Many residents of the hurricane stricken areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama remain without power and no reliable connection to the outside world. T-Mobile is attempting to alleviate some of that suffering by opening up its hotspots in those three states to the public through Friday. The company would reevaluate the situation at that time.

T-Mobile said that the offer only extends to its wireless Internet services. "This free offer for the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama is for Wi-Fi service only, not T-Mobile voice services," the company said. The company offers service at Borders, FedEx/Kinko's and Starbucks among other locations.

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Apple quietly added an option to its Web site earlier this week allowing for customers to test out the company's Mac Mini product for a period of thirty days. The promotion is only being honored through Apple's online store.

"We’re so confident you'll love your new Mac mini, we'll let you test drive it for 30 days with no risk," the promotion's Web site reads. "If you decide you don't want it, we'll take it back."

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In an attempt to counter Apple's expected announcement of an iTunes phone next week, Napster on Wednesday said that its subscription-based Napster To Go service was already available on several mobile phones.

Almost any phone that operates on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 and Windows Mobile 2003 is able to transfer and listen to songs from the service. This includes the Motorola Q, due early next year, as well as devices from Audiovox, HP, HTC, i-Mate, Orange, Palm, Samsung, Siemens, and Sierra.

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Microsoft has shipped the first release candidate of its interim update to Windows Server 2003, known as R2. Rooted in Windows Server 2003 SP1, R2 delivers many enhancements and several new components, while leaving the core of the operating system unchanged to facilitate faster development.

Beta 2 of R2 was released in April, prompting fears that Microsoft would delay a final launch. Barring any delays, however, R2 is still expected to be ship before the end the year. Downloads of RC0 are available for both x86 and x64 versions of the operating system.

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Further emphasizing the growing importance of Internet telephony, Microsoft said late Tuesday it has acquired VOIP provider Teleo. Founded in 2003, Teleo offers a service for making voice calls from a PC to a traditional telephone number. Microsoft plans to integrate the technology into its MSN services.

Like fellow instant messaging clients, MSN Messenger currently offers PC-to-PC calling. But the additional of Teleo would mean calls could also be made to standard national and international phone numbers directly from the software.

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Once heralded by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates as the future of portable computing, Tablet PCs now appear to be a niche market that has slim prospects for significant growth even through the end of the decade.

Forecasts at the time of the Windows XP Tablet Edition launch expected sales to hit 5 million in 2005, 9 million in 2006, and 14 million by 2007. However, sales so far this year are not even in line to hit one million.

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Scientists in London on Tuesday said that ten years of mobile phone use showed no link to brain cancer. However, they could not rule out the possibility of higher risk of cancer over longer periods of time. The study will be published in the British Journal of Cancer.

The researchers focused on tumors that grow in the nerve connecting the ear to the brain, called acoustic neuroma. Previous studies showed some adverse affects from the radiation emitted from cellular phones, but no direct link had been established between cell phone use and cancer.

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One of the founders of popular online payment site PayPal has launched a new service that could prove useful to those computer users who have vast collections of digital photos on their hard drives.

Called Slide, the program will index photos and then group them into "channels" that are streamed in a ticker tape like interface that sits on the user's desktop. A user can share individual images as well as invite friends to subscribe to a channel to view those images.

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Google has petitioned a California federal court judge to rule that Kai-Fu Lee's contract with Microsoft is unenforceable so he can begin his employment with the search giant.

The legal battle between Google and Microsoft began on July 18 when the Redmond company announced that it would persue legal action against Google. Microsoft argued that Lee was breaking confidentiality and non-competition agreements he signed before working for Microsoft.

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Can the open source OpenOffice.org project ever take on Microsoft Office in the marketplace? Version 2.0 is showing the most promise yet, and the second beta of the new productivity suite is already receiving high marks from users. Below is a selection of reviews from BetaNews readers.

Excellent software, and worthy Office Replacement. Sure, it takes a few seconds more to load, but are those few seconds worth $329 to upgrade to Office 2003 or $499 for a full new license? OO is far and away the best Office alternative, and you can't beat the price. - arossetti

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To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Opera Software plans to give away free registration codes for its Opera Web browser for a period of 24 hours. Users can also join the party at Opera's community site, which features games, stories on the history of Opera and music downloads.

Opera was founded in 1995 as a reasearch project in Norway at telecom company Telenor. "On this day we celebrate our users. From the very beginning, we've consistently worked closely with our community to make sure we deliver the best Internet experience," said Jon S. von Tetzchner, Opera Software CEO.

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Microsoft and Scientific Atlanta, one of the largest manufacturers of cable set-top boxes, announced on Monday that the companies would begin to work together on boxes for IPTV. The partnership would be key to the rollout of IPTV by SBC Communications.

Scientific Atlanta would manufacture the set top boxes, and Microsoft would supply the operating system to be used on the boxes. The box would allow a user to access programming, as well as multimedia content over a network connection.

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A Connecticut man who was caught selling portions of Microsoft's source code for its Windows operating system on his Web site has plead guilty to charges associated with the theft.

Known by the Internet handle "illwill," William Genovese Jr., 28 had obtained code from the Windows 2000 and NT 4.0 operating systems. He was charged in February 2004 after Microsoft discovered the code for sale on a Web site owned by Genovese.

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Microsoft said it is investigating a report of a new potentially critical flaw discovered in Internet Explorer by security researcher Tom Ferris. The problem affects fully patched Windows XP SP2 systems running IE6, and could lead to remote code executation.

Ferris, who has been credited by Microsoft as finding a security vulnerability in the Remote Desktop Protocol, says he reported the issue to Microsoft on August 14. Ferris is not sharing any specifics of the flaw in order to keep users safe while Microsoft develops a patch, but he has posted a screenshot of IE crashing from the bug.

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Wireless carrier Cingular has reportedly signed a deal with Apple to offer the Motorola phone with built-in iTunes software, which would enable users to transfer songs to the mobile handset. The phone is expected to be officially unveiled September 7 at an event in San Francisco.

Both Motorola and Cingular have shot commercials for the phone, which will reportedly hold around 100 songs. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal confirmed Apple's plans and said Cingular will bring the phone to market in time for the holidays.

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