Last month, Intel's announcement of its discovery of the formula and design for producing stable, more miniaturized transistors for future 45-nanometer CPUs beat IBM's announcement of its own such discovery by mere minutes. But what may distinguish the two developments is how quickly the two rivals will put them to use.

Late yesterday afternoon, Intel announced it plans to invest as much as $1.5 billion in the retooling of its Fab 11X production site in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, so that it can produce 45 nm CPUs with the HK+MG technique during the second half of next year.

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Corel made a play for a piece of the Web 2.0 pie on Tuesday, releasing WordPerfect Lightning in beta, a free, compact version of its standard word processing suite that combines both online and offline functionality.

The company is referring to the product as a Google Writely, Adobe Reader, and Microsoft OneNote competitor rolled into one. At 16MB, the entire program can be placed on a USB stick or burned to CD to allow for maximum portability.

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Microsoft said Monday that it donated $1.7 million to support rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, with the money being awarded to non-profit partners in Louisiana and Texas. With its latest donation, the company will have donated over $55 million as part of its Unlimited Potential charity program. Through this effort, Microsoft donates cash, software and technology to communities in need.

"In a post-Katrina world, retaining and rebuilding a skilled work force is critical to the future of the Gulf Coast economy," CEO Steve Ballmer said at an event to announce the grant in Louisiana. "Microsoft is committed to working with our Gulf Coast partners to help expand opportunity for people and businesses throughout this fantastic region."

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Apple informed customers who had ordered its new Apple TV entertainment device late Monday that it would miss its original target shipping date of February, instead promising delivery starting in mid-March. While the company did not give a specific reason for delay, it did say that final development of the product was "taking a few weeks longer than we expected."

The Apple TV device costs $299 USD, and is the company's first attempt at extending its dominance in digital entertainment to the living room. It was first introduced at Macworld along with the company's first mobile phone, called the "iPhone."

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A new user of the same online forum where one user last December reported having retrieved the title key for a specific HD DVD movie, and another user demonstrated a method for extracting a title key that could be applied to an automatic process, reports that he has been able to fish for the AACS device key -- the unique cryptographic element licensed to each player hardware or software component by AACS LA -- using a memory dump during the execution of the Windows-based player WinDVD 8.

Other users of the same forum, including the user with handle arnezami who earlier had automated the process to locate title keys, confirmed the discovery of device keys in independent tests.

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In an effort to continue its momentum in next-generation DVDs, Sony said Monday that it would launch a lower-cost version of its Blu-ray player over the summer for $599 USD.

However, even at the new price the player would still be more expensive than Toshiba's HD DVD player, currently priced at $499 USD. Regardless, it does show willingness on Sony's part to cut into profits in order to accelerate adoption of the Blu-ray format.

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If you are one of the many who now make a significant amount of income off of eBay, Uncle Sam may be interested in how much you're bringing in.

Beginning in 2008, the federal government has proposed that auction houses like eBay report any customer who carries out more than 100 transactions above $5,000 USD. The law is being proposed because many are not reporting income from such sources.

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Just days prior to a tremendous loss by Microsoft in a jury trial over the MP3 format sent warning signs about the uncertain structural integrity of MP3's intellectual property, a previously unknown Texas-based firm filed suit ten days ago in federal court in Marshall, in defense of patents it claims it acquired from one-time MP3 chip powerhouse SigmaTel. The suit charges SigmaTel's former competitors and some former customers, including Apple, Samsung and SanDisk, with infringement.

While the patent in question protects a methodology that's enacted in hardware, not software as in the MP3 format patent case which Microsoft lost, the new company may be rushing to file the proper paperwork before a potential landmark decision by the US Supreme Court - which could come any time - redefines the boundaries of American technological patents.

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Taiwan based BenQ acknowledged over the weekend that its mobile handset division had no chance of being sold as a whole and thus would be liquidated after filing for bankruptcy last September. BenQ had acquired the struggling business from Siemens in June 2005, but failed to turn it around.

German paper Sueddeutsche Zeitung first reported the decision, noting that some 3,000 jobs would likely be lost - although employees will receive wages for up to a year thereafter. Siemens was barely able to keep the phone unit afloat when it sold it to BenQ in exchange for a 2.5 percent stake in the Taiwanese electronics maker. At the time, BenQ expected the acquisition to give it more exposure and double annual handset sales.

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Microsoft said Monday that it would acquire Medstory, a company that develops web search technology for health information. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Redmond company said that it intends to use the move to begin a push into the realm of consumer health. Medstory would be folded into the recently created Health Solutions Group at Microsoft.

Medstory's technology allows users to perform searches on health information in a more intuitive way, which more closely mirrors the way a person thinks. Microsoft said this helps searchers to receive more relevant results, and allows the user to make better health-related decisions.

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According to Vonage, rumors of its demise due to its ongoing patent litigation with Verizon have been greatly exaggerated.

In a statement released Monday morning, the nation's largest VoIP provider disputed media reports that the ongoing lawsuit brought against it by Verizon may have a negative impact on the company's business.

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In its continuing effort to move away from its roots as a popular method for the decentralized transfer of pirated content, BitTorrent said Monday it had launched a new content network with the help of several television and movie studios.

Called the BitTorrent Entertainment Network, the service will feature content from 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.

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In a story for the Associated Press carried on many online news services this afternoon, one of the directors of Microsoft's Windows Client Product Planning team appears to make a curious and perhaps astounding statement. Scott Woodgate is quoted as saying that a Black Hat security conference demonstration last August, where virtualization functions were exploited to plant an active rootkit onto a beta of the Windows Vista kernel, scared Microsoft to the point where the company seriously considered removing virtualization capability from Vista entirely.

Ostensibly, the AP article was about Microsoft's decision to ban Home Basic and Home Premium editions of Vista from serving as guest operating systems in virtualization engines. This was a recent discovery for Macintosh users, though it was public knowledge for Vista users since last July, when Woodgate himself made the announcement.

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Data from Nielsen indicates that sales of Blu-ray media for the first time has outpaced that of HD DVD; however, as expected, both camps in the high-definition format war have different ways of interpreting the data.

For the week of February 18, Blu-ray sold 100 units for every 98.71 units of HD DVD. That culminates a several week period where sales of the disc format began to catch up to HD DVD after nearly a year of slow sales.

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Today at one past midnight, a form of communication long used by both radio amateurs and communications pioneers slipped further into the annals of history.

The FCC formally removed the requirement for ham radio operators to learn Morse code back in January, however the ruling didn't take effect until Friday. Under the new policies, those who may have not had access to what are called the "HF bands" by hams would now gain access.

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