Top Items:

MS to omit anti-virus from Vista — Microsoft will omit anti-virus protection in Vista, the next version of Windows, which it plans to ship late this year. As with previous versions of Windows dating back to Windows 2000 at least, Redmond is promoting Vista as a landmark improvement in Windows security.
RELATED ITEMS:

Microsoft Would Put Poor Online by Cellphone — DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 29 — It sounds like a project that just about any technology-minded executive could get behind: distributing durable, cheap laptop computers in the developing world to help education.
RELATED ITEM:

The Resurgence of E-Cards — THE online greeting card industry is starting to make some noise again. Just ask the screaming banshee. — The highly freaked-out woman, known by millions from an animated Halloween e-card from Hallmark.com, is back, this time in a Valentine's Day revival of her hair-raising neuroses.

ATTENTION ENGINES NOT JUST FOR THE GEEKOSPHERE — The attention conversation keeps going. Latest post by Scott Karp: … Scott refers to Umair of Bubblegeneration. I love Umair's stuff. — One related post I came across yesterday by Noah Brier makes his show-stopping observation:
Discussion:
NoahBrier.com
RELATED ITEMS:

Bowl marketers think small — NEW YORK — This year, Super Bowl ads will be anywhere you want them to be: on TV during the game, on the Web, on your iPod, even on your wireless phone. — Many Super Bowl advertisers, looking to get more bang for their bucks, will take their ads from the Big Game to a lot of small screens.

Blogs versus the NY Times in Google — In 2002, Dave Winer of Scripting News and Martin Nisenholtz of the New York Times made a Long Bet about the authority of weblogs versus that of NY Times in Google: … I decided to see how well each side is doing by checking the results for the top news stories of 2005.

Is TiVo next on Cisco's push into homes? — news analysis If its history of acquisitiveness is a guide, computer networking king Cisco Systems will likely buy a number of companies as it expands into the consumer electronics market. — Already Cisco has announced plans to spend $6.9 billion on cable set-top maker Scientific-Atlanta.

AOL Is Selling Access To Your Inbox — I have been an investor in a company called Return Path for almost six years. Return Path is in a number of email related businesses, but one that they basically invented is the email delivery assurance business. They work for commercial emailers …
Discussion:
The Jason Calacanis Weblog

Why Polaris is backing Heavy.com — I recently made an investment in Heavy.com, one of the leading broadband video sites. Why did we invest? — Although pure "content" deals like this are a little atypical in the VC world, my partners and I found Heavy to be a pretty compelling investment opportunity.

IBM sets DB2 database free … IBM on Monday introduced a free version of its DB2 database, a move designed to win software developers over to its products. — DB2 Express-C is the same database as IBM's commercial offerings but the company places limits on what kind of hardware it can run on.

DirecTV, EchoStar Bundle Up — Rupert Murdoch's DirecTV (DTV:NYSE - news - research - Cramer's Take) is linking up with rival EchoStar Communications (DISH:Nasdaq - news - research - Cramer's Take) to launch a nationwide wireless broadband network, TheStreet.com has learned.

SUPER RSS TOOLS — Today I had to dig a little deeper into the world of RSS. I'm preparing a Live.com environment for a potential customer and I needed tools to convert dynamic HTML pages (search queries) into RSS feeds so I could add them into Microsoft's feed collector.

Warner Bros. to Try File Sharing Of Films, TV Shows in Germany — In a move that shows Hollywood is examining the benefits of a technology it long reviled, Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. is expected to announce today that it will sell movies and television shows online in Germany using peer-to-peer technology.

Science Puts Enron E-Mail to Use — In March 2001, just a few months before Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling resigned, an employee e-mailed him a joke about a policeman pulling over a speeding driver, whose wife subsequently rats him out to the cop for other offenses, including being drunk.

Grandstream Networks IP Video Phone — This new video phone by Grandstream Networks is powered by Texas Instruments' programmable DSPs and promises to deliver crisper images and better usability. — The GXV-3000 is based on the SIP standard. It features the latest H.264 real-time video codec …

Geekbench Comparison — Introduction — A while ago we (finally) released a preview version of Geekbench, our cross-platform benchmarking tool. I thought it was about time we put Geekbench to use and compare the performance of a variety of machines. Even though the tests in Geekbench …

'Electronic Discovery' Industry Blooming — EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. - Even just a few years ago, lawyers in corporate lawsuits sometimes agreed not to poke around in their opponents' e-mails. Instead they'd confine themselves to paper memos and other documents on file as they pursued evidence.