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From The Register’s hardware site: the first commercial MP3 player was introduced in march 1998 by Saehan Information Systems, a South Korean company. The MPMan F10 had 32mb of RAM, a parallel port interface, and a numeric LCD display.

The Register has a photo of a later model, along with Creative’s Rio player. An RIAA lawsuit briefly halted MP3 hardware sales in October 1998.

Apple, of course, released its first iPod in October 2001, and ported iTunes software to Windows in April 2003. When iPods lost their FireWire connections and gained USB, consumer adoption began in earnest.

Ah, the memories. LowEndMac has an early timeline of the iPod for those who are interested.

According to Reuters, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is discussing a possible expansion of his company’s facilities. Malaysia is the most likely location, as that country ranks number one in Google usage in Southeast Asia. The country is also close to Google’s existing offices in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.

USA Today reported Thursday that Samsung and Microsoft have signed a cross-licensing agreement for consumer electronics patents.

Samsung’s mobile phones have become popular in the US. More of these phones include a digital music player. Microsoft needs to get more of its mobile software on these platforms, even if sales volume of its Zune audio player has brisk.

Cross-licensing agreements are one commonly used method for companies to share technology.

According to the Associated Press, South Korean hackers attacked the DNS (Domain Name System) computers that handle the .org addresses. These three computers are part of the 13 root DNS servers that map numeric IP addresses (like 216.106.112.135) to the more-familiar domain names that users have come to rely upon (like yahoo.com).

Most ISPs and large companies operate their own DNS servers, which at some point copy updated information from the root servers.

Domain names are discussed in chapter 9 of the IS 6100 text on p 341.

The attack was similar to an October 2002 attack on the 13 root DNS servers.

Business Week has an article about an interesting merger of two video game companies. Bandai bought Namco in September 2005, and Namco Bandai became the 3rd largest video game copmany in Japan.Here’s another article: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4252&Itemid=2

In the early years of the industry, Namco was best known for the Pac-Man, Galaxian and Frogger arcade games, as well as their use of the number 765 as a corporate symbol. In the PlayStation era, Namco found success with Tekken and Soul Calibur.

Bandai developed several popular series, as well as the Mobile Suit Gundam, Power Rangers and Cowboy Bebop multimedia franchises.

Both companies each struck licensing deals to put their games on home video game systems. I used to play the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man. It was tolerable, but at least I could save my quarters.

Both companies had strong relationships with the Sony PlayStation groups. Namco Bandai has developed two games for the PlayStation 3 launch, new versions of Mobile Suit Gundam and Ridge Racer. This is amazing, considering that the PS3 is a brand new console that was launched at different dates in Japan and the United States.

The company has also set up software development teams in the US, while maintaining its development offices in Korea and Japan. The US office focuses on porting older Namco and Bandai games to mobile phones. Rereleasing old intellectual property (IP) is a common business model in publishing.