Vudu begins shipping 1TB box, updates system software
Vudu pushed an update to its platform this week which would allow for users to free up hard drive space by "storing" purchased movies on the company's own servers.
Known as the "Vault," it appears to merely allow for the customer to delete the movie from the set-top box's hard drive by flagging the movie as having been previously purchased from the Vudu servers.
Alienware counters HP's Blackbird with a quad-GPU monster
Today, Dell division Alienware announced its Area-51 ALX CrossFireX gaming desktop, a pricey quad GPU gaming PC that utilizes so many bleeding edge hardware features that it actually requires Windows Vista.
So much for the theory that frequency is dead in computing. One of the big selling points for Alienware's new Area-51 ALX CFX system, which premiered just today and is available now, is that customers should feel free to experiment with the 4.0 GHz barrier.
First new principles, now an interoperability initiative for OOXML
Microsoft wants to show that it's working really, really hard on adopting the principle of interoperability in its key software. To keep the rhythm flowing in its direction, it's building new alliances with software vendors.
A few days after the scheduled Ballot Resolution Meeting of ISO Standards Committee 34 has come to a close, Microsoft wants to leave a positive picture in the minds of members still considering their Office Open XML votes. That picture, it hopes, shows a company that is practically flogging itself over the interoperability issue.
Ask.com refocuses business to target core users
March 6, 2008 4:10pm - Ask.com sat down with BetaNews Thursday afternoon to publicly dispel some misunderstandings regarding Wednesday's news, as well as provide additional clarification on our original story.
Primary to this, Ask.com spokesman Nicholas Graham said that while Ask.com certainly does have a large female demographic, it was "not becoming a women's site." Rather, the new strategy going forward will pay closer attention to this group, while also attempting to expand it outside of this demographic.
New iPhone firmware, Exchange support, third-party software en route
Two of the Apple iPhone's biggest negatives were addressed on Thursday, as the Cupertino company announced both native third-party application and Exchange support.
Along with the new functionality, Apple also demonstrated a beta of the 2.0 release of the iPhones firmware, which incorporates the changes necessary for the new development platform.
Circuit City gives HD DVD buyers more time to return players
Saying it wants to take care of its customers, Circuit City announced Thursday that it would extend its standard 30-day return policy to 90 days for buyers of HD DVD players.
Toshiba disclosed last month it would stop producing HD DVD players, effectively ending the high-definition format war that it was waging against Sony for the past three years. Although early adopters of HD DVD knew there was a risk that Blu-ray would come out on top, it wasn't until January -- when Warner Bros. went Blu-ray exclusive -- that Sony gained the advantage.
MPA settles with Bejing Jeebo over movie piracy
A settlement has been reached with a Chinese company accused of providing cybercafes with copies of movies by MPA member studios.
Announced Thursday, the agreement was reached on February 28, and will settle any pending litigation. Five MPA member companies had filed complaints with the Shanghai No.2 Intermediate Court in September and December of last year.
New Mitsubishi displays will have built-in TV Guide
Establishing deals with practically every hardware manufacturer, Gemstar's program guides have already found their way onto millions of screens. Today's announcement just keeps up the pace.
Gemstar-TV Guide announced a multi-year licensing deal with Mitsubishi to build its Digital G-Guide interactive program guide (IPG) directly into new Televisions and DVRs in Japan. Gemstar claims that more than 20 million CE devices and personal computers in Japan use G-Guide.
Apple misses goal of 1,000 rentable movies on AppleTV
Adobe is not the only target of Steve Jobs' ire -- it appears movie studios are as well. The Apple CEO made clear in comments earlier this week he's unimpressed with progress in making videos available through iTunes.
While an exact count of the number of rentable movies has yet to be assessed, current estimates peg it at about 400 to 500. This is less than half the promised amount when Apple first announced its rental initiative at Macworld last January.
Intel CEO vows to overcome flash price meltdown
Intel now plans to move aggressively into new markets, to help offset the impact of major price drops in the NAND memory chips used in Apple iPods and other CE devices, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said on Wednesday.
The company is also re-assessing its level of investment in NAND, according to Otellini.
Google opens up Contacts API to help encourage collaboration
In a move to make its online applications more accessible to people who use collaboration tools -- especially with Outlook -- Google yesterday announced it's going to implement a little interoperability of its own.
Google yesterday announced that its Google Contacts Data API is available to developers.
IE8 Beta 1 experiences Acid2 hiccups, while Acid3 is rolled out
Testers anxious to see the first Internet Explorer edition that passes a Web standards test by default, were disappointed yesterday to discover it wasn't passing as expected. Naturally, Microsoft had an excuse on hand.
A choice regarding the default handling of ActiveX controls, according to Internet Explorer developer Phil Nachreiner late yesterday, forced the first public Beta 1 build of IE8 to fail the independent Acid2 test for public standards.
Julius Baer drops suit against Wikileaks
Swiss bank Julius Baer has dropped its case against whistleblower Wikileaks, without giving any reason for doing so..
A district judge reversed his own injunction which shut the site down last Friday, saying he had concerns over Wikileaks' First Amendment rights and legal jurisdiction. Several media companies, the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation all filed motions to intervene in the case.
The virtualization challenge and whether IT is ready
The tools businesses need to be able to manage a virtualized data center are coming, though they haven't arrived yet, according to a panel of industry executives. What's more, IT may not know what to do with them when they get here.
LOS ANGELES (BetaNews) - The most obvious effects of virtualization in the data center, most experts have predicted, is a radical consolidation of processing power. Today, most server processors use about 5% of their total processing capacity. Engineers at Microsoft expect that figure to grow to as high as 60%, once operating systems such as Windows Server 2008 and built-in virtualization hardware on both AMD and Intel CPUs, are deployed in big business' data centers.
Google to launch consumer health care service later this year
With a pre-announcement of a health care "cloud" initiative at a medical conference last week, Google took further steps into the health care market. But some in the health care industry question Google's long-term commitment.
Over the year ahead, Google will introduce a new service called Google Health, said Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in a keynote speech at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida.
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