Microsoft is totally obsessed with Google because Bill Gates is obsessed with Google. In a way, Bill needs a bogeycompany like Google to motivate the troops, since they are no longer being wowed by Microsoft's stock performance.

I hope Google does pull off a couple more spectacular product feats, but I won't be all that surprised if they don't. It will take the company another five years just to mature the businesses they already have.

So it could be that Google isn't the Microsoft-killer many people -- including Gates and Ballmer -- fear the company is. Going a step further, it is even possible that Gates's conviction that he'll eventually be taken down by a startup is wrong, too.

I think Microsoft's clearest threat still comes from Apple, though not the way most people expect. Yes, Apple is about to take Microsoft to the woodshed when it comes to Internet movie distribution. Yes, Apple already super-dominates the music player market where Microsoft doesn't even really exist. But the real jewel is one Microsoft has to lose, not gain -- the PC platform, itself.

We're proud to announce the launch of Yahoo! Music Unlimited.

Thanks to everyone who checked us out during the beta preview period. We've added some cool, new features to supercharge your music experience. Just take a few minutes to upgrade your software. Then, start your Engine and enjoy the latest enhancements.

Revved-up home pages. Find what you need faster with redesigned home pages for Yahoo! Music Engine and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. Click here to check out the new pages on Yahoo! Music Unlimited after you upgrade your software.

Send-to-a-Friend. Share subscription music with other subscribers via IM or email. Look for "Share this page" on artist, album, and song pages.

Find it Faster. Find the most popular songs by an artist faster than ever. They're now listed right on the artist pages, or you can switch back to the classic album view. Use what works for you.

Enhanced performance. Faster, better, easier. The Yahoo! Music Engine has been tuned for greater speed and reliability to make it the ultimate music machine.

Two and a half years after the music business lined up behind the chief executive of Apple, Steven P. Jobs, and hailed him and his iTunes music service for breathing life into music sales, the industry's allegiance to Mr. Jobs has eroded sharply.

Mr. Jobs is now girding for a showdown with at least two of the four major record companies over the price of songs on the iTunes service.

If he loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted - 99 cents to download any song - could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.

Mr. Jobs' vision of simple, uniform pricing for songs and a policy of limiting Apple's music to Apple's devices are increasingly under attack.

The Japanese company that makes the Rio line of MP3 players is shuttering its portable digital-audio division.

Rio parent D&M Holdings said on Friday that the ultra-competitive business no longer fit its market strategy.

Although it has only a small market share compared to Apple Computer's iPod, the Rio brand name has been linked with the early days of digital-music history since weathering a lawsuit from the recording industry that aimed to shut down the MP3 hardware business.

The company said it will stop producing the Rio line of products at the end of September.

ALL PERSONS OR ENTITIES RESIDING IN THE UNITED STATES WHO PURCHASED OR OBTAINED A NEW FIRST, SECOND, OR THIRD GENERATION IPOD ON OR BEFORE MAY 31, 2004:

THIS NOTICE AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS. PLEASE READ THE COMPLETE NOTICE CAREFULLY.

Microsoft will support both Linux and Solaris in its next version of Virtual Server. But virtually, on top of Windows.

At the same time, the interim release of the product was renamed Virtual Server 2005 R2, rather than "Service Pack 1" because it will include significantly more changes than a usual service pack, said Zane Adam, director of marketing in the Windows Server division of Microsoft. The software giant typically offers service packs and interim releases called "R2s" between major updates to its server products.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 also will include 64-bit [host] support, which allows more virtual machines to run on one server. It will feature better performance for virtual machines in memory-intensive applications, as well as higher availability through new clustering technologies, Adam said.

A few months back word got out that Alex Garland had written a Halo movie script, and that Universal and 20th Century Fox were interested in double-teaming it into a film. We didn't say anything at the time because the deal still needed massaging. But today I'm happy to announce that Microsoft and the studios have worked-out all the kinks, and we're ready to get cracking on the fun, creative part of the process.

You've undoubtedly got questions: "What's the plot? Is it the same as Halo1? Halo2?" "Who's gonna play the Chief? Scratch that – who's gonna play Cortana?" "I read somewhere that the script had 'bad buzz'. Does that mean the movie's gonna suck?"

I can't respond to any "who, what, where" queries without ruining a bunch of cool surprises, (there will be Grunts - that I guarantee), but as far as the quality of the finished film goes ... well, the only thing I can say is: so far so good.

Ultimately, the Halo movie's gonna be great because it's in the best interest of Bungie and our partners at Universal and Fox to find great people to make it. People who get it. People who care about the games as much as we do. Heck, as much as you do.

Because the question isn't so much "will the movie be good?" but "will I, someone who's played both games, read the novels – you know, someone who's an unabashed Halo fan – will I think it's good?"

We sure hope so. Because we're making it just for you.

Groups headed by Toshiba Corp. and Sony Corp. offering competing technologies for next-generation DVDs have given up efforts to develop a unified format, the Yomiuri newspaper reported Tuesday.

For three years, the two groups have pushed to have their respective standards adopted to gain dominance in the multibillion-dollar markets for DVD players, PC drives and optical discs.

Toshiba, along with NEC Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co., has been promoting HD-DVD, while Sony (Research) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the maker of Panasonic brand products, have been developing a technology known as Blu-ray.

The two groups have held negotiations on unifying their formats to persuade consumers to shift to advanced discs and to promote industry growth.

But negotiations fell through as neither side yielded, and time ran out to develop a format before the launch of new products from both groups, the newspaper said.

OpenOffice.org receives most of the attention among free and open source (FOSS) office suites, but users shouldn't forget that free software includes at least two other word processors: AbiWord, part of a projected GNOME Office, and KWord, part of the KOffice suite. From their inception, both have been playing catch-up with OpenOffice.org's Writer. But now, after several years of development, AbiWord and KWord are both reaching early maturity. How do Writer, AbiWord, and KWord compare?

I compared the three programs using some of the more common features of word processors as evaluation criteria:

* Interface
* Styles
* Templates
* Adding objects
* Bulleted and numbered lists
* Page layout, frames, and sections
* Headers and footers
* Tables
* Indexes and tables of contents
* Footnotes and endnotes
* File import and export
* Unique features

The final results give an encouraging snapshot of the current state of free software word processors, while also showing how far each has to go in some areas.

Given the history and resources behind OpenOffice.org Writer, its victory in a review of features is not surprising. Neither AbiWord nor KWord should be the first choice for long documents, like manuals or doctoral theses. Still, they might do in a pinch, and both are suitable for daily use by students or office workers. Although AbiWord and KWord lack Writer's formidable array of options, they now have solid foundations to build on in many areas of word processing and document design. If they can add features without sacrificing response times, both AbiWord and KWord could challenge Writer's supremacy in a few more releases.

Ubuntu is described as "a free, open source operating system that starts with the breadth of Debian and adds regular releases (every six months), a clear focus on the user and usability (it should "Just Work", TM) and a commitment to security updates with 18 months of support for every release. Ubuntu ships with the latest Gnome release as well as a selection of server and desktop software that makes for a comfortable desktop experience off a single installation CD."

Ubuntu is good enough for me to continue using for a while, possibly indefinitely if the next release continues the same pattern of improvement that version 5.04 had over its predecessor. With what seems to be true dedication to the open-source market, Canonical has a very solid operating system with Ubuntu, and I'll gladly recommend it to anyone looking for a great beginner's system.

A free Linspire clone has hit the FTP mirrors. DistroWatch reports 'Freespire is a new Linux distribution, a free edition of Linspire with all proprietary components and trademarks removed. The distribution comes with a free repository of over 1,500 packages available via apt-get and Synaptic. This initial release functions as a live CD only and serves as a proof of concept. It certainly looks like an interesting idea: combining the benefits of Linspire's excellent usability and hardware auto-configuration with a free repository of Debian packages.'

It is far too early to make any judgments on Freespire. All I can say about this early release is that it has potential. It has a long way to go to win me over. I think for now I'd stick with the free Linspire 5.0 Live CD.

Underground Desktop is a GNU/Linux distribution, based on Debian-unstable, that touts itself as being fast and easy to install. Certainly, it attains the former goal better than many distributions, but this beta software remains very rough around the edges.

The standard procedure for Underground Desktop after an install is to boot straight to a full-blown K Desktop Environment -- as root. I was nearly in shock. Haven't we seen enough security problems with Windows users running as Administrator all the time? Didn't we learn our lesson?

In my experience, Underground Desktop is far from being user-friendly, and it contains numerous problems that need solving. It was no joy ride to get working, and it wasn't significantly faster than other distributions.

The "Lizard Blizzard" continues as OpenSUSE released Beta 2 of the upcoming SUSE Linux a coupla days ago.

Most of the changes appear to have taken place beneath the hood, updating software versions, squashing bugs, kernel patches and the like ... [also] the koffice icon on the desktop has been replaced by an OpenOffice.org icon.

For a more complete report of the goodies in SUSE Linux by OpenSUSE, consult my previous report.

Internet search giant Google—which is quickly becoming a leading online media company—today launched Google Talk, an instant messaging (IM) solution. Based on the Jabber IM standard, Google Talk can communicate with users of Jabber, iChat, and Trillian, and Google says it will soon open up the tool to users of MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM).

Google Talk is open to the public and is free, without ads, and requires a Gmail user account. Users without a Gmail account will receive one when they sign up for Google Talk, the company says, assuming they don't mind providing Google with their cellphone number in order to prevent people from squatting on valuable email addresses.

Compared to other IM solutions, Google Talk is lean both graphically and feature-wise. While the system offers text and voice chatting and clean, uncluttered interface, it does not offer any video features and can't be used as a telephony solution. However, Google's products are perpetually in beta and are often upgraded quickly. The company says that its rapid-fire update policy and adherence to Internet standards will set Google Talk apart from the competition.

When Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger shipped in April, the rest of the media fawned over its hot new features and made you feel that Tiger was a must-have upgrade.

While I was impressed with many of its features, I suggested waiting for the inevitable bug-fix releases. My last words were, "I'll let you know as soon as I feel that Tiger is 'safe and sane' for the average user. Until then, you're probably better off without it."

Four months and two minor updates later — the current release is version 10.4.2 — it's time to take another look.

So, is it safe yet? The answer is a qualified "maybe."

I read MacFixIt's recently released Troubleshooting Mac OS X 10.4.2 Special Report, and now I'm not so sure ... that most of the problems appear to be behind us now.

You really should read the MacFixIt report, which includes much more than just polls, including descriptions of dozens of issues users have encountered while installing or updating Tiger, plus strategies and fixes that have worked for other users.

While the trend is moving in the right direction, I still don't like your odds. So, if you haven't already upgraded to Tiger, you might want to consider waiting just a little bit longer.

As an OpenOffice.org and StarOffice trainer, I teach a lot of one-day classes on the core software features. As I introduce the program and then word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc) and presentation maker (Impress), I teach students how to deal with the oddities of each application before we get into the primary lessons.

My first half hour of each section is gone.

The lessons on making the icon bigger, how to get to a different toolbar, how the option for wrapping Calc spreadsheet cells doesn't actually have the word "wrap" in it; my shtick on how the most important buttons in Impress are the tiniest -- all gone. I'll need to figure out some new jokes for my classes.

This makes me happy. Not only can I spend more time teaching new OpenOffice.org users how to really enjoy the software and use the more powerful features, but the changes in OpenOffice.org 2.0 means someone has been thinking about more than just spreadsheet rows. There are some smart changes in this release.

Just to be clear: OpenOffice.org 2.0 isn't out yet; I'm reviewing the 1.9.122 release. Release date for 2.0? I'm not sure. Indications are late summer, but it's late summer now. Check the OpenOffice.org Web site or subscribe to the announcements list. That's what I'll be doing.

This article is a look at what I like, as an instructor and user, about the new OpenOffice.org 2.0.

On Monday, Google updated its perpetually-in-beta Google Desktop Search application to version 2, adding an intriguing and extensible new component called Sidebar. Like the Windows Vista feature it emulates, the Google Sidebar presents discrete panes of information that can be filled with various bits of functionality. The base Sidebar, for example, includes panes dedicated to email, news, photos, weather, and related features.

The new Sidebar component is optional in Google Desktop Search 2 and can be replaced by a deskbar component, which sits in the Windows taskbar, or a floating deskbar, which hovers over the desktop. Users can optionally choose to use the application's advanced features, which sends information about the Web sites you visit to Google so that the company can provide personalized services. Google Desktop Search and the Sidebar do not, however, display any ads, and Google says that a controversial Web caching feature from previous versions is now disabled by default.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

That is the message to Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs from almost every other company in the digital music space vying for consumer attention after several years of domination by the iPod and iTunes.

Today, Apple commands 80 percent of the MP3 player market and 75 percent of online music sales. But even as analysts predict another massive holiday sales season for the company this year, many believe Apple's reign will last only another 12-18 months before the playing field levels out.

Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster says, "It's safe to say that nobody can sustain an 80 percent market share in a consumer electronics business for more than two or three years. It's pretty much impossible."

Privately, record company executives say they can't wait. Not because they want to see Apple stumble, but because a less dominant Apple means a more robust market for digital music.

If you have Media Center [PC] you will be able to stream standard and high definition video [to the Xbox 360].

While we designed [the Xbox 360 as] a no compromises game system, a huge percentage of our customers are not like the folks in this chat room. Recognize that more than 75 percent of the folks on Xbox have not played Halo. By introducing the core system we are sending a signal to the market that we are committed to this part of the market just like with the Xbox 360 premium bundle that we are committed to you [the hard core gamers]. The significance of this message can not be understated. Many of the publishing and retail partners want our commitment to grow the market. And as you have heard from us in our press conferences and such we are very committed to growing the market.

It's going to be interesting to see how and if a high def format for movies plays out. When we designed the the initial Xbox many people asked if SACD [Super Audio CD] or DVD Audio would be the successor to the CD format for music. As everyone knows, the real successor was MP3 and digital distribution with things like Napster, iPod, and MSN Music. While there is a lot of talk about this in the industry it will be interesting to see what the exact future of this is for movies. Of course I think there will be a need for higher capacity optical media for storage applications. We prefer HD-DVD to Blu-Ray in terms of the flexibility it offers to different applications as well as the infrastructure costs to the market.

Backwards compatibility [with Xbox 1 games] will require a hard drive. The good news is that the core system owners can upgrade if they deside to update at a later date.