For those who haven’t yet, somehow, had their fill of Paris Hilton, there’s a new Web site that has posted a seemingly endless offering of the celebutante’s belongings.

The Web site, ParisExposed.com, launched Tuesday. It boasts that it has an array of Hilton photographs, home videos, diaries, love letters, recorded phone conversations and phone numbers of friends and celebrities, all left behind at a Los-Angeles based storage facility.

The items were sold to an unidentified buyer after a third party failed to make payments to the facility, and eventually wound up in the hands of a broker aiming to sell them, Hilton’s spokesman, Elliot Mintz, told The Associated Press Tuesday.

Source: AP

Patience has been a virtue when it comes to PlayStation 3 sometimes, but one of the biggest annoyances out of the gate was the lack of pixel-perfect compatibility, despite being one of Sony’s most touted features over Xbox 360, which has to software emulate each game in its back catalog.

However PS3 was playing back many PS2 and PlayStation games was resulting in almost unreadable text, forcing many to keep their PS2s sitting around if they wanted a bout of Kingdom Hearts 2 or Okami.

Thankfully, though, Sony’s issued a firmware update, bringing the console up to version 1.5, that makes this issue disappear.

Source: extremetech

Apple’s digital rights management lock on its iPod device and iTunes software is illegal, the Consumer Ombudsman in Norway has ruled. The blow follows the news that Germany and France are joining Norway’s action against Apple.

The Norwegian Consumer Council, Forbrukerradet, lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman on behalf of Norwegian consumers claiming that the Fairplay DRM system acted against the interests of consumers. It said the fact the technology stopped songs bought from iTunes being played on any player other than an iPod broke the law in Norway.

The Ombudsman has now agreed, according to Torgeir Waterhouse, senior advisor at the Consumer Council.

“It doesn’t get any clearer than this. Fairplay is an illegal lock-in technology whose main purpose is to lock the consumers to the total package provided by Apple by blocking interoperability,” Waterhouse told OUT-LAW.COM. “For all practical purposes this means that iTunes Music Store is trying to kill off one the most important building blocks in a well functioning digital society, interoperability, in order to boost its own profits.”

Waterhouse said the Ombudsman has written to Apple to say it believes that Apple’s Fairplay system is illegal. “iTunes Music Store must remove its illegal lock-in technology or appear in court,” he said. “As of right now we’re heading for a big breakthrough that will hopefully pave the way for consumers everywhere to regain control of music they legally purchase.”

The Consumer Council believes Apple has only three options: it can license Fairplay to any manufacturer that wants iTunes songs to play on its machines; it can co-develop an open standard with other companies; or it can abandon DRM altogether.

Source: The Register

Google announced Wednesday that it has dropped the beta tag from Google Groups, its group discussion application.

Google Groups offers multimedia discussion boards on popular topics, as well as user-generated groups. Google Groups can be public, or private by invitation only. Users can create member profiles, as well as view the profiles of others.

Google Groups can be browsed by topic, language and location, or searched for something specific. A description of a closed group will come up in search results and users have the option of applying for membership to that group.

In addition to dropping the beta tag, Google will now offer Google Groups in about 20 languages, and has made some minor changes to its features.

Source: News.com

Sony on Tuesday denied claims that it was preventing the porn industry from using the Blu-ray high-definition format developed by the consumer electronics giant.

Media reports have quoted adult-film directors and producers accusing Sony of pressuring others not to manufacture Blu-ray discs with adult content or share technology with the porn industry. The result, according to reports, has been a migration by adult filmmakers toward HD DVD, a competing format.

Sony dismissed the claims saying it has no control over the licensing of Blu-ray, and has no problem with the adult industry using the format. “There’s no prohibition against adult content,” Lisa Gephardt, a spokeswoman for Sony Corp. of America, said. “We don’t tell people how they can use the licenses they get from the Blu-ray Disc Association.”

Source: InformationWeek

The ever popular Digg This Wordpress button got a security fix.

The new version 1.0.2 now checks that the story on digg actually point to your post. This solves spoofed referrers that create a digg button on your site to a story that is not coming from you, and also fixes the problem with links from the comments that point to you and cause a digg button to be displayed.

Download Digg This Wordpress plugin

Microsoft has released its Asynchronous JavaScript and XML tool, ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, to the Web.

ASP.NET AJAX, formerly known by the code name “Atlas,” is Microsoft’s offering for developers to build next-generation, AJAX-style web applications through integration with the .Net Framework and the Microsoft platform.

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 includes enhanced training capabilities made available by: Virtual Labs, MS Learning Online Clinics, resource kits, third-party reference materials and online tutorials.

In addition, ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions will be available under the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL). This will enable developers to view the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions code aiding in application debugging, maintenance and interoperability.

Source: eWeek

Microsoft Corp will extend the free support period for its
Windows XP Home Edition until after 2010 in response to consumer appeals.

Microsoft has originally planned to end its support service in late January 2009 as it prepares the global launch of the Windows Vista next-generation operating system for personal computers next Tuesday.

But Darren Huston, president of Microsoft’s Japan unit, said Wednesday there had been requests from consumers, especially in Japan, for a longer support period.

“It is going to be significantly extended” he said in an interview with Kyodo News. “When I say significantly, it’s more than 1 year.”

Source: AFP