AOL Pushes AIM Mail, Unlimited Storage
Monday, after months of one-upsmanship between its rivals, America Online will take AIM Mail live along with offering unlimited mail storage for AOL members.. The launch coincides with the general release of the final build of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) 5.9 ahead of AOL's migration to its next-generation Triton client.
AOL Explorer, an integrated Web browser that was introduced in beta builds, has been notably dropped from the final release.
Unified Microsoft Update Site Goes Live
After several months of testing, Microsoft Update has gone live. Microsoft Update unifies patching for Windows and Office, providing performance and security updates to customers through Microsoft's "Update Services" platform.
The advent of Microsoft Update was first announced by Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates during his keynote address delivered at the RSA 2005 conference in February.
IBM Computers to Create Virtual Brain
The question has been proposed: When will computer hardware rival the human brain? In the 1980's futurist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a technological singularity where artificial intelligence will one day overtake the human brain and even foil any attempt to comprehend its complexity. That may yet happen, but for the time being, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
IBM, in partnership with scientists at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne's (EPFL) Brain and Mind Institute will begin simulating the brain's biological systems and output the data as a working 3-dimensional model that will recreate the high-speed electro-chemical interactions that take place within the brain's interior.
Apple to Pay Up for Faulty iPod Batteries
Thousands of customers complained about problems with the iPod's battery life; eight filed a class-action lawsuit. The group of eight have tentatively won $50 vouchers and extended service warranties for up to 2 million customers in the United States that purchased first, second and third generation iPods from Apple.
The class-action, filed in fall of 2003, stems from Apple's boasting that iPod would play music nonstop for 10 hours straight and that the rechargeable battery would last throughout the product's lifetime. In reality, many customers enjoyed only four hours of continuous playback and ended up with a dead battery within a period of 18 months.
McAfee Buys Wireless Security Tech
Security software vendor McAfee has acquired Wireless Security Corp, obtaining encryption, authentication and intrusion protection technology to lock down Wi-Fi based networks.
McAfee will use Wireless Security's technologies in combination with its own Antivirus, Firewall and Internet Security products to secure the perimeter around home and small business customers.
Yahoo 'Mindset' Classifies Search Links
Yahoo has taken a new mindset on how it classifies search results. Yahoo Mindset is a text classification system that segregates Web pages into two categories: commercial or information. This is accomplished by using advanced algorithms that "learn" how to interpret unclassified Web pages by examining human behavior.
Yahoo Labs is providing a beta preview of the technology that is more or less in its infancy. From a technical standpoint, the machine learns like a baby does mimicking adult behavior. Variable training algorithms and tests sets provide what Yahoo describes as a "seed set" of basic knowledge that advances the learning process through trial and error.
Microsoft to 'Open' Office File Formats
Ratcheting up its support of XML, Microsoft announced on Thursday that it will release a new Extensible Markup Language (XML) technology that replaces existing Office file formats for Word, Excel and PowerPoint with fully-documented, royalty free formats.
The formats, called Microsoft Office Open XML, will debut in the second half of 2006 with Office 12 and constitute a dramatic upgrade to Office and a broad extension of Microsoft's XML strategy - without the direction of standards bodies.
Google Affected by Own Search Exploit
Drawing into question the safety of Google's indexing system, the Web site all-in-one-business.com managed to "hijack" Google's position in its search results with a 302 server redirect. Following the redirect, a query for "Google AdSense" returned results pointing to the unrelated site, rather than Google itself.
This type of incident can happen because of the way that Google implements the W3 HTTP specification. 302 redirects temporarily swap one domain name with another using rudimentary scripting. The spirit and letter of the specification requires Google to infer that content hosted by the 302 target is owned by the party doing the redirect.
MS Details Office Communicator Future
Wednesday, Microsoft officially said that it has released Office Communicator 2005 to manufacturing, publishing a QA session to provide customers with greater detail about its development and future. Office Communicator integrates IM, voice, video, telephony and Web conferencing into a single interface and makes those capabilities accessible across Microsoft's Office applications.
Communicator is the default client for Office Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005. LCS 2005 is designed with one goal in mind: To streamline business communication and provide customers with real-time collaboration. The relationship between Communicator and LCS can be likened to the reciprocal nature of Microsoft Outlook and Exchange.
Serence Reads Beyond RSS in KlipFolio
Serence released a beta of its next KlipFolio 'personal dashboard' software Wednesday. The new version 3.0 delivers rich features to developers that can in turn build Klips that sport a more polished look with added support for images, columns, as well as more advanced options such as pop-up alerts and tooltips.
KlipFolio parses XML and other formats from remote data sources, aggregating and filtering content before pushing it onto users' desktops. Users are free to specify their own update and alert settings.
HP Adds Itanium to NonStop Server Line
Hewlett-Packard will soon find out if its multimillion dollar support of Intel's Itanium processor will produce a return on investment. Tuesday, HP announced an addition to its NonStop product family that yields an Itanium under its iron called Integrity NonStop. The server can scale to up to 4,080 Itanium 2 processors.
According to HP, the servers offer twice the performance of earlier models at half the cost. Integrity NonStop servers are the third Itanium-based offering from HP, which first partnered with Intel to develop the chip in 1994.
Sony Tests New Copy Protection on CDs
Sony BMG has begun to wrap a new digital rights management (DRM) scheme onto select CDs. The copy-protection technology, developed by UK-based anti-piracy specialist First4Internet, has shipped with 1 million discs since March.
The solution provided by First4Internet deploys Windows Media Audio (WMA) on discs to allow three primary copies in a process Sony refers to as "sterile burning." Because of the DRM, this "sterile" backup copy cannot be duplicated. Although the perceptive may be that this type of casual copying matters very little, Sony executives have taken issue.
Apple Not Serious About Sirius
Sirius is refusing to confirm reports that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has taken a fancy to the idea of partnering with the satellite radio provider. On Thursday, reports circulated around the Web claiming Mel Karmazin, Sirius chief executive officer, had discussions with Jobs during the D conference in California.
However, Sirius has told BetaNews that Jobs has not expressed any concrete interest thus far.
Ask Jeeves Adds Zoom to Web Searches
Ask Jeeves will cut down on search time with a query refinement enhancement it calls "Zoom". The feature zooms in to refine a search and zooms out for broader search results. Zoom identifies and examines concepts, using clustering technology to roll search suggestions into categories that can either narrow or expand a search.
Zoom is an evolution of the company's previous "Teoma" search technology. The official description of Teoma is a technology that segregates the Web into "topic communities." When Zoom identifies and examines concepts, it looks at the relationships between these communities in its index.
BitTorrent Creator Opens Online Search
BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen has launched an online search that links to torrent files, which are used to download content via the protocol. The move comes in the midst of a crackdown by the entertainment industry in conjunction with Federal agencies against illegal file sharing happening on BitTorrent Web sites.
Along with the online search comes a new decentralized BitTorrent client that eliminates the need for a "tracker" - Web sites that aggregate torrent files. In essence, this means that while the Feds may have gained some ground by shutting down tracker Web sites, actual file sharing and the ability to search for illicit content will not be brought to a standstill.
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