eBay announced Monday that it would form a strategic alliance with VeriSign in order to strengthen security on its PayPal online payment service. As part of the alliance, eBay will also purchase VeriSign's payment gateway business.

The online auction site will pay VeriSign $370 million for the payment gateway in cash and stock. The service is expected to generate an additional $100 million in revenue for eBay, the company said in a statement.

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With all the rumors surrounding a possible video-enabled iPod launch this week, at least one company is taking advantage of the heightened attention on portable media center devices.

San Francisco-based Handheld Entertainment announced on Monday plans to offer a PlaysForSure compatible portable media player next year, but remained mum on exact details of the player itself.

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Intel on Monday unveiled new dual-core versions of its Xeon server processor in an effort to catch up to rival AMD in the business market in terms of performance. AMD has had dual-core server chips available since April as part of its Opteron line.

The addition of the better performing processors got the attention of IT managers and likely was the key force in taking AMDs worldwide market share from 5.6 percent in March of this year to 7.4 percent in June, according to research firm IDC.

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Saying it wants to "enable customers to begin realizing the promise of self-managing dynamic systems," Microsoft on Monday announced changes to its licensing structure in order to accommodate the increasing popularity of virtualized computing through a project called the Dynamic Systems Initiative.

Such systems allow IT departments to virtualize computing resources in order to make them more nimble and responsive to a company's specific requirements. The new license structure would no longer require customers purchase a Windows license for each virtual server until the virtual server is actually used.

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27 companies announced on Monday that they would be joining forces to promote the next generation of wireless networking technology. The group would be known as the Enhanced Wireless Consortium and will push for the ratification of 802.11n.

802.11n promises connection speeds of up to 600 Mbps. In comparison, 802.11b maxes out at 11 Mbps, and 802.11a and 802.11ag at 54 Mbps. Supporters of the proposed standard also say it conserves battery power due to less time spent transmitting data.

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The sale of violent video games to minors will no longer be permitted in the state of California. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation into law on Friday that would impose fines to those who rent or sell such games to anyone under the age of 18.

The law passed the California legislature last month, and was helped along by the scandal surrounding the revelation of sexually explicit scenes within Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Schwarzenegger, himself a parent, said that while he supports the video game industry, such laws are essential to protecting children.

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This year's DARPA Grand Challenge robot race across the Mojave Desert had a much more successful ending than last year's event: entrants actually completed the race.

The contest was sponsored by the Department of Defense in an effort to investigate methods of further roboticizing the army and cut down on human casualties. Everyday consumer vehicles were outfitted with computers to completely automate the driving process.

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Symantec last week said that it would complain to the European Union about Microsoft's planned security products for enterprise customers, press reports indicated.

According to Symantec, the company was "asked" by the EU to provide information on its role in the security industry, however the company said it had not yet filed a formal complaint.

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Weeks before Microsoft is expected to release the October Community Technology Preview of Windows Vista, build 5231 has found its way onto the Internet. The pre-Beta 2 release incorporates minor updates over the September CTP that debuted at PDC 2005, including an early build of Windows Media Player 11.

Internet Explorer 7 has also received a minor facelift, with its tabs moved below the address bar to match the interface style used by the likes of Firefox and Opera. The Windows Sidebar has re-emerged in Vista build 5231, but it's not clear if the October CTP will include the feature.

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Microsoft is preparing to publicly test its new front end Hotmail, code-named "Kahuna" and simply branded: Mail Beta. The upgrade will support an AJAX-based interface that has been rewritten from the ground up using Microsoft's Atlas framework and a new architecture known as FireAnt.

Explaining the new Mail Beta, program manager Imran Qureshi said, "Some would call it a blank slate I guess. When we asked customers what they wanted the main theme was clear: Make it faster, make it simpler and make it safer. It couldn't have been clearer." Interested Hotmail users can now sign up for the Mail Beta test.

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Following in the footsteps of AOL and Apple, Yahoo has begun testing out a new search engine dedicated to audio files, or podcasts, available on the Web. Yahoo! Podcasts categorizes podcasts by topic, keyword and user-created tags. The site also features reviews and ratings of the top podcasts.

Like Apple has done with iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine users can access podcasts directly from the audio player. Listeners can subscribe to podcasts through their RSS feeds, or listen to the audio directly from Yahoo. The site will allow for playback at 2x speed to more quickly get through long podcasts. Down the road, Yahoo even plans to introduce software to help users create their own podcasts.

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UPDATED Can't we all just get along? Cogent and Level 3 Communications customers may be asking that question after a spat between the two Internet backbone companies earlier this week resulted in portions of the Net becoming unavailable to customers of the other carrier for several days.

The disagreement was serious enough that it has caused members of Congress to call for changes in the Telecom Act to prevent future blackouts.

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The chairman of the South Korean Fair Trade Commission said on a local radio talk show in Korea on Friday that it might consider investigating Samsung and Apple over collusion charges. The probe would focus on allegations that Samsung gave Apple a favorable deal on flash memory chips in order to push out competitors, the Korean wire service Yonhap News Agency said.

Samsung's Korean rivals had originally accused the electronics manufacturer of collusion with Apple in a story printed in the Korea Times on September 9. To its defense, Samsung vehemently denied those allegations, saying it had offered Apple no such deal.

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Google took the covers off a Web based RSS reader at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco Friday. The tool, appropriately dubbed Google Reader, serves as an aggregator for Web feeds and is designed much like the company's Gmail service with Starred favorites and keyboard shortcuts.

"We often get asked how anyone's supposed to keep up with the firehose of stuff launched from the web's spigot, so we're offering Reader as a way to help," explained Google software engineer Chris Wetherell. "Like the Personalized Homepage, it's a part of Google's ongoing effort to bring together personalized web content to make information more relevant to users."

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David Falman is Managing Director for Odessa Mama Records of Melbourne, Australia. In this guest column, he explains from a professional perspective why the record industry's attempts at raising the price of digital music from iTunes' 99-cent ceiling would do more harm than good.

With a showdown approaching between the major labels and Apple over its 99 cent price for downloads (and now music managers in the UK becoming unhappy with iTunes pricing) I wanted to give an independent label's view on this subject, given that there are over one thousand independent labels on iTunes.

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