Google, likely in reaction to the official rollout of Facebook Connect, has opened up its universal log-in system, Google Friend Connect. Journalists on Thursday received a hurried e-mail saying, “Starting today, any website owner is welcome to add Friend Connect to his or her website — no need to be whitelisted. We’ll be posting on the Official Google Blog soon with additional details.”

I still give the nod to Facebook Connect in this stage of the battle for the ownership of on

Mozilla has its own skinning technology in the works, a plug-in called Personas that launched on Mozilla Labs in March. That head start, coupled with its vastly larger and more engaged external audience, gives it a big lead over Chrome when it comes to getting gussied up.

Google on Tuesday launched a gallery of 29 themes for Google Chrome (requires Google Chrome 3.0 beta for Windows). But Mozilla, while refraining from sniggering, boasted it’s now up to 20,000.

Mozill

Microsoft said late Friday that it won’t ship the Windows 7 “E” version of Windows even though Europe has yet to sign off on its revised plan. The plan calls for the company to ship Windows 7 with Internet Explorer, but present a ballot screen in which users in Europe can decide whether they want Internet Explorer or another browser.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Microsoft announced last week that it was open to the “ballot screen,” but said that it would wait to can the browserle

Toshiba is not alone in announcing commercial shipments of large-capacity SSDs. Micron Technology’s Crucial Technology unit has begun selling 256GB drives listed at $599, which beats Toshiba pricing at that capacity.

SSDs typically offer higher performance–often much higher performance–than hard-disk drives and are more durable since they have no moving parts.

All drives come in either a 1.8-inch enclosure, typically used in ultraportable laptops, o

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The bundle features a limited-edition
Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 console, a copy of the game, two black wireless controllers, a 250GB hard drive, and an Xbox 360 headset.

(Credit: Major Nelson/Microsoft)

The limited-edition Modern Warfare 2 bundle is available for preorder now. It costs $399 and will be released on November 10–the same day Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 hits store shelves.

Windows 7: RTM in pictures

The official release of Microsoft Windows 7 has earned an Outstanding rating from CNET, and in this gallery you’ll see why. Whether this is your first time looking at Windows 7 or you’ve been testing the operating system since the beta release in January, this slideshow is a comprehensive look at what Windows 7 offers.

While Dell’s plan for Perot Systems looks good on paper it will remain a small services player relative to rivals.

Dell said that it can bolt together Perot’s services business with its own and create a global services company. However, today the Dell-Perot services business is an $8 billion unit. “We can make a different services company with a new set of capabilities,” said Dell.

Dell had been talking about diversifying away from its core PC and server b

REDMOND, Wash.–Steve Ballmer is never at a loss for words, but that doesn’t mean he always spills the beans.

“They’ve done a very good job of marketing to their 3.5 percent of the market,” Ballmer said. “I’m glad we’re doing a great job with the other 96.5 percent.”

Such was the case with the top-secret Courier dual-screen tablet that Microsoft is said to be working on.

As part of an interview for our new CNET Conversations program, M

Microsoft has responded swiftly to suggestions that its Bing search engine seems to throw up ads alongside the keyword “pornography”.

(Credit: CC Kessiye/Flickr)

“The keyword that seems to be triggering these results is ‘free videos,’” the Microsoft representative explained. “We are following up with Google to understand why this ad is showing up in these types of queries.”

A Microsoft representative declared in an e-mail: “Microsoft has not purchased the keyword ‘po

All four of the major music labels declined to comment for this story.

Advertisers are simply unwilling to pay the music sites a premium rate. In order to charge advertisers $10 for 1,000 impressions, ad-supported sites must operate their own sales teams, which is expensive. In SpiralFrog’s case, the company’s salespeople were successful at signing a few marquee advertisers, including McDonald’s and Microsoft, but much too often, the company found itself selling excess ad invento