Microsoft has revamped its Bing Video interface, and over the next few days will be rolling out a new unified online video destination, the software maker announced. The overhauled service, which meshes MSN Video with Bing, promises to be more organized and contain plenty of high-quality content.

"With the New Bing Video you can now access videos from across the web, MSN's array of high-quality videos, and videos from sites such as Hulu, ABC, and YouTube," Microsoft said on its Bing blog. "Bing videos viewing options are nearly endless."

Microsoft said its video portal grants users access to over 900 television shows, all of which it says are organized and easy to sort through, even if the episode you're looking for is from last season. Users will also be able to share videos, and the portal now includes a 'dim the lights' feature. 

Give Bing Videos a peek here, then hit the jump and tell us what you think.

Intel this week became the latest company to enter the e-book market, only Intel's is specifically intended for the visually impaired. The launch is being spearheaded by Ben Foss, a 36-year old who grew up with such a severe case of dyslexia that his mother used to read him books during his school years.

Not unlike other e-book readers, the Intel Reader is capable of reading digital files aloud. But it doesn't stop there. The Intel Reader can also capture images from any printed material and convert it to speech at a variety of listening speeds. It also boasts a high res camera used to convert printed text to digital text, and it can even capture words from Websites.

"We want people to experience the independence of being able to read on their own in a public place or anywhere they want to," said Foss. "A metaphor for this are the ramps that make buildings wheelchair accessible. This reader is like a ramp."

The reader's also worth its weight in gold, and then some. It's available now, but for $1,500.

The troubles just keep piling on for Oracle as of late. Earlier this week, the European Union formally objected to the company's takeover bid of Sun, and if that wasn't enough to deal with, a bunch of existing Oracle users are voicing complaints with the vendor's new My Oracle Support portal.

"We've been having severe problems with the new My Oracle Support all day. Sometimes we can't log in. When we can log in, we can't get an SR [service request] logged - it errors out at various points in the process," one user complained in a post Monday to an official Oracle forum.

The disgruntled user said tech support wasn't much help, and he wasn't alone in his complaints. Other users said similar things about the Support portal, with one noting "it looks like a total disaster today."

The worst part is Oracle doesn't appear to have a grip on the situation, or at least the vendor's not communicating that with its customers.

Wyse on Tuesday announced its new thin clients and new zero client will support VMware View 4 and its PC-over-IP (PCoIP) display protocol. Both of these devices are expected to be listed on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL), Wyse said.

"We have been relentlessly addressing the needs of end users for many years now, and with the introduction of the Wyse P class we have successfully addressed many of the challenges in rolling out a client virtualization model to high-end specialty workers," said Curt Schwebke, CTO at Wyse. "Designers, scientists, architects, engineers, and artists will be able to run their most sophisticated applications on a virtual client that uses as much energy as a small light bulb."

The company's existing devices will support PCoIP when View 4 is released later this month. Wyse also said it will offer support of View 4 in its Wyse PocketCloud software enabling users of Apple iPhones to access a View 4 environment from their smartphone.

Hewlett-Packard is stepping up to the plate with improved data protection and better backup solutions for small and medium businesses, The Register reports.

First on the list is HP's LeftHand Networks P4000 SMB storage area network (SAN) lineup, which will now come equipped with application-integrated snapshots. This will make it easier on admins, who can use the P4000 GUI to signal that a snapshot needs to be made of a volume, and the P4000 array software will handle the rest.

The second change comes to HP's Disk-to-Disk (D2D) backup product, which has been given a file interface allowing applications to view it as a NAS box. In the long-run, customers will be able to reduce their reliance on tape.

For those who want to keep using tape, HP introduced its new DAT320 tape drive. The 8mm DAT320 packs 320GB, or twice as much as the DAT160.

It turns out our favorite browser might also be the most susceptible to security breaches. According to application security vendor Cenzic, Firefox leads the way in terms of total vulnerabilities, accounting for 44 percent of all browser vulnerabilities reported in the first half of 2009.

Coming in second is Apple's Safari browser, which accounted for 35 percent. And what about everyone's favorite whipping browser, Internet Explorer? A comparatively low 15 percent. The Opera faithful will be stoked to learn that their favorite browser was the least vulnerable of the bunch with just a 6 percent share.

As to why Firefox's numbers were so high, Cenzic said it was a combination of things.

"They've gotten more traction as a browser, which is good for them and the more you get used the more exposure you have. As well a fair amount of the vulnerabilities have come by way of plug-ins," noted Lars Ewe, CTO of Cenzic.

In other words, Firefox's biggest strength -- customization through plug-ins -- might also be its biggest weakness. However, it's important to note that just because the tweakable browser had the most vulnerabilities, it doesn't mean that Firefox users were more at risk. According to Ewe, Ceznic looked at all reported vulnerabilities and made no distinction between a zero day bug and less serious security holes.

Rumors of an Atom ban turned out to be true, as the Hackintosh community found out with the latest update to Apple's Snow Leopard OS.

"Well, looks like I was right, again,"  Hackintosh guru StellaRola wrote in a blog post. "The netbook forums are now blowing up with problems of [Snow Leopard] 10.6.2 instant rebooting their Atom-based netbooks. My sources tell me that every time a netbook users installs 10.6.2 an Apple employee gets their wings."

While the ban presents a temporary setback, StellaRola  reiterated that "this is OSx86 after all," and predicted that a modded kernel is likely just around the kernel.

In the meantime, a user on the MyDellMini forum claims to have found a workaround that entails running 10.6.2 with a 10.6.1 kernel. The process involved booting from a backup, mounting the 10.6.2 partition, and punching in a few commands, all of which you can read here.

While giving a speech at the American University of Dubai, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang held nothing back in declaring his affection for Macs (while taking a dig at Intel in the process).

"Apple uses the best technology for their [computers]," Huang said. "Apple says to their customers: 'If you buy a computer from us, you can be sure we have selected the best technology inside for you.' Their promise to consumers isn't 'we've selected the best technology for you with the exception of what Intel allows us to use'. And that's why I'm all Apple! At home it's just Macs everywhere. It's Nvidia's technology in all of them but I use Macs. My son has two Macs, my daughter has a Mac, there's an extra Mac just in case, and my wife has a Mac. It's just Mac, Mac, Mac!"

Call us crazy, but we get th feeling Huang likes Macs. And that's well and good, so long as Nvidia keeps churning out high-powered videocards for those of us content to be controlled by Intel on the Windows-based PC platform.

On a side note, there's been a bit of buzz over the slick looking tablet pictured in front of Huang. The outspoken CEO didn't say a word about it -- or at least no one's reporting that he did -- leaving us to speculate. Could it be the long-rumored Apple tablet? Is it a Tegra-powered handheld? Maybe both.

After sitting in beta for six months, Panda today announced its Cloud Antivirus is now ready for prime time and is available as a free download for all consumers.

"Since the beta release of Panda Cloud Antivirus in April, we have been judiciously testing our cloud-based protection model, making upgrades in security and performance, and listening to our user community," said Juan Santana, CEO of Panda Security. "With Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.0, we've really changed the game, providing our users the most powerful and lightweight free protection available on the market today."

There's been a few improvements from when we first glimpsed the beta back in April, such as a polished interface, better performance thanks in large part to cache optimizations and memory management schemes, a Collective Intelligence Monitor which keeps a list of malware from the community updated in real time, and new support forums.

You can grab the free download here (and if you're a fan of the banjo, be sure to check out the video in that same link).

Sprint feels awfully confident in Clearwire's WiMax 4G technology, enough so to pump another $1 billion into it, Combined with a $500 million investment from Comcast, Intel, Time Warner, and Bright House, that brings the latest round of funding to $1.5 billion, reports the Wall Street Journal.

As if billion dollar investments needed any additional intrigue, what makes this one so interesting (and risky) is that Clearwire and Sprint are the only two U.S. carriers putting faith in WiMax to usher in 4G wireless broadband. Verizon and AT&T, who happen to be the two biggest heavyweights, are banking on rival technology LTE for their 4G networks.

The gamble is huge for Sprint. Should Clearwire burn through its cash, which the company has been known to do, it will be up to Sprint to invest even more if it's to keep majority control. Sounds simple enough, except that Sprint's net debt was already approaching $16 billion at the end of last quarter.

Looking for an alternative to Photoshop and GIMP? You're in luck - there's a new version of Paint.NET available, and it's a pretty significant upgrade over previous versions.

Version 3.5 sports a refreshed UI with a bunch of new icons, and if you're running Windows 7 or Vista, the developers say it's been enhanced for Aero and "glass."

Paint.NET haslearned a few tricks with the newest release, including Surface Blur, Dents (Distort), and Crystallize (Distort). Russian translation has been tossed into the mix, and the whole shebang promises to be much snappier thanks to extensive optimizations to performance and memory usage.

Check out the laundry list of changes here, and kick the tires by downloading the new version here.

Perhaps looking to restore order in the court -- and a little common courtesy -- a federal judge in Georgia has banned using Twitter while in the courtroom, CBSNews.com reports.

According to U.S. District Judge Clay Land, Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure should be interpreted to ban Twitter. This is what it says:

"Except as otherwise provided by a statute or these rules, the court must not permit the taking of photographs in the courtroom during judicial proceedings or the broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom."

The ban came after a reporter for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer asked permission to tweet the deets from a corruption trial, which was scheduled to start on Monday.

Someone cut the cake, and be sure to save a slice for Microsoft, who probably won't be attending Firefox's fifth birthday. That's okay, because plenty of former Internet Explorer users have sent in their RSVP.

It's hard to believe it's been five years already, and in that relatively short time span, the open source browser has come to claim over 330 million users around the globe. It's the second most used browser on the planet, and while Firefox's market share is barely visible in IE's rear view mirror, Mozilla's browser is quickly catching up and is on pace to pull ahead well before another 5 years goes by.

In celebration of Firefox's fifth birthday, Mozilla communities are hosting parties all over the place in a campaign called "Light the World with Firefox." Need more details? Check it out here.

Coming as a surprise to absolutely no one, the European Union on Monday formally objected to Oracle's proposed takeover of Sun. The EU's hard stance could throw a wrench in the $7.4 billion deal that had already been approved by U.S. officials.

The sole sticking point for the EU is that the deal would give Oracle control over Sun's free MySQL database software. Because Oracle sells its own database software, the EU fears the company would purposely hamstring MySQL in order to boost its own sales.

"The Commission's Statement of Objections reveals a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics," Oracle said in response to the objection. "It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MykSQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source."

Oracle will have an opportunity to respond to the EU's objections before it makes its final ruling on the deal by January 19. Even then, should the EU outright reject the deal, Oracle could file an appeal. The alternative is to back out of the acquisitionl, which would cost Oracle a $260 million breakup fee, the Wall Street Journal reports.

It's been a rough month so far for Web host UK2.net, who last week lost its customers' emails following a storage array failure. The host hoped to have service restored over the weekend, but is now saying it might be another day or so as engineers work to finish up an email migration.

"We are currently performing emergency maintenance on mercury.safeukdns.net due [and] due to this the server is currently offline. Our engineers are working on this and will have the server back online ASAP," the company wrote on its blog.

Apparently the Web host has managed to uncover a password migration issue, which it is currently investigating. In the meantime. UK2.net is advising customers who are unable to access their account because of a password authentication failure to place a support ticket to have their password reset.

According to market research firm Gartner, worldwide software as a service (SaaS) revenue is on pace to reach $7.5 billion in 2009. That's a big turnaround from 2008 -- 17.7 percent, to be exact -- when revenue fell flat at $6.4 billion.

"The adoption of SaaS continues to grow and evolve within the enterprise application markets," said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. "The composition of the worldwide SaaS landscape is evolving as vendors continue to extend regionally, increase penetration within existing accounts and ‘greenfield’ opportunities, and offer more-vertical-specific solutions as part of their service portfolio or through partners."

But that's not the only good news. Gartner says the market will show consistent growth at least through 2013, by which time SaaS revenue is expected to exceed $14 billion in the enterprise sector.

Rupert Murdoch and other News Corp bigwigs have long complained that aggregators like Google are profiting from the works of others, leading some to question why the news conglomerate doesn't just make its sites invisible to search. "I think we will," was Murdoch's reply when asked this very question by Sky News political editor David Speers.

Murdoch's plan is to charge Internet users access for online content, a move which has become a hot topic as of late as news sites look to turn a profit on the information superhighway. What it boils down to is that Murdoch and others who share his view don't support the idea of news aggregators getting a free ride by linking someone's else's content. Others argue that by linking to the original source, it directs traffic to sites like News Corp that they might not otherwise have had, but Murdoch doesn't agree.

"What's the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see in Google, come to us? The fact is, there's not enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the websites profitable," Murdoch stated in an interview with Speers. "We'd rather have fewer people come to our websites, but paying."

Murdoch has voiced his displeasure with news aggregators before, but this is the first time he's talked about removing content from search engines, mUmBRELLA.com reports.

If you have a little shy of 40 minutes to spare, check out the interesting interview here.

Expect to see quite a few netbook and nettop deals this holiday shopping season, especially if Intel forges ahead with plans to fast track the introduction of its upcoming Pine Trail platform.

"Intel is planning for a fast transition to Pine Trail. To generate excitement for the platform ahead of launch, Intel is planning a press release in late December publicly disclosing the details of the platform," X-bit Labs claims to have read in an Intel document.

Should Intel aggressively push Pine Trail ahead of its launch, consumers could see a fair number of pre- and post-Christmas day sales on older Atom platform-based netbooks and nettops. And look for plenty of coverage at next year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Intel's Pine Trail platform will include a bunch of next-gen Atom Pineview processors, which will come with an integrated graphics core, a built-in DDR2 memory controller, a new core-logic set, and other goodies.

Like everyone else, we're chomping at the bit to see what Nvidia's next-gen Fermi graphics chipset (GT300) brings to the table, so we're a little bummed it's been pushed back until Q1 2010. The delayed launch, however, isn't expected to negatively impact Nvidia's sales for the remainder of 2009, DigiTimes reports.

When Fermi does ship, Nvidia will position the GPU into three different product lines, including the GeForce brand, Quadro, and Tesla, according to company CEO Jen-Husn Huang.

While the delay is unlikely to hurt Nvidia's bottom line, that could change if Fermi gets pushed back a second time, some analysts warn. They say Nvidia could start to lose some of its market share should Fermi arrive in April 2010, as AMD will in all likelihood have already started shipping its entry-level Radeon HD 5600 and 5300 GPUs.

With the release of Windows 7, tablet PCs are drawing a ton of attention, and if you don't mind getting your hands dirty inside a Dell Mini 9 netbook, you can roll your own.

The hack comes courtesy of Rob928 from MyDellMini.com and involves stripping off the lid, trimming down the hinges, and other somewhat scary tasks when dealing with electronics. The end result is that Rob928 was able to fuse a Dell Vostro A90 with a Hoda Technology solderless touchscreen kit. He also tossed in an accelerometer for good measure giving the homebrewed tablet the ability to automatically rotate the screen.

It's not easy, nor is it for the faint of heart, but for anyone willing to follow in Rob928's footsteps, this is one of the coolest mods we've seen in awhile.

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