The war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD is hotting up. Sony will offer a cheaper Blu-ray DVD player to battle against the least expensive HD DVD player on the market, while Toshiba will launch a HD-DVD player with Blu-ray-like 1080p playback. At stake is a potentially huge upgrade market for next generation high-definition DVD movies suitable for playback on HD flat-panel displays. Who will win the game? Whose technology will become the standard for next-generation high-definition DVD content?

The alterations to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [DMCA] have come under scrutiny from the RIAA, who claim that the changes put content providers at risk again by advocating piracy. But we already knew they were going to say that.

We can all get a little more excited about the prospect of DRM-free content, as a bill called the Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007 (FAIR USE Act) was introduced to Congress Tuesday, February 27 2007.
The bill, which was introduced by John Doolittle (R-CA), and Rick Boucher, aims to allow consumers, teachers, and librarians (?) to remove DRM protection on audiovisual media from purchased content.

The Lunar New Year is the most important holiday in Chinese tradition. Globally, it stirs a mass-migration of Chinese who return to their families to celebrate the New Year.

In response to overwhelming feedback on Dell’s IdeaStorm costumer suggestion forum regarding Linux, Dell announced that the popular open-source OS would soon be pre-loaded on business laptops and PC’s; however, it is a dark day for Linux fans.

A reworked version of the infamous Storm Worm is using blogs, forums and web mail to spread itself.

If you think the market will pick up Google Apps smoothly then think again. This web-based office suite like any other hosted software has an inherent technology drawback. Until this inherent technology drawback is resolved Google Apps will have a rough time finding acceptance.

It never ceases to amaze me how far people will go to get money out of big business. Take the story of Shaun Harrison, 19, and Saverio Mondelli, 20, of New York, who tried to extort $150,000 from the social networking site, MySpace.

Apple’s recently announced media-streaming set-top box, Apple TV, has been delayed until mid March. The Apple TV had been schedule to ship in February, but since it is now the end of February, and there’s no Apple TV, the announcement comes as little surprise.

After a 5 month set-back in Sony’s scheduled release of the Playstation 3 in Australia, the release date is finalized for March 23rd. Though many feel the PS3 will explode into an eager market, it seems there are a few variables that might limit the success of Sony’s next-generation console in Australian homes.

PC maker Dell has announced that it will sell a new line of certified user-ready Linux-loaded desktop and laptop computers, after seeking input from customers on how to spice up its products and improve services.

Chinese scientists from the Robot Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University of Science and Technology have managed to control the flight of pigeons using small electrodes set in their brain.

For those of you that were convinced Vista was the fool-proof operating system of the future,  be prepared for a system shock: Microsoft has found a security issue in both Vista and the new Internet Explorer 7!

A recent survey by the Pew Internet Project (as reported by my colleague George Gardner) reveals that 34% of American citizens have accessed wireless networks with laptops, PDA’s and cell phones at one time or another. When will a study tell us something we DON’T already know?

Mozilla, the open-source developers responsible for the ever-popular Firefox web browser, mail client Thunderbird, and other handy web applications released a vital security update to their Firefox web browser Friday. The patch updates current 2.0 browsers to 2.0.0.2, and comes strongly recommended from the Mozilla team. 

According to a recent U.S. survey conducted by PEW/Internet, some 34% of Internet users have logged on using a wireless Internet connection either at home, work, or through one of the many available Wi-Fi hotspots. The study shows a unique correlation to the wireless users’ activity and their usage of the Internet compared to those who connect using more traditional methods.

Symantec’s latest anti-virus suite, Norton 360, goes on sale today. I wasn’t really expecting a price drop, but it’s come out with a $79.99 per year price tag. Does that seem too much?