The end of the year is approaching, and that means its time for Google's yearly look at what we've all been searching for. Topping that list were two social networking sites, and a appetite for news on the ever-controversial Paris Hilton.

Google's annual zeitgeist, which is a snapshot of trends observed through its users' search patterns, showed the increasing influence of social media. The two top searches during the year were Bebo and MySpace in first and second, both social networking sites.

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Nintendo plans to make available a customized version of the Opera browser for its Wii console on Friday, the company said Tuesday. Users will be able to download a trial version of the software at that time, which would activate the "Internet Channel" on the Wii menu. The final version is due out in March 2007. Downloads until June of next year will be free, and 500 Wii points afterwards.

The two companies first announced the partnership in May of this year. "Our software brings the power and reach of the Internet to the hottest video game system available," Opera devices executive vice president Scott Hedrick said. "Wii's unique interface adds a new dimension to our browser, making it a useful tool that the whole family will enjoy operating with ease." The browser would be standards based, and come with built-in support for Adobe Flash.

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Consider an earlier warning by some news organizations that a self-propagating worm making its way through the Skype network a false alarm. Websense, the company that first disclosed the threat on Monday, retracted its earlier statements Tuesday and called the vulnerability a Trojan horse instead. The changes were made after the firm discussed the issue with the development team at Skype.

"The behavior of this Trojan using the Skype API is as per the specifications of the API. The end-user who is running Skype does get notified that a program is attempting to access it and must acknowledge it," the firm wrote in a new alert. "There is no vulnerability in Skype at this time that has been uncovered." At the time of this story, the site hosting the Trojan was down.

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Film studio Warner Bros. took another step towards becoming a full-fledged video game publisher, announcing Tuesday it would distribute the titles of British game maker Codemasters beginning in April. The deal is Warner's second in the industry in a week. Last week, the studio invested in SCi Entertainment Group, taking a 10.3 percent stake in the company. That deal involved a licensing deal of popular characters to which Warner Bros. owned the rights.

The Codemasters deal will run through May 2008. Codemasters produces several games, the most popular of which in the US is its "Operation Flashpoint" title. The game maker hopes the deal will increase its sales within the region.

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Microsoft on Tuesday announced a settlement with one of its disc replication partners, after the company admitted it had breached agreements with Microsoft by unlawfully producing the Redmond company's server software.

A multi-year investigation found that the Thai office of MPO Group relied on a forged licensing agreement provided to it by a counterfeiter who had 20,000 copies of Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server produced in 2003. Microsoft said it does not license software to be reproduced in this way.

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eBay is reportedly pulling out of the Chinese market, instead opting to replace it with a new site that would be run by Bejing-based Tom Online, sources told the Wall Street Journal Monday. So far, the auction site has refused to confirm the speculation.

The San Jose, California-based auction site will have a 49 percent stake in the new operation. A deal could be announced as soon as Tuesday. Both companies plan to invest $60 million in the venture, with eBay contributing $40 million of that total.

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In a short but impassioned public statement this afternoon, the likes of which has rarely been seen in Washington for decades, FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell boldly reiterated his refusal to vote in the current debate over the AT&T/BellSouth merger, citing his former involvement with a legal advocacy group opposed to the merger, and at times quoting the pillars of American ethical jurisprudence.

"While I expected the legal equivalent of body armor," McDowell pronounced emphatically, referring to a memorandum from the Federal Communications Commission's general counsel, Sam Feder, authorizing him to vote despite possible conflict of interest, "I was handed Swiss cheese."

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Mozilla's Firefox browser continues to gain market share. However, the launch of Internet Explorer 7 by Microsoft may have acted to temper some of the alternative browser's gains. According to research firm WebSideStory, Firefox had a 10.7 percent share at the beginning of December, up from 9.84 percent in mid-October. IE, on the other hand, dropped from 89.1 percent to 88.2 percent during the same period.

It still appears that Internet Explorer is more commonly used in the workplace, as the firm noted Firefox's share often increases during the weekends. This likely means that a higher percentage of Web users have chosen Mozilla's offering for use at home. In addition, the company's research shows that nearly one out of every five web users have upgraded their browsers since IE7 and Firefox 2.0 were released over the past two months.

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An independent audit committee assembled by network technology provider Broadcom in the wake of the industry-wide SEC options backdating scandal, has found that stock options granted to executives and employees for a nearly five-year period were improperly accounted for.

Last Thursday, the company stated this morning, the Securities and Exchange Commission informed Broadcom that its investigation has entered the formal stage. Apple and Dell received similar notices last week, responding by making further delays to their quarterly and annual reports, leaving investors with a fuzzier picture of the actual capital value of these companies as the weeks pass.

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Aimed at expanding its presence in the mobile sector, MTV Networks has created a new division specifically charged with expanding its presence on mobile devices.

The group will manage MTV's mobile partnerships and content distribution, while working with the company's various divisions to develop new content and application. Already, MTV produces 600 clips, or about 30 hours of mobile video per month, it said.

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A six-year-old registered trademark, acquired by Cisco Systems after the 2000 acquisition of telephone equipment supplier InfoGear, and which applied at the time to a device no one would want today, may just now pay off for Cisco's consumer division. Linksys today announced it's attaching the iPhone trademark to its line of VoIP and Skype phones.

Back in August 2005, Linksys demonstrated its first series of wireless Skype phones, though Engadget correctly ascertained the CIT200 model wasn't really WiFi - that it actually transmitted over the 1.9 GHz band. Last May, during what could be considered the "first re-introduction" of Linksys' VoIP equipment in the US, the company presented its first real WiFi VoIP phone, the WIP300, this time with support for SIP v2 signaling protocol.

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XM said Monday that it had put its fourth satellite into operation, nicknamed Blues. Combined with its previous next-generation satellite, "Rhythm," the two would provide better coverage and reliability than the first generation satellites launched in 2001, named "Rock" and "Roll." XM said they expect the satellites to be in use for at least the next 15 years.

For the time being, the deactivated older satellites would serve as spares in the event of problems, the company said. XM has had its share of problems with the older satellites. Both suffered from power degradation issues due to a design flaw in their solar arrays. The resulting power loss has caused the satellites to operate a little less effectively than the satellite radio company had hoped.

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A little less than two months after IBM sued Amazon over patent infringement, the web retailer has turned around and countersued Big Blue. Amazon says IBM misappropriated technology in order to enhance its own offerings.

The move could be seen as a defensive action in an attempt to gain leverage in negotiations between the two companies. According to IBM, the two sides have tried to work out an agreement since 2002, but have been unsuccessful thus far.

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The explosive growth of Web 2.0 and user-generated content is changing the way we use the Internet and interact with one another. So congratulations, Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2006 is you.

This year's pick marks the 79th time the magazine has picked a "Person of the Year" since it started in 1927. Past winners include Charles Lindbergh, FDR, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bill Clinton.

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The replacement of a thin plastic resin insulating layer, or polyolefin, with a new and undisclosed heat resistance layer, could prevent future incidents of lithium-ion batteries spontaneously catching fire. The battery producing arm of Matsushita, Panasonic's parent company, claims it's now ready to begin producing batteries with the new insulator.

The recent episodes of batteries overheating and even exploding that have plagued Sony and other manufacturers all year could be due to the presence of foreign metal materials that cause short circuits in batteries.

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