With the announcement by Apple that they have sold approximately 6.5 million songs and are basically break-even in their new music service yesterday during their quarterly conference call, many people are announcing their intention to follow Apple's lead and compete with it. An article from Australian IT discusses EMI's …

According to an article from Wired, a Pentagon program that provides online voting in general elections will be increased from the pilot levels in 2000 of 86 users to over 100,000 voters in 2004. The plan is to allow serving troops and ex-patriots to vote using a "secure" system …

A posting from ActiveWin indicates that Microsoft is readying a full version of Windows Media Player 9 for Apple's Macintosh computers, to be released this fall. Indications are that all of the CODECs will be supported, including the WMP9 Voice CODEC used by MSNs Messenger Voice service.

The positive reviews for Apple's new iSight camera and iChat AV software continue to roll in. This time, it's Popular Mechanics adding their kudos for the pair. Once again, the comparison is made to Microsoft's MSN Messenger offering, but once again, the issue of tight integration has given the Apple …

Only six weeks into its run, Finding Nemo has shot past The Matrix Reloaded to a total of $275M (to Reloaded's $271M). With this past weekend's $11M gross, Nemo is sitting in second place for 2003, behind The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (which is pretty secure …

An article from CNet quotes Adobe executives as saying that it "would have taken a lot of work to have cross-platform support" and that in a small and crowded market for video products, Adobe was not interested in making the investment to release a new version of Premier Pro for …

Declaring "Xbox independence day", a group has released information about an Xbox security exploit that allows the machine to run code that is not signed by Microsoft. People familiar with the game console will know that the Microsoft has locked it up by using hardware and software security methods in …

Microsoft has once again admitted that they have found and fixed a security flaw in the Microsoft Passport that could have granted access to user's accounts. According to an article from the Washington Post, the flaw only affected folks with accounts older than four years and to Microsoft's knowledge, had …

The New York Times has reviewed preliminary versions of the Microsoft MSN Messenger product and Apple's iChat AV. The long and the short is that the two programs do similar things in very different ways with different requirements. Apple's product has focused on a high-quality solution and Microsoft's has focused …

CNet reports that Steve Ballmer commented at a press conference in Japan that the replacement for the Xbox isn't due until 2006. This was a bit of a surprise, since many expected it in 2005.

Apple has released version 2.01 of the iPod software. The update includes goodies for both Macintosh and Windows users, but most importantly for the Windows folks are Audible.com support and USB 2.0 support. Better support for Asian languages Enhanced On-The-Go playlist functionality Improved playback performance Improved handling …

In a new twist reported by BBC News, a recent virus (called the AVF Virus) is finding its way around the net that opens up a back door for spammers to send their spam from infected machines. The virus appears to be a classic Trojan horse program, but in an …

An article from CNet describes the reaction of some long-time Microsoft partners to the company's recent moves to sell direct to smaller enterprise customers. Most of the article discusses the current licensing plans and Microsoft's push to lower the entry for companies from 500 seats to 250, but it does …

An article from the Washington Post provides a number of complaints from Microsoft competitors indicating that they are violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the anti-trust agreement with the Feds. One issue is the licensing terms and prices for crucial interoperability technologies from Microsoft. These include a host …

An article from MacMegasite confirms that the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit is not planning on releasing any future version of Microsoft Internet Explorer for the Macintosh. Coming after the recent Microsoft announcement that there will be no further stand-alone versions for Windows, this isn't a big surprise. So, make sure …

Linux Journal has an article this week on pending open source legislation and the groups lobbying against it. Nobody will be surprised at the finger pointing against Microsoft, but it is good to know which organizations are funded by the company (such as the Initiative for Software Choice), which wants …

The State (of South Carolina) is reporting that Microsoft is trying once again to get back into the set top box business. Their latest offering, Microsoft TV Foundation Edition, announced in this press release, is aimed at the lower-priced cable converter market, as opposed to some of the previous offerings …

An article from CNET reports that Sun and Intel announced they are teaming up to make sure that Java runs well on Intel's XScale processor, used often in PDAs and some phones. The press release from Sun's site specifically refers to some modifications to Sun's Hotspot VM and some changes …

Wired has an article today that describes the various efforts that Microsoft has underway in order to continue their push to make Windows Media 9 the next format for digital media. They cover a number of recent efforts by the company to push into the film industry, including a recent …

The latest AIM beta for Windows from AOL contains "Encrypted IM". Following the "more info" link, we find out some more tidbits about how this is to work. It looks like the end-to-end pieces are part of AOL's move to offer enterprise AIM services on their existing infrastructure. Staying away …