Dutch Philips Electronics said on Thursday it would introduce the world’s first cordless DECT phone that can make Skype Internet calls without being connected to a personal computer. The product will be available before the end of the year, Philips chief of consumer electronics activities, Rudy Provoost, told journalists at the IFA electronics fair here. [...]

BERLIN (Reuters) – Film studio Twentieth Century Fox, a unit of News Corp. (NWS.N: Quote, Profile, Research), on Thursday announced its first eight movie titles that it will publish on the new DVD format called Blu-ray and which will be on sale by November. Mike Dunn, global president of home entertainment at the studio, told [...]

California is getting serious about network security—well, serious enough to legislate stickers. AB 2415 has cleared the General Assembly and now heads to Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk for his signature. It’s an attempt by the state to make sure that consumers know how to activate security features on their WiFi routers in order to prevent personal [...]

Although not as widely anticipated as some of the other products currently inching towards release, many web surfers are looking forward to version 2.0 of Firefox. The popular open-source browser has seen its release date pushed to late October, but those of you who are dying to get hold of the latest from Mozilla can [...]

Norwich is pioneering a free wi-fi project which covers three sectors of the UK city and its centre. The £1.1m, 18-month pilot has been live for three weeks and is backed by the East of England Development Agency. Paul Adams, from Norfolk county council said: “It allows people to see the benefit of wireless technology.” [...]

Jeremy deBeer reports that Sony BMG Canada has settled several Canadian class action lawsuits over the inclusion of the rootkit in dozens of CDs. The settlement, which must still be approved by a Canadian court, features similar terms to those found in the U.S., including the right to cash compensation or music downloads. The settlement [...]

Sony Ericsson, the world’s fourth-largest mobile phone maker, plans further to develop its PlayNow service, currently used for downloading ring tones, a spokesman for the Japanese-Swedish group said on Wednesday. The spokesman, however, could not discuss the nature of the development or when it would happen. “We are developing the PlayNow service further. It is [...]

Microsoft has said it is working to close a breach of its technology that protects music digital files from copyright infringement. A program called Fairuse4wm has been posted on the net and is said to be capable of bypassing Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) system. It could spell problems for internet music shops, potentially enabling [...]

Software industry lobby group the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has called for government to mandate stiff penalties for companies using unlicensed software. The organisation says it wants a “harder enforcement stick” to ensure compliance. The group, which represents many major software publishers, says the current legal regime is no disincentive to illegal users since those [...]

Search engine Google plans to offer consumers the chance to download and print classic novels free of charge. The firm’s book search tool will let people print classics such as Dante’s Inferno or Aesop’s Fables, as well as other books no longer under copyright. Until now, the service has only let people read such books [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York Times decision to block British online readers from seeing a story about London terrorism suspects raises new questions on restricting the flow of information in the Internet age, legal and media experts say. The New York Times said on Tuesday it had blocked British Internet readers from seeing [...]

Universal Music, in the midst of a rare bout of ingenuity, is backing a an ad-supported digital download service. Due to start in December, SpiralFrog, as it is to be called, will rely solely on advertising revenue to pay for the music downloads. “Perry Ellis, the fashion company, said it would advertise on SpiralFrog. Levi’s, [...]

Instead of having to create a torrent, run a tracker, and then run a seeder for each file you want to share over the web, now all you have to do is drag and drop them into the correct folder and then webserver does the rest. Snakebite “…provides all the power of BitTorrent with all [...]

According to Reuters, Amazon.com has begun taking preorders for it’s new Windows Vista operating system. Prices will range from $99.95 for a basic upgrade version to $399.00 for an ultimate version. The difference between the two is that the ultimate version will also have “…television and digital photography components that used to be in Microsoft’s [...]

If only we had a parliamentary system of government here in the United States where true representation could take hold and foster a healthier form a democracy. Instead of the endless malaise of having to settle for one of two bad candidates, we could all have a seat at the table by being able to [...]

Music publishers are taking action against guitar fan websites which they say infringe songwriters’ copyrights. Publishers have started to use copyright lawsuits to shut down sites which share notations to help musicians to play songs at home. Called guitar tablature, or tab, the notations indicate where players should put their fingers. Books filled with tab [...]

Linkin Park, one of the few major acts that had yet to make its music available via Apple’s iTunes Music Store, has changed course and pacted with the service. Three of the group’s albums are available beginning Tuesday, each with two bonus tracks and a third iTunes exclusive cut. In addition, iTunes is selling the [...]

The traffic shaping battle continues. Allot Communications announced today that their traffic management device “NetEnforcer is able to detect, and throttle encrypted Bittorrent traffic. Allot Communications states: Previously, companies have been able to detect and manage applications based on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file transfer protocol. However, detecting encrypted BitTorrent has been nearly impossible. They [...]

Hollywood studios announced the launch of more than 75 titles for the next generation Blu-ray format today. Due out later this year, the titles will include ‘The Da Vinci Code” and “Chicken Little,” with other, and hopefully much better, titles as well. Again Blu-ray is playing the catch up game with the HD-DVD format, this [...]

A great article on how to improve your BitTorrent spreeds when downloading small or large torrents. One of the most commonly asked questions on Zeropaid.com is how to improve BitTorrent download speeds, well Malicious Intent has addressed this issue full force with an excellent guide to improving BitTorrent download speeds. Make sure you check out [...]