Samsung plans to release a phone that can receive satellite TV signals and launch a service package that lets customers receive up to 40 stations. The company expects to launch both the service and the handset, called the Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) phone, in the third quarter of 2004.

Hitachi’s hard disk drive unit said Sunday that it will spend about $200 million to double the disk drive output of its Thailand factory, including the 1-inch, 4GB disk drives that are found in the iPod Mini. Production of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies’ Microdrive will rise to about 2 million units per quarter by the end of the year, from 200,000 in the first three months of this year, said John Osterhout, who manages Hitachi GST’s Microdrive program.

NetZero announced that it is giving away five 2004 Chevrolet SSR roadsters to users who sign up for NetZero HiSpeed.

Biologix-IT has chosen SYWARE’s Visual CE, Rapid Application Development Environment, for their Mobile Healthcare Information System. The company has used Visual CE to develop AIMS Mobility, the mobile version of Biologix-IT’s Acute In-Patient Management System (AIMS), used by ICU and hospital medical groups across the US.

Symantec has released patches to fix four high-impact vulnerabilities in several of its popular antivirus and firewall products for Windows. An attacker who successfully exploits the holes could render targeted systems inoperable or execute remote code with kernel-level privileges.

Proporta has announced the latest addition to their PDA-protection product line, the new Deluxe Screen Protector. Each individual screen protector is made from a washable, high clarity plastic to improve the feel of your screen as well as protecting it from dust, dirt and scratching.

Qualcomm unveiled a new line of chips with ultra-high-resolution camera features and said it was making inroads in advanced new markets. Six-megapixel image quality would make camera phones based on Qualcomm chips competitive with the most advanced digital cameras being sold in consumer markets worldwide.

NoruSoft announced the release of MEGA Hangman 1.2 for the Palm OS. It features over 26,000 words from 4 to 12 characters long. The Norusoft site has more complete information.

Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett said the company’s upcoming big ad push would revolve around the digital home, with the personal computer serving as a hub for managing everything from digital photos to music files and video recordings.

This note is from David, our editor-in-chief: “For those of you expecting email answers to messages you sent me in the past few days, be patient. I took a long weekend and found my inbox filled with 6,552 messages this morning. It gonna take me a while to dig through these. So sit tight. I will respond, but Lordy, Lordy, there be tonload ‘o mail here to dig my way out of.”