HP yesterday announced plans to purchase 3Com in a move that's being seen as a direct challenge to Cisco Systems. HP will pay $7.90 per share for a total of around $2. billion. Both HP and 3Com's board of directors have already approved the deal.

"We wanted to create a powerhouse in the networking industry," HP senior vice president Marius Haas said of the multi-billion dollar deal. Asked to comment on the deal, Cisco managed to find a way to pat itself on the back, stating, "While Cisco has a healthy respect for all of our competitors, acquisitions in our industry only validate the fact that networking is becoming the platform for all forms of communications and IT."

3Com made $1.3 billion last year, with more than half of its profits coming from China.

Best Buy is teaming up with Sonic Solutions to provide customers on-demand access to streaming movies and TV shows.

Best Buy will embed Sonic's Roxio CinemaNow technology on a number of devices, like web-connected TVs, portable media players, PCs, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, and mobile phones. This will include a variety of manufacturers, Best Buy said, but the store did not reveal any specific companies at this time.

The multi-year agreement allows Best Buy to license Sonic's technology to make its on-demand digital content delivery a standard feature on connected devices. As part of the deal, Best Buy purchased an undisclosed number of Sonic common stock.

When the service is in place, Best Buy customers can buy or rent from the CinemaNow catalogue, which includes access to new movies, TV shows, independent films, and older catalogue films. Some of those movies will likely be available on the same day as their DVD release, Best Buy said.

Both companies said they also plan to work with movie studios on "new service and content offerings" but did not elaborate.

Gateway and Verizon Wireless are teaming up to release a new netbook equipped with Verizon's 3G mobile broadband service.

The Gateway LT2016u will be available starting October 4 on verizonwireless.com and in Verizon stores. The device is available in "night sky black" and will connect to the Web via Verizon's 3G network.

The netbook will retail for $149.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate, which will be sent out in the form of a debit card. Customers will also have to sign up for a two-year Verizon mobile broadband contract. Options include 250MB of monthly access plus 10 cents per megabyte overage for $39.99 per month or 5GB plus 5 cents per megabyte overage for $59.99 per month.

The LT2016u features a 10.1-inch, high-definition WSVGA LED, a 6-cell battery that Verizon says will provide up to six hours of battery life, an Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of memory, 160GB of hard drive space, and a digital media card reader.

Cisco Systems this week announced the purchase of Tanberg. The computing giant purchased the Norway-based video conferencing company for a cool $3 billion.

Tandberg specializes in high-end video conferencing units smaller than the models currently sold by Cisco. "It really enables us to build out our portfolio," Cisco senior vice president Ned Hooper said of the deal. The acquisition values Tanberg at 11 percent over its Wednesday closing price.

Verizon Wireless today said that they are terminating the Verizon Hub, an innovative VOIP home phone that doubled as a Web tablet and digital photo frame.

While we gave a mediocre review to the first shipping version of the Hub, we were excited about new versions shown at this year's CTIA show which offered YouTube, MySpace and Twitter widgets. Those models will now, apparently, never be sold.

The Verizon Hub died from a terminal service plan and confused retail strategy involving an expensive $34.99 monthly fee and a perplexing requirement that owners also have a Verizon Wireless cell phone. It is survived, only barely, by its first cousin the AT&T Home Manager.

Microsoft yesterday announced the acquisition of Interactive Supercomputing, a parallel computing company aimed at simplifying "high end computing." According to a statement issued by Microsoft via its Windows Server blog,

ISC's products and technology enable faster prototyping, iteration, and deployment of large-scale parallel solutions, which is well aligned with our vision of making high performance computing and parallel computing easier, both on the desktop and in the cluster.

ISC CEO Bill Blake and others from the company's existing team will be moved to Microsoft's New England Research & Development Center in Cambridge, MA.

Because of a scheduling snafu, we missed the first segment of the TechCrunch50 conference on Monday. But we were in time for the "New Frontiers" segment, which included a couple of interesting hardware products.

Spawn Labs has developed a so-called HD-720 platform that allows a PC user to log in to a game console, such as a Microsoft Xbox 360, from a network-connected PC. As of now, Spawn only works with the Xbox 360.

To set up products, you'll need the Spawn HD-720 applicance, which connects to a game console. A game cline tis needed for the PC. With a username and password, the PC and the applicance connects, and the game can be played in 720p resolutions. If bandwidth is limited, the video resolution will degrade to maintain the frame rate.

The problem is latency: on a network it's 100 ms. The company knows ways to get to 70 ms,  playing across the Internet can add up to 50 ms.

Google's fantastic new telephony service, Voice, just got a little bit better. The company this week has rolled out a new feature that lets users forward their SMS to their e-mail, in a manner similar to (albeit likely more coherent than) the service's current voicemail transcription feature.

The new feature also lets users respond to said forwarded text messages via e-mail. According to TechCrunch, a few third-party app have already introduced this functionality, but required information for your Voice account.

A newly proposed law in the UK is looking to hit pirates where it hurts--right in the bandwidth. The law would give the Office of Communications (Ofcom) the ability to temporarily shut off the accounts of those deemed "hardcore copyright pirates."

The law would require ISPs to shutdown repeat offenders, splitting the cost of tracking down pirates between the Internet providers and the rights holders of infringed content. According to the BBC, however, the ISPs are, "disappointed by the proposal to force ISPs to suspend users' accounts," adding that the responsibility for tracking down offenders should not fall on them.

One of the cool WiMAX devices I saw today in Seoul was a router called the "Egg," which turns a WiMAX subscription into a Wi-Fi hotspot. With broadband speeds around 4 megabits down and 1.5 megabits up in the subway, and a monthly fee of $20 for 30GB of usage, KT's WiBro (Wireless Broadband) WiMAX service seems really compelling.

Korea doesn't have the iPhone yet, but apparently they have something almost as good. Twitter user Min Lee (@the_verdict) told me that Koreans are using Eggs to get their iPod Touches online at super-high speeds. You can stash an Egg in your bag and pow, you have a hotspot the Touch can use. It's a similar strategy to the trick of buying a Verizon Wireless MiFi router so the iPod Touch can pretend to work on Verizon - except the Korean version is cheaper, faster, and better. (Verizon charges $60/month for only 5GB, at slower speeds than WiBro.)

Of course, the iPod Touch still isn't a phone, but there are various VOIP apps available for the device that let it make calls, including Skype. The whole assemblage gets a wee bit clunky, but the idea of a $20/month, WiMAX-speed quasi-iPhone must really smart to everyone on AT&T in the USA.

PCMag.com editor in chief Lance Ulanoff and I are in Korea for the week, and I spent much of the day talking about and testing WiMAX - what the Koreans call WiBro (wireless broadband.) The Korean technology is exactly what Clearwire is currently installing in cities like Baltimore, Portland, and Atlanta, albeit on a different frequency.

WiBro launched in April 2007, and it's available across the Seoul metropolitan area. That's only one city, but it's half the Korean population. KT, the service provider, said they have about 300,000 subscribers for a range of plans priced at $10/month for 1GB, $20/month for 30GB or $27/month for 50GB of usage.

The WiBro experience in Seoul shows what true, high-speed wireless could feel like if it's done right. Deep in the Seoul subway system, Samsung hooked us up with adorable, candy-colored N310 netbooks with AnyCall USB WiBro modems. We pulled down fearsome speeds:  4.3 megabits down and 1.5 megabits up while sitting still in a station, and 4.1 megabits down and 900 kilobits up while zooming along on a train. Streaming video was a snap.

The experience reminded me: it's not the technology, it's the buildout. In recent WiMAX tests in Baltimore, I got a fraction of the speed I got in the Seoul subway. WiMAX requires a solid network of well-placed transmitters with plenty of backhaul to work well. If you go cheap on the buildout, you end up with lousy speeds.

Remember metropolitan Wi-Fi? What was supposed to be the saving grace of metropolitan areas fizzled out quickly, in part because of 3G connectivity, and consequently, as a result of communities questioning the networks' effectiveness.

One metropolitan Wi-Fi infrastructure continues to thrive, however: the one installed in Mountain View, Calif., the home of Google. Visit the Computer History Museum on Shoreline Blvd., for example, turn on Wi-Fi, and "GoogleWiFi" pops up, requiring only a free Gmail login to access the network. The network will celebrate its third anniversary this month.

In a recent press release from Tropos (which owns the routers on the network), the Google Wi-Fi network now covers 12 square miles, and serves 16,000 to 19,000 users at a time.  On a daily basis, the network now transports close to 600 gigabytes of user data -- double the volume from just two years ago. Tom Ayers, Tropos' chief executive, claims the network handles more data and users than any other comparable network in the world.

And, not surprisingly, more and more is from handhelds, Google said.

"We continue to experience extremely high demand - both in terms of users and bandwidth," said Karl Garcia at Google, who leads the Google WiFi project. "We've seen the iPhone and other Wi-Fi enabled handheld devices as significant drivers of the high demand we see. Currently nearly a quarter of all devices that connect to our network are handhelds, compared to almost none when we launched the network."

A 2006 compilation of metro Wi-Fi performance by Novarum is here, placing Google's network second behind a St.Cloud, Flor. network operated by Cyberspot. That's the same year PC Magazine did some wardriving to test it, which turned up some initial problems.

One planned municipal Wi-Fi project is definitely dead, however. Earthlink, which at one time planned to install a municipal system in San Francisco, is completely out of the muni Wi-Fi business, a company representative confirmed. Some analysts suspect that muni Wi-Fi may make a comeback, though, as more smartphones adopt the technology.

Finally! Although Clearwire turned their WiMax network on in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Portland earlier this year, Sprint users couldn't have access to it up until now. That changed today as Sprint said those three cities are ready for Sprint 4G users to jump on board. They join Baltimore, the only city that had official Sprint WiMax service up until now. (We reviewed the service a while ago when it was called Xohm.)

Right now, there's only one device Sprint is selling for WiMax, the U300 USB modem. Clearwire is selling several different devices for their side of the network, including the Samsung Mondi Windows Mobile handheld and a bunch of modems.

A service plan combining WiMax and Sprint's national 3G service costs $69.99/month; if you just want to buy a day pass to the WiMax network, it's $10/day.

According to a Sprint press release, Sprint has several new 4G devices planned for 2009 and 2010, including a single-mode 4G data card, embedded laptops and a 4G phone. Back when Sprint 4G was known as Xohm, they already had a data card from Samsung and a bunch of laptops, but pulled them from the market when Sprint changed their strategy.

Also from the press release: Sprint plans to deploy Sprint 4G service in these additional markets in 2009: Chicago, IL; Dallas, Ft. Worth, Philadelphia, PA; Austin, Texas; Abilene, Texas; Amarillo, Texas; Boise, Idaho; Bellingham, Wash.; Charlotte, N.C.; Corpus Christi, Texas; Greensboro, N.C.; Honolulu, HI; Killeen-Temple, Texas; Lubbock, Texas; Maui, Hawaii; Midland-Odessa, Texas; Raleigh, N.C.; Salem, Ore.; San Antonio, Texas; Seattle, WA: Waco, Texas; and Wichita Falls, Texas. In 2010, Sprint expects to launch service in multiple markets, including Boston, Houston, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Microsoft and Nokia on Wednesday announced an alliance that will bring Microsoft mobile software to Nokia devices next year.

Both companies, however, stressed that they remain committed to their respective operating systems - Windows Mobile and Symbian.

"We will develop Microsoft Office Mobile and related communication and collaboration software and services for Nokia smartphones," Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft Business Division, said during a call with reporters and analysts. "We will market these solutions to our partners and over the longer term, we will jointly design a range of new user experiences for future Nokia devices."

Nokia will first offer these services via its Eseries business phones, but will eventually expand to "many other Nokia smartphones," said Kai Öistämö, executive vice president for Nokia Devices, though he could not provide details on specific phones.

As a first step, Nokia has renewed its license with Microsoft Exchange Active Sync.

Next year, Nokia will start shipping smartphones loaded with Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile. Other Office applications and related software and services will be added in the future, including the ability to view, edit, create, and share Office documents on more devices, enterprise instant messaging and optimized conference calling, mobile access to intranet and extranet portals via SharePoint, and enterprise device management via Microsoft System Center.

"What we have shared today is by no means the full extent of the alliance," said Öistämö. "This is much more than just putting Microsoft software on Nokia smartphones."

So what else should we expect?

Is technology helping your boss take advantage of you? Three T-Mobile employees say yes.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the cell phone carrier was sued last month by workers who claim they their bosses contacted them after hours via company-issued smartphones to handle work-related issues without pay. Those who complained were told the extra work was part of "standard business practices."

A similar suit was filed in March by a former CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. maintenance worker, the Journal said.

With smartphones, "the boundaries become much more permeable" and work is difficult to monitor, Christina Banks, a senior lecturer at the University of California Berkeley and president of Lamorinda Consulting LLC, told the paper.

Should companies reimburse workers for any and all off-the-clock work, or is that just part of the deal in a more connected society?