Ed Oswald

Intel on Monday debuted its fastest Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core processor yet, further distancing itself from rival AMD. The 2.93GHz QX6800 will be produced using the company's 65-nm process and carry a pricetag of $1,199 USD.

The Santa Clara, Calif. chipmaker says the processor would be ideal for the next-generation of PC games, which are now beginning to take full advantage of what multicore and multithread processors offer. Intel has partnered with several game developers to assist them in rewriting code.

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Yahoo is joining the ranks of Microsoft and others in attempting to unseat Apple's venerable iPod by teaming with SanDisk on a new Wi-Fi enabled Sansa MP3 player. The device will retail for $250, and includes a 2.2-inch color LCD screen and a capacity of 4GB.

Although it's not the first portable music player to boast Wi-Fi connectivity, Yahoo and SanDisk are making the feature more useful. Unlike the Microsoft Zune, the Sansa Connect would be able to directly download songs from the Internet and stream Internet radio.

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Google is asking college students to voice their opinions on campus e-mail services, likely aimed at giving the company a better understanding of how to improve its suite of communications services aimed at colleges and universities.

The Mountain View, Calif. search giant has been offering a version of its Google Apps product for educational institutions for about a year now. The offering includes e-mail, instant messaging, document collaboration and calendaring tools.

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Although the company denies that it is discontinued, the 20GB version of the PlayStation 3 is becoming increasingly difficult to find. At least two online retailers no longer carry the low-end model, with a brick-and-mortar retailer apparently discontinuing sales as well.

One of those stores is Sony's own SonyStyle.com. In a statement, Sony said the $499 20GB PS3 is still shipping to retailers, claiming its move was due to market demand. A spokesperson for Best Buy, whose online store has also removed the lower-end PS3, was not immediately available.

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Microsoft has announced its planned upgrades to the Xbox 360, expected on May 7. Among the new features are integration with the Windows Live Messenger network.

The new functionality expands the messaging capabilities beyond the Xbox Live gaming network to the entire Messenger community. The messaging services will be unified for simplicity's sake, Microsoft says.

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Mozilla on Friday took the wraps off of the first release candidate of its upcoming Thunderbird 2.0 release, aimed at making organization of e-mail easier for its users.

The open-source e-mail client will be available across 35 languages on three platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. In addition, full Vista support has been built into the client for the first time.

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P2P provider Azureus, which provides software and technology for the transfer of large media riles, said Thursday that it had launched Vuze, a legitimate service that would specialize in high-quality video content.

Vuze will feature both DVD and HD-quality content, and offer premium content from around the world. BBC's hit television series Sorted as well as original programming from premium network Showtime will also be offered.

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eBay's plans to create an online television ad sales market seems to be faltering as the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau said Thursday that it would no longer participate in the auction site's trial.

"We appreciated the opportunity to test the system - throughout our review it became apparent that the Media Exchange was too narrow an application, had clear connectivity issues related to cable's emerging end-to-end e-business platforms and lacked the provisions necessary for capturing critical strategic and idea-driven intelligence during a buy," CAB president and CEO Sean Cunningham said.

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A spat between Agence France-Presse and Google over the use of news and photos on the Mountain View, Calif. search engine's news site has been settled, the companies said Friday.

Google was sued in March 2005 by AFP, which claimed that Google never obtained permission to link to use its content, and asked for $17.5 million in damages.

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When VeriSign renegotiated its domain contacts for .com and .net, many feared the company would begin raising rates. It appears as if some of those fears are being realized.

The company said later Thursday that it would raise the fees for .com domains to $6.42 from $6, a 7 percent increase, and from $3.50 to $3.85 for .net domains, a 10 percent increase. The changes would take effect on October 15.

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While actual sales numbers may suggest otherwise, a new study from Harris Interactive seems to suggest that consumers are increasingly deciding to hold off on upgrading to Windows Vista.

The poll was initially taken in December 2006, preceding the software's consumer release. At that time, only 47 percent of respondents were aware of Vista. Of that group, 20 percent said they would upgrade, 31 percent said they would wait, and half were unsure.

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Microsoft could very well be barred from collecting royalties on technical information provided under a settlement with the European Commission, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

According to a document obtained by the paper, Microsoft has been informed that it could collect either zero or one percent of sales of software based on that technical data. The Redmond company has been asking for 5.95 percent.

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Google has introduced a new feature to its maps service that aims to make the process of map notation easier, by allowing the user to add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed content.

Called My Maps, the service will support drag-and-drop functionality and would give each unique map a public URL and make it searchable within Google Maps.

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Although it means essentially nothing to the ongoing litigation between the two companies, Nokia said Thursday it had made a $20 million payment to Qualcomm for the use of its UMTS patents.

The company also plans to make future payments and would announce them as necessary. Nokia said the payments do not extend an agreement over patents that partially expires on April 9.

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The once undisputed king of video game consoles appears to be back.

Led by the widespread success of the Wii console, Nintendo revised its sales and profit numbers for its fiscal year that ended in March for the fourth time, with higher than expected demand for DS games also contributing.

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