As of February 1, Microsoft officially jumps into the cloud-computing frey and now is charging customers for developing and running apps in its Azure cloud.

(Update: Microsoft’s Azure team said charges actually won’t commence until Tuesday February 2,  in order to sync up billing across time zones. “Microsoft will begin charging for Windows Azure and SQL Azure starting at 12:00 AM February 2, 2010 GMT to ensure that customers and partners are not charged for their free usage in the month of January,” said the team in a February 1 posting annoucing Azure general availability.)

Microsoft has been working on Azure for more than three years; beta testers have been kicking its tires for more than a year. With Azure, Microsoft is attempting to recreate its Windows ecosystem in the form of a utility. Today, developers and customers can develop and deploy on the Windows Azure operating system and make use of the SQL Azure hosted database. In the coming months, Microsoft will make available to developers its Azure AppFabric Web-service utilities. And as 2010 progresses, Microsoft is slated to make available to developers and customers more of the on-premises “private cloud” complements to Azure.

While many (including yours truly), describe Azure as Microsoft’s “cloud,” Microsoft actually has many different public and private clouds. Very few Microsoft properties are currently hosted on Azure. Those that are include Live Mesh, Microsoft’s HealthVault service and its energy-monitoring Hohm service. Mega-scale services like Windows Hotmail and Xbox Live don’t run on Azure. Neither does Microsoft’s hosted Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, CRM Online, its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) or its Danger services for mobile devices. Microsoft hasn’t provided a timetable as to when (or definitively if) it will move these services to Azure.

Microsoft officials say that there already are “tens of thousands” of apps and services running on Azure, a total which includes everything from pilot “hobbyist” apps, to full-fledged commercial ones. (February 1 is the cut-off date, by the way, for those with Azure Community Technology Preview accounts to decide wehther they are going to upgrade to paying account ; Microsoft is advising userswho don’t want to subscribe  to export their data pronto so it won’t be deleted.)

But is Azure really ready for prime-time, as Microsoft flips the commercial switch?

Cloud expert and author of Cloud Computing with the Windows Azure Platform (Wrox, 2009) Roger Jennings says yes. He’s been running a Windows Azure Table Sample Project he created and has been seeing a majority of 100 percent uptime weeks.

“I’ve been happy with the capabilities and performance of the SQL Azure Database, as well as the free supporting applications for it, such as George Huey’s SQL Server Migration Wizard and the Sync Framework Team’s SQL Azure Data Sync tool. Both tools export schemas and data from on-premises SQL Server databases to SQL Azure in the cloud.”

Early Azure customers have tended to use Azure for “cloudbursting,” notes Directions on Microsoft analyst Rob Sanfilippo, via which Microsoft’s datacenters provide overflow capacity to add to what customers currently have available on-prmises, so as to be able to handle peak demands without having to make permanent infrastructure investments.

Azure is still “a fledgling platform,” Sanfilippo says, “and it will take large deployments and time to prove its scalability, stability, and security. It doesn’t yet offer administrator control of a Windows Server virtual machine like Amazon currently does, but this has been promised for later in 2010 with an upcoming ‘virtual machine roles’ feature. Advanced features of SQL Server such as reporting and analytics are not yet available with SQL Azure (again, promised for later), and the previously promised Workflow and Live Services components have been delayed. Improvements could also be made by providing more online administration tools and closer parity with Microsoft’s on-premises products (yes, these are promised too).”

Developers have a number of tools for not only migrating existing apps to Azure, as Jennings points out, but also for developing new apps from scratch. Microsoft has been working with a variety of partners to make open-source tools available for Azure — everything from Eclipse, to PHP. Silverlight can be used for SQL Azure clients, “but most Windows Azure devs probably will stick with ASP.NET Web roles for now, move to MVC with Visual Studio 2010, and Silverlight as they come up to speed with it next year,” Jennings says.

Microsoft faces some big competitors in the cloud, ranging from Amazon, to Google, to Salesforce, to IBM. It also already is facing pricing pressures, with developers pushing the Redmondians to offer a lower-end, hosting-centric pricing to compete with ISPs (as opposed to the full-fledged operating-system-centric infrastructure that Azure currently is). Microsoft still has yet to articulate exactly how it and when it plans to mirror its public-cloud Azure environment for customers who want and need to keep their data in-house. (Microsoft has said it plans to offer a public-to-private cloud. And it still has a lot of behind-the-scenes work to do to get its reseller partners onboard with Azure.

MIcrosoft is counting on developers and customers wanting more, not less, in the cloud. Microsoft is banking on coders wanting a (mostly) familiar operating environment, middleware and development infrastructure whether they are writing apps that can run on-premises, in the cloud or both.  Now that the meter is running, we’ll see whether devs and users agree….

Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 20 years. Don’t miss a single post. Subscribe via Email or RSS. You can also follow Mary Jo on Twitter.

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As usual Apple likes to convey the image it is number one, even if it is clearly not, it is number one in certain limited  areas only, MS computers still rule the waves.. so does Google 

and so now Apple chief Steve Jobs has lately come out swinging , reacting to the release of Google’s Nexus One, which has apparently angered him by being now fairly cool, and by actually having a decent reception – unlike a certain apple iPad. Google  ”They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them. This don’t be evil crap: It’s bullshit.” yeah and ‘How dare someone else try and sell a phone’” especialy a very decent one . http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/the-best-iphone-to-buy-or-to-use/

Flash has all the advantages any entrenched technology enjoys and remains the standard multimedia language for a vast majority of developers and programmers. The new iPad would not display videos, animations or any other features created using Flash, a type of multimedia software made by Adobe. Flash is one of the world’s most prolific  applications, appearing on 98 percent of all computers. YouTube videos run on it. It is what animates millions of graphics and advertisements on Web sites around the world. Adobe says the technology supports nearly 75 percent of video on the Web and 70 percent of online gaming sites.  Flash would not be used on the iPhone. Apple has argued that the Flash technology is too slow and unduly taxes laptops and netbooks. The company also has concerns over Flash’s vulnerability to viruses and other malware, as well as the way Flash-based content can voraciously consume battery life.. but what about the real monetary concerns? Adobe, said Apple’s opposition was a way for the Apple gouging company to control its iTunes system. “I think it’s pretty clear that Apple wants to regain control of the content consumers see online and the content Apple offers for their devices,” Many persons also do maintain  it is impossible for Apple to maintain a walled garden around the content and advertising people consume on the iPad.  The same  Jobs once again threw  a couple of insults against Adove too. “They (Adobe) have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy”, he is reported as saying. “Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash”. Sadly there are constant updates required for Adobe flash, which do slow down your computer if you do not install them too..

Actually, not a bad idea.

From the link:

Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) top legal official yesterday called on Congress to create new laws that would give data stored in the cloud the same protections as data stored on a PC. He also called for tougher penalties for hackers who access data centers, citing significant damage that’s often done in such attacks.

Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel at Microsoft, told an audience at a Brookings Institution forum here today that laws now protecting electronic data were written in the early days of PCs. “We need Congress to modernize the laws and adapt them to the cloud,” he said.

While many consumers have adopted cloud computing by subscribing to e-mail services like Google (GOOG) Gmail, to social networks like Facebook and to Microsoft’s increasing online services offerings, enterprises have been somewhat cautious about moving corporate data to hosted systems due to legal and security concerns both here and abroad. Those fears have been causing problem for IT vendors, forcing some to provide significant protections to large users.

Important. For more information , look under ‘IT/internet’, category.

The flaw does not affect Windows operating systems for x64-based and Itanium-based computers, Microsoft said.

According to Tavis Ormandy, the Google researcher who released the flaw details, Microsoft was notified about the issue in June 2009. After waiting several months and not seeing a patch, he decided it was in the best interest of everyone to go public.

As an effective and easy to deploy workaround is available, I have concluded that it is in the best interest of users to go ahead with the publication of this document without an official patch. It should be noted that very few users rely on NT security, the primary audience of this advisory is expected to be domain administrators and security professionals.

Ormandy’s advisory includes instructions for temporarily disabling the MSDOS and WOWEXEC subsystems to prevent an attack from functioning. This can be done via Group Policy.

The mitigation in Microsoft’s advisory mirrors the advice from Ormandy.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=5307&tag=nl.e589

I haven’t been tracking this story closely enough to realize an IE security issue caused the security breach of Google’s corporate network. One pretty simple solution is to change browsers. I was never enamored with Firefox, but finally tried out Google’s Chrome browser in August and have never looked back.

The lesson, as always with online security, is to make sure you have all your patches up to date and do seriously consider capable products to replace known security sieves like IE.

From the first link:

Microsoft (MSFT) is scrambling to patch an Internet Explorer flaw that was used to hack into Google’s (GOOG) corporate networks last month. The attack was used to hack into networks at 34 companies, including Adobe (ADBE), security experts say. Typically such hacks involve several such attacks, but the IE bug is the only one definitively linked to the hacking incident, which security experts say originated in China.

In a security advisory released Thursday, Microsoft said IE 6 users on Windows XP are most at risk from the flaw, but that other users could be affected by modified versions of the attack. Microsoft said it is developing a fix, but it did not say when it expects to patch the issue. The company is slated to release its next set of security updates on Feb. 9. A Google spokesman confirmed Thursday that the Internet Explorer attack was used against Google and that the company then reported the issue to Microsoft.

Google learned of the issue in December and, after discovering the server used to control the hacked computers, notified other companies affected by the hack. Apparently convinced that the infiltration was sanctioned by the Chinese government, Google has threatened to effectively pull its business out of China.

Hit these links for more background on the actual security breach.

Microsoft has started dropping broad hints that an emergency patch for Internet Explorer will be released very soon to counter targeted attacks and the publication of exploit code for a “browse and you’re owned” vulnerability in its flagship Web browser.

The out-of-band update will be released once the company is satisfied that it has been properly tested against all affected versions of Windows. This could happen as early as this weekend.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=5268&tag=nl.e539

Please some more on this subject filed under ‘IT”

Hackers linked to China used a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser to compromise corporate systems at more than 30 U.S. companies, including Google, Adobe and Juniper Networks.

Microsoft is considering an out-of-band emergency IE patch to fix this vulnerability.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=5250&tag=nl.e550

Microsoft officials are well aware that its biggest Windows 7 and Office 2010 competitors are its own previous product iterations (Windows XP and Office XP/2003). To try and wean users away from older, “good-enough” releases, Microsoft is introducing a new licensing promotion.

The revamped “Up to Date Discount” program is targeted at small/mid-size business (SMB) customers running older versions of Windows and Office. Between January 1 and June 30 of this year, Microsoft is enabling users running Windows XP or Vista (on the operating system side) and Office XP, Office 2003 or Office 2007 (on the productivity suite side) to receive a discount of 50 percent on the cost of their licenses for Windows 7 and Office 2007 (or Office 2010, once it is released by June 2010).
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=4867&tag=nl.e589

A federal appeals court has ordered Microsoft to strip custom XML support from Word 2007 by January 11, effectively banning the sale of Microsoft Word and Office (which includes the Word software) in their current form.

Microsoft may be forced to stop selling Word 2007.

The injunction stems from a patent infringement lawsuit filed by the small Canadian firm i4i in 2007. The suit claims i4i owns the custom XML editing technology that is included in Microsoft Word.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas agreed, slapping Microsoft with a $290 million fine and ordering it to remove custom XML capabilities or stop selling the infringing software.

Microsoft appealed, but the lower court’s ruling was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals. And now the software giant has precious little time to re-release Word and Office 2007 before being barred from selling the profitable office software.

In a statement issued yesterday, Microsoft’s Director of Public Affairs Kevin Kutz expressed confidence in the company’s ability to meet the injunction date.

With respect to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007, we have been preparing for this possibility since the District Court issued its injunction in August 2009 and have put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature from these products. Therefore, we expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction.

While speaking with Stuart J. Johnston at Datamation Microsoft analyst Rob Enderle admits the ruling “shows the increasing hostility of this market,” before adding, “For Microsoft, I think it’s going to be an increasingly expensive way to do business, with a lot more patent vetting.”

Regardless of whether new versions of Office 2007 will appear in time to meet demand, this significant legal decision will only further the cutthroat approach technology companies apply to protect their patents.

Svchost.exe is a system process produced by Microsoft Corp and is created to handle DLL files or processes in Windows Operating System. Since Svchost.exe is a crucial part for the running of a computer, many hackers or malicious producer invade or attack users’ computers through making use of it.

See the original post here:
Free Svchost Exe Fix – Get Your Free Svchost Exe Fix Now

It was only a matter of time.

On the heels of “Dead Space’s” successful debut last year, Electronic Arts has officially announced that the game series’ storyline will continue with the creation of “Dead Space 2.” Hero Isaac Clarke will return to battle necromorphs with new weapons.

Visceral Games will be producing the new saga, which had been rumored for months. A press release from EA says that survival won’t be the only thing on Isaac’s mind in “Dead Space 2″ – “this time, he calls the shots.”

Released in October 2008, the original action-horror game won nearly 100 industry awards and received a score of 89 percent from gamerankings.com. Earlier this year EA released “Dead Space: Extraction”, a prequel story that was exclusive to Nintendo’s Wii system in an effort to win over a new audience.

Executive producer Steve Papoutsis said, “Expect plot twists that will surprise you and a huge cast of twisted, disgusting monsters that are sure to scare the daylights out of you.”

“Dead Space 2” is being developed for the PS3, Xbox 360 and the PC. No release date has been announced.

As the holiday shopping season ramps up, video game console makers are keeping a wary eye on early sales.

Sony, maker of the PlayStation 3, claims it got off to a rousing start during the Black Friday week ending on November 29.  Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director of Corporate Communications, said the company sold more than 440,000 consoles, which was an “all-time high.”

Those sales numbers are up from October (320,600 units sold) and Seybold believes Sony’s software will help sell its hardware.  “We have no doubt the momentum and demand will continue,” he said.

By contrast, Nintendo said it sold 550,000 consoles during the same Black Friday week.  It also announced its DS Lite and DSi portable gaming devices combined to sell more than 1 million units during the week.

In September Nintendo cut the price of the Wii for the first time, by $50 to $199.99.  Last year, the company shipped 800,000 Wiis to the U.S. for Black Friday week.

Microsoft has not made any announcements about sales of the Xbox 360 during the intense shopping week.  Aaron Greenberg, Director of Product Management, posted on his Twitter account that the Xbox 360 had its biggest sales week of the year.

When asked about hard numbers, Greenberg tweeted that Microsoft was waiting for the official industry numbers before commenting.  The game review site, Gamespot, extrapolated previously reported numbers from October to come up with approximately 124,850 consoles sold during this past Black Friday week.

A Beijing court has ordered Microsoft Corp. to stop selling some versions of its Windows operating system in China in a licensing dispute with a local supplier.

The order, which came on Monday, said Microsoft exceeded its rights under licensing agreements with Zhongyi Electronic Ltd., a Beijing company that developed Chinese character fonts used in the software.

Microsoft must stop selling versions of Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 with Zhongyi’s fonts, the Beijing People’s No. 1 Intermediate Court said in its ruling, a copy of which was released by Zhongyi.

Microsoft said it would appeal.

“Microsoft respects intellectual property rights. We use third party IPs only when we have a legitimate right to do so,” the company said in a statement. “We believe our license agreements with the plaintiff cover our use of the fonts.”

Microsoft did not respond to a question about what proportion of its products sold in China use Zhongyi fonts or how many copies might be affected.

Zhongyi said its agreement with Microsoft allowed the Seattle-based software producer to use its fonts only in Windows 95 and they were added to later products without permission.

China is a leading source of pirated copies of software, movies and other goods and its government has long been accused of failing to do enough to stop the thriving underground industry.

China’s small but ambitious technology companies say they are among the biggest victims of piracy and are turning to the courts to help defend their intellectual property.

In December, a group of 11 people who were convicted of selling unlicensed copies of Microsoft software were sentenced by a Chinese court for up to six and a half years in prison.

On the Net:

Zhongyi Electronic Ltd.: www.china—e.com.cn/en/profile/ZhongYiProfile.htm   

Microsoft Corp.: www.microsoft.com

UPDATE 2:13 p.m. ET: Facebook also will be accessible through the PlayStation 3 after the console’s next firmware update. According to a posting on the PlayStation blog, PS3 users will have the option of automatically updating Facebook news feeds with trophy and PlayStation store activity. There is no announced date for the firmware release.

In an effort to blur the line between gaming and social networks, owners of Xbox 360s will have the chance to bash zombies and then post Facebook updates about it without leaving their consoles.

Microsoft announced that several social media and audio/video services can be accessed through the Xbox 360, starting today. The new features will be part of an automatic update, so when users turn on their consoles and the update kicks in, all the features will be ready for use. Most of the services are limited to Gold members, but a few are available to Silver members.

Facebook and Twitter have signed up to allow connectivity through Xbox LIVE directly from the console. All current features of the social networks will be available, and gamers will be able to share their favorite gaming moments (in supported games) with their friends.

In addition to watching movies from Netflix, as part of a previous deal, Xbox users also will be able to stream high-definition video through the Zune media player — coincidentally, also made by Microsoft. The Zune Marketplace, which includes the Zune Video player, is available to Silver members.

Also, as of today Last.fm joins with the new Xbox LIVE music channel, allowing for access to streaming music directly from the Xbox 360. The updated music channel lets users listen to personal recommendations from Last.fm’s dedicated menu on the console’s dashboard.

All Xbox users will be able to check out the new features during a “Free Gold Weekend” Friday, November 20 through Monday, November 23. Silver members will be able to try out everything that comes with Gold membership, including Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm.

And by better, the question is really could it be more efficient. The answer is yes, but can it be more efficient? Probably not, but that’s not stopping these guys at Defrag 2009 from mulling the possibilities.

From the link:

Wading through e-mail is one of the primary woes of office workers everywhere. Despite many theories on how workers should process their incoming messages, most people still seem to feel buried in the flood. This week at Defrag 2009, a technology conference in Denver focused on tools and technologies for handling online data, experts suggested that the best strategies for fixing e-mail might rely on information and strategies drawn from social Web technologies.

“E-mail is kind of this giant, endless task list, and you’re really the slave to a lot of stuff that comes to you,” said Lili Cheng, general manager of Microsoft’s future social experiences labs. She believes that incoming messages need to be organized and sorted in a more automated fashion.

Lately, I have been reading a lot about users stating that they have been able to perform clean installation with the Windows 7 Upgrade media. There is a significant catch in how and why it is being allowed. While researching a bit more for some genuine information on this subject, I finally turned to ZDNet’s blog post by Ed Bott, who happens to be an award-winning technology writer. He explains the whole phenomenona in detail. You would get a little suprised by some of the facts that he reveals in his blog post.

In short, Windows 7 does allow upgrade from Windows XP and Windows Vista. However, the upgrade mechanism may differ a little. For instance, when upgrading Windows XP, you will need to do a clean install and then migrate your settings etc to the new installation of Windows 7. This is also considered to be an upgrade. This is what is mentioned on the upgrade box:

For the rest of the story, you can read through the Ed Bott’s blog post: Clean install with Windows 7 upgrade media? Get the facts!

 BELLEVUE: Microsoft Corp. is giving its MSN Web portal a long-overdue makeover and says it hopes the new site will funnel more people to Bing, the software maker’s search engine.

Microsoft is ditching the heavy blue background and stack of tiny text and menus across the top of the page that have defined msn.com for a decade.

The new site is cleaner, with a white background and simple, colorful links for “news,” “entertainment,” “sports,” “money,” “lifestyle” and “more” lined up across the top.

But it’s still clearly a portal, filled with blocks of headlines. The most prominent real estate on the page is dominated by a slide show of the top five stories with big headlines and photos.

Some of what appears on the MSN home page will be picked by editors looking for top stories. They’ll get an assist from new software that uses Bing to find hot topics just as they begin to simmer.

Other stories on the home page will appear based on a Web surfer’s location or other details gleaned from his or her browsing behavior.

Microsoft’s online services business is a money-losing venture, as advertising revenue has failed to make up for the money the software maker has poured into competing with Google Inc. in search.

Scott Moore, the executive producer for MSN in the U.S., said the site’s main goal is to drive up Bing’s search share. Bing, which launched in June, remains a distant third in search, after Google and Yahoo Inc.

In July, Web search became a two-team race when Microsoft and Yahoo announced that the Bing technology would be used behind the scenes on Yahoo’s sites as well. That deal is awaiting regulatory approval.

The MSN redesign also shows Microsoft’s growing interest in collaborating with operators of other popular sites, rather than simply trying to compete.

In a slim column on the right-hand side of the page, Microsoft displays Hotmail e-mails and status updates on Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft’s own “Windows Live” service. People who have accounts on those services can log in to each to see a list of friends’ updates and to post their own.

This refreshed msn.com  is rolling out to a small percentage of U.S. users on Wednesday but won’t appear for everyone until early 2010.

Who is going to be: Google or Microsoft? They are once again head to head and this time for the e-mail system overhaul for Los Angeles, which is trying to get rid of its ancient e-mail system. CEOs of Google and Microsoft are willing to come down to L.A. and meet the council committee.

So, who is going to be? Both the big guns have pros and cons. Microsoft has strengths of MS Outlook and MS Exchange and Google is betting its cloud computing. So far, Google seems to be having a bit an edge in this matter after getting clearance from one of the city council committee. However, Google will need clearance from the second council committee to win the bet.

Read the complete story: Microsoft vs. Google: An e-mail showdown at L.A. City Hall

Actually a cross promotion with Burger King:

From the linK:

For the next seven days, Burger King will be a selling a gigantic seven-layer Whopper, which is apparently a gargantuan five-inches thick. The price? Y777, of course — at least for the first 30 customers each day. If you’re customer number 31, you’ll be paying Y1450. Given that a double Whopper is loaded with just shy of 1,000 calories, we’re guessing that this one’s a good few days worth of “nutrition.”

Its been some time since both Microsoft and Google have been trying to woo the internet sensation Twitter, finally both Microsoft Corp and Google Inc secured separate agreements to access real-time content from Web phenomenon Twitter.

Source:
http://technology.globalthoughtz.com/index.php/microsoft-and-google-both-announce-deal-with-twitter/

A great, and necessary idea, but really at least 15 years too late. With the sheer bloat of Microsoft’s offerings, antivirus should have been standard equipment before even the Melissa virus hit ten years ago.

From the first link:

Microsoft Corp. says its new computer security program can be downloaded starting on Tuesday.

Microsoft Security Essentials, as the free antivirus software is called, has been available in a beta test version since June.

Google Inc. is counting on the crown jewel of its online advertising empire to burnish a diamond in the rough.

Hoping to take an even bigger bite out of ad budgets, Google has melded the technology powering its lucrative search marketing network with a system that it bought 18 months ago to sell online billboards and other more visual commercials, including video.

The long-awaited combination poses another threat to Yahoo Inc., whose profits have been sliding the past three years. Yahoo is the Internet’s largest seller of display advertising, a mantle that Google has set its sights on. Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL also operate large exchanges that help manage display ads.

The upgrade announced Friday has been something Google has been working toward since it bought DoubleClick Inc. for $3.2 billion a year-and-a-half ago. Google prized DoubleClick largely for its tools for selling and serving display ads.

Although they are more dynamic, display ads so far haven’t proven to be as popular as the text ads that appear alongside search results.

Huge potential

Last year, online search advertising sales in the United States totaled $10.5 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, with most of that money going to Mountain View, California-based Google. The Internet’s U.S. display ads totaled $7.6 billion.

“The display market today is probably not really living up to its full potential,” said Neal Mohan, a Google vice president of product management.

Google is betting it can sell more display ads by drawing on the science, simplicity and ease-of-use that has made its search advertising system so profitable. The marriage will open DoubleClick’s display advertising system to hundreds of thousands of advertisers and Web sites that belong to AdWords and AdSense — the cornerstones of Google’s commercial search.

“We are going to be bringing a lot of the know-how and a lot of the efficiencies of the search market to the art of display,” Mohan said.

DoubleClick’s display exchange matches up advertisers with Web sites trying to sell some of the empty space on their pages.

It’s an approach pioneered by four-year-old Right Media, which was bought in 2007 by Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo for $526 million. Yahoo says Right Media remains the Internet’s largest display advertising exchange, processing 9 billion daily transactions for 120,000 buyers and sellers around the world.

Yahoo doubts Google will be able to dominate display advertising like it has search advertising.

“We fully expect the display market to be fragmented and for there to be other exchanges,” said Frank Weishaupt, Yahoo’s vice president of North American marketplaces. “We welcome these exchanges, and look forward to working with them and integrating with them for our partners.”

For those who don’t know, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) is the RIAA-equivalent of software, representing such copyright holders as Microsoft, Adobe and Symantec. They recently released a very bizarre video, according to ZeroPaid, called “To Catch a Pirate”. I found it really odd, so I figured I would share it here. Check it out

As for HiTechVNN, apparently that site has shut down… these leech sites are up one day and down the next, so it is difficult to find a good one that lasts. When I find one I will be sure to post it for you guys.