TechBlog

If you’ve been squeezing the last bit of value out of that installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2 or are continuing to run it because of proprietary software that you’re squeezing the last bit of value out of, well, you only have two more months of squeezing. Microsoft will end support for Service Pack 2 on July 13. Now if you can somehow upgrade to Service Pack 3, you can forget about the problem until Microsoft’s Extended Support for XP ends April 8, 2014, assuming the hard drive in that PC you bought in 2001 lasts that long. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t slack off on the backups. ...

Yesterday, the Pirate Bay went down following pressure from the RIAA, which threatened to slap TPB’s hosting provider with huge fines. We predicted The Pirate Bay’s downfall ages ago, but it still hasn’t happened. Things have been looking grim for the file-sharing service for a while. First, there was the lawsuit from the entertainment industry that left the Pirate Bay’s team scattered and struggling to stay the course it charted for itself. Then the news that the entire service was to be sold (the sale never happened) to a Swedish Gaming Company seemed to have scattered the Pirate Bay’s fans, too. ...

Google announced today that it has made a cash offer to acquire Global IP Solutions (GIPS). A leader in the real-time VoIP processing space for both voice and video, GIPS doesn’t have any consumer-facing products; instead, it provides services that work on the backend for products like Yahoo! Messenger, Citrix and WebEx. This is an interesting acquisition for Google, who already has a number of consumer products that could benefit from GIPS technologies. Not only does GIPS provide voice processing for VoIP calls that could potentially improve gTalk and Google Voice, GIPS also has a large focus on real-time video transmissions, both on the client and mobile side. Our first thought when looking at this announcement was that Google could provide some really formidable competition to Skype. ...

Not one to rest on its laurels, the Google Chrome team is hard at work on Chrome 6. The official move to the 6.0 designation in the Chromium developer builds officially started a few days ago. The move to a Chrome 6 branch for Chromium means that the final tweaks and polishes on Chrome 5 are almost complete. Chrome 5 is a big release — not only is it blazingly fast, it’s also going to be the first stable release for Mac and Linux users. ...

Right now, the words “Prince of Persia” probably make you think of muscular Jake Gyllenhaal jumping from building to building. The video game the movie is based on, however, is a remake of an ancient platform-style game with the same name, released for Apple II and later ported to PC and other platforms. The original game now seems to be coming to the iPhone under the title Prince of Persia Retro. ...

A Pakistani court has ordered the authorities to temporarily block Facebook due to a contest that calls for caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The court order follows a petition by a group called the Islamic Lawyers’ Movement, which complained that the contest was “blasphemous.” A search on Facebook reveals two sites featuring such caricatures: one supporting Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who created the caricature of the Prophet, published in Danish newspapers in 2005. ...

Canon has just released a Mac version of its popular image and document scanner, the imageFORMULA P-150M, complete with built-in support for the popular organizational service Evernote. The small scanner, which Canon calls the “Scan-tini,” lets you quickly scan documents and route them to Evernote automatically. The scanner, which is also available for Windows, uses embedded drivers to start up and scan quickly, effectively decreasing the time it takes to initialize the device. Using what Canon calls CaptureOnTouch, documents can be routed automatically to apps like iPhoto or Evernote. This can be really useful, especially for business users who want to have a way to easily scan and upload lots of documents quickly. ...

Yesterday, Yahoo! Inc. announced it would be acquiring Associated Content Inc., and the transaction would cost the search company an estimated $100 million. Associated Content calls itself the “People’s Media Company,” and is a media outlet consisting of more than 380,000 freelancers publishing news, photos, video, and other content on subjects chosen by the site. “Combining our world-class editorial team with Associated Content’s makes this a game-changer,” said Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo! Inc. “Together, we’ll create more content around what we know our users care about, and open up new and creative avenues for advertisers to engage with consumers across our network. These are important aspects of building engaging consumer experiences on Yahoo!, and one of the reasons why we’re one of the most visited destinations online.” ...

Video chatting is on the rise. Yesterday, we got to take a look at Qik’s mobile video chat client for the Sprint EVO 4G, and today, we get to take a look at Skype’s latest development: five-way video chat. Today, popular VoIP and chat client Skype launched a beta of Skype 5.0 for Windows, which includes a free trial of group video calling, a re-designed call view window, improved video snapshots gallery, and improved browser plugin performance. ...

Google today said it will stop collecting Wi-Fi network data from its Street View cars, after an investigation from the German Data Protection Authority (DPA) found the search company was also collecting personal data about user behavior on these public hotspots. Google’s Street View cars weren’t only taking 360-degree images of our streets for use on Google Maps, but they were also pulling publicly broadcast SSID and MAC information from Wi-Fi hotspots. ...