Top Items:
Jay Greene / Business Week:
Microsoft Vista: Companies Can Wait — Corporate buyers may be slow to adopt the new operating system and Office business programs — It's been five years since the last release of Microsoft's Windows operating system, and more than three since the previous iteration of its Office word-processing and spreadsheet program debuted.
Business Week:
The Google/YouTube Come-On — Google (GOOG ) and YouTube are dangling nine-figure sums in front of major programming and network players—that is, the Time Warners, News Corp (NWS )s, and NBC Universals of the world. Google calls these monies licensing fees, according to executives who've been involved in the discussions.
Gizmodo:
WTF Alert: Chinese BenQ MusiQ Dog Tag Player Site Has Guy Posing In Front of WTC Ruins — These BenQ MusiQ Dog Tag MP3 players may be quite stylish, but wtf is up with their Chinese site? The splash page features some one gloved Michael Jackson guy standing in front of what looks like the WTC ruins.
CNET News.com:
FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool — update The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.
Discussion:
Slashdot
Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com:
Open-source group wants educational patent reversed — A legal center is trying to overturn a patent it says threatens three open-source educational projects, a sign of the tension between patent holders and the collaborative programming community. — The Software Freedom Law Center …
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Nintendo Wii launches in Japan — According to our row of clocks in the Engadget situation room here at Engadget HQ, it's now past 9:00AM, December 2nd in Japan, which means the Wii has been out and about in its home country for around two hours by now. We just got some pics from a friendly tipster …
David Chartier / The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
Intel GM has "religious experience," buys a Mac — Hexus has an interview with Pat Gelsinger, Intel's GM of their Digital Enterprise Group, in which he describes crossing "the religious boundary" by purchasing a Mac. Note how the interviewer reacts and grimaces around 1:41 when Pat drops the bomb …
Discussion:
The Apple Blog
I, Cringely . The Pulpit | PBS:
In a Jam: Stories of ISP bad faith and can the government really listen in to your VoIP calls? Yes they can. — My son Channing, who is four years old, recently celebrated Pajama Day at his preschool when everyone — even the teachers — came to school in their pajamas.
Discussion:
Techdirt
George Ou:
AMD Quad FX slaughtered by a single Intel CPU — All the reviews are in for AMD's new "4×4" Quad FX dual CPU platform and it loses nearly every single real world benchmark to a single Intel CPU while consuming more than twice the electricity. We basically see two FX-74 3. GHz processors …
Jon's Radio:
A conversation with John Wilkin about the Michigan/Google digitization project — My guest for this week's podcast is John Wilkin. He's the director of the University of Michigan Library's technology department, and coordinator of the library's joint digitization project with Google.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
On to the next version of Windows — Guess Microsoft really wants to make sure the next version of Windows doesn't take another five years. — The day after releasing the final Windows Vista bits to volume-licensing business customers. Microsoft issued a call to testers asking for input on the next version of Windows.
Jason Clarke / Download Squad:
How to fix your iTunes artwork — I recently learned a little trick that helped me to fix the artwork that was associated with the songs in my music collection. Over the past few years, I've used a number of different artwork importing tools, with varied results.
Unsanity News:
New in version 2.4: — ShapeShifter and guiTweak are now Universal Binaries! — ShapeShifter now requires Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" or newer. — ShapeShifter now supports windows with a "Unified" toolbar. These are windows which are draggable by the entire toolbar, yet are not metal windows.
Kevin Kelly / Joystiq:
Bringing your notebook doodles to life (finally): SketchFighter — We reported a year ago that Ambrosia's game team was looking for folks to help in the beta development of the retro-looking, paper and ink space shooter SketchFighter, and now it's finally here.
Derek / .:UNEASYsilence:.:
Parallels - IE7 & Firefox in "coherence" mode — OS X Parallels Desktop users will rejoice knowing that the latest beta build of Parallels includes a slew of new updates including the ability to resize the virtual machine window (with resolution adjusting automatically) and my personal favorite - "coherence".
