Sony Electronics today unveiled its first internal Blu-ray Disc(TM) (BD) rewritable drive for the computer aftermarket.

The new drive (model BWU-100A) supports up to 50 GB of data on BD-R (write once) or BD-RE (rewritable) discs or up to four hours of high-definition video using HDV 1080i on a BD-RE 50GB disc. The new drive is capable of burning a full 25GB disc in about 50 minutes.

The recordable/rewritable drive will be available in August for about $750.

As part of its quarterly patch cycle, Oracle on Tuesday released fixes for 65 security vulnerabilities that affect many of its products.

Many of the vulnerabilities are significant; 27 of the 65 bugs could be exploited remotely by an anonymous attacker, Darius Wiles, senior manager for security alerts at Oracle, said in an interview. Oracle has no suggested workarounds for any of the issues. Instead it is urging customers to patch their systems.

Source: News.com

Novell has officially released SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, a powerful Linux platform for enterprise computing. Available in desktop and server flavors, the much-anticipated release includes a number of highly compelling new technologies and unique features. With goodies like Beagle and built-in XGL support on the desktop, and desirable features like Xen virtualization and AppArmor security on the server, SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 is an impressive commercial offering.

Source: arstechnica

I’m happy to announce that Digg This - Wordpress Plugin is out of beta and released as version 1.0

Digg this wordpress plugin is a plugin that detects incoming links from Digg.com to your wordpress post and automatically display a link back to the digg post, for people to digg your story.
When a digg is first recognized an email is sent to the site’s admin.

After several requests and with the help of digg API update Digg This - Wordpress Plugin now also supports Digg’s vote button, so you can now have a digg vote button right on your page, however if you like the text link with the better tracking options, you can also use that.

More info about the plugin here

OpenOffice.org has been increasing in both popularity and visibility over the past several months. Version 2.0 has added a number of new features to bring it closer to feature parity with Microsoft Office, and it also offers full support for the Open Document format. However, a report just released by the French Ministry of Defense says that it still falls short of Microsoft’s office suite in one important area: security.

The classified report follows a one-year study by the Ministry comparing the popular open-source suite to its commercial competitor. The researchers found that OpenOffice.org was more susceptible to certain attacks, including those made via macros.

Source: arstechnica

Federal officials have charged 11 people, including the CEO of a big gambling Web site, alleging they committed conspiracy, racketeering and fraud in taking sports bets from U.S. residents.

The Justice Department said Monday it is seeking the forfeiture of $4.5 billion, cars and computers from the defendants, including BetOnSports PLC and three other companies.

BetOnSports Chief Executive David Carruthers and four other defendants were arrested over the weekend. Carruthers was arrested Sunday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport during as he awaited a flight from Texas to Costa Rica, where the company has operations.

Source: AP

Microsoft Corp. today announced the acquisition of Winternals Software LP, a privately held company based in Austin, Texas, that provides Windows-based enterprises with systems recovery and data protection solutions in addition to offering a freeware tools Web site called Sysinternals. The addition of Winternals is a significant advance in Microsoft’s promise to lower customers’ total cost of ownership of the Microsoft Windows platform. Customers will be able to continue building on Sysinternals’ advanced utilities, technical information and source code for utilities related to Windows. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

On a personal note, I think that it would be wise for people to download all of Sysinternals utilities now because I believe that at some point Microsoft will require you to run WGA in order to download these great tools, and if you are like me that runs a perfectly legal Windows XP, but refuse to run WGA, you’d better act now.

comScore Networks today released its monthly qSearch analysis of activity across competitive search engines.

In June 2006, Google gained in search market share for the eleventh consecutive month and maintained its status as market leader with 44.7 percent of searches conducted on its sites. Yahoo! remained in second place while increasing its share to 28.5 percent, and MSN ranked third with 12.8 percent.

In June 2006, Google Sites led in search query volume with 2.9 billion searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (1.8 billion) and MSN-Microsoft Sites (818 million).

Google and Yahoo! continue to dominate the toolbar search market, combining for more than 95 percent of the market share in June. Google grabbed 49.6 percent of toolbar searches, while Yahoo! captured 46.1 percent.

H.D. Moore, creator of the Metasploit hacking tool and the security researcher behind the MoBB (Month of Browser Bugs) project, has released a search engine that finds live malware samples through Google queries.

The new Malware Search engine provides a Web interface that allows anyone to enter the name of a known virus or Trojan and find Google results for Web sites hosting malicious executables.

Source: eWeek

The Mac Pro may not be the only thing Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference next month: he’ll pull the rabbit of iTunes Music Store movie downloads out of his hat too, one Apple-watching website claims.

It’s not exactly a developer-centric announcement, of course, but with all the press Microsoft’s would-be iPod whacker, Zune, is getting, it’s undoubtedly something Apple wants out as soon as possible.

Source: The Register

Nintendo of America’s “New Super Mario Bros” grabbed the No. 1 spot on the U.S. video game sales chart in June for the second month in a row with 453,000 units sold, according to market research firm NPD Group.

The title, for the Nintendo DS portable player, is the latest version of the iconic game starring Italian plumber Mario and his brother Luigi.

Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s urban-action title “Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories” for Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 2 console debuted in the No. 2 spot, selling 400,000 units in June.

Nintendo’s “Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day” — another title for the Nintendo DS — targeted senior citizens and other nontraditional gamers and held steady in the third-place position.

Source: Reuters

Microsoft is taking extra precautions during the current Mideast conflict.

The company has imposed security measures at its Israel offices, has told employees to cancel or postpone travel to Israel or Lebanon, and has cleared its offices in Beirut until the situation changes.

“We wish for a swift and peaceful conclusion to this difficult situation, and for the safety of all concerned,” said a spokesman for Microsoft.

Source: News.com