William Henderson has found out that working for the U.S. Postal Service may not be so bad after all. The 58-year-old former Postmaster General is now the Chief Operating Officer of Netflix, replacing Tom Dillion, who plans to retire in April. The company cited Henderson's experience with large amounts of mail as one of the primary reasons for his hiring.

Henderson was the Chief Operating Officer of the USPS from 1994 to 1998, and was promoted to CEO and Postmaster General in 1998. He held both positions up until his retirement in 2001. "Bill Henderson is about the only person on the planet who looks at our volume of mail as a trickle," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in a statement.

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French chipmaker STMicro said on Wednesday it will introduce a disposable chip that would be able to detect the avian flu in humans. The test would be available for healthcare providers by the fall, just in time for the next flu season, the company said.

While the virus has not yet made the necessary mutations in order to transmit easily among humans, scientists say the avian flu carries the highest risk of a worldwide pandemic of any flu strain in decades.

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After almost 400 comments, we have chosen the winners of our second Windows Live Messenger beta invite giveaway. Many of you came up with excellent slogans for Windows Vista, and I'm sure a few Microsoft marketing folks were reading through the responses.

And the winners are..

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Apple on Wednesday addressed privacy concerns over its iTunes Mini-Store, adding a dialogue that allows users to opt out of the service. The Mini-Store feature came with the launch of iTunes 6.0.2, but was quickly criticized for not explicitly saying it was sending data back to Apple through a third party.

The data collected by the application was being sent to 2o7.net when the Mini-Store was open. The domain is registered to Omniture, a Utah-based company that uses cookies to "generally improve the user experience on the Web." As part of the changes, the Mini-Store must now be activated manually by the user in order to function. A message will now greet the user at first launch, saying "Apple does not keep any information related to the contents of your music Library."

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Microsoft has made available prerelease versions of the Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation, which comprise two of the core building blocks within Windows Vista. The company has also issued a Go-Live license for each, signifying the products' state of readiness.

The idea of the releases is to enable developers to build applications and solutions on the new technology and be ready by the time Vista reaches store shelves. The two foundations are part of the new WinFX programming model, which Microsoft has backported to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

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Just in time for the Treo 700w and Cingular 2125, Opera Software has made available a beta version of Opera 8.5 for Windows based smartphones running Windows Mobile 2003 and the latest version 5.0. The Web browser supports all major Web standards, including CSS2, DOM 2 and JavaScript.

The Opera 8.5 beta works on all Pocket PC devices as well, and employs the company's rendering technology that dynamically reformats a Web page to fit the screen size. The mobile browser has begun shipping on the Sharp W-ZERO3 device in Japan, and is available for download now.

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Cingular on Wednesday announced the availability of the self-branded 2125 Windows Mobile Smartphone in retail locations throughout the United States. The device is the first traditional-style cell phone to include the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system, the company said.

The 2125 has been available through the company's Web site since December 12. Built by HTC, the phone includes Bluetooth, quad-band capability and EDGE data support.

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Despite rumors of its demise, Napster said on Wednesday that its subscription service had surpassed 500,000 subscribers, including some 50,000 non-paying college users.

Earlier in the week, Web log Digital Music News cited sources within Napster who painted a much less rosy picture of the company. According to the alleged source, layoffs are imminent and executives were looking into exit options.

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The release of Sony's highly anticipated PlayStation 3 may not occur in the U.S. until the holiday season of 2006, analysts say. Furthermore, in what could be potentially damaging to the gaming console's overall sales, the number of titles available may be far less than competitor Xbox 360.

A working version of the console was notably absent at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, and Sony CEO Howard Stringer left any mention of the PS3 out of his keynote address. A non-working model was displayed behind glass, and only non-playable demos of games were shown at Sony's booth.

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Seagate on Tuesday began shipping its first notebook drive using perpendicular recording, which was first announced last June. By standing bits of data on end, rather than flat on the drive's surface, Seagate has achieved 160GB of storage in a 2.5-inch form factor.

Seagate's Momentus 5400.3 is not cheap, however, with a retail price of $325 USD. A 120GB model runs $240 USD, and a 7,200-RPM version is slated to follow later this year. Hard drives using parallel recording can store about 100 to 120 gigabits per square inch. With the new perpendicular method, drives can store 230 gigabits in the same space.

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Google on Tuesday announced it was opening up Google Talk to all other instant messaging networks that utilize the XMPP protocol, developed for Jabber. The move to federate means Google users can communicate directly wtih users of Earthlink, Gizmo Project, Tiscali, Netease, Chikka, MediaRing and others.

Any IM provider is now free to connect to Google Talk without any sort of agreement, simply by following the specifications. Google eventually plans to add support for SIP, which would enable cross-network calling as well. "We think this is pretty exciting," said Google Talk product manager Mike Jazayeri, "and we hope it will bring us one step closer to making IM and Internet voice calling as ubiquitous as email."

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According to an update on Microsoft's support lifecycle Web site, the next service pack for Windows XP isn't due out until the second half of 2007 -- one full year after Windows Vista launches.

XP SP3 will likely serve as a cumulative update for what will soon become Microsoft's legacy operating system.

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Google expanded into the radio advertising business Tuesday with the purchase of DMarc Broadcasting, a company that deals with the sales, delivery and reporting of radio ads. The deal is reportedly worth $102 million dollars and will give AdWords subscribers a radio ad distribution channel for their advertisements.

Rumors have swirled in recent months that Google may expand into more traditional methods of advertising. The company has already branched into print ads, and was rumored to be looking into the television market as well. "Google is committed to exploring new ways to extend targeted, measurable advertising to other forms of media," said Google vice president of advertsing Tim Armstrong.

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Corel on Tuesday announced the availability of WordPerfect Office X3, the popular alternative desktop productivity suite. The newest version includes continued enhancements to its Microsoft Office compatibility, and the company claims the client is the first to natively import and export PDF files.

Notably missing from this release is any OpenDocument Format support, which Corel helped spearhead. However, the company told BetaNews that its target with this release was to focus on a open format that is already widely used: PDF.

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Microsoft said Tuesday it would set its sights on Lotus Notes and Domino customers, providing new tools to assist in the migration to Microsoft Office products. As a further incentive, these tools would be available on the company's Web site as a free download.

In addition to migration tools, Microsoft also announced the availability of Exchange connectors for Lotus and Domino. This would allow customers who wish to continue using IBM's suite employ Exchange Server on the backend.

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