Toshiba on Monday announced its latest additions to its gigabeat music player line with two devices that will appeal to the more fashion-conscious music lover. The new gigabeats will come with capacities of 512MB and 1GB, and sport either a multi-color or black design.

Also included is a 1.1-inch OLED color display that will give the player the capability to display JPEG photos in addition to music.

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Opera Software on Monday released a new version of its Web browser for Series 60 based mobile phones, such as those offered by Nokia. Opera 8.5 for S60 includes a new zoom function that lets mobile users view images and text in full size. A password manager has also been added in the update.

Other new features include customizable keyboard shortcuts, better image handling and support for more languages. Opera uses a special rendering technology to display full-format Web pages on mobile devices, keeping as much as the original design as possible. Opera 8.5 for S60 devices is available for download now.

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Search giant Google is reportedly investigating methods where its users could rent online copies of books for one week, indicating that the company is continuing to flesh out ways to make its Google Print service more attractive to publishers.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a publisher contacted by Google has said users would not be able to download or print the books, although those features may be added later. Google has proposed that the fee be ten percent of the book's list price, although the publisher indicated that pricing was too low.

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Calling it "strongest launch in the history of video game consoles," Microsoft announced Monday that 18 games and 13 accessories will be available for customers on November 22, when the Xbox 360 officially goes on sale in North America. The launch titles will all be priced at $49.99 USD.

Available games will include Madden NFL 06, NBA2K6, Perfect Dark Zero and Call of Duty 2. In addition, between 12 and 15 Xbox Live Arcade games will be offered for download starting on day one. "On Nov. 22, the next generation of gaming begins," said Xbox vice president Peter Moore. "From there, gamers will be overwhelmed with the pipeline of amazing Xbox 360 games yet to come."

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Google on Monday took the wraps off a new service for tracking Web statistics, which will be offered free to site owners and AdWords customers. Google Analytics is designed to help businesses improve their marketing campaigns by seeing how visitors find them and how they interact with a Web site.

The new offering is based on Urchin, which Google purchased in March. Google has integrated the service with AdWords to enable its online advertisers to easily track the results of any campaign, be it graphic banner, text link, newsletter or paid search.

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Although details are still sketchy at this time, partners close to Microsoft have indicated that work has begun on a version of Office 12 for mobile devices. Microsoft Watch reported that the update will include refreshes of the mobile versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, which have been included with Windows-based PDAs for years, in addition to a mobile version of the company's OneNote product.

Support for Microsoft's new XML-based file format would be included in the new mobile releases of the programs, sources told the site, as well as rights management support. The suite would run on both PDAs and smartphones with the Windows Mobile operating system. Microsoft has declined to confirm or deny the rumors.

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Research firm Gartner made waves Friday by telling clients in a note that there was no compelling reason for most businesses to upgrade to Windows Vista until 2008 -- or even later. However, Microsoft's response to the scathing analysis may shock many: it called the report "balanced."

The research note, entitled "Ten reasons you should and shouldn't care about Microsoft's Windows Vista client," highlighted the problems with Microsoft's strategy for the next-generation operating system.

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Microsoft has issued a list of over 200 original Xbox games that will compatible with the Xbox 360 upon launch, with a promise that more games will be supported through software updates in the future. But the list is missing some older, but still popular, games.

Because the Xbox 360 will use a software emulator to load the original Xbox games, the version of the console with a hard drive will be required. Quality on older games will be improved as well, with the Xbox 360 upscaling the graphics to 780p or 1080i high-definition. Future compatibility updates will be delivered free of charge online or through the mail.

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Following up on earlier indecision, Microsoft said over the weekend that it has decided to detect and remove the rootkit found in Sony's digital rights management, which sparked huge controversy after being discovered on a number of CDs.

Signatures will be added to Windows AntiSpyware shortly, as the December release of Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool. The announcement was made in the company's Anti-Malware Engineering Team blog.

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IBM continues to dominate the supercomputing industry, according to the Top500 Organization's latest list of the most powerful computers in the world. Altogether, Big Blue's systems comprise 219 of the 500 systems included in the bi-annual survey.

IBM manufactured the top three systems on the list, with two falling under the company's Blue Gene supercomputer brand.

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Leading personal computer manufacturer Dell saw its profit slump by 28 percent in the third quarter of 2005, however it remains optimistic in the face of what looks to be an increasingly tough market for PC makers. Computer users are increasingly turning to lower-end systems that are powerful enough for basic tasks.

The problem with this trend is that manufacturers make less profit on each system they sell. Dell actually shipped a record number of PCs in the third quarter, but it did so at a lower profit margin due to the shift in the market.

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Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference has been scheduled for May 23-25, 2006 in Seattle, Washington. The conference will be crucial for vendors preparing for the launch of Windows Vista late next year, with Windows Server "Longhorn" also expected to make an appearance.

At WinHEC 2005, Microsoft provided the first look at Longhorn in over a year and invited a group of bloggers to take an early peek at the new operating system. Next year's event will feature "the information you need to design and build great PCs, servers, and devices for the Microsoft Windows platforms of today and tomorrow," the company says.

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One of the largest clients of RIM's BlackBerry service has stepped in and asked that a court ensure the network keeps running for its employees: the U.S. Government. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that lawyers had filed a "statement of interest" on the government's behalf in a U.S. District Court in Virginia.

NTP, the firm that owns the disputed patents in the RIM case, states that any halt to BlackBerry service would only apply to non-government users. However, lawyers for the U.S. Government want more than just a promise to ensure e-mails continue to flow.

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Following a week of consumer pressure, Sony BMG is backing away from its controversial CD copy-protection software, which installs a rootkit to prevent the DRM from being removed and potentially opens the door for security vulnerabilities. The label will stop making CDs that use the technology, known as XCP.

"As a precautionary measure, Sony BMG is temporarily suspending the manufacture of CDs containing XCP technology," the company said in a statement. "We also intend to re-examine all aspects of our content protection initiative to be sure that it continues to meet our goals of security and ease of consumer use."

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Microsoft may have plugged in Cheap Trick for its Visual Studio 2005 launch, but five Microsoft Korea programmers have just one-upped their Stateside developers with music of their own. The group raps in Korean about Visual Studio 2005 Team System, complete with an animation that rivals Hitachi's Get Perpendicular.

English lyrics below the Flash music video reveal choice phrases such as, "We developers who keep living a hard life all the time...I will arm myself, because that is the only way to put an end to this boring life." But the outro says it all: "Are you done for the day? Then, how about have some beer? / Which program do you use, sir? Visual Studio Team System."

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