ATI loses ground after AMD purchase ... Yahoo reorganizes, COO to leave

HIGHLIGHTS

News: ATI loses ground in graphics after AMD purchase
News: Wii sold estimated 372,000 units at launch in Japan
News: Yahoo reorganizes into three groups, COO to leave
News: Microsoft warns of new Word attack
Tip: Sharing DVD drives
GottaGadget: What's your biggest gadget secret?
ITwhirled: Star Wars Kid gets more downloads than Paris Hilton


NEWS UPDATES

ATI loses ground in graphics after AMD purchase
ATI Technologies Inc. lost ground in every major graphics product category during the third quarter, and its acquisition by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is likely to blame, according to Jon Peddie Research.

Wii sold estimated 372,000 units at launch in Japan
Sales of Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s Wii games console hit 372,000 units over its first two days on the market, according to figures from Enterbrain Inc.

Yahoo reorganizes into three groups, COO to leave
Yahoo Inc. will reorganize into three new units, as part of a shake-up that will see Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig leave the company, Yahoo said Tuesday.

Microsoft warns of new Word attack
Microsoft Corp. warned Tuesday of a new, unpatched memory corruption error in its word-processing software, and said that it was investigating reports of "limited" attacks that exploit the problem.

Dell, Microsoft collaborate on storage tech
Dell Inc. and Microsoft Corp. rolled out a new storage system on Wednesday for file and application data that integrates hardware and software from both vendors. The system pairs Dell's PowerVault NX1950, a serial-attached SCSI (SAS) back-end storage array that can use up to 45 drives, with Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003, a file server and package of management tools.

Sametime links up with AIM, Google Talk
IBM Corp.'s Sametime has gained interoperability with public instant messaging networks from AOL LLC and Google Inc., and will interoperate with the one from Yahoo Inc. in a matter of weeks.

2006: The year in PCs and chips
Vendors in the PC and chip industries moved boldly in 2006, changing the marketplace map through mergers, recalls, layoffs and lawsuits. Oh, and they launched some impressive new products too, keeping Moore's Law moving as they built smaller, faster chips and cooler, more efficient computers. Here, in chronological order, we share a sampling of the biggest events of the past 12 months.


TIP

Sharing DVD drives
By Sandra Henry-Stocker

While only the newer Sun systems and higher-end PCs today are equipped
with DVD drives, application software is beginning to arrive on DVDs
because of the tremendous increase in storage capacity. Your typical
CD holds about 700 MB of data. That was a lot of data when system
disks were only a couple of gigabytes in size. DVDs, on the other
hand, may hold 4.3 or 4.7 GB -- and that's just a starting point. If
the multi-layer storage capacity of DVDs is ever fully employed, DVDs
will hold nearly 16 GB of data. With less overhead for data integrity
and more area, it's no wonder that Solaris is being shipped on DVDs
only.

So what do you do if you need to install software that is only
available on a DVD on a system which has only a CD drive? One answer
is to mount and share the DVD from a system with a DVD reader. Since
I had to do that just last week, I'll run through the steps in today's
column.


GOTTA GADGET

What's your biggest gadget secret?
Do you play games on your PDA during boring meetings? Do you have a separate account for gadget purchases that your spouse doesn't know about? Do you use your gadget in an unexpected way?

Share a secret, and enter our drawing to win an Apple iPod (with video capability).


ITWHIRLED

Star Wars Kid gets more downloads than Paris Hilton
Viral Factory, a British firm, declared the famous video of Ghyslain Raza, the Canadian teenager who swung a golf ball retriever around like a light saber, is the most commonly shared Internet video in history, with over 900 million views -- more than twice as many as Paris Hilton's infamous sex video. A decades-old film of an whale being dynamited on an Oregon beach, which was a meme from the early days of the Internet, also made the top ten.