AP - THE OFFERING: Apple Inc.'s new music-discovery feature, Ping, which lets you see what songs your friends are buying and recommend some of your favorites to them.

PC World - A new study by security vendor Symantec reports that Internet crime has grown into a widespread problem globally. It also provides intriguing insights into consumers' lax attitudes toward online piracy, plagiarism, and other illegally or unethical activities.

AP - OOPS: Microsoft Corp. had to apologize to a small West Virginia town and a 26-year-old gamer after suspending him from its Xbox Live service for listing his location as Fort Gay — a name the company considered offensive.

bossanovalithium writes "Back in 1936 — 74 years ago — boffins accepted that about 3.3Khz was the accepted frequency that telephone calls are going to run on and it's been like that, generally, ever since. Call quality is reasonable but leaves a lot to be desired. Think calls from Skype to Skype where quality is often crystal clear." It's crazy to me that (for people with decent mics at least) Ventrillo sounds better than corporate conference calls.

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AP - Apple Inc.'s new music-discovery feature, Ping, is a potentially useful addition to iTunes. With it, you can see what songs your friends are buying and recommend some of your favorites to them.

Macworld.com - To coincide with the release of iOS 4.1 for the iPhone and iPod touch on Wednesday, Apple also released iPhone Configuration Utility (iPCU) 3.1, an update to its device management utility for businesses and the enterprise.

jsuda writes "You've got to have a lot of confidence and nerve to write and try to sell a nearly 400 page book on cooking to the take-out pizza and cola set. No cookbook is likely to turn many geeks into chefs or take them away from their computer screens. However, even though Cooking for Geeks contains a large number of recipes, it is not a conventional cookbook but a scientific explanation of the how and why of cooking which will certainly appeal to that group, as well as to cooking professionals and intellectually curious others." Read on for the rest of jsuda's review.

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Mashable - Last year's Super Bowl champions, the New Orleans Saints, will kick off their season with a home opener against the Minnesota Vikings Thursday night. In anticipation of the game, running back Reggie Bush is giving away eight autographed footballs to fans who track them down scavenger-hunt-style.

AFP - British mobile phone giant Vodafone lost a legal appeal Wednesday against an Indian tax bill estimated to be 2.0 billion dollars relating to the group's 2007 purchase of local group Hutchison Essar.

GCPSoft writes with this quote from a Google announcement: "Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type."

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AFP - Google on Wednesday began scouring the Internet in real time, delivering results as fast a a person can type.

AP - Amazon.com Inc., seeking to expand its position in the music download market against rivals like Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store, has purchased online music retailer Amie Street for an undisclosed amount.

AP - Ten people have been arrested in raids across Europe against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet, Belgian police said Wednesday.

Meshach writes "A study out of Canada claims that Facebook is a magnet for narcissists and people with low self-esteem. The theory is that these people use the site as a means of self promotion or to feel important."

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Macworld.com - Apple on Wednesday released iOS 4.1, the first major update to its mobile OS.

PC World - Following up Norton's new product launch early Wednesday, Trend Micro announced an overhaul of its entire home user product line on Wednesday, under the moniker "Titanium." The new products, Titanium Internet Security, Titanium Maximum Security, and Titanium Antivirus+, include new features that use cloud computing for malware detection.

eldavojohn writes "News is out of BP's report on the gulf spill that shifts some of the blame on to other companies like Transocean that worked with BP in erecting the Deepwater Horizon rig. If you were affected by the spill, you might find the video, executive summary and 193 page report an interesting read. The summary outlines six or seven major failures in safety and engineering that all built up to the deaths of eleven workers and widespread contamination of the gulf. From incorrectly using seawater instead of drilling fluid to misinterpreting pressure test results, this report is just BP's side of the story as the blowout preventer has been pulled up and is still on its way to NASA where it will be analyzed by government investigators who will be able to compile their own report."

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Young people at The University of Baltimore will be able to study the zombie condition thanks to the newly available English 333. Students in the class will watch 16 classic zombie films and read zombie comics. Instead of writing a final research paper they may write a script or draw storyboards for their own zombie movie. Unfortunately the class doesn't seems to cover brain appreciation.

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AP - Microsoft Corp. and the chief rules enforcer for Xbox Live are apologizing to a small West Virginia town and a 26-year-old gamer accused of violating the online gaming service's code of conduct by publicly declaring he's from Fort Gay — a name the company considered offensive.

Jamie is helping bring our childhood fantasies/nightmares to life with a link that says "Andrei Rhode, a researcher involved with the project, said that existing optical tweezers are able to move particles the size of a bacterium a few millimeters in a liquid. Their new technique can move objects one hundred times that size over a distance of a meter or more."

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