Samsung at center of 'Korean Watergate' bribery probe
In South Korea, Samsung Electronics' politically powerful parent company stands accused by a whistleblower of creating a $220 million slush fund for paying off government officials. The investigation keeps intensifying.
While Samsung Electronics this week launched a new solid state disk (SSD) Web site, and T-Mobile released Samsung's WiFi-enabled Katalyst phone, the South Korean government banned more officals of parent firm the Samsung Group from leaving the country and hunted around for documents to support allegations of bribery and corruption at the conglomerate.
Verizon president: Google's Android dovetails with Verizon's open access
Verizon gave some hints late last week that it may be willing to do more than just welcome Google's Android handset environment into its foray of "open access" devices, but conceivably embrace it outright.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - While Verizon hasn't officially announced support for Google's Android, Verizon President Denny Strigl has acknowledged that he sees the emerging Linux-based development environment as meshing well with Verizon's recently unveiled plans to provide open access on its current third generation (3G) and emerging fourth-generation (4G) networks.
First multi-touch tablet from Toshiba available today
Toshiba made available today its 9th generation M700 tablet PC, the current highest-end tablet PC offered by the company, and the first to offer multi-touch capability.
Besides being the first convertible laptop from Toshiba to feature a multi-touch backlit LED display, it is also the only tablet currently available in retail to incorporate a swappable Ultra SlimBay for an internal optical drive, second hard drive, or just to lighten the overall package.
Improved startup repair tool, media throttling among Vista SP1 changes
To reassure customers that it really has been addressing consumers' concerns about Vista, Microsoft has made its change log to Windows Vista SP1 publicly available early.
Microsoft has released early its final change log for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 -- an indication that the release of the software itself could be imminent. Among the changes and additions which the company has confirmed are several that directly address customer complaints, including one of the big ones: system slowdowns while running multimedia files.
LinkedIn wants your apps for the business world
LinkedIn, a social networking site designed for establishing and maintaining business contacts, has announced that it will provide a set of REST APIs and widgets that let developers build applications using LinkedIn data.
The site is a member of Google's OpenSocial developer network, so in the near future, developers will be able to use their own UI and back end, augmented with the LinkedIn Application Program Interface (API).
CompUSA store chain to soon become history
CompUSA, an early success story among computer retailers, will now cease to exist as a store chain by the end of this year. Meanwhile, rivals Best Buy and Circuit City only keep coming on stronger.
Although overall PC sales keep rising worldwide, US-based computer retail chain CompUSA will be shutting down all its remaining stores at the end of the December holiday season. As announced on Friday, the new owner of CompUSA, a Boston-based restructuring and investment firm known as the Gordon Brothers Group, is also looking to sell CompUSA.com, along with CompUSA's TechPro technical services business.
AOL debuts new desktop software for Windows
After its OpenRide software was not well received, the ISP went back to the drawing board. The result was AOL Desktop, which released Friday.
"Helix," as it was called in beta, follows the general gist of OpenRide, but also continues a path the company has been following for the past several years, including its Communicator, Fanfare, and AOL Suite projects.
LG's dual-format disc player hits stores
LG said Monday that its second try at a dual-format next generation disc player is now available at retailers.
Unlike the company's previous player, this unit has been certified by both HD DVD and Blu-ray, and will be upgradeable to the new BD Profile 1.1 when those discs become available next year. Like its predecessor, the BH200 will retail for $999 and support up to 1080p resolution. LG's announcement follows that of Samsung, whose player will sell for $200 less when it becomes available later this month.
Toshiba enters the solid-state disk arena
Nearly a full year after leading flash memory producer Samsung presented its first solid-state drives, flash producer Toshiba plans to follow along behind with three models that take advantage of its exclusive design.
By next February, Toshiba plans to begin sampling 32 GB and 64 GB embedded solid-state disk drives for small, portable equipment. After having stayed out of the market to this point, the manufacturer plans to ramp up production quite rapidly from there, with a goal of producing 128 GB SSDs in the 1.8" and 2.5" form factors by next May.
Palm to miss revenue targets by a substantial margin
The handheld manufacturer expects to post revenues some $30 million less than its original forecast due to shipping delays in a unnamed product.
Revenues are expected to be between $345 to 350 million dollars, well off of its $370 to 380 million estimate in October. Analysts believe the "product launch" was a wider rollout of the Treo 755p.
Symantec update removes Web filtering program
An update for the company's Norton Antivirus software has yet again caused problems with its customers' computers.
While Symantec is saying it was just a mistake involving a routine software update, the problems caused by the mixup had likely cut off the Internet access of tens of thousands of customers of Solid Oak Software.
Office Live Workspace beta goes public
Since October, Microsoft has been busy working to hang its Office shingle in "the cloud," where users can save documents somewhere to the Web. Now it's ready for the general public to try out the cloud.
The consumer side of Microsoft's hosted service strategy steps up to the next gear this morning, as it unveils the official beta of its Office Live Workspace service to the general public. Unlike its Office Live Web-based applications, the Workspace service creates a Web location for storing traditional Office documents, as a way of ensuring portability.
Netflix envelopes anger Postmaster, Postal Service balks
The US Postmaster General issued a report to the Postal Service recommending it either change its First Class mailing standards to disallow Netflix mailers, or start charging the company a 17 cent handling fee per envelope.
Apparently the two-way Netflix mailers were brought up in audit because approximately 70 percent of them have to be processed by hand. Automatic processing was found to damage either the DVDs or the sorting equipment, and the design of the envelope was reported to cause obscured return addresses and missorts.
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SourceForge launches commercial 'marketplace' for open source software
Upon posting a loss for its most recent financial quarter, open source foundry SourceForge has launched an auction-based service that charges commissions to developers. Coincidentally or not, SourceForge got hacked this week.
After reporting a fiscal first-quarter operating loss of $1.1 million at the end of November, software foundry SourceForge this week instituted a new revenue stream by rolling out a commercial marketplace for sales, service and support of open source software.
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