By Martyn Williams
July 7, 2009 04:11 AM ET

Sony will begin selling its first netbook computer next month and in doing so enter the only sector of the PC market showing significant growth. The Vaio W is based around a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, the same processor used in many other netbooks. Like other netbooks the Vaio W has a 10-inch screen, but its display has a resolution of 1,366 by 768 pixels rather than the more common 1,024 by 600 pixels.

That means more of a Web site can be fitted onto the screen, and the user will have to scroll less, the company said at a launch event in Tokyo on Tuesday. Sony is planning to use the higher resolution as one of the key differentiators between the Vaio W and other computers on the market. It will also promote the machine's touch panel, which is about the same size as that found on conventional laptops.

In Japan it will cost around ¥60,000 (US$630), which is roughly in line with netbooks from other Japanese vendors such as Toshiba and Fujitsu but more expensive than machines from foreign companies, such as Dell and Acer. It will go on sale in the U.K., France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and Russia from August, and be available via Sony's online shop. North American launch details have not yet been announced.

The PC industry witnessed a record decline in the first quarter of this year as grim economic conditions caused many consumers and companies to postpone nonessential purchases. Global shipments fell by 8 percent against the same period of 2008, led by a sharp decline in demand for desktop PCs, according to iSuppli. The mobile segment saw 10 percent growth thanks largely to demand for netbook PCs.

by Mary Jo Foley
July 6th, 2009 @ 6:08 pm

As reported recently by OSNews, a number of Linux vendors have been on the fence as to what to to with Mono, Novell’s open-source implementation of a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime (CLR). Rightly or wrongly, some open source backers have been worried about the possible legal ramifications of deploying a technology with roots in the closed-source, Microsoft world.

But on July 6, Microsoft removed a seeming licensing hurdle for Mono by putting the licensing of the CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) and the C# programmng language its “Community Promise” Via that promise, Microsoft agrees not to “assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, or distributes any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including open-source licensing models such as the LGPL or GPL.”

(In short, Microsoft is less likely to sue a company over technology that is implemented under the Promise.) It will be interesting to see how and if Microsoft’s guarantee will affect the perception of Mono inside the open-source community. Mono’s leader, Novell vice president for developer platforms Miguel de Icaza, blogged that he was gratified by Microsoft’s move. And he hinted about what Microsoft’s licensing change might mean for the future of Mono:

“In the next few months we will be working towards splitting the jumbo Mono source code that includes ECMA + A lot more into two separate source code distributions. One will be ECMA, the other will contain our implementation of ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Winforms and others. “Depending on how you get Mono today, you might already have the this split in house or not.” Does Micosoft’s latest licening move around C# and the CLI affect you and your organization? Does it change your feelings or opinion of Mono?

by Rafe Needleman
July 6, 2009 4:28 PM PDT

Yahoo will launch a new tool on Tuesday to help people organize research they do on the Yahoo search engine. The Yahoo Search Pad will automatically save search results when it notices the user is doing research, which should make it easier for people to come back to a project on subsequent days to do more work.

Other Web notebook projects have notably failed, or at least failed to become important. Tools like Google Notebook and JetEye are (or were) all very strong tools for saving Web search results, but they require intent on the part of the user. They save nothing without the user asking for it to be saved. Search Pad, in contrast, watches what the user does (as long as they're doing it on Yahoo), and, according to Yahoo VP of Consumer Experience Larry Cornett, "uses deep science to recognize when someone is doing research."

In other words, if you're scanning for a funny video of a cat to occupy yourself during a conference call, it won't kick in. But if you're searching on a medical condition or researching a car or other major purchase, it will notice that you're clicking a lot of links, create a dossier for you in the background, and start to catalog your search results. In my testing, it didn't work quite as advertised.

While the service, which sits innocuously in the corner of Yahoo search result pages, collected Web site titles, pictures, and URLs in a little notebook, it never popped up to help me organize them despite me clicking dozens of times on sites during a test on a medical condition. However, the product is still a day from launch and the on-screen demo I got on it earlier was compelling.

By Jacqui Cheng
July 6, 2009 7:00 PM CT

All references to the new version of Quicken for Mac have been removed from Intuit's website, leaving only the old 2007 software. A year and a half after the "complete rewrite" was showcased, has the company decided to ditch the software in favor of its web offerings?

All references to Quicken for the Mac 2009 have disappeared from Intuit's website, leaving users wondering when—if ever—the software will launch. The software, meant to be a "complete rewrite" of Quicken for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, was showcased at the Macworld Expo 2008 and originally expected to ship that year. However, after at least one delay, the software now appears to be MIA more than a year and a half after it was introduced.

Intuit first showed off its plans for Quicken Financial Life for Mac (the then working title) in January of 2008, hailing it as a complete rewrite of Quicken 2007 for Mac with new and better features. Users could track their cash flow, download info from banks, track taxes, and even create budgets, and was expected to launch as a beta by the fall of 2008. In September, however, Intuit said that the software had "required significant engineering and quality testing" and the company needed "some extra time to get it right."

The ship date was moved to the winter of 2008. Well, unless you live in another hemisphere, winter has come and gone. We are now in the throes of Summer 2009, and it appears as if Intuit has decided to celebrate the arrival of warm weather by removing all references to Quicken for Mac 2009 (which were previously found all over the company's website). This seems like a curious move for a company that has spent "significant" resources on developing its software.

By Lucas Mearian
July 6, 2009 04:37 PM ET

In light of a new buyout offer for Data Domain Inc. by EMC Corp., NetApp Inc. said today it plans to review "all of its options" in considering a counteroffer for the deduplication vendor. "In response to EMC's revised, unsolicited offer, the NetApp Board of Directors will carefully weigh its options, keeping in mind both its fiduciary duty to its stockholders and its disciplined acquisition strategy," NetApp CEO Dan Warmenhoven said in a statement. He promised an update "shortly."

EMC Corp. today upped its all-cash offer to purchase Data Domain from $1.8 billion to $2.1 billion, once again one trumping NetApp, which had offered $1.9 billion. EMC said that offer stands until midnight July 17. While Data Domain has scheduled a special stockholders meeting on Aug. 14 to consider and vote on the NetApp merger proposal, EMC's offer is different from a merger agreement and Data Domain's stockholders need only decide to sell their shares to EMC by July 17.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Computerworld, an EMC executive argued that his company's offer is the most logical one for Data Domain shareholders. Matthew Olton, worldwide head of mergers and acquisitions at EMC, said his company is "dramatically" larger than NetApp and far more capable of infusing money into Data Domain to increase product development and worldwide marketing and sales. NetApp last year had $3.4 billion in sales while EMC reported $14.8 billion.

"I just have to believe it's much more of a strain on Netapp to digest an acquisition of this size than it is [for EMC]," Olton said. In their respective offers for Data Domain, both NetApp and EMC included termination fees to be paid if Data Domain decided to walk away after agreeing to a merger. Today, EMC announced it had dropped any such deal protection clause. NetApp still has a termination fee in its proposal that would require Data Domain to pay it $57 million if it walks away from a deal.

by Sam Diaz
July 6th, 2009 @ 1:05 pm

Facebook will likely bring in “billions of dollars in revenue” in five years time and could even do $1 billion in revenue this year if it really pushed itself, board member Marc Andreessen told Reuters. (Techmeme) Instead, it’s more important for Facebook - and even micro-blogging site Twitter - to continue to grow and capture market share.

That strategy mirrors the one that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg put forth when he said last year that he didn’t see the need for a revenue plan until 2011. I’ve been critical in the past of these sites that continue to grow but offer no insight as to how they make money. Maybe I’m tarnished by the last dot-com boom and the number of sites that launched - and generated a lot of publicity - and then disappeared when the money went away.

At some point, there needs to be a plan - a strategy of some sort that says “We’re here for the long run, not just until investment money dries up.” With that said, the Reuters piece addresses that by pointing to the MySpace example. MySpace was once a leader in social networking but was quickly swooped up by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which put the focus on selling advertisements instead of feeding the growth momentum. As a result, Facebook swooped in and took market share.

When you look at it that way, it’s hard to argue. Forgive me if I’m a bit leery of popular, high-profile Web properties that have no solid plan for generating revenue over the long-term - but I’ve seen that before. If Facebook can truly bring in $1 billion this year with some effort - as Andreessen suggested - then maybe I don’t have to worry that Facebook will run out of cash and fold up anytime soon.

by Ina Fried
July 6, 2009 1:41 PM PDT

Going from Windows Vista to Windows 7 is relatively straightforward. So one might think that moving from a pre-release version of Windows 7 to the final version would also be simple. One would be wrong.

That's because the upgrade versions of the Windows operating system (the cheapest way to move to the final version) check for a previous paid version of Windows on the drive. That means, if a user did a clean installation of Windows 7 on their test system (as recommended by Microsoft), that same user will have to back up their data, reinstall their original operating system (XP or Vista), then install Windows 7, restore their data, and then reinstall their applications.

For testers who were running XP, that means doing a clean installation of Windows XP over their Windows 7 test build and then a clean installation of Windows 7 over that. Vista users have the option of reinstalling that operating system and then doing an in-place upgrade or a clean installation of Windows 7. Microsoft says that, for what it's worth, that's roughly the same thing that was required for those moving from pre-release versions of Windows Vista to the final release.

Even so, it's an unfortunate burden for those who have provided lots of feedback and indeed been some of the operating system's biggest champions. Users were also pushed to do a fresh installation when moving from Windows 7 beta to the latest test version, although some users found ways around having to do this. It's just one of several scenarios in which users may find getting to Windows 7 to be a tricky proposition. In general, most people get Windows through buying a new PC.

By Jacqui Cheng
July 6, 2009 2:30 PM CT

Remember CompuServe? While many of us thought it had already died years ago, it turns out that AOL was keeping it on life support—up until this month. With the decision to finally shut the 30-year-old service down, Ars reminisces about the olden days of the Internet.

A little piece of Internet history has now been laid to rest, as CompuServe was shut down for good just before this Fourth of July weekend. After some 30 years of service, CompuServe's new owner has finally pulled the plug, leaving us to reminisce about the days when the Internet was young and we were still using modems whose speed was measured in baud. Most of us remember CompuServe fondly as one of the main Internet services from the 80s and 90s, and associate it with some of our first dabblings in the online world.

Along with Prodigy, CompuServe offered a data connection to people across the globe, a connection that few had previously had at home. It set an early example for companies like AOL and even Apple's eWorld that launched in the early-to-mid 90s. AOL eventually became the new hotness and ended up acquiring CompuServe's online services in 1997, vowing to keep CompuServe online and operational as a separate service from AOL. That was then, though, and this is now.

As AOL's online services became increasingly irrelevant in today's broadband world (as evidenced by Time Warner's recent decision to spin off AOL), CompuServe—eventually renamed CompuServe Classic—was kept around as a nostalgic throwback to the Internet days of yore. It comes as no surprise, then, that AOL decided finally to close the doors on CompuServe this month. In fact, it's surprising that CompuServe managed to stay alive for this long. Did anyone still use it in 2009? (If you did, please tell us why in the comments!)

The Official Pattern Release or OPR is Trend Micro's latest compilation of patterns for identified viruses. It is guaranteed to have passed a series of critical tests to ensure that customers get optimum protection from the latest virus threats.

Editors Note: Most people do not need to download the latest definition files, but rather use your anti-virus programs auto updater to get daily updates as soon as they are available. This download is provided here in case you are having trouble with your auto update feature.

Author: Trend Micro
Date: 2009-07-06
Size: 15.1 MB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All

Update your Windows Defender if the automatic update fails.

Installation:
Step 1: Save or run the file
After you click this link, click Run to install the definition file immediately, or click Save to save it to your computer. If you click Save, remember the name of the folder where you save the file.
Step 2: Install the definition update
To install the saved definition update file:

If your computer is running Windows Vista, click Start, click Documents, and then locate the folder where you saved the definition file. Right-click Mpas-fe.exe, click Run as administrator, and then click Run. When you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation, and then wait while the definition files are installed.
If your computer is running any other Windows operating system, you must be logged on as an administrator to install the latest definition file. Browse to the folder where you saved the file, and then double-click Mpas-fe.exe to install the latest definition file.
Note: If you do not have an administrator account on the computer, ask an administrator to log on and install the definitions file for you. For more information on how to manually download the latest definition updates for Windows Defender, see this Knowledge Base article on the Microsoft Help and Support website.

Author: Microsoft Corp.
Date: 2009-07-06
Size: 10.8 MB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All

Kaspersky Anti-Virus combines reactive antivirus and spyware detection methods with the latest proactive technologies to provide your computer with the most effective protection against malicious programs. The product is simple to install and set up, while offering advanced users a range of versatile settings for fine-tuning the program.

Windows 2000/2003/9x/XP
Shareware

Kaspersky Internet Security technological prototype represents a new generation platform for creating applications specifically designated for complex protection of personal computers and workstations. Uniting the substantially improved functional abilities of version 5.0, Kaspersky Lab protection products with the latest technological innovations introduced by the company the Kaspersky Internet Security solution secures the most effective and complete protection of a computer from all sorts of electronic threats - malicious programs, hacker attacs and spam.

Windows (All)
Shareware

By Nick Farrell
Monday, 6 July 2009, 11:44

SOFTWARE GIANT Microsoft has said it wants to hire more students because they don't know what is impossible yet. Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, told EETimes that students are in a great position to solve some problems because they are untainted by any knowledge of what can't be done. He said that students don't know how we have tried to solve problems in the past, have new ideas and can take advantage of the latest technologies available.

Naíve and innocent people think about things in a markedly different way and that gives them the opportunity to do things that people his age would not try. In his day Lotus Notes was bleeding edge and Ozzie is currently trying to direct the development of the company's next-generation software services platform. Students have unbounded amounts of energy and idealistic views of what they can do to change the world. This combined with a facination with technology lets them imagine what they can build, he added.

by Christopher Dawson
July 3rd, 2009 @ 8:11 am

Obviously, this isn’t true. Their underlying architectures are quite a bit different, Gnome looks different than the 7 UI, etc., but to an average 17-year-old, there just wasn’t any meaningful difference between the two operating systems. The other day, I posted a blog titled “Windows 7: Good enough to pay for?”

I described how I’d installed the Windows 7 Release Candidate on my son’s computer for his take on the OS after living with Ubuntu 9.04 (and 8.10 before that) for a few months. It’s summer break, so he basically spends every waking moment when he’s not actually interacting face-to-face with friends on the computer. No better time to have a kid do some serious testing, right? I asked him last night about his initial impressions of Windows 7 and, in typical teenage fashion, as he was bouncing between Meebo windows and browser tabs, he said it was “nice.”

I managed to extract from him that his favorite feature was that he was able to use his Zune with it, something that had never worked terribly well with Ubuntu. Otherwise, he said, “Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu; there just really isn’t anything different about them.” Of course there isn’t. He lives in a web browser. The underlying OS is irrelevant. He has no need for Office 2007 and I expect his next portable music player will be platform independent.

For some, Windows 7 may, indeed, be good enough to pay for, especially if they are power-users of Windows-only software. For my oldest son, if he gravitates to any machine, it’s to my Mac because it’s so easy for him to create and share video content. For the average student, though, the old Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux debate may finally be dead. For someone who “hated Linux” a year ago to now happily switch between Windows 7 and Ubuntu in a completely transparent way certainly signals an end to that age-old flame war.

by Stephen Shankland
July 6, 2009 4:00 AM PDT

Twitter's dramatic rise has helped ignite an industry to shorten Web addresses to fit within 140-character messages. With the technology, though, comes a new handful of challenges. Among the challenges are reliably connecting people to the Web sites they want to reach, keeping spam and phishing attacks at bay, and maintaining the service into the future.

Joshua Schacter, founder of Yahoo's Delicious site for storing and sharing Web bookmarks and now a Google programmer, summarized the issues in an April rant about short-URL problems. "I feel that shorteners are bad for the ecosystem as a whole," he concluded. Until a remote future arrives when Twitter and the telecommunications industry decide 140-character messages are too short, though, URL-shortening services aren't going to go away.

Fortunately, their potential problems can mitigated through careful use, and newer services such as Bit.ly are being designed expressly to avoid the pitfalls. And even if some service falls by the wayside and stops functioning--well, welcome to the real world, where not all information is preserved. "In the digital age, everything has a certain amount of bitrot," said Paul V. Mockapetris, who invented the Domain Name System (DNS) that serves as the Internet's address book.

URL-shortening services are abundant and becoming more so. They're usually designed with a priority on minimum character length, not easy reading: Is.gd, Bit.ly, Twurl.nl, Tr.im, Sn.im", Cligs, and TinyURL. If you want to see dozens more, Mashable has a long list. And the traffic they handle is large. On a typical day right now, Bit.ly is used to create 5 million to 7 million shortened URLs each day, and it handles 25 million requests to expand them--and the growth rate is at a breakneck 5 percent to 15 percent week over week, the company said.