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At Intel’s Developer Forum (19-21  August 2008), Intel and Yahoo preview Widget Channel. Widget channel is a application framework that is optimized for devices running on Intel’s hardware platform. Widget channel will allows television users to enjoy rich Internet application while watching their favorite television program. Widget channel will be powered by Yahoo Widget Engine. Widget Channel is fifth generation application framework from Yahoo. The Yahoo! Widget Engine development environment takes advantage of industry standard tools, including JAVASCRIPT, XML, HTML and Flash.

Eric Kim, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the company’s Digital Home Group Said

TV will fundamentally change how we talk about, imagine and experience the Internet. No longer just a passive experience unless the viewer wants it that way, Intel and Yahoo! are proposing a way where the TV and Internet are as interactive, and seamless, as possible. Our close work has produced an exciting application framework upon which the industry can collaborate, innovate and differentiate. This effort is one of what we believe will be many exciting new ways to bring the Internet to the TV, and it really shows the potential of what consumers can look forward to

Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life, Yahoo! Inc, said

On the PC and mobile devices, Yahoo! is a leading starting point for millions of consumers around the world. Yahoo! aims to extend this leadership to the emerging world of Internet-connected TV, which we call the Cinematic Internet™. By partnering with leaders like Intel, we plan to combine the Internet benefits of open user choice, community, and personalization with the performance and scale embodied in the Intel Architecture to transform traditional TV into something bigger, better and more exciting than ever before. By using the popular Yahoo! Widget Engine to power the Widget Channel, we intend to provide an opportunity for all developers and publishers to create new experiences that can reach millions of TV viewers globally. Yahoo! plans to enable the Cinematic Internet™ ecosystem, which will benefit consumers, device makers, advertisers and publishers.

More information can find here

• Intel® And Yahoo!® To Bring The Internet To Television Press release
• Yahoo Connected TV Website
• Intel Developer Forum Website

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Intel Corp., the world’s biggest chipmaker, reported a 25 percent increase in second-quarter profit after demand grew worldwide for personal-computer processors. Net income climbed to $1.6 billion, sales gained 9.1 percent to $9.47 billion.Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said he’s seeing strong demand globally and hasn’t felt any impact from a slowing U.S. economy. The outlook signals that technology may be holding up better than housing and financial markets. Intel also expects shipments of more-profitable laptop processors to overtake those of desktop-computer chips for the first time this year. This is a very important milestone.

Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini sped up the introduction of new products last year, helping the company win market share from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel’s only remaining competitor in computer processors. Otellini, is now focusing on returning to double-digit sales growth by expanding outside the PC chip market.

Intel, whose results serve as a bellwether for computer demand, ushered in earnings season for U.S. technology companies. Microsoft Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Google Inc. and AMD will report results on July 17. So far this year, Intel shares have fallen 22 percent, compared with a 15 percent decline in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. Computer disk-drive maker Seagate Technology also reported results on Tuesday: its quarterly profit fell 70 percent amid an inventory overhang, and its shares fell 9 percent. Programmable chipmaker Altera Corp said its second-quarter profit rose on stronger sales, higher gross margin and lower costs. Its shares rose 7.5 percent.

Shipments of notebook processors rose about 5 percent from the first quarter, Intel released an updated design of its best- selling Centrino notebook chips yesterday to fuel demand this quarter.

The Intel division that makes memory chips and other semiconductors had an operating loss of $706 million last quarter on sales of $300 million. The memory business formed a joint venture to produce so- called Nand flash memory with Micron Technology Inc. The operation is suffering from a glut of the products, which store data in mobile devices such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone. Prices of flash chips fell as much as 20 percent in June. Intel expects price declines to continue for the rest of this year. Otellini also is trying to win sales in the mobile-device market with a new chip called Atom. It’s designed to power future smart phones such as the iPhone and Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry.

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Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system. According to insiders the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly.

“This isn’t a matter of ditching Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,” the person said. An Intel spokesman said the company was testing and deploying Vista in certain departments, but not across the company. Intel’s decision is certain to sting Microsoft because the two companies have worked closely to align hardware and software from the earliest days of the personal computer. Indeed, the corporate duo is known as “Wintel” in the PC industry.

When a company as tech savvy as Intel, with full source code access and having written several large chunks of the OS, says no thank you, you know you have a problem. Well, everyone knows Microsoft has a problem, but it is nice to see it codified in such a black and white way though. Reassuring, like a warm cup of tea, or a public kick to the corporate crown jewels.

The Inquirer, a London-based technology website, was the first one to report Intel’s decision not to roll out Vista across the entire company. Intel is hardly alone in its reluctance to embrace Microsoft’s latest operating system, which was available to corporate customers in November 2006 and to consumers in January 2007. Large companies routinely hold off a year or so after a new version of Windows is introduced before adopting it, waiting for initial bugs to be eliminated and for applications to be written. “But by 18 months, you’d expect to see a significant uptake, and we haven’t seen that,” said David Smith, a Gartner analyst. “There’s not much excitement.”

His Gartner colleague, Michael Silver, said that about 30 percent of corporate customers skip any given new version of Windows. But the percentage will be higher for Vista, Mr. Silver predicted. Gartner’s corporate clients that plan to skip Vista, like Intel, do not see value of this upgrade, particularly since it requires new PC hardware at the time when the economy is weak and corporate budgets are tight. In the end, you have Intel flipping MS the bird, and telling them what they already know, Vista in undeployable by anyone with a grain of common sense.

There are more than 140 million copies of Vista installed on machines worldwide. Consumers and small businesses simply get the operating system that is on a new machine when they buy a PC, and that is Vista. Meanwhile, the Microsoft operating system engine chugs on, phasing out the old and proclaiming the new. The company reiterated this week that, despite some customer protests, it would halt shipments of the previous version of Windows, XP, to retail stores and stop most licensing of XP to PC makers next week. Microsoft also announced that the next version of its operating system, Windows 7, is scheduled to go on sale in January 2010.

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