Hitachi introduced the first commercially available one-terabyte hard drive on Friday, delivering on a promise made nearly two years ago. The drive uses perpendicular recording technology in order to store data.

The Deskstar 7K1000 is slated to beginning shipping in the first quarter of this year at a retail price of $399 USD, or about 40 cents per gigabyte. In addition, Hitachi will also release a version of the 1TB drive, called the CinemaStar, aimed at the burgeoning DVR market.

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Even though XM Satellite Radio has achieved a positive cash flow, lagging subscriber growth to competitor Sirius is problematic. However, the news of both services moving ever so slowly towards profitability made Wall Street happy.

Once far outpacing its smaller rival in subscriber growth, XM now finds itself being outpaced by Sirius by over a 2 to 1 margin. For the crucial fourth quarter, the company added about 442,000 new subscribers, compared with 905,000 for Sirius.

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There are two networking standards battlefronts shaping up this week for CES: 802.11 WiFi, where the question is, "To 'n' or not to 'n?,"' and 802.16, the WiMAX standard that's battling with UMB (the former EV-DO Rev. C) for supremacy in the municipal-area broadband space. Verizon is squarely behind EV-DO, while Cingular is riding high on its EDGE network. Today, Sprint Nextel evened the stakes by bringing Nokia on board as its infrastructure supplier for WiMAX.

This announcement gives each of the three biggest cellular carriers in the US a well-distinguished position on broadband Internet coverage for their respective handsets. Last August, Sprint announced WiMAX as its own way forward, though the company had made overtures toward WiMAX adoption as early as February 2005. Today, the company said it could spend as much as $2.8 billion over the next two years in rolling out its broadband infrastructure. Intel, Motorola, Samsung, and now Nokia will be the big benefactors.

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Microsoft will begin the New Year with eight security patches, of which at least two will be critical. Three will affect Microsoft Office, one each for vulnerabilities in Visual Studio and both Windows and Office, and three for flaws in Office alone.

At least one of the patches for Office is expected to address some of the zero-day attack threats that have appeared during the month of December. In recent months, Microsoft's productivity suite has become a more popular target for attackers.

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Taiwanese manufacturer Luxpro made headlines in March 2005 when it first showed off its first-generation iPod Shuffle clone at CeBIT. The company is now striking back, suing Apple for $100 million over lost sales.

Luxpro was emboldened by an appeals court decision which reversed an earlier ruling that the company had indeed infringed upon Apple's Shuffle design. Originally called the "Super Shuffle," Luxpro later changed the name to the Tangent in an attempt to avoid legal action.

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While Microsoft is adamant that sales of its Zune player are 'meeting expectations,' data from market research firm Current Analysis indicates that the device failed to break into the top 10 in sales, and is competing in the wrong market segment. As a hard drive based player, Microsoft has already limited itself to 20 percent of the overall digital music player market. Eight of the top ten players were Apple models, with the remaining two belonging to SanDisk.

However, within the HDD player segment, Redmond is actually performing quite well, with about one out of every eight players being a Zune, or 12 percent. Current's sales data only includes sales from five retailers: Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Staples and RadioShack. The player is found in most of their stores. Publicly, Microsoft has said it expects to sell 1 million players by June.

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Though the formal press release has yet to be delivered, press services including Reuters were formally alerted this afternoon that movies made using hybrid multiple-layer, Blu-Ray/HD DVD/DVD disc manufacturing system for which Warner Home Video applied for a patent earlier this year, will be formally revealed to the public by Warner Home Video next week at CES 2007.

It may seem like magic, but Warner's format, which reports say will be christened Total HD, can sandwich up to three data layers atop one another - not one format on one side and another on the flip side - with each layer capable of being read by its respective player. Up to 22 configurations were described in the application, including mixtures using the high-capacity DVD format SD-9, with the objective being to create a single disc that can be operated in more than one type of player - conceivably as many as three.

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Last September, the French Security Incident Response Team (FrSIRT) discovered an exploit made feasible by way of intentionally malformed arguments placed to certain methods in Adobe’s Acrobat Web reader control. Adobe advised its customers of the flaw in November, and issued a patch for Acrobat 7 in early December.

But when a pair of Italian security engineers demonstrated a new way to exploit the same flaw, in a presentation before a hackers’ convention in Berlin just before Christmas that at one time was supposed to have been entitled, “Hijacking AJAX for Fun and Profit,” FrSIRT picked up on the news as though it were a new discovery, issuing a fresh security bulletin.

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The ability to burn legally downloaded movies to DVD came one step closer to reality Thursday, as a studio-approved system to prevent piracy was introduced. However, there are still obstacles preventing widespread usage.

Called Qflix, the technology was produced by digital media software company Sonic Solutions. Compatible drives, media, and video services will display the Qflix logo to allow consumers to identify who supports the new technology.

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After having whetted the public's appetite for a high-definition console capable of playing both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats at this time last year, and then publicly withdrawing that plan, LG Electronics this morning announced it is jumping back into the high-def pool head first. The company is promising to provide "details" next week, at CES 2007 in Las Vegas, of a hybrid HD DVD / Blu-ray Disc player.

That is all LG is promising for the moment, "details." There's no name for the device just yet, only a promise that it will be unveiled in the US early this year. There's also a single sentence: "LG expects this technological breakthrough to end the confusion and inconvenience of competing high-definition disc formats for both content producers and consumers."

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eBay on Wednesday announced that it will raise fees in both its standard and automobile auctions, while also announcing that it was the number one online destination on both "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday."

In a letter sent to eBay users, eBay North America president Bill Cobb said the changes were necessary as part of a regular evaluation of its business structure. Increases are slated for the Insertion and Final Value Fees, as well as fees specific to eBay Motors that would take effect January 30.

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Among the many miniaturized technologies that will descend upon Las Vegas at CES 2007. Samsung is gearing up to add to the mix the second generation of solid-state hard disk drives. This at a time while users even today continue to discover the first generation.

Since August of 2005, Samsung has been shipping solid-state drives (SSD) using 4 gigabit (Gb) and 8 Gb NAND flash memory components, in 1.8" and 2.5" form factors, and last June announced a new model with a 32 gigabyte (GB, with a big "B") capacity. This morning, Samsung upped the ante with its announcement that it is shrinking the lithography for its NAND flash memory from 65 nm to 50 nm, and will be shipping 16 Gb NAND flash components in this quarter.

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Kodak and Sony have set aside their differences, with both parties announcing a cross-licensing arrangement concerning each other's digital camera and imaging patent portfolios. The settlement also ends any litigation filed by either company.

The spat between the two companies began in March 2004 when Kodak sued Sony, alleging the company was infringing on several of its digital photography patents. Not long after, Sony fired back by countersuing over infringement of its own patents.

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Although it has not released 2006 figures as of yet, Mozilla continues to generate revenue, mostly through lucrative deals with the various search providers. In 2005, the company posted revenues of $52.9 million, up sharply from $5.8 million in 2004, and $2.4 million in 2003. The increased revenue has allowed Mozilla to expand far larger than its original group of 10 people, chairman Mitchell Baker said.

If Mozilla would be a publicly traded company, its low expenses would be sure to make any investor happy. 2005 expenses totaled $8.2 million, of which the majority went to paying the increasing payroll of the rapidly growing company. "The unspent revenue provides a reserve fund that allows the Mozilla Foundation flexibility and long term stability," Baker said in a Web log post on Tuesday.

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A failed movie download service has taken Apple, Google and Napster to court, accusing them of violating patents for its digital entertainment platform. The technology covers methods to manage price and distribution of content.

Intertainer filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Friday. Altogether, the now-defunct service holds nine patents, although the lawsuit only involves the aforementioned patent, awarded to the company in 2005.

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