Microsoft developer Ashish Thapliyal has published a roadmap for the Silverlight 2 Web platform, confirming a final launch scheduled for the summer, and noting that Silverlight won't be able to play back .flv Flash video files.

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 made its debut at MIX 08 last month with a limited non-commercial license. Beta 2 is slated for release this quarter and will allow developers to launch commercial applications built atop the platform. Microsoft typically lets developers to do this with its near-finished betas using what it calls a "Go-Live" license.

The British Home Office today announced it wants to stop convicted sex offenders from using social networking Web sites by making it illegal for them to sign up. Parliament is scheduled to take a look at the legislation before 2009.

Registered pedophiles would be forced to give their e-mail address to police authorities, who will turn the e-mail over to social networking sites for them to be blacklisted. If caught violating the law and using an e-mail address not given to the government, convicted child sex offenders could face up to five years in prison.

While the Wii continues to dominate the Japanese market, Enterbrain reports that the PSP has once again begun to outsell the Nintendo DS.

The new sales tally for March ends a strong six-month run for the DS, where it was for the most part far outselling its competitors. The resurgence of the PSP could be explained by a refocus by Sony on the product, of which the dividends are now beginning to pay off.

The U.S. Census Bureau has been trying to upgrade to a paperless filing system to collect population data, but it announced this week it will return one aspect to paper forms after PDAs proved to be too complex.

The Bureau is responsible for collecting population data every 10 years so the government may appropriately tailor budgets, congressional representation and voting power of the United States.

While the iPhone may be in short supply in the United States amidst rumors of a forthcoming 3G model, the iconic device doesn't appear to be selling as well in Germany. In turn, Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile arm is lowering the price to just 99 euros ($122 USD) for two months.

The promotion runs from April 7 to June 30, and is a sharp discount from the iPhone's suggested retail price of 399 euros. The 99 euro offer is for the 8GB model only. In the United States, the sells for $399, although for a time, buyers could pick up the discontinued 4GB model for $299.

The man who became the public face for Windows Vista -- and often bore the brunt of criticism directed at the OS -- through blog posts and community events has resigned from Microsoft.

Nick White is leaving the Redmond company to take a position at BuzzCorps, a blog-oriented viral marketing company founded by former AMD communications manager Chris Aarons. White has worked with Aarons in the past on marketing efforts for Windows Vista.

In a total reversal of what Windows and Macintosh users might expect, Adobe Creative Suite 4 will include 64-bit support for the Windows platform, but not for Mac.

Mac OS X users probably won't get 64-bit support until CS5, the subsequent release of the graphics editing software, according to John Nack, Adobe's Photoshop product manager.

Symantec sued Microsoft almost 2 years ago for violating licensing terms on its patented technology in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The suit has finally come to an apparently amicable settlement.

Financial terms were not disclosed by either party, both of whom requested to dismiss the case from the Seattle U.S. District Court "without an award of costs or fees to either party."

Sony today unveiled its HDR-TG1 Handycam, claiming it's the smallest and lightest high-definition camcorder currently available.

The portable camcorder market is thriving, with Canon, Vivitar and other companies making cameras smaller with more bells and whistles.

Although the announcement won't go out until next week, Nokia's retooled N-Gage mobile gaming system for smartphones has finally reached its full release.

"There will be an official announcement on Monday, but for you, the N-Gage faithful, we wanted to let you know we're up and running," according to a posting on Nokia's N-Gage blog site.

AT&T Wireless announced Thursday it will prorate early termination fees (ETFs), giving consumers "greater flexibility" to opt out of their contracts without paying the full $175 penalty.

Beginning May 25, customers who are under a one- or two-year phone contract will have $5 taken off the termination fee per month for the length of the contract. AT&T customers who agree to a one- or two-year service agreement before May 25, however, will still have to pay the entire $175 fee.

Thanks to a spike in post-holiday sales, Apple's iTunes online store outsold long-time top music retailer Wal-Mart in the United States during both January and February, the company said Thursday.

Research firm NPD has been tracking the meteoric rise of iTunes among music retailers since it broke the top ten sellers in the third quarter 2005. It entered the rankings at number seven behind Circuit City, FYE, Amazon.com, Target, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart.

Dell, Inc. now plans to cut more jobs than the 8,800 headcount reduction predicted earlier, said CEO Michael Dell, speaking today at a meeting with financial analysts.

Dell's profitability plans also include pay reductions, removal of product features that are "not valued by customers," and "optimization" of the company's global manufacturing network, maintained Donald J. Carty, Dell's vice president and CFO, during the same meeting today.

Confirming the rumors that devices such as Asus' Eee PC are prolonging the life of XP, Microsoft today announced that the previously-established June 30, 2008 cutoff date for OEM and retail Windows XP sales was final, except for the new class of what the company has termed ULCPCs: Ultra Low-Cost PCs.

The nebulously-named class of computers including UMPCs, MIDs, Origami devices, subnotebooks and even desktops that offer lower power have received the official Ultra Low Cost PC (ULCPC) moniker from Microsoft.

Opera on Thursday released a beta version of Opera Mini 4.1, the company's free Web browser for mobile phones that runs on Java. Most notably, the new release is now signed, which means the phone will not prompt users every time they run the software.

Aside from eliminating the annoying Java security pop-ups, version 4.1 noticeably speeds up Web surfing by up to 50% thanks to improvements to Opera Mini's rendering engine. Accessing sites will be quicker, too, as the browser saves previously entered URLs and auto-completes them for users.