BetaNews Staff

Google and ABC announced details of a partnership Friday that would provide the network's ABC News Now webcast with search statistics, including rankings on the day's popular search terms and the most viewed news stories according to Google News. The search engine has a similar deal with Al Gore's Current TV in which the most popular search terms of the day are highlighted in a short segment shown every half-hour.

Separately from the ABC deal, Google this week also debuted a version of its News site designed for mobile devices and organized by subject. Only content formatted for mobile screens is shown, however. Google News for mobile devices follows GMail mobile, which the company also recently launched.

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Apple rumor site Think Secret is standing behind its claim that Apple is preparing a video iPod with touch screen, despite the device being a no-show at the company's special event earlier this week. The site now reports that Apple could launch the new iPod at the end of March or in early April.

The holdup, Think Secret asserts, is the availability of movie content. Apple is said to be in talks with Hollywood studios about selling full-length feature films through the iTunes Music Store. The movies would take advantage of the new iPod's 4-inch screen. The new device is expected retain the iPod's current form factor, with the larger display replacing the scroll wheel.

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The online user-created encyclopedia Wikipedia racked up its 1 millionth English language article on Wednesday, marking a significant milestone for a service that has faced much controversy over the years. The article covered the Jordanhill railway station in Scotland and was authored by Ewan Macdonald.

Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the project, says a total of 3.3 million articles are under development in more than 125 languages. "Although its method of editing is new and controversial, Wikipedia has already won acclaim and awards for its detailed coverage of current events, popular culture, and scientific topics; its usability; and its international community of contributors," the Foundation said in a statement.

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HP said late Wednesday that it had settled a nearly two year-old fight with Gateway and its subsidiary eMachines over patent infringement. Under the terms of the deal, Gateway would pay $25 million to HP, followed by an additional $22 million to be paid no later than one year after the final agreement is signed.

The two sides would also agree to drop all litigation filed against each other, and agree to cross license their patents. HP had sued Gateway and eMachines in 2004 and 2005, claiming infringement on 27 patents. Gateway then countersued, accusing HP of infringement on 13 of its own patents.

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Corel has inked a deal with Lenovo to ship its Small Business Center suite with the PC manufacturer's new desktop and notebook systems it announced last week. The agreement adds to Corel's reach among small businesses, and follows previous deals with Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Corel Small Business Center includes: WordPerfect Office, CorelDRAW, Corel Paint Shop Pro X and Corel Photo Album 6 Starter Edition. The bundling is non-exclusive, however, which means Lenovo will likely offer customers Microsoft Office as well. Still, Corel has remained viable in the competitive market by targeting small businesses with a low-cost solution and touts its number-two position.

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TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said Monday that the company is about to offer new pricing plans, including one that would give away a TiVo box for free in exchange for a higher monthly fee and long-term contract. Another plan would sell TiVo with service for the lifetime of the unit at a set price.

Currently, TiVo has some 4 million subscribers, of which two-thirds are from its DirecTV partnership. With the satellite provider now offering its own DVR option, TiVo is under pressure to find new ways to attract customers. The company recently signed deals with cable provider Comcast, and indicated that it would sacrifice profitability in order to bring on new customers.

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Hardware manufacturers Sony and NEC inked a deal on Monday to merge their optical drive businesses into a new company that will be known as "Sony NEC Optiarc." Sony will control 55 percent of the merged entity, with NEC holding the remaining 45 percent.

Combined optical drive sales from Sony and NEC total close to $1.9 billion. Although Sony has fiercely backed Blu-ray for next-generation DVDs and NEC had planned to produce HD DVD drives, it's likely the new independent company will build hardware for both formats. Samsung and Toshiba previously merged their optical drive units in 2003.

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Centercode is seeking testers for two upcoming beta programs involving phone hardware. The first test is aimed at avid Skype users and is open to testers in all countries. Centercode is also looking for individuals to try out a new conferencing product designed for small to medium businesses.

According to Centercode, "Active participants in the beta test are given priority selection on future beta tests and have the chance to earn excellent incentives." More information and system requirements for each test can be found on the Centercode callouts: Skype phone beta and conference phone beta.

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UPDATED A U.S. District judge chastised both RIM and NTP for not settling out of court, but refused to order an immediate shutdown of the BlackBerry service. The ruling, while good news for RIM, does not mean the service would necessarily avoid being shut down at a later time.

Judge James Spencer took time after hearing nearly four hours of arguments to remind RIM that it had already been found guilty of patent infringement, and told the company "the simple truth, the reality of the jury verdict has not changed."

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Further building up its library of free video content, Google on Friday announced it has launched a pilot program to digitize filmstrips from the United States National Archives. The company is currently offering videos from NASA, United Newsreel and the Department of Interior that date from 1916 to 1981.

"I think both students and teachers can agree that any of these would make for an exciting day in the classroom," commented Jon Steinback, product marketing manager for Google Video. "This includes truly momentous events like the moon landing, as well as rare historical footage like government documentaries from the 1930s and battlefield stories from World War II."

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Ericsson said on Friday that it had filed a lawsuit against mobile phone manufacturer Samsung, accusing it of patent infringement in a number of countries. Ericsson says agreements with Samsung to license GSM, GPRS and EDGE technologies had expired at the end of 2005 and the companies have been unable to negotiate new deals.

A spokesperson for Ericsson said the company has spent large amounts of money on research and development, a common practice in the technology industry. She added that a lawsuit was in the best interest of the company's shareholders and investors. Representatives from Samsung had no comment.

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Google this week delivered three widgets for Apple's Dashboard feature found in Mac OS X, which provide access to Blogger, Gmail and Google Search History. Dashboard runs mini-applications that reside in a separate layer of the desktop and can be called up with a quick hotkey or mouse movement.

The Blogger widget allows for quick posting to Google's Web log service, while the Gmail widget lists messages in the inbox. The widgets were created by Google engineers during their "20 percent time," in which they are free to work on projects of their choosing. The company is also currently recruiting new Mac developers.

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Although Apple has attempted to prevent the Intel variant of its OS from installing on generic hardware, a patch surfaced on the Internet Thursday that enables Mac OS X 10.4.5 to work on non-Apple systems. The update fixed several Intel-related bugs, but also added code to stop those trying to install it on regular PCs.

A hacker named Maxxuss released the upgrade patch and plans to create a full 10.4.5 installation routine. Those who install Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware are unable to download updates directly from the company, so these patches are the only way to take advantage of the fixes made in each release. Maxxuss says some issues still remain, such as problems with DVD playback and iTunes on systems with AMD CPUs.

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With no Portable Google Machine on the horizon, Google is providing a new option for mobile phone users looking up a quick answer to their query: automatically reformatting the top search result for small screens. The page's layout is translated through Google's servers and broken up into smaller pieces.

"What if, say, you're out somewhere and absolutely must know if that new Super Monkey Ball game for the Nintendo DS is in stores yet?" asked Google engineer Roger Skubowius. "The whole idea is to get you the information you want as quickly as possible, so you can spend less time downloading and scrolling through long documents on a pocket-sized screen."

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A new law that will mandate European ISPs and telecommunications companies to keep details of the communications of their customers for up to two years was given the go-ahead by the EU Wednesday. Although the content is not recorded, details of the time, destination of the call and length would be stored.

Member countries of the European Union would have until August 2007 to comply. The new legislation has its critics, among them human rights and privacy groups that say the law is a threat to civil liberties. Supporters of the law dismiss such a notion, arguing the data is essential in the fight against terrorism and citing the Madrid train bombings as an example of how such surveillance could have prevented the attack.

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