Google is attempting to make it easier for merchants that list items for sale on its Google Base service by allowing shoppers to make purchases using their Google Accounts.

“Many of you are probably already familiar with the Google Account. You use it to sign in and pay for a number of Google services, like Google Video and Google Earth. We’re now introducing similar functionality on Google Base,” Stephen Stukenborg, Google product manager, said. “For buyers, this feature will provide a convenient and secure way to purchase Google Base items by credit card. For sellers, this feature integrates transaction processing with Google Base item management.”

The service is currently in beta testing mode. The company is starting with a very small number of sellers and expects to include more over the next several months, Stukenborg noted.

The move could be viewed as a declaration of war against PayPal, but Google executives are choosing to sidestep the issue.

“There’s been a lot of interest and speculation about what Google is doing with payments. If you take a look at the history of Google’s advertising programs and online services, one thing you notice is that online billing  and payments have been a core part of our offerings for some time,” Tom Oliveri, product marketing manager, pointed out.

“To run our ad programs, Google receives payments every day from advertisers and then pays out a portion of those funds to advertising partners,” he explained.

Google has billed advertisers in 65 countries more than US$11.2 billion in 48 currencies, and made more than $3.9 billion in payments to advertising partners in the past four years, according to Oliveri.

“As the number of Google services has increased, we’ve continued to build on our core payment features and migrate to a standard process for people to buy our services with a Google Account,” he said.

 From a Lionsgate press release :

Lionsgate today announced plans to release 10 titles on the next-generation high-definition Blu-ray Disc (BD) to coincide with the arrival of the first commercially offered BD players in stores.  The first wave, available at retail on May 23, will include CRASH and LORD OF WAR, priced at a $39.99 SRP,and THE PUNISHER, SAW and TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, marked at a $29.99 SRP.

The second wave with five additional titles will follow shortly thereafter with a June/July date still to be determined.  These BD titles include RESERVOIR DOGS, TOTAL RECALL, STARGATE and FRANK HERBERT’S DUNE priced at $29.99, while THE DEVIL’S REJECTS will be available at a $39.99 SRP.  The announcement was made by Lionsgate President Steve Beeks.

“There has never been a home entertainment experience available to mass audiences like Blu-ray, and Lionsgate is pleased to be providing some of our top-line product at launch for consumers to enjoy,” said Beeks.  “As a company, we have always been at the forefront in utilizing technology to offer consumers the best viewing experience.  Watching a film in your living room is about to radically change forever and we can’t wait to maximize Blu-ray’s technological capabilities and see for ourselves how far we can take the home movie-watching experience.”

And this press release from Sony Pictures :

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) is targeting May 23 to deliver the first wave of Blu-ray Disc (BD) titles at retail, it was announced today.  Delivery will coincide with the launch that day of the first commercially available BD player from Samsung Electronics, which will be followed shortly by BD players from Pioneer and Sony along with a BD compatible VAIO PC from Sony.

SPHE and MGM Home Entertainment will first release eight BD titles, with another eight following shortly June 13.  Benjamin S. Feingold, president, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, made the announcement.

The first Blu-ray Disc titles from SPHE and MGM Home Entertainment will include: 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight’s Tale, The Last Waltz (MGM), Resident Evil Apocalypse and XXX.

BD titles streeting June 13 include: Kung Fu Hustle, Legends of the Fall, Robocop (MGM), Stealth, Species (MGM), SWAT and Terminator (MGM).  Underworld Evolution will debut in early Summer day and date with the DVD.

“We are primed to ensure that a variety of Blu-ray Disc content is available at retail to support the introduction of the first BD players from Samsung Electronics and Pioneer, as well as the first BD player and compatible VAIO computer from Sony,” said Mr. Feingold.  “Sony Pictures further intends to provide additional titles to coincide with the launch of BD products from other manufacturers.  We’re thrilled that the Blu-ray Disc era is about to
begin.”

From Amazon.com press release:

Leading online retailer Amazon.com, Inc. today announced it has acquired Shopbop.com (http://www.shopbop.com/), a retailer of fashion-forward apparel, shoes and accessories for women. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Shopbop.com is located in Madison, Wisconsin, and features products from more than 75 leading designers including Marc Jacobs, Juicy Couture and True Religion. Founded in 1999 as a single brick-and-mortar store, the Shopbop.com site sells a wide array of apparel, accessories and shoes to consumers around the world, and is a popular destination for fashion-savvy consumers.

Shopbop.com will continue to operate as a stand-alone site and will be run as a complement to Amazon’s existing Apparel & Accessories Store (www.amazon.com/apparel). All aspects of Shopbop.com’s customer experience will remain intact and their operations will remain in Madison.

Microsoft’s mysterious Origami project appears to be a handheld multi-function wireless tablet, somewhat larger than — but conceptually similar to — the recently introduced Linux-based Nokia 770, a flash presentation on the website of the company behind Microsoft’s Origami project website implies.

Recent Origami speculation included the idea that it may have evolved from the multi-function Origami concept prototype unveiled by National Semiconductor in 2001. Other rumors suggested that Origami would be a successor to the small wireless mini-tablet showcased by Bill Gates in his keynote talk at WinHEC last spring, or that it might even be some sort of “iPOD-and-Blackberry killer” rolled into one.

Thanks to an Engadget reader’s sleuth work (see comments area), a flash presentation was discovered on the website of DigitalKitchen, the marketing firm that is reportedly producing flash videos for Microsoft’s Origami Project website.

The online presentation ( click here to see video )  depicts a small wireless Web pad that integrates a potpourri of mobile device functions, including note taking, sketching, instant messaging, GPS-based navigation, and more. There are also hints that the device may offer VoIP phoning and Portable Media Center capabilities, as well. The latter is suggested by a frame that shows multimedia content for an Origami device being managed by a Windows Media Center PC.

Read WindowsForDevices.com article here

UPDATE:  Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Todd Bishop reports that Microsoft has acknowledged the DigitalKitchen video, but says that the presentation actually represents a one-year-old concept exploration, rather than the current state of the project.

Microsoft is unveiling the official Windows Vista version line up on February 27. While the names of the six core SKUs are familiar, thanks to a recent information leak, some of the specifics regarding the feature list for each variant might catch some company watchers by surprise.

Microsoft is readying six core Vista packages, or SKUs, plus two additional releases customized for the European Union that won’t bundle in Windows Media Player, as ordered by European antitrust regulators. The six Windows Vista variants are: Windows Starter 2007; Windows Vista Enterprise; Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista ultimate, and Windows Vista Business.

Also on the list are two additional releases, Windows Vista Home Basic N and Windows Vista Business N. The “N” releases are those which do not include Media Player.

Microsoft currently offers six core Windows XP SKUs: The line up includes XP Home, Professional, Media Center, Tablet PC, and Professional x64, and Windows XP Starter. (Microsoft also offers “N” versions of its XP Home and XP Professional releases, as stipulated by the European antitrust regulators.)

With Vista, there will not be separate Tablet, Media Center or x64 SKUs, said Barry Goffe, director of Windows client product management. All of the planned Vista versions, except Windows Vista Starter, will be available in both 32- and 64-bit flavors. All SKUs will integrate Internet Explorer 7.0, the new Vista desktop search, parental controls and Windows Defender antispyware technology. And all of the Windows Vista business SKUs will embed features designed to appeal to small/mid-size businesses (SMBs), Goffe said, obviating the need for a separate Vista small-business variant.

Read Mary Jo Foley’s entire article here

A related story, “Microsoft Confirms Vista Editions” from PC World here

The Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD format wars are heating up.  Battle lines are being drawn.  Sony’s Blu-Ray will, reportedly, be more expensive than Toshiba’s HD-DVD, however, Sony has more movie studio support lined up.  But then Microsoft is backing HD-DVD. Sony will have Blu-Ray in its new PlayStation.

The ping-pong game for the market share continues.  Meanwhile, retailers and you, the consumer, loses.  Do yourself a favor, when the first machines hit the market, don’t buy one.  Wait.  Remember Betamax vs. VHS?  Here we go again. 

Read this in-depth article from NY Times writer Ken Belson.  It will give you a good look at what’s going on……

AT first glance, Amir Majidimehr does not look like a game-changer in the battle to develop the next generation of DVD players and discs. As the vice president for Windows digital media at Microsoft, he neither steers a Hollywood studio nor controls one of the many consumer electronics giants that are betting billions of dollars on one of the two new formats that promise to play high-definition movies and television shows.

Yet when he and his team in Redmond, Wash., decided last September to abandon their neutral stance and to support Toshiba and its HD-DVD standard over the Blu-ray format led by Sony, the unexpected change of heart reverberated through the technology industry.

Suddenly, Toshiba’s seemingly quixotic defense of its format had new life. Intel joined Microsoft in backing HD-DVD. Hewlett-Packard withdrew its exclusive support of Blu-ray. This month, another member of the Blu-ray camp, LG Electronics, hedged its bets, too, signing a deal to license Toshiba’s technology.

And earlier this month, one of the main reasons underpinning Microsoft’s move to shuck its neutrality — the complexity of producing Blu-ray technology — led to Sony’s acknowledgment that it might delay this spring’s scheduled release of its PlayStation 3 game console partly because the needed technology was still being worked out.

The possible delay and the Blu-ray group’s loss of its once-commanding lead are not encouraging developments for Sony in its attempt to revive its electronics group after a series of bungles. PlayStation 3 is crucial to Sony’s future, and not only because the latest version of its gaming consoles could generate billions in revenue; the new machines will include disc drives that will turn them into Blu-ray DVD players as well.

“The PlayStation is more than a game system to them; it’s one of their attempts to own the digital living room,” said Robert Heiblim, a consultant to electronics companies. “Blu-ray is also critically important to get right. They don’t want to be weak in an area they feel they can dominate.”

A DECADE ago, a prospective death match between competing first-generation DVD players was averted when Sony and Philips agreed to back down and join the Toshiba/Warner Brothers side, in exchange for a share of royalties that all DVD player producers pay to the format’s creator. Now, no truce seems near, as neither side wants to settle for a small piece of what could be a big electronics success.

So consumers and retailers may be in for a reprise of the confusing VHS-Betamax showdown of the early 1980’s, with Toshiba replacing Matsushita as Sony’s adversary. But Sony hopes to have a happier resolution this time. Sony lost the battle two decades ago when its highly regarded Betamax technology was defeated by VHS, a more widely accepted alternative.

Once again, the differences between the two technologies are not huge. And a growing chorus of critics, including some studio chiefs eager to sell new products as quickly as possible, call the Blu-ray format unnecessarily elaborate and expensive.

The first HD-DVD machines from Toshiba and the competing Blu-ray players from Sony, Samsung and the other Blu-ray companies will all play movies with crisper pictures, enhanced sound and a bevy of interactive features like pictures within pictures and links to the Internet. The machines will also play older DVD’s.

Technophiles got a preview of the HD-DVD technology on Wednesday at an electronics store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As Jessica Simpson and Johnny Knoxville cavorted in the movie “The Dukes of Hazzard,” prospective buyers were able to see the difference between a plain old DVD and the high-definition kind. But the main feature was the price. Toshiba will sell two players starting in March; one will cost just $499, half the price of the cheapest Blu-ray machines, the first of which will hit the stores this spring. Samsung’s first machine will cost $1,000, while Pioneer’s Blu-ray player will run $1,800.

Toshiba executives have said that because more high-definition movies will be distributed over the Internet in coming years, they have essentially upgraded existing DVD technology to keep prices down. Blu-ray discs, however, include an architecture that Sir Howard Stringer, Sony’s chairman, calls “revolutionary, not evolutionary.”

The Blu-ray camp is trying to create a brand-new technology that will accommodate features that are still to be created. In preparation for that future, Blu-ray discs will store 25 gigabytes of data, compared with the 15 gigabytes on comparable Toshiba discs and 4.7 gigabytes on today’s DVD’s.

Read the entire article here

IBM has collaborated with two universities to develop several speech-enabled Web applications for mobile phones, the company said Friday.

IBM is partnering with Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and the University of California, Santa Barbara (USCB), to test technologies that it may eventually offer to other types of users, such as sales forces, physicians and emergency response teams, according to the company.

The MobileU program allows students to ask “What time is the next bus coming?” into their cell phones. Global Positioning System devices inside the buses use General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) to transmit their location to servers on campus and ultimately to students’ mobile phones to tell them how long they have to wait.

The application, developed with Wake Forest University, uses IBM WebSphere Everyplace Multimodal Environment software.

With LaundryView, IBM built an application on top of an existing Web application developed by the Mac-Gray Corp., which provides laundry management services to schools.

Students at Wake Forest living in special, tech-enabled facilities can ask any Internet-connected device how many washers and dryers are currently in use. As a result, they don’t have to waste time walking to the laundry room to find out whether any machines are free.

Six Apart’s Mena Trott talks to Business Week about blogging:

It’s hard to imagine the world without blogs. The publishing technology has become a cultural and political force. One of the reasons for the rapid growth of the blogosphere is the existence of user-friendly blogging software such as Moveable Type. The program was designed with simplicity in mind by Mena Trott, a former graphic designer and early blogger (she launched dollarshort.org in early 2001), and her husband, Ben Trott, a programmer.

Mena and Ben went on to found Six Apart, the San Francisco-based company behind the blog-hosting service TypePad. In January, 2005, Six Apart acquired LiveJournal, an online community of personal blogs that today boasts 9.6 million accounts and more than 16,000 new posts per hour. In December, 2005, Six Apart and Yahoo! (YHOO) announced a partnership to build Yahoo-hosted blogs with Moveable Type.

Six Apart is currently working on a new product, codenamed Comet, that will start beta testing this quarter. “It’s meant for the next generation of blogs,” says Mena Trott, without revealing details.

Netflix has put the video store no further away than your mailbox, but are digital video recorders about to bring the video store even closer, even faster? Perhaps so: DirecTV says that it plans a broadband video service that ups the ante in video content distribution.

Satellite TV provider DirecTV, which is partially owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., has announced that it will provide a video downloading service along with its premium DVR service. Although DirecTV won’t offer the broadband Internet connection that will be necessary to use the service, an article in The Wall Street Journal said that 5 million of DirecTV’s customers already have broadband service anyway.

Through the service, DirecTV users will be able to order videos through their DVRs, or through a website. Granted, people will have to wait to pop the popcorn, since it will take some time for the videos to download to their DVRs for viewing — apparently the videos will be fully downloaded later that day, or even the following day. DirecTV will offer a library of 2,000 videos for users to choose from.

Sony leapt to first place from fourth place in the LCD-TV market during the final three months of last year, knocking rival Sharp off the top spot for the first time ever, according to market researcher DisplaySearch.

In what may mark signs of a revival for Sony, the company’s Bravia series of LCD-TVs led it to the first place spot in the fourth quarter of last year in both units and revenue, along with its LCD panel capacity from its TFT-LCD panel joint venture with Samsung Electronics, DisplaySearch said.

Sony has been aggressively slashing prices of its Bravia series, and pumped up its marketing in the final months of last year to grab a bigger share of the market. Its strong name brand was the biggest boost, a DisplaySearch analyst says.

Sony’s share of unit sales surged to 15 percent of the overall market from just 9 percent during the third quarter, mainly due to sales of LCD-TVs with larger size screens, the market researcher says. In terms of sales, Sony reached a 19 percent share of market revenue in the fourth quarter, up from 13 percent in the previous quarter.