Panasonic BD-Live player's price tag shrinks
The DMP-BD50, Panasonic's entry-level BD-Live player, has still to be officially released, but has surfaced several times online at various price points. It has again appeared, at its lowest price yet.
Panasonic's first BD-Live Blu-Ray machine premiered at CES this year, showing off the extra features that can be obtained by connecting a Blu-ray player to the Internet. At the time, there was no launch date or price, but Panasonic told BetaNews that it would be watching how the market changes before deciding on anything.
E-book reader still emerging for Android phones
Google's Android Market online store is slated to gain some new software applications over the next few months, and it looks as though a native e-book reader will be one of them. But developers may want to fix some glitches first.
An Android edition of a well-acclaimed e-book reader is on its way to Google's Android Market, but not as quickly as software developers first hoped.
UK trade group pushes MP3 labeling
In the United Kingdom this week, the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) unveiled the "MP3 Compatible" campaign, to easily inform customers whether the content they're downloading is actually in MP3 format.
Digital music vendors Play.com, HMV, 7digital, Digitalstores.co.uk, Tescodigital, Woolworthsdownload.co.uk, and Tunetribe.com have all adopted the ERA's new "MP3 Compatible" seal, to indicate that their content is MP3 and not another format that is less universally compatible or protected by DRM.
Google / Yahoo partnership is scrapped
Citing the possibility of protracted scrutiny from government investigators, Google's senior counsel this morning stated his company has decided to back away from its AdSense sharing deal with Yahoo.
"After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement," reads a statement from Google SVP and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond this morning. "Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement."
Discount brings street price of Windows Home Server down to $100
After a price reduction over the weekend for the shrink-wrapped System Builder Edition of Windows Home Server, at least one online retailer extended that discount to customers, while others sell out their inventories at 62% higher.
The OEM editions of Microsoft operating systems and applications are typically sold without the fancy box, and with licenses that stipulate their use in pre-installation for computers that are to be resold, but that stipulation has historically never been enforced. Almost a decade ago, the OSR2 bundle of Windows 98 -- what many at the time called the most stable edition of that system, even though it wasn't really a separate build -- ended up being sold in retail establishments such as Egghead and CompUSA.
Google and Harvard split on Book Search agreement
The recent agreement between Google and various litigants has caused Harvard to walk away from its longstanding partnership on Google Book Search -- at least where copyrighted works are concerned.
The two will continue to work on scanning books that have entered the public domain. No books already scanned by the project will be affected. Harvard's been on board the search project since its pilot days in late 2004.
FCC okays white space access in last minute 5-0 vote
In a unanimous decision late Tuesday, the FCC gave its approval to public access to the "white spaces" of the wireless spectrum, after the tally was pushed back by an earlier vote today in favor of the $28.1 billion Verizon-Alltel merger.
A 5-0 vote by the Federal Communications Commission today in favor of opening up the white spaces followed months of lobbying by Google, Microsoft, and other Wireless Industry Association (WIA) members on behalf of the measure and by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) against it.
A peek at an early build of the new Win7 taskbar
One of Mac OS X's most successful features has been its zooming apps dock, which has been mimicked in third-party utilities for Windows. Windows 7's new taskbar looks more similar, but its changes are already themselves being changed.
The "pre-beta" edition of Windows 7 handed out at PDC 2008 last week appears on the surface to contain only a slightly revised version of the Windows Vista taskbar, if only temporarily. But developers were actually given hints that an early build of the Win7 taskbar was hidden behind a protective barrier.
Ya-hoo-boy, this is not a good time
The search site named for the whooping sound of fun and excitement is having not much of one and way too much of the other again.
The company confirmed via blog yesterday that Yahoo Live, the video-streaming social site that's been in the works for most of the year, will be shut down early next month. The service didn't get much attention after its initial rollout in February, though its group video chat feature was well-liked by many. In an interesting twist, the service will be commemorated tomorrow (Wednesday) in the service's Town Hall area.
Netflix cans used DVD sales
Online movie rental service Netflix has been evolving on an almost daily basis. Following a number of developments in its streaming video category, it announced yesterday it will soon cease selling previously viewed DVDs.
On the official Netflix blog yesterday, community leader Meghan wrote, "As you know, our core business is delivering great movie rentals to you on DVD by mail and instantly to the computer and TV, so we've decided it makes sense for us to focus exclusively on that. This means we will stop selling previously viewed DVDs through the Web site. We're sorry for any inconvenience for those of you who regularly purchase DVDs at Netflix, but we're excited about being able to spend the extra time focusing on continually improving our core rental business for you."
Dash exits the personal navigation device market
In an announcement yesterday, Dash Navigation said it is strategically reducing the size of its workforce as it shutters its dedicated device division and shifts into the position of a software and services company.
Dash made a connected personal navigation device (PND) as a sort of "next gen" for the extremely popular devices, including live traffic reports and support for location-based information through Yahoo's Fire Eagle middleware.
Apple's iPod chief steps down, iPhone sales outlook follows suit
Senior Vice President of Apple's iPod division, Tony Fadell has stepped down from his leadership position, and is being replaced by former IBM exec Mark Papermaster.
Fadell is regarded as the progenitor of the iPod ecosystem, bringing to Apple in 2001 the idea of a portable media player with its own dedicated online marketplace. Though The Wall Street Journal says he will be keeping a consultancy position, Fadell's Apple Bio has been removed.
Amid a perfect storm, Sirius XM faces a shareholder lawsuit
It's difficult to make the case for conspiracy against the competition when XM and Sirius had no competition prior to their merger. Still, a shareholder plows ahead with his campaign against the merged entity, despite a global crisis.
In recent days, analysts have speculated on various ways that US satellite radio provider Sirius XM can complete the funding of its merger and stay afloat, including issuing more stock and even possibly taking the company private. While all of that remains in the realm of speculation, a Sirius XM shareholder whose name is all too familiar to executives who hail from Sirius, has amended his lawsuit in US District Court in California, in an effort to stop what he describes as a conspiracy to monopolize the satellite radio industry by eliminating existing competition and erecting barriers to new competition.
Nokia announces layoffs, low-cost phones
Finnish mobile-phone giant Nokia will drop up to 600 employees as it reorganizes operations, closes a plant, and contemplates global poverty.
In its ongoing effort to address the global digital divide, Nokia is launching both new low-cost handsets in the New Delhi market and a service for rural areas of India, other parts of Asia, and Africa.
LG points to more Windows Mobile smartphones
During a visit from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Korea-based LG gave more than a hint that it plans to expand its projects with Microsoft, despite belonging to Google's Open Handset Alliance and the Nokia-backed Symbian Foundation.
LG Electronics has made an official vow to keep working with Microsoft on mobile technology, in the face of growing competition to the Windows Mobile operating system from Google's Android, Apple's iPhone, Symbian, and RIM's BlackBerry platform.
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