The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is working on a plan to solve the problem of nationwide access to high-speed Internet service.The three main issues the agency is tackling first are, figuring out how to improve availability, quality and affordability, according to the Washington Post. Acting FCC Chairman Michael J. Copps held a meeting this week where he asked the public to comment on the national broadband plan, which Congress has demanded be done by February. The public has 60 days to submit comments;

If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer who’s been hanging on for the release of Verizon’s version of the HTC Touch Diamond, you now have something else to hang on to: your wallet. 

According to today’s press release, Verizon plans to sell the “new’ Touch Diamond for $299 with a two-year service agreement and a $70 mail-in rebate, which means you’ll lay down $370 bucks to take home this soon-to-be retired handset when it goes on sale tomorrow.

Why price Verizon’s Touch Diamond $100 over the MSRP of Sprint’s version?  No clue. 

We’ll be eager to see how long it takes for Verizon to lower the cost of this phone.

Kingston Technology Releases Intel-Certified DDR3 XMP SO-DIMMSModules Support Latest Generation XMP-Ready Notebook Computers Fountain Valley, CA – April 9, 2009 — Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the release of its first XMP-ready HyperXR DDR3 SO-DIMMs for notebook PCs using Intel’s Cantiga mobile chipset. The 1066MHz CL5 KingstonR ultra-low latency memory kits have passed Intel’s XMP certification process and come pre-programmed with both JEDEC

On March 25, a Taliban Web site claiming to be the voice of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” boasted of a deadly new attack on coalition forces in that country. Four soldiers were killed in an ambush, the site claimed, and the “mujahideen took the weapons and ammunition as booty.” Most remarkable about the message was how it was delivered. The words were the Taliban's, but they were flashed around the globe by an American-owned firm called ThePlanet, which is located in a leafy corner of downtown Houston, Texas.

The Texas company, a Web-hosting outfit called ThePlanet, says it simply rented cyberspace to the group and had no clue about its Taliban connections. For more than a year, the militant group used the site to rally its followers and keep a running tally of suicide bombings, rocket attacks and raids against U.S. and allied troops. The cost of the service: roughly $70 a month, payable by credit card. The Taliban's account was pulled last week when a blogger noticed the connection and called attention to it. But the odd pairing of violently anti-American extremists and U.S. technology companies continues elsewhere and appears to be growing. Intelligence officials and private experts cite dozens of instances in which Islamist militants sought out U.S. Internet firms — known for their reliable service and easy terms that allow virtual anonymity — and used them to incite attacks on Americans.

On March 25, a Taliban Web site claiming to be the voice of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” boasted of a deadly new attack on coalition forces in that country. Four soldiers were killed in an ambush, the site claimed, and the “mujahideen took the weapons and ammunition as booty.” Most remarkable about the message was how it was delivered. The words were the Taliban's, but they were flashed around the globe by an American-owned firm called ThePlanet, which is located in a leafy corner of downtown Houston, Texas.

The Texas company, a Web-hosting outfit called ThePlanet, says it simply rented cyberspace to the group and had no clue about its Taliban connections. For more than a year, the militant group used the site to rally its followers and keep a running tally of suicide bombings, rocket attacks and raids against U.S. and allied troops. The cost of the service: roughly $70 a month, payable by credit card. The Taliban's account was pulled last week when a blogger noticed the connection and called attention to it. But the odd pairing of violently anti-American extremists and U.S. technology companies continues elsewhere and appears to be growing. Intelligence officials and private experts cite dozens of instances in which Islamist militants sought out U.S. Internet firms — known for their reliable service and easy terms that allow virtual anonymity — and used them to incite attacks on Americans.

The Conficker worm is finally doing something–updating via peer-to-peer between infected computers and dropping a mystery payload on infected computers, Trend Micro said on Wednesday. Researchers were analyzing the code of the software that is being dropped onto infected computers but suspect that it is a keystroke logger or some other program designed to steal sensitive data off the machine, said David Perry, global director of security education at Trend Micro.

“As expected, the P2P communications of the Downad/Conficker botnet may have just been used to serve an update, and not via HTTP,” the blog post says. “The Conficker/Downad P2P communications is now running in full swing!” In addition to adding the new propagation functionality, Conficker communicates with servers that are associated with the Waledac family of malware and its Storm botnet, according to a separate blog post by Trend Micro security researcher Rik Ferguson. The worm tries to access a known Waledac domain and download another encrypted file, the researchers said.

Micron Technology and Nanya Technology, along with their joint venture Inotera Memories, have announced that they will not participate in the formation of Taiwan Memory Company (TMC). Instead, the partnership between Micron, Nanya and Inotera will be developed and improved, ready to face competition from the new entity, the camp said in a press conference this afternoon (April 9).

The joint announcement follows recent remarks by Micron CEO Steve Appleton which said Micron was still considering reasons why it should play a part in TMC. The Micron-led camp expressed concerns over the potential of seeing its technological IP leak out if multiple patent holders began working under TMC. Micron said that its IP portfolio for specialty DRAM is more advanced than Elpida's, and this will help its camp build and enhance relationships with memory IC design houses and downstream suppliers.

The Bluetooth 3.0 specification could be made official on April 21, according to a story at Phone Scoop. 

The Special Interest Group (SIG) responsible for Bluetooth has been working on the next generation peer-to-peer wireless technology for some time, and if the announcement date is correct, it’s possible we could begin seeing Bluetooth 3.0 hardware showing up in devices by the end of the year.

While we have nothing official to go on at this point, Bluetooth 3.0 is supposed to include new power saving protocols and a technology designed to decrease the number of dropped connections between devices.  Of course, the main attraction of Bluetooth 3 is its increased transfer speeds:

“Bluetooth 3.0 uses Generic Alternate MAC/PHY (AMP) [which] lets Bluetooth profiles operate at Wi-Fi speeds. The 802.11 Protocol Adaption Layer (PAL) will enable the Generic AMP feature to be used with an 802.11 radio. Bluetooth is used to create the pairing between two devices, but the data transfer itself is handed off to Wi-Fi. In order to take advantage of the higher transfer speeds, both devices need Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. If Wi-Fi isn’t present on one of the devices, the spec reverts to Bluetooth for data transfer.”

via EngadgetMobile

While not quite out in time for our GTX 285 round-up, Sparkle’s making sure you have just one more option when it comes time to lay out for a new NVIDIA GPU. The company’s non-extravagant GeForce GTX 285 arrives in just two forms: a 1GB version and a 2GB version. According to the company, this card provides up to 30% faster performance than rivaling single-GPU solutions, but we’re a bit wary of believing that blindly.At any rate, the specifications list shows a 648MHz core clock speed, GDDR3 memory, a 512-bit

AMD has released the ATI Catalyst Software Suite 9.4 drivers. As always, there are a number of fixes and enhancements to be had. Check out the list of changes in our forums and see if you should download the updated drivers today!

ATI Catalyst 9.4 includes a new ATI Overdrive auto-tune application to accurately
determine the best over-clocked engine and memory values for ATI Overdrive
supported ATI Radeon Graphics accelerators.