For the Record Podcast

Podcast: Microsoft and Yahoo VPs explain the deal

Barring any unlikely interference from regulators, the Microsoft-Yahoo relationship is a done deal. It's a "comprehensive search deal" said Yahoo Executive Vice President Hilary Schneider in a recorded interview (listen below) that "provides an improved search experience for consumers," taking the rich technology of both companies and "bringing them together in an integrated search platform."

For Microsoft, according to the company's Senior VP Yusuf Mehdi, the deal "created a lot of value in terms of cost savings and increased revenue opportunities. This creates a lot of new value for each of us," he said in the joint interview.

Listen to Larry Magid's conversation with Microsoft's Yusuf Medhi and Yahoo's Hilary Schneider.

Podcast: iTunes cuts off Palm Pre sync

Just before Palm started shipping its new Pre smartphone, it surprised us all by announcing that customers would be able to sync their phones to a PC or Mac using Apple's iTunes software.

I wondered at the time how long it would take Apple's lawyers or engineers to put an end to that practice. Turns out the engineers won. The latest upgrade to Apple's iTunes software no longer recognizes the Pre as if it were an iPod.

Pre users can still synchronize their device to a computer, but not with the newest version of iTunes.

Podcast: PCs used to attack government Web sites at risk of data loss

Symantec's Kevin Haley says the malicious software responsible for attacking government and other sites in the U.S. and South Korea contains code that could turn against host PCs, erasing data and making the machines unbootable.

The attacks, which have been going on since July 4, have affected Web sites operated by several U.S. and South Korean government agencies including the U.S. Treasury Department and White House and the South Korean Ministry of Defense. Some company sites, including The Washington Post, have also been affected.

Like other distributed denial of service attacks, the actual PCs that are doing the attack are part of a "botnet." They have been infected with malicious software designed to carry out the attack. And, as CNET's Elinor Mills reported earlier, that same software could wipe out data on infected PCs.

Listen to Symantec's Kevin Haley discuss the risk:

Podcast: Cyberattacks not likely from North Korea

Over the past few days government Web sites in the United States and South Korea have been under a denial-of-service attack, preventing visitors from accessing sites from the U.S. Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission, as well as sites from several South Korean agencies including the Defense Ministry.

Some officials in South Korea have blamed North Korea, but Roger Thompson, chief research officer for Internet security firm AVG, says that it's more likely the work of run-of-the-mill hackers. In this eight-minute podcast, Thompson says he's far more worried about Chinese hackers.

Podcast: Apple VP Greg Joswiak on iPhone 3G S

The day before the release of the iPhone 3G S, Greg Joswiak, Apple Vice President of iPod and iPhone Worldwide Marketing, spoke with CBS News technology analyst and CNET blogger Larry Magid about the new phone and the new OS 3 operating system that is also available free to existing iPhone users.

Joswiak talked about the new features of the phone, the new parental controls (Joswiak said they do not allow parents to block specific websites) and why Apple thinks that a lot of existing iPhone users will want to upgrade.

The interview runs 8 minutes, 11 seconds

Podcast: Palm Exec on how Pre is unique

The Palm Pre is probably the most highly anticipated tech product of the year, and, finally, people are starting to get their hands on it. A few days before the launch, I spoke with Paul Cousineau, Palm's director of product management for WebOS. Listen to what he had to say.

Podcast: Could expanding privacy law harm children?

A new report from the Progress & Freedom Foundation says that officials in some states want to pass legislation that would extend the Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) from covering children under 13 to covering teens until they're 18.

COPPA, which became law in 1998, requires verifiable parental consent before a child under 13 can provide personally identifiable information to a Web site that caters to children. Expanding the law to cover teens till they're 18, according to the report, would "require Web sites to obtain more information about both minors and their parents, which runs counter to the original goal of the Act: protecting the privacy of minors." Ultimately, say the authors, "this would actually make minors less 'safe online.'"

In this podcast, the report's co-author, PFF Senior Fellow Adam Thierer, explains the original COPPA law and why, in his opinion, the expanded law could have a chilling effect on the free speech rights of minors.

The podcast runs 11:30

Podcast: Glympse launches mobile location sharing

Location-based services like Loopt have been around for a few years, but a new player--Glympse, is launching its public beta service. Glympes CEO and co-founder Bryan Trussel says that his service is easier to use and safer because a user allows him or herself to be tracked for a specified period of time--never more than four hours--so that once it expires they are no longer transmitting their location.