Kazaa, Recording Industry Reach a Deal

In a dramatic close to the legal battle between filesharing software developer Kazaa and the entertainment industry Kazaa said today that it has agreed to pay at least $ million to four record companies and an additional amount to motion picture companies to settle two lawsuits.
 
Kazaa will pay Universal Music Group Sony BMG Music Entertainment EMI and Warner Music Group said Alex Jacob a spokesman for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. He could not specify the exact amount

Garfield, Ninja Turtles Streaming Soon To Mobile Phones

Comic book fans will soon have many more choices on where to find media for mobile phones. Sprint on Thursday officially launched a service through content provider uclick at the ComicCon International in San Diego.
 
GoComics subscribers agreeing to pay $. monthly now have an option through Sprint to choose from several titles they can download through a mobile reader.

Verizon Wireless Cingular Wireless and other carriers will also begin offering the GoComics service in August said Jeff Webber

South Korean Internet game giant targets US market

South Korea's top online video game website announced plans to become a player in the US market this year.
 
NHN Corp. revealed that it discretely set up shop in Mountain View California the home turf of Internet juggernaut Google and planned to roll out game and search services targeted at computer users to years old.

"Our plan is to become a major player worldwide so getting a foothold in the United States is a critical step for NHN"

Skype Offers New Wireless Phones

Skype the voiceoverInternet company is now directly offering mobile phones to go with its free Internet calling. The company introduced four new Skypecompatible WiFi handsets. These are the first phones directly from Skype.
 
The phones are being manufactured by four different companies: Belkin EdgeCore Netgear and SMC. They operate when in the presence of a WiFi hotspot do not require a computer connection and automatically synchronize with a Skype account. The phones also include several Skype features such as enabling

Yahoo Software Lands on Motorola Phones

Yahoo has now signed up the two biggest handset manufacturers to load its Yahoo Go for Mobile services on their phones after an announcement with Motorola this week.
 
Motorola said it will prominently feature Yahoo Go for Mobile which includes Yahoo Mail search address book and Yahoo Local on handsets worldwide starting the first half of next year. Motorola did not specify which handsets would get the feature but said it would distribute tens of millions of phones featuring Yahoo Go

Google Launches Accessible Search for visually impaired users

For visually impaired users Web pages that are designed to be accessible can be more easily read by screen reading machines or by making the type larger. But welldesigned accessible pages are not yet everywhere.
 
Google took a major step today toward helping users find the most accessible pages on a given topic. It is releasing a beta version of Accessible Search for the Visually Challenged available at http://labs.google.com/accessible/.

Accessible Search is "designed to identify and prioritize

Nortel, Microsoft form 'strategic alliance' to grow Internet talk

Nortel and Microsoft Corp. have announced a new partnership to sell new combined technologies to facilitate email instant messaging telephone calls and more via the Internet.
 
Their alliance will "accelerate the availability of unified communications" Nortel the Canadian telecom equipment giant said in a statement Tuesday.

Further the two technology heavyweights will transition traditional business phone hardware systems into software based on a Microsoft platform and Nortel software products to provide "advanced telephony functionality."

"Nortel and Microsoft have each led

ATT launches Homezone TV and Internet service

U.S. phone company AT&T Inc. said on Wednesday it began marketing its AT&T Homezone a longawaited service that combines highspeed Internet and satellite television in one settop box.
 
Homezone which offers digital video recording movies on demand photo and musicsharing and Webbased remote access is initially available in Ohio and San Antonio Texas ahead of a broader launch in coming months.

The new service comes as phone companies like AT&T and Verizon Communications Inc. launch various product bundles to compete

Travelers can share the wealth at Trip Planner

Yahoo's Trip Planner which launched in beta phase nine months ago and now highlights more than member trip plans on an interactive world map is among more than a dozen new offerings from websites trying to attract travelers and advertisers by harnessing a collective consciousness. Some come from established players Google's CoOp TripAdvisor's Inside and VirtualTourist's Trip Planner among them while others are startups like Gusto RealTravel TrekkerTime and Squidoo.

The new products target "people who are averse to standard travel

FeedBurner buys BlogBeat

FeedBurner.com which syndicates Web postings for publishers said it has acquired blog analytics company BlogBeat.net for undisclosed terms.

FeedBurner manages managing headline syndication services and operates a growing Web site advertising network. The deal will allow the company to provide publishers with tools to better understand what headline feeds blog site visitors are reading.

Chicagobased FeedBurner founded three years ago said it has acquired the assets of BlogBeat based in RaleighDurham North Carolina. BlogBeat founder Jeff Turner has joined FeedBurner as its

EU acts to slash sky-high mobile roaming charges

The European Commission unveiled plans to slash skyhigh costs for making mobile phone calls abroad defying fierce opposition from the telecoms industry.
 
The clampdown agreed by the commission at a weekly meeting aims to halve socalled "roaming rates" which companies impose on consumers using their mobile phones when outside their home country.

"For years mobile roaming charges have remained at unjustifiably high levels in spite of repeated warnings to the industry" said Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding.

"This

MySpace.com - top single US Web site

Online hangout MySpace.com has overtaken Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO news)'s email gateway as the single mostvisited U.S. Web site although Yahoo's network of sites retains a broader audience according to a report issued on Tuesday.
 
According to Internet traffic measurement firm Hitwise News Corp.'s MySpace.com accounted for . percent of all U.S. Internet visits for the week ending July pushing it past Yahoo Mail for the first time and outpacing the home pages for Yahoo Google and Microsoft's MSN

U.S. House Passes Internet Gambling Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives today passed legislation that would ban most forms of Internet gambling and require banks to develop systems to block their customer's transactions to gambling Web sites.

By a to vote the House approved the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act sponsored by Representatives Bob Goodlatte a Virginia Republican and Jim Leach an Iowa Republican. The bill amends the Wire Act which prohibits gambling using telephone wires to include Internet gambling as a prohibited activity. The bill

Battle lines drawn over Net neutrality

As the U.S. Congress argues the pros and cons of network neutrality many companies doing business on the Internet say their very futures may be at stake.
 
Net neutrality supporters want new laws prohibiting Internet providers from blocking or degrading traffic from their competitors&; networks. If providers are allowed to give preferential treatment to some Web traffic businesses using competing tools will find themselves in the slow lane said Dave Greves owner of Denverbased Faction Media an advertising agency that

Google Enters the Dictionary as a Verb

MerriamWebster has added the term google to the latest version of its Collegiate Dictionary. The term is one of new words or expressions that made the cut for this update. Not surprisingly many of the new entries hail from the world of technology.
 
Joining google among Internetrelated terms to make it onto the pages of the dictionary for the first time are mouse potato a pejorative term that describes someone who spends a lot of time at a computer