05/08/2008

Facebook, states agree on new safeguards 3:15 PM CT
Facebook has agreed to ban convicted sex offenders from using the service and will make it harder for older users to search online for subscribers who are under age 18. The agreement is similar to one reached in January with Facebook's larger rival, MySpace.

05/09/2008

PhotoShop Elements 6 has all the angles
You don't need to know an f-stop from an aperture to get great pictures the first time you fire up Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.

05/08/2008

HP wants more help from scientists
Banerjee took over HP Labs last year and pursued an overhaul, cutting some projects to focus on fewer but bigger bets in such fields as molecular-scale circuits, content management and network-based "cloud" computing. Achieving those goals quickly, he said, will require broader input from academia.

Research firm cuts into Sony claims for super-thin TV

AP

Sony's OLED TV

DisplaySearch ran two XEL-1 units for 1,000 hours, and measured the drop in brightness. Extrapolating from that, they found it would take 17,000 hours for a display to lose half its brightness, a standard measure of display life. Sony says the display lasts 30,000 hours, or 10 years of typical use. Spokesman Greg Belloni said that figure is based on years of tests and the company stands by it.

Comcast considers cap on Net usage
For years, Comcast directly called customers who used up several times more bandwidth than the typical subscriber's 2 gigabytes per month — for instance, by downloading hordes of movies. The big users were asked to reduce their use or have their accounts canceled.

05/07/2008

Take-Two's 'Grand Theft Auto IV' tops $500M in week 1 sales
Already, the game seems to be living up to its juicy past, which includes controversy over hidden sex scenes, sharp criticism from Hillary Rodham Clinton and a 2006 lawsuit that blames the game for three New Mexico murders committed by a 14-year-old.

Sprint and Clearwire to build national WiMax network

AP

Clearwire WiMax card

The new company, which will retain Clearwire's name, will continue developing a mobile network based on WiMax technology, which promises data transmission speeds several times faster than current wireless networks offer.

05/06/2008

Microsoft to bring voice control to Hyundai and Kia
Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors will be entitled to sell cars equipped with Microsoft Auto around the world starting in November, but the companies are working on new capabilities and probably won't be ready this fall.

Yahoo teams with McAfee to offer search results security

AP

Yahoo HQ

With the new security feature — slated to take effect Tuesday — people who search the Internet using Yahoo will see a red exclamation point and a warning next to links McAfee has identified as serving dangerous downloads or using visitors' e-mail addresses to send out spam.

Microsoft, chasing Apple, adds TV shows to Zune Marketplace
In a small victory over Apple, Microsoft said the Zune Marketplace will carry NBC shows including "The Office" and "Heroes." NBC Universal has said it pulled its shows from iTunes over Apple's unwillingness to set different prices for TV shows.

05/05/2008

T-Mobile brings 3G wireless to NYC; other markets to follow
Web browsing and downloading content like ringtones will be twice as fast with 3G on four phone models that T-Mobile USA started selling last year. T-Mobile will offer phones that take full advantage of the 3G network, with data speeds that are four times as fast as current non-3G models, later this year.

Cable, satellite and ... Sezmi? Startup wants in on pay TV

AP

The Sezmi system

At its heart is a TV set-top box that receives video content in three different ways. Two are available through other means: digital over-the-air local broadcasts, the kind that are available to anyone with a digital TV and a rabbit-ear antenna; and Internet downloads through the home's broadband connection. The third delivery method would be unique to Sezmi. It plans to have local TV stations use vacant portions of their airwaves to transmit basic cable channels like Nickelodeon and Discovery.

Report: DT mulling bid for Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel is the third-biggest provider of cell phone services in the U.S. and has a market capitalization of approximately $22 billion. AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless are the top two U.S. providers.

05/02/2008

Federal regulators cap cell phone company payments
The move is bad news for rural cellular carriers who rely on such payments for a substantial part of their revenue, but it benefits big telephone companies like Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc., whose customers are the largest contributors to the fund.

XtremeMac's Tango X2 has more features, lower price than many iPod speaker systems
It seems every time I turn around somebody has introduced another iPod speaker system. In fact, so many look alike it's refreshing to find one that isn't like the others.The Tango X2 from XtremeMac has a lot going for it, with a feature or two that other systems don't have.

Broadband over power lines plan is dead in Dallas
An ambitious plan for using power lines to deliver fast Internet service to 2 million Dallas-area homes collapsed Thursday, when Oncor agreed to buy the system.

05/01/2008

Analyst: HD DVD demise hasn't meant scramble for Blu-ray
Sales of Blu-ray players, excluding PlayStation 3 game consoles, dropped 40 percent from January to February in the U.S., according to NPD. Sales grew only 2 percent from February to March.

AT&T launches TV service on new phones, rivaling Verizon

AP

The eight channels shared with Verizon Wireless are CBS Mobile, Comedy Central, ESPN Mobile TV, Fox Mobile, MTV, NBC 2Go, NBC News 2Go and Nickelodeon. The two channels that will be exclusive to AT&T are PIX, which screens movies from Sony Pictures, and CNN Mobile Live.

Adobe plans to give away Flash for mobile devices
With the Open Screen Project, Adobe said, it aims to improve Internet experiences on all electronics, including computers, TVs and digital video recorders. But mobile devices are a particular focus.

04/30/2008

Report:AT&T to offer $200 price cut on 3G iPhone
According to Fortune, Apple is expected to have two versions of the new iPhone, an 8-gigabyte-memory and a 16-gigabyte-memory model with price tags widely expected to be $399 and $499 before the rebate.

H-P discovery could speed up computers
The newly discovered circuit element — called a memristor — could enable cell phones that can go weeks or longer without a charge, PCs that start up instantly, and laptops that retain your session information long after the battery dies.

04/29/2008

Warner Bros. puts TV shows online
KidsWB.com, geared for children, debuted Monday, featuring animated characters from the Warner Bros. library, which includes Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo and DC Comics heroes like Batman. TheWB.com — with full episodes of shows such as Friends and Smallville and made-for-online shows — is to launch in a beta test format next month, according to Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Television Group.

MySpace unveils new karaoke feature
MySpace Karaoke (ksolo.myspace.com) debuts nearly two years after Fox Interactive, a division of News Corp., which owns MySpace, purchased the karaoke site kSolo.com. The combination of MySpace and kSolo allows users to upload audio recordings of them singing everything from R. Kelly to Richie Valens to their profile page.

Electronics makers including TI to create home networking standard
The effort is aimed at making sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to home wiring for digital entertainment such as movies, music and pictures.

Social network users overlook privacy pitfalls
Turns out, even the privacy-conscious people freely hand over personal information to perfect strangers. They do so every time they download and install what's known as an "application," one of thousands of mini-programs on a growing number of social networking sites that are designed by third-party developers for anything from games and sports teams to trivia quizzes and virtual gifts.

Human ID test is a quicker way to catch a thief
The value of antibody profiling is as a screening tool to help make sense of a crime scene, sort out the blood trails or spatter from multiple victims or more quickly identify body parts on a battlefield or at the scene of a disaster like the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Blockbuster wants stake in Viacom's pay channel
Blockbuster Inc. is in talks about taking a stake in the new Viacom Inc.-led premium television channel that plans to compete with HBO, Showtime and Starz, according to people familiar with the situation.

04/28/2008

Google's Book Search slowly turns the pages
Many libraries began digitizing books a decade ago to preserve them. Funding from Google allows the 28 libraries it's working with to cut their digitizing costs because they don't have to pay for scanning the books Google wants to include in Book Search. Through Book Search, users can track down a book on any topic they're interested in and read a small portion. If the book's not protected by copyright, users can download the whole thing. If it is, or if they just want to read an original, they can use Book Search to find copies to buy or borrow.

GPS market facing sliding prices and demand
Some analysts believe that as stand-alone versions are overtaken by cellphones and other devices with navigation technology built in, GPS devices will become low-margin commodity products, like pocket calculators. But others think a smart company could turn GPS devices into premium products the way Apple made its iPod music player stand out from a host of cheaper devices.

Heard about the new Grand Theft Auto? You will soon
The run-up to Grand Theft Auto IV has been considerably less ballyhooed than last year's over-the-top Halo 3 debut.

04/25/2008

GPS guides history buffs along Berlin Wall
Boasting a headset and a touch-screen, it features a colorful map of the city that can zoom in and out, showing the users where they are. The route of the former barrier between East and West Germany is marked in red while a yellow line guides the visitor from one wall section to the next, calculating the distances via GPS in meters.