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Firefox 2 Contest

Have a killer add-on idea for Firefox you've been meaning to develop? If so, be sure and get it done before December 31st, 2008 2007 and enter Mozilla's Extend Firefox 2 Contest. A panel of judges will select a winner based on several criteria, including overall usefulness and technical merit. See the contest details for what's at stake for the grand prize winner and 12 runner-ups.

Partial Penryn Launch

Intel officially launced Penryn yesterday, the somewhat anticipated 45nm refresh to their Core 2 lineup. Out of the 16 processors released, all but one are Xeons, save for the ultra high end (and pricey) Core 2 Extreme QX9650. Along with a die shrink, Penryn brings SSE4 to the table, 6MB of cache, and increased pressure for AMD's upcoming Phenom.

New Zune Players

Microsoft released three new Zune players today, each one capable of wirelessly and automatically updating their music, photos, and videos, as well as sharing amongst each other. That is, if you can find another Zune owner. The new models are 27% smaller, yet sport a larger 3.2" LCD screen.

Cyber-Bullying Hits Japan

According to a recent survey by the Hyogo Prefectural Board of Education, ten percent of Japanese high school students have been victimized by cyber bullying, which includes harassment through emails, websites, and blogs. Most cyber bullying takes place through cell phones with internet capabilities, and at least one student leapt to his death after classmates posted nude photos of him on a website and demanded money to take it down.

IBM Spends $5 Billion!

What does $5 billion USD buy you in Canada? If you're IBM, it gets you Cognos, the last major independent maker of business intelligence software. Software remains the fastest-growing and most profitable division of IBM, and there may be other acquisitions in the works. In the meantime, IBM sign an agreement to buy Cognos for $58 per share, representing a 9 percent premium over Friday's closing price of $52.98.

IBM Part 2

As if spending $5 billion weren't enough, IBM's also working on a supercomputer named Roadrunner, which will combine cell processors (like those found in Playstation 3 consoles) and AMD chips. Roadrunner will be capable of performing more than a quadrillion operations (can you say petaflop!?), and is expected to be delivered to the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory next summer.