Buzz Out Loud 758: Return of the living MicroHoo

The rotten corpse of the Microsoft-Yahoo merger has apparently reanimated itself and is wandering down Wall Street, munching on the brains of News Corp. and Time Warner, recruiting them to its unholy cause. Sigh. In other news, Microsoft has a new Office subscription service, Blockbuster decided Circuit City just isn't worth it, and we debunk the Texas PC repair hysteria that's sweeping the blogosphere.
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EPISODE 758

Microsoft seeks partners for new run at Yahoo
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121496732802022117.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9982741-7.html

Office subscription service ready to go
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9982212-56.html

Blockbuster abandons Circuit City bid
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9982618-7.html

PINs stolen from Citibank ATMs
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9982500-7.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25495280/

Researchers: 637 million browser users at risk
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10789_3-9981954-57.html

Texas PC repair now requires PI license
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2324220,00.asp
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/06/27/0627computertech.html

Apple orders 50 million iPhone NAND chips from Samsung, rest of world put on hold?
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/02/apple-eats-first-at-samsungs-nand-table-rest-of-industry-starv/

TV Viewers’ average age hits 50 years old
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/01/2121233

AT&T says original iPhones can be inactivated and used as Wi-Fi iPods
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/07/02/att_says_original_iphones_can_be_inactivated_and_used_as_wifi_ipods.html

VOICE MAIL

Roberto Portland
About the Netflix profiles.

Lee Sacramento
Why I don't like indexable Flash.

E-MAIL

Hi Guys.
Just a quick reminder--what you guys call a degradable HTML version, I, as a nonphoton--dependent person (a blind person, for those not up on the latest PC lingo I'm trying to spread) call an accessible version. Molly's sigh of relief at the prospect of not having to put up this second page was a gasp of horror for me and those of my ilk.

Screen readers do a miserable job reading Flash based pages for the very reason it's hard to index them, and without an alternate degradable version I wouldn't be able to access an increasing amount of the Interweb.
Thanks.
--Bill

I still use Limewire for the quick one song downloads, and torrent my albums. Because of both the cost (free) and the higher bitrate/quality than iTunes.

Well that’s all changed now. Last night I used Amazon’s MP3 service because of its 256kb/s bitrate mp3’s mainly.

> I have a Mac so I downloaded and installed the Mac version of Amazon’s MP3 Downloader very easily. After that, and signing into my Amazon account, It’s literally a 1-click process.

You click Buy Album… less than a minute later the entire album is in my iTunes. Full of all the valid metadata and album artwork.

I will never obtain music via P2P again. Amazon’s MP3 service is cheap, reliable, high quality, and supereasy to use! Also, it comes with all the correct metadata and album art, which is important to me when I’m using my iPhone and Apple TV.

--Don

Buzz Crew!
I hate to be “that” guy, but since I have my degree in history, I though I’d let you know that Max from Fresno needs a friendly historical reminder. Lenin followed the Romanovs, not Stalin. So, the time line was as follows: Romanovs–>Lenin–>Stalin–>etc. What is really scary is the correlation to the tech world. Under this corrected time line, XP=Romanovs, Vista=Lenin, and Windows 7=Stalin? Lenin was terrible and offered no downgrade option, but Stalin exterminated over 50 million people…so Windows 7 is really the Apocalypse (or at least one of the horsemen).

Enjoy the tweets and the show,
--Shawn in Greeley, Colo.

Yesterday you were talking about WiMAX being deployed for the first time in the U.S. in some small town, but I received an interesting piece of junk snail mail on Saturday from AT&T proclaiming “There’s a new internet in town!” They advertise up to 2 megabits per second (not that fast, but a start) and charge $20 a month for 384kbps speed when bundled with phone service. The interesting thing is they are selling this service in Anchorage, Alaska, not exactly tech capital of the world (we don’t have AT&T 3G coverage anywhere in the state). Here is the link to their AT&T Alascom WiMAX service page. http://www.attalascom.com/home/anchorage.html
Love the Show
--Mark from Anchorage, Ala.