Palm Inc. on Wednesday introduced a compact portable computer to accompany its Treo smartphone, seeking to regain its competitive edge in the crowded high-end handheld device market.

The new “Foleo” is about the size of a hardcover book and, at 2.5 pounds, half the weight of other small laptop computers. It is designed to be used with a smartphone, to help business travelers better manage their e-mail and documents by offering a 10-inch screen, full keyboard and wireless technology.

Palm, best known for personal digital assistants (PDAs) and Treo phones, said it expects the Foleo to eventually work with rival smartphones such as Research In Motion’s Blackberry and Apple Inc.’s iPhone, although it has not discussed technology-sharing agreements with those companies.

Company founder Jeff Hawkins said he expected unit sales of Foleo — priced at $599 before a $100 rebate beginning this summer — to be smaller than Treo units sales at first.

Sweden became the first country on Wednesday to open an embassy in the virtual world Second Life.

Created to promote The Nordic state’s image and culture, the embassy does not offer any real or virtual consular services but provides information on its real world counterparts.

Second Life, an Internet-based world where users create characters known as avatars, is run by Linden Lab, based in San Francisco.

The opening of the embassy was attended on line by Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, in the form of an avatar, and at a real life press conference in Stockholm.

IBM Corp. laid off 1,570 people Wednesday, primarily from an ongoing overhaul of operations in its giant technology services unit.

The company carried out a similar level of job cuts at the beginning of the month, for a total of 3,023 in this quarter and 3,720 for the year, according to IBM spokesman Edward Barbini.

That amounts to roughly 1 percent of the company, which employed 355,000 people at the beginning of the year. But even these small numbers reflect a big project inside IBM to transform its business.

CBS Corp. said on Wednesday it bought Last.fm, the online music service that allows fans with similar tastes to connect, for $280 million in a bid to attract young audiences.

The London-based service has more than 15 million active users in over 200 countries, CBS said, and has earned praise for a system that recommends songs by tracking users’ music-playing habits and linking them to other fans with similar tastes.

Within a year, CBS aims to apply Last.fm’s technology to build new communities for online videos that will include its own archive of hit shows, CBS digital chief Quincy Smith said in a phone interview.

Google is keeping a close eye on a small, suburban Melbourne start-up that claims to be developing a search engine that improves on the world leader.

MyLiveSearch, which plans to go live as a public beta in a few weeks, is the brainchild of self-taught software developer Rob Gabriel.

Mr Gabriel, 35, says his search engine gives better, more relevant results than the search king because it is a truly “live” search.

Google’s search engine works by building a vast index of web pages, via automated “spiders” that crawl through billions of web pages a year. However this represents only a fraction of the enormous, sprawling internet, and the index can never be entirely up to date.

MyLiveSearch is fundamentally different. It works through a small browser plug-in. The search terms are put through Google, or other indexed search databases, but those results are treated as “starting points” alongside the user’s bookmarks and other popular web hubs.

From there, the live search takes over, crawling through hundreds of web pages connected to those starting points in search of more information relevant to the search.

Mr Gabriel says the results come back in seconds, and are almost always richer, more detailed and more useful than a standard, index-based search. His product can also search the so-called “invisible web” of dynamically-generated web pages that search engines have trouble indexing.

Apple released iTunes 7.2 updated in the Mac OS X Software Update tonight, which offers support for “iTunes Plus”, Apple’s new DRM-free $1.29 offerings announced in April.

With iTunes 7.2, preview and purchase iTunes Plus music—new higher-quality, DRM-free music downloads from participating music labels.

Despite the software update, the Apple iTunes Store itself does not show any DRM-Free music currently available for purchase.

Picture a surface that can recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Today at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil Microsoft Surface, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, dynamic surface that provides effortless interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.

The intuitive user interface works without a traditional mouse or keyboard, allowing people to interact with content and information on their own or collaboratively with their friends and families, just like in the real world. Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that small groups can use at the same time. From digital finger painting to a virtual concierge, Surface brings natural interaction to the digital world in a new and exciting way.

“With Surface, we are creating more intuitive ways for people to interact with technology,” Ballmer said. “We see this as a multibillion dollar category, and we envision a time when surface computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror. Surface is the first step in realizing that vision.”

Microsoft Surface puts people in control of their experiences with technology, making everyday tasks entertaining, enjoyable and efficient. Imagine ordering a beverage during a meal with just the tap of a finger. Imagine quickly browsing through music and dragging favorite songs onto a personal playlist by moving a finger across the screen. Imagine creating and sending a personal postcard of vacation pictures instantly to friends and family, while still wearing flip-flops.

Surface also features the ability to recognize physical objects that have identification tags similar to bar codes. This means that when a customer simply sets a wine glass on the surface of a table, a restaurant could provide them with information about the wine they’re ordering, pictures of the vineyard it came from and suggested food pairings tailored to that evening’s menu. The experience could become completely immersive, letting users access information on the wine-growing region and even look at recommended hotels and plan a trip without leaving the table.

Google Maps just released a new feature that lets you actually look around the street. Seems to only be working in major cities for now.

In certain locations, you can view and navigate within street-level imagery. Here’s how: Blue outlines show roads where street view is available.
The person pin icon shows where you are on the map. The green arrow points in the direction you’re looking. You can drag the icon to navigate to a different location. You can also just click on a blue outlined road to go there.
Drag the street view to look around 360°. Use the arrow buttons to navigate down the street. You can also use the arrow keys on the keyboard.
(via digg)

Last week a Google engineer told us “The next big thing for image search would be the ability to search based on visual concepts, such as a picture of a house on a mountain with a river in front of it.” And now, Google Images allows you to restrict your search to a specific category – albeit in an “unofficial” mode only – and one of these categories may well be powered by actual image recognition (as opposed to textual keyword analysis). Right now, the available modes are (at least) the following:

* show everything (the default old search)
* show faces
* show news images

Yoggie Security Systems has squeezed a complete hardware firewall for Windows systems into a USB key sized form-factor. The “Yoggie Pico” runs Linux 2.6 along with 13 security applications on a 520MHz PXA270, a powerful Intel processor popular in smartphones and other high-end consumer devices.

GoDaddy.com, the leading registration company for Internet domain names, has agreed to take over and manage more than 850,000 addresses belonging to customers of a troubled rival, officials announced Tuesday.

RegisterFly customers had been in limbo following financial and operational troubles at the company. Officials say many customers had been unable to renew domain names before they expired or to transfer them to another company.

The takeover, reached with the support of the Internet’s key oversight agency, calls for RegisterFly to give GoDaddy its customer databases and for GoDaddy to start running those names within a week. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“Jeopardy!” has answered the question of how to integrate the online world with America’s classic game show with the Jeopardy! Google Daily Challenge.

Beginning Friday, viewers who log on to Jeopardy.com will find an additional clue/answer drawn from one of the featured categories from that day’s broadcast to which they can use the Google search application to find the correct answer. Online participants will then be entered into a sweepstakes for a chance to win the daily $100 prize or the $25,000 grand prize.

The contest will continue through July 13 with a new clue posted each day.