In another expansion to their 18-month-old interoperability agreement, Microsoft and Novell introduced software tools designed to let systems administrators monitor Linux, Unix, and Windows servers from within Windows.

In an interview with BetaNews, Joe Wagner, senior VP and general manager of Novell's Systems and Resource Management unit, said Novell will work with Microsoft to enhance a product rolled out at this week's Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas: the Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 Crossplatform Extensions.

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With all that Google has had on its plate over the past two years, you can imagine some projects have been shoved to the very back of the back burner. But only now is a February 2006 acquisition starting to heat up.

Over two years ago already, Google purchased the developer of an innovative set of blog traffic measurement tools called MeasureMap. Its key feature was providing blog proprietors with a near-real-time geographical plot of where its readers originated from, along with key data as to what readers were interested in and what they responded to.

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Contrary to blog chatter today, Intel's creative relationship with McCann-Erickson, the firm responsible for a questionable ad last year, has not ended entirely, though $300 million of its media planning and buying will go elsewhere.

Omnicom Group's OMD will replace Universal McCann and Starcom who currently handle Intel Corp's $300 million dollar global account. The company announced its win yesterday, after a year-long review from Intel.

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How does law enforcement solve the problem of holding spammers accountable, when federal anti-spam laws are still in their formative stages? In the case of a Colorado man, the answer was to leverage some help from the IRS.

A Colorado man was sentenced yesterday to 21 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release after he pleaded guilty last December to charges of tax evasion and falsifying e-mail headers.

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Some bloggers this week are suggesting that Microsoft is handing out "backdoor keys" to Windows security to police officers. Although Microsoft is denying the bulk of the rumors, a full explanation still seems a bit elusive.

In a statement to BetaNews this afternoon, a Microsoft spokesperson denied that a technology unveiled at a law enforcement conference in Seattle on Monday would be used to equip officers and investigators with "backdoors" into Windows systems, as various blogs and news sources have since speculated.

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Fortune cites sources indicating that AT&T is planning to cut the price of the 3G phone to attract new customers. Others say the magazine's got it all wrong. The truth? Nobody may be straight on this one.

The financial magazine's Scott Moritz created some waves Tuesday with a post to his online column this morning stating that when the 3G iPhone takes off this June, it will come with a subsidy to those who purchase it from the carrier.

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Emerging from beta yesterday, build 115 of version 3.8 of the latest edition of Internet voice messaging platform Skype promises to focus on the messaging platform's single biggest gripe in recent months: call quality.

Download Skype 3.8.0.115 for Windows from BetaNews FileForum now.

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Social networking site MOG said Wednesday it had received an additional $2.8 million in funding, some of it coming from Universal Music Group and Sony BMG.

The site has around a million unique users a month according to company statistics, and promotes itself as a destination for music enthusiasts to discover new music and connect with others who may have similar music tastes.

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Intel, Panasonic, Infineon, and TI are among the charter members of a group dedicated to creating a new worldwide standard for transferring digital media over power, phone, and coaxial cables.

Companies and consumers have long talked about a possible system capable of linking devices in the home together so they can be controlled using a PC or notebook. While Intel's Viiv and AMD's Live platform have been around for a few years already -- and Windows Media Edition plays a critical role there -- there still is lacking a certain interoperability that could bridge together all of a home's media-capable devices, using wiring that homes already have in place.

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Is it a first peek at an entirely new class of Intel CPU that Apple is offering in its latest refresh of iMacs, or is it an older class of CPU that is being overclocked at customers' requests? Intel is indicating that the iMac's new high-end CPU is neither.

The latest round of the old "telephone game" amid several online news sources yesterday resulted in two unusual interpretations of Apple's news on Monday that its top-of-the-line iMac was getting a speed boost to 3.06 GHz.

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While consumers are still not able to use the audio-visual features of Microsoft's instant messaging client for Macs, a new version adds support for AV for businesses.

In order for businesses with Mac clients to be running Microsoft's Messenger for Mac 7.0 with video support, an organization must be running Exchange server and Microsoft Communicator. Video and audio chats will be available, as well as multi-party conferencing.

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In February, EA's six-year-old Sims Online MMO underwent a serious format change and re-branding, becoming a free-to-play world called EA-Land. Already, the team responsible for EA-Land has announced its termination on August 1.

Yesterday, in the official EA-Land blog, it was announced that the "lifetime of the game has drawn to an end, and now we will be focusing on new ideas and other innovative concepts in the games arena." Resources consumed by EA-Land/The Sims Online will be focused on "future games."

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In a move that may have serious implications on the possibility of a future AOL + Yahoo pairing, Time Warner said Wednesday that it will be spinning off its cable division.

Time Warner owns about 84 percent of the cable provider, and its CEO said in a statement that a "complete structural separation" will be in the best interest of its shareholders.

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A company known as 24/7 Mobile Solutions has made available a chip which the company claims to be able to unlock any 3G phone.

To install the SIMable mod, the user must punch a hole in his SIM card with the provided cutting device, and then sandwich the chip and the SIM together in the handset.

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Although not everyone agrees with the prediction, analysts at ABI Research are now saying that the Blu-ray high definition DVD market won't "kick into gear" for another 12 to 18 months.

Until prices reach the $200 level for full-featured players, people who don't own HDTVs will "certainly favor standard DVD players" over Blu-ray drives, according to a report issued by the industry analyst firm.

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