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The final version of Photoshop CS3 is due in spring 2007, according to Adobe. Adobe will make the beta available as a universal binary--meaning it will run on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs--for the Macintosh, as well as for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista. The release will include an early version of an upgrade to Adobe Bridge, an application for managing files. The beta will also include a new tool, Adobe Device Central, for creating content for mobile devices.

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Distinguishing between the look and the function of an invention isn't always easy. But imagine that you're seeking a patent for a wine glass. If it's simply a combination of glass stem and bowl that has been done many times before, it would not be eligible for a patent. But if there is some sort of unique, fanciful etching on the glass, then it could theoretically be patented if that design feature is "inseparable from the article to which it is applied and cannot exist alone." The question of what makes a patent too obvious to merit protection, which the U.S. Supreme Court is currently mulling, applies to design patents as well as utility patents. The distinction with design patents is perhaps even more fuzzy, said Philip Mann, a Seattle-based patent attorney and author of the IP Litigation Blog.

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The basic idea was a clone of Intel's Centrino strategy: put a colorful sticker on a PC, get PC makers to put a combination of Intel-developed technology inside the PC and reward them with marketing assistance, then blast the airwaves with snappy messages promoting the product. But Centrino took a technology concept that both businesses and consumers were starting to embrace--wireless networking--and made it easier for average PC buyers to understand. In Viiv's case, Intel and its partners are trying get people to use PCs in very different ways while wading into a new world of on-demand content delivery that is still challenging even for established cable and satellite companies.

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We here offer an alternative to this update dilemma, starting immediately: version 3 of our script collection Offline Update requires only a few steps to reel in a current service pack at any time, combining all released Windows updates at the time of download. The download script acquires the complete update library for selected operating systems from Microsoft's servers and uses them to created ISO images for CDs or DVDs as desired. These in turn can be used to update as many PCs as you wish.

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To woo that set, Microsoft has been pitching the Zune in TV spots, outdoor ads, print ads and online promos, mainly trying to get into the heads of those aged 18 to 28. But even with a decent size marketing budget, Microsoft knows it may need to buy more ads to try to get the Zune better known. The company's initial goal was to have its ads reach about one quarter of those in its target age range, and reach them at least three times. It has TV ads that have run in shows like Prison Break, Family Guy and Grey's Anatomy, and has inserted print ads in magazines such as Scratch, Paste, Spin, Vibe and Rolling Stone. There are also online ads on sites like AOL, Billboard and MTV, as well as on Microsoft's own MSN site.

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The leading DRM digital download service, Apple's iTunes, has experienced a collapse in sales revenues this year according to analyst company Forrester Research. Secretive Apple doesn't break out revenues from iTunes, but Forrester conducted an analysis of credit card transactions over a 27-month period. And this year's numbers aren't good. While the iTunes service saw healthy growth for much of the period, since January the monthly revenue has fallen by 65 per cent, with the average transaction size falling 17 per cent. The previous spring's rebound wasn't repeated this year. And it isn't just Apple's problem. Nielsen Soundscan has grimmer news for prospective digital download services, indicating three consecutive quarters of flat or declining revenues for the sector as a whole.

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Here’s the background. Back in August, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit updated Mac users on the status of its development efforts for the next version of Office. According to the software giant, things were going well, and we learned that there will be free XML converters for current Office users to read the new Office for Windows' file formats. (However, we've since learned that there will be a three to four month gap between the release of Office for Windows and the availability of the Mac converters. Those could be a few painful months to be a Mac Office user in a Windows environment.) The MacBU also noted that tens of millions of lines of code had been successfully transitioned to Xcode. Amidst all the good news, however, was this little lump of coal, as we reported it then:

Microsoft also indicates that it is discontinuing support of Visual Basic (VB) scripting in the next version of Office for Mac, but on the flip side, the company said it's going to increase support for standard Mac scripting methods like AppleScript and Automator.

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In BEA's case, it created software called Liquid VM. Liquid VM is an addition to the company's JRockit Java virtual machine, which runs directly on VMware's hypervisor. That virtual machine allows Java programs to interact with hardware servers without the need for an operating system, according to Stephen Hess, director of product management for the WebLogic Platform.

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A huge study from Denmark offers the latest reassurance that cell phones don't trigger cancer. Scientists tracked 420,000 Danish cell phone users, including 52,000 who had gabbed on the gadgets for 10 years or more, and some who started using them 21 years ago. They matched phone records to the famed Danish Cancer Registry that records every citizen who gets the disease and reported Tuesday that cell-phone callers are no more likely than anyone else to suffer a range of cancer types. The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is the largest yet to find no bad news about the safety of cell phones and the radiofrequency energy they emit.

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The Gowers Report was commissioned by the government to look at modernising UK copyright laws for the digital age. While it proposes new powers against copyright infringement, it also says private users should be allowed to copy music from a CD to their MP3 player. It also recommends the 50-year copyright protection for recorded music should not be extended. Former newspaper editor Andrew Gowers said piracy and counterfeiting was probably the biggest challenge the intellectual property (IP) system faced.

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These document format standards matter a great deal financially, because they can influence which software products companies choose to buy. Microsoft Office Open XML is the default document format for its Office 2007 suite, which was recently released to businesses and is set for consumer availability on January 30. Alternative OpenDocument is the default for the open-source suite OpenOffice.org and the preference of Microsoft rivals IBM, Novell and Sun Microsystems. The emergence of dueling standards has ratcheted up the competition in Microsoft's home turf--a situation that should benefit end users who care about accessing documents in the future, said Andrew Updegrove, an attorney at Gesmer Updegrove and author of a blog that follows international standards.

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A security advisory from the Redmond, Wash., company said the flaw can be exploited if a user simply opens a rigged Word document. Affected software versions include Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Word Viewer 2003, Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac and Microsoft Word 2004 v. X for Mac. The Microsoft Works 2004, 2005 and 2006 suites are also affected because they include Microsoft Word.

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As I am sure most of you know Crucial is a name that you can trust. I have personally used Crucial and Micron memory since I have built computers back when I was much younger than I currently am. It was not until recently that Crucial began to offer chips that had overclocking potential in the brand lines. This started with the new Ballistix line of RAM. In the past, Crucial had a stance that their RAM was for stability and not for overclocking, even though many people used it for both. Crucial RAM is rock solid, if you run it at the rated specs. Remember that overclocking is a variable thing; we shall see how Crucial stands up with their 2GB kit of PC2-5300.

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With DDR2-800 still in the early stages, PC users have to often pay a lot more for the latest and greatest memory products. The Mushkin High Performance (HP) Series memory is just what the doctor ordered. Mushkin offers the HP2-6400 at an affordable price with all the features enthusiasts want.

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The G7 in my mind should be standard equipment for any computer user that wants to truly enjoy his/her computer with complete control, accuracy and problem free longevity you want for your money. Kudos to Logitech with their quick swap battery technology. Finally a wireless mouse that isn't heavy to use.

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Anyone who has worked with a laptop for a longer period of time knows that it gets very hot underneath. Not only can that produce some nasty effects on your lap but it also can both shorten the life span of the laptop as well as affect the performance when the computer clocks back the speed of the CPU and/or GPU due to the heat.

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Power and mobility are 2 very important factors when choosing a laptop. You want something that is powerful enough to suit your needs, but also portable enough so that it is not a hassle to travel with. We recently reviewed the Dell XPS M1210 laptop and it achieved both of those factors easily. Today we will be taking a look at Alienware's Area-51 m5550 15.4-inch laptop and we will see how it stacks up to the M1210 and if it is portable enough for our needs. So let's take a look.

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Quote: In the spirit of college football bowl season, Bigbruin.com has a new contest for registered members of the forum. Up for grabs is a brand new, unopened Saitek A-250 Wireless 2.1 Speaker System. Even if you know nothing about college football, you can still compete in this contest. All you need to do is enter your predictions for the final scores of the bowl games featuring the top 25 ranked teams

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Computer gamers around the world know that the accurate laser mice work best on high quality mousepads. Movements are fast and accurate when the mouse glides easily over the surface. We've seen pads made from aluminum, steel, fiber, glass and plastics and every single of those have had strongpoints over the others. There are also differences in surfaces - other pads are smooth and other rough. Both pads tested this time are made of plastic and have a rough surface.

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Corsair knows their stuff when it comes to performance memory, but how about power supplies? Despite the fact that they are new to the PSU market, they prove that they are not newbies. After taking a look at their HX620W, we walk away impressed.

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Gone are the cheapo power supplies of yesteryear. Processors today from both Intel and AMD require a power supply that can deliver a steady diet of power. The Seasonic name has become the standard of barrier in power supply from a distant land, China. We are looking into one of the new M12 Modular series today rated at 600 watts from Seasonic.

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The PC-A10 is a fantastic case. All the little things that Lian Li does over and over again make this case stand out from the crowd. The anti-vibration mounts for the fans, drives and side panels, the removable motherboard tray, PSU tray and drive cages, as well as the tool-less design make this case a pleasure to work with.

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Let's cut to the chase, as those of you that have read my reviews know is my style: I thought it might be fun to do a short addition to the first review as since writing it I have made some rather significant upgrades to my test rig and also added a second XFX 8800 GTX running in SLI. Now that I have your attention, just a few words on what to expect. First, this addendum will only contain the outline for testing the SLI configuration and the test results as anything more would be a rewrite of the article I've already published.

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If you don't have $300 to spend on a GPU, then there are a slew of budget cards for you to ponder over. Last week we took a look at an X1650 Pro, and today we are taking a look at a similar model. Is the card worth your $150?

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Quote: After reviewing HIS' X1950 Pro Turbo card just the other day we now take a look at their X1650 XT. You may think that the X1650 XT is just a slightly higher clocked X1650 Pro but you would be wrong. Yes the XT does have a tad increase in clock speed over the Pro version, 5MHz in core speed and 60MHz in memory speed, but the biggest difference is in the physical structure and architecture of the card.

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In addition to having more cooling than any Antec case before it, the 900 is currently Antec's only case to use a fan larger than the standard 120mm model. These extra large fans are something relatively new to the mass market and a few companies have gotten there first, like Enermax, Aerocool, and Thermaltake (though most have opted for 250mm models). This case looks like it is going to be a great addition to Antec's lineup- it is a bit more adventurous than what they normally put out, but judging from what we have seen from Antec in the past, it should be worth investigating further.

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Quote: There is a compartment on the bottom side of the Hiyatek CF-6159-1 cooler between the two fan openings. Opening a sliding door reveals a storage area for the included USB power cable which has two full size connectors on the end intended for your notebook computer, while the end intended for the cooler has a single mini USB connector. In some situations it may be necessary to have both connections plugged into the host computer to make sure that enough power is provided and that data can be transferred through the hub connections, but I found that using just one USB connection was more than adequate on my notebook computer.

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Ideazon is a company whose products are specifically designed for gaming purpose. They have a range of products from keyboard to gamepad and most recently, gaming mice. Their first product-Zboard is a gaming keyboard that is specifically designed for some of the world's hottest games: Doom 3, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 2. What Ideazon strives to do is design the product that is from the gamer's perspective. Today, we'll be looking at the Reaper, Ideazon's first gaming mouse. Join us and see if Ideazon can bring innovation and good performance to the Reaper as with what they have done with their keyboards.

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When Zalman and Fatal1ty team up, you expect some special results. The FC-ZV9 graphics card cooler combines good cooling performance, great looks and wide compatibility into a product that any gamer would be proud to have in their case. The nickel plating and red LEDs give it a distinctive look that many folks will find appealing. The price, however, may deter some potential buyers.

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The Cooler Master Eclipse isn't just a futuristic off the wall design, the ability to cool a pretty intense processor is most definitely there as well. I was able to overclock both the Intel and AMD dual-core processors quite a bit while still maintaining more than acceptable temperatures with the Eclipse, even on the low fan setting.

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A first look at the keyboard shows that the shape has become more traditional; the feet no longer stick out as much as they used to, and media keys have been added on the top right hand side. Additionally, there is also a new dial to adjust the brightness of the backlighting.

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Gaming performance was, on average, double of anything the multi-GPU MSI 7950GX2 was capable of. Battlefield 2142, the newest title we tested with, proved to be no challenge at all for the MSI NX8800GTX. Despite the fact that widescreen gaming isn't officially supported, our quasi-widescreen settings still looked very good and performance was right up there. In fact, now that we've really gotten used to it, we think it's going to be very difficult for anyone to go back to traditional 4:3 gaming once they've played games in widescreen mode.

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The internet can be a very scary place. Yes, it is filled with countless amounts of useful information on all sorts of subjects, but that is also its downside. Having grown up with the internet, many adults are very adept at maneuvering it. Unfortunately, not enough people are as savvy as they should be, because spyware, viruses and the ever faithful phishing scams are running rampant. This of course doesn't even get into the realm of what your kids are getting into. This now brings up the whole point of this review, just what are your kids getting into? How much time is your child spending on the internet, and where? Are they looking up offensive content? Are they rotting their young minds? How much of your personal information is being stolen by Trojans and other forms of spyware? I could come up with so many

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The Scythe Karma Meter is a drive bay device to monitor the temperature inside your case with 4 separate diodes, control the fan speed of up to four fans and set the master volume of the PC. The Kama Meter shines with perfect build quality as well as 8 different back light modes. We take a close look to see if its features are useful and temperatures are accurate.

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One common problem that PC and console gamers alike experience, is sweaty hands. Yes, this can easily happen during an intense Moto GP or Need for Speed session. Logitech to the rescue with their latest gamepad, which includes a beefy 40mm fan to help you keep your cool during gameplay.

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Throughout the extensive overclocking and testing of these modules, I could not come up with anything to complain about. They look great, they perform as they should, and they have plenty of overclocking headroom for the enthusiasts out there. Again, without a retail price anywhere it is hard to give a very concrete judgment but something tells me that these modules should be a part of anyone's buying decision if you're in the market for a 1GB memory kit. I can hardly wait to get my hands on a 2GB kit of some hot FireStix.

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NVIDIA's new G80 GPU is the first to implement DirectX 10 support and Shader Model 4.0. Palit is one of NVIDIA's board partners who is selling the GeForce 8800 GTX. The card comes with 768 MB of video memory and can will run whatever you throw at it at highest resolutions with maximized settings. We test the card against the ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, X1900 Crossfire and the Geforce 7900 GTX.

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DDR2 memory is now mainstream and needed for current motherboards. So, when upgrading your computer system, it's required to pick up at least 2 gigabytes of DDR2 memory. Selecting memory can be a daunting task, as there are so many memory companies on the market. OCZ has really taken the guesswork out of this memory though, since it's designed to work best with ATI chipset motherboards. So if you are getting a new ATI chipset motherboard, this would be the memory to get. With a default speed of 800MHz DDR2 and a timing of 4-4-4-12 it is sure to perform very well in high-end motherboards...

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Quote: With the holidays right around the corner many enthusiasts are in the market for a brand new video card. Some may want the fastest card out there, regardless of its price, which means they would probably want NVIDIA's newest card, the 8800. Others are looking to upgrade their card that they've had for the past 3-4 years and is a couple generations old. They don't want to spend a lot of money but don't want to have to replace their card next year. In their case they will probably want to shoot for a card in the $150-$250 range which means that the X1950 Pro from HIS might just be the card for them.

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Even though I am sure most of us would love to be able to buy one or two X1950XTX or GeForce 8800GTX cards, the hard reality is that we cannot afford to. We have to look to a cheaper alternative that still hopefully will perform well enough.

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The first chips produced by AMD on the new process will be desktop chips. Notebook and server chips will come in the relatively near future. Intel and AMD are in the midst of a manufacturing battle. Intel first began shipping 65-nanometer chips in October 2005. Chips made on the 65-nanometer process generally provide more performance and/or consume less power than those made on the older 90-nanometer process. (The nanometer figure refers to the average size of features on the chip; a nanometer is a billionth of a meter.)

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The base would be built in incremental steps, starting with four-person crews making several seven-day visits. The first mission would begin by 2020, with the base growing over time, beefed up with more power, mobility rovers and living quarters. The Moon base would eventually support 180-day lunar stays, a stretch of time seen as the best avenue to establish a permanent presence there, as well as prepare for future human exploration of Mars.

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But Kriss insisted that the ODF policy wasn't intended to be anti-Microsoft. He said technical people at Microsoft told him it would be "trivial" to add support for ODF to the new Office 2007. The resistance to doing so came from the vendor’s business side, according to Kriss. Yates told Computerworld in an interview last month that ODF "came up late in the development process for Office 2007" and that the standard "really isn't finished." He also said Microsoft was "surprised" when Massachusetts issued the ODF mandate and dropped what he claimed was an earlier agreement for the state to accept Office file formats as being open.

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Malware makers are starting to take advantage of the number of users searching for cracks for the pirated copies of Vista floating around. A new download has started circulating around the crack boards called "Windows Vista All Versions Activation 21.11.06". It purports to be an activation crack for any version of Vista. However, the file is actually a trojan-carrier which will install Trojan-PSW.Win32.LdPinch.aze onto your PC. BitTorrent users who posted reviews of the crack said that a number of antivirus programs detected the malware, though Norton AntiVirus and NOD32 did not.

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ISO/IEC 26300:2006 defines an XML schema for office applications and its semantics. The schema is suitable for office documents, including text documents, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents like drawings or presentations, but is not restricted to these kinds of documents. ISO/IEC 26300:2006 provides for high-level information suitable for editing documents. It defines suitable XML structures for office documents and is friendly to transformations using XSLT or similar XML-based tools. ISO/IEC 26300:2006 first provides an introduction to the OpenDocument format and explains the structure of documents that conform to the OpenDocument specification. It describes the meta information that can be contained in such documents, and their text and paragraph content. Text Fields and text indices are described.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Universal Music Group Chief Executive Doug Morris said on Tuesday he may try to fashion an iPod royalty fee with Apple Computer Inc. in the next round of negotiations in early 2007.

Universal, the world's largest music company, owned by French media giant Vivendi, was the first major record label to strike an agreement with Microsoft Corp. to receive a fee for every Zune digital media player sold.

"It would be a nice idea. We have a negotiation coming up not too far. I don't see why we wouldn't do that... but maybe not in the same way," he told the Reuters Media Summit, when asked if Universal would negotiate a royalty fee for the iPod that would be similar to Microsoft's Zune.

"The Zune (deal) was an amazingly interesting exercise, to end up with a piece of technology," he added.

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Because no sex or nudity is involved, the prosecutions raise unusual First Amendment concerns that stretch beyond mere modeling-related Web sites: children and teens in various degrees of undress appear in everything from newspaper underwear advertisements to the covers of Seventeen and Vogue. When actress and model Brooke Shields was 15 years old, for instance, she appeared in a racy Calvin Klein jean advertisement featuring the memorable line, "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." Shields also appeared nude at 12 years old in an Oscar-nominated movie called Pretty Baby that was set in a New Orleans brothel. Similarly, 14-year-old Jodie Foster, wearing revealing clothing, played a pre-teen prostitute in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

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Let's take the studios' argument to its extreme. A buyer could be subject to legal liability for ripping purchased DVDs at home onto a purchased portable video player without either first seeking permission or purchasing the content again for specific use on the portable video player. One wonders whether a court would embrace such an argument. Load 'N Go Video likely will assert that it has engaged in "fair use" for copyright purposes, and that such fair use trumps the claims of the motion picture studios under the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. While Load 'N Go Video under these facts does have a defense to assert, one must keep in mind that the motion picture studios, like the music industry, have been very successful to date in seeking to protect their copyright works. Stay tuned to see how this case plays out.

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On Thursday, Microsoft is set to release to businesses Office 2007, an upgrade of its productivity suite which introduces an XML-based file format called Office Open XML. Because so many more documents will be created in that format, Corel has decided to make opening and editing those document types an option in the WordPerfect word processor as well as in the company's presentation application and Quattro Pro spreadsheet, said Richard Carriere, general manager of office productivity for Corel. In addition, Corel in the middle of next year will allow people to open and view word processor documents stored in the OpenDocument format, or ODF.

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Carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas that contributes to climate change. As concerns over global climate change build, many experts expect the U.S. federal government to put mechanisms in place to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "The debate has shifted from whether or not there will be federal regulations, to when it will come," said Fred Wellington, a senior financial analyst at the think tank World Resources Institute. "The smart money understands that climate policy is coming." What is still up in the air is what form regulations will take, and whether state and local efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be coordinated with any federal policies, Wellington said.

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Now you can add "Cyber Monday" to that end-of-year fantasy list. Another year has come and gone and, as many predicted, by late in the day on the West Coast, Cyber Monday appeared to be just another busy holiday shopping day. Retailers, of course, have breathlessly promoted the first Monday after Thanksgiving as a crucial day for online shopping, the day Web cash registers were supposed to be stuffed as bargain hunters got an early jump on holiday gift buying. But in all the effort to hype the day, somebody forgot to tell consumers.

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In August 2005, the Illinois State Legislature enacted the Sexually Explicit Video Game Law ("SEVGL"), which criminalized the sale of "sexually explicit" video games to minors, and required purveyors of such games to conspicuously label any sexually explicit game with a four square inch label reading "18", and provide relevant signage within the stores where games are sold. The Entertainment Software Association, among others, filed suit against the State of Illinois the day after the SEVGL was enacted, claiming that the law violated the First Amendment. The district court permanently enjoined enforcement of the law, and the State of Illinois sought review. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the lower court's holding that the statue was not narrowly tailored.

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It also means the earliest official recordings from The Beatles, from 1963, will be out of copyright in 2013. Music journalist Neil McCormack told BBC Radio Five Live it was a blow to the industry. "This was set before the advent, the big boom of rock and roll. The boom in popular culture which has led to a whole vast number of people making their living from these royalties. "You can make a record in 1955 and have been getting royalties... been living on that and suddenly they're gone."

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Some hardware and software makers have argued they're especially threatened by the standard because their products frequently include thousands of pre-existing components that they would like to be able to rearrange at will. Some say the lax rules have fueled the rise of patent speculators--disparagingly known as "patent trolls"--who make a living off predicting those incremental changes to existing high-tech inventions, landing patents and then going after companies for infringement.

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According to Microsoft's Windows Vista End User License Agreement (EULA), the platform's Home Basic and Home Premium editions cannot be run as a virtual machine (VM). Such restrictions do not apply to the business versions of the OS. "Today, customers using this technology are primarily business customers addressing application compatibility needs or technology enthusiasts," the spokesperson said. "For everyday use, Windows Vista Home and Home Premium cannot be installed in any virtual machine technology, but Business and Ultimate versions can. Each virtual installation of Windows requires a new license just as it was for Windows XP."