IDG News Service

Voice over IP service provider Skype (DEMOmobile 04) today makes available a beta version of its latest upgrade, Skype 4.0 for Windows-based personal computers, which the eBay unit calls its biggest and most ambitious release in its nearly five-year history.

"This is the most fundamental change in our product since its inception," said Don Albert, general manager of Skype North America, during a news conference.

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Trend Micro, Inc. of Cupertino (DEMOfall 06 and DEMO 04) may have received more than it bargained for in its software patent dispute with rival Barracuda Networks. In the past few months Barracuda's cause has been taken up by free software advocates, who see Trend Micro's patent claims as a threat to the open-source ClamAV antivirus project. That's because Barracuda uses ClamAV to be able to scan for viruses at the "gateway," where a local area network connects to the Internet. Trend Micro says it owns the technology behind this -- thanks to a patent it calls the "600" patent.

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SAN FRANCISCO - A technology that could help the environment by eliminating the need to ship a power adapter with every electronics device got a vote of confidence Friday from consumer electronics maker Westinghouse Digital Electronics.

Westinghouse said it had committed to using a smart power technology developed by San Ramon, CA start-up company, Green Plug (DEMO 08), that aims to let people use a single "universal adapter" to power their laptops, cell phones and other electronics gear.

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Just as a cellular industry trade association released a scathing letter against a proposal that would deliver free wireless Internet access across the country, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission decided not to vote on the proposal this week as planned.

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Virtualization powerhouse VMware of Palo Alto, CA (DEMO 1999 and 2003) has inked a deal to buy B-hive Networks, an application performance management vendor in San Mateo, CA, and Herzliya, Israel, for an undisclosed sum, the company said Wednesday. The deal, set to close in the third quarter, gives VMWare a better way to track performance of virtualized servers. B-hive's research team will serve as the core of VMware's new Israel development lab.

Earlier this year, VMWare (NYSE: VMW)purchased software start-ups Thinstall and Propero.

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Adobe Systems, Inc. of San Jose, CA (DEMO 07 and DEMO 04) is releasing Tuesday public beta versions of upcoming upgrades to the company's Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth tools.

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Symantec has told customers of its consumer security products that they should disable a feature in the software before upgrading to Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), or risk crippling their computers.

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VMware (DEMO 1999 and 2003) is releasing two bundles of management and automation products designed to streamline disaster recovery and curb virtual server sprawl.

The bundles, announced Monday, include several previously released products built on top of VMware's virtualization software and two that are new. The new products are Site Recovery Manager, designed to simplify disaster recovery on virtual machines; and Stage Manager, designed for deploying and updating applications on virtual machines.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Two Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would subject broadband providers to antitrust violations if they block or slow Internet traffic.

U.S. Representatives John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from the Silicon Valley in California, are sponsoring the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act.

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SAN FRANCISCO- Meet this year's JavaOne spotlight technology, the same as last year's JavaOne spotlight technology.