August 05, 2005, 4:35 PM PDT
Washington gives nod to Sprint-Nextel merger
Posted by: Kent German

The Feds have approved the proposed merger between Sprint and Nextel, leaving one less hurdle to a full union between the two companies. While they also need to win the OK from some state government, the go-ahead from the Justice Department ensures that the merger should be wrapped up by its planned completion date this autumn. The combined company would be the third-largest carrier in the United States, after Cingular and Verizon Wireless, with around 40 million subscribers. We're also beginning to see more details about what the merger really means. According to NewsFactor.com, Sprint and Nextel will merge their networks by 2006. From the looks of it, though, Sprint seems to be the main beneficiary of the deal. Sprint will pick up Nextel's pioneering Direct Connect push-to-talk technology and Nextel's significant spectrum holdings. And I'm still a little curious how this merger will go down. Nextel's customers tend to be very brand loyal, and I'm sure they'll strongly resist any changes to their services or phones.

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August 05, 2005, 2:25 PM PDT
Game(s) of the Week(s)
Posted by: Robert Dubbin

Happy weekend! Why go out or visit friends when you can enjoy CNET's Game of the Week slide shows from this and last week?!

This week: Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (Xbox 360)
Last week: Quake 4 (PC)

Next week, I'll have hands-on previews of EA Sports' Madden 2006, NBA Live 2006, and Tiger Woods 2006 for the Sony PSP, as well as a brief rundown of NHL 2006 for consoles. Yep--it's that time of year, when everyone who's tired of their MLB 2006 season looks forward to bigger and better things.

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August 05, 2005, 1:20 PM PDT
Newest reason to buy an HDTV
Posted by: Molly Wood

HDNet, the high-definition television network, says it will distribute a high-def video of the shuttle Discovery's launch--for free. Very cool. Because the video file is 1.3 gigabytes in size, it will be distributed using peer-to-peer technology--so it should take you only as long to download the Discovery launch video as it would take a space shuttle to orbit the moon.

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August 05, 2005, 1:15 PM PDT
DVR scheds fixed in a New York minute
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

Over the past few years, several TV networks, NBC in particular, have gotten into the unfortunate habit of shifting their start and end times by a minute or two. While watching your favorite show from, say, 9:01 to 9:31 isn't that big an inconvenience, try telling that to your TiVo or other DVR device, which is easily flummoxed by orders to tape two shows that overlap by a minute.

These days, even the basic cable company DVR box has two tuners, so it's less of a problem, but NBC should still be commended for going to go back to the good old days of keeping a program in its time slot, which strikes us as a pretty simple thing to do, really. Legions of time-shifting fans take to the Internet to rejoice.

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August 05, 2005, 1:07 PM PDT
Google: upping the evil factor?
Posted by: Molly Wood

So, according to Slashdot, via our own News.com, Google is no longer speaking to News.com, because News.com used Google to get a bunch of personal information about Google's CEO and put it in a story about how powerful search engines (such as Google) can pose a threat to privacy. Google has apparently vowed not to speak to News.com for an entire year--until July 2006. Sorry, can't write anymore, I'm busy Googling "childish temper tantrum."

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August 05, 2005, 11:24 AM PDT
Microsoft to patch six flaws Tuesday
Posted by: Robert Vamosi

Microsoft posted advanced notice of six new patches it'll release next Tuesday, August 9. The advance warning is so that system administrators can prepare; at least one of the six is rated "critical" by the software giant. No specifics were given, except that all of the patches will require restarting your computer. Microsoft said it would issue a high-priority, non-security-related patch, as well as release an updated version of its Malicious Software Removal Tool, which specifically looks for Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom (among others) and removes these viruses and worms from your system.

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August 05, 2005, 10:43 AM PDT
Damn near perfect...
Posted by: William O'Neal

When I first saw the Creative Zen Portable Media Center at CES 2004, I was pretty excited. Of course, my excitement was tempered by some glaring drawbacks in the device's design. Not to malign the good folks up in Redmond, but many of the shortcomings in Creative's first PMC could be laid squarely at the feet of the Windows Mobile operating system that Creative used. Nevertheless, I still managed to find the device useful; that 20GB hard drive held most of my digital music, and its battery life was amazing. I didn't even mind how huge it was.

With change being the only constant in life, Creative's latest Personal Video Player (PVP), the Zen Vision, abandons the Windows Mobile OS and uses a proprietary OS that gives Creative more freedom to customize the device according to the kinds of things that users like. And since getting my hands on one a week or so ago, it's safe to say that I'm in love with it. Because it's not a Windows-based product, it has support for a plethora of audio and video formats, is actually pocketable, boasts a 30GB hard drive, and like the Palm Life Drive, has the ability to sync with your Outlook PIM data. While the preproduction software that I'm using has a few wrinkles to be ironed out, I can't wait to get my hands on the final device.

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