News From Around The Industry:

• In-flight broadband is a threat to the sanctuary of being on a plane?:
Airlines see airborne Internet access, which typically uses Wi-Fi technology deemed safe for flights, as producing both revenue and a competitive edge against one another and over trains, buses and automobiles. Frequent fliers said the temptation to go online would be overwhelming, though they were divided over whether they would rejoice. Frequent travelers said catching up with e-mail in the air frees up their time at their destination — in the hotel or back home with family. Good decisions and breakthroughs often arise from "the kind of deeper, reflecting thinking" not possible when new messages continually arrive, said on Carson, chief executive with online fundraising company cMarket Inc. Jay Pease, a regional marketing director for Exstream Software LLC, said he needs to rest during trans-Atlantic flights for morning meetings in Europe. But he often has trouble sleeping, and he worried that "the temptation would be there to say, `I'll just log on and surf the Internet for a while.'" I say if you're afraid you'll lose sleep because you have Internet access on a flight or think of a plane as a refuge from the Internet, you should probably check into one of those Internet addict rehabs in Japan or China.

• "w00t" crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary:
"w00t," an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary. Merriam-Webster said "w00t" reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging. Visitors to Merriam-Webster's Web site were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases culled from the most frequently looked-up words on the site and submitted by readers. Runner-up was "facebook" as a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the Web site Facebook.com or to search for people on the social networking site.

• Georgia's governor feels that his state's IT is inefficient and ineffective, and has decided to outsource it:
Georgia state Governor Sonny Perdue has announced that he is moving all of the state's IT over to... no, not to India -- to the private sector. The move—what Perdue calls the most ambitious outsourcing over services in the state's history—is expected to result in pink slips for about 200 state employees. Perdue told a press conference Dec. 11 that Georgia's executive branch is currently spending more than $617 million each year on IT and that his new plan will consolidate the 11 state agencies that make up most of the branch's IT spending. "Maintaining the status quo is not an option," said Perdue at the conference. "Technology is the underpinning for a well-run, modern enterprise. My vision is for Georgia to lead the nation's state governments in IT enterprise management and the innovative use of technology." This announcement follows an assessment which found large gaps in the state's IT network security.

• Winamp Media Player Opens Windows to System Hijacking:
Even as Microsoft prepared to release critical updates for flaws in multimedia frameworks and APIs, proof-of-concept exploit code came out over the weekend that shows how an attacker can target the Winamp multiformat media player, a media player from Nullsoft that runs on Windows and is second only to Windows Media Player in worldwide popularity. Symantec on Dec. 8 produced a security advisory warning that attackers can take over systems due to a vulnerability in how Winamp processes some MP4 files. Nullsoft has since addressed the issue, which boils down to a buffer overflow problem, in Winamp 5.35. The problem affects Winamp 5.02 through 5.34. Symantec is advising users that if they can't immediately install the patch, they should deploy network intrusion detection to monitor network traffic for suspect activity, including NOP commands and unexplained traffic that may originate from exploitation attempts or a successful system takeover.

• The crash of Digital Download 1.0; and if you bought one of MovieBeams set-top boxes, its a brick now:
Movie rental service MovieBeam, once backed by Walt Disney, Intel and Cisco Systems, will close down Saturday, stranding people who paid $200 for its set-top box with a useless piece of hardware. The MovieBeam box stored 100 movies that were continually refreshed through a wireless connection. Backers invested some $50 million in the venture before selling it a year ago for $10 million to Movie Gallery, the movie rental store chain, now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. It will shutter the service "in light of the company's ongoing efforts to enhance its financial performance," said a spokeswoman. The collapse of MovieBeam follows the recent sale of Movielink, a movie download Web site backed by big Hollywood studios that pumped $148 million into the money-losing venture. Call it the crash of Digital Download 1.0, an eight-year effort by Hollywood and tech startups trying to do an end-run around cable and satellite TV firms by selling movies and TV shows direct to consumers via the Internet. Other pioneers still standing despite taking some arrows in the back include CinemaNow, Akimbo and Vongo.

• Microsoft Fixes Glitches in IE, Multimedia, Vista:
Microsoft released seven security bulletins that addressed 11 vulnerabilities on its Dec. 11 Patch Tuesday. Of those, three bulletins containing seven client-side vulnerabilities are rated as critical and affect nearly all major Microsoft operating systems: 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. "The more alarming vulnerabilities are those in Windows Media Format Runtime and Internet Explorer, since a successful exploit could occur when a user visits a malicious Web page or when viewing a malicious e-mail. Neither issue requires any further interaction by the victim to exploit, compounding the problem," Ben Greenbaum, senior research manager for Symantec Security Response, said. Microsoft said in its security advisory for four IE flaws that it has received information that at least one of the IE vulnerabilities is being exploited in the wild.

• NBC Universal Taps SanDisk's Service As Replacement For iTunes:
NBC Universal, which recently pulled its TV shows off of iTunes in a well-publicized spat with Apple, has revealed a new content platform partner. On Tuesday, the joint partnership of General Electric's NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment said it plans to offer some its most popular shows onSanDisk (NSDQ: SNDK)'s online video-download service. Under the agreement, NBCU shows could be downloaded onto SanDisk's new PC-to-TV video player that lets users download content from a USB port, and then carry the files over to a living room television for playback through standard audio/video sockets. To feed its Sansa TakeTV device, SanDisk has launched a download site called Fanfare, which is in beta and would compete with Apple's iTunes music and video store. NBCU plans to start offering content on Fanfare in January. The shows will only play through TakeTV. NBCU dropped its shows from iTunes in August after Apple refused to budge on pricing.