Taiwan's Quanta has been selected as original design manufacturer, or ODM, for MIT's $100 laptop, the One Laptop per Child organization said late Tuesday. While the company may not be familiar to many, it has manufactured computers for Hewlett-Packard and Dell among other companies.

MIT has worked with Quanta before, signing a $20 million five-year research pact in April. The company has agreed to devote research resources to the project in the first and second quarter of next year, with the goal to release the first laptops in the fourth quarter.

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IBM on Tuesday is expected to announce a new software strategy that will allow supercomputing customers to leverage the power of the General Parallel File System (GPFS) across a mixed-vendor computer cluster for the first time.

First developed by Big Blue in 2001, GPFS is the commercial name for the Tiger Shark file system developed by the company's Almaden research laboratory. Orginally built for work on large-scale multimedia projects, it was later extended to parallel computing applications.

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As expected, Microsoft has released Beta 1 of Windows Live Messenger to a limited group of testers, with plans to expand the beta in the coming weeks and months. The new IM client, which replaces MSN Messenger, includes "some elephant-sized changes," says Microsoft, including offline messages and PC-to-phone calls.

The Live Messenger development team plans to use its Spaces blog to ask for public feedback on potential new features. "We'll use pictures and descriptions so you can add your opinions whether you have the beta or not," the team says. A detailed and extensive feature list has been posted for those not lucky enough to have been selected.

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The much-anticipated Motorola PEBL will launch with T-Mobile as a Web-only exclusive on Wednesday, BetaNews has learned.

The move by the nation's fourth largest carrier signifies the beginning of a more aggressive marketing campaign by T-Mobile USA to occur in 2006. This would happen through phone exclusives and a continuation of the company's philosophy of being the go-to wireless carrier for budget-conscious consumers.

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The December release of Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool attempts to clean up the mess left behind by Sony BMG's XCP copy protection software, which entered the spotlight in November after the discovery that it installs a rootkit.

Microsoft previously labeled XCP as malware within Windows AntiSpyware, but the MSRT should reach more customers as it's delivered through Windows Update. The tool removes the cloaking and a potentially dangerous ActiveX control, but not Sony's DRM.

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The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced a settlement with DirecTV in which the satellite television provider will pay $5.3 million for the largest violation of the Do Not Call registry ever recorded. Over 1.4 million complaints were received by the FTC.

An investigation took two years to complete and involved DirecTV and five telemarketing firms. The DNC registry currently includes 110 million phone numbers and receives about 3,000 complaints per day. "Sellers are on the hook for calls placed on their behalf and for their benefit," said FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras. "It is not named the Do Not Call Registry for nothing."

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Honda on Tuesday debuted the second-generation model of its humanoid robot ASIMO, adding new features that for the first time could make the robot useful in real life situations.

Previously, the company rolled out ASIMO to entertain on stage at its press events, and it had been used as a symbol of the Japanese spirit of ingenuity. However, now Honda says the robot is ready for real world tasks.

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As promised, Microsoft on Tuesday rolled out two security updates as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday program, one rated "important" and the other "critical." The patches fix flaws in Internet Explorer, as well as a vulnerability in the Windows Kernel.

Microsoft has fixed four critical vulnerabilities within Internet Explorer versions 5 and 6, replacing an earlier cumulative fix issued in October of this year.

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Amazon on Tuesday rolled out the Alexa Web Search Platform, which opens up 5 billion documents and 300 terabytes of data to anyone, along with offering computer and storage time for processing tasks. The idea is to enable the creation of new services that utilize Alexa's vast Web archive and search technology.

In its simplest form, Amazon is providing storage space and server power to users at a price of $1 per CPU hour consumed, $1 per gig of storage used, $1 per 50 gigs of data processed, and $1 per gig of data uploaded. A user will have access to the equivalent of a 3.6GHz Linux server with 4GB of memory.

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Confirming initial reports, a survey released Tuesday shows that Saturday's debut of the Xbox 360 in Japan fared much worse than the launch of the original Xbox in the country in 2002. Microsoft's failure to excite Japanese gamers could mean early trouble for the console outside of the Western world.

The Asian market is crucial to any game console's success. For example, 20 percent of the more than 100 million PlayStation 2 systems were sold in the region. However, Microsoft still has time to increase sales, as the Xbox 360 will be the only next-generation console on the market for at least the next several months.

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The race for a next-generation DVD standard could become closer, as Toshiba on Tuesday said its planned end-of-year launch for HD DVD players in Japan will be delayed until early 2006.

This could mean both HD DVD and rival Blu-ray formats would launch players at the same time, essentially giving consumers the power to choose a winner. HD DVD was expected to have an advantage in overall market momentum by launching months earlier.

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Microsoft on Tuesday announced it had released to manufacturing Office Communicator Web Access, an AJAX based version of its new instant messaging client for businesses. Because it is built with open standards, Communicator Web Access works with IE6, Firefox, Netscape 7.2 and even Apple's Safari.

Communicator Web Access, formerly code-named Budapest, will provide real-time instant messaging coupled with presence. The interface of Communicator Web Access is a replica of the desktop client. However, it is not yet expected to have the full range of features that can be found in the desktop software.

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MTV Networks on Tuesday announced that it will launch a digital music service, which would be integrated into the forthcoming Windows Media Player 11 and feature content from MTV, VH1 and CMT, as well as over 2 million songs from major labels and thousands of independents.

Called URGE, the service is set to debut in 2006. MTV plans to offer content in a variety of genres, and has garnered support from executives of the major labels in addition to music superstars like Alicia Keys, Coldplay's Chris Martin, and Gretchen Wilson.

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Vonage and UTStarcom on Tuesday announced a cell phone-like device that will allow customers to use their Vonage accounts from anywhere there is a Wi-Fi connection.

Initially, the phone will only operate with public networks, meaning hotspots like those in Starbucks or some airports would not be compatible. However, Vonage said that it plans to resolve these issues as soon as possible.

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Microsoft and MCI on Tuesday announced the formation of a multiyear partnership to bring VoIP calling to Redmond's next generation messaging client. Called Windows Live Call, the feature will be tested as part of a limited beta of Windows Live Messenger, which is set to begin this week.

Details of a possible partnership came to the surface last week when news first broke on Yahoo's VoIP plans. Several Web logs reported on a possible deal in the works, and sources later confirmed to BetaNews that MCI had been selected for Microsoft's VoIP offerings.

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