also would offer TV services later this year.

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Sun Microsystems has become a "patron" of the Free Software Foundation, joining the likes of HP, IBM, Google and MySQL. The announcement was made over the weekend at the FOSDEM conference in Brussels, and follows Sun's decision to license Java under the GPL.

"Sun and the FSF have been promoting software freedom add this to the recent announcement that the Java platform will be licensed under the GPL, and it becomes obvious that the connections must be stronger," said Sun's chief open source officer Simon Phipps. The FSF was founded by Richard Stallman and is credited for helping start the open source software movement.

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In the opening salvos of the patent infringement case between Vonage and Verizon, the telecommunications company claimed Vonage caused serious harm, while the VoIP provider said it had no knowledge of Verizon's patents.

Already in its fourth day, the trial is now centering on arguments over Verizon's claimed losses and whether or not Vonage did indeed willingly infringe on the telco giant's patents. If found guilty, Vonage could be liable for as much as $200 million, say experts called to testify.

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Customers using Microsoft products that have entered their "Extended" support phase will need to fork over $4,000 for a patch that makes the software compatible with the new March 11 date for Daylight Saving Time (DST), according to Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley.

Among the products affected that have left "Mainstream" support are Windows 2000, Exchange Server 2000 and Outlook 2000. Foley learned of the cost in a PowerPoint presentation distributed to analysts, which explains that due to the number of customers affected by the DST change, Microsoft will not be charging the standard, pricey fee to join its Extended Support Hotfix program. Instead, customers can simply purchase the DST hotfixes they need for a flat $4,000 USD fee.

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Google said Wednesday it had updated its Maps service in more than 30 major United States cities to include real-time traffic information. A new "Traffic" button joins the Map, Satellite and Hybrid options already available, overlaying road conditions with green, yellow and red colors.

"If your route shows red, you're looking at a stop-and-go commute; yellow, you could be a little late for dinner; green, you've got smooth sailing," explained Google software engineer David Wang. Supported cities include New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Washington DC among others.

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