Microsoft's Windows Live team today formally announced a number of upgrades to the Live platform that constitute its "next generation," a more unified experience across all the services within Windows Live.

Beginning in the coming weeks, existing Windows Live users' home.live.com page will change from the current straightforward (read: Google-ish) list of services to a social, profile-based (read: Facebook-ish) setup where all the existing Windows Live services are tied together with a central update feed.

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It's being called the "economic Katrina," and now there are signs that it has officially made landfall. After already preparing investors for bad news, Intel yesterday took the unusual step of proclaiming the news will actually be worse.

The first clear signs of an approaching financial maelstrom for Intel came as early as last April, when the typical seasonal downturn in revenue extended into double-digit percentages. Something was wrong -- demand from businesses and consumers alike was falling demonstrably, and low-margin businesses such as flash memory were already feeling a serious squeeze.

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It's the first holiday season since Blu-Ray put a stake in the heart of the rival HD-DVD format, but if Sony and friends thought that would mean a clear field of fire on shoppers' wallets...sorry, wrong year.

One would think that the looming digital TV deadline in February 2009 would drive the purchase of at least the new television equipment. According to most statistics so far, one would be wrong about that -- even though HDTV prices are on the decline.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. - At the CES Unveiled press event Tuesday, Navigon previewed the 8100T, a device touted as the first in-car GPS navigation system to offer panoramic 3D views of mountains, valleys, and other highlights of the surrounding landscape.

During a stop by BetaNews at the booth, J. Michael Martin, channel marketing manager, showed how the upcoming Navigon 8100T will use maps based on NASA terrain data -- along with a built-in graphics accelerator --to capture experiences such as driving up hills and peering down through ravines on its wide-screen 4.8-inch display.

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Belkin today announced what would have otherwise been an unremarkable piece of cabling had it not been given a name that sounds like a piece of advice.

The cable is meant to recreate on a Windows machine the Mac's built-in Migration Assistant, which is used to transfer user accounts, applications, network and computer settings, files and volumes between Macs. Migration is also an optional process when initializing a new Mac.

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Download a 60-day trial edition of Windows Essential Business Server 2008 from FileForum now.

At last, small- and mid-size businesses now have access to the final commercial editions of Microsoft's pre-configured, feature-packed buildouts of Windows Server 2008 tailored for the needs of corporations smaller than, say, GM.

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Stop calling your mom to ask her if those sniffles and aches mean you've got the flu. You're going to mess up Google's stats.

After a year of testing that involved correlating data and tweaking algorithms with the Epidemiology and Prevention Branch of the Influenza Division at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Google's got a new map that shows where people are searching for info on flu-related topics. According to its tests, the map can accurately estimate current outbreak levels two weeks faster than traditional flu-monitoring systems such as the CDC's own reports.

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Citi Investment Research (formerly Smith Barney) looked at the near future of advertising and predicted yesterday that US advertising budgets will shrink by almost 2% by the end of this year, and as much as 4% next year.

Analysts from Citigroup said that decreased consumer spending, as well as budgetary and credit constraints placed upon businesses, will lead to an overall advertiser pullback in all media that could last until the fourth quarter of 2010.

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The ad hoc volunteer election-monitoring effort undertaken on Twitter last week had problems with imprecise methodology and random trolls, so much so that one researcher calls the compiled data "a mess."

A three-page paper from Bob Conrad, a Nevada-based PR person, blogger and doctoral student, looks at last Tuesday's Twitter Vote Report -- a volunteer effort to give voters a place to describe what was happening at the polls on election day. The project allowed observers to send reports in via Twitter, text or phone, with special apps available for the iPhone and Android.

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Download Windows Mobile 6.1.4 Emulator Images for Visual Studio 2008 from FileForum now.

What will customers with Windows Mobile phones be doing with your application, and how will they perceive your Web site, with the upcoming 6.1.4 release? The latest round of emulator images can answer those questions.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. - ISP and consumer VoiP specialist Ooma will soon start selling its phone system in Best Buy stores and other retail outlets, while also bringing out a new model named Telo which adds cordless phones to the "free calling" mix.

Under Ooma's current plan, a consumer pays $249.99 for an Ooma phone system, and all calling inside the US is then "free for life," according to Matthew Podboy, who heads up affiliated company Voce Communications.

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On Monday, November 17, One Laptop Per Child's 2008 holiday "Give One, Get One" XO program will begin. This year, ordering and shipping are organized by Amazon.com.

In September Amazon announced it would be handling the second annual One Laptop Per Child "Give one, get one" holiday program where customers buy an OLPC XO to donate to a developing country and get their own in return.

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With Europe, North America, and Japan facing some of the worst economic conditions in decades, manufacturers are looking to China and Southeast Asia for shelter. Now, a connectivity provider says it has a plan.

With PC manufacturers looking to emerging markets around the world to help them through a slumping global economic situation, we've learned this morning that they're about to find themselves with unexpected company: Qualcomm, which licenses connectivity technologies such as CDMA and HSDPA for phone and handset manufacturers, announced this morning it has come up with a reference design for what it's calling an "alternative PC," that it has already licensed to one Southeast Asian manufacturer, Inventec.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. - At a pre-CES press event in New York City last night, Samsung previewed two new flat screen technologies, one suited to both ultra large TVs and 100-foot-wide billboards and the other to outdoor viewing in broad daylight.

At CES in January, Samsung plans to show new innovations in flat screen technologies, including one type of panel geared to LCD displays of up to 100 feet -- as opposed to today's limit of about 100 inches -- and another variety of panel touted as "the brightest in the world to be mass produced."

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Sony Ericsson today announced the "Black Friday" US launch date of its new Xperia X1 Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone, which is good news for consumers who had been led to believe the manufacturer would skip America first.

When Sony Ericsson announced availability of the X1 in September, the company gave it a fourth quarter 2008 launch date for a number of markets, but omitted the United States.

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