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MySpace gets a makeover

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Yahoo’s stock was hammered in early morning trading on Friday, a sign that the Google ad-sharing deal wasn’t enough to satisfy Wall Street. So what’s next for the beleaguered Internet giant? Some say Microsoft may still make a move yet.

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Some analysts say the Yahoo-Google ad deal could push Microsoft into making a hostile bid.

Today’s stories:

Analysts don’t rule out Yahoo-Microsoft deal

Leaked AOL search logs take the stage

Sharp’s 108-inch LCD TV descends on Tokyo

Congressmen say Chinese compromised PCs

Also in today’s podcast, CNET News.com’s Holly Jackson talks with the creators behind a play based on the 650,000 search logs released by AOL in 2006. User 927 opened this week in Philadelphia. Also,Rolex Watches, U.S. Congressmen claim their PCs were targeted by Chinese hackers, MySpace gets a massive redesign,LONGINES Watches, rumors of an Xbox 360 price cut,OMEGA Watches, and we check in with our intrepid reporter Daniel Terdiman, who’s on the road in the southeastern U.S.

“There’s some risk of having an impact on PCs, but a certain amount of it is because we just went through the holiday season and Wall Street is under pressure,” he said.
“If you look at the broader technology trends…some recovery in 2007, commercial Vista adoption, pretty strong portable (PC) adoption, (and) we’re still getting lower prices and new users…A number of tech environment factors that suggest we should expect still some pretty solid growth. The risk that we might not maintain double digit growth in the next couple years would be if we had a recession and consumer spending really started to cut back.”

Though there’s been ample hand-wringing over interest rates, credit problems, and weak retail sales, the computing industry is staying immune so far, according to Loverde.

Despite some anticipation of weakening U.S. consumer confidence, PC shipment growth here nearly doubled between the third and fourth quarters of 2007, to reach 8.8 percent, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker report released Wednesday.

Lenovo has been going strong for three straight quarters. It ended the year behind Acer with 7.5 percent of worldwide PC shipments. It’s not in the top 5 of vendors in the U.S. market, but recently introduced its new IdeaPad consumer notebook line, which the company hopes will follow in the tradition of its business-oriented ThinkPad line of laptops.

“From a Dell perspective, part of going from minus-5-percent to 15-percent positive (growth) this quarter is the fact that year-ago shipment was pretty low,” said Loren Loverde, director of IDC’s quarterly PC report. “So some of that is factoring in, but they have also launched a lot of new products, and lot of new (retail) channel arrangements.”

HP, the worldwide PC leader for more than a year now, saw its shipments rise both at home and abroad, though it was somewhat affected by stagnating growth in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, according to IDC. It now has 19 percent of the worldwide market.

Though the market for computers–and both business and consumer technology across the board–appears healthy, it could drop off next year. But thus far, there are no signs of it in the PC space.

In the U.S., it’s Dell (31.4 percent market share), HP (26.1), Acer (9), Apple (6.1), and Toshiba (5.3). Apple has stretched its share of the U.S. market to 6.1 percent, from 5.1 percent a year ago. Gartner also notes that for the second consecutive quarter mobile PC shipments exceeded those of desktops.

Acer also made a big push in retail this year, continuing the rapid gains in the U.S. (it’s grown 294 percent since the same quarter a year ago), and appears to have finally nailed down its coveted No. 3 spot in the worldwide ranking of top PC vendors. When combined with Gateway, Acer shipments achieved 9.6 percent share worldwide in Q4, compared with 6.9 percent a year ago.

Rival analyst firm Gartner ranks the companies in the same order as IDC, according to findings also released Wednesday: the worldwide leader is HP (with 18.2 percent market share), followed by Dell (14.3), Acer (8.9), Lenovo (7.4), and Toshiba (4.0) to round out the top 5.

Though Lenovo has been nipping at its heels, Acer’s most direct competition in the U.S. is the two big guys–Hewlett-Packard and Dell. “HP has a lot more experience with consumers and is going to try to defend that turf. It’s a pretty dynamic competitive space all around,” Loverde said.

Dell actually expanded its market share in the fourth quarter, after a string of disappointing quarters while it reshuffled its ranks and its product lineup. Dell used momentum derived from its new retail push to drive its shipments up by more than 15 percent in the quarter–growth far ahead of the rest of the U.S. The Texas PC maker finished the year with 29.6 percent of the total PC market in the U.S. in the fourth quarter, IDC said.

Although it has had challenges of its own keeping pace with changes in the way server software is run, Microsoft has led the way in some new frontiers of licensing, such as how to deal with multicore processors.

That poses a challenge in a world in which virtualization software, such as that from VMware, allows companies to seamlessly move virtual machines from one physical server to another, based on demand needs.

The software maker confirmed the planned move to CNET News, but declined to go into details ahead of the Tuesday announcement. However, Network World
speculated that the company may ease up on a licensing requirement that ties software in a virtual machine to running on a particular server.

In its continuing effort to adjust to the realities of virtualization, Microsoft plans on Tuesday to announce new licensing and support policies to address how software can be used across multiple virtual and physical machines.

By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted Web page, Apple says that an attacker may use an unpatched version of QuickTime to cause an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability is a heap buffer overflow that exists in QuickTime’s handling of HTTP responses when RTSP tunneling is enabled. Apple did not credit a researcher for reporting this vulnerability.

On Wednesday, Apple released QuickTime 7.4.1. The update is for users of
Mac OS X v10.3.9, Mac OS X v10.4.7, Mac OS X v10.5 or later, and
Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2. It addresses the vulnerability described in CVE-2008-0234.

Terry Childs, a network administrator for the city of San Francisco, has been in custody since July 13 on four felony charges of taking control of the city’s computer network and locking administrators out. Access to much of the city’s information was blocked, including law enforcement, payroll, and jail-booking records.

Although the city has regained control of its network, not all is necessarily forgiven. Erin Crane, Childs’ defense attorney, is expected to cite his cooperation during a court hearing on Wednesday in a bid to have his $5 million bail reduced.

The codes given to Newsom didn’t initially provide access to the system, but a call to Childs’ attorney got the city back in the system.

Childs had reportedly refused to surrender the codes to his supervisors, but after a little more than a week as a guest of the city, he apparently had a change of heart and invited Mayor Gavin Newsom to meet with him, according to a report on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site Monday night.

The computer network hostage crisis in San Francisco is over, thanks to the city’s mayor.

Crane has argued that Childs was merely protecting the network from incompetent city officials who were trying to force him out of his job.

A secret meeting was arranged at the city jail on Monday afternoon, where Childs gave Newsom the codes to the network. The meeting reportedly was so secret that the police department and district attorney were not informed of the meeting ahead of time.

“Mr. Childs had good reason to be protective of the password,” Crane told the newspaper. “His co-workers and supervisors had in the past maliciously damaged the system themselves, hindered his ability to maintain it…and shown complete indifference to maintaining it themselves…He was the only person in that department capable of running that system.”

Given all the recent activity, Yahoo’s fate is less clear than when Microsoft was the only option. Perhaps, Yahoo has created an elaborate illusion to convince Microsoft to increase its bid.

Rafat Ali of PaidContent said AOL and Google working together could help Yahoo stay independent:

Google would benefit by the Microsoft block, its AOL relationship, and potentially a partnership with Yahoo, which would mean that Google is the big winner. Microsoft would be the big loser, if it doesn’t succeed in acquiring Yahoo. Of course, the antitrust regulators might have a say in the matter.

(Credit:
comScore)

According to The Wall Street Journal:

In some ways, Yahoo could be a loser as well, in that Microsoft would technically and financially be a stronger mate than AOL, especially in battling Google over the long-term.

I never thought that Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo could get so interesting. It’s taking on Shakespearian dimensions, with various factions lobbying, forming alliances, and establishing dowries for Yahoo’s favor. In addition, News Corp. may be lending aid to Microsoft in its quest to acquire Yahoo.

The deal, which wouldn’t include AOL’s dial-up access business, would value AOL at about $10 billion. As part of the deal, Yahoo would use the Time Warner cash and additional funds to buy back several billion dollars worth of its own stock at a price somewhere in the middle of the range, between $30 and $40 a share, the people said.

Under the terms being discussed between Yahoo and Time Warner, the latter would fold its AOL unit into Yahoo and make a cash investment in return for about 20 percent of the combined entity, people familiar with the situation said.

The question for Yahoo shareholders will be which deal is best. AOL needs to find a home, and the combined AOL-Yahoo user base would be large. Getting leverage from the two audiences presents similar problems and overlapping to that of an MSN-Yahoo combination.

If Yahoo can logically show that it gets a 30 percent to 40 percent revenue lift on the test, then they have a story to tell–that, if combined with AOL, they have enough scale, cut down costs by outsourcing search and search ads to Google, and add to that a possible share buyback with Time Warner supplying the extra cash, the combination has earned the right to stay independent.

We may find out soon whether AOL is really an alternative to Microsoft for Yahoo, and salvation for Time Warner, and whether Rupert Murdoch wants to get in bed with Microsoft. What we know, at this point, is that Jerry Yang is not saying, “Alas, poor Yorick.”

At the same time, The New York Times is reporting that News Corp. (and its MySpace.com) may be considering throwing in with Microsoft to help acquire Yahoo.

Yahoo and AOL are reportedly in deep talks to join forces. Also note that the Time Warner unit recently acquired the social-networking site Bebo.

Yahoo is also testing the use of Google ads on a small percentage of its search pages. This could lead Yahoo to outsource its core ad search business to Google. As you might recall, Google and AOL have a connection. Google invested $1 billion in AOL in 2005 for a 5 percent stake, and it powers AOL search.

Over the weekend, Steve Ballmer gave Jerry Yang three weeks to capitulate, or Microsoft would take its case directly to Yahoo shareholders. Today, 69 days into the negotiations and posturing, with Microsoft seemingly in the driver’s seat, prognosticators are scratching their heads.

Now, the flip side. The biggest turn off is that Upline does not backup e-mail files. That’s planned for the future, according to HP, but backup users will need it now. Imagine losing your e-mail archive. Enough said.

The product is based on Titanize, which HP acquired when it bought the company Opelin last year. I’ve always thought Titanize was an underappreciated backup application. Perhaps HP was listening.

The desktop application is pretty straightforward for a backup product.

Upline's desktop widget.

The application doesn’t offer PC-to-PC sync (see FolderShare, BeInSync, SugarSync), which to many is an obscure feature, but I think it’s one of the most valuable data safety and convenience applications you can have on a personal computer. There’s no virtual drive, such as XDrive has, which makes using the service just a little more tedious than it needs to be. Also, it’s PC only on the backup side, although any machine with a browser can view Upline archive pages. There’s also no mobile client. Finally, the search feature seems to only search file names, not files’ contents.

HP has entered the online backup space with a new product called Upline. It’s a decent cloud-based backup product at a good price point, but it has a few frustrating limitations.

Another missing piece: System restore. Upline is a document and media backup product. It won’t store your programs or system settings. So if your hard disk crashes, you can’t use it to rebuild your system.

Upline is neither a perfect backup tool nor a complete integrated online storage suite. However, at this price point, given its unlimited backup space and its straightforward sharing options, it’s a good deal.

There’s a free version that gives you 1GB of online storage for a year, but if you’re serious about backup you’ll want one of the paid versions. The least expensive $59/year Home plan gives you the unlimited storage and allows up to three PCs to share the online storage pool. Family plans and small office plans give you individual storage bins, and the business plans also give you an administrator’s dashboard.

See also: Mozy and Carbonite.

The product allows for Web-based access to your backed-up files, which is very nice if you want to grab a something when you’re away from your PC. You can also share files via e-mail (recipients get links, not the files themselves) or publish files for public access.

The good news first: The software is simple to get started with (critical for a backup application) and the paid plans provide unlimited storage for your documents, photos, music, and video files (also critical–who wants to count bits when signing up for data insurance?). The system checks for new files by default every 15 minutes, and uploads your data to the HP-run servers in a quiet background process.

This review has been updated from the original: Information was added on backing up data to a local device.

Upline can also back up files to a local device, such as a second hard drive, a server, or a PC on the local network. I don’t know of any other products that handle both local and Web-based backup. It’s a very cool feature.

Surprising no one, MSI today announced its forthcoming mininotebook will feature an Intel Atom CPU. The rest of the specifications for the MSI Wind remain unchanged from those we saw last month when MSI was dancing around the CPU question. Today’s announcement, however, did include an official price and a ship date. The Windows-based MSI Wind will cost $499 and will be released on June 16. Linux versions will cost $399, but they won’t be out until “later this summer.”

CNET Reviews is scheduled to get one next week; look for our review on or before June 16. We expect our package to look similar to this.

The Windows version features XP Home, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU on the Intel 945GMS chipset, 1GB of 667MHz memory, and an 80GB hard drive. The laptop weighs 2.6 pounds and has a 10-inch display, which is LED backlit with a 1024×600 resolution. Bluetooth and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi are onboard, as is a 1.3-megapixel Webcam, three USB ports, and a 4-in-1 media card reader. The 6-cell battery is rated to run for 5.5 hours.

(Credit:
MSI)

It’s hard to find laptop that doesn’t have built-in Wi-Fi these days. As a matter of fact, if you buy a new and relatively high-end model, such as the Dell XPS M1330 (which I have and really like), chances are your laptop even has built-in 802.11n card.

However, for the high speed to be achieved, your access point or wireless router has to support the specification. If you are about to setup a new network, it makes sense to buy a Draft N 2.0 router, such as the Trendnet TEW-633GR or the D-Link DIR-655. However, if you already have an 802.11g network, it could be a lot of work (not to mention the extra cost of equipment) to port the existing network settings from the old router to the new one. This is especially true when you have network with a lot of different advanced functions being used, such as port forwarding, VPN, remote access, and so on.

I tested the TEW-637AP anecdotally and it offered basically the same throughput and range as the Trendnet TEW-633GR router. The best thing about the TEW-637AP is that it’s very small, about 40 percent the size and weight of Draft N 2.0 access points from other vendors. For about $60, I think it’s worth it.

Even though the new N specification (officially called Draft N 2.0) is not yet ratified as a standard, more people are taking advantage of this specification for throughput gain. In theory, the N specification can offer speed up to 300Mbps, that’s three times of the regular wired connection. In reality, it is just faster than 802.11g standard. Draft N is backward compatible with 802.11g, meaning your existing Wi-Fi equipment should work with the specification, albeit at a slower speed.

(Credit:
Dong Ngo CNET Networks)

This is the situation where I would recommend the Trendnet TEW-637AP Easy-N-Upgrader. This is an access point that is easy to setup and manage. You just have to hook it to your existing router, turn it on, and run the installation wizard on the included CD. In a few minutes, your wireless network will be upgraded to the Draft N 2.0 specification.

The Trendnet TEW-637AP Easy-N-Upgrader is probabaly one of the most compact Draft N 2.0 access points on the market.

A pretty sweet feature is that users can easily e-mail the Google form, if all they want to do is collect a bit of data from people they know. Also, if the spreadsheet is open on a computer, the data coming in via the form can be monitored in real-time, which is, frankly, bad-ass. Try entering data in a form here.

Via: Official Google Docs blog.

As is typical in Google Docs, this feature is simple, easy to use, but somewhat underpowered. For example, the form cannot be easily embedded in a Web page, and there’s no data validation on form entries. I still recommend WuFoo for online data collection, and there are other good online databases allow embed forms (and export data to a spreadsheet for quick processing).

I do expect this feature to evolve over time. Because of this evolution, I do not give good odds to the long-term survival of the other online databases. In fact, I fully expect Google to release a database application into Google Docs to go along with this bare-bones data-entry function.

(Click on the form to try it for real.)

The spreadsheet in Google Docs now supports independent form entry. That means that if someone wants to use a Google spreadsheet as a database, they can ask others to fill in data by putting information into a nice, compact form, instead of into the spreadsheet itself.

OK, I’m not really sure what they are exactly, but they’re kinda cool. Found these Mutant Ears on the Toy Design Workshop site, where they claim the things amplify sound to create “an audiotastic experience.” The Mutant Ears were presented at the Mattel Student Design Summit 2006. There’s also a wacky Mutant Ears “commercial” on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

(Credit:
Jonny Goldstein)

(Credit:
Jonny Goldstein)