Lenovo announced on Wednesday plans to integrate Cingular's high-speed UMTS/HSDPA service into upcoming ThinkPad laptops. The feature would enable users to access Cingular's BroadbandConnect without purchasing an additional wireless PC card. The service offers speeds of 400-700Kbps without requiring a Wi-Fi hotspot.

The first notebooks with the technology will launch in the second quarter of 2006. "Our new Access Connections 4.1 software works with Cingular BroadbandConnect, enabling users to move seamlessly from one available network connection to the next without downtime or costly help desk calls," said Marc Godin, vice president of notebook marketing for Lenovo.

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Sony Home Entertainment on Wednesday announced the first 20 movie titles that will launch on the high-definition Blu-ray disc format, preempting a scheduled press conference by HD DVD slated for Wednesday evening. The titles will be available with BD-compatible players starting this spring.

Released first will be The Fifth Element, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Desperado, For a Few Dollars More, The Guns of Navarone, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight's Tale, Kung Fu Hustle, The Last Waltz, Legends of the Fall, Resident Evil Apocalypse, Robocop, Sense and Sensibility, Stealth, Species, SWAT and XXX. Four Blu-ray titles will be released each month starting this summer, ramping up to 10 per month by the end of 2006.

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The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team released its year-end summary of computer vulnerabilities. While Windows is regarded as the most insecure operating system, the US-CERT found four times as many vulnerabilities specifically related to Unix and Linux. Of 5,198 reported flaws, 812 were for the Windows, 2,328 for Unix and Linux, and 2,058 more affected more than one operating system.

Notably missing from the list of Windows vulnerabilities is the recently discovered Windows Metafile issue. No vulnerabilities were listed for Apple's Mac OS X, however several had been disclosed during the year. Also, since OS X is based on Unix, it is vulnerable to some of the flaws associated with its core operating system.

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Grokster, which shut down its Web site in November citing the inability to battle the record industry after a United States Supreme Court ruling said file sharing services can be held liable for actions of their users, has added an ominous warning to its shuttered site, ostensibly to scare P2P users.

"YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 1.1.1.1 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED," a message says, including the user's actual IP address. "Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous." Grokster has reason to steer users away from illicit file swapping; the company is beta testing a legal paid download service that is part of its new parent company Mashboxx.

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Starting with condensed versions of the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and Nokia Sugar Bowl, Disney on Tuesday said it would expand its iTunes offerings to include content from ESPN, ABC News, Touchstone Television, the Disney Channel, as well as the company's animation department. While most of the content will follow the $1.99 pricing model, the ABC News content would be offered for free.

Later this month, Disney will add content from ESPN's "SportsCentury" program, shorts from ABC's "America's Funniest Home Videos," and skits from the popular 1970's Saturday morning program, "School House Rocks." The announcement of new programming on iTunes follows a deal in December that brought NBC Universal content to the service, including the popular "Law and Order" series and Sci-Fi's cable hit "Battlestar Galactica."

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Samsung debuted on Tuesday its largest flash based music player with subscription capabilities. The YP-Z5 features a capacity of up to 4GB, a 1.8-inch color screen with photo support, a 24-hour advertised battery life, and weighs about two ounces. Microsoft has also certified the devices as PlaysForSure compatible.

The YP-Z5 will be available in February for a price of $199 USD for the 2GB model, and $249 USD for the 4GB version. "Consumers are choosing digital music subscription services and Samsung supports this trend with the first 4GB flash player to offer subscription capabilities," Samsung's Mark Farish said.

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Skype said Tuesday that it had partnered with networking equipment manufacturer D-Link to bring a solution to market that would allow its subscribers to place Skype calls over a traditional phone line.

D-Link will offer a USB phone adapter that enables Skype users to plug in a traditional corded or cordless telephone to use with the service. Both a Skype and traditional phone line can be connected to the device, allowing users to switch between services.

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Microsoft announced early Tuesday that it had completed a patch for a widely publicized security vulnerability in Windows Media File (WMF) image processing that could lead to a full system compromise. But the fix won't be available until next week, the company said.

WMF, or Windows Metafile, is a vector based image format used by Microsoft's operating systems. SHIMGVW.DLL is loaded to render the images and contains a flaw that opens the door for a malformed WMF image to cause remote code execution and potentially allow for a full system compromise.

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Building on an agreement first announced at last year's CES, On2 Technologies said on Tuesday that it would demonstrate in-car video receivers at this week's show through partner XM Satellite Radio. The devices would receive video content through XM's satellites, encoded in On2's proprietary format.

XM rival Sirius had announced previously that it intended to launch a video service with partner Microsoft later this year, however no further announcements as to the progress of the service have been made.

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Motorola on Tuesday unveiled its plans for iRadio, an upcoming subscription radio service. iRadio would first run on the company's forthcoming Rokr E2 cell phone, due out in October of this year.

However, in a possible sign of early trouble with the Apple-Motorola partnership, the phone will not include the iTunes music software. The company had promised more phones with the feature included, but so far only one has been announced.

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Sling Mox said on Tuesday that it would demonstrate new features to be added to its Slingbox product at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas. Among those is a feature that would allow users to watch their home TVs over a mobile device.

The company says this will allow for users to have freedom to watch what they want on their portable players. Currently, there are services that allow for live and recorded television content over cellular connections, however the selection of content is usually very limited.

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Starz Entertainment Group launched a new video download application dubbed Vongo on Tuesday, which allows playback of content on Windows-based PCs, laptops and portable media devices, including televisions. The service would provide unlimited access to 1,000 movies and videos, as well as streaming video of the Starz television channel for a monthly fee.

Each account would be permitted to download content on up to three devices for the $9.99 USD monthly rate. Some movies would be available on a pay-per-view basis for $3.99 USD per download, Starz said.

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BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion celebrated another win in its fight against NTP, saying on Friday that the U.S. Patent Office had rejected two more of NTP's patents in "non-final actions." With these latest rejections, only one of eight patents surrounding BlackBerry technologies still stands.

With its court options exhausted, RIM has had to turn to the Patent Office for any hope of avoiding a disconnection of service. A U.S. judge in Virginia is currently considering a lifting of a stay that prevented the BlackBerry service from being shut down, and has indicated his patience with the case is wearing thin.

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Kodak will unveil the world's first dual-lens digital camera at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, the company said. The EasyShare V570, will combine a 5X optical zoom lens with a ultra-wide angle lens in a camera that is less than an inch thin.

As well as being able to shoot still images, the camera can record TV-quality video at 30 frames per second using MPEG-4 compression. Shaky images will be automatically stabilized through the camera's internal image stabilization technology.

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Apple continued to build on its dominance of the digital music industry in 2005, and saw the successes slowly bleed into its personal computer business as industry analysts began to gauge the iPod's "halo effect."

The folks at Cupertino would also do the once unthinkable and admit that Apple was falling behind the rest of the industry by continuing with the PowerPC architecture, a decision that could shape the company in 2006 and beyond.

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