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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A company that holds patents on the way voice over IP (VoIP) calls are placed said on Friday that it was suing Google over its use of certain technologies within the Google Talk instant message application.

New York-based Rates Technology Inc. has no products. However, it is one of several patent companies now in existence whose entire business is based on collecting royalties from firms that use technologies covered by patents they own.

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It's good to have friends in high places -- at least that's what Reid Gershbein has found out. The computer graphics designer turned film director has received financial assistance from Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to pay for his independent film. Called "Broken Arrows," the film is a story of a man whose wife is killed by a terrorist attack, driving him to become a hitman to deal with her death.

Gershbein, Brin and Page became friends in the late 1990s at Stanford. Costs of production are estimated to be $1 million, and the two have contributed roughly half that. The final version is hoped to see its debut at film festivals in the fall of 2006.

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Intel said Thursday that it plans to unveil an all-new branding scheme and marketing campaign at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week. The company is now expanding into markets outside of its traditional personal computer business, and the change is to be symbolic of that new path.

The two most visible changes will be to the company's logo, which has not updated in nearly three and a half decades. Gone will be the word Intel with the lowered "e," instead replaced with an oval swirl with the company's name inside.

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2005 was a critical year for America Online in which it attempted to shed its image as an un-hip ISP and re-brand itself as a leading Internet destination. The company also launched the first ever major overhaul to AIM and embraced blogs. But can AOL really bring back the cool?

January kicked off the first of many changes to AOL.com with a new search that combined its own editorial content and Google results. The new site set the stage for a complete company makeover that would take place throughout the year. Hints of an expansion to AOL Desktop Search also came to light as the year got underway.

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Microsoft acknowledged late Wednesday the existence of a zero-day exploit for Windows Metafile images, and said it was looking into ways to better protect its customers. Even worse, by the end of the day nearly 50 variants of the exploit had already appeared.

One security company said the possibilities were endless on how the flaw could be exploited. "This vulnerability can be used to install any type of malicious code, not just Trojans and spyware, but also worms, bots or viruses that can cause irreparable damage to computers," said Luis Corrons of Panda Software.

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In an attempt to reintroduce and breathe life back into the AT&T brand, the company will kick off a massive marketing campaign on News Year's Eve. SBC completed its acquisition of AT&T last month and adopted the name. The campaign is expected to cost up to $1 billion.

British rock band Oasis will provide a theme song for AT&T, and the company's logo will be plastered on billboards, airport signs and television commercials across the United States. In Times Square on New Year's Eve, AT&T will have ads covering the entire sides of buildings.

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