Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that exactly one year after its initial release, the Solaris 10 Operating System has surpassed 4 million registered licenses and set 57 performance and price/performance world records. The roster of companies that have registered licenses of the free and open source Solaris 10, the most advanced operating system on the planet, includes 10 of the top 11 retailers, 7 of the top 8 financial services companies, and all of the top 5 manufacturing companies and top 5 IT companies.

Microsoft posted its latest Xbox 360 update last night, which makes a handful of tweaks to the console’s system software, according to the brief list of fixes posted by Microsoft. The update adds improvements to Xbox Guide and to the Dutch Xbox Live network configuration. It also provides more detailed information on unreadable disk or region errors, increases the accuracy of ‘last time played’ readouts and provides a saved-game retention option when users’ profiles are removed.

The update will automatically install when users sign on to Xbox Live.

Source: The Register

A post on the Register, claiming that Google might be close to rolling out a “Goobuntu” Linux desktop distro, has been making the usual rounds in the tech news circuit today. Despite today being earnings release day, presumably a very busy time at the Google press relations office, technology spokeswoman Sonya Borälv said that “we use Ubuntu internally but have no plans to distribute it outside of the company.”

Source: arstechnica

eBay Inc., the online auction house, will start collecting a fee to manage money that customers have on deposit in its PayPal Money Market Fund, the company said in a letter to customers.

PayPal, an electronic payment service with some 87 million customers, sweeps funds that customers keep in their accounts into the money market fund.

The fund currently pays a 7-day average yield of 4.38 percent, the highest rate of any money-market fund in the United States, according Peter Crane, managing editor of IBC’s Money Fund Report.

Starting March 1, PayPal will cut that yield by one-quarter of a percentage point to help pay expenses for managing the money, PayPal said in the letter that it started sending to customers via e-mail on Monday. A copy was obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.

Source: Reuters

Users can point their cell phones at 700,000 buildings, retailers, restaurants, banks, and historical sites throughout Japan to retrieve information.

GeoVector Corp. said Monday that it has teamed up with Japan’s Mapion to offer Mapion’s cell phone searching technology for mobile phones in Japan. Mapion Local Search enables consumers to use their cell phones as point and search devices to call up information.

San Francisco-based GeoVector said users can simply point their cell phones at 700,000 buildings, retailers, restaurants, banks or historical sites throughout Japan to retrieve information.

“Soon, users will point their mobile phones at restaurants to get reviews, point at billboards to shop at the advertiser’s website, point at a movie poster to buy tickets, or play a game by pointing at their friends,” said GeoVector president John Ellenby, in a statement.

Source: informationweek

Google Inc. on Tuesday denied a report the company is in talks on an alliance with Napster that could lead the Web search leader to purchase the reinvented music subscription service.

The report in Tuesday’s New York Post said the two companies were in discussions about an “extensive alliance” that could include an “outright acquisition” sent Napster shares up more than 40 percent in early trading on Nasdaq.

A spokesman at Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters was not immediately available to comment.

However, a spokeswoman in Google’s U.K. office told Reuters, “I can completely deny the report.”

“No, we have no plans at this time to develop a music store, or to compete with existing online and offline music retailers,” the spokeswoman said in a prepared statement.

Source: Reuters

The beta version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 is available to the general public starting today.

This new iteration of the world’s dominant browser adds a number of features long since taken for granted by alternative-browser users, such as tabbed browsing, a toolbar-integrated search box, and limited RSS support. Version 7 also has a much more compact and streamlined interface than its predecessor, with a strong emphasis on dedicating as much of the window as possible to the displayed Web site. Also included are a number of security upgrades, like a new antiphishing filter.

Source: PCWorld

The European Union’s antitrust chief says Microsoft cannot charge licensing fees for software blueprints that it is offering to share with competitors unless it can prove the computer code is innovative.

The official, Neelie Kroes, also told European lawmakers on Tuesday that she has not yet received all information on Microsoft’s offer to share software code and comply with a 2004 EU antitrust ruling.

Microsoft Corp. has until Feb. 15 to meet European Commission demands from December that it provide complete and accurate information on code that would allow competitors’ products to communicate smoothly with servers running Microsoft operating systesms.

Source: AP

ISPs in UK have been ordered to divulge the identities of 150 people accused of the unauthorised sharing of software via the Internet.

Ten ISPs received a High Court order on Monday instructing them to hand over details of the alleged unauthorised file-sharers to the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST), a pressure group that represents the software industry.

The ISPs have two weeks to divulge full personal details of the customers involved, including their names, addresses and dates of birth.

Judge Raynor confirmed that there was “an overwhelming case” for ordering such customer details to be released. ISPs cannot release such customer details without a court order, as this would be a breach of the Data Protection Act.

The main ISPs involved are BT, Telewest, Tiscali, and NTL, according to John Lovelock, FAST’s director-general. All have agreed to provide customer information to FAST, which claims to be working closely with police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Source: ZDNet

Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business - desktop software.

A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the Gnome desktop, it is known internally as ‘Goobuntu’.

Google has confirmed it is working on a desktop linux project called Goobuntu, but declined to supply further details, including what the project is for.

It’s possible that it’s just one of the toys Googleplex engineers play with on Fridays, when they get time off from buffing the search engine code or filtering out entries about Tiananmen Square.

It could be for wider deployments on the company’s own desktops, as an alternative to Microsoft, but still for internal use only.

But it’s possible Google plans to distribute it to the general public, as a free alternative to Windows.

Source: The Register

Shares of digital music service Napster Inc. surged more than 30 percent in premarket trading on a report that it was in discussions with Google Inc. for an alliance that could include a sale.

Internet giant Google is in talks with Napster over an “extensive alliance” that could include an “outright acquisition,” according to a Tuesday report in the New York Post, citing anonymous sources.

The company in January told Reuters that it was not on the block. “The company is not looking to be sold, the management is not looking to step out. It’s simply not true,” a Napster spokesman said on January 23.

Google has been in discussions with Napster to offer a digital music service, rather than start one on its own, the NY Post reported.

Source: Reuters

Microsoft is pushing customers to upgrade to the latest service packs for Office, but not for the usual security and performance reasons.

Ten days ago, Microsoft began notifying its volume-license customers that they should upgrade to the latest service packs for Office in order to comply with a patent-ruling against Microsoft.

“It was recently decided in a court of law that certain portions of code found in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office XP Professional and Microsoft Access 2002 infringe a third-party patent. As a result, Microsoft must make available a revised version of these products with the allegedly infringing code replaced,” according to the note.

The customer note did not offer details regarding the specific legal reasons for the patch push. But a public relations official with the company said that the updates were required as part of a U.S. federal court ruling in June 2005 that found Microsoft guilty of infringing on a Guatamalan investor’s 1994 patent on technology linking Microsoft Access and Excel.

Source: microsoft-watch