Sony pushes forward with BD-J
Using the NAB's yearly meeting as a backdrop, Sony reaffirmed its commitment to Blu-ray Java by announcing new upgrades to authoring software from in-house and third-party sources.
Sony has hopes that pushing BR-J harder will help silence critics who often pointed out Toshiba's now defunct HD DVD format was far more advanced in authoring functionality. Making BD-J easier to use is likely a top priority for the Japanese company.
First look at DRM for Silverlight
It had to happen sometime: Microsoft announced today DRM is making its way onto the Silverlight platform, powered by none other than the company's elusive PlayReady content access technology.
Silverlight, Microsoft's cross-platform answer to Adobe's Flash, was unveiled last year just two months after their PlayReady "cross platform" DRM was announced.
Popular BitTorrent site goes legit, looks for buyer
Likely a move to avoid the legal pitfalls besieging other file sharing sites at the moment, YouTorrent has announced that it will only index sites that compile licensed content.
The indexer only launched in early January, but it has quickly become one of the Web's most visited BitTorrent sites. According to the company, the site now averages about 10 million unique visitors a month.
Blockbuster proposes 'exclusive' content, devices in Circuit City bid
With the format war over, the half-life of disc-based video in the US may already have been expended. So the survival of Blockbuster as a brand may depend on a device that helps move its storefront directly into the household. Enter Circuit City.
In his public letter to the CEO of Circuit City requesting that negotiations commence on a merger deal, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes suggested that the combined retailers would not only be able to secure exclusivity deals for content -- as Blockbuster has already been known to do for its 7,800+ rental outlets in the US -- but might also have the ability to market and sell an undefined, exclusive content delivery device.
Gateway's notebook lineup under Acer starts to gel
In the interest of keeping the individual identities of the whole family of Acer properties alive, Gateway has announced an expansion of its notebook lines.
During the launch of Acer's Gemstone, analyst John Spooner of TBR remarked to BetaNews that the company looked to be positioning itself at the high end of the market, above Gateway and Packard Bell. If that is the case, then today's announcement makes Gateway look appealing to the "top 2/3" gamer/enthusiast market. All models will include Windows Vista SP1, with some offering an upgrade to Vista Home Premium 64-bit Edition SP1.
Carmi Levy: Yahoo's options, now that it appears to have some
At this time last week, Yahoo was said to have reached the end of its rope. It didn't appear very viable on its own, and certainly no one would be crazy enough to try to top Microsoft's cash offer. Seven days later, and it's a different world.
Just days after Microsoft's February 1 bombshell that it was going after Yahoo directly, many financial analysts declared Yahoo to be headed to that great collection of defunct Internet brands in the "cloud" someplace, perhaps alongside Netscape.
IBM creates 'racetrack memory' for faster and cheaper storage
Will there ever come a day when a single handheld MP3 player can store 3,500 movies? IBM researchers think that a new technology called "racetrack" memory will make this possible within the next ten years.
Aside from performance, better relability and lower prices could be on the way, too. Unlike magnetic disk drives, racetrack memory has no moving parts. Moreover, unlike flash memory, it can be endlessly rewritten with no wear and tear, according to IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin and his colleagues at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California.
Oracle launches new security strategy and software
This morning, Oracle rolled out an ambitious strategy aimed at achieving more consistent security in large organizations, along with the first four software components of its new "Service-Oriented Security" architecture.
But given all of Oracle's software acquisitions in recent years, how well will the new security model support Oracle's entire customer base?
NVidia, Intel no longer appear to be prospective partners
During an analyst meeting yesterday, the head of NVidia stated clearly that NVidia is a GPU company and not a semiconductor manufacturer, destroying any flicker of hope that it and Intel may jointly combat AMD and its ATI division.
"We're going to open a can of whoop ass," boasted NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang during an NVidia Financial Day analyst meeting yesterday, invoking a word that BetaNews' own automatic comments parser system would splash an asterisk in the middle of.
EchoStar's motion to re-hear TiVo patent case denied
A federal appeals court this afternoon turned down Dish Network parent company EchoStar's petition to rehear its long-fought patent infringement case, which was only partially reversed in EchoStar's favor last January.
Having attained a glimmer of hope last January with a partial reversal and partial remand -- amid a partial upholding -- of an April 2006 verdict in TiVo's favor, EchoStar this afternoon lost its appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to have the entire case reheard. The Dish Network parent went for all the marbles and lost.
Is Vista dead in the water?
Analysts from Gartner said earlier this week that Windows is collapsing under its own weight. Talk in the blogosphere keeps pointing to a Windows 7 release date earlier than 2010. Is Vista already a lame duck?
ANALYSIS Certainly Microsoft wants to avoid another debacle on the scale of Windows Me, an operating system release that tilted more toward a mistake than an upgrade, and whose publicity turned into pushback from both customers and the press.
Opera will be available for Android phones
Even though not a single phone equipped with the OS is available commercially as of yet, Opera said Thursday it had ported a version of its browser to Android.
Interested parties can download the technical preview from the company's website, and are being asked to submit feedback before Opera launches the product in beta.
Indonesia lifts its YouTube ban
Under government orders on Tuesday, Indonesian ISPs blocked sites that shared Dutch anti-Islamist Geert Wilders' 16-minute film Fitna. The ban on these sites has reportedly now been lifted.
The Jakarta Post reported that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had banned Dutch politician Geert Wilders' film Fitna for disturbing social harmony in Indonesia. Subsequently, 146 ISPs and 30 network access providers were asked to block Web sites that hosted the controversial film. The list of blocked sites included YouTube, MySpace, and Rapidshare.
Is AOL's CEO openly courting Yahoo or Microsoft?
In a letter to AOL employees yesterday, AOL CEO Randy Falco appeared to almost blatantly court some sort of merger or acquisition for his company. But Falco left AOL staff hanging in the breeze as to what kind of deal, he might strike, and with whom.
"I'm sure you've read some of the recent news speculating about potential AOL partnerships. While the company can't comment on any discussions at this time, I'd like to provide some perspective on the industry and AOL's position in the market," Falco wrote, in a letter sent out on the eve of a strategy meeting slated to take place today among Yahoo's directors.
FCC issues $6 million in DTV fines to Wal-Mart, others
The Federal Communications Commission has exacted fines on retailers found to not be fully advising customers about the DTV transition, including Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, and Target; as well as a number of CE manufacturers.
Wal-Mart/Sam's West, Circuit City, Fry's, Target, Sears, K-Mart, and CompUSA were all found to have violated a federal rule on labeling analog TV-related merchandise sold either in-store or on their Web sites, resulting in a total of $3,928,000 in forfeitures.
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