MTV has online Urge

MTV Networks has formed a partnership with Microsoft to develop an online music service to begin operating early next year.

The New York Times reports that the service, to be called Urge, will be integrated into the next version of Windows Media Player and will offer more than two million songs for sale individually or as part of a subscription package. The service will also offer music over online radio.

Amazon is opening its Alexa search engine to Web and software developers to create customised searches and vertical search engines, offering the ability to specify web crawls for the five billion documents in Alexa`s index, Red Herring reports.

Amazon acquired the Web statistics provider in April 1999 and is now offering the technology as a web service to developers.

The Alexa Web Search Platform Beta will allow developers to "create new search services without having to invest millions of dollars in crawl, storage, processing, search, and server technology", according to a statement by Alexa Internet.

Toshiba had hoped to beat the rival Blu-ray format to market, but has delayed the release of the Next-Gen HD DVD debut in Japan. The company attributed the problem to the unavailability of Advanced Access Content System (AACS) digital rights management software licensing.

Informationweek reports that DVD Forum has adopted AACS copyright management as an integral part of the HD DVD format. Toshiba had planned to launch its HD DVD products only after AACS is finalised.

Toshiba hoped to introduce HD DVD players by the end of this year, ahead of Blu-ray Disc players, but decided in September to postpone the US introduction until 2006.

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) board of directors has announced that Quanta Computer of Taiwan was chosen as the original design manufacturer (ODM) for the $100 laptop project.

According to Digitimes, Quanta has agreed to devote significant engineering resources in the first and second quarters of 2006, with a target of bringing the product to market in Q4, according to OLPC.

The launch of five million to 15 million units will be both in large-scale pilot projects in seven countries. A commercial version of the machine will be explored in parallel, added the organisation.