While WiMAX has been around for several years, it has seen slow adoption here in the United States. The reasoning behind this, says Aperto Networks' director of product management Dean Chang, is business decisions on behalf of who owns the WiMAX spectrum.

In an interview with BetaNews on the cusp of the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas, Chang said it is the wireless carriers who own much of the spectrum -- namely Sprint Nextel and Verizon -- and they are holding off for the mobile implementations of the technology. That isn't due until 2007, he says.

Continue reading →

Google took a step further into the content business on Thursday, kicking off a new community Web site dedicated to football, or soccer as it is known in the United States. The search engine joined up with Nike to build Joga.com, which is based on Google's Orkut social networking site. Users can add pictures, videos and blogs, and link up with friends.

Joga users can build their own football teams, find local fields and even play other nearby Joga teams. "Whether we've succeeded, of course, will be up to all of you to determine. We look forward to seeing football-crazy people from around the world playing as beautifully as possible at Joga.com," said Google software engineer Pedram Keyani.

Continue reading →

Microsoft on Thursday rebranded its FrontBridge offering as Exchange Hosted Services, which provides e-mail and instant messaging solutions to businesses who want to avoid setting up the technology in house. EHS focuses on security and centers around four areas: filtering, archiving, backup and encryption.

Microsoft also said it plans to roll out version 5.3 of EHS in April, improving searches, language support and accessibility features. The new release will also enable administrators to force users to choose strong passwords. Version 6 of EHS is slated to debut alongside Exchange "12" in 2007 with support for hosted calendar and contacts.

Continue reading →

eBay disclosed Thursday that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had ruled in its favor earlier this week, upholding an earlier decision that a patent awarded to MercExchange was "obvious" and should have not been issued. The two sides are currently facing off in the U.S. Supreme Court over eBay's use of the "Buy it Now" feature.

A District Court had found that the service infringed on patents owned by MercExchange. However, instead of issuing an injunction, the court awarded the company a monetary judgment. An appeals court later ruled an injunction was warranted. The rejected patent is central to the Supreme Court case, and eBay said its contents were referred to repeatedly during arguments Wendesday. While MercExhchange is permitted to respond, the auction site said it was unlikely any new arguments would change the USPTO's view.

Continue reading →

Press reports indicate that Sony's proprietary Universal Media Disc may be in danger of failure as a movie format. Although sales of the PlayStation Portable -- the device used to play the disc -- are quite impressive, sales of movies in the format have been lackluster at best.

UMD movie releases have become more sporadic, and some studios have either stopped producing the disc or cut back on plans.

Continue reading →

Microsoft's battle against the European Commission has moved forward on two fronts. The company was denied the right to force its rivals to reveal communications with the EU Wednesday, and a hearing on whether Microsoft has complied with a 2004 antitrust ruling began Thursday.

On Wednesday, a California judge refused to force Sun and Oracle to provide internal documents that would assist the company's case. U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Trumbull said in her decision that as a matter of courtesy, she would not interfere with the legal proceedings of a foreign court.

Continue reading →

Popular viral video site YouTube.com earlier this week made some moves to ensure that copyrighted material was not making it on to its site. Effective immediately, the length of videos would be limited to ten minutes or less. In an analysis by the company, it said a majority of those longer videos were copyrighted.

"We're constantly trying to balance the rights of copyright owners with the rights of our users," the company said in a statement.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has begun a limited beta test of its upcoming Windows Live Mail Desktop, BetaNews has learned. The offering is intended to provide users of Windows Live Mail and Hotmail with client-side access to e-mail services. While such a feature was previously only available to paid subscribers, Live Mail Desktop would expand the offering to all users.

"We felt it was important to enable broader email client access to our customers, but also balance these needs with those of running a responsible business," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

Continue reading →

Press reports indicate that AMD has hired away one of the leading designers of the Itanium processor, along with eight of his colleagues, from competitor Intel. Samuel Naffziger had only been with the company for less than a year, having been hired away previously from Hewlett Packard in 2005.

AMD confirmed the move Wednesday and said Naffziger would work on chip design as a senior fellow. However, the company would not elaborate on the work he or his counterparts would be doing. While Intel has downplayed the loss, Naffziger played a key part in several chip launches, including the McKinley and Montecito processors.

Continue reading →

TiVo faced off against EchoStar Communications in court on Wednesday, telling a jury that the satellite TV operator's Dish Network is infringing on TiVo's patent regarding the pausing of live television. Dish claims it invented its own digital video recorder and says it did not steal any technology from TiVo.

TiVo received its patent in 2001, but until now it has been largely unenforced. Industry watchers say the case could have a big impact on the company's bottom line if it is able to extract royalties from makers of TiVo-like devices. EchoStar, however, asserts that the patent is not enforcaeble and plans to detail how its own technology differs from TiVo.

Continue reading →

Microsoft said Wednesday it would license several of its hardware technologies to third-party manufacturers, as part of a broader effort to open up the company's innovations to others. Microsoft's U2, tilt wheel and magnifier technologies would be offered as part of the program.

U2 technology was developed by Microsoft to allow a peripheral device to automatically detect whether it needs a USB or PS2 port in order to operate. The tilt wheel enables the component to be tilted from side to side and up and down to move the cursor, and the magnifier allows a user to easily magnify data on the screen.

Continue reading →

Apple on Tuesday joined Windows benchmarking consortium BAPco, fueling speculation of its possible future moves. The group's benchmarks are used by computer companies Dell, HP and Toshiba, as well as publications such as CNET, Ziff Davis Media, and Computer Shopper magazine.

The move has stirred speculation across the Internet. Some believe that Apple may be interested in having the benchmarking tools ported to Mac OS X in order to more fairly compare Apple's desktops and laptops to equivalent Windows-based systems.

Continue reading →

In an effort to fend off competition from Verizon's FiOS service, which offers download speeds of up to 15Mbit per second, Comcast has doubled the speed of its top-tier broadband service to 16Mbit. The change is currently being rolled out in a few markets, including Reston, Va.; Sarasota, Fla.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; and Howard County, Md.

Along with the faster downloads, users will now be able to upload at a speed of 1Mbit per second. The service costs $52.95 USD per month. Other cable operators such as Cox and Adelphia have taken a similar approach to Verizon encroaching on their territory. Comcast says its move was not made specifically in response to the competition, but simply to test new applications it can offer with such high broadband speeds.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has acknowledged that a planned update to the way Internet Explorer renders multimedia on Web pages could cause some serious problems, and promised to give developers an extra two months to modify their pages to ensure a smooth transition.

The Redmond company was forced to make the changes in response to a patent dispute with Eolas Technologies. The fix would affect the way ActiveX controls are displayed on Web pages, according to experts. If no changes were made, a user would have to "activate" an ActiveX or Java control before it would be usable.

Continue reading →

In an effort to shield itself from possible legal action, Apple announced the availability of a software update Wednesday that can set a maximum volume setting on the iPod. The update is available for fifth generation iPods and the iPod nano. Furthermore, parents could also set a maximum volume setting and lock it with a combination code, the company said.

"With the increased attention in this area, we want to offer customers an easy to use option to set their own personal volume limit," Apple marketing president Greg Joswiak said in a statement. The software update is available immediately from the iPod software download page, and is compatible with any accessory plugged into the headphone jack, as well as the iPod Radio Remote.

Continue reading →