Yahoo’s new ad system is designed to let marketers target prospective consumers not only by the search terms the people use, but also by their demographics, location and what they do on other areas of the Yahoo network, executives said.

The system, scheduled to launch in the U.S. in the third quarter, offers enhanced ease of use, advanced testing features, geo-targeting and automated analytics, Tim Cadogan, vice president of search, said during the company’s analyst day in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Source: News.com

A Trojan with malicious rootkit features hidden in a legitimate software package distributed by online gaming tools vendor Check Raised has the ability to hijack log-in information for multiple online poker Web sites, according to a warning from Finnish security vendor F-Secure.

The spying Trojan, identified as Backdoor.Win32.Small.la, was built into a Rakeback calculator application (RBCalc.exe) distributed by Check Raised to help online poker players keep track of scaled commission fees taken by the Web site operator.

The rake calculator is offered as an executable file that players runs on their machine to calculate rake from hands they previously played (stored in hand history files or a poker tracker database).

However, according to F-Secure virus researcher Jarkko Turkulainen, when the rake calculator is run, it silently drops several files into the Windows system directory to monitor running processes and spy on connections to several popular online poker Web sites.

Source: eWeek

An online game based on the Columbine High School massacre is drawing criticism from relatives of those who died in the 1999 attack, including a father who says it trivializes the actions of the two teen killers.

The game, Super Columbine Massacre RPG, was posted on a Web site last year, but is becoming more popular now. It draws on investigative material, including images of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, who killed 12 classmates and a teacher before committing suicide.

Source: AP

Thanks to pirates, or rather the fear of them, the Intel edition of Apple’s OS X is now a proprietary operating system.

Mac developers and power users no longer have the freedom to alter, rebuild, and replace the OS X kernel from source code. Stripped of openness, it no longer possesses the quality that elevated Linux to its status as the second most popular commercial OS.

Source: Macworld

As part of its regular status reports to the judge, the Justice Department last week called for an extension of certain parts of the final judgment reached by Microsoft and the government, shifting its end date from November 2007 to 2009. Microsoft agreed to the idea, leaving both sides to await the judge’s approval at an already-scheduled status conference.

Source: News.com

Stamps.com has announced a deal with Adobe Systems to help consumers make PhotoStamps with Adobe Photoshop products. PhotoStamps are legal U.S. postage that use images such as personal photos and company logos.

The Web-enabled Photoshop feature will let users see PhotoStamps Web pages from within the application.

Source: News.com

Anti-spam firm Blue Security is to cease trading after deciding its escalating conflict with a renegade spammer was placing the internet as a whole in jeopardy.

Blue reckons it’s unable to safely reintroduce its controversial service without exposing other members of the net community to potential attack.

“It’s clear to us that [quitting] would be the only thing to prevent a full-scale cyber-war that we just don’t have the authority to start,” Reshef told washingtonpost.com. “Our users never signed up for this kind of thing.”

Blue’s decision to shut up shop is understandable but regrettable, because it represents a significant victory by a spammer in the fight to control the internet. In effect, PharmaMaster has succeeded in his main aim of getting Blue Security to dismantle.

Source: TheRegister

Advanced Micro Devices launched a dual-core version of its mobile Turion chip, bringing its brand of dual-core technology to thin-and-light notebooks. In addition, the company said it had begun shipping a mobile Sempron chip, upgraded to include 64-bit capabilities.

Four chips were unveiled: the 1.6-GHz TL-50, the 1.6-GHz TL-52, the 1.8-GHz TL-56 and the 2.0-GHz TL-60, ranging in price from $184 to $354 in 1,000-unit lots.

Source: PCMagazine

Internet search leader Google Inc. is making it easier to post and share online videos on its site, hoping to widen the appeal of a service that so far has been eclipsed by upstart YouTube.com.

Until the system was changed late Tuesday, uploading a video to Google’s site required a special piece of software to be installed on a computer. The Mountain View-based company has retooled its service so that step is no longer required.

Google also is shortening the wait for uploaded videos to appear on its site.

Source: AP

Microsoft Corp. plans software to help workers simultaneously find information on their computer desktop, the Internet and corporate network, the latest effort to counter competitors such as search engine leader Google Inc.

The free download which will be called Windows Live Search, will be announced Wednesday and released in test form later this summer, also is designed to help manage information overload.

Source: AP

Microsoft hinted the week of May 15 that it will be forced to move more jobs abroad if the U.S. government doesn’t raise the cap on H-1B visas.

The Senate resumed session May 15 to debate the Immigration Reform Bill, which makes a provision to nearly double the number of allotted H-1B visas available annually to 115,000 from 65,000, reigniting the ongoing debate between labor advocates who consider the program detrimental to the American workforce, and employers that consider the limits unnecessarily protectionist.

“The cap on H1-B visas has limited the high-tech industry’s ability to attract and retain the best and the brightest workers.” Said Jack Krumholtz, managing director of federal government affairs for Microsoft.

Source: eWeek