Computers
Yahoo to Add Social Networking to E-Mail
Yahoo says that it plans to add aspects of social networking to its e-mail and portal in the future, according to an interview in the New York Times. Read more…
Company Sues 23 for Text Completion Tech
Delaware firm Autotext Technologies has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against 23 major technology companies including Apple and IBM, regarding predictive word processing. Read more…
Germany Passes New Data Retention Laws
Germany's Parliament passed new data retention laws last week that require Web and phone providers to retain their logs for up to six months, despite the opposition of privacy advocates. Read more…
Amazon Offers Freebie Deal for Blu-ray Movies
Amazon has begun offering a promotion that would allow customers to receive one Blu-ray move free when they buy another at full price. Read more…
WSJ Opens Up Site to Digg Users
In what may end up being just the first step in Rupert Murdoch's rumored desire to open Wall Street Journal Online content to everyone by removing the subscription requirement, the publication has inked an agreement with Digg to allow free access to articles submitted to the social news site. Read more…
Mozilla Rushes to Fix Regression Bugs in Firefox
Mozilla Corp. will rush another version of Firefox to users as early as next week, the company's user interface designer said Tuesday, to fix five bugs it introduced in last Wednesday's security update. Firefox 2.0.0.8 patched ten vulnerabilities, including three critical flaws, but also shipped with five regression bugs -- problems unintentionally... Read more…
Oracle ships Windows version of 11g database
Oracle has released the Windows version of its flagship 11g database, a few months after the company shipped the Linux version. Along with assorted performance improvements, the Windows release features beefed-up integration with Microsoft's platform on both the administrative and developer levels. Administrators can now execute backup and reco... Read more…
Microsoft Loosens The Reins On Server Virtualization Technology
Microsoft wants its partners and customers to know they won't risk legal action for using a key application programming interface for Viridian, the vendor's eagerly awaited server virtualization technology. On Wednesday, Microsoft added the hypercall API for the Viridian hypervisor to the Open Specification Promise, a designation aimed at encouragi... Read more…
WARNING: device driver updates causing Vista to deactivate
After weeks of gruelling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA -- something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation. Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced func... Read more…
Microsoft adds mobile, single sign-on to Live ID
Microsoft on Tuesday expanded the capabilities of its Windows Live ID service by adding support for single sign-on for its Windows Live services and making it possible for users to sign up for an ID from a mobile device. Microsoft executives posted the updates to Windows Live on separate blog entries. Windows Live ID is the gateway to Microsoft's W... Read more…
