AOL said Friday that it will be dropping Music Now in favor of Napster, which will power the company's subscription music service. The two companies said they will work together to migrate AOL Music Now's 350,000 subscribers.

The Dulles, Va. Based ISP is now alerting customers that they will be migrating their accounts unless they opt out. Libraries and track credits will automatically be transferred, and AOL Music Now users will be able to retain their old username and password.

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Proving that Apple will indeed have to change at least one name on its iPhone advertising in the immediate future, Cingular announced today what many analysts had expected: The company waited until after CES to begin changing its division name to AT&T.

In a press release this morning, the newly merged entity stated that, in coming weeks, television advertising will feature Cingular's "Jack" logo doing such gracious things as writing the AT&T globe logo in the sky, and directing a troupe of harvesting tools as they cut the globe logo into a wheat field, next to Cingular's subsidiary "five bars" logo. AT&T's new slogan for now, for its wireless division, will be "Raising It Higher" - the "it," in this case, referring to "The Bar," which was prominent in former Cingular ads.

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The December sales numbers from industry analyst firm NPD Group for game consoles have just come in, and they aren't pretty. Sony, beset by supply problems, reduced its initial August prediction of 2 million down to 750,000, and in the end didn't even make that - the company sold 490,700 units in the US in December, for a total of 687,300 since launch.

Of the season's new game consoles, Microsoft's Xbox 360 was the leader, with 1.1 million sold in December for a total of 4.5 million since launch, with Nintendo's Wii following with 604,200 in December and a total of 1.1 million since launch.

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On Tuesday morning in San Francisco, Apple did something it had never done before. In 1976, it basically created the personal computer industry; if it had ever come into fruition without Apple, the computer today would probably be unrecognizable, and maybe even unlikable. In 2001, the company essentially invented the portable digital music industry, even though MP3 players existed prior to 2001, and personal computers of some sort existed prior to 1976.

But this time, Apple jumped into an already burgeoning industry like a diver into a raging river. Its collective mind was clearly set on reinventing the wireless phone, and indeed, it may have done so. With its now-typical flourish, Apple shed from its corporate image some historical baggage, in a move whose significance may only be understood clearly, if not ironically, in a few years' time: It let go of the "Computer" from its name, trimming it down to "Apple, Inc." And even while its new Apple iPhone embraces a surprising chunk of the Macintosh methodology and technology that helped get the company this far, when introducing the device at a conference called "Macworld," Steve Jobs and the slides that accompanied him omitted the "Mac" from the name "OS X."

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Intel struck back at Transmeta on Thursday, countersuing the company for patent infringement over methods to control power consumption in computer chips. The company sued the chipmaker in October over similar patents.

A total of 11 Transmeta patents were part of that suit filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, covering Intel's Pentium III, 4, M, Core, and Core 2 lines of processors. Intel failed to respond to that suit. Intel's suit covers seven of its own patents and was filed earlier this week in the same court. Transmeta would not comment on the suit, as it had not had a chance to look over Intel's charges.

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eBay said Thursday that it had purchased online ticket reseller StubHub in a deal valued at $310 million. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the first quarter of this year.

The auction site already has a fairly active ticket trade through its standard auctions, however the success of StubHub in recent months has made the site into one of eBay's biggest competitors. It grossed about $400 million in sales in 2006.

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Don't expect a version of Skype for cellular phones anytime soon. A company executive told Reuters Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that data plans are still too costly to make such a version viable.

While it may seem to many like a cop-out, especially considering it has already teamed with British cellular provider 3 to offer a mobile version of its software. However, that company offers a flat rate for data access, something no other carrier is doing.

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The FCC has told cable companies to get moving in supporting CableCARD technology, rejecting a bid Wednesday by Comcast to receive more time to implement the platform in set-top boxes it provides by July.

Speaking at CES in Las Vegas, chairman Kevin Martin chastised the cable industry for dragging its feet in offering the technology, and said its advent would lead to new options for consumers in viewing cable television.

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After being selected to power Philadelphia's metropolitan Wi-Fi network some 15 months ago, EarthLink on Thursday made the first steps towards offering service by announcing it would allow for free access in the 15-square mile proof of concept area through January 21.

The area extends from the Schuylkill River to the west to the Delaware River to the east, and Center City and Old City to the south and Montgomery Avenue and the Kensington areas to the north. Speeds of up to 1 Mbps would be available.

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Centercode is seeking testers for a beta program involving a mobile phone that has the capability of receiving and displaying television through a special broadcast feed. Participants must be located in New York City and be a subscriber in good standing with Cingular and T-Mobile.

The phone enables users to watch their favorite sports, news and other programs. Applications for the beta program will be accepted until 25 January 2007. After that time, the application process will be closed. This is a legitimate beta test opportunity and has no cost associated with participation. For more information and to apply, visit the Centercode Web site.

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Cisco had said yesterday that it had been in negotiations with Apple to license the iPhone name, which it was using in connection with its Linksys Internet phone, after repeated requests by Apple, and that with the announcement of the iPhone, they expected Apple to agree to its conditions and sign the agreement that day.

Apparently they didn't.

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A New York Times report this morning cites high-ranking officials with Cingular and Apple as having confirmed they entered into a deal to produce the iPhone as far back as February 2005.

Apple apparently did not shop the phone out to other carriers; instead, the companies had entered into an exclusive relationship early on. That relationship culminated at one point in the iTunes service deal for Motorola's ROKR phones, which may have helped cement relations between the electronics company and the cellular provider, but not between the former and the phone producer.

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An eleventh hour change halved the number of expected security patches to four. However, missing from this month's updates are fixes for any of several zero-day attacks affecting the Microsoft Office suite.

No reasons were given for the change of plan, but when updates are pulled, quality assurance issues are generally the cause. One of the removed updates was for an Office flaw, but it is not clear whether the fix was for any of the aforementioned issues.

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In the ongoing movement by both credit card companies and mobile phone manufacturers to turn cellular phones into virtual wallets, Nokia and Visa announced a deal Tuesday which would create a global payment system.

Like other planned offerings, this latest platform would use Near-Field Communication (NFC) to send payment data to the retailer. With a push of a button, the user could pay for groceries or other purchases.

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AT MACWORLD - While there has been some talk of Apple potentially developing a tablet version of its MacBook laptops, at least one company is not waiting for the Cupertino company to act.

El Segundo, Calif.-based Axiotron launched the "ModBook" at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco Monday. The device is essentially a modified MacBook laptop with a new 13.3" LCD and the addition of true pen input and optional GPS functionality.

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