(Credit:
Microsoft)

“We’re taking SQL Server we’re pulling pieces of it apart and we’re putting it back together,” Campbell said in an interview. One of the challenges is taking software designed to run highly reliable servers and storage and turning it into a commodity service.

Campbell wouldn’t get into how Microsoft would price the service, but [...]

Me, too. Microsoft is too big and too important a company to have ignored the missing ingredient in its open-source strategy: contribution back to existing communities. Open source can be a fantastic complement to Microsoft’s existing products and to its businesses. Open source is a tool. It’s a means to an end, not an end [...]

Ballmer addressed a ton of other topics, some of which I’ll also try and get to here. Asked by an audience member “What about Adobe?” Ballmer replied “What about Adobe?” before going on to say that Microsoft will interoperate in some areas and compete in others, but made clear that Microsoft wants to win a [...]

Indecent Exposure 2: Intermittently unreliable
Samsung SC-HMX10 review and image samples
Video: Canon Vixia HF100
Photo samples: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H10
Photo samples: Pentax K200D
Rumors: Nikon, Canon dSLRs

Samsung SC-HMX10
(Credit: CNET Networks)
It was a relatively quiet week for digital imaging coverage, but here’s the wrap-up (didn’t that get you all excited?):

“Adobe has retained only those limited rights that allow us to operate the service and to enable you to do all the things the service offers,” the company said in a statement. “If you decide to terminate your Photoshop Express account, Adobe’s rights also will be terminated.”

The earlier Photoshop Express terms of service had raised [...]

Music discovery continues to be one of digital music’s greatest vulnerabilities. Nobody has come up with a sure or simple way to help people wade through the millions of tracks available on the Web. Last.fm’s numbers seem to confirm long-held beliefs of many that enabling people to sample full-length tracks is one way to spur [...]

(Credit:
Bonnie Cha/CNET)

The Snap, which debuted at CTIA 2009, is a messaging-centric smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard and a feature called Inner Circle that lets you prioritize messages based on your preferences. It also offers Microsoft Direct Push Technology for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via [...]

Secondly, I have to quibble with the report’s assertion that “the cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied.”

Still, to my knowledge, there hasn’t been any in-depth study about how to find and eradicate terrorists in virtual worlds, and there’s been no doubt in my mind that such efforts would [...]

A screen shot of Matt Harding's Web site. The dancing videographer found a way to "force quality" into YouTube's embeddable player
A screen shot of Harding's video as it appears on YouTube.

“The camera always thought it was falling and wouldn’t record,” Harding said. “I had to go up again with a solid-state memory card and we [...]

The most interesting component of this news is the hybrid Blu-ray/HD DVD drive coming to Gateway’s new, retail-only GM5664 desktop. The system includes a quad core AMD Phenom 9600 CPU, a 1TB hard drive, and a 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT graphics card for $1,150. That’s not a bad configuration for the price, especially [...]