A 38 year-old man from Hong Kong has become the first person convicted for sharing copyrighted material over BitTorrent. Chan Nai-Ming used the P2P technology, which requires you to distribute what you are downloading, to share Hollywood films "Daredevil," "Red Planet" and "Miss Congeniality."

Nai-Ming was arrested last January and pled not guilty to the charges of copyright infringement. He was convicted after a four-day trial and released on bail until a sentencing hearing scheduled for November 7. Nai-Ming could face as much as four years in jail and a fine for his actions.

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IBM will disclose details of the processor it developed for the upcoming Xbox 360 gaming console at a chip conference Tuesday in Silicon Valley. Microsoft switched from Intel's Pentium III, used in the first generation Xbox, to the PowerPC architecture in 2003.

The chip is a customized version of the regular PowerPC chip and will run at a speed of 3.2GHz. The iteration developed for the Xbox 360 includes three cores, and would be able to run up to two simultaneous tasks at the same time, the company said.

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Eight storage device makers announced on Tuesday plans to form a group known as Aperi that will look to develop a platform for managing storage devices. The group includes IBM, Sun, Cisco, Fujitsu, McData, Computer Associates International, Brocade Communication Systems, Network Appliance, and Engenio Information Technologies.

Aperi will attempt to settle on an open source standard for storage, and will use preexisting work done in the arena, such as that from the Storage Networking Industry Association's Storage Management Initiative Specification. IBM will also make a donation of technology to the group; other members may do so at a later time, but no announcement had been made as of yet.

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Internet Explorer 7 will come with several security enhancements to HTTPS connections, a Microsoft program manager said on the IE Blog over the weekend. Chief among the changes is the disabling of the SSLv2 protocol by default in favor of the stronger-encryption available through TSLv1.

"Generally, IE users will not notice any difference in the user-experience due to this change; it's a silent improvement in security," program manager Eric Lawrence wrote. He said that few sites still require SSLv2, and upgrading to SSLv3 or TSLv1 is generally a simple migration on most sites.

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Becoming the first official legal peer-to-peer service, iMesh on Tuesday announced it was taking the sixth version of its software into public beta. The company says it is the only globally active P2P network that maintains the experience of file sharing while assuring the copyright holders are fairly compensated.

The original iMesh was founded in 1999 and enjoyed several years of success before it was sued in September 2003 by the RIAA. Since then, the company has been working on a way to stay viable as a P2P service, yet assure the record labels that it was serious about offering compensation for its members' file-sharing activities.

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After months of delays, Apple on Tuesday launched its 21st music store in Australia, containing over one million songs and a thousand music videos. The launch had been rumored for nearly a year, but disagreements with a major record label apparently held up the launch of the service.

Songs will be priced at A$1.69 ($1.27 USD) each, A$3.39 ($2.55 USD) per video, and most albums at A$16.99 ($12.76 USD). Apple has also gained exclusive rights to offer the songs of several popular Australian artists, including Missy Higgins, Bernard Fanning, Paul Mac, Evermore, Gyroscope and The Dissociatives.

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Settling a nearly two year-old dispute over the redirection of unused domains, VeriSign on Monday announced it had reached an agreement with ICANN regarding the group's attempt to stop the company from sending Web surfers to a VeriSign owned search service back in 2003.

The service, called "Site Finder," angered network administrators due to its potential to disrupt spam filters that discard messages from invalid hosts. Privacy issues were also raised, as VeriSign logged all of the error traffic that came its way.

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Microsoft on Monday talked up a few features of its next-generation Office release, due next year, which revolve around the concept of "business intelligence." A major focus of Office 12 will be on improving the way users access data in existing applications, thereby making business intelligence (BI) more pervasive.

At the core of this strategy lie changes to SharePoint, Microsoft's intranet and collaboration solution for businesses. Office 12 will tie together SQL Server Reporting Services into SharePoint, as well as offer Web-based support for Excel spreadsheets.

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If you own an iPod, it's likely you are more apt to spread consumer-generated media as well as be more technologically savvy than your non-iPod brethren, a survey released on Monday said. Intelliseek, a Internet research firm, said it expects the trend to continue with the recent release of the video iPod.

iPod users are more likely to own digital video recorders, personal digital assistants, digital cameras, laptop computers and cell phones than non-iPod owners. 59 percent of them use text messaging and 45 percent take camera phone pictures, versus 24 and 15 percent respectively who do not own a MP3 player.

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Microsoft's Xbox Live service went offline Monday, promising: "we'll be back soon with a whole new look and amazing new features." During a 24-hour period, the service will be upgraded with features aimed at Xbox 360 users, which will become available after the launch of the console on November 22.

New features to be added include an Xbox Live Marketplace, as well as a ranking system where gamers will be able to see their score in games compared with other Xbox Live users. Gamer information will also be integrated into other MSN properties, such as the company's Spaces blogging tool.

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Cingular is struggling to sell the much-hyped iTunes phone as data indicates return rates are as much as six times higher than launches for other new phones. However, Motorola is determined to fix the marketing issues and make the phone a success, CEO Ed Zander said in an interview with Bloomberg News Service.

News of high return rates is the latest setback for Motorola's ROKR, which received a cool reception at its launch and has been criticized for its non-Apple feel.

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Cingular on Monday introduced two mobile applications that users will be able to download to their phones in order to access their e-mail and instant messaging accounts. The effort is designed to provide standard phones with features normally found on high-end handsets. Both applications will be a free download.

Mobile e-mail will work on the following devices: Motorola's V180, V220, V400, V551 and RAZR V3. Cingular expects to add more phones soon. Mobile IM will work on Nokia (6230, 6620), Motorola (V180, V220, V400, V551, RAZR V3) and Sony Ericsson (Z500 and S710a) handsets. The IM client will have the capability of connecting to the AOL, Yahoo and MSN Messenger networks. Service charges are based on usage.

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If you heard a loud thud over the weekend, it may have been Tiger Telematic's Gizmondo finally launching in the United States. The device, whose sales in the UK -- where it has been available since March -- have been somewhat disappointing, has received a cool response from US reviewers as well.

The handheld Gizmondo retails for $229 USD, and includes a 400MHz processor, a VGA camera, GPS, GPRS, and a 2.2-inch color LCD screen. It has a half-circle shape and comes in a black and silver casing. The operating system is a customized version of Windows CE, the company said.

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Oscar time isn't only a boon for the movie industry as hot Academy Award candidates pack the cinemas - it's also beneficial to pirates looking for DVD-quality copies of new flicks. But this year, Disney is looking to change all that.

In the past, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members who vote on the Oscars received VHS tapes of nominees, which posed little risk of piracy. Now, however, movies are distributed on DVDs that can be digitally copied onto computers and uploaded to the Internet in mere hours.

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Confirming speculation that record labels were not content with the $4.99 pricing of Yahoo! Music Unlimited, the company on Nov. 1 will raise its music subscription fee by $5 to $9.99 USD when purchased annually. Monthly fees will jump from $6.99 to $11.99 USD, bringing the service closer in cost to Napster and Real's Rhapsody.

Current monthly subscribers can opt to keep their $6.99 pricing, which is still advertised by Yahoo, but will lose the ability to transfer downloaded songs to a portable device. Those who have purchased an annual subscription, however, will receive the "To Go" feature for the duration of that year.

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