Technology - NewsFactor

Just two weeks after Apple iPhone users in Australia reported jailbroken iPhones came under siege by attackers, a new version of the iPhone worm is posing a threat. Symantec reports the new worm targets jailbroken iPhones running SSH that are still using the default password. The worm can reportedly steal data stored on the iPhone as well as connect back to the attacker, giving them control of the phone.

California's ban on plasma-screen televisions to reduce energy consumption could cost as much as $50 million per year in sales taxes because consumers are free to buy the sets online or in other states. "At a time when the state of California is facing its worst money crisis in history, this is going to be disastrous," said Jennifer Bemisderfer, a spokesperson for the Consumer Electronics Association, which lobbied against the ban.

In what may remind many consumers of the Amazon Kindle's early days, Barnes & Noble expects shipments of its nook e-book reader to be delayed. On Friday, the giant book retailer said it has sold out its first batch of nooks amid high demand -- and new shipments won't be available until after the holiday shopping season ends.

Dell's earnings are up and expectations are solid, but the company's stock still took a hit Friday afternoon after analysts signaled the company isn't playing a key role in the PC market recovery. Dell's shipments were flat in the third quarter and down five percent from the year-ago period despite improvements in the large-enterprise and small-and-midsize business segments and increased demand and revenue from business customers.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn't talking turkey when it comes to the software giant's newest operating system. At a shareholder meeting Thursday in Bellevue, Wash., Ballmer told investors that Windows 7 sold double the number of copies in one month as its previous Windows Vista operating system.

On Friday, Cloud Engines released its newest version of the Pogoplug, a small "multimedia sharing device" that connects hard drives to the Internet and allows a user to access the files remotely. The company described Pogoplug as "your own personal cloud that broadcasts safely from your home."

Google is showcasing how its Chrome OS will change the user experience when it launches before next year's holiday season. The new operating system will initially appear on netbook-style devices that will feature bigger keyboards than today's netbooks offer, the company said.

AT&T isn't holding back in responding to attacks from Verizon Wireless. After losing a court fight to stop Verizon from airing commercials that pointed out holes in AT&T's 3G service, AT&T is responding with its own commercial.

In a move to make YouTube's massive inventory more accessible to deaf and hearing-impaired people, Google announced plans to add automatic captioning technology to the video site. Google has combined its automatic speech-recognition technology with the existing YouTube caption system. Called auto-caps for short, the captions rely on the same voice-recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for YouTube videos.

With the public beta of Office 2010, Microsoft is offering an intriguing future for the world's most popular productivity suite. The new version features integration with web-based, lightweight versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint; a mobile version; and social-networking features bolted onto Outlook.

Google sketched out more details Thursday about its Chrome operating system, which is slated to become available before the end of next year. Google said the project's initial target is to get Chrome OS up and running on the computing devices that depend most on Internet connectivity.

After announcing a spin-off from parent company Time Warner on Monday, AOL is moving to reduce its head count about one-third. AOL is looking for employees who are willing to resign from their jobs at the once-dominant Internet firm.

Like Elvis, there have been so many sightings and rumors of an upcoming, groundbreaking Apple tablet that it has taken on legendary status. But now the legend is undergoing revisions, with new reports that the tablet will be delayed and that a major publisher is getting ready -- and still no word from Apple.

Apple will soon begin offering its iPhones through carriers in South Korea. On Wednesday, Apple jumped its last hurdle in getting the iPhone into the hands of mobile-phone users in South Korea.

Flying in the face of recessionary cautions about the video-game industry, Activision Blizzard is shattering record after record with its latest release. Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 continues to break box-office and sales records for a five-day worldwide sell-through.

Microsoft has released the beta version of Office 2010, along with betas of the 2010 versions of SharePoint Server, Visio, Project and Office Web Apps for business customers. Office Mobile 2010 has also reached the beta milestone.

Social networking has been the face of Web 2.0 for many years now. But until now the phrase has been synonymous with Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. Despite the efforts of companies like LinkedIn to bring social networking into the business world, in many ways organizations have been slow to adapt to the new technology.

Microsoft told its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles Wednesday that it's already working on the next version of Internet Explorer. In addition to demonstrating some of the progress on performance and interoperability standards in IE9, Microsoft said it intends to make more PC hardware capabilities available to web developers from within the browser.

Microsoft showed Tuesday that it has its head firmly in the clouds as it announced the Windows Azure platform will be at full capacity on Jan. 1. The announcement by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles described Azure and SQL Azure as "core elements of the company's cloud-services strategy."