It appears that Microsoft is once again talking to Yahoo about the possible acquisition of the company. That being said, there is a lot of confusion on exactly what the two parties are discussing. Some sources are reporting that Microsoft is attempting to resurrect the offer that they made for Yahoo a few weeks back. On the other side of things, some feel that Microsoft is only interested in purchasing Yahoo’s search business. Either way, most believe that the companies are definitely discussing some sort of deal.

TechCrunch, a popular tech news blog, reported that both sides are open to discussions about a full buyout. They also reported that Microsoft is offering less than the $33/share that was on the table when Yahoo walked away the first time. With quotes from multiple sources close to the situation, it is safe to say that there is some validity to the information reported by TechCrunch.

Other media sources are disputing the claims made by TechCrunch. They believe that Microsoft and Yahoo are once again discussing a deal, but only for the search business. In other words, neither party is interested in a full buyout at this point in time.

For now, it is difficult to say what is going on. With conflicting reports, it is difficult to say whether or not Microsoft is interested in resuming earlier negotiations for all of Yahoo’s operations, or if they simply want to purchase their search business. If Microsoft decides to move forward with an offer for the search business only, it is thought to be in the range of $1 billion.

Just when everybody thought that Microsoft and Yahoo had parted ways, it appears that both companies are not ready to move on just yet. Is a deal imminent or is this simply more talk?

As you have probably heard by now, all communication between Yahoo and Microsoft has been broken off. Just a couple of months ago it appeared that the two companies would work out a deal in which Microsoft was to purchase Yahoo for tens of billions of dollars. But although Yahoo did not strike a deal with Microsoft, they are still in the news. This time around, it appears that the company is going to strike up a partnership with search engine giant, Google.

On the surface, the terms of the partnership are simple: Yahoo will now have the ability to display Google ads with some of their search results. This covers results on both Yahoo search as well as publisher networks in Canada and the United States.

At this time, it is believed that Yahoo will have full control over which pages the Google ads will appear. To go along with this, it is not known how the company will decide which pages to use and which ones to leave out. Sue Decker, Yahoo President said, “We wanted to make sure we’d have control in the advertiser segments we’re comparable with or superior in performance.”

The big question is: is Yahoo going to be able to make additional profits through this partnership? With their current business model struggling, Yahoo has not been able to make up any ground on Google. Luckily for them, it is thought that they will be able to generate up to $450 million in cash flow through this deal. Obviously, this is good for the company as they will hopefully be able to steady a ship that has been rocked when the Microsoft deal fell through.

Although many tech savvy web users are confused by this partnership, it is safe to say that things will clear up over the months to come. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if there are any other developments between the two biggest players in the search engine industry.

Over the past couple of years, Web 2.0 companies have been collecting venture capital at a record pace. And during the first half of 2007 this trend held the same. In fact, approximately 6 percent more money was invested during these six months. But guess what? Most of this increase took place outside of the United States; particularly in Israel and Europe.

The most noticeable sign of a slowdown in the US is the pace at which venture capitalists are investing. For instance, take Benchmark Capital; the country’s top investor in 2006. Last year, this firm made 16 deals. Through the first half of this year, they have only backed three companies. To make this situation even more complex, only one was in the Silicon Valley area. Similar situations can be found with other large venture capital companies such as Storm Ventures, Omidyar Network, and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers.

The question is: are venture capitalists starting to abandon Web 2.0 companies. While this may appear to be the case, to get the entire picture you need to look outside of the United States. A recent survey shows that investments by venture capitalists in Web 2.0 companies was pretty much unchanged during the first half of 2007 when compared with the first half of last year. There were approximately 67 deals that resulted in nearly $360 million in invested dollars.

It seems that venture capitalists are putting more money into Web 2.0 companies from other countries. The first half of 2007 saw seven deals completed in the United Kingdom for more than $20 million.

During the four year period from 2002 to 2006, just about 40 percent of deals involving venture capitalists and Web 2.0 companies took place in the Silicon Valley area of California. This number dipped to approximately 20 percent during the first half of 2007.

Is this venture capital trend going to continue? Nobody knows the answer to this question, but it will be interesting to see what happens in the second half of the year.

So what exactly does the title mean? At Google, a noogler is known as a new employee. The Reactor is what employees call the back end operations of the ever popular Google Reader.

Although the video has since been removed from the Google website, several sources did get a good look at it, and have made it well known what the video was all about. Here are some of the major points that are touched on. More…

1. The backend of the feed grows at an astonishing pace of approximately 4 percent per week. It contains data from just about eight million feeds.
2. More social features are bound to show up in the near future. The social team is working diligently on these projects, and once complete they are sure to increase the overall usability of this tool.
3. Soon enough Google Reader will be able to recommended new feeds. This will be based on Google activity as well as feeds that have been subscribed to in the past.
4. FeedBurner statistics confirm that Google Reader is the largest full content reader in the world. As far as headline readers are concerned Yahoo has the advantage. But with iGoogle increasing in popularity this may change very soon.

As you can imagine, this video was never supposed to get into the hands of the public. Even though it did not contain any top secret information, there were some useful tidbits (such as the ones above) that are quite interesting. If nothing else, this will give the public an idea of what direction Google is moving in.

The problem at this time is a group of approximately 750 people who have organized against Islam. Even though the group does not say anything too harmful, they have definitely made it well known what they are all about. The group says: “The Quran contains many lies and threats. Islam is false, no god exists, and someone should say that loud and clear.” To some people this may not be a huge deal, but as you can imagine, many others are taking great offense to this statement.

Although this group has only been around for just about a month, many reactions have taken place. In fact, as of recently, nearly 60,000 Facebook members had become part of a group with a simple mission. Either Facebook removes the anti-Islam group, or they are going to leave once and for all. While 60,000 members may not mean a lot to Facebook, it is safe to say that they do not want to be faced with problems like this. Not only does it mean a loss of members, but it also looks bad in the public eye.

Facebook has yet to comment on how they will handle this situation, but one day last week the group was disabled. The organizer of the group explained: “Facebook briefly deleted my account, and I assumed they did so because of the group, but they reinstated the account and told me that it was a mistake of some sort.”

The question of what action Facebook will take is still up in the air. They have a few options in front of them, and need to make the right decision after weighing all the facts and figures. Either way, it is obvious at this point that a large group of people are going to be quite angry.

Acer is getting serious about becoming a major player in the computer industry. They recently reached an agreement to purchase Gateway, Inc. for $710 million. Although Gateway had fallen off the map as of late, this acquisition is sure to move Acer up the computer industry ladder.

Gateway is the fourth largest PC manufacturer in the United States. Each year, they ship approximately 20 million units. But now, these numbers will all be credited to Acer. This will immediately send them to the number three spot as far as computer production is concerned.

“The acquisition of Gateway and its strong brand immediately completes Acer’s global footprint, by strengthening our US presence. This will be an excellent addition to Acer’s already strong positions in Europe and Asia. Upon acquiring Gateway, we will further solidify our position as number three PC vendor globally,” said Acer chairman J.T. Wang.

So what does this mean to consumers, you may ask? Simply put, it will give buyers more options when shopping for a notebook or desktop PC. It is too early to tell if Acer will be able to make a run at the front runners, Dell and Hewlett Packard, but it is safe to say that they will now have the resources to do so.

In addition to Gateway, Acer will also acquire eMachines; a company that Gateway purchased not too long ago. Even though eMachines does not have a huge following, their value based brand is sure to meet the needs of people from all over the world.

Adding Gateway to their portfolio will give Acer a much stronger presence in the North American market; an area where they have struggled to keep up as of late. At this time it is thought that the Gateway brand will stick around. In other words, Acer will not just produce units with their name on them.

It will be interesting to see how this move shapes the computer industry in the years to come. The details of this deal are set to be finalized by no later than December. This will give everybody a chance to see what Acer can do as 2008 gets underway.

In addition, as opposed to other search engines, Ask.com pioneers the rest by allowing preferences such as “Advanced Search” and “Options” to appear in the same window, instead of opening a new page.Search results produced by Ask.com are tailored to the specific type of search the user is doing. For example, music-related searches, such as artist and songs, produce results that can include images to clips of songs. Search results displayed are also accompanied to the right of the screen with information from the wikipedia encyclopedia and the Ask.com dictionary. A new preview function on Ask.com – a pair of binoculars appearing before the website link – allows the user to view the page before he or she clicks on it. Results can also be bookmarked – by clicking the ‘+’ button – for future searches.

Most certainly a great user-interface, both efficient and concise, Ask.com is sure to rise to the top.

Sources
Ask.com
Tech Crunch

I also found the following to be worth mentioning: while not at all a new feature, iPod users are able to put a subway map of their choice city in their respective (nano, photo, and video) iPods. City subway maps include: New York, New York; Paris, France; Los Angeles, California, and many more.

From the innovators who brought you the peer-to-peer file sharing program Kazaa, and the free peer-to-peer online phone carrier Skype, now introduce Joost™ (pronounced “juiced”), an Internet television application that’s transposed the television industry. Co-founders Janus Friis, 30, and Niklas Zennström, 40, are known for “sticking it to the man” with their programs that put the control back to the people. Joost™ works like an on-demand television, removing all of its negative qualities, one of which being what Friis describes as “televisions being locked in linear time”. Joost™ offers “high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.”

“At Joost™ just about all our software is built on top of open source stuff, and we’re proud of it! These pages attempt to skim the surface of what we do with open source, and also provide a glimpse of how we try to contribute back to the community.”

Sources:
Details Magazine
The Register
Web TV Wire

Paths you wish to take on your trip will be highlighted plus you can add your own text and photos for annotation to truly personalize your map. Its creation of a KML (Keyhole Markup Language) file will allow compatibility with the software, Google Earth.

If you are a college student looking for a good deal on textbooks then you should use Chambal. I found a calculus book that cost me 150 dollars for about 10 dollars using Chambal. If I found out about this website before then it would have saved me a lot of money. However it has saved me money this semester when I had to buy new textbooks. It’s a great tool if you want to save money on any product. The search results are concise and immediately show the prices without the need to open new pages like some other websites require. It also shows the ISBN number if you are searching for a book so you can make sure if you’re getting the correct edition. You can compare prices for other products like music and movies. The website offers a good variety of products to compare prices despite some needed variety in the electronics section.

The problem with Chambal is that there isn’t much variety in the electronics section; you can only compare prices to cameras and camcorders. There are a lot more products that fall under the electronics category that can be searched for like televisions and MP3 players. Chambal’s format isn’t so great either, it isn’t really aesthetically pleasing and not really that efficient. In my opinion and standard menu-bar and content similar to amazon.com would be better. Besides these minor problems Chambal is a great website if you are looking for a great deal.

But let’s not forget why this new LG phone needs no captivating title; having the label ‘Prada’ on just about anything means paying a surmountable amount of money more than your rent. Prada has become synonymous with high-end fashion and with high-end fashion come high prices; and this phone is no different. The way women - and some men for that matter - buy Prada apparel and accessories to associate themselves with the prestige that is the Italian fashion company, the Prada phone seems targeted to those who are willing to go the extra mile for the eminence. However apparent the Prada phone seems to be competing with the iPhone, let’s be real here and say that their target audience isn’t exactly the same as Apple’s. To rival to that of Apple’s appeal when it comes to music, LG comes into the game with its fashion allure.

Available to the European public, i.e., the U.K., France, Germany and Italy, in late February, the 12-mm-thick device is set to cost €600 (euro), that’s equivalent to $775, about a couple of hundred bucks more than the 8-gigabyte version of the iPhone. Countries in Asia, i.e., Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, are next in line, expecting the phone in late March, followed by Korea in the second quarter of 2007. A spokeswoman for the company in Seoul, Korea, Judy Pae says that LG has no plans to put it on sale in the U.S..

iPhone

LG Prada Phone

Features:
Music and video player
Input method: Multi-touch
Storage: microSD card slot
GSM: Quad-band (MHz: 900, 1800, 1900)
Wireless data: EDGE + Bluetooth
Camera: 2.0 megapixels
Dimensions: 99 millimeters long by 54mm wide; about 12mm thick.

Sources:
InfoWorld
Boing Boing
Mobile Tracker
NewsFactor
Dial-A-Phone
InformationWeek

“iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device.“

Specs for iPhone:

• Screen size: 3.5-inches
• Screen resolution: 320 by 480 at 160 ppi
• Input method: Multi-touch
• Operating System: OS X
• Storage: 4GB or 8GB
• GSM: Quad-band (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900)
• Wireless data: Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + EDGE + Bluetooth 2.0
• Camera: 2.0 megapixels
• Battery: Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing; Up to 16 hours Audio playback
• Dimensions: 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches / 115 x 61 x 11.6mm
• Weight: 4.8 ounces / 135 grams

You can check out a demo of the program running.
Update: The contest is now over, we will announce the winners in a few days.

With the Zune Microsoft is throwing everything at it including the kitchen sink with claims of wireless streaming radio, movie watching, and wireless connectivity to other Zune players and Zune community with peer-to-peer music sharing a sampling of music to near by devices, also you don’t have to wait for the additional accessories such as Car packs, Home A\V Packs and Travel packs. But just how is Microsoft proposing to do all this community sharing is still unclear, we the consumers will just have to wait and see just like so many other Microsoft products. Can anyone say windows…how many attempts did it take to get that platform correct.

The design for the Zune is a bit on the safe side getting their style queue from Apple’s Ipod the only significant difference is making the display screen larger but otherwise it’s a Zune in Ipod’s clothing. (Let’s try some originality next time Microsoft.) Or my guess is the design team at Microsoft is thinking why change a good thing. After all it is Apple’s ability to key in on function and form as the definitive in separating itself from the rest of the industry no other product looks like an Apple. With a three inch screen, 30gb hard drive and a steeper price tag of the IPod the Zune will resale for 249.99 basic colors black, white, and brown.

For now I would still stick to the tried in true Ipod because you can’t compare Apples with Zunes. It is still an unproven device wait a few years then we can sit down and have this same discussion.

And by the way whatever happened to the Rio?

But imagine how happy the small company that runs YouTube must be, which consists of only 67 employees. YouTube’s own success had been so powerful that their bandwidth bills have exceeded over in the millions of dollars a month. But now they need not to worry about it because of Google, who has an endless supply of money, and bandwidth.

In the end, I think that this deal is good for both Google and YouTube, and even the millions of YouTube watchers. Google will most likely make more money by inserted some type of advertisements, to monetize it, but the visitors to the site will also most likely get better quality and service. I predict that the 100mb limit to video uploads will get a long awaited boost, as we all know google is very generous with their size because we all use their more than 2 and half gigs of gmail.

Go on, have fun check out some of those hilarious youtube videos, here is one of my favorite videos from youtube.

Abandonia is the answer!

With an ever growing library, Abandonia is a an abandonware website that is dedicated to classic DOS games. Updated every day, you’ll find new downloads, game reviews, hints, tips, original box scans, original music, message boards, and more nostalgia a vh1 special.

What is Abandonware?

Wikipedia says, “Abandonware is computer software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder. Alternately, the term is also used for software which is still available, but on which further support and development has been deliberately discontinued.” Since the software is no longer sold or supported, the copyright holders are not directly harmed in any way. This is why abandonware sites are, for the most part, ignored by the law. The distribution of copyrighted software however is, and will allways be, illegal.

Boot disk?! BOOT THIS!

It’s funny how as technology advances, our roots get rolled over. Have you ever tried to load a DOS game on a computer that was made after 1995? You’re sure to have a migrane waiting for you. Well, Abandonia has gotcha covered. Downloads available such as DOSbox, a DOS emulator that now supports over a thousand games.

“In last few years only solution was dual boot with compatibility drivers for sound and graphic cards, and huge basket of luck. There was no real and effective DOS emulator on the scene. Then DOSBox appeared. DOSBox is completely free of charge and open source DOS emulator for modern operating systems like Windows (2000 and XP), BeOS, Linux, MacOS X…”
- DOSBox [programs]

If you’re feeling particularly old school, or can’t seem to get DOSbox to work, you can download the Abandonia boot disk, an executable file will make a boot floppy that has been especially optimized for best DOS game performance.

Editors Pick

Here are a few of my favorite games that are available at Abandonia.

life and death

hugo’s house of horrors

prince of persia

www.abandonia.com

The second thing Apple announced was that their new OS Leopard will come out in the Spring of 07, and is now available to preview on there web site. Some of the cool new features of OS X Leopard is the “Time Machine”, which is kind of like Microsoft’s System Restore, where if you accidentally delete an important file you can go back to the state in which everything worked fine and that file was still on your system. To check out all the new features of the new Mac OS X Leopard, go to the apple website, and more on the new Mac Pro Workstation.