Dell: No Significant Impact From Centrino 2 Delay

The delayed release of Intel's Centrino 2 chip platform for notebooks will not have a significant impact, according to Dell's top executive in Asia.

Earlier this week, problems with some integrated-graphics chipsets and paperwork issues involving the antenna used by the platform's wireless module forced Intel to delay Centrino 2's release by up to two months. The launch, originally scheduled for June, will now take place during the first week of August, the chipmaker said.

Intel described the delay as minor and said it will have little impact, a view echoed by Steve Felice, president of Dell Asia-Pacific, during a conference call with reporters.

"We plan, when we plan our product introductions, for probable or potential delays that may happen in the supply chain. I wouldn't call it any significant impact at all," Felice said.

Laptops are a critical product segment for PC makers, with sales growing at a faster rate and generally offering better margins than desktop systems. For example, Dell's laptop shipments rose 43 percent during the first quarter of 2008, the company said Thursday.

Dell's revenue from mobile products, which includes laptop sales, amounted to $4.9 billion during the quarter, a 22 percent increase over the same period last year. By comparison, desktop revenue grew 2 percent, to $4.8 billion.

India and Brazil File Appeals Against OOXML Standardization

India and Brazil have filed appeals against the adoption of the Microsoft-sponsored Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an international standard.

Their appeals join one from South Africa, filed last Friday with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the two standardization bodies responsible for the technical committee which approved the OOXML standard.

"By the deadline last night, we had received three appeals, from Brazil, India and South Africa," said Jonathan Buck, spokesman for IEC.

"The Brazillian appeal was not lodged in the correct procedure -- it was not send to the CEOs of the two organizations -- but nonetheless it has been received," Buck said, adding that it will be treated in the same way as the Indian and South African appeals.

Members of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) adopted OOXML as a standard in a vote that closed on March 29.

The so-called Fast Track process leading up to that vote has been widely criticized by participants and observers as too rushed. If a draft standard going through that process is rejected in an initial vote because it requires further work, a ballot resolution meeting (BRM) is called to discuss the criticisms made and improve the draft.

Delegates at the February BRM for OOXML had just five days to deal with over 1,000 editorial changes and technical criticisms. Since that meeting, in which many of the changes were put to a vote without discussion, the process has slowed down, and the final version of the text has still not been circulated to national standards bodies over a month after the deadline for publication set by JTC1 rules.

The rushed meeting and the delayed publication are among the grounds for appeal cited by South Africa and Brazil, according to copies of the letters posted by lawyer and standards blogger Andy Updegrove.

Officials at the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and the Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT), Brazil's national standards body, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The CEOs of ISO and IEC each have one month to examine the appeals and to try to reach a compromise with the national standards bodies. If that fails, the appeals are passed to the Standards Management Board at IEC and the Technical Management Board (TMB) at ISO for resolution.

ISO will not say how many appeals it has received until after the TMB meeting on June 6.

IEC's Buck expects to have more to say about the appeals process next week, but noted that the situation is unusual.

"This is the first such appeal after a BRM process in ISO/IEC JTC 1, although appeals occur regularly in other technical committees," he said.

The importance of the OOXML standard is fast diminishing: Microsoft said last week that it does not expect to make its current generation of office productivity software, Office 2007, compliant with the ISO/IEC version of the OOXML standard.

Instead it will issue a patch allowing that software to read and write files compatible with the rival OpenDocument Format, which has already been adopted as standard ISO/IEC 26300. That file format is used by the open-source OpenOffice.org, Sun Microsystems' StarOffice and IBM's Symphony, among others.

Asus to Launch Laptops With Linux Net Software

Asustek (Asus) is trying out its Express Gate Linux software in laptop PCs, a bid to make multimedia files and Internet access a snap for users

Express Gate allows users to bypass Windows at start-up and go directly to the Express Gate screen in just five seconds. From there, users can go directly to the Internet, play games or access music and other multimedia files. The company has equiped its motherboards with the software in the past and plans to put it in all future laptop PCs, including a few to be launched at Computex next week.

Next week, the company will show off the F8V, the first laptop PC with a hot key to access Express Gate directly instead of waiting for Windows to boot up.

From the end of June, all new Asustek laptop PCs will come with Express Gate on board, and all motherboards will come with Express Gate software on CDs so users can load it on their PCs if so desired, an Asustek representative said.

Without Microsoft, British Library Keeps on Digitizing

The British Library's ongoing projects to make thousands of books and other resources available digitally won't slow down significantly, despite the ending last week of a partnership with Microsoft, a senior library official said Friday.

Microsoft formed a partnership with the library in November 2005 to fund the scanning of up to 100,000 out-of-copyright 19th century books, or around 20 million pages. The scanning work will continue for a while longer until the last 40,000 books are finished, said Neil Fitzgerald, digitization project manager.

The library has 15 ongoing digitization projects, focusing on other holdings such as sound recordings and newspaper pages. Funding come from a mix of private and public sources. Those projects will continue, Fitzgerald said.

"There can be a tendency to look at possibly negative aspects, but I think it's worth emphasizing this has been a positive outcome for the library," Fitzgerald said.

The library would be open to partnerships with other companies, including Google, that express an interest in digitization projects, he said. Microsoft's departure wasn't entirely unexpected.

"This isn't a new situation for the library," Fitzgerald said. "We have lots of experience in this area, and we are pragmatic and realistic. Commercial third parties will only maintain a resource if it fulfills their commercial imperative."

Microsoft said last week it would focus its search engine development on projects with "high commercial intent, such as travel." The company shut down a portal, called Live Book Search, that allowed users to search books from the British Library and other sources. Those books are now searchable through Microsoft's main search engine, Live Search.

The British Library holds about 150 million items, of which 13 million are books, Fitzgerald said. Scanning 100,000 books would represent about 0.5 percent of the library's holdings, he said. The library can only scan books for which the copyright has lapsed, yet which are still in a fit state, around 2.5 million items in all.

The books are scanned by automated machines that turn the pages. The APT BookScan 2400, made by Kirtas, uses a robotic arm to turn pages, of which 2,400 can be scanned per hour. Fitzgerald said contractors operate the machines from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. in two shifts, scanning some 75,000 pages per day.

Hi-Tech CEOs Offer Yahoo, Microsoft Merger Advice

Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc seem to hang out in all the same places but somehow keep missing each other.

That's turned speculation over what it will take to get the two of them together into something of a CEO parlor game.

Media magnate Rupert Murdoch said this week he is "mystified" the two have not come to terms. E-commerce mogul Barry Diller said Microsoft should never have fired a hostile shot at Yahoo if they didn't plan to stick it out.

Yahoo board member Bobby Kotick joked that he had tried to get top executives from Microsoft and Yahoo together to play Guitar Hero 4, the hit video game from the company he runs, Activision Inc.

In separate appearances at the D: Conference this week, the top executives of Microsoft and Yahoo said no progress had been made on a merger, though they were discussing lesser deals.

The two had held abortive takeover talks over a three-month period that ended May 3, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock has said.

Microsoft walked away from a proposal to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion, or $33 a share, after Yahoo rebuffed it, saying it wanted $37 a share. Then in mid-May, the companies said they had begun talks on an unspecified deal short of a merger.

On Wednesday, Yahoo's co-founder and chief executive, Jerry Yang, threw cold water on speculation that they might be edging back into merger discussions.

"Microsoft is no longer interested in buying the company, and we are talking about other things. We definitely have to understand what they're proposing ... they clearly have an interest in Yahoo, and we need to understand more," he said.

In an on-stage interview at the conference, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said talks had broken down largely over price. Appearing with Yang, Yahoo President Susan Decker agreed price had always been the biggest barrier to reaching a deal.

Diller, who runs the company behind rival Ask.com, believes a merger of Microsoft and Yahoo is necessary to gain the scale to take on Google in Web search and advertising.

Diller expressed surprise at Microsoft's decision to withdraw its offer and "move on" after pursuing Yahoo at regular intervals over the past two years.

"It seems to me if you fire a gun in a hostile offer, the bullet has to land in the heart," he said in his own on-stage appearance at the conference on Wednesday. "Otherwise, I can't imagining firing at all."

Murdoch agreed, saying that given the original 62 percent premium Microsoft was willing to pay for Yahoo, Ballmer should be more patient.

"You aim the gun and you fire," Murdoch said, echoing Diller. "They are not used to big deals, so they backed off."

Murdoch's News Corp has gotten nowhere in its own efforts to talk to both sides in recent months about alternative deal arrangements involving his MySpace Web business.

The wily 77-year-old deal-maker ruled out prospects for an alternative deal between Yahoo and Google Inc to succeed, saying regulatory issues would likely derail it.

And he dismissed activist investor Carl Icahn's campaign to replace the Yahoo board in a proxy fight at the company's July annual shareholder meeting as "helpful noise" to Microsoft and a threat that Yahoo shouldn't bother worrying about.

"That is not serious," Murdoch said of Icahn. "Look, he wants to make a few hundred-million dollars for himself."

Murdoch's conclusion is that Microsoft and Yahoo need to lock themselves in a room and put their last respective offers on the table and settle on a deal.

Speaking as if he were one of the negotiators, Murdoch said "Look, if it is complicated, we will clean it up afterward."

Anticipating the flood of free advice from other executives, Yahoo made up its own joke video in which Yang and Decker are seen being inundated with unsolicited advice from top technology industry CEOs, investors and media pundits.

Warren Buffett's advice to Yang? "Buy low, sell high."

Bill Gates goes to the Olympics

We just ran into Bill Gates at a cocktail party at The D Conference. Microsoft's founder says he's looking forward to retiring on July 1 -- but he's not getting nostalgic. "People my age don't do that," he says. "My dad is good at that. He's 82."

Gates is going to take some of his new-found free time to travel to Europe with his family. He's also heading to Beijing for the Olympics. And he expects to be able to pick his kids up from school more often. (Today he can only drop them off about three days a week.)

The conference is just getting going. We'll keep you posted on the news as it unfolds.

Blog posts photos from lost cameras to find owners

Imagine you lost the camera that had those one-of-kind vacation photos, or images of a keepsake moment. If a stranger found it, would you feel happy, or somehow that your privacy was invaded, if they tracked you down by viewing some of your images?

A new website, www.Ifoundyourcamera.net, aims to do exactly that: Using the power and reach of the Internet, it asks people who find cameras, memory sticks or photos to upload and send a few of the images, which are posted for all to see. The intent is for people who visit the site to scroll through the pictures for their lost memories or for faces they know.

THE SITE: 'Found Cameras and Orphan Pictures'
RELATED ARTICLE: Photo clues lead to camera's owner

In three months, the website has had more than 700,000 hits, according to Matt Preprost, the blog's 20-year-old co-founder and operator. Almost 60 people have sent images from cameras or memory sticks they found, and that's led to eight happy reunions between camera owners and their digital memories, he said.

"I thought that it was something special and unique, but I was unsure of how long it was going to last," said Preprost, a student at the University of Winnipeg in Canada. He said most people are "dumbfounded" such a site exists, and aren't bothered by potential privacy issues.

His site was inspired by a submission to PostSecret.com, where people submit secrets on the Internet via handmade post cards. In early February, one posted "secret" was from someone who found a camera at Lollapalooza and wanted to reunite it with its owner.

Preprost found it compelling that the person was using PostSecret to try to connect with someone and e-mailed site-founder Frank Warren, whom he'd interviewed for his college newspaper. By the end of the day, they'd started www.Ifoundyourcamera.net together.

Preprost runs the blog — a scroll through its submissions takes you to all corners of the globe — while Warren said he serves as his mentor.

"I've been through a lot of the things he's going through in terms of trying to create this community and listen to it and respect everybody's values and allow the community to grow in a self-purposing way," Warren said.

Preprost, who says the site focuses on the stories surrounding the cameras, asks people to send in two pictures that are visually strong, with identifiable people and landmarks. When an owner turns up, he puts them in contact with the person who found their memories.

Brett Moist, a 21-year-old photography student from Crystal Lakes, Ill., lost his memory card at Union Station in Chicago during a trip in January. He thought he lost it in Michigan, and figured it was long gone.

Then a picture of Moist and his girlfriend in front of Wrigley Field turned up on Preprost's website.

"A couple of weeks after I lost it my girlfriend's friend randomly stumbled onto the site and went crazy when she saw us," Moist said.

While Preprost hasn't run into any problems with people being upset about their pictures being posted online, the site is in a bit of a legal gray area, according R. Bruce Rich, a lawyer with Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York City.

Whoever takes a picture owns it and almost any photo is entitled to copyright protection, Rich said. While Rich said an argument could be made that the website makes unauthorized copies of pictures, it's clear the intent of the site is to get cameras back to their rightful owners, not to deny the camera's owner any commercial benefit.

Another legal problem could arise, though, if someone who appears in a posted image claims that they had a reasonable expectation of privacy when the picture was taken, Rich said.

Preprost said he'd remove pictures of anyone who objected. He said most people seem to appreciate the site, like George Metz, a 66-year-old Pennsylvania resident who lost his camera during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

A picture of him during a visit to Fantasy of Flight in Florida was posted on www.Ifoundyourcamera.net and Metz heard about it when a fellow member of a Star Wars re-enactment group spotted it — through his computer in Denmark.

It turns out a student at Tulane University School of Medicine had picked up Metz's camera after standing near him during a parade.

"It was a real godsend to get this message that she was going to send this back to me," he said. "There were a few pictures on there I really cared about."

Preprost hopes his site will inspire even more acts of kindness.

"I think people are inherently good, it's just, how many opportunities do we get to do a good thing for a total stranger?" he asked. "If I can inspire others, that's the one thing I would want to do in my life."

Google Cements Commitment to Developers With I/O Event

Google will host this week its most important conference yet for external developers, whose applications and mashups the company considers key to its success.

In addition to its almost 100 in-depth technical sessions, the event, called Google I/O, also holds great symbolic importance: It's Google's strongest statement to date of its deep, long-term commitment to external developers.

As a result, Google is taking on the challenge of meeting these programmers' heightened expectations about the company's developer technology, support, training and terms of service.

While Google's first overtures to developers years ago were made in an ad-hoc, informal manner, its relationship with them is now more serious, as Google APIs (application programming interfaces) are now used in commercial Web sites and in applications that support workplace processes, not just in cool amateur mashups.

Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for developer products at Google, acknowledged that with this first edition of I/O, Google makes it clear that it is in it for the long haul in working for and with external programmers.

"All the activity you've seen in the past year is indicative of how serious Google is about developers and our level of commitment," he said. "This is the beginning of a very long-term commitment we have."

So far, developers seem generally satisfied with Google's programs, although there is no shortage of wish lists, requests, suggestions and comments among them. One company deeply interested in Google's developer programs is Bungee Labs, which foresees that Google APIs will generate a lot of the application traffic on its Bungee Connect hosted development and hosting platform, now available in beta mode.

While happy so far with the developer programs, Bungee Labs nonetheless would like to see Google strengthen its tool and API documentation, as well as improve its direct communication efforts. In addition, Google would do well to extend its line of APIs that provide access to the data Google services hold, said Brad Hintze, product marketing director at Bungee Labs.

The documentation available is "pretty good, but they could use a little more," Hintze said in a phone interview.

Likewise, the breadth of Google APIs is "really good and they keep adding to them, so on that front they're doing a terrific job," but Bungee Labs would like data APIs for services such as Gmail, so that they could be tied to business applications and CRM (customer relationship management) systems, he said.

These so-called "Gdata" APIs are the really powerful ones for commercial, workplace applications, and the more that become available, the better, he said. This sentiment is echoed by Nick Moline, Web programmer at legal information Web site Justia.com. "I'd like to see Google open up more RESTful [Representational State Transfer] APIs to their core data sets," he said in an e-mail interview.

In addition, Bungee Labs would like to see more Google staffers available to deal with queries from developers. "The one-on-one engagement with Google has been somewhat sporadic as far as being able to get a hold of an evangelist or a real person," Hintze said.

On that front, Google has benefited from having what he calls a "very active" community of developers who help each other out in discussion groups and online forums.

Hintze, whose company competes to a degree with Google's new App Engine service, recognizes that Google's developer programs are maturing. "They are trying to innovate very quickly and introduce new APIs, and, over time, they [the APIs] really do get robust. But the side effect of trying to get them out there quickly is that not everything is in place as they make that introduction," he said. "Frankly, Google is transitioning into a focus like this as well, so the organization does need to get used to delivering and engaging one on one."

The importance of Google I/O to Bungee Labs is clear: Hintze will be there to boost the company's business relationship with Google, while two of its developers are attending to get further acquainted with the API and tools nuts and bolts.

Of course, Google is also looking out for its own interests, convinced that the more it can do to enhance the Web as an application platform, the more it stands to gain as a for-profit company.

"Google benefits economically from the Web moving forward. As the Web platform gets richer and you can build more interesting applications, that drives more users to the Internet, and that leads to more [Google] searches," Gundotra said.

Almost 3,000 developers will converge at San Francisco's Moscone Center for Google I/O, a significant number considering this is the first time Google has charged for a developer event. "We're thrilled with the response," Gundotra said, adding that the company initially expected no more than 2,000 attendees.

The two-day conference kicks off on Wednesday and will feature more than 100 sessions about the company's developer programs and tools.

On the agenda are sessions about the Android mobile platform, the OpenSocial APIs for social applications, the Gears technology for offline application access and the App Engine hosting service.

In addition, Google will announce that on Wednesday it will open the doors of App Engine to all developers, after an initial period of limited access.

This bit of news is likely to be of interest to Justia.com's Moline, who is particularly interested in App Engine. "It's an impressive way to build massively scalable Web applications. Its early information is promising, but I'm eager to know what their long term goals of the project are," said Moline, who plans to attend the event.

Google will announce that later this year, it will give developers the option to purchase App Engine computing resources beyond the free quota of 500M bytes of storage and bandwidth for about 5 million page views per month.

Google will also provide two new APIs for App Engine in the coming weeks: an "image-manipulation API to scale, rotate, and crop images on the server"; and the "memcache API," a caching layer to improve page rendering, according to the company.

Eren Brumley, a software developer at audio and Web conferencing provider InterCall, also plans to be there, as her job involves exploring new technologies, including those from Google. So far, her answers about Google's developer efforts have mostly come from people outside of Google. She's looking forward to getting first-hand information from Google this week.

"The fact that the conference is presented by the Google team directly was the driving factor of my attendance," she said in an e-mail interview.

She's also interested to see what other developers are doing, gain greater insight on the applications she's using "and not miss any of the 'tricks' that would make them better," she said. Brumley will also check out OpenSocial and Android sessions.

The event will be focused on three key areas: making computing power more accessible to developers via services like App engine; boosting the power of the browser via technologies like Gears; and improving the link between the Web and rich applications through initiatives like Android.

Google will also reiterate its commitment to investing engineering resources in standards and technologies to boost the Web as a platform, Gundotra said.

In addition, Google will announce Web Toolkit 1.5 Release Candidate, for developing and debugging Web applications built in Java and deploying them in "highly optimized" JavaScript. It will be available later this week with Java 5 language support.

For his part, Hintze is counting on Google to fulfill its commitment to the developer community, and he believes Google will do so.

"I believe Google is totally committed. They haven't shown anything that sends any mixed signals," he said.

Intel Delays Centrino 2 Launch Over Chipset, Antenna Issues

Intel will delay the launch of its upcoming Centrino 2 platform for laptop computers to resolve issues related to the chipset and the antenna used with the wireless chipset.

Centrino 2, also called Montevina, is the next version of Intel's popular Centrino platform for laptops and was previously slated for a June launch. Computer makers are now expected to begin shipping Centrino 2 systems to retail shops in July, with production reaching high volumes during the first week of August, said Elvin Ong, an Intel spokesman in Singapore.

The Centrino 2 platform includes new Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme Mobile processors, as well as an updated chipset with integrated graphics. On the wireless side, Centrino 2 will offer support for Wi-Fi, and WiMax is being offered as an option.

"We are taking the extra days to address two issues that require us to re-screen our chipsets with integrated graphics, and attend to some terms-and-conditions mistakes while filing and testing our wireless antennas," Ong said, adding that Intel expects Centrino 2 laptops to be available in time for the crucial back-to-school selling season.

Ong declined to detail the chipset issues that require Intel to re-screen these products, but said the move was necessary to insure the quality of the product. "We are not going to ship a sub-par product into the market," he said.

There is no problem with the processors used in Centrino 2, Ong said, calling these chips "healthy."

Sony Plans TVs That Will Eliminate Set-top Boxes

Sony has signed a deal with major cable TV operators in the U.S. that will pave the way for digital televisions that can receive cable programs without the need for a set-top box.

The agreement, which other consumer electronics manufacturers are invited to join, is to create TVs and other devices that can provide interactive digital and high-definition video services, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), a cable television trade body in the U.S., said on Tuesday.

The six cable operators who have signed the agreement with Sony are Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Cablevision and Bright House Networks.

The NCTAsaid the agreement will help establish a competitive market for "two-way" digital cable-ready products. It addresses how such products will be brought to market with interactive services like video-on-demand, digital video recording and interactive programming guides.

The companies will use a Java-based technology called tru2wayfor their interactive "plug-and-play" standard. Tru2way, which was formerly called OpenCable, is built into televisions, set-top boxes and other devices, and will allow companies to develop services that can be offered across all products that comply with the specification.

Zinio puts hundreds of digital magazines a click away

The future of magazine publishing increasingly is appearing on a digital display - not just a newsstand.

Advancements in software and hardware are making it easier for a growing faction of consumers - including coveted younger readers called screen-agers - to read their favorite publications on the Internet or download and read them later offline.

"It's not Jetsons. It's real," says Richard Maggiotto, CEO of Zinio, one of a dozen or so companies that specialize in creating digital editions of magazines and newspapers.

"We aren't trying to erode print systems, but give publishers another way to redistribute their content," he says. "It gives readers what they want in media formats they are increasingly using, such as iPhone, iPod, PCs."

The San Francisco-based Zinio and similar ventures could be a lifeline for the magazine and newspaper industries as readers - especially younger ones - migrate to the Internet and electronic devices to get their news.

Potentially, more may follow, with developments in "e-paper" technology. E Ink and Plastic Logic are developing flexible screen technology that will let consumers read content in color while on the move, says David Renard, senior analyst at market researcher MediaIdeas. By 2020, e-paper will be a $25 billion industry, he says. Amazon.com and Sony are among those that have created wireless reading devices. Amazon's Kindle lets people buy books and access other content over Sprint's wireless broadband network.

Digital versions of magazines "are a far superior reading experience in that the website is endless. There are billions of pages, where you can drift on tangents stemming from each story," says Bo Sacks, publisher of consultant Precision Media Group.

The growing popularity of virtual magazines could be a panacea for foreign publishers - many of whom want to crack the U.S. market but are hindered by distance and mailing costs - and it extends the reach of American publications to rural areas, where many titles are hard to find.

"It's a cost-efficient way to get an issue to a subscriber who wants it immediately," says Peter Winn, a director in the consumer marketing department at Bonnier, which produces more than 40 magazines, including Field and Stream and Popular Science.

Zinio is at the vanguard of digital publishing. It has created electronic versions of over 750 magazines, including BusinessWeek, Elle, Redbook, Playboy and Car and Driver. Consumers access them from their PC, iPhone or iPod Touch anytime - before magazines hit newsstands. Zinio gets a cut of sales as online distributor, Maggiotto says. Consumers pay publishers for online editions - be it for a subscription, single issue or back issue.

The digital editions let readers click on links embedded in articles and ads to peruse video, audio and related stories. That, no doubt, is pleasing the growing ranks of digital magazine subscribers.

To be sure, the electronic magazines take a little getting used to. To turn pages, for instance, people must click on the upper right-hand corner of a page. And they must navigate a series of links to find details about particular stories.

But, "Now I read the news when it happens - not when my magazine arrives days later," says Bud Clark, a 64-year-old retiree in Lyons, Ore. For nearly a year, he has subscribed to the digital version of Macworld. Previously, he received it through a mail subscription.

"I can flip through the pages on my PC screen, like you would leaf through a magazine," he says.

Reaching new readers

Services like Zinio's can't come soon enough for magazine publishers.

In the second half of 2007, paid circulation of consumer magazines fell 1.7%, to $277 million from $282 million in the first half of that year. The decline has been steady for seven years, since the industry's paid circulation peaked in 2000, says Audit Bureau of Circulations.

At the same time, the number of Internet users at home and at work worldwide now is 850 million, compared with 731 million in late 2006, according to market researcher ComScore. Such wrenching changes have not been lost on magazine publishers.

"To keep pace with a new generation of readers, providing a choice of print or digital, and expanding our online offerings as flexible full-color screens and e-paper emerges, makes sense," says Phyllis Rotunno, senior vice president of subscription circulation at Playboy Enterprises.

Since Playboy launched a digital edition in 2005 with the help of Zinio, it has sold some 1.7 million digital issues. They cost $19.97 for a dozen issues, and $4.99 for a single issue. (Playboy's average annual magazine circulation is 2.6 million.) Main selling points of the digital magazine version include the ability to zoom in and out on photos, view video and photo outtakes and listen to music clips.

Zinio also recently partnered with Barnes & Noble to sell digital magazines on the book chain's website. What is more, Zinio offers for free 120 "digital classics" such as Moby Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Great Expectations through its website, zinio.com. The books are downloadable.

Maggiotto is particularly proud that digital publishing is also good for the environment.

An estimated 12 billion magazine issues are printed each year in the USA. Yet 70% of newsstand copies go unsold, he says. Consequently, the equivalent of 35 million trees are chopped down each year to produce many issues that go unsold, according to the non-profit Co-op America, which tracks paper consumption in the publishing industry.

Playboy, for example, has saved $1.2 million from lower manufacturing, distribution, paper and postal costs.

"We're saving publishers money and the forests trees," Maggiotto says. "It can't get much better than that."

Is Apple changing course on variable pricing?

Will the real Apple please stand up? It's hard to know where Steve Jobs stands with regard to iTunes. This month, HBO joined the Internet's most successful content store with three series including "The Sopranos" meriting $2.99 per episode -- the first deviation Apple has made from its standard $1.99 price for TV episodes.

But the move was all the more surprising given that NBC Universal withdrew all of its TV programming from iTunes six months ago after Apple refused to grant variable pricing, among other issues.

Thus we are left with a question: Is HBO the exception to the rule on iTunes, or is Apple changing the rule?

With its usual Kremlinesque approach to public relations, Apple isn't explaining the change. But sources at several major studios who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of negotiations, say Apple has changed its tune on iTunes.

Long before HBO nabbed $2.99 pricing, programming providers say they have been hammering Apple to obtain not only increases but also lower price points than $1.99 -- as low as 33 cents. More than one studio has been aggressively asking for TV shows to be structured like films on iTunes, which offers new releases and catalog titles at separate price points.

"The conversations I've had with them over the last quarter are markedly different than they were a year or two ago," one content chieftain says. "Apple is much more flexible than people presume."

That presumption also might have been unfair to begin with, given that sources also suggest that it wasn't Apple but NBC Universal that was being stubborn in their previous negotiation stalemate. Not only was the studio pushing to test a $4.99 price point -- suddenly, "Sopranos" doesn't seem that expensive -- but it also wanted to institute dynamic pricing, an experimental new technology that recalibrates price based on consumer demand. NBC Universal declined comment on dynamic pricing, which is being tested by Warner Music Group.

But regardless of whether a TV episode is increased to $2.99 or $4.99, another question arises: Which shows merit price increases?

Apple was comfortable making HBO the test case in this regard because it felt that the brand's premium status clearly differentiated it from the rest of TV. But that decision didn't sit well with one studio executive, who believes Apple is going about variable pricing all wrong. If TV eventually could adopt the dual-tiered pricing model iTunes applies to newly released and library films, why apply an increase to a library title like "Sopranos?" Shouldn't that show actually be priced lower than $1.99?

Even if a program's popularity was key to setting its price, "Sopranos" hasn't proved particularly popular in its first few weeks on iTunes -- perhaps because of the elevated price point. It is ranked 24th among season packages on iTunes; among individual episodes, "Sopranos" didn't even crack the top 100.

No doubt Showtime might want to test the $2.99 waters not only because it shares HBO's premium status but also because its series "Dexter" is currently the most popular full-season order on iTunes.

If sales ends up driving pricing, shows that aren't necessarily big on-air hits but are iTunes darlings could command higher prices, including the CW's "Gossip Girl."

However, one studio boss believes that Apple might have its own opinions on programming value. "When you get into that conversation, it's a slippery slope," the executive says. "Because we'll differ with them on what content is worth what."

If anything is indicative of a show's iTunes price, look at the digits appearing on its DVD price tag. HBO in particular has a massive DVD business, and with that comes the need to maintain a higher price in order to afford some protection from cannibalizing DVD sales.

But variable pricing is only part of what content companies want from iTunes. What one might call variable packaging is high on the wish list as well, which means the ability to bundle multiple titles in creative ways -- for instance, selling a film and its soundtrack together for one discounted price.

Another question altogether is whether Apple also will adjust revenue splits -- known to be in the neighborhood of 70-30 with the content companies -- once pricing changes. Not likely, most say, and beside the point for Apple. Content isn't seen as much as a revenue driver in and of itself as it a catalyst for more significant dollars that come from sales of iPods and AppleTV devices.

ITunes has taken some heat on its message boards for the elevated pricing, but not everyone has a problem with it. As one reviewer wrote, "The Sopranos on VHS: $10. The Sopranos on DVD: $40. The Sopranos on my iPod: priceless."

Microsoft demos future Windows with touch-screen

Microsoft Corp. said its next operating system will be made for touch-screen applications, an alternative to the computer mouse, and its top executives reaffirmed interest in joining forces with Yahoo Inc.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer on Tuesday unveiled the iPhone-like touch-screen feature at The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference, calling it "just the smallest snippet" of the Windows 7 operating system slated for release in late 2009.

A Microsoft employee showed possible applications like enlarging and shrinking photos and navigating a map of San Diego by stroking the screen.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates framed the new feature as an evolution away from the mouse.

"Today almost all the interaction is keyboard-mouse," Gates said. "Over years to come, the role of speech, vision, ink — all of those — will be huge."

The software company's top two executives defended its last operating system, Vista, while acknowledging missteps. Gates said he has never been 100 percent satisfied with any Microsoft product, and that the company prides itself on fixing shortcomings in later versions.

"Vista has given more opportunity to exercise our culture than some products," he deadpanned.

The former Harvard University classmates fielded a range of questions for more than an hour, sharing the stage as Gates prepares to relinquish daily responsibilities at the company in July to focus more on philanthropic work.

Ballmer said Microsoft remained in discussions to team up with Yahoo Inc. after Microsoft's $47.5 billion bid for the company was spurned earlier this month. He said Microsoft wasn't planning to buy Yahoo but offered only the barest details of what he has in mind.

"We are not rebidding for the company. We reserve the right to do so. That's not on the docket," he said.

Microsoft said May 18 that it revived talks with Yahoo, without providing specifics. Ballmer declined to say much more, even when pressed.

"All I'll say is we're in ongoing discussions with them around a partnership," he said.

Gates let Ballmer take the questions about Yahoo. When asked for his thoughts, Gates said, "I've been supportive of everything Steve has done. ... Totally supportive."

Ballmer, responding to an audience question, denied that the bid tarnished Microsoft's reputation.

"If anything, I think people know we're very serious about our online business," he replied.

Microsoft has divulged little about its Windows 7 operating system — even after introducing the touch-screen feature Tuesday — a contrast to the much-hyped release of Vista.

Chris Flores, a director on Microsoft's Windows client communications team, said in a posting on a company blog Tuesday that the more circumspect tack was deliberate and intended to avoid announcing plans that may change.

"With Windows 7, we're trying to more carefully plan how we share information with our customers and partners," he wrote.

The executives regaled the audience with tales of how they met and Microsoft's early days.

Ballmer, who was best man at Gates' wedding, remembered Gates at Harvard as quiet and shy but with "a certain kind of spark, particularly later in the day."

Gates remembered Ballmer for his energy, a reputation that persists today.

"Steve was signed up for more things than anybody else. He was very, very busy," Gates said.

Ballmer said he had to plead to grow Microsoft's payroll from 30 employees and that he had to assume the duties of the company bookkeeper, who left on Ballmer's first day. Gates was rightfully worried about bankruptcy.

When Ballmer began to question why he left business school at Stanford, Gates laid out his vision of a computer at every desk. Ballmer stayed put, leading to a 28-year partnership at the company helm.

"I was forced to be particularly articulate that night," Gates recalled.

Ballmer, known as marketing guru, said he has been Gates' "junior partner" for the last eight years, when Gates left the CEO job. He said he has never been uncomfortable with Gates' much bigger fame, though he admitted struggling to adapt to his new relationship with Gates during his first year as CEO.

"I was not sure how much rope to give," he said.

Ballmer said he doesn't anticipate similar transition struggles when Gates steps down from daily responsibilities.

China launches second weather satellite for the Olympics

China Tuesday launched its second Olympic weather forecasting satellite, the Fengyun-3, to ensure timely weather forecasts during the Olympics.

The satellite was launched on a Long March-4C carrier rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in northern Shanxi province at 11.02 a.m.

Zheng Guoguang, director of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), said the FY-3 would work with the existing FY-2.

China has launched eight meteorological satellites since research started in the 1970s. Its first Olympic weather forecasting satellite, the FY-2D, was launched towards the end of 2006.

India's IT hub wants new government to reboot Bangalore

The booming knowledge industry in India's IT hub is relieved that the people of Karnataka have voted for stability and good governance.

As after every election, the industry's expectations from the new government are high , especially in the case of Bangalore's infrastructure, which has crumbled under the weight of disparity between growth and development pace over the last four years.

With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) set to form its first government in a southern state, head honchos of IT and BT (biotech) sectors and captains of the manufacturing industry have hailed the decisive verdict that will allow a one-party rule for the next five years.

"We welcome the clear verdict. It gives us hope the state would have a stable government to focus on infrastructure development, particularly in Bangalore, and continue to support the knowledge industry for greater investment and job creation," Indian software industry body Nasscom's president Som Mittal said.

Although Bangalore remains a favourite investment destination in the sub-continent for the knowledge sector, tardy implementation of infrastructure projects have choked the city, with its arterial roads turning into a gridlock. Reckless growth and lopsided development have created a digital divide and poor enforcement of green laws have caused heavy pollution and led to health problems.

"We expect the new BJP government to rebuild the image of Bangalore and Karnataka, which has taken a beating over the last 40 months due to instability, misrule and neglect of infrastructure projects by the previous two coalition governments," said Mittal, who was head of global IT major Hewlett Packard (HP) India operations in Bangalore.

Incidentally, the BJP logged into the IT city in a big way by winning 17 of the 28 assembly seats for the first time though the voting percentage (45 percent) was the lowest in the state. The city's IT sector, which accounts for about 40 percent of the country's software services export earnings ($40 billion in FY 2008) and employs about a million people directly and indirectly, wants the new government to draw a long-term infrastructure development plan for Bangalore and tier-two cities across the state for uniform growth and job creation.

"In the next 10 years, Bangalore has the potential to grow by 2.5 times in proportion to the growth of the IT industry and the economy in general. The government would have to get cracking now to keep pace with the industry's growth rate. There is a need to create a similar eco-system in other cities to decongest Bangalore and attract investment," Mittal said.

Echoing Mittial's view, IT bellwether Infosys Technologies director T.V. Mohandas Pai said the first priority of the government should be to complete the Bangalore-Mysore infrastructure corridor that will not only reduce distance and travel time but also facilitate growth between the two sister cities.

"Every new government promises but fails to deliver. We want action on the ground. A number of infrastructure projects related to roads, flyovers, drainage system, water supply, public transport and traffic decongestion remain incomplete, leading to time and cost overruns.

"We hope the BJP government will be serious to implement the pending projects and take up infrastructure development in cities like Mysore, Mangalore, Hubli-Dharwad and Belgaum across the state," Pai noted.

India's biotechnology queen and Biocon chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw hoped that as a progressive and pro-development party, the BJP would undo the damage done to the city's global brand when previous governments failed to keep the infrastructure growth in pace with the booming knowledge economy.

"The Indian knowledge industry has been growing in spite of the government. We are not asking for any special attention or favours. All that the government needs to do is to facilitate the growth of the industry by providing basic infrastructure and civic amenities for a healthy and quality life of its citizens."

The head honchos are also of the view that the new government would have to invest in education and skill development for generating human resources to meet the growing demand for employable youth.

In the same breath, captains of the manufacturing sector voiced concern over the lack of pro-active measures to attract greater investment in the state and encourage growth in the old economy that continues to be the main source of direct and indirect employment and wealth creation.

"There has been a decline in the investment prospects of Karnataka as compared to Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh during the last two-three years. We hope the new government would improve the infrastructure across the state for a spurt of investments from Indian and foreign firms," said S. Vishwanathan, chairman of the Karnataka unit of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and managing director of John Fowler India Ltd. Listing out priorities for the new government, Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC) president John M. Panikar said a stable government for the next five years augured well for Karnataka as the state suffered considerably due to political instability and poor governance in the last three-four years.

"We expect the new government to get into action mode quickly to address the infrastructure and development issues. Karnataka has slipped on the flow of investments due to negative perception. The state has under-performed in both industrial and state gross domestic product (GDP) growth and the rate was below the national average.

"To ensure that Bangalore retains its competitive edge, the BJP government should tackle deficiencies in city roads, public transportation, traffic management and power and water supply on a war footing to revive and improve the image of the city," Panikar said here in a statement.

BlackBerry vows to keep messages secret after India seeks code

The Canadian maker of BlackBerry, involved in a security scrap with India, has promised customers it will not allow New Delhi to read text messages sent on its mobiles.

India, battling a host of insurgencies in places ranging from Muslim-majority Kashmir to the northeast, has raised fears the popular device made by Research in Motion (RIM) could be used by terrorists to communicate.

RIM said it had held talks with the Indian government over encryption in its BlackBerries and wished to "assure customers" it was committed to "serving security-conscious businesses in the Indian market with highly secure" products that "satisfy the needs of both business and government."

"Governments have a wide range of resources and methodologies to satisfy national security and law enforcement needs without compromising commercial security requirements," RIM added in a statement received by AFP on Tuesday.

The statement followed requests by India's department of telecommunications and security agencies for "the master key" to allow them access to contents sent between the mobile devices.

BlackBerry's security system, however, is based on "a key system whereby the customer creates their own key and only the customer ever possesses a copy of their encryption key," RIM said.

The Canadian company does not possess a "master key" to gain "unauthorized access" to data and there is no "back door" in the system that would allow RIM or any third party to gain access, the company added.

Industry estimates say there are up to 400,000 Blackberry users in India's mobile market which is the world's fastest growing.

Vodafone CEO Sarin steps down, to be replaced by Colao

Vodafone Group CEO Arun Sarin will step down from the top job at the mobile operator in July, the company said Tuesday.

Sarin will leave the CEO's chair, a position he has occupied for the last five years, on July 28 at the company's annual general meeting, Vodafone said. He will be replaced by Vittorio Colao, the group's deputy CEO.

Sarin was appointed CEO of Vodafone in July 2003, after serving as a non-executive director of the company. He also did a stint as CEO of Vodafone United States and Asia-Pacific. Sarin joined Vodafone in 1999, when the company acquired AirTouch Communications, where he served as president and CEO.

Under Sarin, Vodafone continued to expand its reach internationally, most recently with the acquisition of Indian operator Hutchison Essar. Through this expansion, the number of Vodafone subscribers worldwide increased from 120 million to more than 260 million, Vodafone said.

Colao previously served as head of Vodafone Italy and regional CEO for Southern Europe. He left Vodafone in 2004 to become group CEO of Italian publisher RCS MediaGroup. He rejoined Vodafone in 2006 as CEO of Vodafone's European region before taking on his current position.

Via releases laptop design as open source

Via Technologies released the hardware design for a low-cost laptop with WiMax support under an open-source license on Tuesday, a move intended to make customization easier and shorten design cycles for system makers.

The CAD (computer-assisted design) files for the OpenBook reference design can be downloaded for free and made available to anyone under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. The terms of this license allow the CAD files to be freely copied, shared and modified.

The only requirements are that use of the design is attributed to Via and changes made to the design can only be distributed under the same license or one that has similar terms.

"We're hoping we'll get some interesting feedback, and look forward to seeing what the community thinks about this concept," said Richard Brown, vice president of marketing at Via.

The OpenBook is based on Via's 1.6 GHz C7-M processor and VX800 chipset. The design includes an 8.9-inch screen with a resolution of 1,024 pixels by 600 pixels and calls for a hard disk with a capacity of 80G bytes or more. The basic wireless module included in the design supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Optional modules include Assisted GPS (AGPS), WiMax, and support for high-speed cellular networks based on EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized), HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access), and WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access).

Other features of the 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) OpenBook include a full-size keyboard, up to 2G bytes of DDR (double data rate) memory, a 2-megapixel camera, a memory-card reader, and a 4-cell battery that offers up to three hours of life. The laptop is designed to run Windows Vista, Windows XP, or Linux, including G/OS, SuSE Linux, and Ubuntu.

The OpenBook design is similar in appearance to Everex's CloudBook Max unveiled at the CTIA Wireless exhibition in April, but the two designs are different, Brown said, pointing to subtle design changes made to suit the requirements of Sprint, the operator that commissioned the CloudBook Max.

Depending on the exact configuration, OpenBook systems will likely cost between US$500 to $800, Brown said, adding that the first products will likely hit the market during the third quarter.

Via isn't the first company to release a hardware design as open source. In March, Openmoko, a company set up by Taiwanese hardware maker First International Computer (FIC), released an open-source smartphone design, the Neo 1973. The handset, which runs Linux, supports GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) networks, and includes Bluetooth and AGPS.

Like Via's OpenBook, the Neo 1973 hardware design was released under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license.

Yahoo buy not a strategy in itself: Microsoft CEO

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Friday that buying Yahoo
(YHOO.O) was not a strategy in itself, and dropping the bid meant it now had $50 billion to spend on other acquisitions.

"Yahoo was never the strategy we were pursuing, it was a way to accelerate our online advertising business," he told a packed hall at a technology conference in Moscow.

"We will spend money on some acquisitions. You can do a whole lot of things with 50 billion dollars," he said.

Ballmer was responding to questions about what he planned to do with Microsoft's huge cash pile after it walked away from a proposal to buy Internet media company Yahoo for $47.5 billion, or $33 a share earlier this month. Yahoo had rebuffed the offer, saying it would only settle for $37 per share.

Microsoft's top executive was echoing a refrain heard from him in recent weeks: At a May 1 employee meeting, he said Yahoo was valuable as part of a strategy to beat Microsoft arch-rival Google (GOOG.O), but there were limits on the price it would pay.

"Yahoo's not a strategy, it's a part of a strategy," Ballmer had said three weeks ago in Redmond, Washington.

"We're interested to pay for it (Yahoo) at some level and beyond that level we're not willing to pay for it."

Talks broke down May 3 and Microsoft said it had "moved on."

Early this week, the two companies said new talks were underway on a more limited deal but neither side disclosed the terms. A source familiar with the discussions said Microsoft had proposed buying Yahoo's search business and taking a stake in Yahoo after Yahoo sheds its substantial Asian assets.

In Israel this week, Ballmer said Microsoft was now not in talks to acquire Yahoo, but was looking at other types of deals with Yahoo, the world's No. 2 Web search service after Google.

The Internet start-ups sector, which has recently seen a new class of instant-messaging tools, is not being used to its full potential, Ballmer added.

"There are many businesses that are in some senses under-appreciated by the market," he said, noting particularly healthcare start-ups.

"There's an aging population -- it's one of the biggest-growing parts of the world economy."

Online communities open but still limit movement

Online social networking today is more about hanging out with friends behind gated communities than exploring the World Wide Web: Visit another site and you'll have to rebuild your profile from scratch.

That's like having to get a new driver's license for every state you drive through.

Although the walls that keep users from taking their data wherever they go are starting to erode, how much three recently announced programs will help users move among the networks remains to be seen. Google Inc.'s attempt to break those fortifications was quickly blocked by Facebook.

The two leading online hangouts, News Corp.'s MySpace and Facebook, have promised to release tools in the coming weeks for Web sites to incorporate profile data, friends lists and other social functions. Google followed with its own program for bridging various networks.

MySpace users, for instance, can soon have their biographical information appear on eBay Inc. profiles. A social network focused on skiing will be able to incorporate Facebook photos and friends list rather than build its own.

It's all done through software hooks that let eBay and others grab profile data from MySpace and Facebook. Changes made at MySpace and Facebook are quickly propagated because third-party sites can't store the data and must check back frequently.

The new programs come as users increasingly complain about having to retype basic profile information over and over. By holding onto users' information while letting them bring temporary copies of it elsewhere, Facebook and MySpace can remain at the core of users' social interactions and keep them from leaving.

More important than saving keystrokes, the programs bring along the meaning and connections behind the data, allowing social circles to travel from site to site, much as friends going bar hopping together don't have to start conversations afresh at each pub.

That said, there are no current plans to exchange profile data between MySpace and Facebook. Message postings at one won't show up at the other, and party invites still will have to be copied and pasted to cross services.

Google's new Friend Connect comes close to merging those lives, though. When announced, it was to pool profile data from Facebook, Google Talk, Google's Orkut, LinkedIn, Plaxo and hi5, though not MySpace.

But within days, Facebook began blocking Google, saying it couldn't ensure anyone's privacy if Google were the intermediary.

Such concerns are simply a convenient way to play down underlying desires for control, said Deborah Pierce, who tracks social-networking privacy as executive director of Privacy Activism.

"They get to say, `We're being the good guys on privacy,' but they are still retaining control of your personal data," Pierce said.

Some startups aren't waiting. Minggl and Zude both promise to help users aggregate data from their various networks, including MySpace and Facebook.

There are some legitimate privacy concerns.

"In many models, something becomes public once and it becomes public forever," said Dave Morin, a senior platform manager at Facebook. "We believe in giving users control. If we move too quickly we might not achieve that."

Users must agree before a third-party site can access their data, but they sometimes change their minds. Facebook and MySpace say restricting outside storage of data ensures that other sites get the latest information, whether it's an updated user photo or a revocation of consent.

Service providers also have to consider that people may agree to be friends in the specific community — not across the Web.

So with Google's and Facebook's programs, both parties have to agree to be on a third-party site before appearing on a friends list. Although that policy extends only to minors on MySpace, adults can opt out of appearing on friends lists on other sites by visiting a new online control panel.

E-mail addresses and other non-profile data are off limits under the programs, as are profiles the services have assembled behind the scenes for ad targeting.

MySpace said it is working on giving users even more privacy controls. Eventually, MySpace users will be able to specify that only photos go to site A and friends lists to site B, rather than all or nothing for a particular site. Facebook said third-party developers could build that granularity themselves, while Google was considering it.

Ultimately, users will have to decide whether they really want to mix work-related LinkedIn contacts with the party photos on Facebook.

"I don't know if people want their worlds colliding," said Rachel Happe, a research manager at IDC. "I don't think this push to share data should go too quickly."

Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online social networks, said users sometimes leave for other networks so they can start over.

Jim Benedetto, senior vice president for technology at MySpace, said social networks will likely open more once they sort out the technical and privacy challenges — much as AOL and CompuServe users can now send e-mail to people who use all other e-mail services. Instant-messaging services, meanwhile, remain in walled gardens even today.

Bill Washburn, whose OpenID Foundation promotes universal usernames and passwords, said social networks will come to realize that openness makes their respective services even more powerful.

They just need to work on a common approach, said Bob Bickel of Ringside Networks, a startup building tools to bridge networks.

"It's kind of a step forward and a half-step back," Bickel said. "It may take a year or two to shake all that out, but it definitely accelerates the timeline."

Microsoft to shut down book scanning operations

Microsoft Corp. is abandoning its effort to scan whole libraries and make their contents searchable, a sign it may be getting choosier about the fights it will pick with Google Inc.

The world's largest software maker is under pressure to show it has a coherent strategy for turning around its unprofitable online business after its bid for Yahoo Inc., last valued at $47.5 billion, collapsed this month.

Digitizing books and archiving academic journals no longer fits with the company's plan for its search operation, wrote Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search and advertising group, in a blog post Friday.

Microsoft will take down two separate sites for searching the contents of books and academic journals next week, and Live Search will direct Web surfers looking for books to non-Microsoft sites, the company said.

Nadella said Microsoft will focus on "verticals with high commercial intent."

"We believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer and content partner," Nadella wrote.

At an advertising confab at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters this week, he demonstrated a new system that rewards customers with cash rebates for using Live Search to find and buy items on advertisers' sites.

Microsoft entered the book-scanning business in 2005 by contributing material to the Open Content Alliance, an industry group conceived by the Internet Archive and Yahoo. In 2006, it unveiled its competing MSN book search site.

Unlike Google, whose decision to scan books still protected under copyright law has provoked multiple lawsuits, Microsoft stuck to scanning books with the permission of publishers or that were firmly in the public domain.

The company said it will give publishers digital copies of the 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles it has amassed.

Microsoft's search engine is a distant third behind Google's and Yahoo's, in terms of the number of queries performed each month, despite the company's many attempts to emulate Google's innovative search features and create some of its own.

Microsoft as much as said its search strategy wasn't working when it offered in February to buy Yahoo to boost its search and advertising. Talks between the companies collapsed because Yahoo executives sought more money.

The company's ceding the book-search segment to Google and the Yahoo-led Open Content Alliance could signal Microsoft has a new search strategy and is ready to jettison its unsuccessful me-too efforts.

However, the software maker has not given up on combining its search operations with Yahoo's. The two companies are said to be talking about a more limited deal.

German police investigate mom who put baby on eBay

German police are investigating a couple after they offered their eight-month-old son for sale on internet auction site eBay.

Renee Beck, a police spokesman in the Bavarian town of Krumbach west of Munich, said on Saturday the 23-year-old woman told them it was only a joke.

But he said police were nevertheless continuing their investigation and the baby was put in state custody.

"She says it was a joke," he said. "That's not yet clear. Detectives are investigating on suspicion of child trafficking."

A number of people called authorities across Germany after seeing the offer on eBay that read: "Baby -- collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long."

The opening bid was 1 euro ($1.57). There were no bidders during the two hours before the offer was removed, police said.

The mother was quoted in Bild newspaper saying: "It was only a joke. I just wanted to see if someone would make an offer. They've taken my son to hospital and I've got to take psychiatric tests next week."

Married? Sleazy? Web dater finds ways to pick losers

When Jane Coloccia set out to find her soul mate online she had no idea that eight years and 200 dates later she would end up an expert on the topic, writing a book and setting up a course to teach the pitfalls of Web love.

Coloccia, now 45, was living in Manhattan and struggling to meet single, straight men when one of her friends met a man online and married him. She decided to give it a go.

Over the next few years, she was swamped with emails and instant messages from attentive men, some who told her she was beautiful, others who lied about their age, weight, hair, and marital status, and one who became her therapist.

Learning along the way how to spot the liars, Coloccia has written a book, "Confessions of an Online Dating Addict: A True Account of Dating and Relating in the Internet Age," tracking the highs, lows -- and addiction -- of online dating. She is also developing an online course on Web dating.

"I would go on three or four dates a week. One Sunday I had three dates - brunch, lunch and dinner," said Coloccia, who has her own public relations and marketing communications agency.

"It does get very seductive as it is nice to open up an email and someone to say you are beautiful and they want to meet you."

The growth in the online dating industry has been massive and is expected to continue. Figures from market analyst Jupiter Research show revenue has almost doubled in the past three years to $1.04 billion in the United States alone and is expected to rise 16 percent a year until 2012.

MARRIAGE, FRIENDSHIP OR SEX?

Coloccia said at first, she was nervous about going to meet the men she was talking to online. "My impression before I did this was that the people online were weirdos but that is just not the case," she said.

But among the good people there were those who were dishonest about themselves and their reason for being online -- as there are always creeps in any bar.

Coloccia said married men, for example, tended not to post a photograph of themselves, would not give a cell phone number and tended to instant message late at night.

Some men were just after one-night stands. Others would post old photographs when they were slimmer and had more hair.

"When I met one man for a date he was bald and fat and his photo must have been from 20 years ago. I told him he looked different and he explained it by saying he was wearing glasses and just had a haircut but that was the end of that," she said.

She was once pawed on a first date, stood up on another, but over the years Coloccia said she honed her technique to ensure she did not waste time on men that were not suitable.

First dates were usually over coffee, with dinner only booked once the man proved to be likeable. She set geographical limits which knocked out the men in Russia, Malaysia or the west coast of the United States.

She advises would-be daters to really question people before they meet and read their profiles well. She says steer clear of free dating sites where married men and ones after sex reside.

Coloccia has been with her current boyfriend Victor -- whom she met online -- for 18 months.

She said there is no stigma attached to online dating any more but it can be addictive. Her therapist even wrote a section in her book about how the ability to build a fantasy life online can be hard to leave.

"Find out why people are there. People date online for a lot of reasons -- some are lonely, some just want to IM (instant message) and never meet, some want friendship, marriage or just sex," she said.

"But it is not a real experience unless you are prepared to get out from behind your computer screen and go live it."

Online communities open but still limit movement

Online social networking today is more about hanging out with friends behind gated communities than exploring the World Wide Web: Visit another site and you'll have to rebuild your profile from scratch.

That's like having to get a new driver's license for every state you drive through.

Although the walls that keep users from taking their data wherever they go are starting to erode, how much three recently announced programs will help users move among the networks remains to be seen. Google Inc.'s attempt to break those fortifications was quickly blocked by Facebook.

The two leading online hangouts, News Corp.'s MySpace and Facebook, have promised to release tools in the coming weeks for Web sites to incorporate profile data, friends lists and other social functions. Google followed with its own program for bridging various networks.

MySpace users, for instance, can soon have their biographical information appear on eBay Inc. profiles. A social network focused on skiing will be able to incorporate Facebook photos and friends list rather than build its own.

It's all done through software hooks that let eBay and others grab profile data from MySpace and Facebook. Changes made at MySpace and Facebook are quickly propagated because third-party sites can't store the data and must check back frequently.

The new programs come as users increasingly complain about having to retype basic profile information over and over. By holding onto users' information while letting them bring temporary copies of it elsewhere, Facebook and MySpace can remain at the core of users' social interactions and keep them from leaving.

More important than saving keystrokes, the programs bring along the meaning and connections behind the data, allowing social circles to travel from site to site, much as friends going bar hopping together don't have to start conversations afresh at each pub.

That said, there are no current plans to exchange profile data between MySpace and Facebook. Message postings at one won't show up at the other, and party invites still will have to be copied and pasted to cross services.

Google's new Friend Connect comes close to merging those lives, though. When announced, it was to pool profile data from Facebook, Google Talk, Google's Orkut, LinkedIn, Plaxo and hi5, though not MySpace.

But within days, Facebook began blocking Google, saying it couldn't ensure anyone's privacy if Google were the intermediary.

Such concerns are simply a convenient way to play down underlying desires for control, said Deborah Pierce, who tracks social-networking privacy as executive director of Privacy Activism.

"They get to say, `We're being the good guys on privacy,' but they are still retaining control of your personal data," Pierce said.

Some startups aren't waiting. Minggl and Zude both promise to help users aggregate data from their various networks, including MySpace and Facebook.

There are some legitimate privacy concerns.

"In many models, something becomes public once and it becomes public forever," said Dave Morin, a senior platform manager at Facebook. "We believe in giving users control. If we move too quickly we might not achieve that."

Users must agree before a third-party site can access their data, but they sometimes change their minds. Facebook and MySpace say restricting outside storage of data ensures that other sites get the latest information, whether it's an updated user photo or a revocation of consent.

Service providers also have to consider that people may agree to be friends in the specific community — not across the Web.

So with Google's and Facebook's programs, both parties have to agree to be on a third-party site before appearing on a friends list. Although that policy extends only to minors on MySpace, adults can opt out of appearing on friends lists on other sites by visiting a new online control panel.

E-mail addresses and other non-profile data are off limits under the programs, as are profiles the services have assembled behind the scenes for ad targeting.

MySpace said it is working on giving users even more privacy controls. Eventually, MySpace users will be able to specify that only photos go to site A and friends lists to site B, rather than all or nothing for a particular site. Facebook said third-party developers could build that granularity themselves, while Google was considering it.

Ultimately, users will have to decide whether they really want to mix work-related LinkedIn contacts with the party photos on Facebook.

"I don't know if people want their worlds colliding," said Rachel Happe, a research manager at IDC. "I don't think this push to share data should go too quickly."

Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online social networks, said users sometimes leave for other networks so they can start over.

Jim Benedetto, senior vice president for technology at MySpace, said social networks will likely open more once they sort out the technical and privacy challenges — much as AOL and CompuServe users can now send e-mail to people who use all other e-mail services. Instant-messaging services, meanwhile, remain in walled gardens even today.

Bill Washburn, whose OpenID Foundation promotes universal usernames and passwords, said social networks will come to realize that openness makes their respective services even more powerful.

They just need to work on a common approach, said Bob Bickel of Ringside Networks, a startup building tools to bridge networks.

"It's kind of a step forward and a half-step back," Bickel said. "It may take a year or two to shake all that out, but it definitely accelerates the timeline."