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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sealed separate agreements with Verizon and AT&T for a combined contract price of $970.5 million.

Under the Department’s agreement with Verizon, Internet protocol (IP), security services and emergency communications services will be provided by Verizon to the Department of Homeland Security. This would greatly help the Department’s response time in a disaster situation. The deal would enable Verizon to assist the 22 agencies of the Department to combine their IP network.

This deal would add up to the previously won 10-year, $20 billion contract won by Verizon which would provide a full range of telecommunications and related network services to the whole organization of the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, the deal with AT&T calls for the company serving as the secondary network service provider in the Eastern and Western region of the U.S. Their deal will cost the Department of Homeland Security around $292 million.

Read [Reuters]

According to a report on Information Week, infamous “Spam King” Sanford Wallace, and his phishing partner Walter Rines were slammed with a whopping $225 million judgment by a U.S. District Court on Monday.

“MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site,” said Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer of MySpace, in an e-mailed statement. “The Federal District Court in Los Angeles awarded MySpace $223,777,500 under the federal CAN-SPAM Act and $1,500,000 under the California anti-phishing statute. User engagement is up 32 percent year over year while spam is significantly decreasing, proving efforts like this are working.”

In October of 2006 the pair began creating bogus MySpace accounts and hijacking over 300,000 others. They then used the compromised accounts to send tens of thousands of spam messages and bomb the comment section of thousands of MySpace pages with links to other spam sites. The popular social networking site sued in 2007. Wallace posted a response to the judgement on his website, claiming he had never been served and that “the check is in the mail.”

Since 1997 Wallace has been sued by many service providers including AOL, Earthlink, and CompuServe, and last year was fined $4 million by the FTC for deceptive advertising and distributing spyware.

Read [InformationWeek]

Remember the rumor back in February that Google was buying Plaxo for $200 million? Well, for the most part, it turned out to be a trumor.  However, instead of Google making the purchase, it turns out that Comcast is doing the buying. The cable company plans to utilize Plaxo to deliver upcoming social-networking features currently in the works for their TV, Internet, and phone service. Plaxo will be used to bridge all three Comcast services together, linking devices such as TVs, DVRs, and wireless devices. The terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, but the two companies have already been working together in developing SmartZone, an online portal available to millions of Comcast broadband and phone customers that provides easy access to several communications tools (e.g., email and voicemail)—all in one place.

Plaxo was founded in 2001 with an original premise of keeping users’ address books updated by automatically sharing data among friends. With the emergence of social networking sites, the start up company now offers capabilities to keep in touch with family and friends by sharing photos, videos, and messages. According to the Plaxo blog:

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In a recently published open letter to the Yahoo! Board of Directors, Carl Icahn makes things pretty clear, he wants to dump the entire current board. He is not very happy with the way the current board acted with Microsoft’s offer of $47.5 billion and feels the $33 per share price was a “superior alternative” to what Yahoo could do on their own.

“It is clear to me that the board of directors of Yahoo has acted irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders and Microsoft.”

In a long and thorough letter he present a list of 10 members that he feels should replace the current board. The new list includes not only himself, but also Lucian A. Bebchuk, Frank J. Biondi, Jr., John H. Chapple, Mark Cuban, Adam Dell, Keith A. Meister, Edward H. Meyer, Brian S. Posner and Robert K. Shaye.

While Carl Icahn is going after this with full force, even if he were to get the newly proposed board in order, there has not been any word from the Microsoft camp as to whether or not they would come back and continue the deal.

Keep reading to check out the full letter…

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CBS and CNET Network has sealed an acquisition agreement that could probably be the next biggest acquisition deal after the failed Microsoft-Yahoo deal. Although the price involved in this acquisition is not as big as the Microsoft-Yahoo deal, the fact is both CBS and CNET Network own some of the most popular internet properties and combining them would elevate CBS into the ranks of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the US.

For a purchase price of $11.50 per share, CBS hopes to acquire CNET Networks by the close of the third quarter this year. Luckily for them, the CNET Board has unanimously approved the proposed deal valued at $1.8 billion.

This deal would certainly be most favorable to CBS, since if you combined the unique visitors of its Internet properties with that of CNET Networks, the company would gain around 54 million unique users per month, with a total of around 200 million users worldwide. This is certainly not a bad deal at all for both companies.

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The wrappings come off a couple of cool applications this week:

Even though Google Sky was first to allow wannabe astronomers to surf the heavens from their computers, Microsoft Research’s Worldwide Telescope is getting some good reviews for ease-of-use and the sheer wonder of its visuals. The app, previewed at the TED Conference in February, is now public and uses images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, among other sources. Sorry, Mac users aren’t invited to this sky party; this window on the galaxy is Windows only.

You like to watch. Admit it. You know you do. Uh...we are talking about live car chases on local TV, right? If you live in the Chicago area, you can now watch those who do the watching of vehicular perps around the Loop. AirFox Live is the Fox affiliate’s website for its chopper video, streaming live from a number of cameras on the helicopter. The nice bonus is live GPS tracking on a map. I’m linking to the AirFox Live site but I first read about this on the Lost Remote website, which does an excellent job of tracking technology developments within the news business.

Read [Worldwide Telescope] Read [AirFox Live] Read [Lost Remote]

It is like silky chocolate that is dipped in creamy peanut butter; that’s how I’d describe two companies I use and enjoy teaming up to bring their services together.  PhoneTag (formerly Simulscribe) the voicemail to text service that saves me from listening to voicemails and Grand Central, the service that allows me to filter out who can actually reach me, have cut a deal to allow the services to work hand in hand.  A happy day indeed.

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It’s the future as seen in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” but it’s happening in the here and now: advertisers and retailers tracking your every move.

In the Tom Cruise blockbuster, that tracking was done via optical recognition whenever his character walked into a Gap or walked by certain ads; in the case of the cable company Charter Communications, the tracking will be done every time you click on a favorite website.

Broadband Reports first dug up the emails that were sent by Charter to its high-speed subscribers notifying them of the “enhanced online experience” they’re about to enjoy, all made possible by technology inserted into ISP networks that tracks browsing habits and allows providers to target ads. Charter says its customers won’t be getting personalized ads or more ads altogether, just ads that “better reflect the interests you express through your web-surfing activities.”

And that’s not personal? The arguments are already being primed by privacy advocates.

Broadband Reports gives props to Charter for at least emailing its subscribers with the news, but then turning the opt-out process into a comedy routine.

Wired’s Threat Level blog goes into more detail about this technology and Charter’s reaction to questions about privacy concerns. Some of the comments on Broadband Reports talk about the lack of rewards for allowing this look at your surfing habits, and therein lies the future of this technology. As it stands now, some customers might not raise a stink about this if there is simply the promise of an “enhanced online experience.” If that experience includes coupons, discounts and giveaways, then the line for those ready to trade their Internet rights for goodies could look like opening night for a Spielberg blockbuster.

Read [Broadband Reports] Read [Threat Level]

Google Search is big, everyone knows that.  But what we may not have know is how big.  According to estimates, Google Search is on track to overtake Microsoft Windows business by this time next year.  But will that be all the Redmond giant loses?

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After announcing the launch of its latest BlackBerry handset - the BlackBerry Bold, Microsoft and RIM have announced an agreement that will bring Windows Live Messenger and Live Hotmail to all BlackBerry handsets. This would allow users to access both their Windows Live Messenger and Live Hotmail using their e-mail addresses and passwords, just once.

With Windows Live Hotmail and Live Messenger on their BlackBerry devices, users will be able to the following; set an automatic message delivery and message synchronization using push technology, utilize a dedicated inbox for Windows Live Hotmail messages delivered automatically to users’ handsets, display HTML e-mail with graphics, web links and contact photos, send instant message and join group chats, see status and preferences of Windows Live Messenger contacts, customize status message, save conversations, display avatars, send and receive picture and files, and use more than 60 emoticons.

Windows Live Messenger and Live Hotmail will be available for the BlackBerry beginning summer of this year in multiple languages.

Read [Microsoft Press Pass]