Sony's PlayStation Portable soared off store shelves with the promise of the first true portable entertainment experience: in addition to video games it plays music and movies, photo slideshows and even supports Web browsing. But getting content onto the PSP has proven easier said than done.

On Tuesday, Sony responded to the complaints by releasing the PSP Media Manager, a software application designed to ease the process of transferring content to the device. Using thumbnail navigation, users can select photos and videos to be converted into formats the PSP supports.

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Nokia said on Tuesday that it had completed both voice and data calls using the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) standard at a lab in the United States. UMA is a technology that will allow a cellular call to be handed over to a Wi-Fi network. Carriers see UMA as a way to more cheaply extend their wireless networks.

"UMA is poised to open up a number of new opportunities and choices for operators and their end-users," said Mark Louison, senior vice president at Nokia America. "We're one step closer to simplifying the end-user mobile experience to access voice, personal information, and multimedia services on one device irrespective of their location, whether at work, at home, or on the go."

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Nikon on Tuesday announced a new digital SLR camera known as the D200, which is aimed at the professional photographer and capable of a resolution of up to 10.2 megapixels.

The camera will come packed with features useful to pros, such as quick response time, 11-area autofocus, better battery life, and optional Wi-Fi connectivity through a separate add-on to be made available early next year.

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Wired Magazine said Tuesday that it plans to open a retail location in the Soho District of Manhattan, which would stay open from November 18 through December 24. The purpose of the store would be to give shoppers a chance to see the latest technology and gadgets up close. 65 products will be featured, including an auction for a trip into space, worth $102,000.

Customers will make purchases from kiosks around the store, and items would be shipped directly to their homes. In a further twist to the average shopping experience, those who make purchases during the weekends will also receive free shuttle service to their next destination in Wired Volkswagens. "Just as the magazine ushered in a new vision and voice for what's next, the Wired Store expands the boundaries of branded retail outlets," said Wired publisher Drew Schutte.

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Just in time for the holidays, Microsoft on Tuesday took the wraps off Digital Image Suite Plus, which bundles the company's photo editing and organization tool of the same name with Pinnacle Studio 10.0 - a popular video editing application for creating home movies.

Microsoft's answer to Apple's iPhoto, Digital Image Suite 2006, lets users create a photo library using keywords, flags and a "star rating" system, along with effects to pictures such as a black and white filter. RAW images from Canon and Nikon cameras are supported in the latest release.

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Not content with just shipping its Web browser in mobile devices and on the desktop, Opera Software is expanding its horizons to in-flight entertainment systems. As part of a deal announced Tuesday, Opera will be offered as part of the Thales TopSeries System to provide airline passengers with a full Internet experience.

Thales is currently in use by a number of airlines worldwide and functions on most new Boeing and Airbus jets. Opera's international support was named as a key reason for its selection. "Opera's speed, small-size and Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA), coupled with its headache-free portability to Linux devices, make it the natural choice for new Internet devices and use cases," Christen Krogh, Opera's VP of Engineering, said in a statement.

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Apple released the third update to Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) on Monday afternoon. The upgrade includes over 60 significant fixes to various portions of the operating system including Finder, Spotlight, Safari, Mail and iChat, as well as updates to the networking and syncing features.

Among the notable fixes are speed improvements to finder Spotlight searches, a fix to allow sending of .Mac mail if port 25 is blocked, improved window scrolling, fixes for compatibility issues with Word and Excel 2004, better mounting of MS-DOS formatted volumes, and more detailed error messages for .Mac problems.

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The FCC on Monday approved two mergers that will shake up the telecom industry: Verizon's $8.45 billion joining with MCI and SBC's $16 billion acquisition of AT&T. The U.S. government agency said that consumers would benefit from both mergers.

Among the positives are the increased performance and reliability of what the government regulator called "complementary networks." The FCC also noted that both newly merged companies would remain U.S.-owned as another point in favor of the deals.

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While it had previously been announced that Office 12 would support a "Save to PDF" function, not much had been said for the company's answer to Adobe, known as XPS. But on Friday, Office program manager Jeff Bell disclosed that documents created in version 12 can be exported into either PDF or XPS.

XPS, formerly known as Metro, is an XML-based "electronic paper" format that will allow documents to be displayed as they were saved on any platform. Many of the features of XPS mirror those in PDF, and Microsoft is working with printer manufacturers to include native support for the format - much like Adobe PostScript.

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The free open source database leader MySQL has some new competition from expensive enterprise database leader Oracle. The company on Monday unveiled a beta release of 10g Express Edition, otherwise known as Oracle Database XE, which is free to develop, deploy and distribute.

Oracle's new edition is aimed at students, small organizations and software developers looking to integrate a database into their applications. Although it offers the same core as Oracle's more pricey business offerings, XE is limited to systems with a single processor, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of database storage space.

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SBC has made it clear that no one will receive free access to its broadband lines. In an interview with Business Week, CEO Edward Whitacre said that some companies like Google, MSN and Vonage have pushed for free usage of the pipes owned by telecom and cable companies like SBC, which will soon become AT&T.

"I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it," Whitacre said in the interview, adding that anyone who thinks the Internet should be free in that sense is "nuts." The opinionated CEO went on to say that he was not pleased with SBC's growth, calling it "terrible."

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The United States Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal by Microsoft regarding its patent lawsuit brought by Eolas and the University of California over the way Internet Explorer utilizes browser plug-ins.

The decision is the second legal setback for Microsoft in as many months. In late September, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office upheld Eolas' patent, which Microsoft claimed should be invalidated by prior art. Microsoft said it would turn to the courts to have the patent nullified.

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America Online founder Steve Case announced on Monday he was finally leaving Time Warner behind, resigning from his board of directors position. The former company Chairman following AOL's doomed merger with Time Warner in 2000 says he will devote more time to his new health care investment company, Revolution.

"Leaving Time Warner's Board will give me a greater opportunity to grow Revolution, including avoiding any potential conflicts of interest as Revolution moves into new areas," Case said in a statement. Other executives at the time of the merger, including Gerald Levin and Bob Pittman, have previously left Time Warner.

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Spanish telephone giant Telefonica SA has announced plans to purchase British mobile phone company O2 -- formerly known as BT Wireless -- in a blockbuster deal valued at $31.4 billion. O2 currently boasts 25 million customers across the UK, Ireland and Germany.

The deal, which is expected to close in January, follows Telefonica's $3.3 billion purchase of a majority stake in Czech wireless carrier Cesky Telekom. Telefonica Chairman Cesar Alierta said the O2 purchase will give the company a much-needed boost in Europe after expanding its Latin American operations.

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Sprint launched its new high-speed entertainment offering on Monday, called Power Vision. The service will introduce a wireless music store, live and recorded television and multimedia downloads, the capability to transfer high-resolution pictures and video, and customized information channels.

The service is based on Sprint's new CDMA EV-DO network, which it had already launched in some airports and business districts across the country. According Sprint, the network averages speeds of 400-700kbps with peak rates to 2.0Mbps, close to home broadband speeds.

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