Sony Vaio FW and SR Series: First 16.4-Inch Notebook, MacBook-Style Keyboards

Two series of Vaio Centrino 2 consumer notebooks: FW is the world's first 16.4-inch widescreen notebook, meant to deliver a 17-inch widescreen 16:9 experience in a 15-incher's footprint. (The math sort of works.) It's optimized for HD and Blu-ray playback (though optional) with built-in PS3 and Vaio Home Theater PC streaming. The SR-series notebooks bring some higher-end features down to the consumer level at a decent, with an LED-backlit 13.3-inch widescreen and G-sensor HDD shock protection. Every Vaio notebook (except the BZ biz class laptops) has the new MacBook style-keyboard—though Sony says they did it first, 2003—as well as a crapware manager

SAN DIEGO, July 15, 2008 Sony today unveiled the VAIO® FW notebook—a multimedia PC that displays HD movies the way they were meant to be seen.

Part of a series, the VAIO FW notebook comes in multiple configurations, including a premium and a standard model. The premium model plays Blu-ray Disc™ high-definition content like movies in full 1080 HD resolution when connected to a compatible HDTV. It can also record, store and play back personal content on high-capacity BD media.
Weighing a little over six pounds, the FW notebook features the world’s first 16.4-inch display, which combines the benefits of a slightly larger17-inch widescreen with the smaller “footprint” of a 15.4-inch model.

Intel's Centrino 2 Gets Official Launch, Alongside Core 2 Extreme

We learned in May that there would be delays to Intel's Centrino 2 chipset for notebooks, but today it gets an official launch from Intel. That certainly tallies with the slew of notebooks hitting the news which have the chips inside. Alongside the Centrino 2, Intel gives us word on the Core 2 Extreme, which runs at 3.06 GHz and the Mobile Intel 45 Express Chipset and wireless Intel Wi-Fi Link 5000, and the WiMAX/Wi-Fi Link 5050 chipset that supports the Centrino 2 to support WiMax and wi-fi operations. Since Intel plans to release eight processors over the next 90 days, there'll be lots more news like this.

New Intel-Based Laptops Advance All Facets of Notebook PCs

New Intel(R) Centrino(R) 2 Processor Technology Brings 'HD-to-Go'; Adds Security and Manageability Features, Boosts Speed, Battery Life and Wireless Range
SAN FRANCISCO —(Business Wire)— Jul. 15, 2008 Intel Corporation unveiled its Intel(R) Centrino(R) 2 Processor Technology products for laptops today, powered by five new Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processors. Close to 250 innovative consumer and business notebook PC designs are on the way, including those equipped with the right combination of powerful processors, graphics and battery life to enjoy viewing stunning high definition videos and myriad other computer and Internet activities.

Toshiba Qosmio G55 is First Laptop With Cell Processor Aboard

Toshiba's Qosmio G55 has popped up on Giz over the last couple of months, talking about it's advanced gesture controls which rely on it's use of the PS3's Cell processor tech, and now it's official. Toshiba's calling it the "world's first laptop with cell processor tech inside", and concentrates on four functions it gives the machine. Upconvert/upconversion (basically 1080i upscaling,) transcoding of video formats, face-based video indexing and gesture control. The laptop will have a starting price of $1,299.99

The Qosmio G55 series is available in the following configurations:

Qosmio G55-Q802 Unique Specifications (MSRP $1,549.99(4))
—OS selection at first boot:
- Genuine Windows Vista(R) Home Premium (SP1, 64-bit5
version)(default)
- Genuine Windows Vista(R) Home Premium (SP1, 32-bit version)
—Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo Processor T7350(1)
- 2.0 GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB
—TOSHIBA Quad Core HD Processor(1)
—4096MB PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz SDRAM memory(6)
—500GB using two 5400 RPM Serial ATA hard disk drives(7)
—DVD SuperMulti (+/- double layer) drive with Labelflash(TM)
supporting 11 formats
—NVIDIA(R) GeForce(TM) 9600M GT with 512MB GDDR2 discrete graphics(2)
memory,
—Atheros(R) 802.11 b/g/n wireless-LAN(8)

iPhone 3G Reviews: Hardware, Software and Apps

Here's our Gizmodo iPhone 3G Review, iPhone Firmware 2.0 Review and our still updating iPhone App Review Marathon.

Free Laptop-Tracking System Hits the Streets

Adeona may have been the goddess of safe returns, but if a group of computer science professors and graduate students get their wish, they'll be viewed as the patron saints of secure laptop computer data, thanks to their new open source software service named after the Roman deity. Also, for those who worship at the altar of bargains, Adeona may indeed be a godsend: It's free. Adeona, the result of a yearlong joint research project at the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego, allows users to track the location of lost or stolen laptop computers.

Microsoft E3 Liveblog [Announcements

We're here in LA and livebloging the Microsoft presser today at 10:30 PDT. Mark Wilson and I will be covering the hell out of the hardware announcements, but if you're interested in the new game announcements, Kotaku will be the place to go. What announcements will there be? A motion-controlled interface? A karaoke controller? We'll find out soon. The liveblog will be here, in this post, so bookmark it and keep checking back! Update: It's started. 9:25 We're here in line waiting for the doors to open. An interesting observation: If you compare the games journalists to the tech journalists we usually see at Apple, games journalists are much younger.

Second Life Faces Open Source Challenges

ruphus13 writes "Linden Labs has talked about Open Sourcing aspects of their platform for a while, but have not always followed through. Now, the OpenSimulator project has been gathering some solid momentum, and this was followed by an announcement by IBM that showed interoperability between OpenSimulator and Linden Servers. What this means is that you can use a Second Life client to log on to an OpenSim server. Beyond that, anyone can run their own server.

Two new Xbox 360 controllers unveiled

Microsoft has unveild two limited edition Xbox 360 controllers, which come in blue or red finishes. The new controllers will retail with rechargeable battery packs, in the same finish as the controller, and are to be priced at USD 64.99. Microsoft's website lists the controllers as being available from September 30 and will feature design changes such as new black accents and an upgraded rumble feature to prolong battery life. View: Games Industry

Evidence mounts for August Eee PC carnage with $299 Dell E launch

Doing with a single E what takes ASUS three, Dell's mini netbook looks to be on track for an August kill sprEee. We've already seen Dell's launch timeline and specs, of course, and this morning we've got the hushed whispers of DigiTimes' "market sources" again claiming that the Compal manufactured Dell 8.9-inchers will launch in August for $299. For that price, assuming everything we've heard so far is correct, you'll get an instant-on Linux distro running atop Intel's 1.6GHz Atom processor, a 1,024 x 600 display, 3x USB, a wee SSD, integrated webcam, WiFi, and more in a 0.82-1.22-inch thick sled weighing about 2.2-pounds.

iPhone 3G launch coverage roundup

Cellphones Even though the dust ought to have settled three and a half days later, people all over the country (and world?) are still spending hours in line for an iPhone 3G. It's a tall order for a phone, but clearly people are ravenous -- so here's all the news you need to catch yourself up on the goings on of the past few days. P.S. -Sick of the iPhone news? Don't sweat it, we'll be live from the Sony and Nintendo E3 keynotes tomorrow! Review! iPhone 3G review Hands-on coverage iPhone 3G first look, what do you want to know? Video: iPhone 3G unboxing and first look Black iPhone 3G vs

Microsoft to Cut Xbox 360 Price This Weekend

Rumors about Microsoft planning to cut the price of its Xbox 360 game console, but now there appears to be sufficient evidence that such a move is imminent: Flyers and internal memos posted on the Internet suggest that the price of the Xbox 360 Pro (Premium) console - Microsoft’s volume system - will drop by $50 from $349.99 to $299.99.Various gaming websites confirmed an earlier report by the Wall Street Journal about the upcoming price cut. Ads from Best Buy Best Buy and K-mart as well as an internal memo from GameStop essentially confirm the $299.99 price beginning Sunday, July 13. The price of the $450 Elite system is generally believed to remain unchanged.Target online has taken it a step further by already offering the Xbox 360 Pro on its website for $299.99.So, why the price drop?There may be two sides to the story. One is the life-cycle of the console. As the production matures, production cost goes down (which has been confirmed by Microsoft over the past six quarters) and enables the company to drop the price to make the package more attractive.On the other side, the Wii and the PS3 have significant momentum and are hurting Xbox 360 sales especially in Europe and Asia. According to NPD, the Xbox 360 was the second worst selling game console in May: 186,600 units were just slightly ahead of the Playstation portable, which sold 182,300 units. Sony sold 208,700 PS3s and Nintendo 675,100 Wiis and 452,600 portable DS consoles.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 GPUs

-- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 GPUs-your portal to a whole new visual world
 
Immerse yourself completely with NVIDIA's latest GPUs. Get unrivaled game play and an unbelievable visual experience.

Games become so real and intense that your palms sweat and your heart races. The PhysX™ technology in the GeForce® GTX® 200 GPU provides convincing character facial animation and fully simulated physical effects, delivering a truly immersive and dynamic 3D gaming experience. And by combining your GeForce GTX 200 GPUs with an nForce® 790i Ultra SLI® motherboard, you can blow away your competition. With up to 240 processor cores and blazing-fast frame rates, your games come to life. Plus, with 50% better performance than previous generation graphics processors, you get it all... No lag. No dropped frames. No compromises.

Beyond the field of play, GeForce GTX 200 GPUs shift intense processing tasks from the CPU to the GPU. So enjoy the latest Blu-ray movie, run the Folding@home protein-folding application to help cure diseases, browse your favorite web sites in 3D, and transcode video to a personal video player up to 7×faster faster than the CPU.1

With the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 GPUs both performance and immersion are absolute.

Goodbye, XP. And Welcome VIsta

June 30 is the day that Microsoft begins phasing out Windows XP by no longer providing copies of the operating system to PC makers and retailers for preloading on new machines. It’s also a good day (thanks to a recent New York Times opinion piece) to start looking ahead to what comes next — after Windows.That answer could be Softie Eric Rudder’s mysterious “Midori” project.First, the back story: As San Jose State Professor Randall Stross notes in his Times article, “Windows Could Use a Rush of Fresh Air,” Windows has become big and unwieldy. That’s why Microsoft has been working for the past several years on reducing dependencies within Windows. And that’s what MinWin, the slimmed-down Windows core that Microsoft’s Core team has built (which supposedly won’t be at the heart of Windows 7) is all about.Microsoft also has been investigating for the past several years what a non-Windows-based operating system might look like. That project, which recently hit the 1.0 milestone, is code-named “Singularity.”
Now its turning into the revolution of Windows Vista, aiming all the providers and the users are now currently using Windows Xp will be changed into Windows Vista. . .
Microsoft is aiming to the net generation Operating System ie, WINDOWS 7 is aming to launch after 2 years. . .

Bill Gates Sign Off from MICROSOFT

The news that the world point out is BILL GATES STEP DOWN FROM MICROSOFT. The man who stood behind the microsoft and the legend in software and computer field is now concentrating to the develop his foundation "GATES FOUNDATION". In 1953 Bill Gates sets the Microsoft into motion. Now he is not in Microsoft.

A detailed description of the life styles and the behind scenes in Microsoft will be posted very soon cheeck out for the latest information.

“We've really achieved the ideal of what I wanted Microsoft to become.”
-Bill Gates, June 2008

The latest video will be updated soon. . . . . .

Firefox 3 Exceeds 2.9 Million Downloads In First 8 Hours

It appears that Mozilla has easily achieved its goal to set a new Guinness world record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. Despite the fact that the download pages were virtually not reachable for several hours after the software was officially released at 1:16 PM EDT today (we actually found it posted on Mozilla’s FTP server at 1:31 PM EDT), lots of download requests apparently were successful.Eight hours after the release of the software, the download counter stood at almost 2.92 million downloads. Mozilla’s own goal was to hit more than 1.6 million Firefox downloads within 24 hours to set a Guinness world record. Firefox 2 was downloaded about 1.6 million within one day after launch. Mozilla said that it will take about one week to review download logs and validate the record attempt.So far, more than 1 million downloads came from the U.S., more than 100,000 from Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, Spain and the UK.

AMD hitting NVIDIA where it hurts, the games

AMD's newfound zest for life has made it look for what would really, really hurt the competition. The answer? the game developers. I'm not sure if you've heard, but Blizzard has grown pretty big these days. World of WarCraft has been an indescribable success. It's been known for a while that Blizzard has been looking at implementing DirectX 10.1 with one of its future games. The fact is that it's more than one, or two.

If AMD has played its cards right, Blizzard is not only looking to implement DX10.1 support, and in best-AMD-case scenario, DX10.1-exclusive effects, with future games, but also patch current games with DX10.1 for additional performance and effects. If everything comes together for AMD, this means that StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, future World of WarCraft add-ons, and more games from Blizzard will sport DX10.1, something which NVIDIA is unable to handle hardware-wise.

That's not all though. We recently learned that AMD is looking to team up with more developers, and if there's one engine that has loved ATI hardware for a long time, it's the Valve Source engine. ATI is apparently hoping to ensnare Valve as well, and have DX10.1 support with future games like Half-Life 2: Episode 3, Left 4 Dead, Portal 2 and the rest. Knowing how flexible the Source engine is, we wouldn't be surprised if current games would be patched to further boost performance and additional effects through DX10.1.

Game developers have a tendency to play it safe though, and whether there will be any exclusive effects or not remains to be seen. We see no reason for why they shouldn't implement DirectX 10.1 though, the worst that can happen is that people with compliant hardware will get a performance boost where DX10.1 makes a difference over DX10.0.

XBOX 360 Finally Getting Blu-Ray

After months of rumors and denials, the XBOX 360 with a Blu-ray disc drive is due to be manufactured soon and shipped in Q3 of 2008. Pegatron Technology, an OEM subsidiary of Asustek Computer, is reported to have received the winning order from Microsoft for a Blu-ray equipped XBOX 360.

Earlier reports cited Lite-On as the company with the privilege of building the new console for Microsoft. Lite-On is also currently one of the suppliers of the internal DVD drive fro the XBOX 360.

One of the strong points for Sony’s Playstation 3 has been the integrated Blu-ray player. The PS3 had the ability to draw both gamers and audio/video enthusiast, and this was proving to be a major advantage over its XBOX rival. It is estimated that 85% of Blu-ray players in use are PS3s. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer had admitted that Microsoft had been working on support for Blu-ray under Windows during this year’s Mix08 conference. Rumors began to swirl and many began to expect Microsoft to announce a Blu-ray peripheral for the XBOX 360.

However, Microsoft came out and denied all rumors, stating that they were not exploring any kind of Blu-ray add-on or in talks with Sony about integrating Blu-ray into the XBOX experience. The software giant stated they would continue to invest in its XBOX Live online service as the means of high-definition content delivery. Toshiba received a crushing blow earlier this year at CES that Warner Brothers would be Blu-ray exclusive. This eventually led to Toshiba withdrawing from the HD format war and the demise of the XBOX 360’s HD-DVD add-on. It is interesting to note that sales of the XBOX 360 lagged behind Sony’s PS3 in the month of February, the same month Toshiba withdrew.

Many expected the death of HD-DVD would trigger a growth in Blu-ray hardware sales. However, to the dismay of the industry, acceptance and adoption of Blu-ray has been dismal.

The PS3 is one of the cheapest (relatively speaking) Blu-ray players available — and you get the console thrown in for good measure.

''VisualRank'' - PageRank for Images

Google has unveiled a prototype for an Internet technology it calls "VisualRank," an image search algorithm that it says will bring the same kind of precision its "PageRank" technology did for text-based Web searches.

In addition to changing the formula for searching specifically for image results, Google said its new technology also takes into account pictures that look similar, grouping those results together.

"We wanted to incorporate all of the stuff that is happening in computer vision and put it in a Web framework," the New York Times quoted senior Google researcher Shumeet Baluja saying at the International World Wide Web Conference.

Google researchers say image recognition and searching has been one area of technology that has lagged behind as other areas have enhanced.

The online giant says it has the "most comprehensive image search on the Web," but it currently relies largely on key text phrases associated with the pictures.

In structuring the new technology, the Times reports that Google first focused on specific items that ranked as top searches on Google Products (formerly known as Froogle). It then moved to matching an image search, for example, for "iPod" by scanning Google’s massive image index for pictures that matched the actual file photo of an iPod than for images with the word "iPod" attached to it.

While Google feels it is paving the future, others have been dismissive. The CEO of the online shopping search start-up Riya told the Times, "I think what they’re trying to accomplish is largely impossible. Our belief is, there [are] not large-scale solutions."

P2P Market share 2008

We want to make it clear though that install rates do not equal usage.

The fact that someone installed a P2P client does not mean that they actually use it.

Google Adds Offline Access to Docs and Apps

Several month after Zoho announced its offline version of Writer, Google has cranked its own Gears with Google Docs.

Using its browser plugin Google Gears, the company says it's rolling out offline functionality to its online office applications over then next few weeks. Users will be able to tell when their accounts have been upgraded with the new capability when an "offline" link appears at the top of the Google Docs site.

Though both Docs and Gears are still both beta, the move is a salvo in Redmond's direction, taking direct aim at Microsoft's entrenched, proprietary, industry-standard Office productivity software suite. Conversely, Google Gears is an open-source project that any developer can use to build offline capability into web applications.

"Web applications such as Remember the Milk and our own Google Reader already use Gears. Google Docs is just the latest to join the party. We're inviting developers to Google I/O on May 28-29 to see how we did it and learn how they can do the same" said Google representative Jason Freidenfelds.

The offline capability will be limited to word processing documents, though the company plans to add it to spreadsheets and presentations in the future. "We're working to make more web applications and functions work where connections are unavailable (including editing spreadsheets and viewing/editing presentations, and bring offline functionality to other apps). But this gives a taste of the future, when you'll always be able to access the cloud" added Freidenfelds.

You can find out more about the development and watch a video demo on the Official Google Blog.

First ATI Radeon HD 4850 Reviews Surface

AMD today partially lifted an embargo that prevented hardware review sites from publishing reviews of its upcoming HD 4850 GPU.

Despite previous confusion, it is now confirmed that the GPU will come with 800 stream processors, 965 million transistors, 40 texture units, a core that is clocked at 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory at 1986 MHz. The maximum power consumption of the card is rated at 110 watts.

In terms of performance, the 4850 goes head to head with Nvidia’s 9800 GTX (which was dropped to $199 today). Reviews published today indicated that the two GPUs deliver a close race in terms of gaming performance. Most reviews we saw today saw the 4850 ahead of the 9800 GTX in games such as Call of Duty 4, FEAR and in the 3D Mark vantage benchmark under Windows Vista. The 4850 came in behind the 9800 GTX in Crysis, ET: Quake Wars, Stalker, Ghost Recon and Grid.
Some may consider Nvidia as keeping the lead and even extending it with the release of the 9800 GTX+ GPU for $229 graphics cards.

But first reviews indicate that AMD has a solid product on its hands. The 4850 version will be announced on June 23 and become available on June 25, according to our sources, followed by the 4870 on July 8 and the 4870 X2 in mid-August.

According to AMD, the new HD 4850 GPU (codenamed RV770) is superior to Nvidia’s GTX200 in several ways. AMD says that on a performance per watt scale, the RV770 GPU comes in at 1.95x while the GTX200 delivers just 1x performance. Memory wise, AMD says that its RV770 GPU supports GDDR5 memory compared to the GTX200’s GDDR3 support. However, current HD 4850 cards on the market that are starting to appear all come with GDDR3 memory. This is because the HD 8450 cards all use the RV7700 Pro GPU. Those who want GDDR5 will have to wait for cards using the RV770 XT.

The RV770 XT is expected to launch within several days, with an even higher clock speed of 750MHz compared to 625MHz for the RV770 Pro. Because of the memory difference, the overall bandwidth for a board using a RV770 XT is nearly double that of a RV770 Pro board — 115.2GB/sec. vs. 64GB/sec.

Hitachi: 4 terabyte hard drives by 2011

The hard drive-maker said it has created the world's smallest disk drive heads, about 2,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Multimedia stockpilers need not worry about laptops, digital video recorders or portable music players hitting a storage capacity ceiling any time soon. Hitachi Ltd. says its researchers have successfully shrunken a key component in hard drives to a nanoscale that will pave the way for quadrupling today's storage limits to 4 terabytes for desktop computers and 1 terabyte on laptops in 2011. A terabyte can hold the text of roughly 1 million books, 250 hours of high-definition video, or a quarter million songs."It means the industry is making good progress to advance the capacity of disk drives and move to smaller form factors," said John Rydning, an analyst at market research firm IDC. The feat, which Hitachi plans to present Monday at the Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference in Tokyo, revisits a technology known as giant magnetoresistance, or GMR, that was the basis of the work of two European scientists who won the Nobel Prize in physics last week. A hard drive has a metal disk inside that spins as an arm with an electromagnetic head at its tip hovers over it. The head reads bits of data by registering the magnetic bearing of the particles on the disk. Capacities of hard drives have grown as researchers have crammed more bits of data closer together while also making the heads sensitive enough to read the data. The industry looks to new technologies every time physical limitations kick in, and GMR -- which allows for extremely thin layers of alternating metals to detect weak changes in magnetism -- was one of the breakthroughs that led to the fastest growth rate in the early 2000s, allowing hard drives to double in capacity every year. But GMR-based heads maxed out, and the industry replaced the technology in recent years with an entirely different kind of head. Yet researchers are predicting that technology will soon run into capacity problems, and now GMR is making a comeback as the next-generation successor. "We changed the direction of the current and adjusted the materials to get good properties," said John Best, chief technologist for Hitachi's data-storage unit. By doing so, Hitachi said it has created the world's smallest disk drive heads in the 30-nanometer to 50-nanometer range, or about 2,000 times smaller than the width of an average human hair.Other hard drive companies are working on similar technology as well, Rydning said. He predicted the entire disk drive industry will begin migrating to this new type of GMR-based technology in 2009.

Toshiba announces M700 series Tablet PCs

Toshiba announced two new Tablet PCs, both of which integrate a LED backlit touch screen display. The 12.1” (1280x800 pixel) WXGA display is capable of detects the presence of a digital pen or a user’s fingertip, automatically switching between the different input methods, with the digital pen given priority when both inputs are simultaneously detected, the manufacturer said.


















The Portégé M700 series is based on Intel’s Santa Rosa platform and is offered for $1700 in a Windows XP version and for $1800 as a Windows Vista model. Standard features include a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo 7500 processor, a 160 GB hard drive, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, Intel X3100 integrated graphics, Wi-Fi and a DL DVD burner. The $1700 model comes with 1 GB of memory, while the $1800 version has 2 GB.

Sony Discontinuing 80GB PlayStation 3

A memo to Best Buy employees indicates that Sony may be discontinuing the 80GB model of its PlayStation 3, leaving no backwards-compatible versions of the PS3 on store shelves.

According to the memo, Best Buy will stop selling the $499 PS3 on January 28 -- next week. Sony late last year stopped selling the 60GB version of the PS3, the only other version of the console that was backwards-compatible with PlayStation 2 games.

This memo only affects North American gamers, as the UK and Japanese markets have already moved to a single-SKU model (the 40GB PS3).

If Sony removes the 80GB PS3 from store shelves and ceases all production of that model, there will no longer be a new-SKU PS3 that plays PS2 games. The 60GB PS3, long since gone at retail, used hardware to enable PS2 games to play on the PS3. The 80GB version, which is apparently on its way out, used software emulation to enable playback for many, but not all, PS2 games.

With both versions gone, the question begs to be asked: is Sony working on yet another version/configuration of the PS3 that will support PS2 playback, or is it leaving consumers high and dry with their PS2 game libraries?

Microsoft to Release IE 8 Beta 1 in First Half of 2008

The first beta of the next version of the Internet Explorer browser will be released in the first half of 2008, Microsoft says.

Microsoft plans to release the first beta of the next version of Internet Explorer in the first half of 2008, and said that IE 8 has passed a key Web standards test that ensures the browser won't "break" the Web.

IE8 has passed the "Acid2 Browser Test" from the Web Standards Project, which shows whether a browser renders a Web site in a certain way. If the browser renders the site correctly, it means the browser supports certain accepted Web standards.

Microsoft posted a video about the browser passing the test on its Channel 9 Web site.

Microsoft developed IE before some Web standards such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) were developed, and so older versions don't support some current standards. Developers would write applications to work with IE rather than to support Web standards, since the browser was the de facto standard for surfing the Internet for so many years. Microsoft also was lax in updating IE to meet the demands of Web standards, since there was little competition in the browser market for years.

With the release and subsequent popularity of open-source browser Mozilla Firefox three years ago, a browser's need to stay current with Web standards once again moved to the forefront. When Microsoft developed IE7, released in October 2006, the company had good intentions and decided to improved support of Web standards with the new release.

However, Web sites that were created for older versions of IE didn't work properly on IE7. Microsoft hopes to remedy this problem so the situation is not repeated with IE8, according to an IE Blog posting attributed to Dean Hachamovitch, a Microsoft general manager on the IE team.

"With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing Web," according to the blog posting.

Hachamovitch said Microsoft is taking a cue in lessons learned from making improvements to CSS in IE7 that "made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the Web as they were coded." The key design goal for IE8, he said, is compatibility with existing Web sites and Web standards supported in other browsers to provide a premium user experience.

"As a developer, I'd prefer to not have to write the same site multiple times for different browsers," according to Hachamovitch's post. "Standards are a (critical!) means to this end, and we focus on the standards that will help actual, real-world interoperability the most. As a consumer and a developer, I expect stuff to just work, and I also expect backwards compatibility. When I get a new version of my current browser, I expect all the sites that worked before will still work."

Microsoft said the final release of IE8 depends upon feedback received from the beta process.

Sun buys MySQL for $1 billion

The purchase of a database provider marks an attempt by Sun to tap into the market for providing services to web 2.0 companies like Facebook

Sun Microsystems has made a bid to tap into the burgeoning market for providing services to web 2.0 companies like Facebook by buying MySQL, a provider of enterprise software.

The California-based server and software firm will pay $1 billion for MySQL, a maker of database management software that social networks like Facebook rely upon to deliver services to their vast numbers of subscribers.

MySQL controls 50 per cent of the $15 billion market for so-called 'open source databases', and its clients include Google, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, the photo-sharing site, and Baidu, the fast-growing Chinese search engine.

Under the terms of the deal, Sun will pay $800 million in cash for the entirety of MySQL's stock, and will also assume $200 million worth of options.

The acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close in the middle of the year, Sun said.

Separately, Sun said it expected its profit in the second fiscal quarter to be in the range of $230 to $265 million - or 28 to 32 cents a share - on an adjusted basis, up from $133 million, or 15 cents a share - for the same period a year ago.

Sun shares were down 2 per cent - to $57.82 - in morning trading.

MySQL is one of the leading providers of database software, which is needed to manage the vast pools of personal and other information that are collected by social networks, search engines and other internet companies.

In particular, it makes open source database software, which makes up a relatively small proportion over the overall database software market, but is becoming increasingly popular among because of the flexibility it gives companies to customise their databases.

The acquisition is the largest acquisition for Jonathan Scwhartz, Sun's chief executive, who took over running the company in 2006 and has consistently put the provision of hardware and sofware services to web-based companies at the heart of Sun's stratetgy.

"MySQL is the fastest growing entrant in the database software marke - they're prolific," Mr Schwartz said in an interview with Times Online. "The growth in the open source database market is in double digits, whereas the rest of the market is flat to down."

He added that there would be strong opportunity to integrate MySQL with Sun's own products, which include the servers that power giant databases like Google's.

Companies such as MySQL don't charge for their database software, which is made freely available to clients, but instead generate revenue by providing maintenance, updates, and other support services.

Sun's backing of MySQL would provide a major flip to the open source database market, analysts said, because larger companies which have traditionally been wary of small providers like MySQL could feel confident that support infrastructures were starting to be put in place.

"This is going to be a real wake-up call for traditional database management sofware companies, which don't take open source particularly seriously," DonaldFeinberg, a vice president at Gartner, said. "It is a potentially landscape-changing situation for the market."

Under the terms of the deal all 400 employees at MySQL will join Sun, and MySQL's chief executive, Marten Mickos, will join Sun's executive management team.

Source: timesonline.co.uk

Google/Youtube's Video Market Share Increases To 31%

Web surfers can't seem to get enough online video and a new market study shows people are now watching 9.5 billion videos a month. The comScore Video Metrix report shows that for November 2007, 75% of United States Internet users watched an online video for an average of 3.25 hours per month. Google's YouTube video sharing service increased its market share over competitors by gaining an additional 2% of the market from October to November for a total of 31.3% of all online videos viewed.

According to comScore, YouTube had more than 3 billion video views for the month and 76.2 million unique viewers. Across all video sharing services, the average people watched 69 videos for the month.

Source: tomshardware.com

Rockstar finally dates Grand Theft Auto IV release

Rockstar Games has finally set a date for the release of one of the year's most anticipated software releases.

Grand Theft Auto IV will be released worldwide on April 29 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

"We are so excited to be releasing Grand Theft Auto IV," commented Sam Houser, founder and executive producer of Rockstar Games.

"We've pushed ourselves very hard to make something incredible and hope the game sets a new benchmark for interactive entertainment."

The date is later than some internet sites had speculated, and comes just within parent company Take-Two's end of financial year.

It also misses the crucial easter sales, considered one of the first big retail periods of the year.

Source: gamesindustry.biz

Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion for Yahoo

Microsoft said Friday that it has made an offer to buy Yahoo for about $44.6 billion, or $31 a share, in a mix of cash and stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium over Yahoo’s closing stock price of $19.18 on Thursday. If consummated, the deal would redraw the competitive landscape of the Internet consumer services business, where both Microsoft and Yahoo have struggled to compete with Google. Microsoft said the combination of the two companies would create efficiencies that would save approximately $1 billion annually. The software giant also said that it has an integration plan to include employees of both companies and intends to offer incentives to retain Yahoo employees. "We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market," said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, in a statement. "We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners," he said. Microsoft said it planned to work closely with Yahoo’s board of directors as they evaluate this, apparently, unsolicited offer.

Despite their heavy investments in online services, both Yahoo and Microsoft have watched Google extend its dominance over Internet search and the lucrative online advertising business that goes along with it. In recent months, Yahoo has struggled to develop a plan to turn around the company under co-founder Jerry Yang, who was appointed chief executive amid growing shareholder dissatisfaction last summer. Yahoo investors, however, remain skeptical. The company’s shares have slumped and before the bid were trading at levels not seen in more than three years. Earlier this week, Yahoo said it would cut 1,000 jobs in an effort to refocus the company and reduce spending, and issued an outlook for 2008 that disappointed investors. It is not clear how Yahoo’s board will react to Microsoft’s offer. Microsoft said it believes the transaction could receive the necessary regulatory approvals by the second half of this year.

Source: nytimes.com

Yahoo selling music service to Rhapsody

Yahoo is selling its digital music subscription service to Rhapsody America — a partnership of Real Networks and MTV Networks — as it revamps its music strategy.

Yahoo Music will continue to offer music videos, Internet radio and music downloads. But customers of its monthly Yahoo Music Unlimited service will be migrated to Rhapsody. No firm timetable has been set. Yahoo, which expects the deal to close by the middle of year, did not disclose terms. Yahoo's music.yahoo.com is the most-visited online music site with 20 million monthly visitors, according to measurement service comScore Media Metrix. But the Music Unlimited service has only about 400,000 customers, says Phil Leigh, an analyst at Inside Digital Media.

Yahoo decided to sell the music subscription service because "we made a strategic decision to focus on the mass audience," says Yahoo senior vice president Scott Moore. As part of the deal, Yahoo will promote Rhapsody on music.yahoo.com. Yahoo Music Unlimited offered discounted subscription rates with a one-year commitment; subscribers now will pay the Rhapsody rate of $12.99 a month for a Web-only plan or $14.99 monthly for a plan that lets them download songs to a media device. Music subscriptions — allowing consumers to access unlimited, on-demand music — have long been described as the holy grail of digital music but have never taken off. Subscription services from Yahoo, Rhapsody, Microsoft and others let you download songs to a variety of portable devices as long as you keep paying a monthly fee. But the services were not compatible with Apple's market-leading iPod. According to market tracker Jupiter Media, music fans spent $1.1 billion on downloads in 2007, compared to $235 million in music subscriptions. Still, Leigh says, the alliance makes Rhapsody "by and far away the market leader," and a stronger force. He says Rhapsody has just under 1 million subscribers. "This takes away a competitor, and gives Rhapsody potentially some marketing muscle," says Jupiter analyst David Card. "This is good for Rhapsody."

Source: usatoday.com

Windows Vista Service Pack is avaliable for Dowload

The wait is over. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RTM is now available for download. Both the 32-bit and the 64-bit editions of the service pack are up for grabs. Microsoft confirmed the information leaked by Amazon.com at the end of the past week that Vista SP1 was going to be made available on March 18, 2008. And the Redmond company met the initially announced delivery schedule which pointed to mid-March ever since February 4, 2008 when the service pack was released to manufacturing. At this point in time x86 and x64 Windows Vista SP1 are both up for grabs either as standalone packages or through Windows Update.

"Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is an update to Windows Vista that addresses feedback from our customers. In addition to previously released updates, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability, performance, and compatibility issues; supporting new types of hardware; and adding support for several emerging standards," reads a fragment of the Vista SP1 description.

Windows6.0-KB936330-X86-wave0.exe and the Windows6.0-KB936330-X64-wave0.exe downloads weigh in at 434.5 MB and respectivelly 726.5 MB, being tailored to integrate with both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista operating systems. As Microsoft revealed following RTM, only a select few languages are supported in the March release. The standalone version of Vista SP1 can be integrated exclusively with copies of Vista RTM with these language versions: English (US), French, German, Japanese, or Spanish (Traditional).

"Today, you can now download Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update. For those of you eager to receive the benefits of Windows Vista SP1 - you can now do so! We've seen quite a bit of questions in our comments so we want to communicate as much as possible surrounding Windows Vista SP1 and today's release to Windows Update as we can," stated Nick White, Windows Vista Product Manager. "Those of you who find that SP1 isn't offered over Windows Update even after updating all your drivers, but would still like to download it can access our "standalone installer" from the Microsoft Download Center."

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Standalone for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system is available for download HERE.

Source: Softpedia.com

Intel Preps Atom For World Domination

Intel released the brand name of its Silverthorne and Diamondville processors for mobile devices - products the company has called its most significant product since the introduction of the Pentium processor: While the chips won't set new performance records for your desktop PC or your notebook, they are very low cost chips pumped out in huge volumes to conquer the market of portable devices and low-end PCs.

The new brand of processors is "Atom", targeting initially mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and, as time goes by, cheap PCs that may be heading into emerging markets to reach consumers with little money to spend. The overall idea isn't new, AMD has been in this market for some time with its Geode CPUs, Via has its C7-M chips and ARM has a variety of core blueprints that the company has licensed to manufacturers around the globe.
For Intel, however, this market is relatively new (if we forget the 90 nm Pentium M-based A100 series of processors the company markets for the most recent UMPC generation), and Atom is built up as a serious attempt to capture market share in mobile devices and low-cost devices. The company will offer two versions of Atom: The version for mobile devices will be based on the Silverthorne core, the version for low-cost PC is based on the Diamondville core, which is a derivative of Silverthorne that likely integrates optimizations to run desktop applications.
Silverthorne is a 45 nm chip that integrates 47 mm transistors on a 25 mm2 die, which compares to 410 million transistors on a 107 mm2 die in the latest 45 nm Core 2 Duo dual-core processor generation. When talking about Silverthorne's performance, Intel likes to compare the chip to the 90 nm (single-core) Pentium M with Dothan core; however, Silverthorne integrates less L1-D cache (24 compares to 32 KB) and less L2 cache (512 KB compared to 2 MB), while clock speeds should be comparable.

AMD appears to be behind in this game right now, but It will be interesting to watch how Via will be defending itself in this market. The company recently announced first details about its Isaiah processor, Via said that the CPU will offer similar power consumption, but will be considerably faster than Silverthorne.

Source: Intel.com

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