Just as Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) gets ready to reap the true fruits of its largest acquisition ever, the company is doing away with a few side effects of that deal.

The ATI brand name will soon be nothing but a memory. A $5.4 billion buyout has resulted in the revolutionary Fusion platform, which is expected to propel AMD into steady profits and technological leadership from 2011 onward. But the ATI brand itself has played its part and now only serves to dilute AMD's central brand, according to the company's own market research.

This move is but a small part in a larger overhaul of AMD's branding strategy. The current plethora of confusing product names will be boiled down significantly over the coming months: You won't need to keep track of what makes a Phenom II processor better or worse than an Athlon II or Turion, for example. Instead the company will offer "Vision" categories that summarize the processing power of AMD machines. This goes one step further than Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and its Core i3, i5, i7 strategy: one brand to rule them all, at least for a while.

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Full article at:
:source: Source: The Motley Fool

Google, who owns video sharing site YouTube, is reportedly in talks with major Hollywood studios to launch a global pay-per-view movie streaming service.

According to The Financial Times, the latest movies would be released on YouTube at the same time as the on iTunes, DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The FT also predicts that it would cost somewhere in the region of $5 to stream 'newer movies', presumably with older titles being potentially discounted below this. YouTube has already been beta-testing a movie rental service since January.

As DVD sales rapidly decline, the next few years will see a massive shift from physical media to online distribution - Blockbuster is already closing hundreds or even thousands of stores this year as it prepares to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September. Movie subscription service Netflix is already "aggressively acquiring" the rights to stream movies, while movie/TV streaming website Hulu, owned by Walt Disney, News Corp and NBC, is planning on floating itself on the stock market.

The latest moves by Google to bring online movie rental to YouTube will mark another big step in the inevitable mass adoption of digital rather than physical media.

Source: The Financial Times (free sign-up required)

The long-awaited Nokia N8 smartphone will be released in "just a few weeks" according to an interview with Dolby, courtesy of ElectricPig, just in time for Nokia World 2010.

Dolby will be providing the first 'true surround sound' to a mainstream smartphone, with the Nokia N8's key feature of Dolby Digital Plus. Among other features, the smartphone will also include:

Symbian^3 OS
3.5-inch, 640x360 capacitive touchscreen
12 megapixel camera with 1/1.83" sensor and xenon flash
HDMI out
802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
Pentaband 3.5G radio

While surround sound on a mobile phone sounds a little like lipstick on a pig, the N8 sports some very impressive features that hold up against even the top of the current smartphone crop. Christmas 2010 is going to be very interesting for the smartphone industry.

Please update to at least 2.0.4 build 21431 if you use µTorrent as it fixes a reported DLL exploit.

There is a DLL vulnerability in all versions of Windows affecting a great deal of software applications. Subsequently, attack code targeting the ?Torrent client surfaced on a third-party website, and while so far no attacks have been reported to us, we have released ?Torrent 2.0.4 to fix this vulnerability. The new client disables loading of DLLs from the current working directory and prevents this exploit from functioning.

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The latest changes:

-- 2010-08-28: Version 2.0.4 (build 21586)
- Fix: tracker retry interval bug

-- 2010-08-26: Version 2.0.4 (build 21515)
- Fix: make survey links never show up on XP
- Fix: started and stopped events now correctly sent to torrents with multiple tracker tiers.

-- 2010-08-25: Version 2.0.4 (build 21431)
- Fix: fixed DLL hijack exploit
- Change: add bold text for Ask toolbar offer
- Fix: added groupbox in bandwidth settings
- Fix: Fixed size of static text in transfer cap setting pane to be translatable
- Fix: Fixed peer exchange exploit
- Fix: Safari 5 compatibility for WebUI
- Fix: WebUI security improvements

:software: Download: µTorrent 21586
:source: Source: µTorrent.com

Verizon Wireless started pushing out the Android 2.2 "Froyo" update for the HTC Droid Incredible phones today (Friday, 08/27/10).

The update is 93.7 MB in size & has a ton of new goodies. You will now have Flash Player 10.1 in the browser & improvements in browser speed. Recording in 720p high-def video will be enabled plus the faster 802.11n Wi-Fi will be turned on as well. The update will let you use your phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. Now there had been rumors floating around when "Froyo" was first introduced that Verizon may not permit this, but for an extra $20 per month, you can.

To download the update, tap the "Menu" button on the lower left face of the phone (after you have unlocked it), then tap "Settings", "About Phone", "System Updates".

Now because of the way Verizon pushes out updates for different phones over several days this update may not be available to all customers on Friday.

Rejoice, the Android "Froyo" roller coaster ride is finally over. We have been patient, it's here! Almost.