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Variety of compatibility tests

MB Love Test Finished is a free suite of different resources that use various esoteric systems (Numerology, Kundali, etc.) to test the compatibility of two partners. All of them function in essentially the same way: users input their personal data and get back a variety of reports.

A number of issues plague what is potentially a fun tool. A few of the reports were overly simplistic, and some of the predictors won't work unless your region is set as the U.S. Some spelling errors and an overall rudimentary interface give the whole program a somewhat amateurish feel. However, … Read more

Astrological match maker

MB Astrology Kundali Match provides users with an opportunity to learn about their compatibility with a mate and more. This program's slightly confusing layout is overshadowed by its impressively in-depth results.

The program's interface asks for some strange information about your birth, but is easy to navigate and fill out. In addition, reading the results also requires some understanding of Vedic astrology, but is mostly easy to interpret and very intuitive to use thanks to organizational tabs. A Help file is available, though it only defines the program's functions and not the terminology of astrology. Determining our … Read more

Microsoft to announce Azure business plan next month

Microsoft plans to announce next month more of the business details behind its Windows Azure operating system.

The software maker unveiled the cloud-based operating system at a developer conference last year. It has said that some of the services, currently in free testing, will be released in final form this year. The company has said that it will run Azure applications in its data centers and will charge users based on the computing resources they need.

In an interview on Monday, Corporate Vice President Allison Watson said that the company will get concrete about the financial details and say how … Read more

Virgin to migrate customers onto Google Mail

Virgin Media plans to move all its home broadband customers onto the Google Mail platform, the company said on Wednesday.

Google's Web-based e-mail service is known as Google Mail in the UK and Germany, and Gmail in the rest of the world.

According to the Internet service provider, the Web-mail rollout will extend to all of its 4 million home broadband customers, but there will be a delay before it reaches everybody. While the customers will be moved off Virgin Media's existing e-mail platform, they will be able to retain their existing e-mail addresses.

The company said the rollout will be one of the largest deployments to date of Google Partner Edition Apps, which lets businesses and individual customers use Google's communication and collaboration applications under their own domain names.

"New customers signing up will get it now and we will start to roll it out to all our customers but it will take time for everyone to get it," a spokesperson for Virgin Media told ZDNet UK.

The service, which will provide each user with 7GB of e-mail storage, will be piloted by the first 20,000 new customers, Virgin Media said in a statement. The full launch to all new customers will follow "shortly," the company said, after which existing customers will be migrated across to the new service. They will be able to keep their existing @blueyonder.co.uk, @ntlworld.com, or @virgin.net e-mail addresses, or sign up for new @virginmedia.com e-mail addresses. … Read more

VC Breyer named to Dell board

Jim Breyer, a partner at venture capitalist firm Accel Partners, was named to Dell's board of directors Monday.

Breyer, 47, will join the board immediately and will be up for official election at the company's annual meeting in July. He will fill one of two slots left vacant by the impending departures of A.G. Lafley and Michael Miles, two directors who announced earlier this year they would not seek re-election.

Considering who he is replacing, Breyer's appointment is useful in looking at where Dell is heading. Breyer's solid credentials as a Silicon Valley money man, … Read more

Palm distances itself from investor's boasting

Roger McNamee is about to learn that nothing can ever be withdrawn from the Internet.

In an SEC filing for the ages, Palm attempted to do just that on Monday, distancing itself from comments made by Elevation Partners' McNamee--Palm's primary investor--regarding Palm's Pre smartphone and Apple's iPhone. Palm is expected to launch the Pre at some point before the end of the first half of the year, and while the company's financial backer is understandably excited, he seemed to lose all sense of perspective during an interview with Bloomberg last week.

In the interview, … Read more

More cash for Facebook?

Accel Partners, a longtime investor in social network Facebook, has created two new funds that add up to just over $1 billion, according to The New York Times.

One of the funds, totaling $525 million, will be used to invest in European start-ups.

But the interesting part, at least where juicy tech gossip is concerned, is the other $480 million, which is going toward a new late-stage venture fund. A few speculative bloggers have connected the dots and taken this to mean that Accel may be looking to pump more cash into Facebook.

The firm first invested in Facebook in … Read more

Symbian looks west for future growth

SAN FRANCISCO--Americans are ready for smartphones, but is Symbian ready for America?

One of the most important factors that will dictate the long-term success of the Symbian Foundation will be its ability to make inroads in North America, which has been a bit of a enigma to London-based Symbian and Nokia, its former controlling partner. Think about it: Symbian has the lion's share of the worldwide market for smartphone operating systems, but new Symbian Foundation executive director Lee Williams agreed that if we walked outside the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco, we'd be hard-pressed to find a … Read more

AT&T: Hold the Java

SAN FRANCISCO--AT&T is planning for a future with just one or two mobile operating systems running on its products, and that may imply a limited future for Java phones at the carrier.

Roger Smith, director of next-generation services at AT&T, implied that Symbian might become the operating system of the future for the phones that AT&T offers subscribers under its own brand. During a talk at the Symbian Partner Event here, Smith promised "dramatic consolidation from AT&T in terms of the mobile platforms and tool chains that we support," and … Read more

Facebook invites members to vote in developer competition

Facebook members can now vote on the second round of finalists for its FBFund seed funding competition, which will give out a total of $225,000 to five grand prize winners. The 25 companies currently in the running have already pocketed $25,000 apiece for the applications they have proposed for Facebook's third-party developer platform.

This is the second annual FBFund competition, but the first one in which members have been able to vote on their favorite apps. They can vote once per day, and can watch promotional "commercials" about what each one of them does. Voting … Read more