June 30 - 9:50am EDT   Swedish gaming company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) on Tuesday announced it is in the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay for $7.8 million. With the process due to be concluded by August, it will see GGF introduce new business models to and make the site legal and keep its owners out of courts. The new owners will also sell shares of The Pirate Bay to investors. GGF will also buy Peerialism and introduce its P2P distribution technology on The Pirate Bay. At the same time, The Pirate Bay will stop hosting and tracking torrents and use a third-party tracker and torrent hosting service. [full story]

June 25 - 4:45pm EDT   MvixUSA on Thursday announced the upcoming release and specs of its 1080p-capable Ultio networked multimedia player. The device is compatible with UPnP-standard networks and can be ordered with a 1TB hard drive. Streaming content from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and other similar sites is supported, and MvixUSA says the device supports a record amount of video file formats and codecs, including the relatively uncommon RMVB or FLAC. [full story]

May 11 - 3:20pm EDT   Apple has made a controversial rejection of two more iPhone apps, say parties involved. The first is Maza Digital's Drivetrain, a remote control program for the Transmission BitTorrent client. Initially met with an Apple message that the app would demand "unexpected additional time for review," Maza later received a notice saying that "this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store." [full story]

May 6 - 8:00am EDT   LaCie early today rolled out network-attached storage (NAS) versions of two of its most familiar external hard drives. The single-disk d2 Network and dual-disk Big Disk Network both get gigabit Ethernet connections that let them share their storage on a local network. They're officially compatible with Mac OS X Leopard's Time Machine backups and have built-in servers to work independently of computers, including their own BitTorrent managers, media streaming through DLNA- and UPnP-compatible devices, and iTunes hosting. [full story]

April 17 - 11:15am EDT   A court in Stockholm, Sweden has ruled against the four founders of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay on Friday. Accused of "assisting in making copyright content available," Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were each sentenced to serve one year in jail and ordered to pay a fine equivalent to about $905,000 each for a total of some $3.62 million by the court. The sum was short of what the prosecution representing recording studios were seeking, though it remains unknown. [full story]

March 27 - 3:45pm EDT   Myka today said it would start shipping its self-titled media hubs shortly after their initial batch is finished production on April 6th. Originally unveiled last year, the set-top box is designed as an open-source alternative to devices like the Apple TV and the VUDU Box that uses BitTorrent as its underlying framework. The feature lets users download commercial and unofficial content without being dependent on any one connection or service. Myka doesn't immediatly have content deals but claims to be in negotiations with "major" providers. [full story]

February 20 - 6:35pm EST   Cover Stream 2.5 ($15) is an iTunes controller that extends iTunes Cover Flow to the desktop. With the software a user can control their iTunes library without needing to open up the iTunes window. Users can set up key commands for controlling playback options and view all of their media in a customizable window that can be viewed as lists or Cover Flow. The new version eliminates the need to sync with iTunes, adds a track list sidebar, a new Core Animation fullscreen menu, and several other new features and bug fixes. [Download - 1.9MB] [full story]

January 28 - 10:55am EST   Cable Internet provider Cox today said it would start trialing a new congestion management scheme on its network that it hopes will manage the network. The test, beginning for Arkansas and Kansas users on February 9th, will prioritize "time-sensitive" data such as games, streaming, VoIP and VPNs over less immediately critical traffic, including uploads, peer-to-peer file sharing and newsgroups. The system only kicks in when the local network is particularly congested and the more critical traffic is at risk of failing, Cox says. [full story]

December 30 - 3:20pm EST   A beta version of the Microsoft's next operating system, Windows 7, has been leaked online and is available for download, according to a Tuesday report. Labeled "Build 7000," a 32-bit version of Windows 7 is currently being distributed via BitTorrent networks, with available copies numbering in the thousands. Those who have downloaded the illegal software are said to believe the build is the genuine article. [full story]

November 27 - 9:30am EST   The long-awaited uTorrent beta for Macs is out as of Wednesday, offering users of Intel-based Macs running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or newer the same low-memory footprint Windows users have enjoyed to date. Compared to the Windows version, however, the newly-released version is missing certain features, including an RSS downloader. Rumors of a Mac uTorrent release first surfaced in June of 2007, with an alpha version leaked back in September. [full story]

November 10 - 4:15pm EST  Ghost 1.1 (free) provides users with a simple way to create or view hidden files. By dragging and dropping files or folders into the applications window then selecting either hide or unhide. The update now prevents users from hiding their hard drives, which cannot simply be unhidden. The application now quits when the last window is closed and other various bugs have been addressed. [Download - 0.67MB] [full story]

September 29 - 2:10pm EDT   Users of Sprint's just-launched Xohm service are likely to face certain services being throttled from the outset, according to the WiMAX network's Acceptable Use Policy page. The carrier claims the right to use "various tools and techniques" to limit the speed available to any particularly data-heavy apps or entire protocol types, including file sharing suites. The restriction would be put in place to create a consistent experience for the user base, Sprint argues. [full story]

September 22 - 10:20am EDT   Comcast this morning obeyed FCC mandates today by publishing info regarding its replacement for its controversial BitTorrent throttling system. The cable Internet provider now says it will use a Quality of Service (QoS) system that adjusts the priority of data packets for the most frequent users: if a network is congested, a new filter will automatically lower the priority of their data packets until the congestion passes. [full story]

September 8 - 1:05pm EDT   QNAP has announced its QGet Utillity for Mac users. QGet offers enhancements to QNAP's Turbo NAS Download Station; the Download Station supports BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP downloading, and QGet allows Mac users to access and remotely manage tasks on QNAP NAS servers, over LAN connections or the Internet. QGet for Mac 1.0.0 works with Mac OS X 10.4 and above, and requires the QNAP Pro Turbo NAS TS-509. [full story]

September 4 - 3:30pm EDT   Cable Internet provider Comcast on Thursday sued the US Federal Communications Commission to try and block the government body's net neutrality order, which requires that the company avoid discriminating against particular types of Internet traffic when managing its network. Comcast executive VP David Cohen describes the suit as an attempt to challenge what he claims is an "absence of pre-existing legally enforceable standards" that would require Comcast to obey the FCC's ruling. [full story]