LG has reportable chosen the ARM11 MPCore Processor to do the dirty in upcoming HDTVs. This chip is a multi-core CPU that, along with the ARM Mali graphics chip, should eliminate everyone’s main complaint about on-TV widgets: lag.

In the past TV manufacturers generally made the CPU themselves. This was never a big deal as the only thing the TV ever had to display was a menu and the picture. But now that consumers want more out of their HDTVS – or manufacturers say they do at least – these chips haven’t impressed. ARM CPUs are quickly becoming the go-to chip for manufacturers as they have been used for sometime by some.

We spent some time with the Yahoo Widget Engine at CES and walked away unimpressed. The system isn’t that responsive and is somewhat buggy. Probably because the chips running the system was never designed to handle such operations. That’s where ARM, and others like Intel, comes in.

Variations of the ARM11 CPU are already found in the iPhone 3G, iPods, the Palm Pre, and a lot of Nokia devices. Maybe we’ll even see ARM Cortex architecture sometime in the future. (That’s what the iPhone 3G S and Archos products are built-on) You have to imagine that Intel wouldn’t mind part of this pie either seeing as it helped develop the Yahoo Widget Engine.

Hopefully this move is the beginning of the next era of HDTVs. Hopefully we’re entering a time when televisions are more off a home appliance rather than a dedicated video device.

First announced at CES, Yahoo!’s widget engine, Connected TV, is now shipping with the Samsung 7000 series LED HDTV, which starts at $2500. The 7000 series Samsung LED HDTVs can either be wired into your home network or connected through a wireless router that costs an extra $80 from Samsung.

The widgets essentially let you surf the Web while you’re catching up on some boob tube. There are shortcut buttons on the TV controller itself and new widgets can be downloaded via the Widget Gallery. Here you can find widgets for Twitter, USA Today Sports, Flickr, Netflix, Amazon, The NYT, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Weather and Yahoo! Finance.

Sony, LG and Vizio will be releasing their own models with the integrated widget engine from Yahoo! in the coming months.

At the Samsung press conference earlier today at CES 2009, Yahoo’s involvement with Samsung’s new HDTV line was revealed to be an integrated system of Widgets, based on a new Konfabulator engine. They went through it very briefly, but Flickr, news, finance, and other Yahoo services are fully available and integrated into an on-screen display, for use during usual TV watching. They call it Medi@ 2.0, a wholly buzz-oriented name, but you’ll probably just call it “Yahoo TV” or “The Stocks.”

Here’s a video of the interface in action — dramatized, it looks like, but a good indicator of what it should look like on your Samsung, should you choose to accept one. (Update: I talked to Samsung, they say it’s pretty much good to go. It’s still only working on prototype TVs right now, however.)

Hey script kiddies, next time you steal some unsuspecting person’s password, you’d better be prepared to do five years in prison. That’s what the kid who “hacked” Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account faces, now that he’s been indicted by a federal grand jury.

The kid, now identified as David Kernell, a 20-year-old student at the University of Tennessee, has been accused of accessing Palin’s e-mail account without her authorization.

The kid is screwed, in other words.

If convicted, the kid faces five years in prison, a $250,000 and three years of “supervised release.” No Facebook for him, I’m guessing.

So, kids, let this be a warning to you: don’t try to impress your friends by reading powerful people’s e-mails. To quote Denzel Washington from Training Day, this kid is federally f*cked now.

Beauty queen turned vice-presidenial nominee Sarah Palin had her Yahoo! e-mail account broken into last week. (Who uses Yahoo! e-mail?) It was a heinous crime, right up there with the Lindburg baby, and one that exposed her horribly boring personal life to the world. It was a political non-event: no saucy tidbits, no porno site passwords, no that-moose-deserved-its. But the likes of Fox News and Drudge used the opportunity to scare the pants off normal folks: “hackers!” “evil!” “danger!” And so on.

As a well-known security expert, I’m more than happy to offer a few tips and tricks to help prevent you from ending up like Palin over there.

Basically, keep your wits about you. Palin’s account was hacked, I think, because the dumb kid who hacked it—you just know it’s some dopey kid trying to impress his equally dopey friends—was able to use Yahoo’s “forgot your password?” feature. Here, Yahoo! asks you for something like your first pet’s name, your mother’s maiden name, etc. in order to retrieve your password. Now, the odds of a complete stranger guessing your e-mail account name and the corresponding password is pretty low. But, who’s to say That Jerk at the office, or perhaps your vindictive ex-wife’s hired gun, doesn’t already know your account name, needing only the password to get in? That’s the type of person you need to be on the lookout for.

Keep your wits about you? Don’t use the same password for all of your online accounts. I know you do—I do, too, but I usually use one of four different passwords per account—but you really shouldn’t. I’m not suggesting you use a random number generator for every forum or e-mail account you have, but at least keep a rolodex of a few different passwords handy.

Keep your wits about you? Don’t take those “forgot your password?” features seriously; answer them with nonsense. Back in 2000, one of my forum passwords was guessed, à la Palin, because someone deduced the answer to the question, “Who’s your favorite wrestler?” (It was a WWF message board.) The answer, Triple H, was easy to figure out, especially since my signature was something like, “Triple H rules!” The evildoer then proceeded to change my password and ruin my good name. It was a lesson learned, though, as I’ve never since taken one of those “forgot your password?” features seriously. Just remember your password. There are harder things in life.

Keep your wits about you? Try to limit the time you spend on public Internet connections. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 1,000 times, all it takes is one script kiddy armed with a packet sniffer (like ettercap, which is the Swiss Army knife of network security tools) and all your data can be intercepted. This includes SSL-encrypted info, too, since programs like ettercap can completely defeat SSL. It goes without saying you don’t want to be doing any online banking at a Starbucks or at the airport, for example.

Keep your wits about you? I really cannot stress the importance of using common sense while online. What if some dude came up to you on the street claiming to be the wallet inspector? Would you give him your wallet? I should hope not. Be vigilant, use your better judgment and don’t claim to be against bridges to nowhere when the record shows that you were very much in favor of it.

The very fabric of our democracy came under attack last week when a hacker broke into Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s e-mail account. Federal investigators have since been involved, and are closing in on a possible culprit, a college student at the University of Tennessee.

Investigators have tracked an IP address to student housing at The Commons in Knoxville, part of the University of Tennessee. It seems the student in question, 20, did, in fact, try to cover his trail by using a proxy server (provided by Ctunnel.com), but the Feds have already figured him or her out.

Next time, elite hacker, use something like Tor, which will help out at least a little bit.

Still, if found out, the hacker isn’t expected to face any serious jail time because of some sort of legal loophole.

I’ve wanted a bike for a couple months now and I think Yahoo! and Electra just made me forget about that James Perse bike that I’ve been attempting to steal from the West Village store. 20 specialized Electra bikes were dispersed to NYC, San Francisco, LA, Toronto, UK, Australia, Singapore, Tokyo, Copenhagen, and Vermont. Five of those Flickr bikes will be sent out on special assignments that will be decided upon by Yahoo! users. The rest were divvyed up between some of Flickr’s most prolific photographers and a select group of others.

So how does this thing work?

The bike is rigged with a Nokia N95 that snaps a photo every 60 seconds when the bike is in motion. If it remains motionless for more than three minutes the motion sensor will trigger a sleep mode. Because it’s located on the front handle bars you can rotate the unit 180 degrees

Each of the 20 bikes has its own Flickr account where you can view the photos and see exactly where it was taken. There are three solar panels that ensure the phone is juiced and five hours of sunlight will keep it fully charged, but there is an AC adapter in case it’s a little too gloomy out.

If you’re interested in the “Start Wearing Purple” campaign then check this out. The color purple apparently emphasizes innovation and imagination.

It’s no secret that Yahoo has been struggling. It seemed they went one way and the rest of the web went another. Well, fine. They’re big enough to take to take a few wrong turns. Now however, they want to get on the same path that others like Facebook and MySpace have been following. To do this they need to attract developers – developers that have been flocking to other sites such as Google or Facebook. But to do that, they need to make things easier for developers in the first place.

Earlier this year Yahoo announced the Yahoo Open Strategy (YOS), in which they plan to open all Yahoo sites. Their immediate focus is upon social networking, in that they hope to create a dashboard for users where their social profile is fully integrated across the Yahoo brand. Today and tomorrow they are hosting Open Hack Day in an effort to draw in more developers.

From PC World:

These include the YOS application platform and a preview of social APIs (application programming interfaces) that will let programs access end user data. The platform and APIs will be available only in preview mode during the event. They will be publicly released in the coming months, according to Yahoo.

Yahoo has taken a lot of heat in recent years, and the article goes on to make clear that they still have a long way to go to get to where they need to be. However, by opening up their APIs for developers (if only for the event) at least they are faced in the right direction.

Today at CTIA Yahoo announced oneConnect for the Apple iPhone. The stand-alone app aims to aggregate all your social networks into one place. Naturally, all your favorites are included: Facebook, YouTube, Dopplr, Twitter, Flickr, even Friendster. Of course Yahoo being Yahoo, others are included too.

Read the rest over on MobileCrunch.

Patrick Barry, VP of Connected TV from Yahoo demonstrated the “Widget Channel”, which aims to seamlessly integrate the Internet with television. Yes, yes, I know we’ve all heard that one before. But this time, they tell us, it will be different.

The Widget Channel is non-intrusive. All previous attempts at marrying the web with TV have obscured the actual experience of watching television by forcing a browser or some other distraction upon the user. By utilizing a widget approach, apps can be integrated into the Widget Dock that can rest alongside the bottom of the screen, much like a news ticker. (The screen can easily be resized if you actually are watching something with a news ticker).

The dock is made up of “snippets”, which are representations of web content of the users choosing. For example, in the demo we saw real time (20 minutes delayed) stock quotes, weather updates, news and sports. For deep functionality, a window can be opened in a side bar for viewing Flickr pictures or getting stock charts. The important thing to note here is that it was able to be done without interrupting the viewing process.

The demo was able to run with the Intel Media Processor CE 3100 (Canmore), which is “a few weeks away” from high volume production.

The demo worked fantastic and for the first time that I had ever seen, I actually believe the Internet can be integrated into the television. Along with consumers primed for true interactive television, industry is geared up for the transition too. Indeed, even the demo had an ad, snuggled right in there between My Media and the weather.

Oh, Yahoo. Why do you make it so hard to like you?

Take this story. Yahoo is shutting down its music download store at the end of September, including the DRM validation servers. Without DRM validation servers, people who purchased tracks outright won’t be able to play them.

In other words, people will be left with useless files on their hard drives. Nice.

To be fair, it’s not like Yahoo is completely screwing its [former] customers. The company will provide coupons to download the previously downloaded (but now useless) songs again from Rhapsody, which will be DRM-free MP3s. That, or you can get your money back. Your choice.

Meh, to be honest, Yahoo is doing right by it customers, and this is more of an illustatrion of how silly DRM is more than anything else.

HP, Intel and Yahoo have teamed up to create the Cloud Computing Test Bed, creating a distributed computing platform for third-party research and application building. There will be six data centers spanning the globe, with the three other partners being, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany.

According to the HP news release:

The goal of the initiative is to promote open collaboration among industry, academia and governments by removing the financial and logistical barriers to research in data-intensive, Internet-scale computing.

At a conference call earlier today, representatives from the three companies noted that each partner will build their own test bed, with some aspects up and running now.

The project states a commitment to support open source software by running Apache Hadoop. HP’s focus will be intelligent infrastructure and cloud services, while Intel looks at important technology issues around hardware stack to drive performance and energy usage.

The current “everything as a service” philosophy contends that with little or no capital expenditure, business and users can access vital services. The distributed computing concept continues to gain traction, with the companies hoping to achieve a level of invisibility, with users creating applications at any scale, without worrying about the underlying architecture.

Yahoo announced that effective Sept 30, they will be shutting down the servers needed for customers who need to reauthorize their legally purchased music. Yahoo previously had announced the demise of their Unlimited Music Store.

DRM encoded tracks have caused a commotion since they were introduced as a piracy-fighting tactic. Users purchasing new computers and operating software upgrades have had to reauthorize their playlists each time. Not surprisingly, that came with a high degree of customer frustration.

As DRM finds its way out the door, more online music retailers are abandoning the technology. In a recent move, Microsoft announced they would shut down their servers in 2011. (After initially pegging an August date). Yahoo suggests that users burn their DRM tracks to CD while they still can. Thanks Yahoo.

Getty Images may soon buy your Flickr photos. The professional photo database has teamed up with Yahoo!, which owns Flickr, to look for great photos that it can turn around and sell to its clients. Of course, as photographer, you’d get a cut of the action if and when Getty buys your photo off Flickr.

Some of the comments on the Bits blog are all, “Waa, this will kill professional photographers/what incentive do they have now blah blah…” A Getty rep was quick to say that today’s advertisers are looking for authenticity as much as anything else, and Flickr is loaded with “authentic,” and “folksy” images.

Very cool, I think, and all the more reason to use Flickr.

Microsoft stopped by Yahoo’s apartment this morning to pick up a bottle of cologne, a pair of sweat pants, and the mountain bike that it had left there and found that Yahoo had stayed home from work. They got to talking and it seems that absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder, as the two companies are considering an alternative agreement which would “not involve a full buyout” of Yahoo by Microsoft, according to Reuters.

In a statement, Microsoft said it “is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative”…

…After Microsoft’s statement, Yahoo confirmed it was looking at a number of “value maximising” alternatives with Microsoft, and would assess offers made by the firm.

Details beyond that are pretty scant as this point, but isn’t it nice to see these kids try to work out their differences? They just needed some space, that’s all.

It’s all over, folks. Microsoft is no longer pursuing Yahoo.

Just wanted to update everyone on the awkward slow-dance going on between Yahoo! and Microsoft. According to the New York Times, Microsoft apparently upped its offer to buy Yahoo! from the initial $31 per share to an undisclosed amount. Yahoo! believes itself to be worth at least $37 per share and The Times is reporting that “Microsoft suggested it was willing to pay more than $33 a share,” according to sources involved with the negotiations.

Yahoo! has been repeatedly declining offers from Microsoft, although co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang has said that it’s not because Yahoo! doesn’t want to strike a deal, it’s because Yahoo! feels that Microsoft’s initial bid “substantially undervalued the company.” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told his employees last Thursday, “I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth to me. I won’t go a dime above, and I will go to what I think it’s worth if that gets the deal done.”

Just an update for those of you keeping score in the Microsoft vs Yahoo! potential merger/buyout/hostile takeover — I’ll keep this as short as possible.

Microsoft sent a letter to Yahoo! basically saying “We’ve repeatedly tried to buy your company. You have three weeks to sell. If you don’t, we’ll just buy a bunch of your stock.” Yahoo! sent a letter back to Microsoft basically saying “Your offer is weak, we’re not selling even though your initial offer was 62% above our market value. Make a decent offer and we’ll sell. Please don’t buy our stock.”

Yahoo! should just sell. It’ll get more money than if Microsoft buys out a bunch of its stock and replaces its board members. It’s going to happen either way. Get it over with and then we can be done with this and continue to use Google to search for stuff.

Full letters from Microsoft and Yahoo! after the jump…

Microsoft to Yahoo!

April 5, 2008
Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Dear Members of the Board:

It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.

While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement. We understand that you have been meeting to consider and assess your alternatives, including alternative transactions with others in the industry, but we’ve seen no indication that you have authorized Yahoo! management to negotiate with Microsoft. This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.

During these two months of inactivity, the Internet has continued to march on, while the public equity markets and overall economic conditions have weakened considerably, both in general and for other Internet-focused companies in particular. At the same time, public indicators suggest that Yahoo!’s search and page view shares have declined. Finally, you have adopted new plans at the company that have made any change of control more costly.

By any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today. We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment, even after reviewing your public disclosures relating to your future prospects.

Given these developments, we believe now is the time for our respective companies to authorize teams to sit down and negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies that will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders, creating a more efficient and competitive company that will provide greater value and service to our customers. If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board. The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.

It is unfortunate that by choosing not to enter into substantive negotiations with us, you have failed to give due consideration to a transaction that has tremendous benefits for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees. We think it is critically important not to let this window of opportunity pass.

Sincerely,

Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Office
Microsoft Corp.

Yahoo! to Microsoft

Dear Steve:

Our Board has reviewed your most recent letter with regard to the unsolicited proposal you made to acquire Yahoo! on January 31, 2008.

Our Board carefully considered your unsolicited proposal, unanimously concluded that it was not in the best interests of Yahoo! and our stockholders, and rejected it publicly on February 11, 2008. Our Board cited Yahoo!’s global brand, large worldwide audience, significant recent investments in advertising platforms and future growth prospects, free cash flow and earnings potential, as well as its substantial unconsolidated investments, as factors in its decision.

At the same time, we have continued to make clear that we are not opposed to a transaction with Microsoft if it is in the best interests of our stockholders. Our position is simply that any transaction must be at a value that fully reflects the value of Yahoo!, including any strategic benefits to Microsoft, and on terms that provide certainty to our stockholders.

Since disclosing our Board’s position with respect to your proposal, we have presented our three-year financial and strategic plan to our stockholders, which supports our Board’s determination that your unsolicited proposal substantially undervalues Yahoo!. Those meetings with our stockholders have also provided us an opportunity to hear their views.

We have continued to launch new products and to take actions which leverage our scale, technology, people and platforms as we execute on the strategy we publicly articulated. Today, in fact, we are announcing AMP! from Yahoo!, a new advertising management platform designed to dramatically simplify the process of buying and selling ads online.

Finally, our Board has been actively and expeditiously exploring our strategic alternatives to maximize stockholder value, a process which is ongoing. All of these actions have been driven by our overarching commitment to maximize stockholder value.

Our Board’s view of your proposal has not changed. We continue to believe that your proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo! and our stockholders. Contrary to statements in your letter, stockholders representing a significant portion of our outstanding shares have indicated to us that your proposal substantially undervalues Yahoo!. Furthermore, as a result of the decrease in your own stock price, the value of your proposal today is significantly lower than it was when you made your initial proposal.

In contrast to your assertions about the effect of general economic conditions on our business, Yahoo!’s business forecasts are consistent with what we outlined in our last earnings call. As you know, we recently reaffirmed our Q1 and full year guidance, which is a testament to our ability to perform in line with our expectations despite the current economic environment. In addition, our three-year financial and strategic plan which we have made public demonstrates significant potential upside not previously communicated to the financial markets. This plan has received positive feedback from our stockholders, further strengthening the view that Yahoo! is worth well more as a standalone company than the value offered in your proposal, and would be even more valuable to Microsoft. Your own statements have made clear the strategic importance of Yahoo!’s substantial assets and capabilities to Microsoft.

We regret to say that your letter mischaracterizes the nature of our discussions with you. We have had constructive conversations together regarding a variety of topics, including integration and regulatory issues. Your comment that we have refused to enter into negotiations to conclude an agreement are particularly curious given we have already rejected your initial proposal, nominally $31 per share at the time, for substantially undervaluing Yahoo! and your suggestions in your letter and the media that you are considering lowering the value of your proposal. Moreover, Steve, you personally attended two of these meetings and could have advanced discussions in any way you saw fit.

As to antitrust, we have discussed with you our concerns. Any transaction between us would result in a thorough regulatory review in multiple jurisdictions. As a follow up to a recent meeting among our respective legal advisors we had on this topic, and at your request, we provided to you on March 28 a list of additional information we would need to further our understanding of the regulatory issues associated with any transaction. To date, you have still not provided any of the requested information.

We consider your threat to commence an unsolicited offer and proxy contest to displace our independent Board members to be counterproductive and inconsistent with your stated objective of a friendly transaction. We are confident that our stockholders understand that our independent Board is best positioned to objectively and knowledgeably evaluate our Company’s alternatives and to maximize value.

In conclusion, please allow us to restate our position, so there can be no confusion. We are open to all alternatives that maximize stockholder value. To be clear, this includes a transaction with Microsoft if it represents a price that fully recognizes the value of Yahoo! on a standalone basis and to Microsoft, is superior to our other alternatives, and provides certainty of value and certainty of closing. Lastly, we are steadfast in our commitment to choosing a path that maximizes stockholder value and we will not allow you or anyone else to acquire the company for anything less than its full value.

Very truly yours,

Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Board

Jerry Yang, Chief Executive Officer

I love how other, unnamed blogs characterize Microsoft’s threat to pursue a hostile takeover of Yahoo! as “mean” or “oh man, they’re playing hardball now, watch out!” Like, if a company’s shareholders want a takeover to occur, but the board doesn’t, and the bid goes though, it’s a hostile takeover. That’s it. It’s not like Ballmer is running into Yahoo! HQ and taking the building over by force.

But, we’re not really concerned with financials here, so, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Just a peculiar thing I noticed while listening to some random band I found on What.cd and planning the rest of my day.