Below The Beltway

It’s been long enough, but it looks like the merger between XM and Sirius Satellite Radio may finally go forward:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The proposed merger of the nation’s two satellite radio broadcasters, bogged down in the regulatory process for over a year, has cleared a major hurdle with Federal Communications Commission chief recommending approval of [...]

It’s official, the next version of Firefox will be released next Tuesday:
After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download [...]

cNet reports on signs that the iPhone may not be tied exclusively to AT&T for much longer:
While everyone else was calling the iPhone the greatest device of all time and putting Steve Jobs on that pedestal he enjoys so much yesterday, AT&T quietly told its investors that the revenue sharing deal it had with Apple [...]

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connnor is apparently involved in a project to bring Constitutional jurisprudence to the online gaming world:
If you imagine what Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is doing in her retirement, you might not come up with this: Designing provocative clothing for virtual avatars to wear in a multiplayer [...]

If you could narrow it down to two words, for most of us it would apparently be — you’re boring:
New research that makes creative use of sensitive location-tracking data from 100,000 cellphones in Europe suggests that most people can be found in one of just a few locations at any time, and that they do [...]

The writer’s strike may have only been the beginning of what looks to be a momentous media change:
With the exception of Fox’s surprisingly strong “American Idol” finale on Wednesday, the May ratings have been pretty atrocious across the board, in a strike-shortened year that’s already shaping up as the TV executives’ annushorribilis.
The worst part is [...]

The WaPo’s Howard Kurtz has sour grapes over the fact that the newspaper industry is being forced to change:
Let’s not bury the lead: This is a rough time for the newspaper business, a rough time for The Washington Post and a rough time for me.
No one need shed any tears for the people leaving this [...]

It’s happening slowly, but the landline phone looks to be on the way to becoming an anachronism:
WASHINGTON - For nearly three in 10 households, don’t even bother trying to call them on a landline phone. They either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone.
The federal figures, released [...]

An interesting article in The New York Times today talks about the changes being forced on television networks by the growing popularity of time-shifting technologies such as Digital Video Recorders:
This week, the television upfronts — in which the broadcast networks present their schedules to advertisers — will open with a mystery. Who stole six million [...]

The Vatican Website, now in Latin:
[S]tarting today, in addition to its Italian and English and German and Spanish and Portuguese and French versions, the Vatican web site — and quite a sophisticated and attractive site it is — has just added a Latin version as well.
Hey, if this catches on, I may have to work [...]