Industry watchers mostly agree that Tuesday's announcement of a multi-year partnership between Google and Sun was not what they thought it would be. Some even suggest Sun is fighting a battle to stay relevant as the tech world passes it by. Read on to see what people are saying about the deal.

"I've gotten comments ranging from "lame" to "underwhelmed," describing today's Sun-Google announcement. I wouldn't underestimate the significance here. I certainly never expected a Google/Sun deal on StarOffice. OK, so Google is going to ask people to download a huge chunk of Java software--well, huge compared to the toolbar. What's the big deal? Google just shot a huge canon across Microsoft's bow. A Google alliance with any competitor is probably going to cause ulcers over at Microsoft."
- Joe Wilcox, Microsoft Monitor

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SanDisk on Tuesday unveiled its m200 series of flash-based MP3 players, the first higher capacity players to break the $100 USD price barrier while ensuring PlaysForSure compatibility. The SanDisk players will range in capacity from 512MB to 4GB.

The company's aggressive price structure could force other Windows-based audio player manufacturers to again lower prices. Many are already hurting financially due to price pressure from market leader Apple.

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On Monday, news surfaced that Microsoft had invented a single-play DVD that would no longer function after being watched once in order to combat piracy. The story was quickly repeated, often without source, on a number of Windows enthusiast sites and blogs. There was only one problem: the news was not true.

The report was initially made by British Web site "The Business Online," claiming, "Showing a video of himself dressed in a sailor suit pretending to audition for the blockbuster Titanic, Gates pitched Hollywood with the proposition that only Microsoft could solve its piracy problem by making its DRM software a standard across every home entertainment playback and recording device."

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AOL tweaked its search engine on Wednesday in an effort to make results more relevant, as well as allow for the search of Web sites and multimedia from a single page. Users will also be able to save results in a search, which can be "clipped" to the top of the page for future searches on that term.

In addition, searches can now be made by asking natural-language questions, called "Quick Answers." AOL intends to have the new feature complement its "Snapshots" technology in which results are pre-programmed by editors for common search terms. Answers to these natural-language questions would be placed at the top of the result pages.

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Sprint Nextel late Tuesday announced that it had filed suit against two Internet telephone providers -- Vonage and Voiceglo -- accusing the companies of violating patents surrounding the processing and delivery of packets in a voice over IP (VoIP) connection.

Altogether Sprint claims seven patents were violated: four having to do with the "method, system and apparatus for telecommunications control," and three surrounding the "broadband telecommunications system."

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EURid, the European organization tasked with managing the .eu top-level domain name, has announced it will begin offering registrations on December 7. To prevent cybersquatting, public bodies and trademark holders will be the first to register until February 7, 2006, when company names and artistic names can be claimed.

Starting April 7, 2006, .eu domains will be open for anyone to register. All domains will be offered on a first-come first-served basis, EURid says, and those registered in the initial phases will require legal proof of name ownership. The price to register a .eu domain will vary depending on the reseller.

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Microsoft began a full-court press to promote its upcoming Xbox 360 game console by making several major announcements at a press event in Amsterdam Tuesday. Also confirmed were several titles that will be made available when the new Xbox becomes available next month.

The company expects some 20 titles to be ready when the console launches, with up to 200 more currently in development. In comparison, the original Xbox only had about a half-dozen titles available at launch.

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Comcast has struck a deal with the National Hockey League to stream NHL games live to its nearly 8 million high-speed Internet subscribers. Comcast will stream up to two matches per day, including the Stanley Cup playoffs. All broadcasts will be available in archived format up to two days after the game ends.

Local blackout restrictions will still apply, however a Comcast subscriber will be able to view a game from anywhere with a broadband connection, the company said. The news follows an August 18 announcement that made Comcast subsidiary Outdoor Life Network the new cable home of the NHL. The station will broadcast 58 games during the regular season.

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Motorola announced Tuesday that it had signed a deal with Universal to make the label's music available on the electronics maker's upcoming iRadio service.

iRadio will allow users to download content from their computers to their mobile phones, home stereos or car radio. The service is expected to cost about $7 USD a month. The deal will bring music from popular artists such as U2, 50 Cent, Mariah Carey, Eminem, and Sheryl Crow to the service.

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Apple has sent out invitations to a special event next Wednesday at the California Theatre in San Jose, using the tagline "One more thing..." Last month, Apple held a similar event in San Francisco that heralded the arrival of the iPod Nano and Motorola ROKR iTunes phone.

Per usual, Apple is keeping mum on the details of the event. Prior speculation has pointed to a video-enabled iPod or paid music video downloads being added to the iTunes Music Store. Jefferies & Co. analyst Adam Benjamin said this week that production may have begun last month on a video iPod using chips from PortalPlayer.

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UPDATED A security researcher has uncovered a critical security flaw in Kaspersky Anti-Virus that could allow an attacker to take control of a vulnerable system. The problem lies in a component used to open CAB files, which can be exploited using a buffer overflow.

According to an advisory issued by Alex Wheeler, a malformed CAB file could be sent via e-mail, and when opened by Kaspersky Antivirus for processing the PC could be compromised.

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Microsoft has tapped the team behind the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy to help bring its popular "Halo" Xbox game to the big screen. LOTR Peter Jackson will join his wife Fran Walsh as executive producers of the film, which will utilize Jackson's production facilities in New Zealand.

Universal Studios, Fox and Microsoft's Bungie game subsidiary that created Halo will aid Jackson in the process. The Halo screenplay -- about futuristic soldier "Master Chief" battling aliens -- was written by novelist Alex Garland. A director is expected to be named in the coming weeks, although the cast has yet to be announced.

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IBM on Tuesday unveiled the first servers to be based on the Power 5+ processor, squarely aimed at solidifying the company's dominance in the UNIX server market over rivals Sun, HP and Dell. The new processors will be offered in IBM's low-end models first, gradually being introduced to the company's mid- and higher-end servers during 2006.

The purpose of the "bottom to top" rollout is to give small and medium sized businesses a chance at the computing power that had previously only been available to larger corporations that have bigger IT budgets, according to Jeff Howard, program director for P5 product marketing at IBM.

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Google and Sun kicked off a multi-year partnership at a special event on Tuesday, inking a deal to distribute each other's software. The two companies will collaborate on ways to make it easier for consumers to obtain Sun's Java runtime, the OpenOffice.org productivity suite and the Google Toolbar.

By working with Google, Sun could better compete with Microsoft through increased online promotion. "Working with Google will make our technologies available more broadly, increase options for user, lower barriers, and expand participation worldwide," said Sun CEO Scott McNealy.

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Microsoft and Motorola announced on Tuesday an agreement to work together on technology aimed at emergency services and criminal justice customers. As a part of the deal, Motorola would develop new applications built on the Microsoft platform.

The Redmond company sees its alliance with Motorola as a way for it to further expand its business into the public sector, where contracts for services can prove quite lucrative and beneficial to those involved.

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