Public's Choice voting has begun for Microsoft's next-generation PC design contest hosted on StartSomethingPC.com, with the winner being awarded $25,000. The idea was to move beyond the beige box and rethink how people are using their computers - while keeping Windows Vista in mind.

The PC designs fit into four segments: Entertainment, Productivity, Living/Lifestyle and Communication/Mobility. Submissions were accepted from professionals, amateur designers and even students from May 18 to October 3. Votes will be counted until December 16 and winners in three categories will be announced at CES 2006 in Las Vegas. A panel of judges and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates will select the other two winners.

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The two largest search engines are set to offer new services aimed at mobile phones with feature sets that make them similar to their desktop equivalents, according to press reports.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Yahoo is working on its own cell phone with SBC Communications, and Google is planning to make its services more accessible through wireless devices and smartphones.

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After months of delays, Nokia on Monday announced that its highly-anticipated Linux based Internet Tablet is available for purchase in Europe on the company's Web site. Nokia says it expects to make the device available in the U.S. next week. The Internet Tablet 770 will retail for 349 euros ($421 USD).

At launch, the device will feature Web browsing, e-mail, Internet radio, an RSS newsreader, file manager, and a media player supporting MPEG, AVI and RealVideo formats. "During the first half of year 2006 we will launch the next operating system upgrade to support more presence based functionalities such as VoIP and Instant Messaging," said Nokia's vice president of convergence products Janne Jormalainen.

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Qualcomm announced on Monday that it had filed a lawsuit against competitor Nokia, accusing the company of infringement on 12 patents related to the manufacture of devices that adhere to the GSM standard. The suit seeks a halt to Nokia's phone sales in the United States, as well as monetary damages.

Nokia along with five other manufacturers had complained last week to the European Commission over Qualcomm's business practices. The companies alleged that Qualcomm was attempting to shut out competitors in making chips for 3G mobile phones.

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Microsoft's Windows AntiSpyware application, which entered beta testing last January, has been given a new name: Windows Defender.

"The name, after long consideration by our product marketing and branding folks, is Windows Defender! What's really cool about this name is that it's more positive than Windows AntiSpyware," wrote Jason Garms, group program manager for Microsoft's anti-malware team. "Windows Defender is about what Windows will do for customers, defending them from spyware and other unwanted software."

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TiVo users will soon be able to schedule television programs to record directly from the Yahoo TV Web site, under a partnership announced Monday. Customers with a Series 2 TiVo and a Yahoo account can utilize the service immediately.

Previously, users had to go through the TiVo Web site in order to remotely schedule programs on their receivers. Benefits of the partnership will also extend to other areas of the TiVo service, including photos, traffic, and other Yahoo content that will soon be available directly from the TiVo interface.

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Cingular last week quietly dropped the price of Motorola's ROKR iTunes phone by nearly 40 percent, possibly indicating that reports of disappointing sales may be accurate. The price for the music-enabled phone alongside a two-year contract with Cingular was lowered from $249.99 to $149.99 USD.

According to analysts, sales may be meeting expectations, but customers are not happy with the ROKR. A research note released by financial analyst firm Piper Jaffray in October indicated that the return rates for the phone were unusually high. In the last three weeks of the third quarter, Cingular sold only 250,000 ROKRs; however, it's unclear how many of those phones were returned.

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The latest report on the AOL suitor saga comes from the New York Times, which said Monday that Microsoft is the leading candidate to partner up with the Internet portal. The Times cited two sources who claim that joint venture discussions between Microsoft and Time Warner began a few months ago.

Nonetheless, Yahoo, Google and News Corp. are apparently still in the running and any deal is at least weeks away. Although AOL is struggling to establish itself as a leading force on the open Web, Time Warner is worried about the risk of bringing a third party to the table. One main issue is how much control the partner would have over AOL's Web properties.

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The FreeBSD Project on Friday heralded the 6.0 release of its venerable Unix based operating system. FreeBSD 6.0 brings to the table a number of improvements over version 5, including a multithreaded filesystem to speed up disk access, and expanded support for wireless networking and the WPA protocol.

"This release is the next step in delivering the high performance and enterprise features that have been under development in the FreeBSD 5.x series for that last several years," said developer Scott Long. FreeBSD 6.0 is available for a number of different platforms including Intel, AMD64 and, for the first time, Power PC.

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Not to be left out of the party, Microsoft joined the online book movement Friday by announcing a deal with the British Library to digitize 25 million pages of content from the library's collection during the next year. The two organizations also plan to continue the process after the first phase is complete.

Google announced early on Thursday that it was going ahead with plans to digitize books as part of its Google Print initiative. The news was followed Thursday afternoon by Amazon unveiling a program that would allow consumers to purchase portions of and entire books for viewing online.

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Mozilla has put out a call for developers to help extend the features of its Firefox browser through a new program called "Extend Firefox." The company hopes that the contest will bring hundreds of new extensions to the browser, and further solidify its role as the de facto alternative to Internet Explorer.

Three grand prize winners of the contest will receive a special edition Firefox PC and a prize pack, while eight runner-ups win an iPod Nano and O'Reilly books. The contest is scheduled to end on January 6, 2006. Interested developers can learn more about the categories at the Extend Firefox Web site.

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European Union Court of First Instance President Bo Vesterdorf told reporters Friday that the court planned to decide Microsoft's antitrust case by early spring. Microsoft has appealed to the court hoping to overturn a 2004 ruling by the European Commission that found Microsoft engaged in anti-competitive behavior.

As a result of the 2004 decision, Microsoft was forced to create a special version of Windows XP without Windows Media Player and pay a 497 million euro fine. "Hopefully, we will have a ruling in early spring - hopefully before April," Vesterdorf said to reporters at a conference, but made no other comments.

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While they may not leave behind a paper trail, e-mails and BlackBerry messages can be just as damaging, former FEMA director Brown learned this week. His electronic correspondence during the Hurricane Katrina crisis was released by a Louisiana congressman, and highlights a lack of leadership amidst an unfolding tragedy.

"Can I quit now? Can I go home?" Brown wrote in an e-mail to Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of public affairs, the morning Hurricane Katrina hit. "If you look at my lovely FEMA attire you'll really vomit," he followed up. "I am a fashion god."

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A California man was arrested by federal authorities on Thursday, accused of running a 400,000-computer network for illegal activities. This network, called a "botnet," contains systems that have been compromised by a hacker who can upload files or control them remotely through an IRC channel.

20 year-old Jeanson Achenta spread a trojan horse application called "rxbot" to the machines, which most notably infected government computers in the Weapons Division of the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center. He also is accused of uploading adware onto the compromised systems.

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Potentially trying to avoid a PR disaster after suing a 67 year-old Wisconsin grandfather for $600,000 because his 12 year-old grandson downloaded four movies, the MPAA has offered Fred Lawrence a deal: pay $4,000 over 18 months to settle the case. But Lawrence says he doesn't have the money.

Lawrence was contacted earlier this year when the MPAA tracked an IP address downloading and sharing four movies on the P2P service iMesh to his home computer. He says the family actually owns three of the movies and his grandson had no intention of breaking, nor knowledge of copyright laws.

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