Speculation is mounting that Apple plans to enter the £500 laptop fray with a MacBook sporting a 13in screen. Gene Munster, an analyst at investment bank Piper Jaffray, told Apple Insider that the move is part of an overall strategy to cut gross margin to 31.5 per cent for the current quarter and down to 30 per cent for 2009.

"We believe there is an 80 per cent chance Apple will introduce redesigned MacBooks and possibly new MacBook Pros at lower price points," he said. "Specifically, Apple may re-enter the $999 price point (currently $1,099) with the MacBook, or test the $1,799 price point with the MacBook Pro (currently $1,999)." The arrival of a £500 MacBook would bring further big name competition to the burgeoning netbook market.

View: The full story @ vnunet

Microsoft has traded its exclusive deal to plaster Facebook with banner advertising for the right to pump Google-style contextual search ads on the profit-lite website. The switcheroo was tossed into yesterday's attempt by Steve Ballmer to convince analysts that he's still the world's top chair-flinging sweaty software kingpin in the wake of the Yahoo! bid debacle.

Boydroid CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims that he isn't interested in making money and that his once-buzzy firm is focused on "adding value" for users. The truth however is that Facebook needs to demonstrate to its real customers and chiefs - advertisers and venture capitalists - that it is anything more valuable than a complicated web spam generator. Especially after the world was shocked - shocked! - to discover the site isn't really worth $15bn.

View: The full story @ The Reg

Yahoo has become the latest company to abandon customers who bought tracks from its music store encoded with DRM (digital rights management), drawing fire from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

On Sept. 30, Yahoo will shut down the servers that are needed to reauthorize music purchased from its failed Unlimited Music Store if it is transferred to a new PC, Yahoo said in an e-mail to customers. The rule to designed to slow music piracy. Re-authorization is also needed if someone upgrades their PC's operating system.

The only workaround for customers wanting to listen to their music on a new or upgraded computer after this date is to burn the tracks to a CD and then reload them on a PC.

View: The full story @ PCWorld

Microsoft's chief software architect surely isn't its chief orator. Ray Ozzie's sentence construction makes his speeches great generalizations bereft of real details. Ray had lots to say during Microsoft's annual Financial Analysts Meeting today. But like past speeches, this one had a disjointed character. He talks about "the mesh"—well that's how I would describe his keynote. A mesh. Maybe smart people don't think linearly.

But through all the miserably winding sentences, something startling emerged. Microsoft's Web services strategy is Windows-centric after all. Whatever "the mesh" is going to be, Windows or Windows Mobile will be required. Ray started his keynote by speaking about his three years at Microsoft and how in the early days he saw that "a large industry shift was on the way." Part of the shift: "Service-enhanced software."

View: The full story @ MS-Watch

Mozilla Messaging patched nine security vulnerabilities in Thunderbird Wednesday, the first time it's plugged holes in the e-mail software since early May. Thunderbird 2.0.0.16, which was added to Mozilla's download servers late Wednesday, quashes nine bugs, including one that was patched last week in Firefox , the company's open-source browser. The remainder fix flaws that were first addressed in early July when Mozilla updated Firefox to version 2.0.0.15.

It's not unusual for Thunderbird security updates to lag behind those released for Firefox. Seven of the nine bugs were rated "moderate" by Mozilla, the second-lowest of the four rankings in its threat system. The other two were pegged as "low."

View: The full story @ InfoWorld

As High Definition (HD) technology continues to advance in the consumer electronics and display arenas, so does the penetration of the High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) interface technology for connecting HD devices. While the DisplayPort alternative shows some promise, can it or any technology rise up to challenge HDMI?

Consumers love HD video products like flat-panel televisions and Blu-ray DVD players. However, consumers did not love the legacy approach that electronics manufacturers have used to interconnect such devices, including hard-to-use connectors and bulky cables. The answer was HDMI, which was immediately embraced by consumers and OEMs alike in both the PC and consumer markets because of its relative ease of use.

View: The full story @ DigiTimes

The market of ultra low-cost personal computers (ULCPCs) is on the rise these days as many PC vendors are looking forward to add appropriate products into the lineup. Nonetheless, Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s No. 2 maker of x86 central processing units (CPUs), is not particularly enthusiastic about such systems despite of the fact that it does have a processor to address the segment.

Answering a question about AMD’s response to Intel Corp.’s Atom processor, the new chief executive officer of the company, Dirk Meyer, said that AMD was looking forward the market, but would discuss actual products only in November, 2008. The chipmaker cited the fact that it was a much smaller company compared to Intel and could not offer a competing device shortly after the rival’s product launch.

View: The full story @ Xbit-Labs

Account hijackers have targeted Apple iTunes for months, but now they're hitting Apple developers as well.

Reg reader Andrew McAuley discovered that his iTunes account was hijacked after 150 unauthorised transactions, each valued at $42, appeared on his debit card bill. McAuley, a Brit who lives in the US, noticed the attack after he checked his bank account on 11 July. "I tried to log in to my [iTunes] account and was unable. Seems someone had changed the login to a different name completely," he explained.

When he contacted iTunes support McAuley was told his account had been taken over by an "unknown fraudster" and that this was the subject of an ongoing investigation. Apple has suspended the account.

View: The full story @ The Reg

Taking a jab at the embedded market, Intel on Wednesday said it was working on new x86 chips to use in devices ranging from consumer electronics to mobile phones. Intel is developing more than 15 system-on-chips based on the x86 core found in Intel's Atom chip, which can be found in mobile Internet devices and low-cost laptops.

By using the Atom core, the company is trying to increase performance and drop power consumption on the new chips, said Gadi Singer, vice president of Intel's mobility group, at a press event in San Francisco.

View: The full story @ PCWorld

In an unexpected shakeup, earlier today Microsoft split up its Platform and Services division into two groups and announced the departure of divisional president Kevin Johnson. Whoa, Microsoft loses two of three divisional presidents—the other being Jeff Raikes—in one year.

Worse, these were the two execs responsible for cash cows Office and Windows.

View: The full story @ MS-Watch

Hackers have released software that exploits a recently disclosed flaw in the Domain Name System (DNS) software used to route messages between computers on the Internet. The attack code was released Wednesday by developers of the Metasploit hacking toolkit.

Internet security experts warn that this code may give criminals a way to launch virtually undetectable phishing attacks against Internet users whose service providers have not installed the latest DNS server patches. Attackers could also use the code to silently redirect users to fake software update servers in order to install malicious software on their computers, said Zulfikar Ramizan, a technical director with security vendor Symantec. "What makes this whole thing really scary is that from an end-user perspective they may not notice anything," he said.

View: The full story @ InfoWorld

AMD is denying reports that it will sell off its fabrication plants, or fabs, in Germany as part of a plan to cut expenses and refocus the chip maker’s energy of processors and graphics. Advanced Micro Devices is planning to keep its fabs for now.

AMD is denying a report that appeared in the Austin American-Statesman that contains an interview with new CEO Dirk Meyer that seemed to indicate that the chip maker was preparing to spin off its manufacturing facilities in Germany and sell its two fabrication plants, or fabs.

View: The full story @ eWeek

Originally scheduled to launch in November or December this year, Intel's Nehalem-based Bloomfield processors will now launch in September along with X58 chipsets, sources at motherboard makers have revealed.

However, the sources pointed out that CPUs and motherboards will not officially appear in the channel until early October.

View: The full story @ DigiTimes

Now that Microsoft has released a fix for the data corruption bug in Windows Home Server, channel partners are hoping Microsoft will embark on an advertising and marketing blitzkrieg to show consumers that having a server in the home can, in fact, make their lives easier.

Before this week's release of Power Pack 1, the first major update for Windows Home Server, Microsoft may have been reluctant to trumpet the virtues of a product whose primary function of backing up users' data was in doubt. Now that it has fixed the glitch, Microsoft can continue working on the challenge of creating demand for the brand new home server segment. Susan Bradley, a Small Business Specialist partner in Fresno, Calif., describes Home Server as a "strong" product, but says she's "honestly concerned" about the amount of marketing Microsoft has devoted to the product thus far.

View: The full story @ CRN

Florida based company "Channel Intelligence" filed for patent infringement on Tuesday against multitude of people and companies that offer "wishlists".

Specifically, the wishlists in question are lists of desired products from the defendant's websites that the user would like to purchase, which are then stored in some form or other on a database.

CI are claiming that allowing users to create these lists needs their permission as they are the owners of patent 6,917,941 - "A method for configuring a database system to store information regarding a plurality of items", which was issued in July 2005.

Strangely (or not), CI have not made claims against larger companies such as Amazon, Ebay and other large online retailers, all of whom are offering exactly what CI have patented.

Surely the USPTO needs to start reviewing it's practices for Intellectual Property if more and more frivolous 'inventions' like this are going to become weapons for taking other peoples money?

View: US Patent 6,917,941
Link: Full Story @ TechCrunch