Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to help improve your coverage in the Google index. It’s a collaborative crawling system that enables you to communicate directly with Google to keep us informed of all your web pages, and when you make changes to these pages.

With Google Sitemaps you get: Better crawl coverage to help people find more of your web pages, Fresher search results; A smarter crawl because you can provide specific information about all your web pages, such as when a page was last modified or how frequently a page changes.

Google Sitemaps is an experiment in web crawling. Using Sitemaps to inform and direct Google crawler to betten index your site.

arstechnica.com published an interesting article about Xbox 360 CPU code name Xenon, covering the design of its individual parts, and how each part fits with the vision.

Source: arstechnica.com

Consumers who had battery problems with older versions of the popular iPod digital music player will get $50 vouchers and extended service warranties under a tentative settlement in a class-action lawsuit.

Lawyers representing consumers in the state court case against Apple Computer Inc. said Thursday that the settlement could affect as many as 2 million people nationwide who purchased first-, second- and third-generation iPods through May 2004.

Apple confirmed the settlement but deferred immediate comment.

According to the terms of the settlement, people who fill out a claim form are entitled to receive $50 redeemable toward the purchase of any Apple products or services except iTunes downloads or iTunes gift certificates. They can redeem the voucher within 18 months of final settlement approval at any bricks-and-mortar Apple Store or online.

Consumers who had battery troubles can also get their battery or iPod replaced through the lawsuit. Apple currently replaces or repairs defective products that are returned within one year but the class-action settlement extends the warranty to two years, plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

Consumers who file a claim must have a receipt. Apple didn’t want to extend vouchers or extra warranty protection to people who bought their Apples on eBay auctions or other sites with used or liquidated merchandise, plaintiffs’ attorneys said.

Source: AP

Microsoft Corp. plans to announce as early as next week that it is ready to ship a Windows 2000 Update Rollup, the final security patch for the 5-year-old operating system.

The Update Rollup, which replaces Windows 2000 SP5 (Service Pack 5), is a cumulative set of hot fixes, security patches and critical updates packaged together for easy deployment.

The Update Rollup comes just one month before mainstream support for Windows 2000 client and server releases expires on June 30. Microsoft divides its support lifecycle into two phases: mainstream and extended. Once a product enters the extended support period, Microsoft charges for support.

Source: eWeek

Developers of the Mozilla Foundation’s open-source e-mail client have added a podcasting feature to its arsenal and improved its defense against phishing attacks.

The changes were highlighted Tuesday in a Mozilla blog that discussed modifications to the software before its upcoming 1.1 release. They are not available in the current 1.0.2 release.

Source: News.com

Drawing into question the safety of Google’s indexing system, the Web site all-in-one-business.com managed to “hijack” Google’s position in its search results with a 302 server redirect. Following the redirect, a query for “Google AdSense” returned results pointing to the unrelated site, rather than Google itself.

This type of incident can happen because of the way that Google implements the W3 HTTP specification. 302 redirects temporarily swap one domain name with another using rudimentary scripting. The spirit and letter of the specification requires Google to infer that content hosted by the 302 target is owned by the party doing the redirect.

Source: BetaNews

Microsoft said Thursday that it will introduce new XML-based file formats for its Excel, PowerPoint and Word applications when the company launches its Office 12 software package next year.

Company officials said the move to replace Microsoft’s traditional binary file formats with open-standards-based XML versions will allow companies using Office 12 to more easily access data across XML’s various applications.

Source: News.com