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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If Seagate had shown the DAVE device at CES last month, it might very well have been the hit of the show: a portable hard drive that borrows the WiFi or Bluetooth connection to make up to 20 GB of storage available to cell phones or handsets from a distance of up to 30 feet.

For a great many consumers, that may be all they need to know about the Digital Audio Video Experience (DAVE) device - they could even forgive Seagate the silly acronym.

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Microsoft said Friday afternoon that it was in the process of issuing new keys to those who may have received invalid ones through the Vista Family Discount program. The feature, provided exclusively to purchasers of Vista Ultimate, allows for two PCs to be upgraded to Vista Home Premium at a cost of $49.99 per computer. However, a glitch in the key-generation system produced invalid keys.

According to Microsoft, the keys would be on the way via e-mail to those affected over the next five days. The company is at a loss to explain the cause of the key-generation issues, although it said it was taking steps to prevent it from happening to future participants. News of the response was first reported by Windows enthusiast site Neowin.net Friday.

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After scouring through over 800 comments with suggested captions for our contest to win Windows Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Home and Student, we have selected two winners. If you weren't chosen, worry not, we will have more giveaways shortly!

And the winners are...

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The open source project to build a translator between Microsoft's new Office Open XML format and OpenDocument, the standard backed by OASIS, reached its first milestone Friday, releasing 1.0 of the technology for both Microsoft Word and competing ODF-compatible office suites.

The Open XML Translator is available at no cost to all users and is compatible with Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP. The idea, says Microsoft, is to let users choose whether to save their documents in Open XML or ODF no matter what productivity suite they choose to use.

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Google on Friday moved to combine two of its separate personalization features in order to make searching a bit more friendly for its users. When signed into the site, Google will automatically custom tailor search results based on search history and preferences selected for the personalized homepage.

"Keep in mind that personalization is subtle—at first you may not notice any difference," says Google engineer Sep Kamvar. Those who don't want Google to track what they're doing can simply sign out of the site and personalization features will be disabled. "After all, the goal is to give you what you want when you want it," added Kamvar.

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If you have an iPod, and plan to install Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, Apple has one word of advice for you: don't.

That's because issues with iTunes 7.0.2 and the next-generation operating system are creating havoc for some users, Apple disclosed on Friday. The problems include issues with purchased music tracks playing, syncing issues, and even incidents where the device becomes corrupted.

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The future of Palm OS -- now known as Garnet OS -- may be cloudy, but Sling Media is still working on its software player for the mobile platform. SlingPlayer enables Slingbox owners to view what's on their television using a Palm Treo with broadband connectivity.

The company is now accepting beta applications for a test of the software through Centercode, and estimates it will take about 15 minutes to complete the survey. Sling Media has previously made available a Windows Mobile version of its software, but Palm OS users have been waiting anxiously for their own mobile client.

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Chipmaker Broadcom has developed a way to integrate Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM reception capabilities onto a single chip, allowing manufacturers to produce devices with the functionality without sacrificing cost, size or battery life.

The functionality would be integrated into a 65-nanometer CMOS chip. The solution is perfect for those looking to include more functionality in smaller devices, the company said. Up until now, added functionality required embedding more chips.

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Investors in Dell are suing the company, accusing it of improperly accounting for bonuses it received from Intel for using its chips exclusively. The suit, which seeks class action status, claims the profits of the company were artificially inflated.

Dell could have been receiving as much as $1 billion per year in kickbacks, which were not properly accounted for and would likely be illegal under U.S. law. Furthermore, this could have hid more serious financial issues at the Texas-based computer maker.

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Reuters is reporting that Viacom, the parent company of MTV Networks, whose Comedy Central unit produces The Daily Show and South Park, among others, has retracted its agreement with Google's YouTube unit reached last October, and is asking Google to remove videos of programming it produces from public access.

Relations between the two organizations have been shaky since May 2005, when Viacom Corp. issued a subpoena to YouTube (which was then not owned by Google) asking it to remove extended clips of the movie Twin Towers, produced by Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures. Last October, Viacom, Inc. had appeared to reach an agreement with YouTube that would have enabled it to carry clips of MTV Networks-produced shows.

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A tremendous amount of confusion has arisen in recent days over whether security firm Symantec actually discovered a new vulnerability in Microsoft Word three days ago, or simply uncovered a new exploit of an existing problem that Microsoft already acknowledged. In what appears to be an effort at backtracking, Symantec today appears to be saying both simultaneously.

In a blog posting three days ago, a Symantec engineer stated the company had found new Word documents which its anti-virus program already detected as Trojan.Mdropper.X. "We believe this is a new vulnerability, making it the fifth currently unpatched Office file format vulnerability," the engineer wrote, even though the anti-virus program obviously reported this as an existing exploit.

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