In an expansion of their alliance, Microsoft and Toshiba said they plan to develop high-definition DVD players together and cooperate in designing new models of mobile personal computers.
The deal, announced by Bill Gates, is a big win for the HD-DVD format in its competition against the Blu-ray Disc, which is backed by Sony and Apple, to become the world standard for next-generation of DVD players.
Gates stopped short of calling the agreement exclusive, though he stressed he wanted to see HD-DVD become more widespread.
The competing sides have unsuccessfully been holding talks to try to agree on one standard. The Blu-ray format has more capacity, with 50 gigabytes, compared to 30 gigabytes for HD-DVD disks. But proponents of HD-DVD say their format is cheaper because the production method is similar to current DVDs.
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Roger that: Customers of XM Satellite Radio aren't the only ones who appreciate its digital quality and nationwide coverage. The U.S. military might draft XM's service for homeland security purposes.
XM and Raytheon have jointly built a communications system that would use XM's satellites to relay information to soldiers and emergency responders during a crisis.
The Mobile Enhanced Situational Awareness Network, known as MESA, would get a dedicated channel on XM's satellites that would be accessible only to emergency personnel. The receivers would be the same as the portable ones available to consumers, with slight modifications to make them more rugged.
The military often leases transmission space on commercial satellites, but this collaboration between a massive defense contractor and a fun-loving radio network -- XM's first two satellites were called "Rock" and "Roll" -- is unusual.
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Open access: A new website plans to make widely available to the public certain government reports about topics from terrorism to Social Security that congressional researchers prepare and distribute now only to lawmakers.
The site links to more than 8,000 reports from the Congressional Research Service and centrally indexes them so visitors can find reports containing specific terms or phrases.
The site is operated by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group. The project is a response to years of rumbling by open-government advocates over a lack of direct accessibility to reports from the policy research arm of Congress.
The site also encourages visitors to ask their lawmakers to send them any reports not yet publicly available -- and gives detailed instructions to do this -- so these can be added to the collection. None of the reports is classified or otherwise restricted.
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Free advertising: Sun Microsystems said that it will publish the source code of its software used as the foundation of web services, such as online banking, in a bid to spur sales of its computer services and other offerings.
The network computer maker said that it will share the source code for its Java System application server software Platform Edition 9, which enables web services.
The move by Sun comes almost two weeks after the company published the source code for its Solaris operating system that is used to run large computer centers.
By making the application server software free to developers, who write programs and make possible web services that work in conjunction with application server software, Sun hopes to increase further the number of Sun software developers.
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Compiled by David Cohn. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
