Citing recent growth in "cybersports." Microsoft this week announced it would become the premier sponsor of the World Cyber Games, the top competition in the video game industry. The Redmond company will provide its Xbox 360 console for WCG events, along with games and marketing.

Microsoft Windows and the Xbox will become the exclusive platforms for both PC and console games in the WCG. The company's sponsorship will also cover three championship events in South Korea, the United States and the the WCG Grand Finals in Monza, Italy.

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Kaspersky Labs is seeking beta testers for the second version of its Anti-Virus Mobile product, which protects Symbian based smartphones, including those from Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung and Siemens. New features of the 2.0 release include faster performance, quarantine support, as well as spam blocking for SMS and MMS messages.

In addition, "The user can customize Kaspersky Anti-Virus Mobile settings, monitor current protection status, and view application logs with the results of application activities," the company says. Kaspersky plans to add support for Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform with Beta 2, which is currently in development. More information and downloads of Anti-Virus Mobile 2.0 are available from Kaspersky's Web site.

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Fox has signed a six-year revenue sharing agreement with its 187 affiliates that will allow it to make sixty percent of its prime time schedule available online. The move follows a similar one by Disney's ABC network that will put some of its most popular shows online a day after they originally air starting in May.

Details of the Fox agreement have not been ironed out, including what shows would be made available and how they would be delivered, but the network is considering allowing local affiliates to place the programs on their own Web sites. The agreement is an extension of one struck in 1993 that gave the local affiliates some responsibility in paying for the rights to air National Football League games.

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In a decision that could have implications for the entire digital video recorder industry, TiVo on Thursday won a patent infringement case against EchoStar Communications. A jury awarded the DVR manufacturer $73 million and found that EchoStar willfully infringed on TiVo's patent.

The patent covers how TiVo is able to play one television show while recording another, in addition to various DVR functions including the pausing of live television. EchoStar, which is accused of using TiVo's technology in its recorders for the DISH Network satellite TV service, vowed to appeal the decision.

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Samsung will take the wraps off its first Ultra-Mobile PC on May 1, according to an invitation sent to journalists this week. The event, to be held in San Francisco, will mark the launch of the first device based on Microsoft's Origami concept that made waves at CeBIT in March.

Samsung's UMPC, known as Q1, will retail in South Korea for $1264 -- more expensive than Microsoft's target price range of $500 to $1000. Prices for the United States and Europe were not announced, nor were hardware specifications of the device. UMPCs largely resemble a small Tablet PC with 7-inch touch screen, and run a full version of Windows XP with special software.

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A new report out by market research firm Forrester suggests that Apple could double its market share through defections from the Windows platform alone. The firm said that much of this has to do with customers' deep distrust of Microsoft.

Apple, along with TiVo, was the only company whose brand trust increased in the last two years. Consumers trust technology brands like Bose, Dell, Sony, Panasonic, and Hewlett-Packard the most, while Toshiba, Hitachi, Gateway, and LG joined Microsoft at the bottom.

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Microsoft on Thursday released an updated version of Windows Defender Beta 2, the company's anti-spyware and malware application that will be integrated into Windows Vista. The release fixes bugs in signature updating, polishes the user interface and improves the software's SpyNet reporting capabilities.

Responding to feedback from users, Windows Defender can now remain active in the system tray at all times. The SpyNet feature enables users to send reports back to Microsoft and help the company keep ahead of malware authors. "With these upcoming changes to our reporting network and our core technology, we will improve our detection and removal capabilities even more in the upcoming months," said Microsoft's Anti-Malware Engineering Team.

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Those suspected of using PayPal to avoid the Internal Revenue Service will soon risk having their accounts searched by the agency thanks to a recent court ruling. A U.S. District Court judge in San Jose, Calif., has ruled that under certain conditions it would be legal to access an individual's PayPal account.

While the ruling was handed down in February, the Justice Department said it had decided not to disclose it publicly until a press briefing earlier in the week.

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Orb Networks, maker of software that enables Windows XP users to stream digital media from their home PCs to anywhere with a network connection, announced

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Google may be working towards providing a method for users to make searches on the Web simply by speaking commands, according to a recent patent filing. Although filed in February 2001, the voice search patent was approved and published on Tuesday.

According to the patent abstract, Google's system would use voice recognition technology to build keywords that are entered into the search engine. "The system then provides the weighted boolean query to a search system and provides the results of the search system to a user," the filing states.

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The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Thursday a recall of 102,000 Disney-branded DVD players that were sold between April 2005 and March 2006. The devices contain battery packs that can overheat and potentially explode while being charged. 17 reports of overheating were filed with the Commission.

The affected DVD players came in a variety of themes of children and were sold at Disney theme parks, catalogs and at discount stores across the United States for between $70 and $130. Customers are urged to contact Memorex Electronics -- the company that distributed the batteries -- for a replacement. More information is available on the company's Web site.

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The city of Portland, Oregon announced Wednesday that Mountain View, Calif., based MetroFi had been awarded a contract to build a public Wi-Fi network in the city. The startup beat out two competitors, including EarthLink.

The Portland contract will mark the first time that EarthLink has lost a bid to build a municipal wireless network.

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Sprint unveiled a new service Thursday that will allow parents to track their children via cell phones in an attempt to attract more families to the carrier. Parents would be able to see the location of their children via a map on either a computer or a cell phone.

Accuracy of the reading would vary from as little as two yards to as many as several hundred yards, according to Sprint.

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Calling it "the old beta versus VHS dilemma," Blockbuster Online said Thursday it will carry both HD DVD and Blu-ray high-definition movies when they begin to ship next month. Subscribers can begin adding HD DVD films to their rental queues on April 18, and Blu-ray titles are set to be available on May 23.

Blockbuster also held a survey among its members and found that 55 percent had an HD-capable television and 47 percent were "very interested" in the new technology. Still, only one-third of subscribers said they planned to purchase HD-capable DVD hardware due to high pricing and the lack of a unified standard.

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Apple on Thursday released Aperture 1.1, a major update to the company's new post production tool for photographers that brings support for Intel-based Macs and improved RAW image rendering. The company says MacBook Pro users will find image editing and searching is now up to four times faster.

Apple has also added new RAW Fine Tuning controls, a built-in color meter that displays pixel values in RGB, Lab or CMYK, as well as enhanced export functionality. In addition, version 1.1 now supports the Nikon 200D and Canon 30D. The price of Aperture has dropped to $299, and buyers of version 1.0 will receive a $200 coupon for use at the Apple Online Store along with a free upgrade.

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