News about what is happening in technology today!

By Olga Kharif

The spyware debacle has sparked anger, distrust, and boycotts among consumers, but the financial impact on Sony BMG is likely to be limited

David Snider’s dismay with Sony (SNE) has been a long time coming. It started when his Sony-branded CD/MP3 player broke down after less than a year of use, and worsened when the company took four months to send a replacement. Snider, 28, says his dissatisfaction escalated recently after the new player began skipping tracks. And then it came to light that Sony BMG Music Entertainment — in the name of protecting copyrighted material — embedded CDs with software that installed spyware on users’ computers. That was “the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Snider.

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PCWorld’s list of the ‘Best Products of 2005‘ is out and Firefox tops the list. Also notables are GMail at number 2, Apple OS X, Tiger at number 3, Skype ranks in at 8 and Ubuntu at 26!” From their Firefox article: “Are you sick and tired of Internet Explorer? Have you grown weary of the constant vulnerabilities and patches? Do you scratch your head at sudden program lockups and crashes? Are you dismayed that Microsoft hasn’t lifted a finger to improve or enhance IE since it buried Netscape’s Navigator browser at the dawn of the century? Yeah, me too.

‘Internet giants Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are testing a new form of online advertising that encourages people to pick up the phone rather than click on a link, lending credibility to the ‘pay-per-call’ ad model.’” From the article: “Google is testing a variant in which users click on a phone icon and type their number into a box. Google then dials the user, who hears ringing until the merchant answers. Google says the service is free for callers even on long-distance calls, and it promises not to divulge the caller’s number to anyone.

Microsoft is working on a new feature for Windows Vista, known as Restart Manager, which will update parts of the operating system or applications without having to reboot the entire machine. From the article: ‘If a part of an application, or the operating system itself, needs to updated, the Installer will call the Restart Manager, which looks to see if it can clear that part of the system so that it can be updated. If it can do that, it does, and that happens without a reboot.

Adobe Systems Incorporated and Macromedia, Inc. today announced they have either received or been notified they will receive all regulatory clearances necessary to complete Adobe’s pending acquisition of Macromedia. The companies expect to close the transaction on December 3, 2005. Does this mean the end for Fireworks and Freehand?