Update to our previous article (reposted below):

Cablevision and ABC have come to a deal, 45 minutes after the start of the Oscars. More word on the agreement when it is finalized.

Original article:

Disney has blacked out the broadcast channel ABC for Cablevision's 3 million subscribers, the day of the highly-anticipated Academy Awards.

Cablevision says it's willing to restart negotiations with Disney, along with a third-party arbitrator, to end the spat over transmission fees.

The cable company has a decent monopoly over the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and parts of NJ and Connecticut.

"Given the extraordinary public interest in this matter, Senator (John) Kerry and other public officials have suggested that arbitration is appropriate in this highly unusual situation," added Charles Schueler, Cablevision's executive vice president of communications. "Cablevision will agree to binding arbitration and calls upon Disney CEO Bob Iger to immediately return ABC to New YOrk area viewers and join us in binding arbitration to resolve this matter fairly."

ABC says they have put forward a counter-offer this afternoon.

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Earlier this week we reported on the "funeral" of Internet Explorer 6, hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Colorado.

The service had a coffin with a dummy inside with an IE6 logo for its head. Anyone who attended was welcome to eulogize the browser with memories, good or bad.

Google plans to pull all IE6 support from its Google family of sites, including Docs and Gmail starting next week, and YouTube fans will start to get hit with nagware popups when trying to access the site from IE6.

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AppleInsider is reporting that Apple is in the midst of updating Safari, QuickTime and Pro apps, each with significant updates.

Reads the full post:

Safari 4.0.5

People familiar with the seedings say one of the primary focuses of Safari 4.0.5 is to fix a regression in the browser's JavaScript engine that manifested with the release of Safari 4.0.4. The maintenance release will also reportedly see certain code blocks, like Move Code, transitioned from the Safari codebase to that of Webkit in order to improve cross platform support.

A short list of other enhancements planned for the Safari 4.0.5 include improved HTML5 Video Playback, quicker loading of the Top Sites panels, faster JavaScript performance, better performance loading YouTube, and an overall reduced memory footprint.

Additionally, the release should also sport a much improved Plug-in manager aimed at reducing the number of crashes caused by plug-ins, including Adobe Flash plug-in, people familiar with the current betas say. These advances will reportedly also improve load times for plug-ins.

Safari 4.0.5 is currently undergoing tests in four distinct distributions: a build for Windows, one for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, one for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and another for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Each are members of the 405Axx build train and weigh between 26 and 38 megabytes.

QuickTime 7.66

Meanwhile, Apple is also evaluating a maintenance, security and performance release for QuickTime 7 labeled QuickTime 7.66. It's expected to be one of the final updates to QuickTime 7 and is currently undergoing evaluation for Mac OS X Leopard and Windows. The current build is said to be build 23.

Pro Applications Update

Finally, the Mac maker is also wrapping up QA testing on a significant maintenance release to its Final Cut Studio and Pro applications labeled "Pro Applications Update." Those familiar with this release, code named "Iron Man," say it was originally scheduled to go live last week but has been pushed back a week or so for further evaluation.

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In a strange discovery this weekend, an O2 tariff list reveals that video calling has been added to the "key features" list of the plans for the carriers, and that it will cost as much as the current voice-only plans.

The listing could mean a possible leak into future video chat capabilities of any iPhone, however, current hardware could obviously not allow for such capabilities.

iPhone OS 3.2 beta has shown references to video calling as well.

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According to new digging from 9to5Mac, Wikipedia is likely to be added as one of the default search engines for Safari on the iPad as well as upcoming versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The code is seen in the iPhone 3.2 SDK, and will be the third default behind Google and Yahoo.

It is still unclear why Wiki is being added over Bing or other true search engines, especially because Wikipedia has a very popular free app as well, but still interesting.

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AndroidAndMe is reporting a new interesting rumor today, that cable company Cox is teaming up with phone maker Kyocera to bring a new Android phone to the market, one that will have TV/DVR capabilities.

Says the article:

"Worked on a quick short-term sub-sub-sub contract where I wrote an app for Android, to be run at a trade show. The hardware I installed on was a Kyocera, but even more interesting was the Cox logo on it. The logos were taped over but quite legible from the bumps nonetheless. There were also some Cox apps included; I think one was either for watching TV or controlling DVR? Not entirely sure. The screen was WVGA800, very nice and sharp, though the hardware wasn't the fastest. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to photograph or examine it too closely since I only had about an hour to load and debug."

Cox Wireless is ready to hit three test markets in the next few weeks, and the Android device may be the first on the LTE network, which has seen peak speeds of 25Mpbs.

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Disney has blacked out the broadcast channel ABC for Cablevision's 3 million subscribers, the day of the highly-anticipated Academy Awards.

Cablevision says it's willing to restart negotiations with Disney, along with a third-party arbitrator, to end the spat over transmission fees.

The cable company has a decent monopoly over the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and parts of NJ and Connecticut.

"Given the extraordinary public interest in this matter, Senator (John) Kerry and other public officials have suggested that arbitration is appropriate in this highly unusual situation," added Charles Schueler, Cablevision's executive vice president of communications. "Cablevision will agree to binding arbitration and calls upon Disney CEO Bob Iger to immediately return ABC to New YOrk area viewers and join us in binding arbitration to resolve this matter fairly."

ABC says they have put forward a counter-offer this afternoon.

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Davenport Lyons, the notorious law firm known for going after alleged file-sharers on behalf of large game publishers such as Atari, is now under investigation for harassment and bullying by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, an industry watchdog, says GI.biz.

The consumer group Which? has been complaining about the firm since 2008, when the law firm first began sending out letters accusing citizens of unauthorized file sharing.

Each letter demanded a payment of £300 or the case would be taken to court. Which? calls the letters as "excessive" and even "bullying" and says "that Davenport Lyons was making incorrect assertions about the nature of copyright infringement and ignoring evidence presented in defence. It added that the letters incorrectly claimed their recipients were legally responsible for ensuring their internet connections were properly secured."

Adds Deborah Prince, head of legal affairs at Which?: "We're pleased to see some action at last from the SRA and hope the tide is finally turning in favour of consumers. We now want to see some decisive action to stop these bully-boy tactics."

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