Week in review: Let's be friends

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confirmed to News.com that it has started offering machines that, in some cases, have improved processing powers and other enhancements. However, Apple is not labeling the new machines in any special way, so buyers have no way of knowing if they are getting the more capable models.

And it might look like a Mac Mini, but this one has Intel inside: Taiwanese computer maker AOpen is scheduled to release two versions of its Pandora desktop just in time for the holiday shopping season. The company said Apple's Mac Mini inspired its latest desktop PC. Pandora is one of several 2-inch-tall computers being sold as home entertainment PCs.

The gadgeteers
Apple this week acknowledged a flaw in its new iPod Nano music player, offering to replace for free models that shipped with a defective screen that is prone to cracking.

A company representative said the issue was a manufacturing, rather than a design, problem and said it affected less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all the Nanos that have shipped so far.

However, the representative said the screen-cracking issue is separate from reports on user sites that the slim new music player is more easily scratched than prior models. Complaints about both issues surfaced shortly after Apple introduced the flash memory-based Nano earlier this month.

Get ready for so-called softphone technology, which enables people to download a piece of software to make a call using VoIP from any computer--and could eventually let everything from an iPod to a PDA act like a telephone. Tech executives are betting that consumers will soon change how they make phone calls, but before softphones can really become widely deployed, the technology will have to be accessible to more devices than just a laptop.

The cell phone is also quickly becoming the Swiss Army knife of electronic gadgets, offering users everything from traditional voice calling to music listening to TV programming.

RealNetworks, for example, the company that provides music, games and video to customers on their PCs, is now also offering that content to consumers on their mobile phones. The company announced that Cingular Wireless will provide the mobile operator with technology that allows people to watch streaming video on their cell phones, a key deal for RealNetworks as it moves into the mobile-entertainment market.

But before the cell phone and entertainment industries wed, they will have to iron out some critical issues. Content providers, distributors, and cell phone makers and operators face critical challenges as they try to create business models for future partnerships that will satisfy customers without eroding their existing markets.

Handsets will also need better protection from hackers and from unauthorized access when they're lost or stolen, according to an industry group proposing new, hardware-based security standards for the devices.

Spinning the Web
Google announced on Wednesday plans to build a 1 million-square-foot campus at the NASA Ames Research Center, not far from its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, which is dubbed the "Googleplex."

As part of the Google-NASA deal, the two entities plan to cooperate on research projects such as large-scale data management, nanotechnology, massively distributed computing and the entrepreneurial space industry.

In the latest round of the contest over search index sizes, Google this week also unveiled an updated index that it said is more than three times larger than that of any of its search engine competitors.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt listed the launch of new products, including Google Talk, Google Earth, Google Video and Google Desktop Search.

Meanwhile, a project called Wikibooks aims to create an open-ended curriculum that would offer a free and freely licensable alternative to traditional textbooks.

Wikibooks is still in its earliest stages, but because of its digital model, which lets content written for the project be easily manipulated, read and edited, its backers believe that it could pose a major challenge to the publishing industry's hold on the world of textbooks.

And a California court has temporarily barred about a dozen engineers hired by Yahoo from working on interactive speech technology at the search engine, after the company they recently left filed a lawsuit accusing Yahoo of trying to steal trade secrets.

More from Redmond
In a move that counters Google's successful advertising programs, Microsoft's MSN unit on Monday launched its own paid-search advertising program in France and said it plans to begin testing the system in the United States next month.

MSN AdCenter, which debuted in Singapore at the end of last month, allows advertisers to launch highly targeted online keyword search-based campaigns, with the ability to include or exclude target customers based on geographic location, gender and age, and to run ads only during certain times and days.

Microsoft and JBoss, an open-source Java software company, this week announced an endeavor to explore ways to link their respective server and development products.

And the software giant also on Tuesday moved a step further into the data storage market with new software for backing up corporate data.

The company said it has shipped its Systems Center Data Protection Manager software, which lets companies back up data from file servers to disk-based storage servers. Microsoft says the software can help companies transition from decades-old tape-based backup systems to faster and, ultimately, cheaper disk-based systems.

Also of note
A new federal law aimed at discouraging camcorder-equipped movie pirates has snared its first catch...Some 40 robotic vehicles began racing around the California Speedway this week in a government-sponsored test...More than half of Silicon Valley companies are outsourcing, and roughly half of those outsourced jobs are going to India...Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer have finally entered the million-dollar salary club...A new flaw in Internet Explorer could be exploited to launch attacks or access data on vulnerable PCs...A judge has asked Visa and MasterCard to disclose details about their relationship with CardSystems Solutions...Disney on Thursday unveiled a new line of portable digital audio players for preteen consumers...Technologists are inventing devices for the disaster kit of the future.

[Llib Setag]

Friends? (Said the MShark to the fish)

Prepare to be devoured Palm.
Citizen Gates has NO FRIENDS in this industry.
He is a ruthless shark circling his next prey & smiling the whole
time.
Citizen Gates : Keep your friends close & your enemies closer.
Prepare to die Palm OS.
When my Treo 600 Palm OS PDA Phone dies, that will be the last
Palm device I will ever use.

[geo11101]

Eric Schmidt is the biggest Mafia puppet in the US. He is bad news for apple users. http://endmafia.com