At a leadership seminar in California Friday, Motorola CEO Ed Zander talked about his role in rebuilding the phone maker's brand. But when answering a question from the audience about the iPod Nano, Zander apparently lost his cool saying, "Screw the Nano. What the hell does the Nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?"

Motorola, however, has fired back and claims IDG News Service, which first reported the outburst, is taking the comment completely out of context. Company officials say Zander was smiling and joking when he responded to the question, and he did praise Apple and its iPod.

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After a decade of rivalry, Microsoft and Palm finally shook hands Monday morning at a press conference announcing a new Treo smartphone powered by Windows Mobile 5.0. Although the device won't launch until early next year, analysts and consumers alike have already begun to weigh in and the response is overwhelmingly positive.

"While deals like Skype and eBay make you want to check your calendar to see what year it is, deals like this make you want to check outside to see if Hell has frozen over. This is a huge win from a psychological perspective and from a market perspective [for Microsoft]. Microsoft has the potential to be a very strong player in the mobile space. Great device, great form factor, great partner with EV-DO and its all running Windows Mobile 5.0."
- Michael Gartenberg, Jupiter Research

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UPN and Google have teamed up to screen the first episode of its new show "Everybody Hates Chris" on Google Video for the next four days. Viewers can stream the entire pilot episode, which premiered September 22 to record ratings for UPN, directly from Google.

Everybody Hates Chris is about "a teenager growing up as the eldest of three children in Brooklyn, New York during the early 1980's." The show is narrated by comedian Chris Rock and airs Thursdays at 8pm. "This is the first time Google users can watch an episode of a brand new television show on Google Video," said Susan Wojcicki, vice president of Product Management at Google.

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UPDATED In what could be considered a huge win for Microsoft and the Windows Mobile platform, former rival Palm announced Monday a new version of its Treo smartphone running the Redmond company's operating system for mobile devices.

Although not yet named, the new Treo will be carried exclusively by Verizon Wireless when it debuts in early 2006. Palm president and CEO Ed Colligan said Verizon would have exclusive access to the phone at least through the middle of next year.

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MTV Networks on Monday announced that it had signed an agreement with Warner Music Group to use its music videos in an upcoming mobile offering. The agreement is the first to allow on-demand access to music videos over a wireless network. Also, MTV plans to make excerpts of some of its programming available for download as well.

Original content will come from the company's various networks, including MTV, VH1, CMT, and Logo. "This is a great leap forward in the evolution of our mobile video strategy, and we look forward to developing more exciting initiatives in this space over the year to come," said Judy McGrath, Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks.

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Sony's Media Software division and Corel have joined forces to bundle and co-market their digital imaging and video software solutions, the companies announced Monday. The idea is to offer a single package for the holidays that offers photo editing, video production and DVD creation.

Two Windows-based bundles will be available: Visual Creation Studio and Visual Creation Studio Pro. Sony will contribute Vegas Movie Studio + DVD while Corel offers up Paint Shop Pro X and Photo Album 6, it's latest products aimed at digital photo enthusiasts.

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Nokia on Monday debuted a new brand for its growing list of music-enabled phones in a effort to make them more easily identifiable by consumers. Called Nokia XpressMusic, the phones will have common features such as dedicated music keys and automatic pause and resume of incoming calls.

The phone maker's announcement coincides with the unveiling of a new phone to fall under the brand. The Nokia 3250, will support over-the-air downloading, Windows Media format songs, and up to 1GB of expandable memory.

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Microsoft on Friday released Beta 3 of its Team Foundation Server to MSDN subscribers. Based on the SQL Server 2005 CTP and Visual Studio 2005 Release Candidate first distributed at this year's Professional Developers Conference, the software is used to better manage application development.

The final release of TFS is expected sometime early next year. Rick LaPlante, general manager of Visual Studio Team System, said Microsoft was on track to release the program on time. "Releasing a high quality, feature complete TFS Beta 3 was a critical step in being ready for Q1 [2006] and we still feel good about that commitment," LaPlante wrote in his Web log.

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What some analysts have billed as the "top MP3 player this fall" may have just hit a potentially damaging roadblock - its own frailty.

Complaints have begun to circle on both Web logs and Apple's own support forums surrounding an issue with the polycarbonate plastic that covers the front of the iPod Nano. Some users claim the player scratches extremely easily, enough that it makes the screen difficult to read.

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MSN has officially taken the lid off its paid search service in France and Singapore, with plans to launch a pilot in the United States next month. The program, known as adCenter, had been in testing since March in the two countries and launched in Singapore on August 31.

The new method of selling advertising will be used across MSN's search pages initially, company officials said. However, the content provider expects to use adCenter across other web properties in the future.

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Massachusetts has finalized a proposal to move away from proprietary document formats to open standards based on XML, which would eliminate Microsoft Office as an option for creating new documents. Microsoft responded harshly to the plan, calling it "inconsistent and discriminatory."

The final Enterprise Technical Reference Model version 3.5 was completed Wednesday following a period of public comment and a "lengthy discussion" at the September meeting of the Massachusetts IT Advisory Board. A draft of the proposal was published in late August detailing the changes.

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Contrary to initial reports that Apple may have had to settle with significantly lower profit margins in order to release the flash-based iPod Nano, electronics research firm iSuppli says that the cost to the Cupertino company to produce the player is likely the same as previous models.

iSuppli dissected a 2GB iPod Nano and found $90.18 USD worth of parts. Combined with the $8-10 it costs to produce each model, the Nano ran about $100 USD to produce, said iSuppli. The player retails for $199 USD, meaning a profit margin of just under 50 percent.

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A recent change made to TiVo's customer agreement has opened up the door to allow the company to institute service contracts. Although it is unclear as to why the change has been made, TiVo has recently endeavored to market the DVR service to new customers and contracts would keep those users from canceling.

According to the new service agreement, any TiVo activated after September 6 will require a 12-month commitment. Those who cancel before the end of their contract, or have their contracts terminated by TiVo, will be forced to pay a $150 early termination fee.

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Microsoft chairman architect Bill Gates is still the wealthiest person in America with a total of $51 billion, according to Forbes' annual list. Four out the top five richest Americans represent the technology industry, with fellow Microsoft founder Paul Allen, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison trailing Warren Buffett.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin were the big movers on the 2005 Forbes 400 list. The Google founders vaulted to number 16 and 17 with $11 billion each. Google CEO Eric Schmidt followed at number 52. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs took position 67 on the list with $3.3 billion, while Amazon's Jeff Bezos dropped from number 38 to 42.

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The latest in a string of deals designed to bring more subscribers to TiVo's doorstep is targeting Portable Media Center buyers. iRiver is offering its $500 PMC-120 media player with a free 40-hour Series2 TiVo and 1 year of service pre-paid. The deal expires October 15.

The PMC-120 features a 3.5-inch color display and 20GB hard drive for playing back music, TV shows, movies, photos and more. TiVo users can take advantage of TiVo To Go to watch recordings on the run using the device. The offer could help iRiver get rid of some inventory as well, with Portable Media Center sales less than stellar due to high prices and short battery life.

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