Toshiba to release Blu-ray players

In today's podcast: Toshiba to release Blu-ray players; China arrests 13 in death of Net addict; and BMC buys MQSoftware; and Microsoft changes default browser install process.

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Toshiba plans to launch DVD players and laptops later this year that support the Blu-ray disc standard, the company said on Monday. Toshiba had been the primary backer of the HD-DVD standard, which lost out to the Blu-ray in a battle to become the standard for next generation DVDs. In a brief statement Toshiba said it had applied for membership for the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), the standards setting and licensing body behind the format, and that it would would launch products before the end of 2009. The move ends a seven-year journey for Toshiba that began in August 2002, it proposed a blue-laser format to the DVD Forum along with NEC. Sony and a group of other companies had announced their intentions to unite with Blu-ray Disc earlier in the year and the stage was set for a battle between the two. Toshiba threw in the towel early last year when its final few supporters jumped ship to Bluray disc.

Chinese police have detained 13 people over the beating to death of a teenager at an Internet addiction camp in southern China, according to state media. The Qihang Salvation Training Camp is one of many boot camp-style centers for Internet obsession in China. It was found to be unlicensed and closed down Friday, the official Xinhua news agency said. Parents of 122 other students took them home from the camp in Guangxi province and police are investigating the case, it said. A week earlier, a 15-year-old boy was allegedly put in solitary confinement, scolded and beaten to death within a day of his arrival at the camp. The boy's father found his bloodied body in a local hospital, where camp staff said they had sent him because of a severe fever.

BMC on Monday said it has bought MQSoftware, maker of middleware that helps companies monitor the performance of IBM's WebSphere MQ as well as other platforms. Terms were not disclosed. BMC competes with Novell, CA, IBM and a range of smaller vendors in the market for business service management software, which is meant to help companies manage their IT infrastructure and align it with business processes. By purchasing MQSoftware, BMC wants a stronger play in companies that are working on SOA projects. WebSphere MQ is a messaging platform that allows various applications and systems to communicate with each other. It can play a key role in SOA implementations, which seek to create composite applications consisting of multiple, sometimes shared sources.

Responding to complaints that Internet Explorer 8 was being designated as the default browser during some installations, Microsoft has told a US judge that it will change the installation process starting this week. By Tuesday, Microsoft will change the way the express install works for Internet Explorer (IE) 8, the company said in an antitrust settlement compliance report released late Friday. In May, browser makers Mozilla and Opera complained that Microsoft was quietly changing the default browser back to Internet Explorer when the browser was updated with Microsoft's Windows Update service. In the antitrust status report Friday, the US Department of Justice said the browser install options presented to Windows users were "unclear."

And those are the headlines for Monday August 10th. This is James Niccolai with IDG News Service in San Francisco.