Sharp said it has plans to release a 57-inch LCD television in December in a move aimed at increasing its market share of flat-panel TVs. The company also said that it plans to launch the TV in North America in February 2006. The TV will support the full HD standard, with a resolution of up to 1,920 by 1,080 pixels.

LCD televisions, however, still remain much more expensive than plasmas. The TV will retail for 1.52 million yen, or about $13,600 USD. In comparison, a new 65-inch plasma set from Panasonic due out soon in Japan will sell for 990,000 yen, or about $8,875 USD.

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Secunia warned on Tuesday that critical vulnerabilities within the Linux and Unix versions of Firefox could allow an attacker to easily execute shell commands on a user's system. Mozilla responded on Wednesday by issuing version 1.0.7 of the browser that addresses the flaw.

The vulnerability is known to affect Firefox version 1.0.6 on Fedora Core 4 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Secunia rates the issue "extremely critical," which is reserved for "remotely exploitable vulnerabilities, which can lead to system compromise. Successful exploitation does not normally require any interaction and exploits are in the wild."

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UPDATED Google is testing out a free wireless hotspot service in two locations, company officials acknowledged Tuesday. News of Google Wi-Fi spread following a new download called Google Secure Access that lets users connect to Google's VPN, or virtual private network, in order to keep their Internet connection secure from prying eyes when using Wi-Fi.

Google's wireless plans have been the center of much speculation over the past few months, with the company buying up fiber optic lines and expanding its portfolio with Google Talk and through the purchase of wireless start-up Android. However, Google itself has remained mum on its future plans.

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Intel said on Tuesday it had made changes to its manufacturing process that would allow for the production of processors that use very little power, and would extend battery life of mobile and small form factor devices.

To decrease power consumption of its chips, Intel had to improve the design of the transistor. Energy leaks from these transistors, even when in the off state waste electrical power. Through the new design process, engineers at Intel were able to reduce leakage by 1,000 times over the standard construction.

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Dell on Tuesday debuted the "Ditty" - its answer to the iPod Shuffle which the company hopes will prove more successful than previous incarnations of its DJ music players. At $99 USD for 512MB, the Ditty is aimed at taking away some of Apple's Shuffle market share this holiday season.

The Ditty has two features that the Shuffle has been often criticized for not including: an FM tuner and small monochrome screen. The device is also "PlaysForSure" compatible, meaning the user can download music from any Windows Media based subscription music service.

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MasterCard said at an industry conference in Memphis Monday that it planned to have nearly four million "swipeless" RFID credit cards in circulation by year's end. Dubbed PayPass, a user will only have to wave his or her card in front of a sensor to make a payment on the item. American Express announced a similar service in June.

MasterCard is also working with cell phone providers in order to allow consumers to use phones as payment devices, and is now in a pre-launch phase in the United States. Similar programs have already proven successful in Asia. MasterCard America president Ruth Ann Marshall acknowledged that the Internet is causing "substantial ripples in the personal finance industry," and companies like PayPal -- and potentially Google -- pose a threat to MasterCard's business.

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Microsoft enhanced support for Exchange Server in its Entourage e-mail client for Mac OS X, releasing Office 2004 for Mac Service Pack 2 on Tuesday. The update also includes changes across the entire Office product line, as well as bug fixes for common issues.

The company hopes that the tighter integration with Exchange will encourage its business Mac users to switch to Entourage, which competes with Apple's built-in Mail client. SP2 builds on basic support for Exchange server first introduced in 2004.

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Microsoft on Tuesday announced a broad reorganization of the company into three new divisions each headed by its own president. Current group vice president of platforms at Microsoft, Jim Allchin, also announced plans to retire by the end of 2006 - once Windows Vista is out the door.

The Microsoft Platform Products & Services Division will be comprised of the Windows Client, Server and Tools, and MSN product groups. Allchin will serve as co-president with Kevin Johnson until his retirement, when Johnson will take over.

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Apple overnight took its .Mac service offline, and it returned early Tuesday morning with several enhancements including more storage space, an updated version of Apple's Backup application, a new collaboration feature, and additional language support.

Most notable among the new features is the expansion of storage space from 250MB to 1GB on single-person accounts. Family accounts received a storage boost from 1GB to 2GB, and either type of account can add an additional gigabyte of space for $49.95 USD annually.

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Nokia on Tuesday officially said it was delaying the much-anticipated N91 music phone until the first quarter of next year, citing the desire to make the phone work with as many music providers as possible and hold thousands of songs. Motorola's ROKR iTunes phone can store a maximum of 100 songs.

Nokia recently unveiled its 6630 Music Edition phone that supports MP3, AAC and WMA. The company told Reuters that Microsoft's DRM was the primary reason for the delay, saying it needed more time to ensure a solid implementation of the copyright protection software. The N91 boasts a 4GB hard drive for music and features built-in support for Wi-Fi.

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Don't expect the price of songs on iTunes to rise in the near future, at least if Steve Jobs has his way. Calling the record labels "greedy," Jobs said Apple has no plans to up prices. He mentioned that the profit margins on digital music are much higher than conventional distribution, and said there are no reasons why the price needs to change.

Labels are upset with Apple over its unwillingness to allow for higher prices, and are hoping to negotiate more favorable terms when iTunes contracts come up for renewal. "We're trying to compete with piracy, we're trying to pull people away from piracy and say, 'You can buy these songs legally for a fair price,'" Jobs told reporters Tuesday at Apple Expo Paris. "But if the price goes up a lot, they'll go back to piracy. Then everybody loses."

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Qwest and Microsoft have announced that the two companies will team up to bring voice over IP services to small and medium-sized businesses, and combine their efforts to offer a digital communications suite of products.

Qwest will be the first company to use the Microsoft Solution for Enhanced VoIP Services, Microsoft said Tuesday at the Fall 2005 VON, a twice annual VoIP trade show.

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America Online on Tuesday said it would launch a new pay service for making VoIP calls through its AIM client starting October 4. No AOL subscription will be required to use the service, and current subscribers of AOL's Internet Phone service will receive the upgrade automatically.

The company claims that consumers could save up to 40 percent over monthly landline phone bills by using the service, dubbed "TotalTalk."

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Following a successful 24-hour giveaway last month, Opera Software has decided to drop the banner ads from its Web browser and permanently nix the licensing fee. Opera 8.5 is now available for download free of charge, putting new pressure on Firefox as it nears version 1.5.

"Today we invite the entire Internet community to use Opera and experience Web browsing as it should be," said Jon S. von Tetzchner, Opera CEO. "Removing the ad banner and licensing fee will encourage many new users to discover the speed, security and unmatched usability of the Opera browser."

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Symantec has some bad news for Macintosh and Mozilla users. According to a recent report by the security firm, neither Mac OS X nor Firefox is as secure as proponents claim.

The firm said that during the first six months of 2005, 25 vulnerabilities were discovered that affected the Mozilla family of browsers, versus only 13 for Internet Explorer. Furthermore, 18 of Mozilla's and 8 of IE's vulnerabilities were considered "high severity."

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