Microsoft cobbles together a 'Plan C' for online search
Just as a team of white knights are preparing a new round table of leadership for Yahoo, and riding off to rescue the Microsoft buyout, Microsoft inexplicably sends an intentionally mixed message on Sunday implying it would rather not be rescued.
In a move that could be considered unprecedented, for the most part, due to its being bizarre, Microsoft issued a statement yesterday saying it would be interested in purchasing part of Yahoo, without saying which part it had in mind. While reporters and analysts speculated that Yahoo's search component must be what the company has in mind, an internal memo "leaked" to multiple reporters, including The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher, written by Microsoft's president for its platforms division and also dated yesterday, gives employees a heads-up that it is actually planning to announce its own, homegrown, major search initiative this upcoming Wednesday.
Novell challenges Microsoft, IBM with new NOWS collaboration suite
Despite its well known interoperability deal with Microsoft, Novell still sees Redmond as the big competitor to catch in the groupware, collaboration, and messaging arenas, where the SuSE Linux distributor has just released the new, multiplatform Novell Open Workgroup Suite (NOWS) with Novell Teaming.
"Our agreement with Microsoft is about interoperability only. When we signed it, we didn't say we'd never compete with Microsoft on anything," said Richard Lindstedt, senior product marketing manager at Novell, in an interview with BetaNews.
Google tries to make its spreadsheets more like wikis
In a strange move, Google has added a new feature to Google Docs that enables users to allow anyone to edit a spreadsheet, advertising the option as a way to make a spreadsheet like a wiki.
Previously, individuals could be invited to view or edit a spreadsheet, but they had to create an account with Google after entering a custom URL that effectively served as a security-through-obscurity barrier.
Gates demonstrates touch UIs everywhere, including walls and furniture
"Little thin, tablet-like computers" and giant, sensitive walls with interchangeable touch- and pen-based "natural interfaces" are still on the way, said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, speaking at a CEO Forum Wednesday.
Microsoft's prototype Touch Wall includes special software plus "some scanning cameras down here at the bottom, so whenever I go up to it and say just touch it, the software will notice that, theoretically," as described by Microsoft's ex-CEO and soon-to-be-retired chairman to an assembly of CEOs at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
Backup feature surprisingly removed from Windows Home Server refresh
Testers of a forthcoming service pack for Windows Home Server were the first to discover that a feature they'd come to rely upon had been removed from the product -- as it turns out, intentionally.
One of Windows Home Server's key features is the ability to perform manual or automatic backups of the entire contents of hard drives of PCs in a home network -- a consumer-centric version of the same backup engine used in Windows Server 2003 and 2008. WHS stores the backups from each of those drives in a special database; and for safety, many users have found it convenient enough to manually back up the backup database, sometimes onto separate drives in case of a server crash.
Sony announces in-house video game lineup
Looking to keep up the current string of positive news, Sony on Friday detailed its game lineup for the rest of the year and into 2009.
Part of the announcement also revolved around games intended to take advantage of the PlayStation Network, Sony's online gaming service. While the service is said to have eight million registered users, it still is seen by many as inferior to Xbox Live.
Municipal Wi-Fi sustains fatal blow with likely loss of MetroFi
After scrapping its citywide Wi-Fi deployment project for Portland, Oregon, municipal wireless company MetroFi is planning to liquidate its network assets or close down entirely.
In addition to Portland, MetroFi has free, ad-supported networks in place in Concord, Cupertino, Foster City, Riverside, San Jose, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale, California as well as Aurora, Illinois. In a private e-mail from MetroFi CEO Chuck Haas to Wi-Fi Networking News editor Glenn Fleischman, he says if no buyers turn up for these networks, his company will gradually shut them down.
Sprint eyes 2008 for WiMAX launch, ahead of AT&T and Verizon LTE
Sprint this week unveiled plans for a commercial launch of its WiMAX 4G network by the end of 2008 in the Baltimore and Washington, DC area, capping about a year of testing with Samsung and other wireless vendors.
Yesterday, Sprint announced the latest battery of tests of its Xohm network in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area launched last month, show it has passed "commercial acceptance" criteria, including overall performance, handoff performance, and handoff delay. That milestone having been passed, the company can now concentrate on its first commercial service rollouts.
Beta of an Outlook synchronization gadget for Google Apps
A great many Microsoft Outlook users don't have the benefit of an Exchange server, so their e-mail and calendar are bound to one PC. Now, a gadget just entering beta could help by extending the reach of personal data to the Web, through Google Apps.
More than 2,000 beta testers have reportedly signed up to help Cemaphore Systems test its MailShadow for Google Apps service, which offers real-time synchronization between Microsoft Outlook/Exchange, calendars, contacts, and Google's Gmail.
Yet another cross-site scripting vulnerability affects IE7 on XP
A private security researcher well known for turning up cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in Web browsers has discovered another one, and is trumpeting the find as another milestone in Web history.
Truth is, it sounds like a trumpet we've all heard too many times before. On Wednesday, researcher Aviv Raff posted on his Web site the discovery of a vulnerability so open and easy to exploit, that merely mentioning what it is could be enough of an instruction manual for malicious exploiters to try it for themselves.
Yahoo's SearchScan irks some Web site owners
False positives and errors have some developers seeing red over Yahoo's new security feature.
Released in beta earlier this month, SearchScan culls search results to find possible malicious sites. Users can either choose to have the sites flagged as such or left out of the results altogether.
Report: Alltel's choice of LTE a big loss for WiMAX, UMB
With the smallest subscriber base of the top five wireless carriers (13.3 million) in the US but one of the biggest networks (in 34 US states and parts of Canada), ABI Research thinks Alltel has picked a winner by aligning its future development with GSM-based Long Term Evolution (LTE).
Alltel yesterday announced that it is committed to LTE for the future of its network. Following Verizon Wireless' path, Alltel is now the second CDMA carrier to commit to LTE instead of Qualcomm's Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) or Mobile WiMAX, championed by Intel.
Study: BitTorrent blocking common on Comcast, Cox, StarHub
Blocking of BitTorrent traffic is widespread among some ISPs in the US and Singapore, but not in Canada or any other country on the globe, says a new study released this week from German researchers.
The study was conducted between March 18 and May 15 by the German-based Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, with assistance with more than 8,000 users worldwide. Together, they implemented a tool called Glasnost to test whether their BitTorrent traffic was being manipulated.
Firefox 3.0 Release Candidate 1 available on Mozilla servers
Moving right along according to plan, the first release candidate of Firefox 3.0 appeared this morning among Mozilla's beta and candidate downloads. BetaNews has obtained the link, and RC1 is downloadable now.
Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0 RC1 from BetaNews FileForum now.
Yahoo chairman's response to Icahn leaves possibilities open
Roy Bostock had every opportunity to simply just say no to Carl Icahn, whose open letter yesterday launched his hostile takeover strategy. But instead the Yahoo chairman wrote a candid, curiously unsolicited history of Microsoft's walkout.
It was not an emphatic denial of Yahoo's wish to be acquired that its chairman, Roy Bostock, transmitted to investor Carl Icahn this morning, by way of the rest of the world. It was a rejection of being acquired by Microsoft, certainly, though Bostock's response to Icahn's suggestion yesterday of nominating a powerhouse team of alternate directors was, at best, tepid.
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