In what could be the most sweeping changes yet to its front page, Yahoo is testing the impact of a redesign in the US, UK, France and India, and has already added the capability to play back full songs in response to a music search.

Yahoo's forthcoming upgrade bears slight resemblance to the existent My Yahoo page, except in a couple of critical respects: Naturally, the Yahoo search field is the paramount item on screen, and the left-hand navigation pane is where the new Yahoo and the present My Yahoo are most similar. In My Yahoo (and the standard home page), a quick-links bar connects users to Yahoo's other services; in the new Yahoo home page, that component has become the "My Applications" dashboard. It links to the same services, however in the redesign, the user defines which links are shown, and contents are no longer limited to Yahoo properties.

Can a two-and-a-half-year-old game console infringe upon a company's IP portfolio that includes patents that are younger than the device itself -- including one that's only days old? A new case now tests a curious loophole.

The US International Trade Commission says it will formally investigate whether Nintendo's Wii game console violates Section 337 of the Tariff Act -- specifically, whether Nintendo is importing devices that infringe upon the intellectual property held by Hillcrest Labs. This after the licensing firm filed suit against Nintendo in US District Court in Maryland for infringing four patents, literally one day after the US Patent Office granted Hillcrest one of those patents.

Laptops and other consumer devices with 4G access are already on the way to widespread deployment, and some vendors will be supporting WiMAX and LTE within the same products, according to 4G experts today at the Interop conference.

NEW YORK, N.Y. (BetaNews) - Will WiMAX and LTE -- the two main flavors of future 4G networks -- be able to peacefully co-exist? Yes, but by living next to each other on consumer electronics products rather than by joining hands through standards groups, according to panelists at Interop.

There's an underlying issue in the debate raging about the reported hack into the Yahoo e-mail account of VP nominee Sarah Palin, and it actually has very little to do with the governor: Is there an e-mail vulnerability we should know about?

Though a Fox News report from commentator Sean Hannity yesterday credited anonymous individuals who regularly post to a massive random image posting site called 4chan, with the revelation of screen shots of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's private e-mails -- including some that may play a role in an ongoing investigation -- the existence of the account's location may actually have been first publicly disclosed by, of all places, the Washington Post. A September 10 article by reporter Karl Vick reported that Palin had apparently been using one or two Yahoo e-mail accounts to conduct state business, with concern being cast upon the relative security of any private transactions that took place there.

Today T-Mobile announced that its 3G network will be available by mid-October, roughly the same time the HTC Dream Android phone is expected to go on sale.

T-Mobile will be premiering the world's first Android phone in just five days; the 3G device is presently without an official sale date and price. Unofficial reports have placed availability between October 13 and October 21, and though today's announcement from T-Mobile does not provide any further information on dates, its "mid-October" availability of 3G services is in keeping with that timetable.

In its third week in the wild, Microsoft's outwardly pointless advertisements will tonight be making their first statement, and it's one we're now familiar with: I'm a PC.

In the wee morning hours today, Microsoft's Steve Clayton posted a brief blog saying he'd seen the ads that will be airing tonight, and provided a link to the New York Times' fresh analysis, along with a picture of a diver in a shark cage holding up a tablet displaying the once-derisive slogan "I'm a PC."

You may think the 802.11n Wi-Fi networking standard is already here. The fact is, equipment manufacturers have been relying on drafts. At last, the final draft is on its way, and an Interop panel discussed its implications Wednesday.

NEW YORK, NY (BetaNews) - The now emerging IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi standard will add some major new twists to Wi-Fi, or in many cases, finalize some of the twists manufacturers have already begun implementing while waiting for the finalized draft. Some of the most important of these changes will include three modes of operation and two frequency ranges, speakers said at the Interop conference here Wednesday.

The latest suite of Windows Live "Wave 3" betas is now available for download, which includes the beta of Windows Live Movie Maker. Can you really use it to edit a motion picture? Yeah...in a sense, as we found out first-hand.

Microsoft's new Live Movie Maker -- the latest beta in "Wave 3" of its Windows Live services -- leaves quite a bit to be desired at this point, as it lacks the ability to do anything except arrange clips and photos with the option to include background music.

Plastic Logic, flexible e-paper display company, cut the ribbon today on its own factory in Dresden, Germany. This will be the factory that manufactures its e-reader device which will compete with Sony's Reader and Amazon's Kindle.

Just as the company announced at the debut of its own e-book reader at DEMO in San Diego last week, the Plastic Logic facility opened today.

Although computer companies were among its earliest adopters, "green computing" is quickly spreading roots into a range of other industries, judging from comments raised today by CIOs at the Interop trade show in New York City.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - At the Interop conference today, a panel of CIOs from Liberty Mutual, KPMG International, and the UMB Group all said that some sort of "green computing" initiative is already underway at their organizations, even though other aspects of IT management -- such as degrees of standardization and centralized control -- vary greatly across their environments.

A costly technique for using two masks to produce one semiconductor wafer etching at the 22 nm level may be minimized, thanks to a process that IBM announced today, though for obvious reasons has not completely explained.

The need for devices to reduce power consumption is the chief motivator behind the drive to shrink the size of components. It's not like we need more space anymore; smaller components are simply, by design, more efficient. But it takes a tremendous array of new efficiencies along the way to yield that power efficiency at the end, and one of the problems facing chip manufacturers has been, how to implement these new processes without completely overhauling factories.

While Yahoo's deal with Google directly affects only the US and Canada, the European Commission is currently investigating the potentially pond-hopping impact on the availability of advertising resources worldwide.

The European Commission's zealous consideration for a fair and competitive market has brought many, if not all, of technology's biggest companies before the judicious eyes of Commissioner for Competitiveness Neelie Kroes. Now, Reuters reports the deal between Google and Yahoo -- which is slated to only affect Yahoo search pages for North American Web users -- has been brought to Kroes' attention.

Japanese gamer mag Famitsu today published Japan's weekly game console sales tallies, and Microsoft's Xbox 360 has secured the top position, thanks to compelling software releases and the console's refreshed pricing.

The Japanese market was initially lukewarm toward Microsoft's game console. Even after price reductions, the console's uptake only saw a brief surge over Sony's PlayStation 3.

During a conference call with analysts late yesterday, executives from Adobe confirmed that the company is sticking to its schedule of launching its final editions of Creative Suite 4 next week.

Final builds of Adobe CS4 beta components were being discussed on its testers' forums as late as last weekend, and one problem that may not yet be completely resolved even on the launch date -- now expected to be next Tuesday -- concerns the compatibility of extensions made for CS3 with CS4. On testers' forums this week, Adobe claims its development partners have been given plenty of time to make the changeover, though at least one such partner claims it hasn't been given the help it needs from Adobe.

11:00 am EST September 17, 2008 - At a meeting with analysts on Monday, HP officials said that a total of 1,500 employees have been working on a strategy to cut 24,600 jobs and produce other cost efficiencies in integrating HP with its newly acquired EDS.

About 500 staffers are working on this task full-time, while 1,000 are doing so on a part-time basis, said Shane Robison, HP's executive VP and chief strategy and technology officer.