The word which perhaps best characterizes the screenshots, leaked today to The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher, of Microsoft's internal tests of a search service tentatively entitled "Kumo," is unremarkable. They show a remade version of Windows Live Search with a few new innovations -- new for Microsoft, that is -- but at least based on these samples alone, not enough to clearly demonstrate why anyone should use Kumo instead of Google or Yahoo.

The screenshots display search results for three typical types of popular searches. These results are displayed on a page with a categorical navigation bar along the left side, offering ways in which the service can display different types of results (in Windows Live Search, these categories might appear in a line along the top marked See also). Unlike in Live.com, however, results can appear automatically grouped into Yellow Pages-like categories; for example, a search for "Audi S8" returned a list which was subcategorized into "Parts," "Accessories," "Forum," and other groupings with related terms.

Continue reading →

Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox, sent out the call Tuesday afternoon on mozilla.dev.planning: It's time to lock the trees and land the bugs on beta 3 of the 3.1 version of the browser.

As of 3pm PST, just nine bug landings stood between the dev team and handoff of mozilla-1.9.1 to the Release Engineering crew according to the mozilla.dev.planning thread on Google Groups. Beltzner noted in his Twitter stream that he "is hoping we get done with beta 3 code for Firefox tonight" after a day so busy he was wondering if he needed to block off time for bathroom breaks; the staff of Betanews wishes him all the best with, well, all of the above.

Continue reading →

Palm on Tuesday issued the kind of preliminary earnings data that illustrates just how much the company depends on a successful Pre launch for its continued survival -- and how much the firm is betting on a win for the wildly anticipated smartphone.

The company says that for the third quarter of 2009, which ended for Palm on February 27, it expects to report revenues of between $85 million and $90 million. Operating expenses were between $95 million and $100 million. Factors cited included late shipment of the Treo Pro and the general economic situation.

Continue reading →

At the Demo 09 show in Palm Desert, CA today, a start-up named Always Innovating showed off a Linux-based netbook with a touch screen, a detachable keyboard, and a touted battery life of 10 to 15 hours. The company's Touch Book netbook also happens to be the industry's first with an ARM processor, as opposed to the Intel Atom CPU used in most other netbooks.

Pre-orderable now, the Touch Book is slated for delivery this spring at pricing of $399 with the detachable keyboard and $299 without the keyboard. The detachable keyboard concept has appeared before in convertible tablet PCs as well as some netbooks. But although the Touch Book might lack the same horsepower as a convertible tablet, it's certainly a lot less costly than PCs in the tablet category, which still run anywhere from around $1,000 to above $3,500. Ten to 15 hours of battery life isn't bad, either.

Continue reading →

At the CeBIT fair in Germany this week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is acting as a cheerleader (and unofficial ambassador of sorts) for the green computing products of the Silicon Valley, exhorting attendees from Europe and elsewhere to "Go green!" In an energetic speech during opening ceremonies, Schwarzenegger pumped up the audience at the recession-rocked show, down 25 percent this year in numbers of exhibitors.

"We are gathering in challenging times. Some may say this is the wrong time for a big trade show like this, but they are wrong," urged the Governor, who accompanied about 50 computer vendors from California to the event in Germany. During a stop at IBM's booth at CeBIT, Schwarzenegger contended that time is of the essence for cutting energy costs and reducing greenhouse emissions, with the information technology industry's carbon footprint still expanding inexorably from one year to the next.

Continue reading →

A Microsoft spokesperson today confirmed the text of a statement attributed to Business Division President Stephen Elop this morning, which was interpreted by bloggers including Silicon Valley Insider as meaning that the company's forthcoming Office 14 suite will add advertising as a source of alternate revenue.

"There will be ad-based revenue streams," reads the quote from Elop. "There's an opportunity to draw those pirate customers into the revenue stream. We want to draw them into the Windows family and maybe there's an upsell opportunity later."

Continue reading →

The prosecution, representing the IFPI and major content studios, finished up yesterday. They seek 117 million SEK ($12.7 million, €10.1 million) in damages and up to one year imprisonment of Pirate Bay's founders for making infringing content available.

The defense made its closing remarks today, which included a presentation from Pirate Bay founder Karl Lundstrom's lawyer Per Samuelsson. Samuelsson said, "The Pirate Bay is one of thousands of services that all look the same. There is a legal use of the service area. You can use it to find perfectly legal torrent files, with full legal coverage. You can also use the service for illegal means. The service is blind."

Continue reading →

NASA and Cisco announced on Tuesday that they'll work together on Planetary Skin, an online monitoring platform that will capture, collect, and analyze environmental data gathered by satellites and sensors (airborne, maritime, terrestrial and human) around the globe.

The data will be accessible to governments, businesses and the general public -- anyone looking to measure and verify environmental data. And since no one's interested in dried-up old skin,

Continue reading →

The Federal Communications Commission confirmed minutes ago that Julius Genachowski, the venture capital firm director who served as counsel to former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, has officially been nominated by President Obama to serve as FCC Chairman. This after an unusually long vetting process that many suspect may have been slowed down not by Genachowski himself -- whose credentials have yet to be questioned -- but by the President's recent track record of nominating candidates with clean tax histories.

"I can think of no one better than Julius Genachowski," reads a statement from the President this afternoon, "to serve as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He will bring to the job diverse and unparalleled experience in communications and technology, with two decades of accomplishment in the private sector and public service. I know him as the son of immigrants who carries a deep appreciation for this country and the American dream; and as the proud father of three children working with his wife Rachel to be responsible parents in this digital age."

Continue reading →

According to a complaint filed by the US Department of Justice, EMC made payments of money and other "things of value" to systems integrators and other alliance partners around government contracts, and these payments amount to kickbacks and "conflict of interest relationships."

The government also charges that the storage vendor made false statements to the US General Services Administration (GSA) about its commercial pricing so as to get higher pricing on government contracts, thereby bilking federal agencies.

Continue reading →

With the recently increased focus on Green technology and intelligent energy consumption, aJile Systems looks to the forthcoming growth in smart infrastructure with its direct execution 32 bit Java system on a chip, announced today.

The aJ-102 is a 32-bit microprocessor that includes a micro-programmed real-time kernel, an integrated DSP processor, a 10/100 Ethernet Controller, a USB OTG controller, a discrete encryption/decryption processor, and LCD controller. This sort of system on a chip is ideally suited for live resource tracking in smart meters, or for home automation.

Continue reading →

After the demise of AOL's Xdrive service just a few months ago, Hewlett-Packard's Upline and Yahoo's Briefcase will now bite the dust by the end of March.

Evidently, supply is exceeding demand in at least some segments of the nascent cloud storage market, particularly with users' time, patience and spending budgets increasingly exhausted by the deepening financial crisis.

Continue reading →

Intel filed suit against "Netbook" trademark holder Psion Teklogix late last week, hoping to free up the name for all the companies which make products in the unofficially named netbook device class. Intel contested that Psion Teklogix, a British company that makes handheld computers, hasn't made its trademark netbook in six years, and in that time, the term has become generic.

The company struck back at Intel with a countersuit of copyright infringement and unfair trade practices. Over the weekend, documents detailing Psion's counterclaim were released, where the company claimed it continues to sell its "netBook pro" product well into 2009. Note: the device in question is located in the discontinued products category, and the spec sheet is a fake link.

Continue reading →

Amazon's on-demand video streaming service on the Roku set top box began beta tests in early February, and today has officially been released to the public.

Roku announced today that software updates for its $99 set top box will be rolled out over the course of the week, giving customers access to a library of 40,000 movies on demand that cost between 99¢ and $3.99 per rental.

Continue reading →

A spokesperson for Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology confirmed to Betanews this morning that it has submitted a proposal to the government of Taiwan to assist that country in the consolidation of its DRAM industry. That proposal, if agreed upon and carried out, would create something being referred to as a "new DRAM entity" that would be launched with an automatic joint research and development agreement with Micron, as well as the license to use some 2,000 patents from the company's portfolio of 17,000.

"Micron has talked a lot about seeing value in the memory industry," spokesperson Dan Francisco told us today. There's certainly value in Taiwan's ability to produce, and that is what Micron is interested in fostering. Negotiations are ongoing, Francisco said, and involve other leading companies in Taiwan's memory industry, though no names are currently being included on that list.

Continue reading →