Sony used the launch event at the New York Public Library to highlight some notable new features of its e-book platform. Most notable is the expansion of support for library loans to the Sony Readers. If your local library supports electronic lending, members will be able to download the borrowed books and transfer them to the Reader for 21 days (after which the files expire). Sony is partnering with Overdrive.com to make it easier to search for available books at participating libraries.

It seems as if it were just yesterday that Yahoo’s Messenger team rolled out version 9 (it was a little less than a year ago, in fact.) The upgrade was so dramatic and overdue that it’s a little surprising Yahoo has already tweaked its chat client, now parading Yahoo Messenger 10 beta to testers and curious chatters. We’re glad they did. Even though the changes may not please everyone uniformly, nor should they incite ire. The features build off Yahoo Messenger 9, emphasize social networ

Bing 2.0 could be around the corner

Fitness bot whips Japanese seniors into shape

According to some wayward tweets emanating from the Microsoft all-hands meeting Thursday, the new search engine, Bing, is about to get a makeover. It’s unclear when it will happen, but it appears it will include integration between Silverlight, maps, and images at the very least. Also looking for a fresh start is Motorola, which yesterday unveiled some new Android phones as well as

Intel said Friday that its Larrabee graphics processor will initially appear as a software development platform only.

“Rather, it will be used as a software development platform for internal and external use,” he added. Intel is not discussing what other versions may appear after the initial software development platform product, or “kit,” is launched next year.

Graphics chip analyst Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, said Intel is not

“There’s a lot of overhead around threading that means you want to break your program into as few pieces as possible. With Grand Central Dispatch, we say break your program into as many tiny pieces as you can conceive of,” Hodges said.

The 32-bit kernel
However, the core component of Mac OS X, the kernel, is still 32-bit software by default on consumer machines such as MacBooks and iMacs. Apple has written it so that applications can handle more than 4GB of memory, thoug

Mac OS X Snow Leopard will cost $29 as an upgrade for Leopard users. For Mac OS X Tiger users, the Mac Box Set, which includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iLife ‘09 and iWork ‘09, will cost $169.

Snow Leopard also supports Exchange Server 2007. This means that you can use Mac OS X Mail, Address Book and iCal out of the box with Exchange.

For instance, according to Apple, 90 percent of the Mac OS X code has been worked on for the Snow Leopard release. This is

You can see this in the most recent IDC numbers on Linux deployments. While Red Hat, Novell, and other Linux vendors are growing comfortably, nonpaid Linux adoption is outpacing paid deployments. A sign that enterprise IT is going it alone?

Still, open-source vendors like Red Hat will win often enough to ensure that open source remains big business, and big for business, for many years to come. The risk is that while open source has transformed enterprise IT, enterpr

“I think what we’ve seen so far this year is what we’ll see for the rest of the year,” he said. “I’m encouraged by the stability we see in the market, but we’re not ready to call it a turn.”

This post was updated at 3:30 p.m. PDT with information from the earnings call.

HP’s shares were down 2 percent to $43.09 in after-hours trading.

Hurd said HP saw better-than-expected growth in its sales in China, but the same was not true for the other major regions.

Running on Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux operating system, the package offers open-standards-based e-mail, word processing, a spreadsheet application, communication tools, and social-networking features. In addition, users can collaborate with each other through a cloud-computing model. IBM said the package can also work on virtual desktops using the VERDE system from Virtual Bridges, which will be available through business partners.

With a focus on health c

“Why I like @benchmark: They consistently ask ‘What’s best for the entrepreneur?’ and they think big,” Mickos said Tuesday on Twitter.

(Credit:
Benchmark Capital)

Marten Mickos, surrounded by inflatable MySQL dolphin mascots.

Marten Mickos, the one-time chief executive of MySQL who left about a year after Sun Microsystems acquired the open-source database company, has joined Benchmark Capital as an entrepreneur in residence.

The admiration is m