Vonage close to patent fix
Vonage is close to coming up with a technical fix that could solve its patent infringement problems, Chief Executive Jeffrey Citron said during the company's quarterly earnings conference call Thursday. In March, a jury in Virginia found Vonage had infringed on three patents held by Verizon Communications. Vonage is currently appealing the decision. Citron said the new technology, which will provide a work-around to the first two patents that describe how IP addresses are mapped to telephone numbers, can be installed through software downloads. The fixes are not expected to cost Vonage much to implement, Citron said. And the installation will require minimal effort from customers. He also said the company is working on a solution for the third patent, which deals with the transmission of voice over Internet Protocol calls over Wi-Fi networks. Vonage's net loss for the first quarter was $72 million compared with a loss of $85 million in the same quarter a year earlier. The company was not publicly traded in the year-earlier quarter. Revenue was up 64% to $196 million from $119.7 million a year ago. Jobs brushes aside backdating concerns Microsoft slims its virtualization software Can plankton slow climate change? Care and feeding of a Webkinz Extra: The best games to play at workVideo: Hydrogen cars--the hybrids of the future? But the company's legal troubles may have affected its ability to sign up new customers. In the first quarter, the company signed up 166,000 new subscribers. During the same quarter a year ago, it signed up 328,000 new subscribers. Vonage, which spent an average of $275 to acquire each new customer in the quarter, said that its churn rate, or the rate at which customers drop its service, rose to 2.4% compared with 2.3% for the previous quarter.

Google admits gunning for Microsoft 
Google has officially announced that its going into the software market in competition with Microsoft. While many people have been saying this for ages, the search engine outfit has been a bit evasive about admitting it. However speaking to shareholders yesterday CEO Eric Schmidt said that Google's new tagline will be “Search, Ads and Apps." The company is hoping to peddle Microsoft standard office applications with the added advantage that you have all the data stored offline. Schmidt said punters would prefer to have a trusted partner to keep all the information safe and have it for you on every device.” However Google’s efforts into Vole's territory have done little to raise any cash so far. A shareholder asked Schmidt and Google co-founder Larry Page how they would avoid becoming known as 'the new Microsoft, and not in flattering terms'. Page's answer was that Google was not the same kind of company because its engineers all run Linux. "It’s free. You can hack on it. It’s deep in our DNA”

Ipods can make pacemakers fail
iPods can kill people who use cardiac implantable pacemakers by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart, according to a report on Reuters. A study presented by a 17-year-old high school student Jay Thaker to a meeting of heart specialists looked at the effect of Ipods on 100 patients, whose mean age was 77, outfitted with pacemakers. An Ipod threw out enough electrical interference was detected half of the time when it was held two inches from the patient's chest for five to 10 seconds. In some cases, the Ipods caused interference when held 18 inches from the chest and caused telemetry equipment caused the device to misread the heart's pacing and in one case caused the pacemaker to stop functioning altogether. Fortunately the sort of people who have pacemakers rarely buy an Ipod, but it would make for an amusing wave of Apple ads. Fat Microsoft loser: "I listen to music on my Zune, it is expensive and dull looking. It suits my image fine." Smug Apple git: "Steve Jobs tells me to listen to music on my iPod, it is pretty, cool and shorts my pacemaker." Fat Microsoft loser: "On my Zune I can play all those hits from the 1970s and 1980s which I really like." Smug Apple Git: "On my Ipod, Coldplay sound truly miserable just like they do in real life and... ook [suffers heart attack].

Sony gets creative with social networking site
Sony is entering the crowded social networking market with a website that combines the community elements of MySpace with the video aspects of YouTube.  The Vaio Nation site allows users to create individual pages and blogs, and post their own film or music on the site which can then be voted on by other members of the community.  "Users can keep up to date with their favourite artists, chat with friends, write their own blogs, upload videos, music and photographs on their own homepage, as well as check out the latest music and film industry news," said a statement from Sony. "Users can also rate the artists' tracks and videos which make up the weekly charts." The launch has included a number of contributions from established and emerging talent from the world of music and film.

Helio Ocean makes its debut
Helio's dual keypad Ocean is released today. Sporting both an alphanumeric and full QWERTY keyboard (which slide out in different directions), it also boasts the full compliment of smartphone services. Email / push email, IM, browsing and Direct Search - where you can just type into the idle screen and it switches itself to search mode - are all included, as well as a 2 megapixel camera, video recording, 3G, a comprehensive media player and 200MB of (expandable) memory. Given the 4.3" x 2.0" case and 0.86" (roughly 2cm) thickness in a device that contains two keypads, it's pretty damn compact too. Convinced? It can be yours for just $295.

New Domain Names
New Internet addresses for general use could start appearing in the summer of 2008 under a timeline the Internet's key oversight agency announced Thursday. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers invited public comment on procedures for creating new names, the first expansion for general use since 2000. Names added since then have been limited to specific regions or industries. "This is all about choice," ICANN Chief Executive Paul Twomey said in a statement. "We want the diversity of the world's people, geography and business to be able to be represented in the domain name system." Domain names are key for helping computers find Web sites and route e-mail. There are currently about 250 domain name suffixes, most of them for specific countries such as ".fr" for France. General-use names include ".com" and ".net." In 2000, two years after its designation by the U.S. government as the authority for overseeing Internet naming policies, ICANN approved seven new names, but only ".info" and ".biz" were truly for general use.

45% Of Workers Steal Data When Changing Jobs 
Nearly half of professionals from across a wide range of industries admit they have taken data with them -- everything from documents and lists to sales proposals and contracts -- when they've changed jobs. What about safeguards? Seems workers aren't all that concerned with them -- or getting past them, at least. According to the international Information Security Survey, users polled said they don't see their companies' IT security practices as obstacles to accessing data from outside company walls or to walking out the door with it in their bag or thumb drive. They're also aware that if they're capable of taking critical information home with them, others are, too. The survey showed that 39% of workers have printed a document out rather than forward it on electronically to try to minimize the number of paths it could take out of the building. The study, which was commissioned by enterprise rights management company Liquid Machines, was conducted by online survey services provider Zoomerang. More than 900 professionals, with 84% in the United States, were polled over a one-month period earlier this year.

Beatles Download Issues “Virtually Settled”
As Paul McCartney prepares to release his first original album available for download sales, he has told Billboard magazine that a deal to distribute the Beatles’ catalog for online downloading is “virtually settled,” Billboard Biz reports. McCartney’s new album, Memory Almost Full, will be his first solo release available for download and streaming on PCs and mobile phones on June 5 on Starbucks’ new Hear Music label and will be available through iTunes. Starbucks plans to position Memory in the Hear Music spot on the iTunes main page. The Beatles and Apple settled their long-held trademark dispute in February. No word on how soon the music will be available, however. 

NYC taxi cabs getting an upgrade
To taxi officials, the touch-screen monitors popping up in cabs help passengers make the most of the 13 New York minutes spent on an average ride. Passengers can pay by credit card — no more fumbling for cash and tip. As a cab heads through Greenwich Village, for example, passengers can find ads and reviews for neighborhood bars and restaurants. They can also view news stories and an electronic map of their cab's progress. The monitors are now in 200 city cabs as an experiment, but a plan to put them in all 13,000 cabs has angered many drivers. They see the technology as an expensive imposition that would cost them money and allow taxi owners and officials to check up on them. The issue has a delicate history: A 2003 experiment with touch-screen television in taxis ended within months, amid passenger anti-pathy.

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