By Jeremy Kirk
December 1, 2008

Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. had no comment on a report that they're once again in discussions to sell Yahoo's online search business for $20 billion. The Sunday Times of London wrote that Microsoft had agreed to the "broad terms of a deal" but that there was no guarantee that it would be completed.

"We continue to offer no comment on such rumors and speculation," according to a statement supplied a Microsoft spokesperson in London today. A Yahoo spokeswoman also said the company had no comment on the report. The Sunday Times wrote that Microsoft would bring in Jonathan Miller, the former CEO of AOL LLC, and Ross Levinsohn, a former president of Fox Interactive Media Inc., to manage a new team.

Levinsohn, according to a Wall Street Journal blog (subscription required), called the report "fiction." The blog by Kara Swisher also said that high-level sources at Microsoft and Yahoo also scoffed at reports of a potential deal. The Times also wrote that Microsoft seeks a 10-year agreement with Yahoo to run Yahoo's search business. Microsoft would have a two-year call option to buy that business for $20 billion. Yahoo would still run its own e-mail, messaging and content services, the paper wrote.

Microsoft began courting Yahoo earlier this year, offering $44.6 billion in February for the entire company, or around $31 per share. Yahoo's co-founder and then-CEO Jerry Yang held out for a higher offer, but Microsoft eventually lost interest. Yahoo's stock has since quickly fallen, along with the stock of many other technology companies that are feeling the effects of the global credit crunch.

By Sylvie Barak
01 December 2008, 12:02 PM

MSI HAS ANNOUNCED its new generation of netbooks, based on the Intel Z series Atom processor. At an event in France, MSI unveiled the U110 and U115, both sporting 1.6GHz Atom Z530s, copycatting Dell's Inspiron Mini 12.

With 1GB of 533MHz DDR 2 memory, the 1.1kg U110 includes a 10 inch display, Bluetooth 2+EDR and 802.11n Wi-Fi. It will also come in 120, 160 and 250GB of SATA hard drive capacity flavours and either a 1.3 or 2 megapixel webcam. The U115 has 2GB of 533MHz DDR 2 memory and offers a dual storage option, namely either an 8, 16 or 32GB SSD and an 80, 120 or 160GB HDD. Also both models purportedly have enough battery juice to last 8-10 hours.

by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
December 1st, 2008 @ 10:25 am

The other day the eagle-eyed Long Zheng noticed a document on Microsoft’s MSDN site outlining how Microsoft plans to allow DirectX 10 acceleration on the CPU. WARP (which stands for Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) basically gives users DirectX 10/10.1 support without needing a GPU.

The minimum spec will call for an 800MHz CPU, and in return for this modest investment you get Direct3D 10 and 10.1 support, 8x multi-sampled anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and optional texture formats. According to Microsoft this is the perfect solution for a variety of situations:

* When the user does not have any Direct3D capable hardware
* When running as a service or in a server environment
* When no video card installed
* When a video driver is not available, or is not working correctly
* When a video card is out of memory, hangs or would take too many system resources to initialize.

Microsoft has also posted frames per second (FPS) performance data for CPU-powered DirectX, comparing running Crysis at 800×600 with all the quality settings on their lowest settings on a range of systems:

* Core i7 8 Core @ 3.0GHz - 7.36FPS
* Penryn 4 Core @ 3.0GHz - 5.69FPS
* Phenom 9550 4 Core @ 2.2GHz - 3.01FPS
* Core 2 Duo @ 2.6GHz - 2.83FPS

by Stephen Shankland
December 1, 2008 10:58 AM PST

Google has published its plan to build into Chrome what is arguably its most requested feature: the ability to accept extensions that can customize how the open-source Web browser operates. And guess what?

Google's dependence on advertising notwithstanding, one of the extension examples the company points to is the ability to block advertisements. The Chrome extensions document, spotlighted Saturday by Google programmer Aaron Boodman, doesn't include a timeline, but it does shed light on why the project is a priority for Chromium, the open-source project behind Chrome.

"Chromium can't be everything to all people," according to the document. "User-created extensions have been proposed to solve these problems: the addition of features that have specific or limited appeal; users coming from other browsers who are used to certain extensions that they can't live without; bundling partners who would like to add features to Chromium specific to their bundle."

When Google launched Chrome three months ago, it promised a Chrome extensions framework. Extensions are a popular feature of Chrome's most likely rival, Mozilla's Firefox, and one very popular extension is AdBlock Plus.

By David Chartier
December 01, 2008 - 12:25PM CT

The numbers from Black Friday are in, and traffic measurement firms have released their initial 2008 holiday shopping studies. Brick-and-mortar stores saw an unfortunate (though unsurprising) drop in online visitors and spending dollars, but online-only venues enjoyed a spike in traffic and spending that beat 2007.

Leading off with the bad news, Hitwise reports that online shopping traffic on Thanksgiving Day was down 11 percent compared to 2007, and Black Friday traffic was down five percent. Amplifying one of its reports last week on a drop in online spending since the holidays began, comScore says that spending totaled $10.41 billion during the first four weeks of November, which is a four percent decline during the same period in 2007.

On the bright side, however, online-only venues, such as Amazon.com and Newegg.com, saw traffic boosts of 11 percent on Thanksgiving Day and 10 percent on Black Friday. Online spending reached $288 million on Thanksgiving Day, a six percent increase from 2007, while online Black Friday spending saw a one percent increase from 2007 to $534 million as well. When auction sites like eBay are excluded, Amazon, Walmart, and Target were the top three retail websites on Black Friday, according to Nielsen Online.

Otherwise, eBay takes the number one spot with 9.8 million visitors. These sites are followed by Best Buy, Circuit City, Dell, Sears, Kohl's, and JC Penny, with Circuit City enjoying the largest traffic spike from the previous Friday (11/21) of 352 percent. Not bad for a company that just closed 155 stores and filed for bankruptcy.

Publisher's Description:

AnyDVD works in the background to automatically remove the copy protection of a DVD movie as soon as it's inserted into the drive, allowing you then to backup the movie using a DVD backup tool such as CloneDVD and CloneDVD mobile. You can also remove the RPC region code, thereby making the movie region free and viewable on any DVD player and with any DVD player software. It is capable of removing unwanted movie features, including subtitles and prohibition messages such as copyright and FBI warnings. It also allows you to launch an external application whenever you insert or remove a disc, or prevent 'PC-friendly' software from automatically launching when you insert a video DVD.

Decryption is not all that AnyDVD offers. You can control the drive speed of your DVD drive, allowing you to reduce the noise level when watching movies on your PC. You can even adjust the display frequency of your monitor for both NTSC and PAL displays. It also decrypts protected audio CDs to allow you to copy them.

Released: December 1, 2008
Publisher: SlySoft, Inc.
License: Shareware
Limitations: Yes; 21 day timeout
OS Support: Windows 2000/2003/9x/Vista/XP

Publisher's Description:

Clipdiary is a freeware utility for keeping the clipboard history. You will never lose the data you once copied. The utility will run on Windows startup and will record everything you place to the clipboard into the database. At any moment you can view the clipboard history, copy the necessary item back into the cache memory or even paste it into an application. All you have to do is press the "Ctrl+D" keys combination or click the program icon in the system tray.

ClipDiary can log clipboard history and record data of several formats: plain text, RTF (Rich Text Format) and bitmap images (BMP). So, besides saving parts of text, you can easily make series of screenshots in your favorite games, and ClipDiary will save them for you.

Released: December 1, 2008
Publisher: Softvoile
License: Freeware
OS Support: Windows 2000/2003/Vista/XP
Uninstaller?: Yes
Skin Support?: Supports XP Themes

DataRecovery is freeware and written by TOKIWA
to undelete accidentally deleted files even from recycle bin.

But DataRecovery doesn't assure that all files deleted can be recovered successfully.
It mostly depends on your system/configuration and we can't support each of all those varieties.

Compatible operating systems
Windows9x/Me/NT4.0/2000/XP/Vista

Key-features:
FAT12,FAT16,FAT32,NTFS undeletion
undelete NTFS compressed files
undelete EFS encrypted files
wipe out deleted files never to be recovered again
runnable from USB memory or floppy disk
search by partial string in the file name
undelete whole files in a directory
undelete multiple files by selecting them with Shift/Ctrl key
sort items displayed by clicking column headers
rename file to be recovered by right-click on the file in the list(NEW)
neither installation nor DLLs is needed
Windows Vista supported

How to use:
You can understand it intuitively through simple UI. So there is no need for instructions. Also you can update DataRecovery to new version if available through Version info of system menu.

Notice:
You need "administrator account" to run DataRecovery at WinNT/2000/XP/Vista.
To wipe out deleted files, DataRecovery directly write NULL to disc.
On FAT volume, first character of the file name is sometimes overwritten by delete-code on deletion. In that case the lost character is replaced by "$" on the list displayed.
On Windows Vista, Never to destroy OS, you can Not wipe files in system drive.
Norton UnErase keeps DataRecovery from scanning deleted files.
Total wiping on system drive might cause serious problem.
"Full scan" for NTFS is effective in such a case where you quick-formatted drives. But this would take long time, so try it only when you could not find wanted files through normal scan.

Install/Un-install:
DataRecovery doesn't need to be installed. Just unpack the archive you downloaded and it's runnable.
DataRecovery doesn't install anything, so no registry entries or initialization files are left on your computer when you delete the directory of DataRecovery.

File Attributes:
R read-only
H hidden
S system
D directory
A archive
N normal(no other attributes are set)
T temporary
O offline
C compressed
E encrypted
Rp reparse point
I index view
Sp sparse file

Author: TOKIWA
Date: 2008-12-01
Size: 199 KB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win9x/NT/200x/XP/Vista

Saving images for web/email/other media with the best compression ratio and quality is a difficult task if you don’t have the right tools.

Choosing the right format then choosing the right parameters are the key factors of smaller files. Previewing the resulting image and the projected filesize will help the user choose the best settings.

Main features:
- Open multiple graphic file formats by looking first at the magic number (it does not need file extension to recognize format)including support for uncommon images types (up to 128 BPP, integer and floating point. EX: hdr images, 16 bit grayscale, etc)Adaptive logarithmic tone mapping algorithm (Drago) used for HDR images
save and optimize JPEG, GIF and PNG with a simple, clean user interface
- Dual view: original - result. Automatic preview of resulting image
the compression and the results are comparable to those of commercial products.
- Fast processing (all is done in memory); see instant results including resulting filesize
- Decide if you want to keep metadata (comments, IPTC, Adobe XMP, EXIF profiles, ICC profiles). Unsupported metadata is removed
- Common tools: pan and zoom, rotate, flip
resize image by using best known resample filters (ex: Lanczos3, Catmull Rom, Bicubic, and others)

v.0.2.1 (26 nov 2008) (stable)
- added all corrections from 0.1.13 until 0.1.15 to fix bugs that affected 0.2
- JPEG processing speed improvement by 25%.
This is done using SIMD optimized instructions (MMX, SSE,SSE2, 3DNow!).
- overall speed optimizations

Author: Lucian Sabo
Date: 2008-12-01
Size: 1.14 MB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win 2K/03/XP/Vista
Downloaded: 1176 Times

By Gregg Keizer
November 29, 2008

Microsoft Corp. will deliver Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) to manufacturing in April 2009, two months after it issues a final test version to users, according to a Web site that accurately predicted several Windows ship dates in 2008.

TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web site that nailed the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) dates for Vista SP1 and XP SP3 earlier this year, said that Microsoft will post a release candidate -- the final test version -- of Vista SP2 in February 2009, finish the service pack next April and offer it to users via download from the Web at some point afterward. The last was necessarily vague, if only because Microsoft has had trouble this year synchronizing service pack RTM dates with availability on Windows Update.

It took six weeks last winter to get Vista SP1 in the hands of most users -- and then only after a ruckus when Microsoft initially denied access to subscribers of its for-pay developer services -- and a week to issue Windows XP SP3 in the spring. XP SP3 was delayed because of a data-corrupting compatibility bug with Microsoft's own point-of-sale software. Although Microsoft issued the beta of Vista SP2 to a limited number of testers a month ago, company officials have so far only committed to shipping the update sometime in the first half of next year.

According to Microsoft, Vista SP2 will include Windows Search 4, Bluetooth 2.1 wireless support, faster resume from sleep when a wireless connection has been broken and support for Blu-ray. Some of those features, including Windows Search and the Bluetooth support, have been available to Vista users for months through individual updates. The service pack will update both Vista, the client version of Windows, and Windows Server 2008, the company's corresponding server software.

By Charlie Demerjian
29 November 2008, 12:53 PM

CONTRARY TO POPULAR belief, the Nvidia 9300/9400 chipset line has been fraught with problems, both logic bugs and heat. Late though it may be, it is still far from ready, and Apple is the latest victim. According to Apple Insider, the latest Macbooks have two distinct problems.

The first is a lockup/black screen whoopsie when using the GPU to do such unusual things as gaming. Those darn 'customer use patterns', how could people think they could get away with gaming on their machines! The other one is distortions while scrolling. One has an easy fix, the other is much more problematic. The easy one is the distortions while scrolling.

This is usually fixable with a software patch, most likely simply adding deeper buffering of frames. I expect this one to be taken care of in short order. The other one is a little more problematic. No, it is a lot more problematic, and it gets to the heart of Nvidia's greatest technical weakness, they can't keep heat and power usage under control. This chipset has a long history, and is internally code named MCP79, as you can see below.

Please note the last three characters, the "-B2" part, this means the Macbooks are using the B2 stepping of chips. The letter connotes a major revision, the number a minor stepping, counting from zero. Parts start out with 'first silicon' being labeled A0, then minor fixes make A1, A2... Ax. GPUs and chipsets are usually marketed by A1 or A2 silicon.

by Mary Jo Foley
December 1st, 2008 @ 5:13 am

After a weekend of “it’s on-again/no it’s not” rumors regarding Microsoft doing some kind of search deal with Yahoo, it’s worth noting the Redmondians are still pushing ahead with their plan to rebrand Live Search as “Kumo.”

Kumo is one of a handful of potential new search brands Microsoft has been investigating as a replacement for Live Search, according to my sources. (Others under consideration, as of this summer, included “Bing” and “Hook.”) But recently, Microsoft redirected some of its search servers to point to the Kumo.com domain, leading many to speculate that Kumo was the leader in Microsoft’s search-rebranding bake-off.

It’s not justthe Kumo.com domain that the Softies have registered. It turns out it also has registered related placeholder names for some of the verticals that the company’s search unit has been targeting — such as, travel, healthcare, wiki-search and the like. CSC — one of Microsoft’s favored “hidden” domain registrars — and the original registrar of kumo.com — has taken possession of more than a few other Kumo-specific domains. Among them:

* www.kumosearch.com
* www.kumopics.com
* www.kumowiki.com
* www.kumogroups.com
* www.kumotravel.com

by Rafe Needleman
November 30, 2008 9:24 PM PST

Power.com is an ambitious social utility that brings together all the networks you have on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut, as well on instant-messaging networks like AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger.

If you have have a presence on more than one network, it's worth a look, though it has its own interface that awkwardly sits on top of your existing services when you use it. The biggest draw of Power is that it really does bring everyone in your networks together for you. On the Power start page, you can see all your contacts from all your networks, and all their status updates, and then quickly jump to user profile pages on whatever network they're on, or drop users messages. What Meebo does for instant messaging, Power does for social networks as well.

Meebo for social networks - Like Meebo, Power lets you connect to users without bothering with which network they're from. From the Send Message window in Power, you can select any number of your friends, from any of your networks, and send the same message to all of them. You don't even need a new login for Power; you can use one from one of your existing social networks.

One feature I was unable to test is the utility of updating all your social-network profiles when you update just one. So if, for example, you change your profile picture or a photo album on Facebook, you can have it changed for you on MySpace and Hi5. Or if you add an OpenSocial-compliant app on one service, you can also have it show up on the others.

By Joel Hruska
November 30, 2008 - 09:15PM CT

For all the performance advantages that a solid state drives (SSDs) can offer, the technology's mass-market appeal is limited by high costs, low drive capacities, and decidedly mediocre (given the first two factors) random write performance.

SanDisk believes it has found a way to address all three of these multi-level cell (MLC) flash drive issues, and the company plans to present the details of its solutions—including information on its brand-new ExtremeFFS technology—at CES in January. The first two components of SanDisk's plan are entirely unsurprising: the company will begin the transition to a smaller, 34nm manufacturing process by the end of 2009.

It also plans to introduce 3-bit and 4-bit MLC drives. At present, SLC drives store two states (1 bit) per block of memory, while MLC drives store four states (two bits). Increasing the number of bits (and, by extension, the number of states) stored in a single block of memory will increase drive capacities (improve cost-per-gigabyte), while a smaller manufacturing process allows the company to build more flash on a single wafer (decreasing drive cost).

Adding additional bits to MLC drives, however, has a direct effect on write performance, and MLC can't afford to get any slower here. (For an example of SLC, MLC, and HDD write performance, see Tech Report). This is where ExtremeFFS enters the picture. According to SanDisk, ExtremeFFS (Flash File System) "has the potential to accelerate random write speeds by up to 100 times over existing systems," and will appear in shipping products within 2009.

By Peter Cohen
November 25, 2008

Hammer Storage introduced the morespace Portable hard disk drive yesterday. Equipped with USB 2.0, the drive is available in capacities from 160GB to 500GB priced from $59.99 to $139.99. The morespace Portable is designed as a hand-held hard disk drive that easily fits into a bag or knapsack.

The drive also features customizability -- you can put on your own "skin" to set your morespace Portable apart from other disk drives. Inside the chassis is a 2.5-inch hard disk drive mechanism that's compatible with Mac OS X and Windows. It comes with a 20-inch USB cable and supports USB power, so no external AC adapter is necessary.