Two European airlines will allow passengers late next year to use their own cell phones on commercial flights within western Europe.
TAP Portugal and British carrier bmi both have agreed to introduce OnAir's voice and text service for cell phones in separate three-month trial runs.
The planes -- which will be the first to allow passengers to make and receive calls with their own cell phones while onboard -- will give OnAir the chance to assess its service ahead of its general release in 2007 for everywhere in the world but North America.
Users of mobile phones and other handheld wireless devices with roaming capability will be able to make and receive calls using a base station within the airplane. They will be allowed to turn their phones on after the plane reaches 10,000 feet, when other electronic devices such as portable music players and laptops are permitted.
OnAir's mobile communications system is based within the plane, which it says ensures that cell phones and other devices operate at lower transmission power and thus avoid affecting avionics. The company hopes to clear all regulatory hurdles for air traffic in Europe and the rest of the world, except the United States, at some point next year. Approval in the United States is expected to take longer.
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Lost at sea no longer: Government cargo inspectors would be able to get real-time data about the contents and whereabouts of shipping vessels around the world under a new tracking service being introduced by IBM (IBM) and Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S.
The monitoring program involves putting a shoebox-size wireless sensor inside individual cargo containers. The devices would relay data on the containers' locations and conditions -- and whether they appear to have been tampered with -- via satellite to a centralized system accessible by manufacturers, retailers and shipping companies, in addition to government inspectors.
Currently, U.S. port inspectors can electronically obtain information about the contents of a cargo vessel, but it's generally limited to static data gathered when the ship left port.
The IBM-Maersk project would be new in its ability to offer real-time information that could signify something suspicious to port inspectors. Any such clues could be vital, considering that nearly 9 million cargo containers arrive in U.S. seaports every year.
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Baidu's bandit bandwidth: Chinese search engine Baidu.com plans to appeal a court verdict ruling it violated copyrights held by a local affiliate of global music giant EMI.
Beijing's Haidian District Court found Baidu guilty, saying it provided access to websites offering illegal MP3 files of music belonging to recording company Shanghai Push, also known as Shanghai Busheng Music Culture Media.
Baidu, whose share price more than quadrupled following its listing on the Nasdaq last month, argued it merely provided a search function, not downloading services, and therefore wasn't violating copyrights.
Baidu's mp3.baidu.com MP3 search page has made it hugely popular among young, increasingly tech-savvy Chinese. Analysts say it has grown into China's largest search engine, prompting U.S. search giant Google to buy 2.6 percent of the company last year.
The Beijing court ordered Baidu to stop providing the alleged downloading services related to songs under copyright by Shanghai Push and pay the company 68,000 yuan ($8,395) -- 2,000 yuan ($247) for each of the 34 copyrights the company said Baidu violated.
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Movie police: Hollywood's six major film studios unveiled a technology venture to find new ways of protecting movies from illegal copying and distribution in black markets or over the internet.
Motion Picture Laboratories, or Movielabs, will look for new technologies to detect illegal videotaping of films in theaters and evaluate new computer hardware and software that is being used by networks to distribute films.
The venture's goal is to discover technologies that combat piracy, then recommend their use to universities, companies, internet service providers and other network operators, the groups said in a statement from the Motion Picture Association of America.
The movie studios figure they lose as much as $3.5 billion a year in revenues due to the illegal copying of movies on videotape and DVD, and they are deeply concerned about possible further losses due to digital distribution via the internet.
Movielabs' founding owners are Walt Disney Co. (DIS), Viacom (VIA), News Corp. (NWS), Sony (SNE), General Electric (GE) and Time Warner (TWX).
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Compiled by Keith Axline. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
