Apple clears Jobs in options probe, restates earnings ... "Happy New Year!" worm on the move

HIGHLIGHTS
News: Apple clears Jobs in options probe, restates earnings
News: "Happy New Year!" worm on the move
News: Yahoo to offer full auction refunds in Japan case
News: New Creative Commons head to reach out to businesses
Opinion: Attack of the killer digicam
ITwhirled: Geek Comic of the Week: Station V3


NEWS UPDATES

Apple clears Jobs in options probe, restates earnings
An investigation into past stock option grants at Apple Computer Inc. has found that Chief Executive Steve Jobs was aware of procedural irregularities but did not benefit personally from the grants or understand the accounting implications.

"Happy New Year!" worm on the move
Verisign Inc. is warning of a new e-mail worm arriving in inboxes with the subject "Happy New Year!" The message, currently being spread from 160 e-mail domains, requires users to click on the attached "postcard.exe" file in order to cause damage.

Yahoo to offer full auction refunds in Japan case
Yahoo Japan Corp. has decided to refund users of its auction Web site any money that was sent to a consumer electronics retailer that abruptly closed down and disappeared.

New Creative Commons head to reach out to businesses
Creative Commons, the grass-roots content licensing system that has taken hold amongst bloggers and other content creators online, could soon be arriving in your digital camera.

AT&T offers more concessions for BellSouth acquisition
In a bid to win approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for its planned $67 billion acquisition of BellSouth Corp., AT&T Inc. has expanded the set of concessions it's offering to overcome opposition to the deal.

Nintendo Wii sales surge in Japan
Sales of Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s Wii surged in the third week of December in Japan as more supplies of the hard-to-get games console arrived in shops across the country.

Report: Apple records on Jobs options falsified
Apple Computer Inc. gave Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs 7.5 million stock options in October 2001 without authorization from its board and later falsified documents that said the board had met to approve the grant, according to a Financial Times report on Thursday.

Intel ordered to produce foreign evidence in AMD case
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) will be able to collect evidence about events outside the U.S. for an antitrust lawsuit against Intel Corp.


OPINION

Attack of the killer digicam
By Sean McGrath

In recent times, sites publishing user-generated video content, such as YouTube have been very much in the news. Young people who, prior to video sharing sites became popular, had no particular interest in investing in a camcorder are now doing so and producing home videos that are, well ... interesting. Videos of themselves goofing around in the kitchen. Videos of a friend's opinions on pop star X. Videos of how best to care for your pet hamster. Everything imaginable. It is tempting to watch some of these and dismiss them as skateboard-like. That is, possibly a passing fad, possibly a phenomenon destined for niche status. Perhaps "professionally produced" video will always be beyond what amateurs can produce. Perhaps. Perhaps not.


ITWHIRLED

Geek Comic of the Week: Station V3
Station V3 is a lonely space station, a rest stop and fuel station in a system where nobody really needs to rest or refuel. The cast of characters, including a overprogrammed robot and plant mastermind, entertain themselves while waiting for visitors. Plus: ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS!

Amsterdam tests open source ... Internet access recovers in Asia after quake

HIGHLIGHTS
News: Amsterdam city authorities test open source software
News: Internet access recovers in Asia after quake
News: Yahoo research goes beyond computing to social science
News: Netflix best, CDW worst in customer satisfaction
Opinion: Short straw people 2
GottaGadget: What's your biggest gadget secret?
ITwhirled: U.K. already considering robot rights


NEWS UPDATES

Amsterdam city authorities test open source software
Microsoft Corp. has two years -- until the company's contract expires in 2008 -- in which to convince Amsterdam city authorities that it can offer better value for money on the desktop than open source alternatives.

Internet access recovers in Asia after quake
Asia's Internet and telecommunication infrastructure showed signs of recovery Thursday, following service disruptions caused by a series of powerful earthquakes off Taiwan's southern coast earlier this week.

Yahoo research goes beyond computing to social science
Yahoo Research has set up a team of economists, ethnographers, cognitive psychologists and sociologists to research new media experiences that will promote the formation of online communities.

Netflix best, CDW worst in customer satisfaction
This holiday shopping season consumers rated Netflix Inc.'s Web site as the best among the 40 largest retail sites, while CDW Corp.'s ranked last, according to a survey whose results were released Wednesday.

YouTube response to Japan complaints 'not satisfactory'
A group of Japanese content producers that asked YouTube Inc. to act on the large amount of copyrighted material on the popular site say a response received from the company was unsatisfactory.

Taiwan IT production largely unaffected by big quake
A pair of powerful earthquakes near Taiwan caused some factories to temporarily halt operations for safety reasons, but mostly left the island's IT production unscathed, companies said Wednesday.

Microsoft sees botnets as top cyber-threat
If there's one thing that Aaron Kornblum, a senior attorney with Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Safety Enforcement team, would like to quash, it's the botnet armies -- the remote-controlled PCs that have been taken over without their user's knowledge. Symantec counted more than 4.5 million of them during the first six months of 2006, and according to Kornblum, they are the backbone of today's cybercrime.

Taiwan allows three chip investments to China
The Taiwan government gave a formal stamp of approval on three major China-bound chip investments on Wednesday, a significant easing of regulations for its technology industry and a sign of improving ties with China.

Report: Feds looking at Apple stock-option documents
U.S. federal investigators are "looking closely" at stock-option documents that former Apple Computer Inc. officials allegedly falsified to boost their own profits, The Recorder legal newspaper reported late Tuesday in its online edition. Revelations regarding past stock-options practices are expected in Apple's delayed annual report due out Friday.

After one month, no rush to adopt Vista
Windows Vista has been on the market for nearly a month now, but enterprise users and industry experts agree that Microsoft's latest and greatest OS still isn't yet ready to replace XP.


OPINION

Short straw people 2
By James Gaskin

Two years ago I wrote Short Straw People for those of us working
during the holidays. Now it's time to revisit that issue, because
we're still working during the holidays. We drew the short straw again.


GOTTA GADGET

What's your biggest gadget secret?
Do you play games on your PDA during boring meetings? Do you have a separate account for gadget purchases that your spouse doesn't know about? Do you use your gadget in an unexpected way?

Share a secret, and enter our drawing to win an Apple iPod (with video capability).


ITWHIRLED

U.K. already considering robot rights
The Brits are definitely forward thinking on this one: A report from the United Kingdom government's chief scientist speculates that by the year 2056, robots may have reached the level of consciousness that will merit rights (voting, health care) and responsibilities (military service, taxes).

Earthquake disrupts Internet access in Asia ... PS3, Wii have banner sales week

HIGHLIGHTS
News: Earthquake disrupts Internet access in Asia
News: PS3, Wii have best week of sales since launch in Japan
News: Samsung develops 1G chip for handheld devices
News: Wikipedia-like search engine in development
Opinion: Remote monitoring
ITwhirled: Terrible iPod-related gift ideas


NEWS UPDATES

Earthquake disrupts Internet access in Asia
A pair of powerful earthquakes off the coast of Taiwan damaged undersea cables and disrupted telephone and Internet access in Asia on Wednesday.

PS3, Wii have best week of sales since launch in Japan
Sales of both the PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles jumped in Japan during the second week of December thanks to greater supplies of the consoles from their respective manufacturers.

Samsung develops 1G chip for handheld devices
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has developed a thin, low-power 1G-byte chip for portable devices such as cameras, media players and game consoles.

Wikipedia-like search engine in development
The founder of Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia, is developing a wiki-based search engine to compete with established commercial search engines from Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.


OPINION

Remote monitoring
By James Gaskin

Do you know what's going on at all your remote offices? When someone
calls and reports the network is "acting funny" do you have a way to
look at their network, or are you doing that painful "tell me what
lights are on" dance with the remote site secretary who started work
yesterday?


ITWHIRLED

Terrible iPod-related gift ideas
Were you the lucky recipient of one of these iPod-themed gifts? If so, you may be questioning the gift giver's sanity. Who knew so many undergarments could uselessly be redesigned to accommodate iPods?

Social networks influence holiday e-shopping ... Toshiba to push HD DVD at CES

HIGHLIGHTS
News: Sharp to expand LCD production earlier than planned
News: Toshiba plans aggressive HD DVD push at CES
Report: Panasonic in talks to sell JVC stake to Kenwood
News: Social networks influence holiday e-shopping
News: Project aims to tag Tokyo neighborhood with RFID
Opinion: A quick trip to Redmond
ITwhirled: Top ten geek business myths


NEWS UPDATES

Sharp to expand LCD production earlier than planned
Rising demand for flat-panel televisions around the world is pushing Sharp Corp. to bring forward a planned expansion of display production, the company said Monday. Sharp's second manufacturing line at its Kameyama factory in western Japan will begin producing LCD panels in January -- two months ahead of schedule.

Toshiba plans aggressive HD DVD push at CES
Toshiba will join a group of companies supporting the HD DVD format in a news conference Jan. 7, the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, to announce their plans for 2007.

Report: Panasonic in talks to sell JVC stake to Kenwood
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic) is in talks to sell a big stake in its loss-making Victor Co. of Japan Ltd. (JVC) subsidiary to Kenwood Corp., the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported in its Saturday morning edition.

Social networks influence holiday e-shopping
New e-commerce trends have shaped this holiday season, including the increasing importance of social networks, blogs and user content, booming sales of luxury items, an extended shopping period and the emergence of niche sellers.

Project aims to tag Tokyo neighborhood with RFID
A location-based services trial that will see a famous Tokyo neighborhood blanketed with around 10,000 RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and other beacons got its start earlier this month.

Elpida begins mass production of 70nm DRAM
Japanese memory-chip maker Elpida Memory Inc. Monday began mass production of memory chips using a 70-nanometer production process, which offers to further reduce costs and improve performance.

Congress in '07: Privacy and patents on agenda
Some technology vendors and advocacy groups see new opportunities in the U.S. Congress in 2007, with issues such as patent reform and data protection getting fresh life under a Democratic-controlled legislature.


OPINION

A quick trip to Redmond
By Joel Shore

Heading up to Microsoft's Redmond, Wash. campus is always interesting. In the past, these trips were for big-time launch events, briefings for large groups of editors and analysts, product reviewers' workshops, or the occasional one-on-one interview for an executive profile piece. This time was different. Very different.

The recent gathering included just a handful of invitees. Several of them were from the world of the blogosphere. The agenda appeared to revolve around the idea of innovation. Certainly many people do not use the words "innovation" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence. I could play the cynic and note that Microsoft purchased DOS, built Windows from ideas first seen in Apple's Lisa, and more recently, launched its Zune music player five years and five million units after Apple's iPod. But I digress.


ITWHIRLED

She's a 10
Top ten dumbest secret identities ... Top ten geek business myths ... Top ten vampire myths ... Top 10 Ruby sites ... Top ten inventor myths