An annual survey of the world's most influential brands in 2006 indicates that technology companies are increasingly garnering the most attention, with Google and Apple leading the pack.

The survey is commissioned by brandchannel.com, a branding e-magazine, and asks 3,625 industry professionals and students to rank the top brands. For the second straight year, Google grabbed the top spot, followed by Apple, which also appeared in second in 2005.

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An industry coalition that has represented competitors of Microsoft in European markets before the European Commission stepped up its public relations offensive this morning, this time accusing Microsoft of scheming to upset HTML's place in the fabric of the Internet with XAML, an XML-based layout lexicon for network applications.

In a prepared statement this morning, ECIS Chairman Simon Awde connected XAML with Windows Vista, the system that will next week be the predominant deployment system for Windows Presentation Foundation. XAML can be used to lay out pages and controls for programs that WPF produces using the .NET Framework.

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When Reuters sounded alarm bells that Microsoft net income may have fallen by as much as 28% (if it had done the math correctly, it should have come up with 25.5%), it was a bit premature: Microsoft chose to defer about $1.64 billion of revenue from sales of Windows Vista during the last quarter, which came in the form of coupons that customers will redeem this quarter.

As a result, a company whose operating income gains would probably come in at about 10%, in line with estimates, ended up looking like one whose income had plunged in the wake of last year’s Vista delay. Microsoft stock traded generally lower on the day, experiencing a hump followed by a lull in late trading after earnings numbers were reported, ending the day down over 2% in value on the NASDAQ.

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For the first time, cell phone shipments topped the one billion mark in 2006, a feat that was helped along by a 20 percent increase in shipments during the holiday quarter to 295 million units, according to research firm IDC.

2006's total of 1.02 billion units was up 22.5 percent from the previous year's total of 833 million. Motorola was able to gain ground on market leader Nokia, however in both cases the companies felt the sting of strong competition. Profit margins declined for both companies, IDC said.

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EarthLink said Thursday that it was in the process of negotiating a contract with its hometown of Atlanta that would allow it to build, own, and operate a municipal wireless network there. The deal would be EarthLink's eighth in a major city. So far, it has operational networks in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Milpitas and Anaheim, Calif. Construction is underway in Alexandria, Va., and Pasadena, Calif., and a network is near approval in San Francisco.

The rest of the Atlanta network's specification would be similar to that of its other networks. 1Mbps connection speeds would be provided for $18 per month, with discounted rates available to low-income households. The network would also be open access, which means competing companies would be permitted to offer their own services over the same signal.

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A former HP executive has accused the company of snooping on Dell's printer business, as well as claiming he was the target of pretexting similar to the case that nearly brought the company to its knees last year.

The claims were made in a countersuit filed by Karl Kamb, Jr., who along with four others were fired and sued by HP for attempting to start their own flat-panel TV business when they were to be developing the company's own models. The suit asked for $100 million in damages.

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Following news Monday that its new 787 "Dreamliner," the fastest-selling new plane in the company's history, would be delayed three months, Boeing said it was scrapping plans to deliver in-flight entertainment over a high-speed wireless network.

Boeing had planned to utilize wireless connectivity to stream movies and other programming to each site, thereby reducing the amount of wiring needing to be run during the aircraft's assembly. Airbus, Boeing's European rival, encountered numerous wiring issues that delayed its A380 super-jumbo jet by more than two years.

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Fox is attempting to uncover the identity of a YouTube user that uploaded recent episodes of the network's hit television shows "24" and "The Simpsons" to the service without its permission, a blog reported Wednesday.

Details of a subpoena granted by a U.S. District Judge in San Francisco were first reported by Google Watch. A smaller video site, LiveDigital, also received a subpoena as part of the legal action.

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Access, the company behind the former PalmSource, announced Thursday it is renaming the Palm OS operating system to "Garnet OS," rolling out a new "Access Powered" logo that replaces the "Palm Powered" branding used on a wide range of handheld devices.

In September 2005, Access purchased Palm OS and its owner PalmSource, which was spun out of Palm, Inc. following that company's separation from former parent 3Com. PalmSource changed its name to Access Systems America in October, selling the rights to the "Palm" brand name back to Palm, Inc.

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Google said Thursday that it would begin to allow users of its video search service to also search videos on YouTube. The company also seemed to indicate that Google Video was not going anywhere, contrary to some rumors.

The Mountain View, Calif. snapped up YouTube last year in a blockbuster $1.67 billion deal. However, since that acquisition, and its completion in November, both sites have operated separate of one another.

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Sony solidified March 23 for the launch of its PlayStation 3 console in Europe and Australia/New Zealand, but will only sell the high-end model and at a price that puts it at a significant premium to its competitors.

The console would simultaneously launch in both regions. Approximately one million units of the 60GB version would be made available for the launch, which could alleviate some of the supply concerns that plagued the PS3's North American launch.

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A report from wireless industry analyst firm ABI Research released today proclaims that the new Apple iPhone does not fall within the firm’s standard definition of a smartphone, due to restrictions Apple has placed on the phone against the inclusion of third-party applications.

By ABI’s definition, a smartphone is “a cellular handset using an open, commercial operating system that supports third-party applications.” Apple’s announcement two weeks ago that its iPhone would run OS X – essentially an adaptation of its Macintosh edition of Unix – led many to believe the iPhone could open up a world of possibilities for consumer-conceived functionality.

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Yesterday, the US-CERT security awareness team from the Dept. of Homeland Security posted a warning that it had been notified by Cisco that certain of its routers running IOS do not process specially crafted IPv6 headers properly, leading to a potentially exploitable condition.

The warning has ominous echoes of Cisco router vulnerability from the summer of 2005, the precise details of which were divulged in a Black Hat demonstration by an ISS security researcher who got maybe more than five minutes of fame, but paid for them with his job.

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In a recent interview with BetaNews, the chief technology officer of the company that discovered history's most expensive worm -- the "Code Red" worm that exploited a wide-open buffer overflow vulnerability in Microsoft's IIS -- stated he believes when security companies give multiple dramatic names to known threats, rather than accept a single, common identifier, the result simply confuses users.

The naming of Code Red, eEye Chief Technology Officer Mark Maiffret told BetaNews, was originally supposed to be a "one-off," "part of our normal course of business." By contrast, among today's anti-virus vendors, Maiffret believes there's too much fighting over who gets to christen the latest virus, worm, or zero-day exploit for the press.

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Microsoft said Wednesday it has added an Extended Support phase to the consumer versions of Windows XP: Home Edition and Media Center Edition. The five-year Extended Support normally applies only to the business versions of Windows.

With the change, Mainstream Support for Windows XP Home and Media Center will last through April 2009, while Extended Support runs through April 2014 - just like it does for Windows XP Professional. During the Mainstream Support phase, Microsoft provides non-security fixes to customers free of charge. During the Extended phase, those customers must sign an agreement with Microsoft and pay a fee for any updates.

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