European mobile broadcast standard still up in the air
In an outcome that can best be described as quintessentially European, both sides in the debate over adopting DVB-H as Europe's official standard for digital mobile broadcasting have claimed full victory.
News of the outcome of today's vote of EU member states on, among other matters, the adoption of DVB-H as the one and only digital broadcast standard was so bipolar in nature that Reuters today reported the measure was adopted, while the Associated Press reported it was rejected.
AT&T CEO lets it slip: 3G iPhone is on its way
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that Apple is working on a 3G model of its iPhone set to debut next year.
Apple has a habit of trying to keep things under wraps. However, with that company partnering with others more often these days, and with those others apparently having less stringent policies on talking about future products, the curtains may be coming up prematurely on some of Apple's plans.
EMI may cut funding for RIAA, trade groups
The future of the fight against piracy may be a lot less certain following rumors that music label EMI would like to make cuts in the funding of trade groups.
The four major music publishing labels -- EMI, Warner, Sony BMG, and Universal -- reportedly make regular payments to international representative groups such as IFPI and the RIAA. IFPI alone gets about $132 million a year from the four publishers, and that amount could be similar for RIAA, although no data was available.
Gucci tests anti-terrorist satellite tracking for securing clothing designs
Active RFID isn't just for tracking arms shipments any more. BetaNews has learned that luxury consumer goods designer Gucci is working with Xpondr to test an emerging mix of technology for preventing theft aboard ocean ships.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - How can you keep international freight safe from the hands of terrorists and crooks? A tech start-up called Xpondr is now beta testing ANTS (Autonomous Node Transfer System), a satellite-, active RFID-, and GPS-enabled solution the vendor has developed to quell the security concerns of organizations ranging from national governments to Gucci and other makers of high-end consumer goods.
WinDVD gets Profile 1.1 certification from Blu-ray
Corel said Thursday that its WinDVD playback software had received certification from the Blu-ray Disc Association to playback discs that use the Profile 1.1 standard.
With the certification, WinDVD would become the first non-hardware playback option available on the market capable of supporting the updated standard. The first discs based on 1.1 are expected to hit the market in early 2008, as will the version of WinDVD with the capability.
Coming to a PDF near you: advertisements
Soon Adobe's popular document format will include functionality to support advertising, thanks to a new partnership with Yahoo.
The two companies are framing the service as a way to allow publishers to offer their content on an ad-supported basis. This could also accelerate the adoption of PDF as a way to deliver paper content to subscribers in electronic form.
HP's PC lead over Dell increases even further in Q3
As HP's market share soars, Dell's growth continues to underperform with PC shipment growth sagging to only 1.5% annually. Meanwhile, the flip-flop battle continues for the #3 and #4 slots.
Hewlett-Packard sold 16.8% more PCs worldwide in the third quarter of this year than the previous quarter, according to market research firm iSuppli, with just under 13.1 million PCs shipped. And its annual shipment growth rate of 32.7% is nothing short of astonishing; last quarter, that growth rate was only 4.4%.
Google tests GPS-less mobile phone location service
The Mountain View, Calif. search company is testing out new technology that would pinpoint a users location on a mobile phone even though it's not equipped with GPS capabilities.
Obviously without a GPS, the location given would not be as accurate as some may have come to expect. However, Google hopes to use the location indicator phones already provide to at least offer basic location-based services through an improved version of Google Maps.
Exchange Server 2007 SP1 rolls out tomorrow
The latest upgrade to what is fast becoming one of Microsoft's principal products will be released for download Friday, with significant new features including a long-sought disaster recovery tool.
One of the changes e-mail administrators had been wanting since the era of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 concerns replication -- the ability to source the e-mail database at multiple physical locations simultaneously. Exchange has always had this feature, especially on the local level, but effectively managing it has been a matter of tricky scheduling.
TSA biometric security fails 1 in 50 transport workers' credentials
A Lockheed Martin official told a maritime security conference that the current biometric security system for shipping workers implemented in the wake of 9/11, fails to match users with their thumbprints 2% of the time.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - The director of credentialing technology for US government contractor Lockheed Martin, Jon Rambeau, told attendees of a maritime security conference here today that fingerprint biometric security systems currently used in the Transportation Security Administration's Transport Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program fail to properly authorize enrollees' credentials one time in 50.
UN panel: Cows emit more greenhouse gases than cars
A panel convened at the United Nations yesterday to discuss what the IT industry could do to better the environment, nearly came to the conclusion its practitioners could do more by changing their lifestyle...for instance, how they eat.
UNITED NATIONS (BetaNews) - After quite some time had passed, and panelists had issued what could be described as ordinary platitudes on the subject of corporate environmental policy -- essentially, "We can all do more," -- the executive director of the Society for Information Management, Judy Arteche-Carr, offered an invigorating bit of context to the discussion.
Apple to stop supporting Tiger Boot Camp on Dec. 31
Although its not exactly a surprise, Apple reiterated the expiration date for the Boot Camp beta, saying Tiger users will lose access on December 31.
The company had previously stated that the Boot Camp beta would "terminate automatically without notice from Apple upon the next commercial release of the Apple Software, or December 31, 2007, whichever occurs first," according to the EULA.
Thousands of user IDs stolen in Red Cross blood drive hack
Over a two-week period, over 278,000 e-mail addresses of Red Cross workers were swiped by a malicious user who found a back-door into a certain brand of non-profit fundraising software.
Convio Inc., an Austin, Texas-based software company that exclusively serves the needs of non-profit groups, admitted today that its GetActive software had been hacked and user data from 92 groups were stolen between October 23 and November 1.
FCC abandons its 'a la carte' cable programming plan
Chairman Kevin Martin's proposed overhaul of the basic cable system was removed from a plan to help ensure minority-owned programmers have access to channel spectrum.
The five members of the US Federal Communications Commission found themselves unusually occupied yesterday -- not so much with ordinary business as they were waiting for Chairman Kevin Martin to bring his plan up for a vote. Knowing his unusually radical plan to replace some metropolitan basic cable plans with "a la carte" programming choices -- supposedly as a means of ensuring fairer access to minority-owned channels -- was doomed to failure (it literally said as much in that morning's New York Times), Martin periodically postponed yesterday's final vote on the matter in hopes his fellow Republicans would reverse their opposition.
Google forced to identify slanderous blogger
The IP address of a man using Google's Blogger service has been handed over to authorities after the company settled with council members of an Israeli town in the West Bank.
The blogger had been posting slanderous content about members of the council of Sha'arei Tikva. Under the terms of the settlement, Google would give the man up to 72 hours before a court hearing to come forth or his IP address would be handed over.
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