XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio have agreed to merge, the two companies said Monday. The deal would consolidate the only two companies in the emerging business of subscription-only satellite radio, and is sure to face tough scrutiny from federal regulators. Investors and analysts have been speculating about a deal for months.The deal would consolidate the only two companies in the emerging business of subscription-only satellite radio, and is sure to face tough scrutiny from federal regulators. Investors and analysts have been speculating about a deal for months.

Digital Media Converter is essential to anyone navigating the modern world of digital cameras, camera phones, portable media players, media PCs, and handheld game platforms. You can convert between all popular media formats. For instance, video recorded from a camcorder can be converted to play on an iPod. Audio recordings can be converted to Windows media streaming format for online web listening, or MP3. Now you can easily capture movies from your Windows Media Center PC and view them on your portable media device. With the simple wizard-like interface, you can simply select a folder of media files, choose what format to convert them into, and walk away. The program can convert all the files in a single operation, unattended.

SanDisk said on Friday it will cut 10 percent of its work force and trim executive salaries to compensate for a recent collapse in prices for memory chips, sending its shares down 5 percent. It was the second recent warning about over-supply in the volatile memory chip industry. Micron Technology Inc. said last week that prices for memory chips used in consumer electronics would drop 30 percent to 40 percent this quarter.

On2 Technologies announced that it has developed the Flix Engine 3GPP transcoder, a platform that allows Flash 8 video to be played on cell phones and other mobile devices. With the Flix Engine 3GPP transcoder, set to come out this spring, On2 Technologies hopes to provide businesses, Web site operators and consumers with a platform that can encode and publish a large number of video clips using Adobe Flash Video to make their content available on mobile phones.

OCZ has pushed into the PC peripherals market with the planned release of the Equalizer Gaming Mouse, which features a “burst fire mode”. The company did not disclose a ship date for the mouse, nor pricing. The Equalizer features a “Triple Threat” button that can turn one click into three, a feature that the company is touting as a burst mode for games, turning one shot into a quick three. More prosaically, the feature could also be used to turn multiple-click functions into a single click. The Equalizer is a dual-laser-engine mouse, running at 2500 DPI.

BoxWave has released their ElectraSpan Extended batteries for the Palm Treo 680 and 750.

Advanced Micro Devices is ready to offer its graphics technology to developers of handheld devices such as PDAs and smartphones. The world’s second largest producer of chips announced Feb. 13 that it has created a new business unit to develop graphics technology, such as low-power 2-D and 3-D graphics for mobile phones and other handheld products. The new business division is one of the first offerings from the Sunnyvale, Calif., company to combine some of the technologies it acquired during its $5.4-billion purchase of ATI. The deal was completed in October.

Mobile telecommunications giant Nokia said it and partner Intel had scrapped a joint plan to develop an HSDPA module for notebook computers. “We have, together with Intel, canceled the HSDPA module cooperation in the form we formerly announced,” said Nokia spokeswoman Eija-Riitta Huovinen. The Finnish-based firm had announced last September it was working with Intel on the HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) module, which would help notebook computer users find the best wireless connections.

Firefox and Internet Explorer users beware: There are serious, unpatched flaws in both browsers that could allow the manipulation of authentication cookies and the hijacking of files from your Windows machine. Details on both vulnerabilities have already been posted to the Full Disclosure mailing list by Polish researcher Michal Zalewski. SecurityFocus provides coverage of the issue, which dates back to 2006. According to Zalewski, a well-known hacker credited with several major flaw discoveries, there are two very different issues affecting Firefox and IE 7.

Yahoo said on Sunday it has signed up top corporate advertisers to use its advertising system to run brand ads on mobile phones in 18 countries, marking a major diversification beyond computers. The Internet media company has begun offering its brand advertising to reach mobile phone users across markets in Western Europe, South Asia and the Americas, capitalizing on its prowess in supplying Web advertising to computer users.