Yahoo's plan to move the company forward involves much more than just search, and as such the company has decided to host their next Open Hack Day in Taiwan later this year in September. The event is an attempt to spurn development using Yahoo's own APIs, encouraging developers to publish a web-app as fast as possible, doing all the development in a single day. Their goal is to further the Yahoo vision of a massive social platform, which they are dubbing the Yahoo! Open Strategy.

Yahoo-sponsored Hack Days have been happening since 2005, and the idea has spread to spawn other events as well. A lot of code might live and die in the few days the events take place, but the hope is to generate interest as well as fresh ideas which could give Yahoo the boost they need today.

Gone is the day when a phone was a simple analog device incapable of being compromised in any way, excluding a wire tap. These days, PDAs are running full-fledged operating systems and are potentially just as susceptible as PCs to security exploits and other issues – especially with their explosive growth in popularity. Apple, for instance, is coming under fire for failing to keep the iPhone up to date, which is powered by a embedded version of Mac OS 10.5.

According to one researcher, numerous flaws exist on the iPhone, many of which are the result of the iPhone's software packages not being kept up to date in the same fashion that patches for the desktop iteration of Mac OS X are. Not that it would be easy for Apple – software updates on a phone aren't as simple as pushing out an update and waiting for someone to reboot. It probably won't be long before monthly “patch cycles” for phones are common.

If you are planning to get a GTX 260 or 280 card from Nvidia, you may want to hold off your purchase for a few days. It appears that third-party manufacturers have been complaining to Nvidia about having to charge more for their cards despite them performing almost on par with the less expensive Radeon HD 4850 and 4870, which sell for $199 and $299 respectively.

This has several of Nvidia’s board partners walking on thin ice and thus demanding price adjustments to protect their margins. Nvidia has caved in to the pressure, it seems, and agreed to cut the price of the GTX 280 by $90 and $30 for the GTX 260. Of course that is just a price cut Nvidia is handing down to its partners, which will then have to set the final retail prices. According to reports, an average 260 model is expected to cost $360 (down from ~$399), while the flagship 280 should be priced at around $560 (down from ~$599).

Meanwhile, AMD is already planning an answer to the GTX and should release the $499 Radeon HD 4870 X2 before the end of the month – if rumors prove to be true. It’ll certainly be interesting to see this dual-GPU card pitted against Nvidia’s high-end products when it debuts in the coming weeks.

Solid state disks have been a hot topic this year, with prices dropping considerably while capacity and speed claims by manufacturers continue to grab headlines. A report by Tom’s Hardware, however, has recently brought one of the often-touted benefits of SSDs to question: power consumption. While it’s almost a common belief that the solid-state approach saves power (after all, SSDs have no moving parts), their tests show how switching to SSD could actually cost you anywhere between 5% and 30% of battery life.

Their results have not gone unchallenged, of course, and today at least a couple of manufacturers have chimed in to shed some light into the matter. According to STEC, data used in the test applies to the current first-generation mass-market SSDs but not necessarily to upcoming drives, which will supposedly come with optimized drivers for better power management. Micron Technology echoed concerns that the review used legacy drives, adding that other factors should be taken into account as well, such as how an SSD-equipped computer might handle more work in the same amount of time.

All valid points, indeed, and are perhaps a reminder that sometimes is best to wait for a second (and improved) generation of any new technology. In any case, there are also other potential benefits to consider besides energy efficiency when buying a SSD, such as speed and reliability – two aspects in which solid state drives apparently excel. Check out Micron’s statement after the jump.

There are many people who want to see desktop Linux succeed, and there are many companies and independent projects working towards that goal. Linux has very strong ties to the server and embedded markets, and device for device outweighs Windows in the world. However, not everyone agrees trying to erode Microsoft desktop market share is the way to go for Linux growth, and one of those people is a chairman of Linspire.

Michael Robertson of Linspire thinks that pushing Linux onto the desktop has been a near-futile effort, claiming that the “ecosystem” of Windows on the PC is too complex to compete with. That's a far cry from the roots that Linspire came from. As many of us remember, Linspire was once Lindows, and they prided themselves on making an easy to use desktop OS that catered specifically to people coming from Windows. Instead, Robertson now feels post-PC devices, like ultra mobiles and low cost laptops, PDAs and others of their kind are where Linux needs to make its stand.

He's got a point – Linux as a kernel and a platform has been very attractive to the manufacturers of these products. Is the room for growth enough, however?

Solid state disks are slowly gaining ground on traditional hard drives, particularly in laptops, but that isn’t stopping Hitachi from continuing to push HDDs to the limit. While recent developments in the field are already yielding one terabyte units, Hitachi believes they can have a commercial 3.5-inch hard drive on the market that can hold 5TB by 2010.

The company aims to achieve this boost in capacity with write heads that use something called current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magnetoresistance (CPP-GMR), which pushed data density above one terabit per square inch. But it seems that Hitachi isn't the only one that is considering the release of a 5TB hard disk, Fujitsu also has some plans of their own – though fewer details on the technology used to achieve this have been made available.

If you are an iPhone user and a fan of Google, you may want to check out a newly released version of Google Talk that is customized for the iPhone. The new Google Talk application is built for the iPhone as well as the iPod Touch. You can sign in from your iPhone it just by visiting the Google Talk site.

It doesn't feature quite the same functionality that the standalone clients do or that logging into Gmail accomplishes, as they admit, but should “remain true” to the Google Talk experience, as they say. It's a browser-based program so no installation is required, though I can easily see the desire for a standalone app on the iPhone as well.

In the ongoing spat between Google and Viacom over copyright concerns, a judge has ordered the former to hand over records of every video watched on YouTube, including user names and IP addresses, to the media giant. Google had argued that turning over the data would invade users’ privacy. However, US district judge Louis Stanton ignored the argument claiming privacy concerns expressed by Google about handing over the log were “speculative.”

Viacom requested the data in an effort to back up its claim that copyright-infringing material reproduced on the site is more popular than lawful user-generated content. Many other requests made by Viacom were denied in whole, however, such as information regarding videos marked private on the site, Google's advertising tactics across all its properties – allegedly to find out how much they were benefiting financially from ads displayed on copyrighted content – and access to YouTube video source code.

Things might be looking bad for Nvidia at the moment, what with a massive stock decline, less than expected revenues and defective hardware to deal with, but the opposite is true for AMD. The Radeon HD 4800 series is being well-received so far, and AMD has plans to offer even more of the cards very soon. The Radeon HD 4870 X2, a dual-GPU monster aimed at the hardcore gamer and enthusiast crowd, is supposed to be here before the end of this month.

The high-end (and high-priced, at around $499) card should sport up to 2GB of GDDR5 memory, an impressive amount by anyone’s estimates, and judging by the performance stats of the other 4800 series cards will be a great performer.

Nvidia seems to be taking quite a beating today, with their stock prices dipping some 25 percent after the company revealed a financial forecast cut short due to slowing sales, product delays, pricing pressure from AMD / ATI, and a hefty $150 - $200 million payout to cover the expected cost of faulty chips.

Details are sketchy but Nvidia believes that the problem is caused by the thermal design of some laptops and packaging material used on the afflicted chips. So far there’s no word as to what product lines are affected, with them only saying that the problem involves ‘significant quantities’ of its previous-generation laptop GPUs and media control processors (MCPs).

To tackle the problem, Nvidia is releasing a driver update that will cause system fans to start operating sooner to reduce the thermal stress on the chips – of course it would also adversely affect battery life. The timing for Nvidia is terrible with AMD / ATI apparently on a roll, and could mean an opening for the latter to gain further ground in the graphics chip business. Time will tell.

Scientists Getting Closer to Cloaking Technologies @ DailyTech
Sony's Stan Glasgow talks TVs, Blu-ray @ News.com
Virgin warns 800 punters for file-sharing @ The Register
Cops adopt SMS tip lines to help fight crime @ Engadget
See more articles and reviews.

Five years ago in TechSpot:
Laptop sales beat desktops

How many downloads did Mozilla manage to snag upon the release of Firefox 3? Their “world record” attempt was initially fraught with peril, but once they had their servers up and running the rest of the day went smoothly. It was reported the day after that more than 8 million copies had been downloaded, though how many of those would be counted and fit into the time frame remained to be seen.

Today Mozilla announced the results, as well as their official induction into the Guinness World Records. They managed to supply exactly 8,002,530 downloads in a 24 hour period. At 9.2MB for the Windows installer (though a large number of Mac and Linux users downloaded it as well), that's 71,897 Gigabytes of data transfer. Impressive, and Mozilla is certainly proud of themselves for not only getting Firefox 3 out the door, but being able to spread the word enough to generate so much demand.

The release of firmware 2.40 earlier today seems to have caused a wide number of issues for those who updated their PlayStation 3 consoles. Shortly after going live, reports began to emerge on forums about issues such as console freezes or even console bricking – in which case reformatting the hard drive is the only solution.

There doesn’t seem to be any real pattern as to which systems are affected either, with pretty much every PS3 model being reported as troubled by the issue. A representative for the company quickly emitted a statement, saying they were “looking into the matter,” and as of this writing they seem to have pulled the update from its servers. Even when the firmware is back online, though, you should probably head to the official Sony PlayStation boards and see if other issues arise before deciding to update to 2.40.

The recently released streaming video box dubbed “Roku” by Netflix is about to become a bit more attractive. The unit, released in May as a way to access streaming Netflix content easily and play it on your TV, is supposedly getting an upgrade, with a mysterious partner entering the scene to offer even more streaming content that Netflix currently doesn't.

Netflix isn't saying who the new partner will be, or how long until the Roku will support it, but some speculation suggests it could be other companies known for streaming content or getting in on the action, like YouTube or Apple. Netflix does make their money selling content they provide, which some would think would exclude them from having other providers hop on board with their device. However, the inclusion of other providers might be somewhat forced: It seems that companies like Microsoft and Sony are preparing software solutions for their respective consoles that could access Netflix's on-demand service.

In a demonstration of how much computers and game consoles have impacted the entertainment market, the NPD has revealed that 2007 was the year in which game sales in the U.S. overtook DVD sales, taking in $18.85 billion compared to $16 billion for DVDs. That dollar amount doesn't represent a substantial and growing segment of the gaming market either – online purchases, such as through Steam or with downloadable subscription based games like World of Warcraft. It's estimated that those types of games have already generated over $1 billion in sales just in 2008 so far.

While not terribly exciting, this does at least represent how far video games have come. In the early days of consoles and behemoth desktop computers, games were often nothing more than a niche market. Now it is one of the largest and most diverse forms of entertainment around. All that growth has come at a cost, however, and it seems that much like movies games are often now depending upon huge budgets to get out the door. Millions of dollars might get sunk into a game that nobody wants to play – and the independent developer has a hard time finding an audience.