Sprint Nextel is preparing to take on the big phone companies in the broadband market.

The assault on DSL is coming quietly, but recent announcements and development in Sprint's technology indicate that the company believes it can be the third pipe into the home--a pipe that would challenge the phone companies' DSL service and perhaps would rival even faster-than-DSL cable-modem service.

Lenovo Group and Microsoft ink an expanded global strategic alliance to promote the use of validly licensed Microsoft software products in China and elsewhere.

Senior executives from Lenovo Group Ltd. and Microsoft Corp. met recently to reaffirm their joint efforts for market development and to formally sign a global agreement that expands and deepens the strategic cooperation between the two companies.

A picture can be worth a thousand words, but an RSS feed is worth a million pictures.

Rather than focus on written words, Pixsy Corp. plans to make Web searching visual, and will shortly launch a search engine that is designed to return thousands of photographs and video images from hundreds of sites.

That is the virtual promise of Pixsy, a visual search engine that scours syndication feeds (in the format of Really Simple Syndication) for up-to-date images and then makes them searchable.

Chinese search giant Baidu is partnering with Intel's China subsidiary to develop Internet applications for a variety of computing devices.

Intel Corp. and Internet search engine Baidu.com have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop search applications for Intel platforms in a deal that could have important branding and technology implications for the two companies in China's high-stakes online market.

New service allows laptop and PDA users to access Internet content offline

A Seattle company recently introduced a new service that allows people with laptops or handheld computers to surf through a range of Web content while they are offline.

Internet literally means an ‘inter’ connected world. But imagine a world where you have all the information of the Internet, your favorite websites and more without even connecting to the net. Well that is what a new service called Webaroo promises.

Vodafone Deploys Solution to Protect Minors from Pornography and Prevent Illegal Internet Content on Mobile Phones; Prevents Malware and Enables Premium Content

European cell phone giant Vodafone is introducing a new content filter that could be used to block subscribers from using competitive phone services.

A Vodafone spokesman scoffs at such a notion. He said the new feature, and another content filter that the company has had in place for the last 18 months, are only to keep those underage from viewing illicit Web sites on their phones.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are all vying for the right to post their keyword advertising in front of Ebay’s millions of online users, signaling a scramble between the search engine providers for access to one of the internet’s biggest untapped audiences.

Ebay, which boasts one of the largest audiences on the web, does not currently carry advertising on its web pages, making it an attractive distribution partner for all three search companies. Also, a high proportion of its users visit Ebay to look for items to buy, making them good prospects for advertisers searching for sales leads.

Looking to drive mobile customers in the right direction, Mapquest recently announced two new services that offer navigation capability via cell phone.

AOL unit MapQuest recently unveiled a mobile map service that customers can use on their cellular phones, complete with voice directions, text and maps in a bid to expand on the popularity of its Internet maps.

The MapQuest Navigator will be marketed as a cheaper alternative to navigation systems built into cars. Available as a free download, the WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) gives customers access to maps and directions on a Mapquest Web site optimized for mobile phones.

Skype buys voice processing startup, which could help it avoid licensing fees it pays to its current tech provider.
Even for the technically challenged, making calls over the Internet is no longer a daunting task, and the cheap price offered by Voice over Internet Protocol providers has made VoIP a must for many long-distance phone users.

The Internet phone service Skype said that it has recently bought web voice processing startup Sonorit and its subsidiary Camino Networks for $27 million, to help “design and develop Skype for the future” with Sonorit’s technology and voice-specialized engineers.

In a legal win for Google, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a writer who claimed the search giant infringed on his copyright by archiving a Usenet posting of his and providing excerpts from his Web site in search results.

Although a minor victory for the company, which faces numerous suits charging that its services trample the rights of authors.

A judge approved a settlement of a lawsuit brought against Time Warner Inc. by shareholders that alleged America Online improperly accounted for revenue in the years preceding and following the companies’ merger.

Time Warner agreed last August to the settlement with a group of shareholders who accused AOL of inflating its revenue by $1.7 billion between January 1999 and August 2002.

Innovation program that can run Microsoft software on Macs sends share prices soaring in New York

Apple’s biggest obstacle to selling more computers in a market dominated by PCs may have been overcome with a new piece of software that can run Microsoft’s Windows and the Mac Operating System on the same machine.

Boot Camp, as the experimental “beta” version of the software is called, can be downloaded by anyone with a new Apple computer that has an Intel processor, and that the application will be a feature in Leopard, the company's next major release of the Mac operating system. Older Macs have IBM processors, which will not work with the new software.

Daum Communication is boosting its U.S. business, with its subsidiary Lycos launching an Internet telephone service.

Daum Communications Corp., one of Korea's second largest portals and e-mail service providers, expanded its internet-based telephony services to the United States via U.S. portal Lycos Inc., which it acquired in 2004.

Lycos said it started a free, PC-to-PC voice and video service, and a free, PC-inbound service from fixed-line and mobile phones. The outbound call rate from a computer to a telephone within the United States is a penny per minute, the company said...

The world's largest electronics firms are reported to have opted to use Bluetooth wireless technology to send video between devices in the home.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has picked sides in the battle between two competing UWB (Ultra Wideband) short-range, high-speed wireless technologies, choosing the Wi-Media Alliance’s MB-OFDM (multi-band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing). The companies said they will use the short-range radio system to link TVs, video players and computers.

Internet calling provider Skype is courting small businesses
Looking to expand into the small business sector, Skype has revamped a number of applications to cater to a corporate audience, the company announced at the CeBIT show in Germany.

Skype, the global Internet communications company, recently announced Skype for Business, a solution designed to help small businesses easily manage communications, improve productivity and reduce costs. Skype for Business expands existing Skype small business offerings to include: Skype for Business Web site, a resource dedicated to business support; new Skype hardware from Plantronics; and new features in Skype for Business Control Panel (formerly named Skype Groups) to simplify management of grouped users and pre-paid services.

Finding a restaurant, getting directions or checking movie times is a quick phone call away on a mobile phone.

InfoSpace, Inc., a leader in online and mobile search, announced the launch of InfoSpace Local, a new local search Web site which allows consumers to find highly relevant listings including neighborhood businesses, white pages listings, event information, maps, directions, and useful Web pages. The site also features multiple keyword searching, time-based results such as movies and events, and a send-to-mobile feature which allows users to send information to their handsets, creating continuity between their online and mobile experiences. The new service, currently in beta, is available at local.infospace.com.

Verizon’s online yellow pages directory, SuperPages.com, has forged a deal to use its advertisers' excess budgets to purchase keyword ads on Google AdWords, and add the search engine's main page to its list of external distribution partners.

The deal will help its tens of thousands of marketers get ads onto Google search result pages, the companies said in a statement.

We are pleased Verizon is an authorized AdWords reseller and helping local small businesses take advantage of the opportunities of search advertising, Google said in a statement.

Hollywood studios, seeking a way to foil piracy and looking toward life beyond the DVD, and turning Europe into a proving ground for new methods of digital movie distribution

Universal Pictures, the movie studio behind “King Kong,” said it will offer the ape saga and other films on a “download-to-own” basis for the first time next month as Internet movie delivery switches to ownership from renting.

Uncertainty over ability of SoftBank to buy company
Vodafone is poised to pull out of Japan after admitting that it was in talks with the Japanese internet investment group SoftBank to sell its ailing mobile phone company there in a deal worth about £6bn.

Verizon Wireless and TiVo recently announced a deal in which Verizon subscribers will be able to program the latter company's digital video recorder through their mobile phones.

TiVo, the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVR), and Verizon Wireless, owner of the nation's most reliable network, of late announced an agreement that will allow Verizon Wireless to debut TiVo Mobile, a new downloadable application that lets TiVo service subscribers schedule recordings on their TiVo device directly from their Get It Now equipped Verizon Wireless handset.