TDK announced that it has begun shipping 25GB recordable and rewritable Blu-ray Disc media to U.S. retailers. Retail pricing is set at $19.99 for a 25GB BD-R (recordable), $24.99 for a 25GB BD-RE (rewritable). In addition, TDK will ship 50GB Blu-ray Disc media later this year with retail pricingset at $47.99 for a 50GB BD-R [...]

Open document standards are crucial to guarding against software, hardware and operating system obsolescence, according to Michael Carden, digital preservation software manager at the National Archives of Australia (NAA). The NAA is responsible for storing government records and archival materials in a range of formats and has formerly relied on what Carden describes as, “boxes [...]

Most talk about virtualisation these days centres on using server hardware more efficiently. But the technology also has the potential to ease another headache: software installation woes. Today, administrators installing software typically must ensure beforehand that it’s certified to run with their particular hardware and operating systems, then configure and optimise it afterward. The hidden [...]

Playaway has unveiled a new audiobook player that eliminates the need of purchasing audio cassettes, CD’s, or download anything. It_s powered through a single AAA battery, and you can control the speed, volume, reading speed, pause and place bookmarks or skip characters. The audiobook is the size of half a deck of cards. You just [...]

A renewed bid to register the word “Linux” as an Australian trademark must meet an early April deadline or face defeat. The nation’s intellectual property regulator turned down an initial bid by local body Linux Australia to register the name on behalf of Linux creator Linus Torvalds in September 2005, saying the name was not [...]

Google is increasing its lead over Yahoo and Microsoft in the US Web search market while a rebranded Ask.com is inching up, according to the latest statistics from ComScore Networks. Google’s domestic market share rose to 42.3 percent in February, up from 36.3 percent a year earlier, ComScore said. Yahoo’s search market share in the [...]

Movielink, a studio-backed Internet video-on-demand service, announced on Monday the launch of the industry’s first download-to-own service for the major movie studios, which will let users for the first time purchase permanent movie downloads. The service will offer Universal Studios’ “Brokeback Mountain” for purchase and download on April 4, the same day it is released [...]

Japanese consumer electronics firm Toshiba released its first HD DVD player in Japan on Friday, beating rival Sony to become the first to bring its next-generation DVD player to market. The Toshiba HD-XA1 will sell there for about $940. The HD-XA1 is slated for release in the U.S. later this month, where it will cost [...]

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV provider, announced on Thursday an agreement with NBC Universal, to offer over a dozen of the company’s most popular network and cable programs through Comcast’s video-on-demand service. NBC primetime programs will become available as early as midnight following their on-air broadcast for 99 cents, while late-night and daytime programs [...]

Are you one of the lucky few who have money to burn ? You stay in Presidental Suites, fly in your own private jet, have a Bentley in your garage in short you command exclusivity. So why have a non-exclusive email address with your ISP, Gmail, Hotmail etc which is shared by million on the [...]

Sony’s Universal Media Disc (UMD) format, on which movies are sold for playback on its PSP handheld video game, is losing support among top movie studios, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Facing very low sales, both Paramount and Universal will likely stop releasing movies on UMD.

I4 Commerce, a developer of alternative payment technologies for retailers, said that it has secured $27.4 million in a new round of venture capital funding, led by New York-based Kingdon Capital Management. Previous investors Crosspoint Venture Partners, Azure Capital Partners and GRP Partners also participated. Maryland-based I4′s “Bill Me Later” platform allows consumers to pay [...]

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has sued Torrentspy, a search engine that provides search results of sites providing movie downloads on the BitTorrent file-sharing network, the BBC reported. Torrentspy itself does not host any copyrighted material, but merely points to third-party sites that host bits of a large movie file, called torrents. For [...]

JupiterResearch, a New York-based business and technology market research firm, on Tuesday said that a new survey it conducted shows that 41% of mobile phone users “are interested in some form of video service on their mobile phone.” While adoption of mobile video on phones has been somewhat low to date — only 2% of [...]