When last June, Microsoft decided to discontinue work on its radically redefined relational file system, then called WinFS, the team announced some of its work would be forked off and merged into the next version of SQL Server, code-named "Katmai." After Bill Gates had proclaimed WinFS in 2005 to be the game-changing component for his future vision of Windows Vista, developers were curious to find out how something that monumental would manage to move mountains as part of a database manager rather than an operating system.

How much of Gates' vision survived the exodus? The answer came on Wednesday, and it's not much.

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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said Thursday that new top-level domain names (TLDs) for general use could be live by summer of 2008, and invited public comment on procedures for creating the new domains - the first since 2000.

Since .info and .biz were established for general use in 2000, ICANN has only approved six regional and industry-specific domains, including .asia, .museum and .travel. While it did not offer specifics, ICANN said it would work to make the process smooth such that new TLDs can be created more quickly in the future. However, businesses have complained that more names leads to more cybersquatting, and pointed out that both .biz and .info have failed to take off in the marketplace.

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During its quarterly earnings call Thursday, Vonage chief executive Jeffrey Citron acknowledged that the company's patent fight against Verizon has hurt profit margins, but says it has developed workarounds for two of the three patents in question.

Vonage declined to offer specifics on how it intends to sidestep Verizon's VoIP patents if it loses on appeal, only saying a software update would be delivered to subscribers in the coming weeks. The third patent -- involving placing calls over Wi-Fi -- is still being worked on, but Vonage says only 10 percent of subscribers use Wi-Fi phones.

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As a means of eliminating the appearance of disparity between the performance royalties about to be charged to US Internet streaming music providers such as AOL Radio and Pandora, and what terrestrial broadcasters pay for the same privilege - which, for that category, is currently zero - lobbyists representing the recording industry, according to Billboard magazine, are pressuring Congress to resolve this problem by extending essentially the same sharply higher performance royalty rates to all broadcasters.

If such a measure were to become law, an industry which once had the problem of overcoming the appearance of paying off radio broadcasters to increase the airplay for their songs -- a practice known as "payola" -- would begin charging broadcasters in all media for the privilege of having their songs played.

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VMware this week made available version 6.0 of its desktop virtualization product, which has set a standard for testing and development, and competes with Microsoft's now-free VirtualPC. New features in Workstation 6.0 include support for Vista, dual monitors, and USB 2.0 devices.

While the server world increasingly turns to virtualization to take advantage of the huge advances in CPU power with the advent of multi-core chips, virtual machines play a critical role in aiding IT administration, development and software testers. Users can quickly boot up a computer within a computer, as well as do cross-platform testing without multiple hardware setups.

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Facing what he called "universal truths about product development," Microsoft general manager for virtualization strategy Mike Neil concluded a multi-page blog post this afternoon touting the progress made with Windows Server Virtualization, code-named "Viridian," by announcing the removal of three of the service's most highly anticipated features: live migration of running virtual machines between servers; "hot-adds" of virtual components such as storage, processors, and memory; and support for more than 16 logical processing cores.

"With all this progress comes the occasional tradeoff," Neil wrote this afternoon. "Earlier this week we had to come to grips with some universal truths about product development: *) Shipping is a feature, too; *) The quality bar, the time you have, and the feature set are directly correlated."

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After over a year and a half of beta testing, Microsoft on Thursday made available the final version of its Developer Toolbar for Internet Explorer 6 and 7. The add-on enables users to analyze the code of a Web page by color coding the HTML source, matching CSS selectors to page elements, and even offering a pixel ruler.

While the 1.0 release offers no new functionality over Beta 3, Microsoft says it has improved reliability and the fit-and-finish of the toolbar. "This tool is a direct response to your requests for free web developer tools and we hope you enjoy it. However, we see this as only the first response to your requests not only for tools, but for making development for IE easier," wrote IE program manger John Hrvatin on the IEBlog. Similar toolbars are available for Firefox.

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Joost, the Internet TV startup founded by Skype and Kazaa creators Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, has raised $45 million from a group of five investors that includes CBS and Viacom. The service has been in private beta for months, and recently opened to a broader audience.

Thus far, Joost's largest problem has been the quality of television content viewers could receive. The new funding news comes after both CBS and Viacom announced plans to make their content available on the service. Joost relies on P2P technology to save bandwidth costs, as each viewer transmits video data to other users as well.

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During a presentation to analysts on Tuesday in Seattle, as BetaNews reported yesterday, Microsoft technical product manager Brian Goldfarb, standing beside his boss, Chairman Bill Gates, demonstrated an application produced for Major League Baseball, showing how fans can keep track of multiple games from stand-alone consoles that include graphics of the current diamonds, and can show multiple video clips simultaneously. Gates cited the demo as an example of what could be achieved by Silverlight developers who move beyond AJAX, which he described as "problematic" and "very complex."

But a spokesperson for Microsoft on behalf of Goldfarb told BetaNews today that, as it turned out, the specific MLB demo shown Tuesday was actually "written in Jscript," and was not the same demo that was written "entirely in C#" and described by Microsoft developer Robert Unoki on his personal blog this week. That C# demo was tailored to be portable so that it runs with .NET Compact Framework, which Unoki is helping to produce for Windows Mobile 6.

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Chinese computer maker Lenovo has inked a deal with Microsoft to buy up to $1.3 billion worth of Windows Vista and Office 2007 for the next year. A similar deal valued at $1.2 billion was signed last year, which was considered a big step toward fighting piracy in China.

Lenovo has been battling Taiwan-based Acer to be the world's number-three computer manufacturer behind giants Hewlett-Packard and Dell. In turn, the company has been forging closer ties with Microsoft, including a joint research center announced last month to be built in China. Details of the new Microsoft agreement will be finalized soon, the companies said.

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Earlier this month, two consulting engineers affiliated with the Internet Engineering Task Force formally proposed the simplest, though easily the most drastic, measure to deal with a diagnostic feature of new IPv6 routing that Cisco learned the hard way two years ago could enable a denial-of-service attack on the Internet's core routers: They recommend turning it off.

As SecurityFocus correspondent Robert Lemos first reported yesterday, two consultants have issued formal drafts to the IETF that officially place on the table for discussion and debate the prospects of disusing the so-called "Type 0 Routing Header." At a security conference in Vancouver last month, a demonstration entitled "Fun with IPv6 Routing Headers" effectively convinced engineers that the problem Cisco first encountered - and warned its customers about in July 2005 - continues to exist.

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With growing pressure from lower-cost DSL and Verizon's faster FiOS, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts used The Cable Show conference in Las Vegas to show off a new cable modem technology that could bring speeds of 150 megabits per second. FiOS is currently offered up to 50 megabits, but is capable of much more.

Version 3.0 of the DOCSIS standard, developed by Cable Television Laboratories which represents all of the cable providers, utilizes four channels to send data instead of just one. This "channel bonding" would enable speeds 25 times higher than current cable modems. Roberts says manufacturers are planning to submit DOCSIS 3.0 modems for certification later this year, and customers could see the technology in their homes within a couple years.

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So much has already been said or leaked about Intel's Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro mobile computing platforms - formerly code-named "Santa Rosa" - that this morning's announcement from the company in San Francisco produced few surprises. But the announcement served as a starting gun for notebook computer manufacturers who are anxious to put an end to the seasonally duller spring purchasing season, and move forward the back-to-school buying season.

The Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro platforms designate a typical range of buildouts for notebook system builders who want to use Core 2 Duo mobile processors, and earn the prestigious Intel logo and reap the benefits of cross-marketing. With at least one notebook manufacturer having jumped the gun (quite literally, a marketing manager may have mistaken "May 9" for "May 4" on a schedule), exactly what the new Centrinos will entail is not new.

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Warner Bros. announced this week it would no longer hold promotional screenings of movies in Canada, and all press screenings would take place in a private room. The move comes in response to increasing movie piracy in the country, which the studio blames on lax laws.

While China and Russia often thought as the largest sources of pirated content, Warner Bros. claims Canada is the real problem. The company says 70 percent of its films have been pirated in Canada over the last 18 months. Those illegal -- and often poor quality -- copies are then sold around the world.

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Advertisers using Google AdWords are seeing a new option for reaching customers: print newspapers. The search company has been testing the print waters since late last year, and said in December it would enable online advertisers to purchase surplus inventory in hundreds of newspapers.

AdWords advertisers can choose a weekly amount they'd like to spend on the campaign, as well as the newspapers to target, which Google lists with circulation numbers. The concept of ad brokerage is nothing new to the industry. What is new is Google's spin on it, which is essentially pure automation and acceleration of the process, not unlike what eBay has done for barter. Marketing Pilgrim has screenshots of AdSense for Print.

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