BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. was pushed closer to a possible shutdown of its popular U.S. mobile e-mail service after a judge refused to delay a patent infringement case.

U.S. District Judge James Spencer Wednesday ruled invalid a $450 million settlement between RIM and NTP Inc., a small patent holding firm of McLean, Va., that maintains the technology behind the popular BlackBerry infringes on its patents.

The security researcher whose examination of anti-piracy software included on many Sony BMG music CDs sparked a public firestorm has been hired as an expert witness in a nationwide class-action lawsuit against the company, Security Fix has learned.

Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals will be joining the legal team led by New York attorney Scott Kamber, who filed a lawsuit earlier this month against Sony BMG and First4Internet, the British company that produced the anti-piracy software. (This may be nothing, but First4Internet’s Web site is looking rather Spartan at the moment.)

iKEY-Audio introduces the iKEY, the first portable USB recorder that enables recording of live audio and convert it into high quality MP3 and WAV files that record directly onto an iPod® or other USB compatible storage devices. It can capture an audio signal in real-time.

By connecting a cable from your headphone jack, CD player or other output source to the iKEY, and connecting the iKEY to a USB storage device such as an iPod®, you can then select a digital audio format, and just hit record. The audio is saved in either MP3 (with a choice of 128, 192 or 256kbps bit rate) or WAV format and can be immediately replayed on playback devices.

The iKEY has an MSRP of $229.99.

Read the press release here…….

Web site here……

Thanks to Les Lieberman for this one!

Iomega has produced a new external hard drive line offering up to 1TB of storage.

The Desktop Hard Drive XL Series is Mac and PC-compatible and features a four-drive enclosure, each containing a 250GB drive, for $899.95.

If you thought Blu-ray and HD-DVD were the only new disc formats coming out this decade, think again. The emergence of holographic data storage technology may hamper growth for the two rival high-definition formats in the years to come.

Holographic data storage has existed for 40 years, but is just coming to the commercial market and may reach the consumer market by 2007. The new DVD formats promoted by Sony (Blu-ray) and Toshiba (HD-DVD) are expected to go on sale in early 2006.

Dell will supplement its famous direct-selling model this holiday season by making some aging desktops and notebooks available through the low-cost retailer Costco, a Dell spokesperson confirmed today.

Dell Dimension 4700 and Dell Inspiron 2200 PCs are available for $899 each at certain Costco stores in the United States, said the company’s Mike Maher. Similarly configured systems were more expensive last year.

Are 20 movie channels on demand just not enough?

Do constant reruns of “I Love the ’80s” on VH1 have you ready to gouge out your eyeballs?

Then come to Al Jessup’s house — where his 5,000-plus radio and television stations from around the world beamed in by his 12 satellite dishes are bound to keep you entertained somehow.

All that gear is probably worth more than this W. Virginia house!

Despite a huge amount of hype, the Monday after Thanksgiving is historically only the 12th-biggest online shopping day of the year.

More than a million Bay Area Comcast customers will see their monthly cable bills increase about 7 percent starting in January.

The package price will rise by an average of $3.13 per month, or about $44.80 to $47.93. Prices vary depending on the community.

Comcast, the dominant Bay Area cable provider, attributed the increase to higher energy costs as well as customer-service and technology improvements. Last year, package prices increased an average of 5.7 percent.

Satelite TV anyone?

An upstart rocket company postponed its first-ever satellite launch on Saturday after a series of last-minute snags.