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Just ahead of the games, Joel Brenner,silver jewelry, the U.S. national counterintelligence executive, talked with Bob Orr of CBS News about the threats that travelers to China could be facing and offered advice on how travelers can protect themselves. The worrisome backdrop, according to Brenner, is a pattern of “relentless and ongoing” identity theft wholesale cell phone Portable GPS.

“Somebody with a wireless device in China should expect it to be compromised,wholesale jewelry,” Brenner said. For more of the interview, see the video here from the CBS Evening News. (And watch for us to be bringing you more such video on CNET News,, which is now published by CBS Interactive.)

At the Beijing Olympics, which officially got under way Friday, athletes from around the world will be striving to run faster, jump higher, and score more goals than their opponents. At the same time, warns the U.S. government, cybercriminals will be on the prowl for credit card information to steal, and security forces could well direct snooping efforts at unsuspecting travelers.

U.S. officials are offering a blunt reminder that any electronic transmission–from PDA, fax, computer, or phone–can be intercepted. Their travel tips include the following: change your passwords frequently; update antivirus and spyware programs; and avoid wireless networks whenever possible.

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

In a recent post on the News.com blog, David Carnoy opined on the future of Toshiba and its ill-fated decision to back a losing format for so long.

Let us also not forget that some of Toshiba’s biggest competitors — LG, Sony, Panasonic and others — have already signed on to the Blu-ray strategy and offer players. Knowing this, why wouldn’t Toshiba get into that market to ensure it’s not locked entirely out? And if it does want to eventually get in, wouldn’t it want to do it as soon as possible so its competitors don’t control too much of the market?

Pointing to a Wall Street Journal interview with Toshiba’s CEO, Carnoy extrapolated information from the discussion and concluded that because the company’s chief executive said his company would “improve this [upconverting feature] even more, so that consumers won’t be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images”, Toshiba has no designs on a move into the Blu-ray player market.

(Credit: Crave)

Carnoy asserts that 2008 will not bring a Blu-ray player from Toshiba, but it may “change its tune” in 2009.

Toshiba will not try to increase the quality of upconverting DVD players, but it will release a Blu-ray player this year. Why you ask? Simple — it has too much invested in the HD game and now that Sony is no longer the enemy, why would it even consider spending even more cash on upconverting when it can sign an agreement with the Blu-ray backers and release players?

And while Carnoy makes a good point in saying Toshiba Blu-ray players will be available next year, I think he’s off by one year.

And although Nishida indicated that his company currently has no plans for a Blu-ray player, let’s not forget that it’s only March and he has the cash and time to release hardware in a matter of months.

Coming to a store near you…in 2008

Aside from that, the company’s chief executive, Atsutoshi Nishida, may sound averse to jumping on the Blu-ray bandwagon and sympathetic to upconverting, but what is the likelihood that upconverting DVD players will outpace Blu-ray players once the latter’s price falls to a more consumer-friendly level? Further, why would Toshiba dump even more cash into something that can’t stand up to new technology?

As it stands, Toshiba is on the ropes in the HD business. Just two months ago, the company was still a hearty contender in the space and was sitting at the forefront of HD technology. Since then, the company gave up its bid to become the format of choice going forward. But if Toshiba realizes that HD is the future, why would it forego its stance as one of the leaders to back an outdated format? Surely that won’t make sense from a business or PR perspective.

Simply put, the future of Toshiba has everything to do with Blu-ray and regardless of what he spews in a Wall Street Journal article, the company’s CEO knows that. A Toshiba Blu-ray player will be released this year and if I had to venture a guess, look for it by the fourth quarter so it can capitalize on the Christmas rush.

“There’s no reason to bid against ourselves,” a source told the Journal.

Two months ago, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo in a deal that was originally valued at $44.6 billion. (The value of the deal has since fallen.) CNET News.com’s Dawn Kawamoto reported that Yahoo and Microsoft held informal merger discussions a few weeks ago, citing a source familiar with the talks. That source also said at the time that Microsoft had set no deadline for itself for when to say enough is enough.

Citing sources close to the company, the Journal is reporting that Microsoft believes time is on its side. The original bid is looking better given the downturn in the economy and a falling stock market, the sources say.

Full coverage
Microsoft’s big bid for Yahoo Click here for the latest on the software giant’s attempt to buy the Net pioneer.

Microsoft is not planning to raise its multibillion-dollar offer for Yahoo, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper is also reporting that “other people familiar with Microsoft’s thinking say the company has no immediate plans to nominate a slate of directors to replace Yahoo’s current directors.” In early March, Yahoo extended the deadline to nominate opposition candidates to its board. The new deadline is 10 days after the company announces the date for its shareholders meeting; that date has not been set.

Hosting a week of technology events isn’t entirely new for the city, as it has traditionally held a “Digital Technology Week” in conjunction with Ziff Davis Media’s annual DigitalLife gadget expo. But with last year’s DigitalLife a disappointment, and Ziff Davis’ future uncertain, it’s an apt time for the city to shake up its showcasing of the local tech industry. And with a focus on new media and entertainment, Internet Week will be a more accurate portrayal of what actually goes on in Gotham, rather than centering on a hardware trade show in which most of the products are brought in from out of town.

In addition, a number of tech and media companies–PaidContent, Flavorpill, The Onion, Thrillist, and Nokia, to name a few–have announced preliminary plans to host events in conjunction.

Despite its A-list leadership, the organizers of Internet Week have said that as an homage to the “open structure” of the Web, anyone can create an event in conjunction with the festival for free.

It might not be Austin’s South by Southwest Interactive, but New York City will be getting its own digital-culture festival.

Called Internet Week New York (OK, they could have picked a better name), it will span June 3 to 10 and encompass several existing events like Federated Media Publishing’s Conversational Marketing Summit, Advertising Age’s Advertising 2.0 conference, and the 12th annual Webby Awards.

The office of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, himself a local tech baron, has officially sanctioned the festival. “It will capture the energy, diversity, and creative spirit that are a hallmark of both New York City and the Internet,” a statement from Bloomberg read.

“The event can take whatever form you imagine,” the Internet Week site promises, “within the boundaries of good taste, of course.”

In addition to Bloomberg’s office, Internet Week is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which organizes the Webby Awards. The festival’s “executive council,” meanwhile, is a who’s-who of Gotham digital media: among its ranks are About.com CEO Scott Meyer, TreeHugger founder Graham Hill, Greycroft Partners czar Alan Patricof, former AOL exec and current Pilot Group investor Bob Pittman, NBC Universal digital chief George Kliavkoff, and CondeNet President Sarah Chubb.

The challenge for Xobni and the rest is how to build a business that can scale. In the end, Microsoft will wind up spending some of the newly freed $42 billion in its coffers to buy Xobni or some other lucky third-party developers. Then we have to cross our fingers and pray that corporate infighting at the mother ship doesn’t make a hash of it all. (I know. That’s little help in the near-term. In the meantime, CNET’s Josh Lowensohn has a great piece on favorite in-box work-arounds used by some of the folks at Microsoft.)

I didn’t think so.

When the company brain trust repairs to the Ballmer Bunker to chew over its next big idea, post-Yahoo, I’ve got a suggestion: how about doing something to deal with e-mail and its discontents? Something grand–like bringing Microsoft Outlook into the 21st century. I don’t mean a tweak here and there; I’m talking about a top-to-bottom overhaul.

Smart e-mail may be a contradiction in terms, but let’s get a show of hands: how many of you believe Microsoft is going to supply the answer?

But it’s best to forget about waiting for incremental improvements. Rafe correctly observed that Microsoft can’t fix Outlook without a complete rewrite. His conclusion is that you can’t patch and make it better. (Listen to our conversation at the tail end of today’s News.com daily podcast. For a deeper dive, check out this compendium of “Tech Nightmares” that CNET put together four years ago. The shame is that it remains as relevant today.)

The product debuted in 1997 and has improved very little since. Given the absence of real competition for most of the last decade, you shouldn’t be surprised at the glacial pace of improvement. We saw the same thing in the browser market after Microsoft disposed of Netscape (though perhaps the nascent rivalry with Google’s Gmail is a harbinger of change.)

I was talking earlier with Rafe Needleman, who runs our sister site Webware, about Outlook and its discontents. Rafe noted that while Outlook is the most important application in the business world, the product still remains flawed in any number of ways. At one time, Microsoft had ambitions to build Outlook into a platform. Unfortunately, developers found the APIs difficult to use and nothing much happened.

Xobni, which came out of beta testing today, has received a bounty of attention because its backers include Vinod Khosla and Niklas Zennstrom. (Getting a freebee compliment from Bill Gates hasn’t hurt.)

The answers more likely will come from start-ups like Xobni and others investigating ways to add more intelligence to the program. Good luck to any third party that can manage that trick. What with a growing backlog of unread e-mails in my in-box–not to mention the daily dose of spam–users deserve a smarter Outlook that better prioritized and understood the tapestry of shared relationships between people.

SugarCRM has landed a $20 million venture investment round, designed to boost international expansion by the maker of open-source customer relationship management software, the company said Thursday.

SugarCRM, founded in 2004, released its Sugar 5.0 software in December. To date, the company has racked up over 4 million downloads of its commercial open-source CRM goodies and counts more than 60,000 community members.

The company plans to use the funds for not only research and development, but also increasing its global footprint–particularly in Europe and Asia.

With its infusion of funds, SugarCRM will have more leeway as it heads down the path toward an IPO within the next two years. But with the recent industry consolidation–case in point being Sun Microsystems’ planned $1 billion merger with MySQL–SugarCRM may find that option just as tasty.

Taking the lead on the funding was New Enterprise Associates, with existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Walden International joining in. That brings SugarCRM’s total funding to $46 million.

Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge gives the rumored 12 million square feet of data center space some context:

We are in the midst of the digital land grab for Internet users. And a key building block to serve those billions of users on the planet is tens of thousands of servers in data centers processing the bits.

It should be noted that this 12 million square foot data center plan is not confirmed. But it is in the realm of reality considering Microsoft’s ambition to duplicate its 20th century success in this century. In this cloud era, Microsoft could be one of the biggest customers of its enterprise own software.

Nick Carr has received hints that Microsoft intends to build out two dozen data centers of about 500,000 square feet or more in size. He said that it was unclear as to when the data centers would be built.

That’s equivalent to filling 65 Wal-Mart Supercenters with servers. It would be a computing footprint more than twice the size of the Vatican; an expansion more than half-again as large as IBM’s entire 8 million square feet of data center space. And Nick uses the term “first phase.”

Tel Aviv, Israel-based Pythagoras Solar has raised $10 million in series A financing and has released a scant few details on its solar photovoltaic technology.

These concentrating photovoltaic arrays are being tested for solar power plants in desert areas, such as Israel. (Click here for an FAQ and photo gallery on concentrated photovoltaics, or CPV.)

The company was founded in 2006 by Gonen Fink, who previously worked at Check Point Software, and Itay Baruchi. It has an R&D center in Hakfar Hayarok, Israel, and a U.S. office in San Mateo, California.

Pythagoras also said Monday it will release more information on its products and technologies by early 2009.

The investment was led by Israel Cleantech Ventures and joined by Pitango Venture Capital and Evergreen Venture Partners.

“The company is working to combine software models, optic design, semiconductor processes, materials science, and mass manufacturing techniques to build highly durable, cost-effective solar energy products,” according to the company’s Web site.

Although Pythagoras has not revealed what sort of solar technology it is developing, concentrating solar power systems use optics–lenses and mirrors–to maximize the output of solar cells.

Solar is one of the hottest areas of clean-tech investment as entrepreneurs seek out technologies to lower the price of sun-derived electricity with more efficient solar cells and optimized manufacturing processes.

The Federal Communications Commission is backing off plans to force TV stations to air more advertisements about the upcoming transition to digital TV next year, according to several news reports.

The FCC had originally rejected the industry’s first voluntary proposal, the Journal said. But broadcasters revised their proposal and agreed to run at least four ads a week during prime-time hours along with a 30-minute show about the transition before the February 17 deadline next year, according to the The Journal.

It’s estimated that there are 70 million or so analog TV sets that rely on over-the-air signals. And because many of these TVs belong to minorities, senior citizens, low-income individuals, and people who live in rural areas, the fear is that these individuals will not be ready for when broadcasters stop transmitting analog TV signals on February 17, 2009.

The FCC supposedly backed down from its position amid criticism from the industry that feared airing more advertisements would displace lucrative paid advertisements during prime-time hours, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The FCC is expected to adopt a more flexible plan that will give broadcasters more leeway in choosing which ads to air and when.

But having an old TV doesn’t necessarily mean that a special digital-converter box is needed. Most people who subscribe to cable or satellite won’t have to worry about the transition, regardless of when their TV was made, because their set-top boxes will do the conversion. So for the most part, the only people affected are people who still use the old rabbit ears to watch TV.

But the industry complained that it needed more flexibility. So the revised plan, which could be announced today, loosens the requirements.

Officials also fear that there is still confusion about what the digital transition means. While TVs made after March 2007 will have digital tuners built-in, TVs made before then won’t. This means that some folks will have to either buy a new TV or get a digital-tuner box, which will be subsidized by the government. The government is already offering vouchers to help people buy these boxes.

Under the FCC’s previous plan, broadcasters and cable operators were asked to increase the number of advertisements about the digital transition to at least four 30-second public-service ads a day with this number increasing to as many as 12 ads a day on each station as the deadline approached.

Compuware does about $1.2 billion in revenue each year and is sitting on over $900 million in current assets. With a market cap under $2 billion, the numbers make sense. Compuware could be a very attractive takeover target for one of these firms looking to expand its management footprint and push up market with bigger deals. Compuware could be a very attractive takeover target for one of these firms looking to expand into the management market and penetrate enterprise data center deals.

Here’s the key for me: Unisys did nearly $6 billion in revenue last year and it’s sitting on over $700 million in cash. Yet the company’s measly market cap is around $1.3 billion. Granted, the company lost over $300 million in 2006, but anyone who knows this company tells me that it also has a lot of fat that could be cut quickly. Former insiders I know say that Unisys–like many turnaround companies–is run by its lawyers who add a ton of bureaucracy and cost. A progressive tech company could adopt a “Chainsaw Al” approach to Unisys, preserve its services value, and cut everything else to the bone.

Yeah, it’s easy for me to write this stuff: I have no skin in the game. Nevertheless, I think these firms are worth a look-see. Each acquisition would take money and chutzpah, but either company could add a lot of enterprise value to the right buyer.

We are all used to mergers and acquisitions in our industry but usually these deals involve a big guy grabbing a smaller guy. Think Citrix Systems buying NetScaler, Cisco Systems purchasing WebEx, or Symantec jumping on Vontu. It’s extremely rare to see larger or established tech vendors get gobbled up in a similar way. In 2008, I can foresee a couple of deals that break the traditional pattern.

Unisys could help another tech company really penetrate the federal government space as well. Last year, Uncle Sam coughed up roughly $64 billion on IT. Seems like a good market opportunity to me.

The second firm may be a bit more controversial. I think it’s high time that Unisys is either acquired or taken private.

First of all, I believe that either EMC, Hewlett-Packard, or Symantec will purchase venerable systems management vendor Compuware. Why? Compuware has a very extensive set of products and services that span from application development to network performance to mainframe management. Compuware is installed everywhere and the mainframe piece is especially valuable as it can get these vendors into deals where IBM has virtually no competition.

On Tuesday, exploits for the Yahoo apps were reported circulating. There is currently no patch from the individual vendors, so the only workaround is to disable the several specific, vulnerable ActiveX controls. (ActiveX controls were developed by Microsoft for use with Internet Explorer and other browsers.)

SANS suggests setting the kill-bits for all of the affected ActiveX controls, and, even if you don’t currently have one or more of these CLSIDs installed on your machine, go ahead set the kill-bit for controls that might be added to your system in the future.

A researcher over at the Internet Storm Center has created a powerful GUI that will set the kill-bits on vulnerable ActiveX controls used in Facebook, Myspace, and Yahoo apps. These popular apps came under attack on Monday after researchers Elazar Broad and Krystian Kloskowski disclosed their findings to a online security newsgroup.

The SANS tool, available here, eliminates the risks associated with editing the Windows system registry file. A command line version is available here.

The kill-bit tool first checks your system to see if any of the vulnerable CLSIDs exist. If so, the tool saves a copy of any values currently set, then updates the display to show that the CLSID–the unique sequence assigned to each ActiveX component that specifies which control you are using–exists. It also shows whether the kill-bit flag is set. To set the kill-bit, just check the box beside any of the affected ActiveX controls then click on the “Set” button. Unchecking any of the boxes will either reset the “Compatibility Flags” to their saved value or remove the CLSID entirely (if you didn’t have the control installed in the first place).