Daily News Links

• The United Kingdom is tops in streamed online video consumption, compared to the United States, France and Germany according to the latest report from comScore.  Read more here (from NewTeeVee).
• Ken Kutaragi, the chief architect of Sony's PlayStation game console and an icon among gamers, retires. His departure marks the end of an era at Sony, when the troubled company dominated the video-game industry with its flagship PlayStation consoles.  Read more here (from Wired).
• British newspaper suggests that the media company may be willing to give MySpace to Yahoo for a 25 percent stake in the struggling dot-com.  Read more here (from CNET News.com).
• Speaking to the NXTcomm telecom conference in Chicago, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin made a case for increased investment in broadband infrastructure, saying that the FCC's role is to ensure everyone in the country is able to take advantage of the "broadband revolution."  Read more here (from Ars Technica).
• The Spanish short film, Lo que tú Quieras Oír–released under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license–has achieved a huge amount of popularity on YouTube, totaling close to 10,000,000 views.  Read more here (from Creative Commons).
• A federal appeals court wrestles with whether portable computers should be treated like pieces of luggage or something imminently more private.  Read more here (from Wired).
• Google has announced that they are releasing their Safe Browsing API, used in Firefox and Google Desktop, to anyone who wants to use it in their own applications.  Read more here (from Ars Technica).
• Google has made another acquisition announcement - they’ve bought a company called Zenter (”a company that provides software for creating online slide presentations”) to help complete their upcoming Powerpoint/presentation application. The price wasn’t disclosed.  Read more here (from TechCrunch).
• Microsoft plans to make changes to Windows Vista to try to assuage concerns from Google that its desktop search product is disadvantaged by the operating system.  Read more here (from CNET News.com).
• Thousands weighed in for and against new "net neutrality" rules during a three-month comment period that concluded Friday, underscoring unusual popular interest in a highly technical and little-understood aspect of internet policy.  By the end of the day Friday, more than 11,000 individuals had filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission on the topic, a number rarely seen in agency proceedings normally dominated by lobbyists.  Read more here (from Wired).
• Though Microsoft fixed a bug in Windows Live that enabled spoofed user accounts, it could still lead to fraud.  Read more here (from PC World).
• More than 80% of UK homes now have digital television on their main set, Ofcom research shows.  Read more here (from Media Guardian).
• After more than a year of court battles, Sun Microsystems and Java hardware maker Azul Systems said Tuesday they have settled a dispute related to allegations of trade secrets misappropriation and patent infringement.  Read more here (from CNET News.com).
• David Lebow has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of Internet Broadcasting, the nation’s largest network of TV station Web sites. Mr. Lebow was previously Executive Vice President and General Manager of AOL Media Networks.  Read more here (from Lost Remote).
• European regulators have cleared the use of mobile phones and BlackBerry devices by airline passengers during flights.  Read more here (from the New York Times).
• A recent study of broadband usage patterns shows that HTTP traffic now outnumbers P2P traffic by a significant margin. Chalk it up to streaming video.  Read more here (from Ars Technica).
• The Ten Network Holdings is confident of improving on the fiscal 2006 earnings performance of its television business this financial year.  Read more here (from The Australian).
• Google's experimental API lets other programs access its blacklist of Web sites that may host malware.  Read more here (from PC World).
• Snap, which created the annoying/useful website add-on Snap Shots, a tool that previews websites when you hover over a link, has added two more elements to the service: MySpace profile previews, and RSS previews.  Read more here (from Mashable).
• Random search strings in Google can yield sites hosting drive-by downloads of malicious content.  Read more here (from CNET News.com).
• Google says it would consider keeping search data for longer than 18 months in an opt-in scheme.  Read more here (from BBC News).
• Expedia said on Tuesday that it would buy back up to 116.7 million shares for $3.5 billion, representing about 42 percent of the travel site conglomerate's outstanding common stock.  Read more here (from ZDNet News).
• DailyStrength, a social networking site which connects people with various health problems, has closed its first round of financing, estimated between $5-7 million.  Read more here (from Mashable).
• BitTorrent has announced the official release of their SDK aimed at consumer electronics integration, as well as their plans to move into our living rooms, starting with a NAS device from Buffalo Technology.  Read more here (from Ars Technica).
• The News Corp.-owned social network, having ditched its old browser-based IM service, formally unveils the new download after a year of buzzless beta.  Read more here (from CNET News.com).
• GameTap, which provides legal access to classic arcade games, is coming to the Mac later this month.  Read more here (from PC World).
• Touting the first service letting callers share live video between cell phones, AT&T releases its new Video Share service in three cities for $5 to $10 a month. But it's not for the iPhone, sorry.  Read more here (from Wired).