Mint.com today has rolled out the beta of a new service called Mint Data that takes the tons of anonymous shopping data it receives, and turns it into a searchable database of retailers. Similar to the way Amazon's Alexa categorizes the popularity of a website by its unique visitors, total views, and inbound links, Mint Data ranks a retailer's popularity by the average purchase price and number of purchases per month.

The information comes from the anonymous spending data of the more than 4 million Mint users, and Mint breaks it down into which categories people are spending their money on (such as food, dining, entertainment, etc,) the specific businesses that they're patronizing, and the city in which they're spending their money.

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Google today announced new administration controls in Google Apps to help Google Apps Premier customers securely deploy and run Android 2.2 devices in the workplace.

With the new functionality, administrators can remotely wipe all data from lost or stolen devices, lock idle devices after inactivity, and require passwords (of varying strength) on each device. This functionality can be added to either company-issued devices, or personal ones.

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At the Professional Developer Conference PDC10 Today, Microsoft rolled out an updated Internet Explorer 9 platform preview and Internet Explorer Test Drive website to let Web developers test their sites with the most current technologies that may not yet be in the public beta of Internet Explorer.

Among the updates in Platform Preview 6, two new HTML5 features have been included: CSS3 2D Transforms, and recognition of HTML5 Semantic Elements as object-type HTMLElement.

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Streaming video on demand service Vudu will be available on all forms of Boxee in November, the company announced Thursday. This partnership will put a Vudu client on both the D-Link Boxee Box and the Boxee media center software for PC and Mac.

The service offers 480p, 720p, and 1080p HD movie rentals, and gets many movies in conjunction with their DVD launch. Though the service first launched as a standalone set top box back in 2007, it eventually became a video solution embedded in TVs and connected Blu-ray players.

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Extensions to what extent

If you're wondering how an extension written purely using Web page languages like CSS can significantly change the browser, the answer is. . . they can't, at least not yet. Like a Google Chrome extension, an Opera 11 extension (at least at this stage) is essentially the next granular step in evolution from UserJS. In fact, the first few extensions released by Opera Software last week include several that don't actually change the browser itself all that much, but instead add functionality to certain pages. One very simple extension called the Opera Configurator does add an options button (with a familiar looking wrench icon) to the main toolbar just to the right of the Search box. Clicking here brings up the contents of the opera:config page, which also answers to that name from the Address box; it's already a very well-designed and useful all-in-one preferences page, but this extension places it where it belongs to begin with.

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Having all but lost the social networking war, MySpace on Wednesday decided to lean on one of the few areas where it still has a good deal of clout: entertainment. The newly redesigned MySpace focuses less on the "friends" aspect it pioneered in the space, and more on sharing videos, music, and games with friends.

The site says it wants to become a "social entertainment destination" for the Generation 'Y' crowd. CEO Mike Jones said that the move marked a complete change in strategy for the company, and focused on its existing strengths. This change may also be the last best hope for the site given how far it has fallen.

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For as popular as Roku's streaming set top boxes are, they have had practically zero presence in physical retail stores. That is, until a few weeks ago.

Early in October, reports emerged of Roku set top boxes with Netgear branding being seen in Fry's, Best Buy, and Radio Shack electronics stores. Though Netgear confirmed the product's existence, it wasn't until yesterday that the company officially announced the new product.

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The white iPhone 4 may never see the light of day as Apple admitted Tuesday that it would not meet its end of year goal for the model's release. When pressed on the issue by Reuters, a spokesperson said the white iPhone won't make an appearance until at least Spring 2011.

Based on the release schedules of the iPhone since its launch, Apple's admission suggests that white will not be a color option for the iPhone 4. Although the company has only offered the reasoning that the model has been more "challenging to manufacture than we originally expected," it appears the color itself is the problem.

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After an arduous four years in and out of the courtroom, battling the RIAA over copyright infringement accusations, peer to peer file sharing service Limewire has finally been shut down.

The RIAA's suit against Limewire was part of a sweeping initiative to curb the trade of copyrighted materials on peer-to-peer networks. In 2005, the group sent cease and desist letters to the owners of major p2p services including Kazaa, WinMX, i2Hub, eDonkey, BearShare, and LimeWire. The orders demanded the services "immediately cease-and-desist from enabling and inducing the infringement of RIAA member sound recordings," but gave the services the option to discuss "pre-litigation resolutions." Most services complied, such as Kazaa, which offered a $115 million settlement.

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The answer to the question may be a question: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, is it a goose?

By analysts' criteria, the 11.6-inch MacBook Air is no netbook. Strange then that many Betanews readers regard Air to be a netbook -- and an overpriced one at that. But even if Air is classified as something else, it could easily suck away netbook sales, as analysts contend iPad has done. MacBook Air being a netbook or not is really independent of its impact on netbook sales. That said, in researching this story, I found that many readers (and real consumers) don't separate the two concepts. I wonder if they really need to.

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Microsoft has rolled out the release candidates of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, the last of the beta builds before the update's final release to manufacturing.

Windows 7 SP1 constitutes a bundle of minor updates for the client version of Windows 7 and has been in beta since June (Though a version leaked two months beforehand.) The main updates to Winddows Server 2008 R2 include new features in the virtual desktop infrastructure called RemoteFX, and Dynamic Memory.

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Tech blog Engadget got its hands on some photographs of a device purported to be a prototype "PlayStation Phone" from Sony Ericsson. The phone is a landscape slider that bears a strong resemblance to the PSP Go when opened, and instead of Sony's XMB interface, it will supposedly run Android 3.0.

As expected, Sony Ericsson would not comment to us on the photographs this morning, but Engadget apparently has a decent source of information, and they have been getting exclusives on the device since August.

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Tueday evening, Barnes & Noble unveiled NOOKcolor, the book retailer's second generation Android-powered e-reader. While the first generation Nook utilized both an electrophoretic "e-paper" screen and a full-color touch panel, this generation goes for the pure tablet experience, and uses a 7" (1024 x 600) LCD touchscreen.

The NOOKcolor is just under half an inch thick and weighs 15.8 ounces, it features 802.11b/g/n, comes with 8GB of storage, supports microSD cards up to 32GB. The battery life is purported to be around 8 hours if the Wi-Fi is turned off.

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Apple had better not do its market research at Betanews, and executives should hope that you, our readers, aren't the measure of interest in MacBook Air. In response to last week's question "Will you buy MacBook Air," the majority responded "No." However, as usual, there was a marked difference between those folks commenting to the story and readers responding by e-mail. A slightly greater number of e-mail respondents say they will buy one of Apple's two thin-and-light models.

Apple unveiled new MacBook Airs -- in new 11.6-inch and updated 13.3-inch display sizes -- during an October 20 media event dubbed "Back to the Mac." Standard configs for the 11.6-inch model sell for $999 and $1,999 and $1,299 and $1,599 for the 13.3-inch Air. Many respondents used the more typical speeds-and-feeds measure to evaluate the, ah, Air quality. Nicholas Gerstenberger expressed sentiments shared by many other Betanews commenters responding in comments: "Old CPU tech, 64GB max drive (even if it is SSD) and a $999 price tag place way over a fully optioned laptop with optical drive 500GB 7200 rpm hard drive and loads of RAM. Sorry I'll pass."

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Fearing that over-the-air radio may be nearing extinction faster than predicted, the US National Association of Broadcasters has been backing legislation requiring mobile phone manufacturers to install "radio-activated chips," making them into de facto FM radios. . . whether consumers actually want them or not. But in an effort to accelerate legislation to make this happen before, say, next January, the NAB signaled yesterday it's willing to make a bargain with its most valuable negotiating chip: radio's decades-old exemption on paying performance royalties.

For over a year, the NAB has boasted that it has the support of a majority of members of the US House of Representatives, backing a bill that would extend the broadcast radio industry's exemption from paying performance fees to musicians (and their designated rights holders) indefinitely. But the political careers of many of those representatives are now somewhat less than definite, as many pollsters predict a change of party leadership in the House next January.

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