US sinks to 15th place worldwide in broadband, says OECD
In broadband access, the United States has now slipped from twelfth to fifteen place versus other countries, according to new research released this week by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The OECD study points to factors ranging from pricing to download speeds as possible reasons why the US may be losing ground, at least compared against other countries. Unlike some other broadband studies, which compare access rates across wider numbers of countries, the OECD research looks only at penetration rates among its own 30 member nations.
Time Warner Cable spinoff officially under way
Though rumors began in 2006, actual news of Time Warner separating its cable division into a standalone company came in late April of this year. Today, the "complete legal and structural separation" of the two entities was announced.
In spinning off Time Warner Cable, parent Time Warner stands to gain $9.25 billion of a total $10.9 billion in shareholder dividends. For those counting, that means the media conglomerate holds 85.2% of the cable company's common stock.
AT&T opens Wi-Fi networks to 3G customers using Windows
iPhone users aren't the only ones who will get free access to AT&T's 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, as the company is also opening the doors to its 3G customers signed up for LaptopConnect plans. But the offer has one catch: it requires Windows.
AT&T recently signed a deal to power the Wi-Fi networks at all Starbucks and Barnes and Noble locations, boosting its hotspot number by 7,000. As part of the agreement, it decided to grant iPhone users free access to its network. AT&T is the exclusive iPhone carrier in the United States, giving it an incentive to support those users.
Lavasoft broadens its malware scope with Ad-Aware 2008 releases
Download Ad-Aware Free 2008 version 7.1.0.7 from FileForum now.
It was perhaps the first great advertising tracker purging system, and may have single-handedly redefined the public's notion of malware. Now, Ad-Aware is growing up, becoming more of a fully-fledged anti-virus product.
Twitter experiences another flutter
In an environment predicated upon all users updating as frequently as possible, social microblog Twitter has revealed its hamartia: that it can absolutely not sustain downtime.
Granted, the service experienced numerous outages in the course of two weeks -- to say nothing of the past few months -- but in combing through the Twitter support forum under the heading "May 20: Twitter Downtime," it becomes apparent that every time the site experiences a service disruption, users are left stranded.
CBS opens up more of its classic TV library
Like Nintendo doling out classic games on the Wii Virtual Console, CBS Home Entertainment has opened up its vault and pulled out some classic shows to be viewed freely on CBS.com and on its partnering CBS Audience Network sites.
Starting today, clips and full episodes of The Love Boat, Beverly Hills 90210, Twin Peaks, Family Ties, and Perry Mason will be available on over 300 participating CBS Audience Network sites. Partners include the recently-acquired CNET and its related subsidiaries, AOL, Microsoft, Comcast, Joost, Sling Media, Veoh, and Bebo.
Researchers: Bugs in open source software are waning
Developers of the Linux OS, Apache Web server, and about 250 other different open source projects have removed more than 8,500 individual bugs from their code over the past two years, according to a study released this week.
Linux developers, according to the Scan Report on Open Source Software 2008, accomplished this feat using a scanning Web site developed by Coverity, Inc. with support from the US Dept. of Homeland Security. In this expansive study, researchers reported a 16% reduction in static analysis density since 2006, among many other findings.
Sprint confirms it's implementing data usage caps
A number of Sprint mobile broadband users have shown their disgust over an internal memo that indicated the company has placed a cap on its mobile broadband service.
In an e-mail and phone correspondence with BetaNews, Sprint officials discussed the reasoning behind its decision to implement a 5 GB per month overall use cap, and 300 MB per month for off-network roaming.
Sugar Labs founded to extend OLPC Linux software to more laptops
Now that One Laptop Per Child has unveiled the Windows XP edition of its XO laptop, a top official of the nonprofit group is leaving to form an organization that will extend the reach of the OLPC's original Linux-based platform, Sugar.
Walter Bender, who served as OLPC's president of software and content, will now help to set up the Sugar Labs Foundation, and so will many core Sugar developers.
Gartner: Mobile IM making gains against texting
Research firm Gartner says that SMS continues to increase in usage, however the increasing prevalence of IM clients on phones is shifting that balance.
Some 2.3 trillion messages will be sent worldwide during this year, a 19.6 percent increase over the year previous. However, at the same time revenues have leveled off due to increased competition.
Second release candidate for Hyper-V virtualization tool now available
Download Hyper-V RC1 for Windows Server 2008 x86 from BetaNews FileForum now.
Microsoft's ambitious, if somewhat reduced, goals of making hardware-supported virtualization a common feature of Windows Server, are one small step closer to fruition this afternoon.
Palm Centro finally finds its way down under
After selling more than one million Palm Centro smartphones in the United States, Palm announced its lowest-priced smartphone will finally be available to Australia Telstra pre-paid customers starting on May 26.
Available to the US users on the AT&T or Sprint networks, with rumors of a Verizon Wireless version in the works, the Centro features a full QWERTY keyboard, 320x320 pixel touch screen, 1.3 megapixel camera, and Bluetooth technology. On the software side, the phone is powered by Palm OS 5.4.9, has easy access to Yahoo and Gmail, a built-in Google Maps application, and integrated photo and video sharing software.
BBC Sound Index portends new popularity metrics for music
Testing in public beta, BBC's Sound Index determines a music artist's popularity based on what people are blogging about, listening to, watching, and downloading, with updates every six hours.
The Sound Index crawlers comb through data from partner sites Bebo, MySpace, Last.FM, iTunes, Google, and YouTube, tallying the most blog mentions, comments, plays, downloads, profile views, and search queries associated with an artist, and ranking them among the top 1,000 most popular.
YouTube answers Sen. Lieberman's request to remove terrorist videos
Terrorism may be unpopular, but speaking one's mind about the subject is free speech: That's the basis of a response this morning to one prominent US senator's call for YouTube to remove terrorist-oriented videos.
"While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view," answered the YouTube Team, after Google, the company that owns YouTube, received a letter from US Senator Joseph Lieberman (I - Conn.) asking for removal of all videos on YouTube produced by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.
NPD: Apple dominates the high-end PC market
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