Live from the Middle East: the Pussycat Dolls, via MySpace
MySpace, streaming encoder provider Kulabyte, and network systems provider Akamai will pool their resources for "Operation MySpace," a new initiative that will offer streaming webcasts of concerts in high-definition live Kuwait.
The team's stream will offer video content good enough to be viewed on a full screen or large LCD screen, along with regular-sized PC monitors, according to Kulabyte.
Sony reportedly in talks with Microsoft on Blu-ray for Xbox 360
Inevitably, the other leading game consoles will need a high-resolution video disc option, and with the format war now over, there's only one option to be had. So it seems like now's as good a time as any for the two sides to talk shop.
A Financial Times report this morning cites Sony Electronics US President Stan Glasgow as saying his company is presently in talks with Microsoft about the possibility of it producing a Blu-ray accessory drive for its Xbox 360 game console.
One ABI analyst still sees a future in muni-Wi-Fi
Researchers from ABI seem to believe that municipal Wi-Fi may still have a future, and that by 2012, if all current issues are resolved, its global service area will extend to around 30,000 square miles, a 60x increase.
"Rumors of municipal networks' death is premature," ABI Research director Stan Schatt told BetaNews this afternoon.
T-Mobile's owner might consider buying Sprint, say analysts
Much beleaguered Sprint Nextel might get bought out by Deutsche Telekom, the owner of major wireless competitor T-Mobile, according to an analyst report.
In a report issued yesterday, Merrill Lynch analysts cited industry pricing as the reason why Deutsche Telekom -- the world's sixth largest telecom carrier -- might acquire Sprint Nextel, despite Sprint's operational difficulties and sinking position in the US mobile market.
Vigor Colossus knocks gamers senseless with a 2x4
Intel may not be as good at code-naming its enthusiast platforms as its OEMs are at naming its PCs. Today, enthusiast system builder Vigor announced its Colossus system, and "Vigor Colossus" has a more enticing ring to it than "Skulltrail," the Intel platform on which it's based.
The Vigor Gaming Colossus, an Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform-based PC that is the company's most powerful system. Colossus ships with two Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 quad-core processors clocked at 3.2 GHz while stock, though initial overclocking tests reveal stable speeds up to 4 GHz.
How will Microsoft's initiatives impact health care?
At a big medical conference last week, Microsoft dove deeper into an maelstrom of industry health care solutions aimed at meeting the demands of government regulators, hospitals, insurance firms, and consumers. Can the team from Redmond swim the distance against competitors including IBM and Google?
The challenge before database software providers today is to address the critical and lucrative market of healthcare information access for doctors and patients, in a way that fulfills the mandates of government regulations for accountability, and at the same time fulfills the requirements of government regulations for security...while staying viable for the everyday user.
Yahoo Maps adds new information, better resolution
Yahoo announced on Thursday that its Maps site had improved its amount of content, adding new information for 300 North American cities and 12,000 specific neighborhoods.
Point-of-interest information has also been upgraded, highlighting such features as schools, rest areas, and ski resorts. Yahoo also says it has also improved worldwide coverage, especially in Eastern Europe.
Not so fast: Latest Firefox beta posted, then un-posted
This morning, BetaNews FileForum received word that Beta 4 of Mozilla Firefox was posted for testers to download...and for a short time, that's how it genuinely appeared.
But as one of our readers soon found out -- and apparently Mozilla as well -- what went up in the properly named releases/3.0b4 directory was not the final public Beta 4 at all, but rather a release candidate for Beta 4 (as opposed to a release candidate for the final product). Essentially, it's the latest build for what Mozilla hopes to be able to distribute as Firefox 3.0 Beta 4.
Legal team scrambles to suppress MobiTV addresses shared in the clear
Once again, a string of characters that purports to be secret intellectual property turned up in the clear, and its public dissemination has triggered more efforts by its owner's legal team than, evidently, by its security team.
As early as last November, a user in Sprint's mobile phone forums who was ostensibly giving a positive user review for a certain model of handset, happened to share a URL he discovered which would enable users of that phone to bypass the MobiTV front end -- and the monthly charges attributed to it -- and access its lineup of streaming mobile TV channels for free.
DoD to stop Google Maps from photographing any more army bases
Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas mistakenly allowed a Google Maps street view vehicle perform a drive-through, photographing the army base in 360 degree-viewable detail.
An anonymous source told the Los Angeles Times that an official at the Fort Sam Houston auxiliary military base in San Antonio, Texas, allowed Google staff access on two occasions, under the assumption that a non-photographic online map provided by Google would be helpful to visitors. He claims that, while on base, Google did not follow the rules.
Microsoft's IE architect: IE8 is what we've been building up to
FROM MIX 08 - For Internet Explorer platform architect Chris Wilson, IE8 is more than just a new version. It's the realization of an effort that began with IE7 to build the best Web browser for both developers and consumers.
"IE7 was the start to IE8," Wilson told BetaNews this afternoon in Las Vegas. It's not a secret that Microsoft largely abandoned its browser after IE6 and rebuilt the development team from scratch for IE7. Although it brought a number of much-needed improvements, version 7 was only a stepping stone for the company on the road to IE8.
TiVo's 'best performance yet': almost breaking even
Though there have been rare exceptions, TiVo generally does not turn a profit. However, that is not to say the company cannot exceed expectations.
The DVR maker was projected to sustain a net loss of between $9 and $12 million for the fourth quarter of 2007, but in the end, net loss for the company was only $6.4 million. The result for the whole of last year was a loss of $31.5 million, a 34% improvement over the prior year's $47.7 million loss.
Is Silverlight 2 catching up with Flash?
As Adobe and Microsoft come out with new releases of their respective multimedia platforms, the debate rages on among developers over which is the most viable. And Flash's proponents are using Linux as their trump card.
One indisputable fact for now is that, while Flash works across both Windows and Linux, the same really can't be said for Silverlight. Moonlight, a free and open source edition of Silverlight, is still under development by the Mono Project, seemingly with no end in sight.
Steve Ballmer on Google, Yahoo, Apple and more
FROM MIX 08 - In his Thursday afternoon keynote at MIX, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sat down for a one-on-one chat with former Apple employee and Alltop co-founder Guy Kawasaki. We've condensed the discussion down to the key points.
- Current status of the Yahoo deal: "We've made an offer! It's out there baby."
New Yahoo service shares users' locations with online services
Fire Eagle is Yahoo's location-aware middleware, which ultimately lets users share their locations with online services, so those sites and applications can deliver results relevant to where they are.
Ten thousand invitation codes were sent out yesterday, in addition to the literal golden tickets given out to those present at Etech in San Diego. Yahoo hopes to entice developers to integrate Fire Eagle into their services to help make location-specific data readily accessible.
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