Nintendo's Wii console continues to be the surprise success in the next-generation console race, outselling the Sony PlayStation 3 by a two-to-one margin in Japan during the month of January.

Only 148,000 PS3s sold during the month, compared with 405,000 Wii consoles, Japanese gaming magazine Enterbrain said Tuesday. Sony's lackluster success in a region normally considered its strongest again brings up questions of the console's overall success.

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The joint mobile venture between EarthLink and SK Telecom finished 2006 with 70,000 subscribers, and expects to hit the milestone in April. Additionally, it is making money at a rate that would allow it to surpass $100 million in revenue per year.

Helio's disclosure of its user base came as part of a larger announcement where it announced its own music store. The company also said it was encouraged by the rate of subscriber growth, which is increasing month after month.

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Just days after Broadcom demoed a chip with integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM reception, competitor Texas Instruments answered back with a better integrated chip that adds Bluetooth 2.1 and 802.11n.

Like its Broadcom counterpart, the TI chip is built using 65-nanometer processes. It would also be the first mobile-based 802.11n solution. For voice over WLAN functionality, call quality and reliability would increase, the company says.

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In an interview with Reuters this morning, AMD's new senior vice president for technology development, Douglas Grose said that the new high-k-plus-metal-gate (HK+MG) transistor technology IBM unveiled two weeks ago might not be integrated with AMD's manufacturing process in time for its first 45-nm CPUs to be produced in 2008.

Saying the decision on when AMD will use its partner's technology depends on his assessment of AMD's roadmap, Grose explained that for now, that time appears to be "in the 45-nanometer timeframe or the 32 node application."

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A plea to prevent a Russian teacher from being sentenced to detention in Siberian prison camps is coming from an unlikely source: former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The leader wrote an open letter to Microsoft founder Bill Gates asking him to show mercy and intercede on behalf of the accused man.

Gobachev claimed in the letter posted to the Web site of The Gorbachev Foundation Monday that Alexander Ponosov did not know he was committing a crime. Ponosov lives in a small village in the Ural Mountains, located in the western part of Russia.

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Beginning with its first issue in February, Home Video Magazine has been presenting "scale-tipping" graphs depicting the current status of the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray movie sales worldwide, based on data provided by Nielsen VideoScan.

With only the second installment, readers have noticed a striking trend that bodes well for Blu-ray: In one week's time, the number of Blu-ray movies sold for every 100 HD DVD movies sold since data was first tracked, increased from 85.05 in the first week of January to 92.4 in the second.

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TiVo said Monday in its annual analysis of the Super Bowl viewing habits that Bud Light and Doritos were the biggest winners in viewership, although K-Fed's highly anticipated -- and much promoted -- Nationwide commercial made a decent showing.

Statistics are compiled using data culled anonymously from 10,000 TiVo subscribers. From there, the company uses the data to show what moments -- and in this case commercials -- best kept the viewer's attention.

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Although it hasn't seen a major update in well over a year, the Netscape browser is about to get a makeover, according to a teaser posted to the Netscape blog. Version 9.0 of the software, which

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Portable computer maker OQO said Monday it would offer a version of its device that would feature integrated wireless connectivity provided by Verizon's EV-DO broadband network. The device features up to a 1.5GHz CPU, 1GB DDR2 SDRAM, shock-resistant 60GB hard drive, and Windows Vista preinstalled. The unit would also be able to support dual external displays at up to 1920x1200 resolution.

"This collaboration with Verizon Wireless is another important step forward in realizing our vision of Anytime/Anywhere Productivity," said Bob Rosin, senior vice president at OQO. EV-DO provides average download speeds of 400Kbps to 700Kbps, says Verizon. The company's BroadbandAccess service is currently available in close to 250 major cities.

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This morning, Microsoft acknowledged the discovery of a new and active exploit involving a malformed string that can trigger a typical overflow in Excel, with the usual bypassing of privilege dangers that ensue. Although the company says the attacks it has seen thus far appear limited and targeted, it’s repeating its warning to users not to open spreadsheets sent in e-mails from untrusted users.

Contrary to some interpretations, this is not an Outlook problem. = Instead, it appears to involve spreadsheets that contain intentionally malformed records where the image data for embedded bitmaps in a record, or IMDATA, have been malformed to trigger buffer overflows.

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Following a ruling in August that found memory chip maker Rambus liable for monopolizing the DRAM market, the Federal Trade Commission has imposed caps on royalty rates it can charge for its patented technologies. The company vows to appeal.

In a 3-to-2 decision, the FTC ruled that the company could charge a maximum royalty rate of .5 percent for DDR SDRAM, and .25 percent for SDRAM for a period of three years after the order is issued. Following this period, the company would be barred from collecting royalties.

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Apple said Monday that it had reached an agreement with The Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd., which settles any trademark issues between the two companies. It is not immediately clear, however, if the settlement includes putting the band's music on iTunes.

It would likely not be known until Tuesday whether the agreement contained such a provision, as that is the day Apple updates its iTunes Store. But the appearance of Beatle music at the Macworld keynote has nevertheless started the rumor mill.

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Regardless of the outcome of the Dell shareholders' class-action lawsuit against their company, the task before the once and future CEO of Dell Computer is gargantuan: to restore customer faith in the nation's #1 brand, and the world's #2 brand, in computers.

Carmi Levy is senior research analyst for Info-Tech Research Group, and helped us assess the shareholder suit Friday afternoon. Levy was able to make a preliminary assessment of the complaint, and assessed it this way:

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The class-action lawsuit filed against Dell Computer on Wednesday makes a complex case, and does not provide much evidence to back up some of its principal pillars other than citing Internet blogs and press reports. Intel is involved, though only peripherally. There are leaps of logic one must take to accept its premises. But whatever the case's outcome, it has already damaged Dell - CEO Kevin Rollins is gone, and Michael Dell is stepping in, perhaps permanently, to run damage control.

There are 241 pages of allegation, but once the long citations of blogs and financial analysts' reports are excised, it's easier to boil down the Dell shareholders' case against their company: The story begins in late 2002, when Dell began a cost-cutting program not unlike so many other companies in the computing field. But the suit alleges the cuts directly and substantively impacted the company's production and service capabilities in ways that the company failed to report.

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This afternoon, Microsoft confirmed to BetaNews it has added three sets of APIs and protocols to its intellectual property portfolio, for availability to corporate developers and other partners between now and next June. It’s generally not a free license, but the intention is to give partners who do have the intention to build on these protocols a way to do so, without Microsoft giving away secrets to its competitors.

Based on information we just received, here’s the three protocol sets being added:

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