Although it reached a very lenient settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Take-Two's troubles over the "Hot Coffee" mod are not over yet. The company announced Monday afternoon that it has received subpoenas from a grand jury in New York.

The subpoenas demand documents regarding what executives and directors of the game publisher knew about the sex scenes exposed by the modification. However, Take-Two says neither it, nor its executives, are under investigation. In response to the Hot Coffee debacle, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have pushed for stricter game regulations, but no federals laws have been passed.

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With patent litigation becoming a bigger issue in the technology industry, a decision Monday by the Supreme Court to hear a case on what could be considered an obvious invention -- and thus not patentable -- could hold significant repercussions.

Several tech companies have taken interest in a patent case involving KSR International and a company called Teleflex. At issue is patents surrounding gas pedal technology that were held by Teleflex. While an initial federal court ruling threw out Teleflex's patents, calling them "obvious," an appeals court overturned that decision.

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Music retailer Tower Records will unveil its digital music download service on Tuesday, complete with 1.2 million tracks priced at 99 cents per song. Powered by Puretracks, tracks would be provided in Windows Media Format, Reuters reports.

As with the company's brick-and-mortar stores, Tower's digital store will provide a range of music across many genres not commonly found in other retail chains. Additionally, the company plans to offer the files encoded at a higher bitrate to increase sound quality.

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Sony admitted Monday that it had made missteps with its Walkman line of products, while also acknowledging that it was gambling by setting the price of the PlayStation 3 so high.

However, the company remains confident that it will be able to turn its Walkman business around despite losing considerable ground to the iPod and other competitors. Similarly, it expects the "value" of the PS3 to help sell the console.

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Intel on Monday rolled out its newest dual-core Xeon processor, known by its code-name "Woodcrest" and branded the 5100 series. The chip will serve to help battle increasing competition from rival AMD, which has made major strides in the server market with its Opteron processors.

Woodcrest is targeted at the server market with a design that focuses on power efficiency. The chip offers a 40 percent power reduction while providing performance improves of up to 135 percent, Intel claims. The 5100 is based on Intel's 65-nanometer process, and is compatible with the current "Bensley" Xeon platform already in use.

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At a strategy event in San Francisco Monday, Microsoft unveiled its new "unified communications" plan, which ties together the company's server and Office products to establish a single experience for instant messaging, e-mail, VoIP, conferencing and mobile calling.

The driving idea behind unified communications is to enable businesses to stay connected 24 hours a day with an increasingly mobile workforce. "PC software makes it possible to see if someone is available before you send them an IM or an e-mail, what we call 'presence,' and calling someone can be as simple as clicking on their name," explained Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division.

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Italian researchers have released data that seems to indicate that cell phone emissions do "excite" the brain, however it's not clear if they do any damage. While the phone is in use, the area of the cortex nearest to the phone does show changes, but returns to normal within an hour.

Researchers at the Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan, Italy performed the test on 15 young males, who made a 45-minute call on a GSM phone operating in the 900 MHz band, a common mobile frequency in Europe. In a dozen participants, a change in brain activity in the cortex was noted.

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In a move to bolster its RAW capabilities, Adobe on Monday acquired the assets of Pixmantec ApS, a Danish software company that develops the RawShooter product for digital photography. RawShooter's workflow management and processing technology will be integrated into Adobe's new Lightroom software, currently in beta.

The RAW format, which provides uncompressed picture data, has become the centerpiece of digital photography, as once high-end cameras reach the consumer market. Adobe will discontinue the RawShooter products once Lightroom is ready for release. However, an upgrade path will be offered to existing Pixmantec customers. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

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UPDATED Microsoft said Friday that it was preparing to migrate its Spaces blogging service to its Windows Live brand, and with the change the company will add new features and tighter integration with other Windows Live services.

No specific date for the switch has been announced, but it is expected in July.

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Spanish startup FON, which is aiming to set up a worldwide network of free Wi-Fi hotspots, said Sunday it would sell 1 million routers for $5 or 5 euros, as long as the purchaser promises to use it to share his Internet connection. The program will cost the company some $60 million to undertake.

Either a Linksys WRT54GL or Buffalo WHRG54S would be supplied to the user with the FON software preinstalled. Once a user shares the connection, in return the user would be able to use any FON hotspot for free. If not, a $3 daily access charge would apply.

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Apple said Monday that CEO Steve Jobs and a team of executives would preview the next version of Mac OS X, code-named "Leopard," in a keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference in August. As well as the demonstration, the company said it planned to give attendees information on how to take advantage of the new features in Apple's next-generation operating system.

The event will run from August 7 to 11, 2006. The preview of Leopard was somewhat expected, as the Cupertino company normally previews its new operating systems at the confab. Details on the expected new features coming in Leopard were not disclosed, although it is known that Boot Camp, the technology that makes running Windows possible on a Mac, will be included in the release.

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Microsoft late Friday delivered the first build of Windows Vista to follow the release of Beta 2 at WinHEC in May. Build 5456 is available to technical beta testers, and includes better user interface performance along with User Account Control tweaks to lessen the number of authentication notices.

UAC is designed to keep applications running in a reduced privilege mode, so malicious programs cannot do extensive damage to the operating system. However, many Vista beta users have found the feature frustrating, as seemingly basic operations require multiple confirmations. Microsoft will not make interim Vista beta builds available to Customer Preview Program customers, who must wait until RC1 for a new release.

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The lead program manager for WinFS, Quentin Clark, has announced that his product is no more -- at least in its current form. Just one week after a slew of WinFS sessions at TechEd, Microsoft has decided not to continue development on the new file system, canceling the expected Beta 2 release.

Although the status of WinFS has already changed a number of times, it seems Microsoft has finally given up on once-lofty plans to completely re-architect the way Windows stores files. The idea of WinFS, or Windows File Store, was to create a "sea of data" that abolishes the need for the standard file and folder hierarchy.

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Microsoft's Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative has netted its first criminal: 23 year-old Jayson Harris from Davenport, Iowa was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay $57,000 to victims for a phishing scheme perpetrated in 2003 and 2004.

Harris created a fraudulent MSN billing Web site and sent notices to MSN customers instructing them to update their account and billing information. Harris claimed that customers would receive a 50 percent discount off their next bill for updating their credit card data, which was then transmitted to an e-mail account.

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Adware company Claria this week took the unusual step of telling users to uninstall its software, following through on a promise to exit the adware business in order to focus on personalized search. Claria says it will stop sending pop-up ads to users' computers on July 1.

"Our software will continue to collect data about your web usage from your computer for research and other purposes as described in our Privacy Statement until September 30, 2006, unless you uninstall the software before this date," the company said in a statement on its Web site. "It is recommended that you uninstall all of GAIN Supported Software presently on your computer."

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