Google on Wednesday will begin to offer people custom accounts to search over their personal query history, in a move to outdo rivals and endear Web surfers.

The search king will unveil My Search History, another of its experimental services that takes a page from longstanding “My” programs from Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN and others. However, unlike typical personal portal services, such as customized stocks and headlines, Google’s feature will focus exclusively on archiving personal search histories for later recall.

“We have a relationship with our users, and extending the depth of that relationship to provide more information” will be beneficial to them, said Alan Eustace, a vice president of engineering at Google.

Google’s new service will search the full text of Web pages viewed from a query list; show related records of search history; and show a graphical calendar of consumers’ search activity on any given day. Most importantly, the service will automatically integrate with Web search so that once people have signed up and logged on they can view their personalized history alongside general information from the Web.

Addressing consumer privacy, Google said that search history data is password-protected and stored securely on its servers. People also can pause search tracking or remove records from their history.

Source: News.com

Playboy.com today has announced its next step in delivering digital and downloadable beauties with the launch of its newest feature “PlayboyStation Portable.” Given the tremendous popularity of the new Sony PlayStation Portable(R), Playboy.com has created a sci-fi themed pictorial of the Cyber Girl of the Year 2005 Amy Sue Cooper that was photographed and formatted specifically for viewing on this device.

Playboy.com first harnessed the burgeoning handheld digital photo revolution last December by offering some of its sexiest girls next door in an exclusive “iBod” editorial feature for Apple’s iPod Photo(R). That feature was an international sensation, and thousands of tech-savvy customers visited Playboy.com to download the customized galleries.

“We know that many Playboy fans are also gaming enthusiasts who are likely to buy this type of device so it was a natural progression for us to design this sexy, action-themed feature,” said John D. Thomas, editor of Playboy.com. “We always strive to stay ahead of the high-tech curve so as technology continues to change, we will continue to create features that will deliver Playboy content to customers on any media platform they wish to use.”

The “PlayboyStation Portable” editorial feature on Playboy.com consists of two free non-nude galleries and one free video feature. Additional nude digital content is available exclusively for Playboy Cyber Club members in Playboy’s subscription site.

Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE), today announced plans for Station Exchange(TM), the official auction site for SOE games. Station Exchange, scheduled for launch in late June, will be the official, secure way for EverQuest II subscribers to buy and sell the rights to use characters, items and coin in a player-to-player auction setting.

“The unsanctioned secondary market for online games is rapidly growing and more and more of our players are taking part in it,” said John Smedley. “Not only are we answering the demands of a sizable portion of our subscriber base, but we are also set on establishing the standard for online game sales. SOE is in a unique position to help guide the industry, just as we have since we first opened the world of EverQuest to the public six years ago.”

Leading industry analyst group DFC Intelligence estimates that the online game industry in 2003 was $1.9 billion. By 2006, they predict revenue growing to $5.2 billion with continued steady growth, with worldwide online game revenue reaching $9.8 billion by 2009. As this business has grown, so too has the “secondary” market, which is based around the unsupported buying and selling of in-game characters, items and coins. Unofficial estimates of underground “secondary” market trade volume range from $100 - $800 million a year, with titles such as SOE’s EverQuest and EverQuest II making up 20% of those sales.

The difference between Station Exchange and other third party, non-sanctioned sites can be summed up in one word: security. When a player decides to auction the use of an item or character, that item is removed from the game world and is moved to a secure Station Exchange server. Interested buyers will be able to browse through all auctions, and will have the comfort of seeing exactly what they are bidding on and knowing that once an auction is complete, the item or character will be placed in their account. Since all transactions happen through Station Exchange servers run by SOE, fraud will be virtually eliminated and the transfer becomes an automatic process. All activities on Station Exchange will be player-to-player on servers designated “Exchange Enabled”; Sony Online Entertainment itself will not sell items, characters or coin.

After several delays, Microsoft is set to deliver in June the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) patching tool and the Microsoft Update (MU) software patching service, a company executive says.

Both MU and WSUS were originally due in the first half of 2004, but were delayed several times. Microsoft has blamed the delays partly on work it had to do on Windows XP Service Pack 2, a security-focused upgrade to Windows XP released last August. Most recently the company has said it would deliver MU and WSUS in the first half of 2005, a target it expects to make.

MU is the successor to the current Windows Update service. It is a single service for users to get patches for a number of Microsoft products, not just Windows. The service will be aimed mostly at consumers and small businesses, as Windows Update is today.

Source: PCWorld

Adobe Acrobat Reader 6 is alleged to be prone to a memory corruption vulnerability. It is reported that the issue presents itself when the affected software is processing malformed files.

It is reported that this issue may be leveraged to execute arbitrary code in the context of an application that is linked to the vulnerable library.

Google has sued Froogles.com, charging the rival shopping search engine with trademark infringement.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, the No. 1 search engine, filed a 68-page complaint against Froogles.com in the Eastern District Court of New York. The complaint alleges that Froogles.com proprietor Richard Wolfe, a New York state resident, illegally traded on Google’s famous name and search brand for profit with a “nearly identical” mark.

“Upon information and belief, the defendant selected the mark Froogles with full knowledge of Google’s prior rights in its Google name and mark,” according to the filing. “As between the parties, Google is the senior user of marks that incorporate the formative–Oogle for Internet search services.”

Google asked the court to shut down its rival and order transfer of the domain name, among other relief.

Source: News.com

File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet can be imprisoned for up to three years, under a bill that’s slated to become the most Draconian expansion of online piracy penalties in years.

The bill, approved by Congress on Tuesday, is written so broadly it could make a federal felon of anyone who has even one copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released. Stiff fines of up to $250,000 can also be levied. Penalties would apply regardless of whether any downloading took place.

Source: News.com