Google has launched it’s holiday gift website. Google’s holiday gift website includes dozens of categories with special offers such as "Apparel & Accessories," "Computers," "Electronics," "Home & Garden" and "Jewelry." Google holiday websites uses Google Checkout and offers $5, $10, $20 discounts on their purchase. More than 600 stores are participating in Google Holiday website, including StarbucksStore, the HBO Shop, J&R Electronics, and Petco. Google says the discounts will be available through December 17.

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Arts+Labs is a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today’s rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products and services to consumers. From the early development of motion picture technology, voice recordings and radio to today’s 3D computer graphics, streaming digital movies, “on-demand” entertainment and online virtual games, innovative technologies and creativity have always gone hand in hand to enrich our understanding and appreciation of arts, entertainment and culture.

Arts+Labs partners include entertainment companies, software providers, telecommunications providers, artists and creators committed to delivering innovative and creative digital products to consumers. AT&T Inc, Viacom Inc, NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co, Cisco Systems Inc, Microsoft Corp and the Songwriters Guild of America are then members of Arts+Labs. Arts+Labs is co-chaired by Mike McCurry, former White House press secretary to President Bill Clinton and Mark McKinnon, former media adviser to the campaigns of President Bush and current GOP presidential nominee John McCain. SGA President Rick Carnes and Chuck Sims of the law firm Proskauer Rose also have agreed to join Arts+Labs as the first members of its advisory board.After the launch, the Arts+Labs team kicked off a three-city media tour with stops in New York, Nashville and Los Angeles

Microsoft restructuring its Search Business Group to ad a new group that will focus towards the commercial search. Jeff Kelisky CEO of multipath will be General Manager of this group. This new commercial search group focus on Live Search cashback, MSN Shopping, local, consumer mapping, Virtual Earth and mobile. Kelisky will report to Search Business Group GM Brad Goldberg in Redmond but will remain based in London.

Brad Goldberg,  GM Search business group

We are increasing our focus on commercial search, including changes to the search leadership team and engineering team and in order to lead this market we need to bring all find, explore and commerce needs together. (Jeff) will direct this team to ensure Microsoft continues to innovate and deliver so that consumers choose us to find local information and services.

Microsoft currently have only 1.8% share in Europe search market and working very hard to increase search market percentage. Microsoft is also building a research and development center for search technology in Europe. According to zdnet blog Microsoft views maps as “one axis for search.” Other axis may be Enterprise Search and Natural-language search.

You’ll remember when I was in India I announced a $1m programmer from Sun to recognize contributors to a selection of Free/open source communities (and gave a few more details afterwards). In the interim, each of those communities has formed a team to work out how they would like to direct the $175,000 Sun has allocated to them, and I’m delighted to announce that the six programmers are now live. Full details in the press release which links to each of the community sites. pointers to all these programs can be found here http://www.sun.com/opensource/awards.

Apple’s iPhone platform presents an interesting opportunity to developers. With a small form factor and interactive touch screen, the iPhone and iPod Touch have won over millions of users in a short period of time. But this novel design and proprietary platform present a new set of challenges for application developers. Until Apple releases its software development kit (SDK) in February 2008, developers wishing to target the platform must create Web applications that mimic the iPhone’s native look and feel.

Fortunately, a new set of open source tools is available to make this easier. Aptana’s iPhone Development plug-in for Eclipse generates iPhone-specific projects and previews applications in a rotatable viewfinder. Joe Hewitt’s iUi, a Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript framework, contains a grab bag of widgets and pages that emulate the native iPhone experience.

For over a decade Oracle and Microsoft have collaborated to ensure rich interoperability between the two computing environments. Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle Applications enable fast deployment of Oracle-based applications on Windows, and tight integration of .NET applications and Microsoft Office products into your broader IT infrastructure.

Sun Microsystems announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, the world’s most popular open source database. This announcement reaffirms Sun’s position as the leading provider of hardware and software platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

with this announcement, Sun demonstrates its commitment to support customers and ISV’s who choose to implement open source solutions, complementing the strong history and continued partnership with commercial database ISV’s including Oracle, IBM DB2, Sybase and others.

MySQL has over 400 blue chip customers and is used by virtually every Web 2.0 and e-commerce company. This acquisition represents substantial new go to market potential for Sun and ISV partners seeking high growth opportunities.

At Sun, we understand your success, our success and that of our customers are tied together. We constantly look for ways to deliver more value to our partners and grow mutual business opportunities. The Sun Partner Advantage Program for ISV’s connects you to Sun technology, sales and marketing support–giving you the power to innovate, collaborate and accelerate growth.

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majority of people uses Internet explorer as a web browser to browse the Internet and many of time people need some more extension except from those that are provided by Internet Explorer. Here is some Very use full Internet Explorer Add on.All these are free and you can download and install very easily.

1. Ipipi SMS IE: ipipi SMS IE is a handy addition to your Internet Explorer’s tool bar that allows you to send SMS messages to virtually anyone, anywhere in the World, directly from your favorite Internet browser. It also allows you to receive replies from your friends and colleagues. Finally, it extends Explorer’s right click menu list and allows you to select any text or picture that you find on the Internet and send it to any mobile phone on the Planet. After downloading the toolbar and running the installation, you will need to open an ipipi account and then you’ll be sending text messages immediately.

2. Searchons Addon: Based on user comment. Searchons.com is the next big thing in term of quality search results. Using the Searchons Addon will allow you to search the Web using searchons and share your findings with the community. This version is the first release on CNET Download.com

3. Video Download: Download videos from Youtube, Google Video, Pornotube, Grinvi, and many other sites with simply one click. This simple add-on adds a Download Video link to the right click menu panel. Just click on it and a new window will be displayed with the download link. You will be able to download videos to your computer and watch them as many times as you want.

4. AutoRefresher For IE: This Internet Explorer addon automatically refreshes websites for you. You can set it to refresh your pages at custom intervals or any predefined ones. Each browser window has its own refresh control. Istaller/uninstaller are included with this package. Great for surfing Web pages that are updated often.

5. Enterra Download Manager: IE plugin that makes files downloading more effective. This easy to use multifunctional toolbar lets users download files from FTP and HTTP servers via appropriate protocols and lets you control the downloads right in the IE window (Compatible with IE version 6.0 and higher). It also has the feature of multi session downloading and files upload resume on the connection break and restoration. This version is the first release on CNET Download.com.

6. IECount: Addon for Internet Explorer: IECount limits number of IE at desktop, stops pop-ups, starts clipboard URL or e-mail by double click in tray, quickly sets favorite Internet browser’s properties, performs search in 10 best engines (Google, Yahoo), changes proxy settings with given list and time interval. IECount is a set of useful ie tips and tricks to simplify your I1nternet surfing.Version 3.2 improves interface and enhances proxy management.

7. FreeWorldRadio Toolbar: The browser radio allows users to listen to 40+ live radio stations including international radio broadcasts. The user also has the ability to add his or her own favorite radio stations to the software. The radio will remember the user’s settings; they need only to click on play to hear their favorite station. Many functions can be added or deleted. User customization is easily performed. Version 4.5.115 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

8. EasyWebBase: EasyWebBase is a powerful browser addon to help you only save the part you want into MS Word/RTF, Text, HTML and manage your saving like IE favorites but much better. It supports main features as below, Manage your saving in IE directly like IE favorites but much better. Only Save the Part You Want. Support more document formats: MS Word Doc/RTF, HTML, Plain Text. Save mass pages with pre-defined filename and format.

9. YouTube Downloader : it’s software that allows you to download videos from YouTube and many others and convert them to other video formats. The program is easy to use, just specify the URL for the video you want to download and click the Ok! It also allows you to convert downloaded videos for iPod, iPhone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, XVid and MP3. Allows you to access YouTube videos for which you need to be 18+ years of age. Now, plays videos downloaded.Version 2.1.4 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

10. Mapper: Mapper is an addon for Internet Explorer 7 which enhances your online map-viewing experience. It hooks into IE as a toolbar button, exposing several features. Switching of map types The first feature is switching of map image source. Basically, when you’re viewing a virtual earth map, it allows you to change its imagery to Google Maps imagery and vice versa. Extending the IE7 RSS reader. The second feature extends the RSS reader built in IE7 with GeoRSS support. It can display GeoRSS on a map, or it can even try to show an ordinary feed on a map. My Collections, when you’re viewing GeoRSS in the Mapper-viewer you can choose to save the feed to the My Collections list. This allows you to show different sources simultaneously. Next to adding feeds to My Collections you can also add data from Web sites using either the Virtual Earth SDK or Google Maps API. Version 0.11 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

Samsung Electronics Co. said in March it will debut a new 500-gigabyte model,
larger than any other currently available.
Currently, the largest laptop drive on the market is a 320 GB model by Western Digital Corp.
Samsung’s Spinpoint M6 500 GB hard drive is scheduled to launch in March.