Apple announces second-generation Apple TV

In today's podcast: Apple announces second-generation Apple TV; is Oracle's Charles Phillips leaving?; and 3Par named in patent-infringement suit.

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Apple announced its second-generation Apple TV during a press event Wednesday, showing off the updated device, which streams movies from the Internet or mobile devices directly to TV sets. The updated Apple TV will stream HD movies and TV shows purchased from Apple's iTunes store and can stream movies from Netflix. The device is priced at US$99 and will replace the first-generation Apple TV, which is currently priced at $229.

Oracle co-President Charles Phillips may soon be leaving the company after some public missteps and a recent change in Oracle's upper management, a financial analyst company said Wednesday in a research note to its clients. Oracle recently replaced Phillips as head of its global business units with Bob Weiler, the former CEO of life sciences software vendor Phase Forward, which Oracle acquired earlier this year, according to a research note from Wedge Partners.

3Par, which is already the subject of a bidding war between Hewlett-Packard and Dell, is now among a group of companies being sued by Crossroads Systems for patent infringement. In a suit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, the company alleged that 3Par, D-Link, Rorke Data, Chelsio Communications, DataCore Software, iStor Networks and American Megatrends infringe on its patent for a storage router that provides virtual local storage on remote storage devices.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission notified M2Z on Friday that it would not support a plan based on the company's proposal to offer free wireless broadband services. The idea first came to light in 2006 when M2Z asked the FCC to give it spectrum so that it could build a national broadband network that would deliver Internet services to people for free. The network would be advertising-supported and would also offer a faster service for a fee.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.