A survey of more than 3,300 customers of Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile, and Sprint in North America has revealed a series of new consumer attitudes about the way voicemail services are provided currently. The survey was conducted for US mobile carriers that are considering deploying SpinVox.

It used service demonstrations, an Internet-based survey engine and open feedback tools to investigate what consumers like and dislike about current voicemail services. It also recorded their impressions of the capabilities of SpinVox next generation of voicemail services next where voicemail is automatically converted to text and sent to the users as a SMS text message or email. The survey revealed customers were most keen on new features.

Vividas, online video streaming specialists, is offering technology like no other on the market by providing technology that supports the high demand for online video streaming. Vividas allows easy viewing for consumers by playing within the Web site and not requiring media player downloads, while also providing the highest content protection management in the industry to prevent virtually any kind of piracy.

Vividas has signed agreements with Fox Soccer Channel to broadcast all 200 live English Premier League soccer matches in their entirety. In addition, Pajamas Media is using their technology to stream interviews with Republican candidates John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Vividas also has a partnership with Sony Pictures, which uses their technology for HD movie trailers for films such as Transformers, Ghost Rider, and Casino Royal.

Microsoft will not launch a product that competes directly with Apple’s iPhone, the software company’s chairman, Bill Gates, said in an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “No, we won’t do that. In the so-called smartphone business we will concentrate solely on software with our Windows Mobile program,” Gates was quoted as saying in the interview, which was published on Wednesday.

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) and Microsoft are working together to develop a dual-boot system to put both Linux and Windows on laptops aimed at kids in developing countries, the head of OLPC said in an interview Tuesday. “We are working with them very closely to make a dual-boot system so that, like on an Apple, you can boot either one up. The version that’s up and running of Windows on the XO is very fast, it’s very, very successful. We’re working very hard to do both,” said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC.

Once celebrated for cameras that made their own prints, Polaroid plans to update the concept this year by selling a portable printer for images on cell phones and digital cameras. And like those old Polaroid instant-film cameras, the new printers should have a wow factor: they require no ink, because they employ a thermal printing technology from startup Zink Imaging Inc.

The 8-ounce printers, a bit bigger than a deck of cards, are due to go on sale around back-to-school time for about $150, Polaroid and Zink announced Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show. Once connected to a phone or camera by Bluetooth wireless or the USB port, the printers need less than a minute to churn out 2-inch-by-3-inch pictures, which can be peeled off a backing and used as stickers. Sheets of paper for the device will cost about 40 cents each, less if bought in bulk.

Digital Foci announced that it will introduce the Pocket Album OLED Series of two new photo viewers at the CES. The new Series includes the Pocket Album Deluxe OLED 2.8 with a 2.8-inch screen with wrist strap, holding more than 3,000 photos and the Pocket Album OLED 1.5, a digital keychain with a 1.5-inch screen holding 120 photos. The viewers use the OLED technology which provides excellent display of images from almost any viewing angle. The 1.5 model is priced at $49.95 and the 2.8 model is priced at $99.95.

The first warnings about the Trojan were posted on Saturday on the iPhone modification forum ModMyiFone.com, said security vendor F-Secure. When installed, the Trojan appeared to do nothing more than display the word “shoes”, according to the ModMyiFone post.

However, when a user attempted to uninstall the malicious code, the application wiped files from the /bin directory, breaking “Erica’s Utilities” such as sendfile. Erica’s Utilities are a collection of command-line utilities for the iPhone, according to security vendor Symantec, which warned on Monday that the Trojan also overwrites OpenSSH, an open-source encryption protocol.

The Trojan, known as “iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep”, or “113 prep”, is the first to be seen in the wild, according to Symantec researcher Orla Cox.

Cable companies aren’t known as nimble innovators, but Comcast is out to change that perception this year with ultra-high-speed Internet service, more high-definition content and gadgets that link video, phone and broadband services. “We’re about innovation and having the best network,” Chief Executive Brian Roberts told The Associated Press in a preview of his speech at the Consumer Electronics show on Tuesday.

Roberts is expected to demonstrate a technology that delivers up to 160 megabits of data per second: It will allow him to download a high-definition copy of “Batman Begins” in four minutes. The technology, DOCSIS 3.0, will start rolling out this year.

In what might have been his final keynote address at an International CES event, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates opened the 2008 expo with talk about entering a new “digital decade,” where his company plans to play a major role.

Gates delivered his final keynote as the full-time leader of Microsoft to a standing-room-only crowd as the 2008 CES began Jan. 6. While his opening address offered few specifics on the new technology Microsoft has been developing, Gates said the next decade of technology can offer users a rich array of choices and new ways to gather and organize their data.

Nothing breeds lawsuits like success. And for Apple, the New Year is bringing a rash of them. Apple disclosed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that an iPod customer, Melanie Tucker, has filed a suit against the company, claiming that Apple violates antitrust laws by not allowing music bought on iTunes to be played on non-Apple music players.

Tucker is seeking class-action status and asking the U.S. District Court for Northern California to force Apple to make iTunes purchases compatible with devices other than the iPod and to pay damages to anyone who bought an iPod or iTunes track after April 28, 2003.