qc110.com

7:35 p.m.: Kodu was formerly known as Boku, though a Google search for that name turns up some extremely not-safe-for-kids images.

Sadly, it’s probably the best part of the keynote so far–and getting the most audience reaction.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

7:44 p.m.: Showing a simulation of caffeine and your brain. Man, i could use a little of that right now.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

6:50 p.m.: Subtle dig at Apple: “At this time economically when people are struggling to make every dollar count” the choice that offers the most power and most value for the money is a PC, Ballmer said.

7:00 p.m.: Those expecting some secret new features of Windows 7 to show up in the beta will be disappointed. It’s basically the stuff that was in the pre-beta along with the user interface stuff that was shown at the PDC.

Windows 7 should boot more quickly, have better battery life, and not pop up as many alerts, he said.

6:59 p.m.: This is the eye candy portion of the talk, with Microsoft showing off the improved taskbar for managing multiple windows as well as a button that clears the screen of all open windows. It’s the same stuff shown at the PDC in October.

7:48 p.m.: She shows a flexible display less than 1mm thick in color. This is pretty cool.

He gets some applause as he talks about the two new Halo products coming–Halo Wars and Halo 3 ODST.

6:34 p.m.: Ballmer’s not out. There’s video, but so far it’s not the usual funny video. It’s shots of Windows and Windows Live.

7:34 p.m.: Demoing Kodu, a tool from Microsoft Research that allows users to create games without having to know a traditional programming language.

End of keynote.

7:01 p.m.: Now they are showing off the “Homegroup” feature designed to make home networking easier to set up and also more intuitive. (The catch: all the PCs involved have to be Windows 7 machines in order for Homegroup to work.)

6:33 p.m.: Also, I have a story here from an interview I did with Windows executive Bill Veghte. The key takeaway: Microsoft is still hoping to get
Windows 7 out in time for the holidays, but it has told PC makers it could still be this year or early next year. Microsoft has said it will be out by the third anniversary of Vista’s January 2007 launch.

6:37 p.m.: “So this is CES,” Ballmer said as he took the stage, noting that he is taking the reins from Gates. “Bill is now devoting most of his time to helping people around the world.”

7:14 p.m.: There’s a band now on stage. Apparently called Tripod. According to Wikipedia, they are an Australian musical comedy act.

6:30 p.m.: And here he is…Well, Gary Shapiro, the head of the consumer electronics association

7:22 p.m.: Now he’s talking Xbox, noting that the company is in the key selling period in terms of unit sales, as its price has reached below $200. He promised “accelerating momentum.”

7:16 p.m.: Now taking the stage, Microsoft Entertainment and Devices unit President Robbie Bach.

And, she’s done.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

LAS VEGAS–With Bill Gates now a Microsoft part-timer, company CEO Steve Ballmer is filling in at this year’s opening keynote for the Consumer Electronics Show. We’re bringing you live coverage of his speech, which started at about 6:30 p.m. PST. Windows 7 is likely to be the centerpiece of Ballmer’s discussion. Another piece of his keynote–a deal with Verizon Wireless–leaked out earlier in the day Wednesday. It’s a five-year pact that will see Microsoft’s search show up on all of the carriers’ phones.

6:48 p.m.: They are showing a video with the latest Windows PCs and Windows Mobile phones.

7:42 p.m.: Should be wrapping up soon. Microsoft Research is showing some stuff from the labs, including a digital anatomy textbook.

7:30 p.m.: First glitch of the night: Robbie’s Xbox controller wasn’t working as he tried to navigate his Netflix queue. Working now.

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Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

6:38 p.m.: Ballmer said he got a series of messages from an “eclectic group” of people today. Showing fake IMs from Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Treasure Secretary Henry Paulson, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, and others.

7:50 p.m.: Tripod comes back for one more song.

Windows 7 beta will be released

7:23 p.m.: Halo Wars is a strategy game and due out February 28, with a demo that will be available February 5. Halo 3 ODST is out this fall, action-style game with new characters and scenarios.

6:39 p.m.: Yang wanted to know why Ballmer keeps ignoring his friend request on Facebook, Ballmer said. Paulson, meanwhile, asked for a copy of Microsoft Money, according to the IM shown on-stage.

6:55 p.m.: Also the Facebook deal, which will allow people to have their Windows Live network notified when they post updates or photos to Facebook.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

6:36 p.m.: Now Ballmer’s out. Red sweater and blue shirt, slacks, not that his wardrobe is a big deal.

7:05 p.m.: Windows Mobile demo also not new. It’s the version of Internet Explorer 6 for phones. The big deal is that, unlike the
iPhone’s Safari browser, it can play Flash content. The code was finalized late last year. But it will start showing up in phones this year.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

He mentions that Ford is introducing a new version of its Sync in-car entertainment.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Microsoft and Verizon announced a mobile search deal Tuesday.

Microsoft Research

6:52 p.m.: Now shifting to Windows 7. “We are on track to deliver the best version of Windows ever. We are putting in all the right ingredients…and working hard to get it right and to get it ready.”

7:15 p.m.: They are singing about being ready to be with their girlfriend just as soon as they finish their game. “Can you move a little to the left? I can’t see the TV.”

7:02 p.m.: Another Windows 7 feature, called “Play To” lets users send music and other media to an
Xbox, a Roku box, or other devices on a home network.

Steve Ballmer at CES

7:04 p.m.: For those who were at PDC–or read about it–there’s not a lot new here. The only new thing so far is that it has reached beta.

7:49 p.m.: “Despite the economy, I hope you will all agree with me that our industry has an incredible, incredible opportunity ahead of us,” Ballmer said, in wrapping up.

6:54 p.m.: Three big announcements on Windows Live: Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery, and Windows Live Mail. It’s final, it’s free and it works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 beta.

7:09 p.m.: Jones is now showing how Microsoft is trying to make the Windows Live home page a sort of network of social networks, showing the updates that people make both within Windows Live as well as in other places like Twitter, Flickr, and now Facebook.

6:44 p.m.: The TV is the oldest of the three screens, but in many ways the least evolved, he said, though that is rapidly changing. The boundary between the TV and the PC will disappear, he said.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

The second area of change, he said, centers on how we interact with all of these devices. The computer will be able to hear you and see you. Speech gestures and handwriting will become a normal way of how we interact. We will still use a keyboard and a mouse when it makes sense.

6:53 p.m.: “I encourage you all to get out and download it,” he said. Now he’s talking about Windows Live.

CNET News’ Marguerite Reardon contributed to this report.

Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices unit.

7:20 p.m.: He also didn’t give an update on Zune unit sales. Now he’s talking about IPTV.

7:19 p.m.: Zune has also had a great year, Bach said. There are 2 million people on Zune social. He’s also touting the innovations on subscriptions, but no numbers as usual (late last year, Microsoft conceded subscriptions were lagging expectations).

6:46 p.m.: Ballmer said that Windows is poised to play a role not just on the phone, but also on the Web and on phones. “Windows has become the language that over a billion people speak around the world.”

6:28 p.m.: Waiting for Ballmer, some very loud rappers just finished their set.

6:56 p.m.: Third are distribution deals with both Dell and Verizon Wireless. (The Verizon deal leaked out earlier Wednesday, but he didn’t pull a Steve Jobs and strip out mention of them from his speech)

Demoing Xbox Live Primetime.

7:26 p.m.: Demoing Xbox Live Primetime, a place for live interaction. Demo is 1 vs. 100, an Xbox game show where people can win real prizes. Microsoft talked about it briefly at E3, but this is the first demo, I believe.

Robbie Bach and Sparrow

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Touchscreen mapping demo

7:03 p.m.: Now they are showing multitouch using a touchscreen to navigate through a 3D map of Manhattan. “We built touch into the DNA of Windows 7,” said Charlotte Jones, a group product manager who is doing the Windows demos.

6:41 p.m.: Ballmer’s now talking about Microsoft’s focus on entertainment convergence, the so-called three screens: PC, TV, and phone. “Now it’s no longer just about the desktop but really about a broader vision,” he said.

6:32 p.m.: Shapiro is still talking, but the embargo has lifted, so you can check out all of the news here.

7:33 p.m.: Talks about the popularity of music games. 60 millon tracks downloaded for games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero via Xbox Live.

“We are releasing the beta of Windows 7,” he said, to a smattering of applause.

7:39 p.m.: The 12-year-old beats Bach handily at the game she created. Ballmer comes back on stage. “If anyone thinks he threw that game on purpose, that would be wrong.”

7:21 p.m.: It will be up to carriers to decide how far back customers will be able to go back to get a show on-demand.

Kodu

Bach talks about a new feature that SingTel (a Singapore telecom firm) is adopting that essentially lets you go back in time to select a program that previously aired but wasn’t recorded.

6:57 p.m.: Now getting a demo of Windows 7 as well as the new Windows Live and some Windows Mobile stuff.

7:36 p.m.: Microsoft had said it planned to change the name. Bach has a kid on stage showing how she created a game using the tool.

TroopTube limits videos to 5 minutes in length and 20MB in size, as opposed to 10 minutes and 1024MB of YouTube. Unlike YouTube, you can’t rate a video but just leave comments.

Technically, you need to be a member of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, or National Guard to register with the site for uploading. However, there’s no enforcing mechanism to make sure that’s the case. There are also options to register as a family member or civilian friend.

The new site is called TroopTube and has a look and function very much like YouTube, with one major difference: a Pentagon employee screens each video upload for taste, copyright violations, and national security issues.

Delve’s technology automatically generates the video content into different file sizes to feed the viewer best depending on his or her Internet connection. This makes the site more bandwidth-friendly than YouTube and other movie sites. The company also creates a text transcript from the uploaded videos’ sound tracks for better and more relevant search results.

After banning YouTube and other social Web sites on all overseas computers in May, citing bandwidth and security issues, the U.S. military on Tuesday launched an alternative video-sharing Web site for troops, their families, and supporters.

According to the Associated Press, TroopTube was built with the help of Delve Networks, a four-month-old start-up that builds advanced tools for approving, sorting, and managing videos.

“As far as we know, no other research group has used machine learning to teach a robot to make realistic facial expressions,” said Tingfan Wu, a computer science Ph.D. student from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and one of the researchers on the project.

(Credit: Flickr/Erik Jepsen, UC San Diego)

The researchers directed the robot head to twist and turn its face in all directions while analyzing its own facial expressions using a video camera and software called CERT (Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox) developed at UC San Diego. This process, which took place on an Intel-based Mac Mini, essentially taught the bot the correlation between facial expressions and the muscle movements required to make them. It then could build on that know-how to form its own expressions.

Albert Einstein has come back to life in the form of a robot with a bushy mustache and a highly expressive face. Especially noteworthy is that rather than requiring manual programming, robo-Einstein has taught itself to smile, frown, and grimace.

The Einstein robot head, which was created by Hanson Robotics, is covered in a material called Frubber and has about 30 facial muscles, each moved by a tiny servo motor connected to the muscle by a string.

The researchers note that some of the bot’s learned facial expressions still appear awkward (see the video after the jump, where it looks like Einstein is suffering from allergies). They say their model may currently be too simple to describe the coupled interactions between facial muscles and skin that can produce thousands of expressions in the typical non-Frubber face.

Psychologists speculate that babies learn to control their bodies through systematic exploratory movements, including babbling to learn to speak. The scientists at UCSD’s Machine Perception Laboratory applied the same idea to teaching their Einstein robot to form realistic facial expressions.

For example, the robot learned eyebrow narrowing, which requires the inner eyebrows to move together and the upper eyelids to close a bit to narrow the eye aperture.

Researchers from the University of California at San Diego relied on developmental psychology and feedback from real-time facial expression recognition to teach the bot to form a series of complex expressions. In an era when robot faces are becoming increasingly realistic (and sometimes downright eerie), the scientists believe their work (PDF) could help circumvent the costly need for human recalibration of robots. It could also offer insight into how infants learn to make facial expressions.

Was this what it looked like inside the real Einstein's head? Given his intellect, it just might have.

Albert Einstein: A robot of many moods.

The team says it’s currently working on a more accurate facial expression generation model–and, presumably, a way to teach robo-Einstein to smile and come up with cosmological theories simultaneously.

(Credit:
Flickr/Erik Jepsen, UC San Diego)

Users on slower or dial-up connections should see performance improvements in Opera Turbo, too, although they didn’t specify what those changes were or what kind of benchmarks users should expect. If you’re seeing dramatically better numbers for Opera Turbo on a slow connection, let me know in the comments.

Opera 10 beta 3 offers more tab and toolbar control.

Opera 10's crash recovery window.

However, JavaScript speed isn’t everything, and Opera’s built-in feature set offers much to users who like a strong out-of-the-box experience. There are far more options available now for tweaks tabs. Through the menu bar View and then Customize, you can move your visual tab bar to the sides of the browser as well as the top or bottom. You can also toggle showing only favicons or text, or force the tab bar to use multiple row, or just a single one. These options are available for all toolbars in Opera, making toolbar customization more streamlined than in other browser.

There’s now a crash logger that Opera says will make the browser “rock-solid,” although what that meant was unclear at press time. Opera spokesman Thomas Ford has since clarified the statement, saying that, “It works like the logger that Windows has when a program stops responding. We can more easily identify and then remediate the root cause of crashes.” It is not a sandboxing feature, so crashes that originate in one tab will still affect the entire browser.

Updated: At 2:50 p.m. we added links for Opera 10 beta 3 with Unite, and added a statement from Opera about the crash logging feature.

Notably, Opera Unite remains in alpha development and continues to be a separate entity from the main build of the Opera 10 beta. There’s no word on how soon integration will occur, although it is apparently planned for before the public release of Opera 10. Opera 10 beta 3 with Unite can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Opera is touting the stability and performance enhancements in the third beta, but in casual testing it appeared to have the slowest JavaScript engine when compared with Chrome and
Firefox. Opera notched 3237.4ms in the SunSpider JavaScript test, while Firefox completed the test in 1142.4ms and Chrome was more than twice as fast as that, reaching 508.2ms.

Opera 10 beta 3 was released Wednesday for Windows, Mac, and Linux users. With a strong European following, the preview version has been able to keep this popular alternative browser competitive by offering page rendering quality comparable to Google Chrome, while offering a robust list of features.

Net Applications, which compiles statistics based on the 160 million unique visits to a network of 40,000 Web sites using its analytics service, dramatically lowered Apple’s browser share when the firm concluded its methodology needed refining. Specifically, the company concluded that there was a disconnect between visits to its site network and actual Web use in some areas such as China, said Vincent Vizzaccaro, executive vice president of marketing.

The top two browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s
Firefox, saw relatively small changes. For July, they had 67.68 percent and 22.47 percent, respectively.

Google’s Chrome got a smaller boost from 1.80 percent to 2.18 percent for May, but its trajectory is upward: for July, it jumped to 2.59 percent.

The good news for Apple is that Net Applications says its growth rates weren’t affected by the change, and Safari is headed upward. In the July measurements, which were released only with the revised methodology, Safari has 4.07 percent share.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

Net Applications' revised May statistics boost Chrome and Opera at Safari's expense.

Apple’s share of the installed base of Web browsers has plunged in half–but because of a methodology at a firm that produces the statistics rather than anything Apple or computer users did.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

To try to better reflect reality, the company adjusted its statistics through use of the CIA’s estimates of Internet population, according to its explanation. Consequently the company took a month to change course then released updated statistics from May and earlier that dramatically changed some figures.

The May statistics based on Net Applications' older methods.

With the old statistics, Apple’s
Safari had 8.43 percent of the May browser market. In the revised tally, Apple dropped to 3.7 percent. The change reveals how dramatically assumptions and other subtleties can affect such measurements–and how much faith you should place in their accuracy.

Opera came out ahead because the revised technique gave more weight to countries in Eastern Europe and Asia, Net Applications said. Its May share increased from 0.72 percent to 2.06 percent with the revised method, but its July share dipped to 1.97 percent.

Net Applications changed its methodology, with Apple faring worse in the new statistics and Opera and Chrome getting a boost. These figures are for July.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

This time, CNET’s Ina Fried and Molly Wood will be traveling to Redmond. We’ve started crafting our list of questions to ask Ballmer on Thursday, but we want CNET’s users to be part of the process.

CNET has talked with Ballmer many times over the years, and we can say he’s one of our favorites: insightful, forthright, funny, and passionate. For one interview at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters, he showed up bleeding from the bridge of his nose, following a rough game of basketball on the campus court. (His team won, he assured us.) During another interview at CNET’s offices, a food tray that included deviled eggs provided an opportunity for some juvenile humor.

Court docs: Ballmer vowed to ‘kill’ Google
Steve Ballmer is a dissin’ machine
Ballmer: We’re cheaper than Apple! (but not Linux)
Ballmer: Google, Google, the economy, Google
Ballmer on car insurance and gay rights
The worst Microsoft promo videos ever! (scroll down to see Ballmer pitching Windows 1.0)

For some inquisitive inspiration, here are a few noteworthy Ballmer headlines:

Click here to submit your question!

What would you ask Microsoft’s CEO?

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET)

Microsoft is most obviously known for developing the operating system that runs the overwhelming majority of the world’s PCs, Windows, and its Office suite of products has helped businesses around the globe operate more efficiently. Additionally, the
Xbox gaming console, Windows Mobile software, Bing search engine, and MSN Web properties are significant businesses and ripe areas for exploration.

It’s time for the next installment of CNET Conversations, and we have another terrific interview lined up: Steve Ballmer.

Leave your questions in the comments section, and we’ll select some of the more interesting ones to ask Ballmer. Leave your name, title, and company, and we’ll give you credit during the interview.

Regardless of whether you love or hate the CEO of Microsoft, one of technology’s most polarizing companies, there’s no denying the influence that Ballmer has on the industry and, by extension, on the U.S. economy.

“We will make these applications available on Android devices and the
Palm Pre later,” Sandeep Gupta, senior director of mobile applications at Yahoo said. “We’re not waiting until these devices have critical mass, but we do have to prioritize. And that means developing apps for devices with the most interactive mobile users first.”

Right now, it seems like the big developers are creating applications for Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices. And then they move to developing for
Google Android.

The big question for developers going forward is whether or not all these new Android devices will work with apps in the Android Market.

View the full gallery

And the reason developers choose to develop for the iPhone is simple. It has the largest base of interactive users. It also has an easy and efficient distribution channel using the iTunes store. And it’s easy to develop for given that there is one screen size and a single version of the operating system.

Android Facebook app photos

Android’s potent potential
The iPhone and the BlackBerry are the two leading smartphones in the U.S. market, so it makes sense for developers like Yahoo to develop for these devices first. But as more Android phones come on the market in the coming months, the priorities among developers could change. Apple, which has at least a two-year head start on the rest of the market, will clearly be the first priority for developers for a long time to come. But Android will likely garner some attention as well.

“You’ll see a slow but steady increase in development for Android,” Quilici said. “And it will be driven by people porting existing applications or extending applications that are interfaces to services.”

“There won’t be just one screen size or resolution. CPU utilization might different,” Bardin said. “These are all different devices made by different manufacturers. And right now we don’t know what is going to happen. We don’t know the changes that each manufacturer has made to the OS.”

The one thing that could hurt Apple in the long run is the fact that the company approves every application that gets into the App Store. Developers have often complained that the process can be long and applications are often denied without any particular reason given.

Meanwhile, BlackBerry may have the biggest audience in terms of smartphones in the U.S. market, but developers say that it’s the most difficult environment to develop applications for because there are so many different versions of devices with different screen sizes and screen resolutions and even slight differences to the operating systems.

This week, two of the most popular mobile applications, social-networking site Facebook and the online radio service Pandora, each released applications on Android Market. These applications have been available for months in the App Store and the BlackBerry World.

Earlier this week, Yahoo announced a Flickr application for the iPhone and two other Yahoo applications for iPhones and a handful of BlackBerry devices. The company said it plans to release versions of these applications for other phones, such as Android phones, later.

“The biggest challenge for a developer when it comes to Apple is getting their application certified,” Bardin said. “The whole process is a black box. You don’t know how long it will take or if your application will be approved.”

Mobile applications for smartphones are hot. The fact that Apple’s App Store has had more than 1 billion downloads after only being around for a year means that smartphone users are hungry for applications that make their phones more useful and fun. But developers, whether they are large or small, have limited resources and time, and they must choose which platforms to develop applications for first.

“If consumers don’t have to pay for applications because they’re subsidized by advertising,” Bardin continued. “And if developers can make money through advertising, it’s a home run for Android for sure.”

Then there is Android. The platform is considered the easiest to develop for. But the market thus far has been small because there have only been two devices available in the U.S., the G1 and MyTouch, both made by HTC and sold by T-Mobile. Sprint also announced it will offer an Android phone on October 11. Internationally, Android-powered devices have been launched in 21 countries with 32 carriers in 11 languages.

The one thing that could make Android a phenomenal success is if Google can crack the mobile advertising market through its application store. In June, Google launched a beta version of AdSense for Mobile Applications, which allows developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads in their iPhone and Android applications.

The long-awaited flood of Google Android devices is about to hit the market, which should help bring more cool applications to new Android phones.

“Developing for the iPhone is a no-brainer,” said Noam Bardin, CEO of a mobile app company called Waze, which has developed navigation applications for the iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile platforms. “You get more bang for each line of code you write for the iPhone. But then the question becomes, which platform do you develop for next?”

In many ways, Android has the potential to be an even bigger platform for developers than the iPhone. Many developers have already been impressed with Google’s open approach to the market. Not only is the source code freely available to developers, which makes developing for the platform easy, but developers can also post their applications directly to the Android Market. This means developers can get updates and new versions of their applications up immediately, instead of waiting to be approved by Apple.

So far, it’s clear that the
iPhone is the first platform developers target. As a result, Apple now has the largest mobile App Store on the market with over 75,000 applications. What this means for consumers is that it’s more likely that the newest and hottest applications are available on the iPhone before other devices.

“What’s happening is Android is the third platform for people to think about,” said Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, a free, visual voicemail service that is available for the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices. “The way we have done it is as YouMail has gotten a larger and larger audience, we’ve started to see 4 percent or 5 percent of our audience on Android. And we’ve built an Android app to satisfy those folks since it’s relatively easy to do.”

Google has confirmed that the Android Market has more than 9,500 apps–some that are free and some that are paid. That’s just a fraction of the number of applications available in the Apple App Store. Still, Android users are quite active, Google has said. Users have downloaded an average of 40 applications on their devices, and four out of five users download at least one app per week.

Now that manufacturers are finally rolling out new Google Android devices, there could be a much bigger audience for developers to reach. Motorola is expected to announce two new Android phones on Thursday. And Chinese manufacturer Huawei has announced a prepaid Android phone for Europe. Other manufacturers, such as Samsung and Sony Ericsson, are also expected to launch new Android phones later this year.

The new BlackBerry AppWorld store also hasn’t really taken off yet, in part because it’s not as easy to use as the App Store for the iPhone. Payments are made through PayPal and the audience is more likely to pay for productivity applications, rather than games and other applications, according to Quilici. The other problem is the AppWorld store isn’t available on every BlackBerry, which means discovery is easier for some users than it is for others.

Motorola will be the next big manufacturer to announce its Android phone. The company plans to formally unveil it at an event on Thursday in San Francisco. Motorola has already been reaching out to developers to get them on board to create new applications that it hopes will drive demand for the new phones.

The lack of Android devices has likely prevented some developers from spending the money and effort to develop applications for the Android Market.

The standardization process is complicated, though, with a complex back-and-forth between the standards group and browser makers trying new features on their own.

“Why three co-Chairs?” Berners-Lee asked in the note. “Clearly, there is a lot of work to do. Sam, Paul, and Maciej bring particular skills to the job (whether it is Maciej’s experience with WebKit or Paul’s with Working Group processes).”

Indeed, the two new co-chairs arrive during a crucial time. The W3C stopped developing HTML with version 4.01 in 1999, focusing instead on a very different standard called XHTML 2.0 that ultimately met its official demise in July. Browser makers, meanwhile, went their own way with a group called WHATWG, short for Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group.

WHATWG’s work ultimately grew into HTML 5 as the W3C embraced HyperText Markup Language once again. It’s got a number of features to make the Web a better foundation not just for static Web pages but also for more interactive Web applications. For example, one Web storage lets Web-based applications store data on a computer, helping Web applications work even when a network connection isn’t available.

The World Wide Web Consortium’s HTML Working Group had been led by IBM’s Sam Ruby and Microsoft’s Chris Wilson. Wilson has stepped down and is being replaced by two others, Paul Cotton, who manages Microsoft’s Web services standards team, and Maciej Stachowiak, who manages Apple’s WebKit WebApps team, according to an e-mail announcement by W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee.

And Aaron Boodman, a programmer involved with Google’s Chrome browser, suggested on the HTML 5 mailing list, “I would like to propose that we get rid of the concepts of ‘versions’ altogether from HTML. In reality, nobody supports all of HTML 5…Instead of insisting that a particular version of HTML is a monolithic unit that must be implemented in its entirety, we could have each feature (or logical group of features) spun off into its own small spec.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft only began HTML 5 discussion in earnest earlier this month.

An Apple manager has become a co-chairman of the group standardizing HTML, giving the company a higher-profile role in a crucial time for development of the language used to build Web pages.

Psystar said these executives were chosen because they are the most knowledgeable in their field.

The company kicked up the rhetoric a notch since changing lawyers in July. Psystar is now being represented by Houston-based Camara & Sibley, which is also defending convicted music-pirate Jammie Thomas-Rasset.

Aug. 07 — John Wright — OS X — Senior Software Manager Aug. 12 — Kevin Van Vechten — OS X — Software Engineering Manager Aug. 13 — Phil Schiller — Marketing — Senior VP Worldwide Product Marketing Aug. 14 — Mike Culbert — Mac Hardware — Senior Director Aug. 18 — Gary Thomas — TBD Aug. 19 — Simon Patience — OS X — Head of Core OS Aug. 21 — Mark Donnelly — Apple — VP Finance and Worldwide Business management Aug. 21 — Greg Christie — TBD Aug. 21 — Bob Mansfield — Mac Hardware — Senior VP Mac Hardware Engineering

Psystar lawyers have begun deposing Apple executives in the copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Apple last year, the Mac clone maker announced.

Psystar filed for bankruptcy protection in May, which normally could shield a company from its legal woes. But Apple asked the court to lift the automatic stay of proceedings in the copyright case. Apple won its argument, and a new trial date has been set for January 11, 2010.

Psystar is even allowing its customers to submit questions to ask the Apple executives, according to a report on AppleInsider. The company said it will take the top 10 questions to each executive deposition.

Apple accused Psystar of copyright infringement after it began making Mac clone computers and selling them with Mac OS X installed. Apple’s license agreement clearly states that the operating system can only be installed on an Apple-labeled computer.

According to the blog post, Apple executives being deposed are:

Surprisingly, it seems that Psystar executives are actually enjoying themselves.
In a Thursday post on its Web site called “A taste of their own medicine,” Psystar seems to gloat over the fact it is now deposing several Apple executives. “For the past week and for the following ten days we will be doing depositions of some of Apple’s highest level people. After numerous depositions of Psystar employees and associates the shoe is finally on the other foot, oh the joy!”

Outages at major social media sites have drawn particular attention since a massive distributed denial-of-service attack last month threw Facebook into flux and took down Twitter altogether.

Facebook confirmed on Monday afternoon that there have been sitewide problems that saw log-in credentials turned down, status messages eaten up, and other various unpleasant occurrences over the course of the past few days. But the social network, which recently surpassed 300 million active users worldwide, hasn’t yet disclosed the source of the problem.

“Some users are experiencing errors across a number of site features,” a statement e-mailed to CNET News read. “This includes content occasionally disappearing, difficulty logging in or viewing profiles, and error messages when posting content. We are working to resolve these issues as soon as possible.”

No, it’s not just you.