Blockbuster's attempt to lure new subscribers to its online service through its "Total Access" program seems to be working, as the company finished the year with about 2.2 million subscribers, of which two million were paying accounts. Blockbuster Online says it signed up 500,000 paid subscribers during the quarter, more in line with the average net adds of its competitor Netflix.

Company chairman Jon Antioco credits the new option where Blockbuster Online subscribers are able to return and rent movies in store with a large part of the service's newfound success. "We believe this compelling and unique offering will make blockbuster.com the fastest growing online DVD rental service in 2007," he said in a statement. Netflix has yet to announce new subscriber numbers.

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Just before last Christmas, a patent rights holder called the Washington Research Institute, which manages patents for universities and their students, filed suit in US District Court in Washington against Matsushita, Samsung, and Nokia, claiming that chipsets they use in their Bluetooth-enabled handsets infringe upon patents they hold on behalf of an Arizona inventor.

While not a direct challenge to Bluetooth itself, the suit calls into question how manufacturers choose to enable Bluetooth in their products, and whether patent law can be leveraged to steer them into implementing Bluetooth in a certain way.

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EarthLink said Wednesday that its CEO had passed away a day previous, succumbing to complications from cancer. Garry Betty had stepped down in late November to take a leave of absence from the company.

Betty first joined EarthLink in 1996, after a stint as CEO of Digital Communications Associates. At the time, he was the youngest CEO ever of a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange.

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Continued tests by BetaNews on the form of the Win32 API message box call discovered two weeks ago, capable of crashing Microsoft Windows Vista as well as earlier versions, indicates that while the executable code remains a problem, its capacity for damage to Windows computers may be limited to merely crashing the system.

Last month, security engineers discovered the latest incarnation of a problem first encountered eight years ago: When an API function dating back to the first version of the Win32 library tells the system to display a dialog box as though it were coming from the OS itself and not the active application, and when the text to be displayed in that message box appears to contain what may be a disused character code sequence, then memory becomes corrupted. At least one, sometimes more, repeated calls can cause Windows to crash.

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After AT&T's offer late yesterday of expanded concessions, including some that would guarantee neutrality in its network and routing pricing arrangements, the US Federal Communications Commission voted to approve the merger of AT&T Inc. and BellSouth, the former Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) that was spun off from AT&T Corp. in 1984.

As a result of this merger - which was announced in March of this year - none of the RBOC entities formed after the original AT&T Corp. breakup remain in their post-breakup form. The names Pacific Telesis, US West, Southwestern Bell, Ameritech, NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, and soon BellSouth will be relegated to history.

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After a daring programmer evidently seeking notoriety posted a relatively convincing looking homemade video to YouTube on Wednesday, purportedly showing an HD DVD video disc with AACS copy protection being cracked on a Windows-based system, a spokesperson for the AACS Licensing Authority told Reuters this morning it is seriously investigating the legitimacy of the claim.

It was the AACS LA that released last February - after production of high-definition disc components had already begun - interim specifications for how high-definition content must be formatted and organized to enable protection from components that will utilize AACS copy protection. The first wave of HD DVD and Blu-ray disc players did not implement AACS in full; most notably, they omitted the Internet-oriented clearing house scheme for mandatory managed copy (MMC), which AACS LA now says is optional.

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For Apple, 2006 marked yet another year in the company's dramatic resurgence. This included the transition of the Macintosh platform to Intel processors, the continued dominance of the iPod music player, and the company's continued evolution into an entertainment provider.

It wasn't all roses however: the company had to deal with accusations of improper stock option granting, and had to deal with legal issues surrounding iTunes and the iPod from its competitors.

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American auto maker Ford is hoping an agreement with Microsoft to outfit its entire fleet of vehicles with computer and Bluetooth technology will help to turn around the company's fortunes. The announcement is expected to be made in January.

The system will be called "Sync," and will eventually be offered as an option on all Ford vehicles. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, car owners will be able to use the system to place hands-free cell phone calls or transfer information wirelessly, such as music or e-mail.

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In a statement accompanying Apple's delayed filing of its annual 10-K report with the US Securities and Exchange Commission today, following an internal audit to discover stock options-based accounting irregularities, the senior members of the audit committee - former US Vice President Al Gore, and former IBM CFO Jerry York - announced that the company's board of directors "has complete confidence in Steve Jobs and the senior management team."

It is an important statement from an important source, especially in light of news that broke just after Christmas from a California legal journal stating that the committee discovered Jobs received a backdated stock options grant that was erroneously recorded as having been approved by the board of directors, and that Jobs may have known the board was unaware.

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The PayPal division of eBay, which operates the Web's most respected online payment voucher system, is beginning beta trials of a next-generation online payment system, in cooperation with MasterCard. Using what's described as a virtual debit card, a customer will be able to make a PayPal-authorized purchase using a one-time number good only for that transaction.

Perhaps the most innovative feature of the VDC system, the implications of which could be enormous if the trial is successful, is that it generates a new MasterCard number for each purchase. That number will be automatically filled in forms for retailers that accept MasterCard, by way of a browser-based add-in program. Once that number is validated, and a supplemental verification takes place between PayPal and MasterCard, that number would be discontinued.

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In a ruling this morning, US District Court Judge Joseph A. Farnan, Jr., has accepted the findings of the Special Master appointed to oversee the discovery of documents in AMD's antitrust case against Intel, and is ordering Intel to produce documents that may show that company entered into exclusivity agreements with retailers in Germany, the effect of which was to limit AMD's ability to upgrade its fabrication facilities in Texas, thereby hurting US customers.

Last month, Judge Farnan ruled that much of AMD's original case is impossible to prove under current US antitrust law, which restricts actionable conduct to business transactions made here, with the exception of some export arrangements. But on December 15, Special Master Vincent Poppiti found that, as long as AMD intends to proceed with its plans to argue why the remainder of its case is viable, it has the right to ask that the court compel Intel to produce relevant documents that may help it bolster its case, even if the judge throws out the rest of the case later.

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A report in this morning's Financial Times, following up on a story in a California legal journal posted to Law.com on Tuesday, states that 7.5 million stock options at an exercise price of $18.30 per share were granted to Apple CEO Steve Jobs without authorization from the company's Board of Directors. The report states that documents were later falsified to make it appear as though the Board did approve of the grant - a practice whose penalty could involve huge fines and jail time.

Tomorrow is the deadline for Apple to produce a delayed 10-K filing for the US Securities and Exchange Commission, whose balance sheets could be adjusted to account for previously unstated expenses involving the granting of options during 2001. Up to this point, Apple's representatives have maintained that Jobs never exercised those options that were granted him, instead trading them in for legitimate securities.

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The Associated Press reported this morning that Google is expanding a pilot program representing the company's second attempt to crack the realm of traditional print advertising.

Two months after launching a trial run with 100 selected advertisers and 66 newspapers, the online ad firm will soon be rolling out the next stage of its print publishing campaign in earnest, enabling online advertisers to purchase surplus print ad inventory.

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BetaNews notes this afternoon with sadness and reminiscence the passing of the United States’ 38th President. Gerald R. Ford was never elected to the office – in fact, he had been appointed House Minority Leader in 1965, as well as to every office thereafter.

Having calmed, if not completely soothed, the country’s mood after Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Ford became the personification of the quintessential pinch-hitter: reliable, safe, sturdier in his policies than at times on his own feet.

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In a move that could lead to the integration of such features as inline linear editing on camcorders conceivably as soon as 2008, Samsung announced today it will begin mass production of a single-chip one-gigabit (1 Gbit) low-power double-data-rate (DDR) DRAM package, for use in mobile handsets and small digital camcorders, as soon as the second quarter of next year.

With production beginning soon, it’s very likely that Samsung will have some type of demonstration planned for the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, preliminary festivities for which begin just a week from Friday.

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