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SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Apple said Thursday it has deals with Hollywood studios to make popular films available for its iPods and iPhones via its iTunes online store as soon as the movies are released on DVDs.

Films available in the United States from iTunes this week due to the deals include Academy Award winners “Juno” and “There Will Be Blood.”

“We're thrilled to bring iTunes store customers new films for purchase day-and-date with the DVD release,” said iTunes vice president Eddy Cue.

“We think movie fans will love being able to buy their favorites from major and independent studios.”

The roster of studios signed on with iTunes includes 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, and Sony Pictures Entertainment, according to Apple.

Movies downloaded from iTunes can be viewed on iPhones, video-capable iPods, personal computers, and televisions linked to Apple TV devices.

New releases will cost 14.99 dollars to download and 9.99 dollars will be charged for older titles offered in the iTunes catalog, Apple said. ITunes rents newly released films for 3.99 dollars.

The freshly-added iTunes feature competes with similar offerings from major US movie rental chain Blockbuster and Internet firm CinemaNow.

Intel has set up an online store called Business Exchange that's meant to help small and medium-sized business find software applications that runs on the chip maker's hardware.

Unveiled Thursday, Intel's Business Exchange zeroes in on four main product categories: security, storage, telecommunications and business applications. Within each of these categories, users can find information on various products, user-generated feedback and request a quote from vendors, as well as leave their own feedback for others.

The site includes offerings from a range of software companies, such as Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Symantec and Tripwire, among others, and will compete against IBM's Global Applications Marketplace, a similar site also announced Thursday that opens for business later this year.

Business Exchange includes a link to Intel's Software Exchange, an online shop where users can purchase boxed software.

IBM is trying to rally support for an online applications marketplace for small and mid-sized businesses that it plans to launch later this year.

On Thursday, it outlined plans to create the Global Applications Marketplace, where small businesses will be able to browse and purchase applications from potentially thousands of ISVs (independent software vendors) around the world, which local IBM channel partners will then install and manage for them.

IBM optimistically compared the marketplace to Amazon.com, because customers will be able to read reviews of products written by other customers. It will also be like iTunes, in the sense that it will be tied to the vendor's hardware: customers who use the marketplace will have to have an IBM server, just as iTunes customers need an iPod.

The goal is to make it easier for companies with small or nonexistent IT departments to adopt new software and services to help run their businesses. For IBM and its partners it's a way to generate more business from companies with up to 500 employees, a market largely untapped by IBM thus far.

The initiative, also called the Blue Business Platform, was announced Thursday at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference in Los Angeles, where IBM pitched the idea to resellers and ISVs. Competitors will include Microsoft's Small Business Center, Salesforce.com and, eventually, SAP's Business ByDesign.

It will also compete with the Intel Business Exchange, which the chip maker announced separately on Thursday. Intel's site offers bundles of software and hardware for SMBs, including applications from Salesforce.com, Symantec, Microsoft, Doculex and Tripwire.

Small businesses will be able to search for applications at IBM's marketplace and enter parameters like the number of employees they have. The system will spit back recommendations, including any IBM infrastructure software that might be appropriate. When the customer decides on an order, IBM sends it to a local reseller who will deploy and manage the software, said Matthew Friedman, vice president of marketing for IBM's Business Systems Division

Success will depend on getting buy-in from ISVs and resellers. To take part, ISVs will have to adopt a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) that allow them to list their software on the marketplace. Other APIs will support remote management capabilities, like the ability to add and remove users or deliver patches, and also allow for integration with other applications and services.

A reseller could connect an application to Amazon's S3 hosted storage service, for example, but only if Amazon chooses to adopt the APIs, Friedman said. Longer term, IBM plans to release other APIs that allow for integration at the data level, allowing resellers to set up business processes, he said.

Only about 10 ISVs have implemented the APIs today, Friedman said, but IBM expects to get many more. Vendors that signalled support Thursday include CFXWorks, which provides credit card processing for retailers; Cincom, which offers a business intelligence product; and InterNetworX, which sells enterprise resource planning software.

IBM expects most of the applications to be installed on premise, the model used by 90 percent of SMBs today, Friedman said, although some software will be offered as a service. The resellers will also be able to incorporate online backup services, he said. The remote management will usually be provided by the reseller.

IBM is setting up hundreds of “innovation centers” around the world where ISVs can go to add the APIs to their software. It is emphasizing the big role that partners will play, although in some cases customers will be able to download and install software themselves, Friedman said. Most customers will want the specialized help that local resellers can provide, he said.

Alienating resellers is the main risk for IBM, said Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group, in Beaverton, Oregon. Smaller resellers with little software expertise will benefit the most, he said, but bigger resellers may feel threatened that customers can now figure out what software they need online.

As a small business owner himself, Olds said the service sounds useful. “There are places you can search for applications, like Google, but you don't really get all those choices in one place,” he said.

For companies with less than 50 employees IBM will offer Lotus Foundations Start. It's a package of IBM's Lotus and Domino software that comes pre-installed on a server and is supposed to provide for all a small company's collaboration needs, including email, security, directory services, backup and recovery.

The product was unveiled at IBM's Lotusphere conference in January. It will be generally available by the end of June, priced starting from about $1,500, Friedman said. It will be the first of other “appliance servers” that IBM plans to release. IBM said it can be set up in 30 minutes and has “self managing” features to make it easy for small companies to use.

Big vendors have been trying for years to tap the SMB market, but have often struggled to meet the individual needs of small companies or come up with a viable business model. IBM said the global market is worth $500 billion, and called it its “largest opportunity for growth.”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The company that controls rights to rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix's music and likeness said on Thursday a purported sex tape of the musician being sold on the Internet was not authentic.

“We strongly dispute the claimed authenticity of the tape,” Experience Hendrix said in a statement.

“We view the release as nothing more than a callous attempt to trade on the image and reputation of a deceased artist who is unable to defend himself against such an outrageous and baseless assertion,” the Seattle-based company added.

Earlier this week, Los Angeles-based adult video company Vivid Entertainment released a 45-minute DVD that includes 11 minutes of roughly 40-year-old film footage showing a man resembling Hendrix cavorting with two unidentified brunettes in a dimly lit bedroom.

Vivid said it consulted several experts to authenticate Hendrix's likeness on the tape, including women who knew the guitarist. It said it acquired the tape from an individual who purchased it from a collector who found it.

Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of Vivid, said in his own statement on Thursday that Experience Hendrix's comments were “not in any way a refutation of the authenticity” of the tape.

“We are very comfortable this is the real thing,” Hirsch said.

Others have also called the tape's authenticity into question, including Charles Cross, author of Hendrix biography “Room Full of Mirrors.” He told the New York Times that “it doesn't add up to Jimi” and said he had previously encountered the film himself when he was researching his book.

The sex tape DVD was available for sale online and Vivid said it would be in stores starting next Tuesday.

Hendrix is considered one of the great rock guitarists of all time with hits such as “Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze” and “Foxy Lady.” He died in 1970 at age 27 in London.

Vivid, in addition to marketing adult videos, has also distributed the notorious sex tape of actress Pamela Anderson and rocker Tommy Lee.

(Reporting by Bob Tourtellotte; Editing by Mary Milliken)

SEATTLE - Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said Thursday he knows how much he’d spend to buy Yahoo and accelerate his company’s Internet play. Too bad he’s not telling anyone else.

“We’re willing to pay for that at some level, and beyond that level we’re not willing to pay for it. I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth to me,” the executive said during an employee meeting. “I won’t go a dime above, and I will go to what I think it’s worth if that gets the deal done.”

Ballmer did not say whether Microsoft is considering raising its unsolicited bid, worth $44.6 billion at the time it was made in early February.

The offer is currently worth about $42.4 billion, or $29.48 per share, based on Microsoft Corp.’s closing stock price Thursday. Yahoo Inc. has rejected the offer, saying it undervalues the company. Microsoft’s board has been considering whether to raise the bid to as much as $33 per share, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Ballmer didn’t provide any new insight into the company’s efforts to buy the Silicon Valley pioneer during the meeting at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters, but he did indicate that an end to months of speculation is near.

“We ought to announce something in relatively short order,” Ballmer told employees.

His comments were first reported by Silicon Alley Insider, an online technology news site, and confirmed by a Microsoft spokesman.

Ballmer added that buying Yahoo is just one of many moving parts in the software maker’s strategy to compete with Google Inc. in search and Web advertising, and that if neither a friendly nor a hostile deal “look good,” he’s willing to walk away.

Microsoft’s board met Wednesday but reached no decision on a next step, the Journal reported. The software maker had given Yahoo until last weekend to agree to a deal or face the prospect of an ugly proxy fight.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is exploring a possible advertising partnership with Internet search leader Google Inc. or a merger with the online operations of Time Warner Inc.’s AOL as possible defenses if Microsoft tries a hostile takeover.

Impressed by a two-week test completed last month, Yahoo could firm up a long-term deal within a week, according to the Journal. Any alliance between Yahoo and Google would face intense antitrust scrutiny, however, because the two companies control more than 80 percent of the U.S. market for search advertising.

Yahoo and Google hope to allay those concerns by structuring their deal so their rivals, including Microsoft, could participate in an auction-based system, the Journal said.

Laptop users may soon get longer battery life from their machines, with ZPower set to plug in its new silver-zinc batteries, which it claims last significantly longer than traditional lithium-ion batteries.

The batteries will be available in consumer and business laptops from major PC makers starting in August, according to Ross Dueber, the CEO of ZPower, although he declined to name any of the vendors on Thursday.

Silver-zinc batteries pack more energy than lithium-ion batteries, giving laptops 40 percent more run time, according to Dueber. If a laptop runs for two hours with a lithium-ion battery, it should run for closer to three hours with a silver-zinc battery, he said.

The battery's water-based chemistry also makes it nonflammable, compared to lithium-ion, which uses dimethyl carbonate, a flammable liquid. Cells can go off “like firecrackers” in lithium-ion batteries, Dueber said.

The silver-zinc batteries also won't degrade in capacity during the first year, while lithium-ion batteries can lose up to 30 percent of their capacity over that period, Dueber said. After a year, however, silver-zinc batteries start degrading at a rate similar to lithium-ion batteries.

Silver-zinc is not a new technology, said Vishal Sapru, industry manager of power systems group at Frost & Sullivan. Early batteries were mainly for one-time use in military and aerospace devices, and ZPower is adding recharge capabilities to those batteries, Sapru said.

The batteries could be good for consumers who want an alternative to lithium-ion batteries, which have received “unfortunate” publicity lately for catching fire, said Jeff Shepard, president of the Darnell Group.

“What we see here is a very strong product that will alleviate those issues. I don't know if it's going to be a silver bullet, but it could be a viable alternative,” Shepard said. Because the technology is relatively new, any imperfections might not be known yet, so PC makers will take a wait-and-see approach, he predicted.

Sapru said he thinks the concerns about lithium iron batteries are overblown. “Think of how many laptops and cell phones we use and carry,” he said. Companies like Valence Technologies and A123 Systems are researching phosphate material that should further reduce the fire risk.

It also remains to be seen if silver-zinc batteries can compete on price, since lithium-ion is relatively cheap, Sapru said. The silver-zinc batteries contain silver, which can be expensive.

ZPower is starting off with laptops, but it plans batteries for mobile devices like cell phones in a few years, Dueber said. The company needs to get the technology validated to encourage other vendors to adopt it.

The focus on mobile products comes partly from Intel Capital, which invested in the company in 2004, Dueber said.

SAN FRANCISCO - In an unusual act of contrition, a state court judge has publicly apologized and agreed to pay $100,000 to Silicon Valley billionaire Tom Siebel for besmirching him in a lawsuit she filed as an attorney more than a decade ago.

“I write to express my sincere regret for pursuing claims against you that were determined to be without merit,” San Mateo Superior Court Judge Carol Mittlesteadt wrote in an apology to Siebel that was released Thursday.

Mittlesteadt, who was appointed to the bench in 1998, also acknowledged her actions “may have caused substantial expense and inconvenience, and damage to (Siebel’s) reputation and good name.”

The apology was part of a settlement that ends a 12-year legal odyssey that began after business software maker Siebel Systems Inc. fired its top sales representative, Debra Christoffers.

Representing Christoffers, Mittlesteadt filed a wrongful termination and sex discrimination lawsuit against Siebel as well as the company. A court ruled the charges against Siebel were unfounded.

Siebel, who is worth an estimated $1.9 billion, hopes the judge’s public penitence teaches lawyers not to fabricate claims against wealthy individuals or large companies in hopes of extracting a large settlement.

He said in an interview that he’s surprised Mittlesteadt is a judge.

“I think it’s a commentary on our system of jurisprudence,” he said. “I am not sure who is watching the hen house here.”

Voters have re-elected Mittlesteadt twice. Her current term expires in 2012.

“I deeply regret that Mr. Siebel believes that I am the kind of legal professional that I have spent over 30 years striving not to be,” Mittlesteadt said in a statement issued separately from her apology.

Siebel said he viewed Christoffers’ complaint as a veiled extortion attempt.

“I was trying to set an example,” Siebel said. “This was a single person’s effort at tort reform.”

Siebel plans to donate Mittlesteadt’s payment to Stanford University programs devoted to legal ethics.

Siebel Systems, formerly based in San Mateo, was sold to Oracle Corp. for $6.1 billion in 2006.

Mittlesteadt said her conflict with Siebel taught her “you ultimately cannot control your reputation with those who do not know you.” She also urged “all attorneys to continue representing your clients zealously within the bounds of the law.”

When she filed the suit, Siebel Systems was preparing an initial public offering of stock, meaning the company had to disclose the potential legal liability and risk rattling investors.

Determined to prove the allegations against him were wrong, Siebel fought the lawsuit and prevailed on all the claims against him.

A jury concluded that Siebel Systems legitimately fired Christoffers because it was dissatisfied with her performance but that it still owed Christoffers for unpaid sales commissions.

After both sides appealed, the company ultimately paid more than $351,000 to settle that part of the case while Christoffers agreed to pay nearly $52,000 to cover Siebel Systems’ legal costs.

After Mittlesteadt was appointed as a judge, Siebel personally sued her and her associate, E. Rick Buell II, for malicious prosecution.

That battle went all the way to the California Supreme Court, which in July 2007 upheld an earlier ruling that the lawsuit against Siebel contained meritless allegations.

Buell publicly apologized last October without making a monetary settlement.

Film fans can now buy new movies on Apple's iTunes Store on the same day as their DVD release. That synchronicity was announced Thursday by the Cupertino, Calif.-based company, which said cooperating studios include 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment, and First Look Studios.

The price will be $14.99 for new releases, and they can be viewed on an iPod with video, a Mac or PC, or a TV using Apple TV. Some of the new titles include American Gangster, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Juno, Cloverfield, I Am Legend, There Will Be Blood, and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Disney Sells 4 Million

Movie distribution through iTunes is becoming an increasingly important channel for the studios. In March, for instance, Disney CEO Bob Iger told news media that his company had sold four million movies through iTunes since it started offering movies though the online service in 2006.

Earlier this year, Apple announced that movie rentals were available on iTunes one month after their DVD release. The January announcement set rental prices of $3 to $4 for a 30-day rental period for movies from the major studios.

Bobby Tulsiani, an analyst with industry research firm JupiterResearch, said he expects other online movie services, such as Amazon Unbox or Movielink, will offer a similar deal in the not-too-distant future.

He noted that, although the iTunes story has received the most attention, several of the major studios were also making their movies available through cable video-on-demand (VOD) services on the same day as the DVD release.

DVD Sales Increased

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that Warner Bros. would release its movies to some VOD systems at the same time it releases them to DVD. A DVD release is generally about four to five months after a theatrical release.

The Times article cited a Warner Bros. previous experiment with releasing movies to VOD and DVD simultaneously, which found that DVD rentals fell only 3 to 5 percent, and DVD sales increased. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes was quoted as noting that digital distribution, compared to DVD distribution, results in a 60 to 70 percent margin instead of a 20 to 30 percent margin.

Some observers have speculated that high-definition movies offered through the iTunes Store and cable systems could adversely affect the sales of Blu-ray high-definition DVD players, even though Blu-ray has won the format war with HD DVD.

While that impact is not yet clear, sales of Blu-ray players dropped 40 percent from January to February in the U.S., and grew only two percent from February to March, according to the NPD Group. Toshiba announced on Feb. 19 that it would stop making HD-DVD players. NPD analysts have said their survey indicates that the price of DVD players is currently a key factor.

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators on Thursday agreed to temporarily cap a growing subsidy program that paid nearly $1.2 billion last year to cell phone companies that do business in rural areas.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to limit payments to wireless carriers from the Universal Service Fund, which is supported by a tax on the phone bills of most Americans. The cap will remain in place until the commission passes a comprehensive reform package, which is in the works.

The move is bad news for rural cellular carriers who rely on such payments for a substantial part of their revenue, but it benefits big telephone companies like Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc., whose customers are the largest contributors to the fund.

AT&T is also a major recipient of such wireless subsidies, but agreed to a cap as a condition of its acquisition of Dobson Communications Corp. last year. The top recipient of such subsidies, Alltel Corp., had also agreed to a cap as part of its buyout by a private investment group.

Regulators hope the decision will slow the increase in fund charges on telephone bills and keep the program sustainable.

The fund was created by Congress in 1996 as part of an overhaul of the nation’s communications legislation, which says all Americans should have access to telecommunications services at comparable rates.

To do that, carriers that do business in rural areas and their customers are subsidized by the fund.

The fund itself is supported by a tax on long-distance and regular subscriber line charges paid by wireless, Internet and traditional phone customers. The amount usually adds up to a few dollars per month, per bill, depending on calling patterns.

Would Dick Tracy watch TV on his wristwatch? AT&T and Verizon hope so. AT&T Mobile TV is the latest offering in what the telcos hope is an emerging market for cell phones — and the subscription fees that come with them.

Running on Qualcomm's MediaFLO service — which also hosts Verizon's V Cast Mobile TV — AT&T Mobile TV will offer 10 channels of streaming TV content for $15 a month. MediaFLO broadcasts over an unused television spectrum.

The AT&T service will be available in 58 markets, including Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, but only on two phones: the $300 LG Vu, a new touch-screen phone, and the $200 Samsung Access. In addition to the pricey new phones and the monthly subscription fee, users will need to sign up for a two-year contract. On the other hand, AT&T is offering a $100 rebate on the phones.

Subscribers to either the Verizon or AT&T plans will get broadcasts from CBS, Comedy Central, ESPN, Fox, MTV, NBC and Nickelodeon. AT&T is also offering movies from Sony Pictures and content from CNN.

Weak Appetite

But do people really want to watch television on their cell phones? In a word, no, said Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Research. While a recent study from the Yankee Group estimated that five percent of cell subscribers would be willing to pay for a TV subscription, “I think that number is high,” Sterling said in a telephone interview. “The appetite for mobile TV is a very small one right now, especially as a separate item you have to pay for.”

While MediaFLO is a superior experience to downloading video clips over a cell network, it is still “generally a poor user experience,” Sterling said. That plus the additional fee and the lack of supported handsets “means there is not much hope of near-term success,” he said.

The screen size isn't the only difference from watching TV at home. MediaFLO offers specialized content for cell-phone viewers. In a review of AT&T's service, a PC World reviewer noted the basic content offerings are “remixes” of broadcast content. While that description smacks of the prepackaged fare seen on airplanes, AT&T is also offering a “fun movie channel” called PIX, the reviewer said.

If the current market is so small, why are AT&T and Verizon investing in Qualcomm's technology? “Maybe these guys are just laying the groundwork,” Sterling said. “It's almost like AT&T is compelled to do this because Verizon is and Wall Street is saying it's a new growth opportunity. They're also looking it as a way to distribute advertising on phones.”

Video in Context

The investment could take a generation to pay off. Carpool drivers may notice 12-year-olds happily watching favorite TV episodes on iPods, but that is fundamentally different than MediaFLO. “iPods and the iPhone are different because of the quality of the resolution and the fact that the video is resident on the device,” Sterling said. “There's none of the stuttering you see with broadcast-to-device.”

But if MediaFLO's broadcast model isn't likely to succeed, that doesn't mean there isn't hope for handset video. “There is an appetite for bite-size chunks of content like YouTube and music videos,” Sterling said. One approach that makes more sense is the AP's Mobile News Network, announced last month, that will deliver news and video — and advertising — to the iPhone and potentially other smartphones.

“In that context, video makes sense. You're reading a news story and you want to watch the video,” Sterling said. “But the idea of long-form TV just doesn't work.”