According to the Financial Times, Sony has plans to start allowing video downloads to the Sony PSP. This would be direct competition for the video iPod from Apple, and according to Sony this would really “open up” the movie download market. Apple iTunes only provides downloads to the iPod and only Disney movies have been available to download due to fear of piracy from other studios.

Fortunately for consumers the new movie download service would not require a new distribution or upgrade of the PSP. This is also important to Sony after having their troubles earlier in the year and will help make the offering more accepted and ultimately successful. In order to enable the downloads without any changes to the PSP, the movies would download onto flash media, in particular a Sony Memory Stick in which at 4GB would allow users to …

Google has recently added another service to the Google Apps For Your Domain offering, by giving users the ability to search and register domain names.

They allow you to register just about any domain name with .com, .org, .net, .biz, and .info extensions only, but the same rules apply for registering domains as they did for adding existing domains, such as you cannot register any name with the word ‘Google’ in it.

Google partnered with two existing registration companies (GoDaddy and eNom) to be able to provide this service. This is a nice added convenience to the Google Apps suite since prior to this addition, administrators creating a site with Google were required to register their domains somewhere else. Registering domains with Google in which you are going to use with Google Apps saves a lot of time …

Reports earlier this week from a number of media sources indicated a 65% drop in iTunes sales since the beginning of the year for Apple iTunes, which is apparently just not true and a misinterpretation of data.

A blog from Forrester Research is attempting the clear up the misconception that iTunes sales have been falling, citing that the credibility of the media may actually be worse off than iTunes. A part of the report indicated a drop in credit card sales, since Forrester does not have actual data of iTunes sales from Apples. This data was too small in amount to be able to accurately show overall sales trending.

A 3% drop in Apple’s stock that seemed to follow the same timeline as the media reports resulted in one upset technology company getting in contact with Forrester about the results. …

For many people, losing a mobile phone is nothing short of utter catastrophe. This results in the loss of important contact information and schedules for various personal and work engagements.

ZYB has created a free online mobile phone data backup service to help combat this problem. With ZYB, users are able to backup their mobile’s contacts and calendar for free. ZYB works by creating a backup of your contacts and calendar. Once backed up you can share your contacts and calendar with your friends, family, or whomever you choose.

The service, which works with more than 200 different mobiles, also allows users to manage their mobile’s contacts and calendar online and synchronize their mobile’s data with other devices and services. ZYB has other pay services planned in the future to further enhance your mobile phone such as synchronizing with iPod and Outlook, send SMS from ZYB, …

loopt is a new mobile service that allows you to see where your friends are located and also broadcast your current location to a select group of friends. The loopt service will allow you to remain connected to all the places and events around you.

Your location can be updated manually or automatically. A manual update requires you to set your location to an address or the last location you were at using the website. Automatic updates utilize the GPS in your phone to locate your phone every twenty minutes.

It might seem a bit scary to broadcast your current location to everyone, but the loopt service has your privacy in mind. loopt operates on a closed network basis, which means that only friends can share their locations with each other. Even if you are friends with someone, you choose who you want to share your location …

Not long after the release of the new MS IE, this week Mozilla released Firefox 2.0, which is the next major version of its Web browser with increased security enhancements and a number of new features having the intentions of making Web browsing a little bit more fun and a lot more intuitive. If you have been a frequent user of Firefox, the changes on the surface may not be too astonoshing, but there are some that are worth mentioning.

One of the key features included in the Firefox 2.0 web browser is Tabbed browsing, which is a component that Mozilla originally created and is now available on IE7 which allows a user to quickly switch between multiple differnt Web sites within the same program window intead of having multiple instances of the browser open. The red ‘X’ to close each web site …

eEye Digital Security has announced the release of it’s Blink Personal software product, which is a free version of its existing Blink endpoint security solution. This product is for use on Windows based PC’s and is free for non-commercial use only. This creates some competition for similar PC security products from companies like Norton and the free version of ZoneAlarm.

What contributes to making the Blink Personal product unique, aside from being free for non-commercial use, is that in a single product it offers a combination of multiple layers of technology that protect against identity theft, worms, trojan horses and other hacker attack methods.

The free eEye Blink Personal product solution contains the following technologies:

A Protocol-based Intrusion Prevention System which stops both known and unknown attacks from reaching your OS.
Application Protection that prevents buffer overflow attacks.
A System Firewall to protect inbound and outbound …

Nokia is hooking up with a place called Orb Networks to make what seems to be a little competition for the SlingBox with something called MyCasting. The product will be software that will allow people to stream media from your home PC to your mobile phone, and specifically they are rolling it out with the Nokia N80 internet enabled mobile phone.

The software will allow users to seamlessly work with different media files on your PC at home, such as record television shows and watch them on the mobile phone, view videos, music and pictures. THe Slingbox’s main focus is television shows streaming to laptops without the need of a home PC to facilitate it, but Orb Networks and Nokia have a little different spin on this. It really takes a decent size step forward to being more mobile with more types …

Best Buy announced today the release of its Best Buy Digital Music Store. This new service will give music lovers yet another option in the increasingly competitive digital music domain.

The new digital music service is powered by the RealNetworks Rhapsody 4.0 music service, and features both a permanent download store and a subscription download service.

This announcement is great for consumers who will now have even more options for purchasing digital music. Best Buy has a long road ahead of them with competitors like the iTunes Music Store dominating with over 80% market share and the recent launch of the Microsoft Zune Marketplace.

MSN announced the beta release of Soapbox on MSN Video. SoapBox is a user-uploaded video service that allows people to upload, discover and share personal videos with the Soapbox community. Soapbox will be available on MSN Video and will be integrated throughout Microsoft’s portfolio of online services, including Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Messenger.

With Soapbox, Microsoft is hoping to capture some of the enormous successes of YouTube.

“Soapbox delivers on a critical component of the MSN growth strategy of deepening audience engagement by enabling people to participate in the content experience,” said Rob Bennett, general manager of Entertainment and Video Services for MSN. “By adding a user-uploaded video service, we are rounding out our existing investments in commercially produced and original content on MSN Video.”

Soapbox uses its own player for uploading, searching and sharing video. Users can rate, comment, and tag videos. …

After a long lunch at my favorite Chinese buffet I can always use a nice powernap. Unfortunately, in my office naps are generally frowned upon – until now. MetroNaps is a New York-based company that provides mid-day rest facilities: a clean, comfortable place to take a nap. MetroNaps was founded the premise that many employees spend significant amounts of their day dozing at their desk or catching powernaps, often in odd places.

The MetroNaps concept began in 2003 through research and testing at Carnegie Mellon University. MetroNaps developed a process and facility to aid in maximizing the rejuvenating effects of a quick nap. The MetroNaps Method and the MetroNaps Pod may just provide you with the quick recharge needed to do more with your day, both professionally and personally.

MetroNaps opened its first location in the Empire State Building in May 2004 and plans …