Netflix on Wednesday said that its planned movie download service is on hold indefinitely due to licensing problems with Hollywood studios. Word of a possible download service first leaked out in July when a glitch in the Netflix system revealed that the company was planning to offer online movies.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made the announcement during a conference call with analysts. "When the content climate begins to thaw," the service will be launched, Hastings said. Work is continuing on the necessary infrastructure in order to make a launch possible, but Hastings did not specify how movies would be delivered.

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The world famous Wembley Stadium in London will soon have a new sponsor: Microsoft. The Redmond company announced Thursday that it had reached a deal with Wembley's owners worth $8.8 million, according to media reports.

The stadium is scheduled to reopen in mid-2006 after a five-year project to demolish and rebuild a new state-of-the-art venue in its place. Microsoft will receive premiere placement of its logo at the entrance, as well as on 100 advertising plaques around the stadium.

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Opera Software isn't wasting any time in the development of its flagship Web browser after version 8.5 heralded Opera's conversion to freeware. The company on Thursday released a Technology Preview of Opera 9.0, which introduces a new storage format for e-mail and a multitude of page rendering tweaks.

Most notable on a long list of changes are an enhanced pop-up blocker and initial support for CSS3 selectors and attributes. Version 9 also now identifies itself through the UserAgent string as "Opera." Developers note the preview release should not be loaded on a primary system or over previous Opera installations. Users are asked to report problems accessing sites that worked previously.

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VMware on Wednesday introduced VMware Player, a free tool that enables users to run virtual machines on a Linux or Windows PC. The company says that the program would be ideal for those beta testing software, or evaluating pre-built application environments. The release of the Player comes during VMworld, a yearly convention held by the company focusing on virtualized computing.

While VMware Player cannot create virtual machines like the company's Workstation software, it does offer a few pre-built applications that can be downloaded from VMware. VMware Player is also compatible with machines created in Microsoft's Virtual PC and Symantec LiveState Recovery disk formats. Download VMware Player 1.0 from FileForum.

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Microsoft Research is coughing up $1.2 million in order to fund academic research aimed at bringing technology to the under-privileged, focusing specifically on making computing more affordable, accessible and relevant to local culture. Two separate programs were launched Thursday.

The Digital Inclusion opportunity is directed at research to aid health, education and socioeconomic conditions worldwide using technology. Microsoft is specifically pushing for research that utilizes mobile devices and phones, as well as networking to help developing countries.

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eBay CEO Meg Whitman went toe-to-toe with a financial analyst during the company's quarterly earnings conference call Wednesday over the purchase of VoIP provider Skype. Analysts have criticized the buy, saying eBay overpaid for a technology that, at least at first look, will not advance its core business.

However, Whitman disagreed with that assessment. "By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net," she said at the time.

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Digital music player manufacturer Creative has apparently started to ship the

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Seemingly reversing its stance in next-generation DVD battle, Hewlett-Packard has asked Blu-ray to re-think its planned copyright protection and instead implement the "managed copy" feature found in HD DVD, which would enable consumers to copy movies to their PCs and stream them across a network.

HP additionally requested that Blu-ray implement interactive menus using iHD, also found in HD DVD. iHD -- developed by Toshiba and Microsoft -- will bring advanced interactivity to DVD movies and is slated to be natively supported by Windows Vista.

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After over two years in development, the final version of OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been made available for download. The productivity suite offers a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation builder and a database -- all for free and available in 36 languages for Windows and Unix based platforms.

Perhaps the most notable addition in OpenOffice.org 2.0 is support for the OASIS OpenDocument format, which could prove to be the first true rival to Microsoft's proprietary Office formats. OpenDocument is a completely open standard that has been chosen for use by several countries and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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Even with the PlayStation 3 not coming until next spring, Sony isn't letting the Xbox 360 steal its gaming thunder this holiday season. The company has put together a new bundle for its PlayStation Portable console, which adds a 1GB Memory Stick PRO Duo and a new PSP stand.

The PSP Giga Pack will go on sale in November around the time of the Xbox 360 for the same price: $299 USD. Sony says it will continue to offer the PSP Value Pack for $249 USD. The new bundle will come pre-installed with Sony's latest PSP firmware, which enables Wi-Fi connectivity and Web browsing features. For current PSP owners, the 1GB Memory Stick will be available separately.

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The milestones keep coming for the little browser that could, and the Mozilla Foundation now has a new reason to celebrate: on Wednesday morning, downloads for Firefox surpassed 100 million. The second major release of Firefox, version 1.5, is due later this fall.

Although the number does not reflect actual users of the product, it does indicate continued enthusiasm for the open source Web browser that has taken on Microsoft's ubiquitous Internet Explorer and prompted Opera to turn freeware. "Our community of more than 100,000 Firefox developers, testers, and grassroots marketers, is rejuvenating Web browsing, which is why millions of new users make the jump to Firefox every week," said Mozilla developer Asa Dotzler.

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Aiming to serve the professional photographer set, Apple on Wednesday released Aperture, a post-production tool that will allow for the editing of RAW images. The company compared the product to Final Cut Pro, its tool for editing of video content.

RAW images are uncompressed, meaning no quality is lost when the picture is taken.

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The Association of American Publishers on Wednesday announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Google to stop the search giant from copying books for its Google Print Library Project. The group said it filed the suit after talks with Google broke down.

The AAP is the second organization to take Google to court over the project. In September, the Author's Guild, a non-profit organization that lobbies for writers, accused Google of "massive copyright infringement." It also asked a U.S. District Court in Manhattan to stop the company from copying books.

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Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it was reducing the number of Shared Source licenses it offered from more than 10 to just three. The new licenses will serve as templates for product groups within Microsoft to release source code and connect with developers.

"In this way, all of Microsoft source code releases will be under consistent terms, and thus more easy to use and to understand. The licenses are each 1 page or shorter," explained Jason Matusow, Microsoft's Shared Source Manager. "They are written in simple terms that non-lawyers should be able to follow."

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Apple on Wednesday refreshed both its PowerBook and Power Mac lines, adding SuperDrives and high-resolution displays to its popular laptops and dual-core G5 processors to its top-of-the-line desktop system.

It now appears all but certain that the PowerBook will not receive the boost to G5 chips that Steve Jobs promised at Macworld in 2004. Many analysts expect the PowerBook line to be one of the first to receive Pentium chips when Apple makes its transition to Intel processors starting next year.

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