Microsoft Corp has begun testing technology that brings together a person’s pictures, documents and other data scattered across a growing number of machines with the goal of allowing people to access their information from anywhere and at any time.

Microsoft’s “Live Mesh” program, which uses the Internet as a data hub, synchronizes files across computers, phones and other devices so a digital picture frame at home could show a picture minutes after it was taken by a cell phone.

Initially the program will be limited to 10,000 U.S. testers and computers running its Windows operating system, but Microsoft said it plans to extend Live Mesh over the next few months to mobile phones, computers from Apple Inc and other devices connected to the Internet.

An advertiser sued Google Inc. in federal court Tuesday claiming the company deceived him and charged for ads displayed on third-party Web sites, even though he left blank an “optional” box that seemed to address the issue.

The dispute is over Google’s popular AdSense program, which targets ads to keywords in articles and other content at participating sites. The program complements the traditional AdWords program, which runs targeted ads alongside Google’s search results. Ads under both programs generate the bulk of Google’s revenues.

The lawsuit accuses Google of defrauding advertisers out of millions of dollars collectively by “redefining the universally understood meaning of an input form left blank.”

The plaintiff in the case, David Almeida, had signed up for Google ads to promote his private investigation business in Massachusetts. Because he did not want to buy AdSense ads, Almeida said he left the maximum per-click bid blank, believing “optional” meant he could opt out of the AdSense program by doing so.

Instead, it turned out the AdWords bid applied when he did not exercise that option, and he should have put “zero” into the box to opt out, said his attorney, Brian Kabateck.

Google gave up control of its Keyhole Markup Language, or KML, in order that the file format used in Google Earth and Google Maps could become an international standard.

“Starting today, Google no longer controls KML,” said Michael Weiss-Malik, KML product manager at Google, in a blog post. “The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international standards body, has announced the completion of KML’s standardization process. KML has become an OGC Standard, and the OGC will take responsibility for maintaining and extending it. This transfer of ownership is a strong reflection of Google’s commitment to open standards. Fundamentally, our interest is not to control information, but rather to encourage its spread.”

The OGC includes 345 companies, government agencies, and academic organizations from around the world with an interest in geographic data standards. In addition to Internet companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, the organization counts as members the likes of Boeing, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to name a few.

Having seen Google set up their Google Analytics product for free (in an attempt to get everyone to spend more money on adwords) and then seen Microsoft release their version of a free web analytics tool into beta, Yahoo have decided to do the same thing, by buying someone else and releasing it into the wild for free. Great news for bloggers who don’t want to sign up for Google’s ‘evil’ plans.

Business travellers to Russia might want to keep their laptops and iPhones well-concealed - not from muggers, necessarily, but from the country’s recently formed regulatory super-agency, Rossvyazokhrankultura (short for the Russian Mass Media, Communications and Cultural Protection Service).

In the UK, Ofcom made deregulation one of its first priorities upon coming into existence, but the Russian equivalent is doing just the reverse, including an ominous-sounding policy of requiring registration for every Wi-Fi device and hotspot, according to a report this week from news agency Fontanka.

Rossvyazokhrankultura’s interpretation of current law holds that users must register any electronics that use the frequency involved in Wi-Fi communications, said Vladimir Karpov, the deputy director of the agency’s communications monitoring division, according to an English commentary provided by website The Other Russia.

Police will have powers to frisk people they suspect of carrying lasers and those without reason to have them - such as educators, architects or astronomers - will be fined up to $5000.

NSW Premier Morris Iemma said today the Government would ban the most powerful laser pointers and make it a summary offence to carry any laser pointer without a lawful reason.

Class three and four laser pointers will be declared prohibited weapons and carrying them could attract a maximum penalty of 14 years’ jail, he said.

Mr Iemma said the misuse of these devices had the potential to cause mass murder.

“It only takes a fraction of a second for a pilot to become temporarily blinded and that could have catastrophic consequences,” Mr Iemma said.

Groklaw is reporting that some people have decided to compare the OOXML schema to actual Microsoft Office 2007 documents.

It won’t surprise you to know that Office 2007 failed miserably. If you go by the strict OOXML schema, you get a 17 MiB file containing approximately 122,000 errors, and ’somewhat less’ with the transitional OOXML schema. Most of the problems reportedly relate to the serialization/deserialization code.

Holloman Air Force Base will say farewell Monday to the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, which the nation is retiring from its arsenal after 27 years.

The angular black radar-evading planes are being put in mothballs.

The last F-117s scheduled to fly will leave Holloman on Monday, then stop in Palmdale, Calif., for another retirement ceremony before arriving at their final destination — Tonopah Test Range Airfield in Nevada, where the fighter made its first flight in 1981.

Holloman’s ceremony will include a four-plane flyby, the last opportunity to see the stealths in the air over New Mexico, said Alan Ponder, media liaison for the base’s 49th Fighter Wing.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which managed the F-117 program, held an informal, private retirement ceremony last month.

Holloman had been the only base to have the stealths since the squadron moved in mid-1992 to southern New Mexico from Tonopah.

The Air Force decided to accelerate the F-117s’ retirement to free funding to modernize the rest of the fleet. The Nighthawk is being replaced by the F-22 Raptor, which also has stealth technology.

A Swedish policeman who helped investigate The Pirate Bay is now working for Warners Brothers, one of the big-name film companies that helped drive the investigation and is now a plaintiff in the pending court case against the swashbuckling P2P file sharing site.

As reported in Swedish by the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan and in English by The Local, this policeman took his job with Warner several months after the preliminary Pirate Bay investigation was completed, but he’s scheduled to appear as a witness when the case goes to trial.

“The question is how long this was under consideration. If it was under consideration at the time of the investigation then it is a scandal,” said Peter Althin, a lawyer defending the four men behind The Pirate Bay, including Peter Althin.

“This is a judicial scandal,” Sunde said. “Talk about a conflict of interests.”

According to Althin, if it turns out the policeman discussed a job with Warner Brothers before the investigation played out, Warner and its fellow plaintiffs would have to ditch their court finding and start all over again.

Commodore International is close to folding. The Dutch company that owns the brand was declared bankrupt this week, but a spokesman said it will appeal the court order.

The original Commodore International, an American company best known for the legendary Commodore 64 computer in the 1980s, declared bankruptcy in 1994. However, the brand refused to die.

German retailer Escom paid $14m for Commodore International and the brand was then taken over by Tulip Computers in the Netherlands. In 2004, Tulip sold the Commodore name to another Dutch firm, Yeahronimo. In the past three years the company has tried to capitalise on the Commodore brand with new products such as joysticks, gaming and video players.

While Commodore is listed on the US over-the-counter market, most operations are carried out from the Netherlands. After disappointing sales of its ambitious Gravel line of personal media players, the firm shed many employees in recent months.

Unsurprisingly, Commodore expects its figures for FY 2007 to be substantially lower than previously estimated. Commodore is expected to announce a €10m loss at a shareholders’ meeting in Amsterdam next Friday.

More trouble lies ahead. Former employees have threatened Commodore with a lawsuit to secure back-payments. And last month Commodore lost a court case against a former partner called Phillar. That company, which was to develop a navigation tool with Commodore, was poorly paid and says it will now seek €9m in damages.

At least three Dutch creditors are demanding an undisclosed sum from Commodore. They went to the bankruptcy court this week in an effort to recoup the debt. Commodore says it wasn’t consulted when bankruptcy was filed and will seek a solution. Official receiver JJ Dingemans told The Register that if Commodore can pay its creditors, he will advise the court to lift Commodore’s litigation.

Intel posted price cuts on Sunday that included reductions of 50 percent on select quad-core processors. The chipmaker also introduced new Celeron and Core 2 Duo processor models.

The price of the Core 2 Quad Q6700 (2.66GHz) fell 50 percent from $530 to $266, while the quad-core Xeon X3230 (2.66GHz) saw an identical cut: from $530 to $266.

Celeron price-cut highlights include the Celeron 430 (1.80GHz), reduced 23 percent from $44 to $34 and the dual-core Celeron E1200 (1.60GHz), falling 19 percent from $53 to $43.

The dual-core Xeon 3085 (3.00Ghz) was reduced 29 percent from $266 to $188, and the Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (3.00GHz), from $266 to $183 (31 percent).

Danny Kennedy may have come up with a way to make solar panels an impulse buy.

Sungevity, Kennedy’s company, has come up with a Web-based system for evaluating the solar potential for a given home through satellite data. Customers log onto Sungevity’s site and provide an address and some information about their monthly electrical bill.

Within 24 hours, the company sends customers a quote for installing a solar system, an estimate of how much the system will save them over 25 years, the prospective increase in the value of their home, and simulated imagery of what their home might look like after solar panels are installed. Traditionally, the process that provides all that information takes days and a physical examination of the roof.

“We do all that (the calculations for preparing the estimate) in about 10 to 15 minutes,” he said.