Merida is a small Spanish city in a big uproar over nude photos on the Internet – because they show city councilwoman Gloria Constantino and television anchor Maria del Mar de las Heras tener el sexo with a man some believe is the brother of Mayor Acebo. Constantino's People's Party is said to have had all but uncritical press despite a nasty feud with opposition parties until the incident. Local Socialist leader Angel Calle said the pictures were "everywhere," even on kids' mobile phones. Acebo charged the photos were fakes but offered no proof. His brother, Angel, said the photos were doctored with images stolen from his own computer.
Much enough anticipated, Microsoft looks like it's going to jump into the Internet music download market later this week, with the Redmond, Washington software empire expected to launch MSN Music September 2 – the same time as they're expected to release a beta test version of Windows Media Player 10. MSN Music will launch in beta mode, too, with more features arriving over the coming weeks, but the timing is said to indicate they're not just looking to compete with Apple's iTunes or the resurrected Napster. "[I]ts strategy is wider than that," said research firm Yankee Group. "By entering the music-downloading market, Microsoft is protecting its investment in its WMA music format and its Janus digital-rights-management technology. There was a risk that companies would have stopped using WMA had Microsoft not demonstrated that it was serious about Internet music."
Microsoft online music isn't the only thing on Yankee Group's mind lately. They also have an eye on how businesses look at Linux open-source operating system, observing a third of businesses plan to migrate some Windows machines to Linux while continuing adoption will be slow and cautious, mostly due to "the increasingly complex calculations required to determine whether such moves are cost-effective." Yankee Group says 36 percent of businesses expected to have a few Linux computers in the next couple of years, while a majority (57 percent) won't be changing Windows on the desktop just yet.
Speaking of Windows, it looks like a new version – the long-anticipated version now nicknamed Longhorn – will roll out in 2006. Windows division general manager Brad Goldberg said the company made the announcement thanks to customer feedback indicating they wanted more advance notice of operating systems plans. The announcement was timed to this month's Service Pack 2 wide-range security update for Windows XP. Longhorn will feature among other things a WinFS data organization tool aimed at changing how Windows users see, search, and store files on computers. Longhorn will come first with a beta version WinFS and release the full product "at some unspecified time" following Longhorn's long-awaited appearance, Goldberg said.
Sprint and EarthCam have a change coming – they've hooked up to let Sprint subscribers see streamed videos on their camera-capable cell phones. Certain Sprint PCS Vision handsets loaded with EarthCam's Java-based EarthCam Mobile, Sprint said August 30, will be able to see live images from their personal computers' Webcams using that new service. They'll also be able to see videos from Webcams worldwide and find local traffic and weather Webcams by way of ZIP codes, Sprint said. Camera phones already account for over a quarter of the cell phones being shipped worldwide, according to several market research reports, meaning a potentially ripe market for the Sprint/EarthCam service.
Would you believe a cell phone film festival? Atlanta-based independent film and festival producer Zoie Films plans one, accepting entries for what it thinks just might be the world's first such film festival. Founder Victoria Weston says cell phones offer filmmakers a very rich working palette. "I think we're in an exciting time with exciting opportunities," Weston told Wired. "Where I feel like this is headed, we won't be tied down to the computer. The cell phone will be the computer." Festival entrant Joe Miale, however, offers one word of caution: you'd better be able to tell a quick story to make a cell phone film work. "You're not going to make a short film that is character-based. It would be more caricature-based," he told the magazine. "It's going to have to be like a commercial, like a really short punch line kind of a film."
