May, 2007 Issue

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Google launched a new feature on its mapping service on Tuesday that allows people to see panoramic views of streets and buildings.

PayPlay.FM is offering its 1.3 million indie songs in DRM-free MP3 format for $0.88 each.

The Defense Department reports China is building cyberwarfare units and developing viruses.

Third-party products will bring VoIP functions to PlaySation in some regions this year.

A European Commission advisory group has raised concerns about how Google uses and manages users' search data.

This week, CNET.com's Robert Vamosi features guest security researcher Chris Boyd of FaceTime Communications. Boyd says he has discovered a new Skype-based worm that manages to jump the fence and infect other IM clients such as Trillian, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger. Boyd also talks about his ongoing work with botnets, in particular one network that appears to be using the botnet's spam profits to buy firearms for a Middle East terrorist cell.

Cell phones will soon be the biggest destination for music downloads, Napster says.

Vendors complete the first live 40-Gbps optical transmission trial.

U.S. firms pushed online ad revenues to new heights for the fourth consecutive year.

In New York City, you can go to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in midtown 24 hours a day, seven days a week and browse the Web from the Macs on display. But due to a new Apple regulation, you can no longer access MySpace.com.

Eben Moglen, the law professor and open-source legal expert who has helped lead the revision of the General Public License, is predicting broad success for the upcoming new version.

The sun came out for EarthLink's Philadelphia Wi-Fi network on Thursday even as prospects for its San Francisco project remain shrouded in fog.

The European Union investigates whether saving search data violates privacy laws.

BEIJING--It seemed like a pretty good place for stories.

Software vendor mulls how to compensate Chinese comupter users effected by a buggy antivirus update last week.

Suits filed against three individuals alleged to have used Hotmail to pump and dump various penny stocks.

A group of Carnegie Mellon University programmers has launched a service called "ReCaptcha" that can help cut down on spam while letting people digitise books.

Fall Professional Developers Conference cancelled due to timing concerns.

A European Commission advisory group has raised concerns about how Google uses and manages users' search data.

Google search just keeps getting more popular. That's according to the latest comScore figures, which show that Google captured 49.7 percent of the U.S. search market in April. That's up 1.4 share points from the previous month.

Despite some confusion over a recent press release, the next major update for Windows XP is still on track for 2008.

Approval of Earthlink's test network clears the way for the company to bring Wi-Fi to all of Philadelphia.

Wi-Fi support phones would allow BlackBerry users to download e-mail over wireless networks, when available.

Motorola will not produce any next-generation Wi-Fi equipment until the 802.11n standard is properly ratified, the company revealed on Thursday.

The EU is stepping up the fight against cybercrime, outlining plans to create more meaningful legislation and promote greater, cross-border cooperation.

April saw a doubling in the number of unique phishing sites, according to a report by industry association the Anti-Phishing Working Group.

The tried-and-true Nigerian e-mail scam is still going strong in Australia, and reported losses continue to grow.

K-12 IT administrators search for better ways to protect school PCs as they wait for the June 6 sentencing of substitute teacher Julie Amero.

IBM is proud of Innov8, its zeitgeist-flavoured service-oriented architecture training tool. A three-dimensional virtual environment, it leads players by the pixelated hand through the sort of analysis and decisions that end up with an SOA solution to all your business-process management needs.

Pity poor EMC. With $11bn (£5.5bn) turnover and an average 10 to 11 percent profit margin it's perhaps not so poor, but you have to pity any company that's trying to get important messages out at an important time in its history (its annual conference runs in Orlando, Florida, this week), but finds its best efforts shanghaied by another company.

Different people associate the iRemotePC project in various ways. It is a system for remote user guidance and assistance for a support service or an easy way of remote PCs administration for network administrators and even it is a tool for web-chat, file sharing in protected mode for common users of local home networks. It is significant that iRemotePC performs virtually all actions in protected mode (SSL). Why did I referred iRemotePC to a project not a software product? The matter is that iRemotePC is closely integrated with web and works in the connection with programs launched on client. These programs are installed on the fly and do not require computer reboot.

Orange announced a deal with Microsoft late on Monday that will see the software giant's corporate collaboration tools integrated into the communication firm's global business systems offerings.

Spammers, phishers and other Internet bottom-feeders, be warned.

For years now, newspapers have quietly watched Google index their headlines and offer users a synopsis of their stories without paying them a dime.

Google has invested $3.9 million in 23andMe, a biotech start-up co-founded by the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday.

Pack your bags Age of Empires. III is heading east. Microsoft Game Studios, Ensemble Studios and Big Huge Games Inc. today unveiled the first details about Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties, the second expansion pack for the top-selling Age of Empires III that arrives on Microsoft. Windows. XP- and Windows Vista-based PCs this fall. The expansion pack will introduce gamers to Asian civilizations, a host of new gameplay features, and a new developer that will provide a unique spin to a classic favorite.

Accordint to Microsoft, Office 2007 users running Windows Vista may not have received a patch for "important" Excel and Office 2007 holes.

Yahoo is interested in purchasing Bebo Inc. to strengthen its disappointing social networking standing, the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph has reported.

Warning: disturbing a war memorial can provoke all out cyber war--at least in Estonia. On April 27, 2007, Estonia officials relocated the "Bronze Soldier," a Soviet-era war memorial commemorating an unknown Russian who died fighting the Nazis, a move that incited rioting by ethnic Russians and the blockading of the Estonian Embassy in Moscow. It also started a large and sustained distributed denial-of-service attack on several Estonian Web sites, including those of government ministries and the prime minister's Reform Party. A denial-of-service attack (DoS) occurs when someone directs a large number of requests to a target URL; the requests occur so quickly that the Web server can't respond and the site becomes inaccessible to everyone. A distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) occurs when hundreds or thousands of compromised computers are enlisted. Within the last week, the intensity of the attacks diminished.

After gaining ground for a couple months, Microsoft's search business lost market share in April, while Google and Yahoo posted gains, according to statistics released Monday by Nielsen/NetRatings.

McAfee plans to unveil Tuesday an intrusion prevention system appliance aimed at protecting 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks from attacks. The McAfee IntruShield M-series appliance is expected to be available during the second half of the year.

Arbitrage and AdSense has been an issue basically since the day Google launched AdSense. Arbitrageurs would use Google AdWords and other means to send traffic to their site, and monetize that traffic with Google AdSense. Well, it seems that those made for Adsense sites and AdSense arbitrageurs are being shut down.

Salesforce.com on Monday is expected to announce a way move data between different applications using its online development platform.

Security company F-Secure has answered criticisms of its suggestion that a .bank top-level domain (TLD) be created to improve the protection of online financial services.

Microsoft has said it has no immediate plans to sue after alleging patent infringements by open-source vendors.

China's Ministry of Information Industry approved on Wednesday the use of European and American standards for 3G mobile phones, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported today.

Symantec announced on Wednesday that it has filed lawsuits against eight software distributors, alleging they illegally copied the company's software. The security and storage management software maker is seeking a total of $55m in damages. The lawsuits were filed over the past few months in three US district courts in California.

The wait is over. No more speculation and no more rumors. Just a few hours ago, Blizzard announced Starcraft 2 at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Seoul. This will be the first sequel to one of the most popular PC strategy games ever. The Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg are all coming back, each with their own unique style of play. The game's trailer was already up on Youtube by midnight and got almost 27,000 views in just over four hours.

Google now has a version of Google Apps tailored for Internet service providers and Web portals.

Microsoft has no plans to support OpenDocument Format in its own applications by default, despite the fact it has backed the ODF for ANSI accreditation.

An ambitious European satellite network will need more public money if it is to get off the ground on time.

In a bid to boost its presence in advertising, Microsoft said on Friday that it will pay $6bn (£3bn) to acquire Aquantive, a digital marketing and services company.

After installing this month's six-bug patch, some users aren't able to use the IE7 browser, Microsoft said.

Microsoft's timing seemed odd to some this week when it complained recently about alleged violations of its patents at the same time it pushed for a patent overhaul bill.

The Wi-Fi Alliance has launched its brand for fast Draft N Wi-Fi products, in advance of the final IEEE 802.11n standard.

The Federal Communications Commission approved Apple's iPhone, clearing the way for the combined phone and music player to hit the shelves.

Google grabbed the Web search headlines on Wednesday with splashy news that it was revamping its main page and blending results for all kinds of media indexed into one place -- not just text on Web pages, but video content, images and local map-related results. Previously, searchers had to conduct separate searches on Google's video, image and other search sites.

Responding to user grumbling about peripheral device incompatibilities, Microsofts claims Vista now supports 1.9 million devices.

Google today said it is now integrating results from a variety of its search engines in an attempt to deliver as relevant and comprehensive a result set as possible.

Google is exploring ways of further integrating its e-mail and instant messaging services with its hosted productivity applications.

Talk about whistling past the graveyard.

Microsoft said on Wednesday that the follow-on to its Windows Server 2008 operating system will be an interim release due to arrive in 2009.

High-speed wireless networking equipment will be certified in June, despite the fact the standard for the technology will not be finalised for two years.

Motorola officially announced the Razr2 cell phone and five other mobile devices today,with hopes the products will turn around the company's slumping sales.

Mozilla developers are experimenting with a service that lets users store online content on a remote server and access that information on cell phones.

As reported by Reuters on Tuesday evening, Warner Music Group Corp. has sued Imeem for copyright infringement pertaining to the use of its music (which includes Green Day, Madonna, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Imeem is a social media site that allows its members to share photos, videos, and music; connect with other members who have similar preferences; and embed Imeem widgets in blogs and other social networking sites.

Oracle announced plans on Tuesday to buy Agile Software in a $495m cash deal, giving the software giant a foothold in the product lifecycle management business.

As it tries to finish the next version of Office for the Mac, Microsoft has delayed efforts to enable current users of the productivity software to work with the new file formats used in the latest Windows version of the desktop software.

Microsoft has sold nearly 40 million copies of Windows Vista so far, Bill Gates told a crowd of hardware developers on Tuesday.

Today Yahoo has launched two new sites to get people motivated to be environmentally responsible. The sites compliment their previous green offering 18seconds.org, which tracks fluorescent light bulb usage in the continental United States. The sites are information tools, and part of a contest to help the greenest city in the U.S. get greener.

Digital photographers on Monday were debating whether a retailer can also offer professional camera reviews without creating the perception that the opinions are biased.

Around 100,000 users have been infected with malware that has piggybacked on Windows updates, according to a report from security research firm Symantec.

Google has warned web users of the increasing threat posed by malware that can be dropped onto a computer as a web surfer visits a particular site.

Child prodigies are rare in any artistic pursuit, but new music composition software is making it easier for parents and teachers to raise a little Beethoven.

LOS ANGELES - For the second time in recent days, Microsoft has inadvertently confirmed Windows Server 2008 as the official name for Longhorn Server.

TechCrunch is reporting that Jossip is reporting (in other words, it's still a rumor) that the web video show Wallstrip has been acquired by CBS News for $5 million.

CodeGear, the development tool company spun out of Borland Software, has created a product specifically for Ruby on Rails.

With the popularity of YouTube, the ubiquity of fast broadband connections and the fact that many people are watching TV programming on their computers, it's clear that online video advertising is getting hot. One of the latest companies to emerge in this space is Adap.tv, a start-up based in San Mateo, Calif., founded by Amir Ashkenazi, the co-founder of Shopping.com (which was purchased by eBay in 2005).

Several individuals and companies have been prosecuted for processing credit cards for gambling sites.

Colubris has revealed what it claims is the industry's first "intelligent, enterprise-class" 802.11n wireless LAN access point.

Microsoft on Sunday introduced phones, headsets and other devices that work with its software, with the intention of replacing the traditional office phone and delivering emails, instant messages and phone calls over the internet.

Microsoft Game Studios today announced that the eagerly awaited and innovative first-person shooter (FPS) Shadowrun has gone gold and will begin hitting retailers throughout North America on May 29.

Think shredding paper is a good way to hide printed information? Think again.

Intel and PGP have teamed up to sell encryption products on systems with Centrino Pro and vPro processors.

Intel has invested an undisclosed amount in Jajah, a voice over IP firm, and will grant the company access to its own patent portfolio.

Microsoft has severely criticised IBM, saying the company is pushing the OpenDocument Format standard to the detriment of Microsoft's own Open XML standard.

The massive data breach at TJX has been linked to badly secured Wi-Fi networks. CNET News.com's Joris Evers and CNET's Robert Vamosi give their take on this week's Security Bites podcast.

Sun is pertnering with Ericsson to support development of Java-based server applications runing on wireless networks.

Google may be known as the Web search advertising company but Google has big plans for offering services to corporations, says Stephen Arnold, author of The Google Legacy and a Google patent scrutinizer.

The failed shareholder proposal would have stopped Google from engaging in self-censorship.

In a blog entry, Second Life publisher Linden Lab has acknowledged it was contacted by a German TV station that said it had discovered images in the virtual world showing a child avatar engaged in "depicted sexual conduct" with an adult avatar.

SAN FRANCISCO--Java has come full circle, and James Gosling has watched the 12-year journey.

Vonage is close to coming up with a technical fix that could solve its patent infringement problems, chief executive Jeffrey Citron said during the company's quarterly earnings conference call on Thursday.

Windows Vista may not be a mystery anymore, but most IT departments are finding plenty of application testing is required before they'll be able to deploy the software, according to research giant Gartner.

AMD's widespread job cuts will not affect its UK operations.

UK Online, the first ISP in the country to offer next-generation broadband speeds nationally, is boosting its focus on the small-business market.

Yahoo is hiring two scientists in the areas of economics and sociology to head up its research in online markets and social networks, the company is expected to announce Thursday.

MySpace.com announced on Thursday that it will be hosting a series of so-called town hall events with many of the candidates who are vying for nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential primaries.

IBM is to launch a billion-dollar programme aimed at increasing energy efficiency in its data centres.

Apple has released a downloadable demo version of the game for iPods.

Ed Zander says Motorola is ready for competition from Apple's iPhone, due out next month.

Updated VMWare supports Vista, displays images on multiple monitors.

Yahoo will close its Yahoo Auctions service in the U.S. on June 16.

Hackers who stole 45 million customer records from the parent company of TK Maxx did so by breaking into the retail company's wireless LAN , it emerged on Monday.

Microsoft on Tuesday released fixes for 19 security flaws in several of its products, including the new Internet Explorer 7, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007.

While Microsoft may face some challenges taking advantage of the shift to internet advertising, it's in good company.

Symantec has lashed out at Microsoft's business security product, saying that the technology used to run it is not adequate.

Microsoft has has begun a months-long process of migrating users to a major upgrade of its Hotmail Web mail service.

Rumors late last week had it that Microsoft and Yahoo might launch a merger in order to better take on the top dog of the Internet, Google. Wall Street and Silicon Valley chewed on that bone for the better part of the day Friday, but in the end there wasn't much there after all.

Carl Icahn has lost his bid to win a board seat at Motorola, according to a preliminary count of votes Monday evening.

Sun Microsystems on Tuesday will introduce a friendlier way to write Java applications for consumer devices, an attempt to derive more profit from Java, and stake a greater claim in the next generation of Web applications.

If you've followed media reports about virtual worlds, this site among them, you might think the only one that exists is Second Life. But, of course, there are many others.

Lately, I've been getting into basketball. I know what you're going to say. That I'm jumping on the bandwagon. (I am.) It all started because of a man, of course.

RIM's BlackBerry Curve, new Nokia low-cost handsets enter the market.

IBM shepherding U.S. software firms into global markets, providing technical help, localization advice, other assistance.

Microsoft will release a revamped version of its popular online e-mail service.

Intel will roll out Vista internally only once the first service pack of the operating system has been released, and Dell is likely to do the same.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is dishing out chip and PIN devices to its online banking customers.

Microsoft has agreed to acquire European mobile phone ad company ScreenTonic to try to gain a foothold in that rapidly growing market.

NBC Universal and Viacom have come out against YouTube in a legal case that could help to determine whether the video-sharing site is culpable for copyright violations committed by users.

Microsoft on Tuesday plans to release seven security bulletins, including a fix for a zero-day flaw in Windows that is already being used in cyberattacks.

With the shadow of Google looming over both companies, the New York Post says the software giant wants Yahoo to consider a buyout.

Some of Microsoft's most important customers aren't happy with the battery life offered by notebooks running Windows Vista.

Think malware will fade away with Vista? Sorry. There's about as much chance of the thriving throngs of online criminals packing up shop as there is of Microsoft doing the same.

IBM's head of innovation called for more integration between online virtual worlds.

Verizon, Geek Squad, and Peak8 gear up to support everything from computers to routers to game consoles.

Nova Media's new Globesurfer Icon 7.2 Ready lets Macs and PCs connect to the Internet via HSDPA, UMTS, EDGE and GPRS cell networks worldwide.

Virtualisation will be a key infrastructure priority for chief information officers looking to reduce costs and increase energy efficiency over the next 12 months.

LOS ANGELES--Imagine a site just like YouTube, except that the people posting videos are successful comedians and actors.

Some of the site's most popular content creators can start earning revenue from videos they post.

From News Corp.'s overt bid to buy Dow Jones to rumors involving Yahoo and Microsoft, the media world was buzzing this week with merger and acquisition speculation. Some of it was real, and some of it, most likely, was wishful thinking. Of course, the reports nudged some stocks along.

MENLO PARK, Calif.--If you want to pack a room of mechanical engineers in Silicon Valley, just trot out its hottest new symbol of status and geekery, the Tesla Roadster.

Tuvalu is one of several Pacific island nations closely watching predictions about rising ocean levels. It's 700 miles north of Fiji. Residents there say the months of highest tides are already worse and wetter than historically. Homes and precious farm land have been lost. Well water is becoming salty. The CIA summary on Tuvalu states it succinctly. "Tuvalu is concerned about global increases in greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on rising sea levels, which threaten the country's underground water table."

Microsoft on Tuesday plans to release seven security bulletins, including a fix for a zero-day flaw in Windows that is already being used in cyberattacks.

After more than two years of overhauling its free Web e-mail service, Microsoft plans on Monday to drop the "beta" term from its Windows Live Hotmail service, according to sources familiar with the company's plans.

Microsoft will continue to prioritize security and ease of use in the forthcoming Internet Explorer 8 and will seek to improve Web development with current standards compatibility, according to the company.

Rumor has it that T-Mobile is prepping the nationwide launch of a Wi-Fi service that would let customers use the technology to make voice calls with their cell phones. Hotspot at Home, which is currently in trials in Seattle, would expand on the carrier's current Wi-Fi network of 8,000 Internt access hotstops. T-Mobile declined to comment on the rumors, which probably means the America's fourth-largest carrier has something up its sleeve.

Brad Garlinghouse, SVP of Yahoo and author of the famous "Peanut Butter Manifesto," in which he told people inside Yahoo that the company was spread too thin, told me tonight at a dinner that "I'm eating my own peanut butter." On Friday, he said, Yahoo will begin to close down Yahoo Photos, in favor of Flickr, the competing photo sharing site the company bought just over a year ago.

New Zealand-based company Michael S Sutton Ltd has filed a complaint against Nokia in the US for infringing a data-packaging technology patent and is seeking damages, court documents showed.

Ubisoft, one of the world's largest video game publishers officially announced that The Settlers® Rise of an Empire, Blue Byte's sixth game in this popular PC simulation series will be released in September 2007.

Yahoo is set to release late Wednesday a new Web-based version of its instant-messaging application that lets people use Yahoo Messenger on any browser and any Internet-connected computer rather than having to download it to a hard drive.

VeriSign has picked a partner to integrate one-time passwords onto banking cards.

Group urges government to extend antifraud regulations to virtual communities.

Symantec Corp. is slipping on its target delivery time for the next major upgrade of its security product for enterprises.

New Mexico plant will lay off workers when Intel stops producing flash memory chips there this summer.

Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg Inc., threw in the towel on Tuesday night.

Creative Technology expects to announce a new lineup of MP3 players soon.

VoIP provider Truphone has attacked Vodafone over its alleged refusal to connect calls to Truphone's network.

LAS VEGAS--The intermingling of media-rich consumer devices and socially oriented Web services is opening up new avenues in marketing, according to Robert Bach, head of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division.

MIX 07 keynote attendees abandon digital entertainment marketing presentations.

Interested in learning Chinese, but don't have the money or time to study in China? Some teachers are turning to Skype for help.

E-mail security company Proofpoint announced Monday that it has introduced Dynamic Reputation, a service for testing the validity of e-mails to weed out threats like spam, directory harvest attacks, and distributed denial-of-service attacks. Like other recently introduced e-mail security products, Dynamic Reputation assesses the reputation of an e-mail's sender, grading it to determine whether it could be classified as spam.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google wants you to express yourself.

Does the world need open-source search tools? The people at Wikipedia think so.

We now know a lot about tsunamis that we didn't know a few years ago. There's even been significant research showing how hurricanes and tsunamis can act alike once onshore. Today, we learn a little more about a tsunami that occurred 400 years ago.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google responded to Viacom's $1 billion copyright lawsuit on Monday, arguing that it has not infringed on the rights of the media company and that the lawsuit threatens the viability of its popular YouTube video-sharing Web site as well as others like it.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued two dire reports this year on global warming and now the third comes on May 4, and it discusses technologies for adapting to climate change.

The BBC's iPlayer on-demand TV service has been given the green light, which will enable viewers to download their favorite programs in the near future.