My calendar

AP – Microsoft Corp. is once again trying to team up with Yahoo Inc. to challenge Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc., although at this point the renewed talks haven’t escalated to another attempt to take over Yahoo.

Reuters – Microsoft Corp said on Sunday it has
proposed an alternative deal to Yahoo Inc, rather than a full
acquisition, in a move that could save the web pioneer from
fighting a proxy battle with financier Carl Icahn.

PC World – China began three days of national mourning for the victims of the May 12 earthquake, restricting access to entertainment…

AP – News Corp. is pooling some of its Web sites, including the newly acquired Wall Street Journal properties, to better sell financial ads targeting Latin America.

PC World – Intel will start shipping a quad-core version of its Itanium processor to system vendors in about six months, with the first…

Reuters – Kenny Chesney won entertainer of the
year for the fourth straight time at the 43rd Annual Academy of
Country Music Awards on Sunday — but said backstage that
organizers had devalued the top prize by making it a
“sweepstakes” up for vote on the Internet.

Reuters – Facebook Inc founder and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg stressed his company’s independent spirit on Monday,
after a report the social networking site might be sold to
software giant Microsoft, which is hunting for ways to beef up
its Internet business.

AFP – Yahoo shares jumped in early trading here on Monday after Microsoft said it was considering a new deal with the second biggest-Internet advertising platform, but not a new takeover bid.

InfoWorld – In the four months since InfoWorld asked businesses and individuals to sign a petition at SaveXP.com requesting Microsoft keep Windows XP for sale beyond the planned June 30 general end-of-sales date, more than 200,000 have signed up to add their voices. As of May 15, the count was 200,805 signatures, excluding duplicates and fake signups.

Reuters – Country singer Carrie Underwood is
the all-time most popular “American Idol” winner, and
dreadlocked Jason Castro was voted the most overrated
contestant this season, according to a poll released on Monday
by AOL Television.

AP – Microsoft Corp. is once again trying to team up with Yahoo Inc. to challenge Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc., although at this point the renewed talks haven’t escalated to another attempt to take over Yahoo.

AFP – Leading Chinese Internet portal Sina.com has launched an English news site, amid intense global interest in China following last week’s earthquake tragedy.

USATODAY.com – Two weeks after withdrawing a $47.5 billion offer to buy the Internet icon, Microsoft said Sunday that it and Yahoo are discussing a transaction but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo.

USATODAY.com – The outcome raises a pointed question: Can a scrappy second-tier carrier like Alltel survive in an increasingly saturated cellphone market when it’s losing ground in the race for airwaves – the most vital building block of a wireless network?

AP – Video game publisher Electronic Arts is extending the deadline on its $2 billion tender offer for smaller rival Take-Two Interactive for a third time.

Reuters – Electronic Arts Inc said
on Monday it extended by one month its $2 billion hostile offer
to acquire rival video game maker Take-Two Interactive Software
Inc .

AFP – “People power” via the Internet could help shame Myanmar into accepting foreign assistance for cyclone victims, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday.

AP – Video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. has for a third time extended the deadline for its $2 billion tender offer to buy smaller rival Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., but it did not raise the price as many analysts had expected.

NewsFactor – A boardroom showdown between Yahoo directors and billionaire investor Carl Icahn may turn out to be irrelevant if Microsoft’s latest move succeeds. That could see Microsoft and Yahoo join forces against Google.

AP – Federal authorities have charged 38 people with stealing names, Social Security numbers, credit card data and other personal information from unsuspecting Internet users, the Justice Department said Monday.

PC World – A startup company called Powerset gained a slew of headlines last week when it launched a beta version of its search engine…

Reuters – Sybase Inc plans to soon start
selling software that lets businesses securely distribute
e-mail to the iPhone, which could help the popular device gain
use among business clients.

AP – Conde Nast Publications said Monday it will acquire the technology news site Ars Technica for an undisclosed amount and combine it with the online operations of Wired magazine.

AP – Israeli jails are using a custom-built computer program to interpret the barks of guard dogs and distinguish warnings of a breakout from everyday woofs, a prisons official said Monday.

NewsFactor – Staying fit by playing a video game. That dream of humankind, possibly second only to losing weight by eating, is the object of Nintendo’s U.S. launch Monday of the Wii Fit exercise game.

AP – One of the best features of Nintendo’s Wii is the Virtual Console, a downloadable library of more than 200 classic games. It’s a great resource for young gamers who want to see what they missed, and for geezers who wonder if old favorites were as great as they remember.

Reuters – Islamist group Hamas has told the main
Palestinian telecoms company to block access to pornographic
Internet sites in the Gaza Strip, a Hamas government official
said on Monday.

PC World – Wetpaint, the company that lets anyone start a wiki Web site, is now letting existing Web sites embed wikis in their pages.

PC World – Customers using Microsoft’s SharePoint enterprise portal can now get deployment help if they subscribe to the Software…

AP – Comcast Corp., which is under federal investigation for blocking some file-sharing traffic, is investing in a startup that delivers high-definition video using file-sharing techniques.

PC World – On-demand ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendor Workday announced an update to its software Monday as it rides a wave of…

Reuters – Nintendo Co Ltd (7974.OS)
launched its “Wii Fit” exercise game in the United States on
Monday, hoping to get gamers off the couch and appeal to new
audiences such as women and older people.

PC World – Brand-new rumors have Microsoft picking up Yahoo search, and then moving on to buy Facebook.

Reuters – Electronic Arts Inc said
on Monday it extended by one month its $2 billion hostile offer
to acquire rival video game maker Take-Two Interactive Software
Inc .

AP – Google Inc. is now offering the general public electronic access to their medical records and other health-related information.

Reuters – Google Inc on Monday unveiled Google
Health, a long-anticipated health information service that
combines the leading Web company’s classic search services with
a user’s personal health records online.

AP – Donald J. Carty, who became Dell Inc.‘s chief financial officer less than 18 months ago when the computer maker’s accounting was under scrutiny, is stepping down and will be replaced by a longtime General Electric Co. executive.

NewsFactor – Mozilla has rolled out Firefox 3 release candidate 1 to testers in advance of a full release in the weeks ahead. According to the program’s developers, RC1 features more than 14,000 updates, “including some major re-architecting to provide improved performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability.”

NewsFactor – Apple is in talks with major music labels to beef up its ringtones and offer over-the-air music downloads on its upcoming 3G iPhone, according to The New York Times.

NewsFactor – Apple is in talks with major music labels to beef up its ringtones and offer over-the-air music downloads on its upcoming 3G iPhone, according to The New York Times.

NewsFactor – The tension between privacy and control reached a high-water mark in the social-networking world last week as Facebook and Google traded barbs about which company is more protective of user privacy.

AP – Federal regulators on Monday said eight former executives of AOL Time Warner Inc. fraudulently inflated the company’s online advertising revenues by more than $1 billion between 2000 and 2002.

AP – Kenny Chesney may not have wanted online voters to decide one of country music’s top awards, but he still asked his fans to click for him.

NewsFactor – How to lose that spare tire around your middle? A miracle pill won’t do it, and neither will eating to exhaustion. But Nintendo may have the answer with the Wii Fit video game that it introduced to the U.S. on Monday.

PC World – An inexpensive way to share USB peripherals over an Ethernet network removes the needs for carting equipment and cables around an office.

PC World – One of the researchers behind ScanAlert, the “Hacker Safe” certification company McAfee recently acquired, is facing fraud…

Reuters – The first fruit of Beck’s work with
producer Danger Mouse has hit the Web.