Other developments: The NewsBlaster game, where you have to shoot like-colored orbs that release headlines, which you also have to shoot for points. What fun!
The most sober of the new products is the NewsScroller widget, which lets you select which categories of news you like (using the same GrrAnimals colors of Spectra) [...]

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Firefox users will see a new default search provider soon: Google rival Yandex.

Mozilla gets the vast majority of its revenue through a partnership under which Google shares revenue from search ads. In 2007, that was $66 million of Mozilla’s $75 million total revenue.

Details on the change can be seen in the Mozilla bug tracker, which [...]

(Credit:
Erica Ogg/CNET News)

The most prevalent theme among the electronics giants: thin TVs. Just like at CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin, and CEDIA Expo this year, they’re jostling with each other in a race to see who can make the largest screen on the skinniest panel.
A slim and trim plasma TV from [...]

Under the Zillow Advertising Network agreement, the consortium’s advertisers can tap into Zillow’s user base of more than 5 million unique monthly visitors, while Zillow’s advertisers will have access to readers of the newspapers’ online real-estate content.

The launch of the advertising network comes at a time when the real-estate industry is facing a steep decline [...]

•  The proposal calls for Yahoo! to sell its industry-leading algorithmic search business and its related strategic and valuable intellectual property portfolio for no incremental consideration; and
Significantly, the Board believes Microsoft and Mr. Icahn are overstating the value their search and restructuring proposal would deliver to Yahoo! stockholders and are substantially understating [...]

Competitor CleanTech Biofuels is also using acid hydrolysis in its pilot ethanol plant, which it expects to open later this year. Another company interested in trash as a feedstock is Coskata, which has a conversion process that uses high-pressure gasification and bacteria to produce sugars.

The U.S. renewable fuel standard mandates that a significant portion of [...]

So how does Chrome change the competitive landscape?

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Firefox has been chipping away at IE’s share for years, but the dominance has remained fairly secure, and unless Chrome offers revolutionary new abilities, it’s not likely to do more than perhaps increase the chipping rate a bit.

Officially, Microsoft welcomes the competition. “The browser landscape is [...]

And a research director for Panasonic’s advanced technology development labs was happy to talk about his work on 3D imaging, but clammed up when asked about his opinion on the current economic environment.

(Credit:
Erica Ogg/CNET News)

Sarah Yoo, who manages overseas marketing for Seoul-based SBNTech, a maker of VoIP video phones, expressed frustration with the financial [...]

The application’s claim to fame is that you can access your passwords while offline and without the use of your browser. If you don’t feel like installing a new, standalone app, you can get similar functionality by trying out the offline version of PassPack that takes advantage of Google Gears to let you do this [...]

That’s why the team has come up with its own alternative, which it is calling Adeona, the name for the Roman goddess of safe returns.

To Kohno, the danger associated with commercial laptop-tracking services is that it’s never possible to know for sure that someone at a company that makes such software wouldn’t exploit the company’s [...]