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News

• Firefox 4 picks up speed

  Firefox 4's first beta is 27% faster than Mozilla's more stable browser, Firefox 3.6.6, but still lags behind rivals including Chrome, Opera and Safari, benchmark tests show.

• Fring Enables 3G Video Calls on iPhone 4

  The problem with Apple's iPhone 4 Facetime commercial is that not everyone has an iPhone 4, and that's just not happening.

• Windows 7 brings 64-bit computing to the forefront

  After a slow start, a larger number of PCs are using the 64-bit version of Windows 7, and the OS will soon become the norm as users move to 64-bit computing, Microsoft said on Thursday.

• Google fixing bugs in Orkut social network

  Google's Orkut social networking site has been beset with bugs lately, leading the company to apologize for spotty service.

• Under pressure, Blizzard gives 'real ID' policy the chop

  Whether gutsy, forward-thinking, or just plain scatterbrained, Blizzard's plans to force you to use your real name when posting to the company's official forums have been shelved just three days after the company announced them.

• Speech-to-sign-language software wins Microsoft dev contest

  Speech-to-sign language translation software written by a team from Thailand won the main category of a Microsoft-sponsored software development contest for students, the Imagine Cup, on Thursday.

• 3D coming to Adobe's Flash

  Adobe Systems has started work to bring 3D to its Flash platform, and will preview the technology at the company's upcoming developer conference in October.

• Nokia boosts Java development for Symbian 3 phones

  Nokia, with the Mobile Runtime for Java Applications (JRT), is enabling development of Java applications for Symbian 3 devices, Nokia officials said Thursday.

• SCO appeals ruling in Novell case

  Following a final ruling from a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah in June, SCO Group on Wednesday filed an appeal in its long-running legal battle with Novell.

• Blizzard: Thou shalt be anonymous no longer

  Forcing anonymous gamers to de-cloak (well, sort of) Blizzard says it'll soon require them to use their real names when they log on to the company's official message boards.

• EMC-Greenplum deal could precede more consolidation

  EMC's announcement this week of plans to purchase data warehousing vendor Greenplum represents a harbinger of things to come for that market, as well as related areas like BI (business intelligence) and data integration, according to some analysts.

• Android, Samsung gaining mobile share in U.S.

  Android is gaining on all the major smartphone platforms in the U.S., though it was only the fourth-most-used mobile operating system in May, market data firm comScore reported on Thursday.

• iPhone app scam likely fueled by phishing, says security expert

  It's unlikely that consumers' iTunes accounts were hacked by a Vietnamese iPhone developer, a security researcher said today.

• Oracle's Exadata delivering on hype for LinkShare

  Oracle's claims about its Exadata database machine's performance capabilities are merited, but in order to get the benefits, customers have to do more than flip a switch, according to a customer and consultant who are working with the platform.

• Three more Microsoft zero-day bugs pop up

  Microsoft faces a rash of zero-day vulnerabilities in some of its most important software, according to recent disclosures of unpatched bugs, including flaws in Windows XP, Internet Explorer and its flagship Web server.