Sony Pictures said Tuesday that the first Blu-ray movies would be released on June 20, coinciding with the release of the first Blu-ray DVD player from Samsung, and a Sony VAIO Blu-ray PC. Seven titles are slated to launch that day, including "50 First Dates," "The Fifth Element," "Hitch" and the "House of Flying Daggers." The studio plans to release additional titles in the coming weeks.

Sony is locked in a fierce battle for supremacy in the race to next-generation DVD. Toshiba has already beaten Blu-ray to the punch with the release of its first HD DVD player and movies back in April, but Blu-ray supporters point to the potential breadth of content to be available on the platform. No sales figures have been released for HD DVD players, but only 10,000 players were shipped at launch, according to Toshiba.

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Blockbuster shot back at Netflix on Tuesday, filing a antitrust counterclaim in federal court saying that the online movie rental service's lawsuit is based on unenforceable patents. The company also says that Netflix is attempting to monopolize the online rental business.

With 1.3 million subscribers as of the first quarter of 2006, Blockbuster Online is much smaller than Netflix, which has close to five million members. The brick and mortar movie retailer has made online rentals a key part of its future business, as in-store revenue is expected to fall by as much as a quarter through the end of the decade.

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Microsoft has released its super-sized Patch Tuesday, heavy on "critical" patches, with eight rated as such. Four other patches rounded out the list of updates, with three patches rated "important" and one rated "moderate."

Of the eight most serious fixes, two affect Internet Explorer, one for JScript within Internet Explorer, one in Windows Media Player, two in Windows, one in Word, and another in PowerPoint.

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Microsoft's new certification program, Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA), which has been in beta testing for over a year, went live Tuesday. MCA is a system of certification based on seven competencies as displayed to a four-member peer review board.

Microsoft says it has striven for an objective, vender-agnostic system that measures the candidate's ability against an ideal, rather than against the performance of others. Skills are assessed in areas of: technical depth, technical breadth, communication, organizational dynamics, leadership, strategy, and tactics.

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Following through on a promise made in April, Microsoft at TechEd 2006 released the first Community Technology Preview of SQL Server Everywhere Edition, a new version of the company's database product for client systems and mobile devices.

With a footprint of under 2 megabytes on disk, SQL Server Everywhere features a subset of the full server functionality and is designed to provide an organized data store for clients when offline. Everywhere Edition can synchronize back with a full SQL Server database, or operate independently.

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Microsoft on Tuesday released version 11.2.4 of Office 2004 for Mac, which corrects a vulnerability that could allow a hacker to overwrite a system's memory with malicious code. The cumulative update weighs in at over 57MB and is available for download from Microsoft.

11.2.4 additionally fixes problems in PowerPoint 2004 and Entourage 2004. The release is available for Mac OS X 10.2.8 or higher, and comes along with a critical fix for Microsoft Office on Windows. That patch corrects a Word vulnerability in which a malformed document could enable an attacker to take control of a system.

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The Recording Industry Association of America claims file sharing had been "contained," saying the market digital downloads continues to expand while illicit music swapping has seen flat growth, USA Today reported on Monday. The industry credits recent legal decisions with helping to combat piracy, as well as the increasing popularity of digital music stores.

The rise of digital music has been assisted by the increasing popularity of Apple's iPod and its accompanying iTunes Music Store, industry executives say. The service has sold over 1 billion tracks.

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Cingular on June 18 will deliver an update to customers with Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphones, which will enable them to receive e-mail as it comes in through push technology. The Messaging and Security Feature Pack connects to Exchange Server 2003 and additionally supports receiving calendar items, contacts and tasks.

The Direct Push feature will only be available to Cingular's B2B customers and will cost either $29.99 or $44.99 with a qualifying voice plan, depending on the phone. The update will also improve security and device management by bolstering password enforcement and adding remote password wipe, as well as certificate-based authentication and FIPS 140-2 certification.

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Adobe issued an update to its Lightroom professional photographer workflow software on Tuesday. The third release of the beta includes several features requested by testers, including the addition of a tool that helps users keep track of changes made to photos.

Lightroom is currently only available as a free download for the Macintosh, however Adobe says it plans to offer a Windows version in a future beta. The software could be considered a competitor to Apple's Aperture photo application, which the company released in October of last year.

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Google pushed an update to its popular Google Earth service Monday, including a major update to the satellite imagery that is a central feature of the product. The amount of available aerial imagery has been expanded by four times, the company said.

A version for Linux systems has been introduced with the most current beta. While the software has already been downloaded 100 million times, the service's move to Linux is likely to help accelerate adoption. Additionally, the software has been localized for French, Italian, German, and Spanish users.

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A worm that is exploiting a flaw within Yahoo Mail is currently making its way through the service, security firm Symantec warned on Monday. However, Yahoo has since offered a patch for the flaw, which it says affected only a vulnerability of its customers.

Called "Yamanner," the worm took advantage of a JavaScript issue within the client that affects all versions except for the current beta. It comes hidden in an e-mail titled "New Graphic Site" that when opened launches the worm.

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Microsoft on Tuesday took a page from the Apple playbook by releasing its own line of webcams, a joint effort of the Windows Live and Microsoft Hardware teams. The company says the new cams would dramatically simplify the video communications experience.

Two models will initially be released, the LifeCam VX-3000 and VX-6000, and are optimized for use with the Windows Live Messenger application. A feature called the Windows Live Call button on each model would allow for one-touch access to a buddy list tool that shows online friends.

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While nearly five years old, the PlayStation 2 continues to be a considerable force at retail in the United States, even outselling the Xbox 360, data from the NPD Group indicates. Only in one month since Microsoft launched its next generation console, April, has the company been able to best the venerable game system.

In May, the PS2 sold approximately 232,000 units to the Xbox 360's 221,000. In April, the roles were reversed, with the Xbox 360 outpacing the PS2 by about 90,000 consoles with an estimated 295,381 consoles sold.

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With Microsoft struggling to keep up with the demand for Windows Vista Beta 2, tech personality Chris Pirillo has taken the initiative to publish the 3.2-gigabite download using BitTorent. But Microsoft recommends against using a third party to obtain Vista code.

Those eager to try out the first public release of Microsoft's next generation operating system have been met with slow download speeds and timeouts. The Redmond company has even recommended that users place an order for a DVD copy rather than deal with the download wait times.

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Microsoft debuted at TechEd 2006 in Boston Monday Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0, comprising a suite of products intended to streamline processes across a company's financials, customer relationships, business services, human resources and the supply chain.

The offering uses Web services to bring together structured and unstructured data from different sources and tie them together into a single workflow. This allows for decision makers to see a complete view of their business processes and enables better decision making, chief technical officer Ray Ozzie explained in his Sunday night TechEd keynote.

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