introduction of dearwatches.com

This is a new wrinkle in the barrage of coverage for two reasons: It’s likely the first time anyone has reported Microsoft would be interested in taking what sounds like a backseat at Yahoo (in addition to buying the search business). And it adds to earlier rumors that the Chinese search site Alibaba wanted Yahoo to sell its stake in Alibaba to keep it from Microsoft. Some speculate Softbank could be interested in buying that stake.

With the Microhoo drama back in overdrive Monday, investors may be scrambling to figure out what buying a “minority, passive stake” means.

Reuters is quoting a source saying Microsoft is considering buying Yahoo’s search business and taking a “minority, passive stake” in Yahoo once Yahoo has spun off its Asian assets. That’s not a direct quote from the source, that’s how the Reuters reporter described it.

Does Yahoo suddenly find itself, despite threats from corporate raider Carl Icahn, with two search suitors it can play off one another?

Like many other Microhoo rumor reports, take this one for what it’s worth: Reuters reports the proposal is “little more than an outline of Microsoft’s thinking,” and does not yet include a value for Yahoo’s search business. Of course, Yahoo is still believed to be in partnership talks with Google on the search business, as well.

Harari said this challenge alone is putting SanDisk behind schedule. “We have very good internal controller technology, as you know…That said, I’d say that we are now behind because we did not fully understand, frankly, the limitations in the Vista environment,” he added.

SanDisk said Monday that
Windows Vista is not optimized for solid-state drives, delaying the delivery of optimized drives until next year.

SanDisk has a production joint venture with Toshiba, which also makes solid- state drives.

The next generation of SSDs will use multilevel cell (MLC) technology, which will require a more sophisticated controller–a crucial component in solid-state drives. These drives will have capacities ranging up to 128GB, 160GB, and later, 256GB. MLC drives are expected to appear in a wider selection of notebooks later this year.

(Credit:
SanDisk)

In the very low-end of the market, however, this is not an issue. “In very low-end, ultra low-cost PCs, existing controllers can get the job done for 8-, 16-, and 32-gigabyte storage because these are relatively unsophisticated…requirements,” he said.

“Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we’ll start sampling end of this year, early next year,” Harari said.

Speaking during SanDisk’s second-quarter earnings conference call, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eli Harari said that Windows Vista will present a special challenge for solid-state drive makers. “As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid-state disk,” he said.

This is due to Vista’s design. “The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls,” he said.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are used instead of hard disk drives in select high-end notebook PCs today such as the Apple MacBook Air and Toshiba Portege R500.

Now go ruin your productivity level. As for me, Stumble Video just told me I might want to watch some Daft Punk videos.

StumbleUpon was acquired by eBay last year, about six months after it debuted the Stumble Video feature. There’s also a specialized version of Stumble Video for Nintendo’s
Wii console.

Stumble Video, which uses past preferences to pick out videos that a member might like–in other words, a nifty procrastination tool–already amasses content from big sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV, and Metacafe.

Media “discovery” site StumbleUpon announced Tuesday that its video service, Stumble Video, has a host of new content available: content sites College Humor, Funny or Die, and VBS.tv, as well as video-hosting sites Vimeo, DailyMotion, and Veoh.

The key to using this feature is that you don’t have to plan ahead. Auto-tagging was designed to help seed the photo and video sections of events with digital media without users having to remember to add it later. This simple one-click-to-add feature has likely increased the amount of photos that get added to events in the days that follow.

All of this might seem like a lot of fuss over a minor feature, but it could be the precursor for some very advanced tagging automation that’s on the horizon. For instance, the pictures I snapped came with geo-locational information as part of the EXIF data. I can see this information when I upload the same shots to Flickr, but Facebook doesn’t seem to do anything with it. Take into account that most parties include an address, and the same auto-tagging system could work to retroactively help tag your photos based on time and location alone.

Of course, more important than simply matching up photos to albums (something humans can easily do on their own) is using facial recognition to tag faces automatically. Facebook was one of the innovators in supplying a way for people to tag their friends in photos, which has even managed to carry over well on the
iPhone application, but it’s time-consuming and doesn’t work well with people you don’t remember the next day. Having a system that would automatically go through uploaded photos and offer up suggestions of who it thinks the people are based on one part actual analysis and another off the known guest list (provided by the Facebook RSVPs) Facebook could have a very powerful offering indeed.

So how long is that window between where an event ends and when the photos are uploaded? From what I can tell, it’s not long. About 18 hours post-party I uploaded two separate images, both of which were taken on the same device and at the event. One was uploaded from my phone while the other from my computer. Oddly enough, neither was picked out for auto-tagging even two hours after being uploaded. In comparison, the one I took (and uploaded) during the hours of the party got flagged for tags almost instantly.

One of my favorite Facebook features is auto-tagging. It happened to me last night by accident and ended up being one of those very rare moments of using a product where I got a big grin on my face. The feature comes into play when the service recognizes that a photo or video upload happened around the same general time of an event you said you were planning to attend through Facebook’s party planning tools. If your photo or video upload occurs within these conditions you’ll be prompted to have it automatically tagged and dropped into the event’s photos and videos section.

If your photos come from a certain time or place, Facebook will suggest tags for you if they correlate to an event you were attending.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

(Credit:
Gabor Nagy)

Air Sharing Turns your device into a portable, wireless hard drive and document viewer. Note: this jewel will eventually be priced at $6.99, but for the next few days you can snag it free.
Graphing Calculator Why spend big bucks on a graphing calculator when your iPhone/touch can do the job for nada? This uber-handy tool offers functions ranging from absolute value to tangent.
Hanoi A beautiful rendition of the classic Towers of Hanoi game. The object is simple: move a stack of disks from one side of the board to the other. I couldn’t put it down.
Instapaper Free When you’re browsing on your PC and come across a Web site (cough *Cheapskate* cough), blog post, news item, feature, or whatever that you want to read later, just click the Instapaper bookmarklet. Then fire up the Instapaper app on your iPhone, and presto: there’s the Web page. Genius!
White Noise Having trouble getting to sleep? White Noise offers an assortment of ambient sounds–waves, rain, wind chimes, etc.–to help you drift off. And there’s a shut-off timer so you don’t wake up to a dead battery.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Tuesday’s roundup of killer freebies for Windows reminded me that I haven’t covered
iPhone/iPod Touch freeware in awhile, so here’s another list of must-have apps that won’t cost you a penny:

If you like this list, be sure to check out my original roundup of iPhone freebies and the sequel. In the meantime, hit the comments and vote for your favorite no-cost iPhone apps.

The free Graphing Calculator app for iPhone/iPod Touch.

On Friday, New Orleans marked the third anniversary of Katrina. That hurricane, a Category 5 storm that shrank to a Category 3 by the time it reached the Gulf Coast, killed between 1,500 and 1,600 people. Katrina also caused $80 billion in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, according to Reuters.

On Saturday, the NHC began trying out Gustav updates via podcast. The NHC is also making a PDA/smartphone-friendly version of its site available.

(Credit: NOAA)

(Credit:
NOAA)

Verizon told the AP that all of its cell sites in the region now have batteries to power them for at least eight hours. Many also have generators with fuel for up to seven days. AT&T’s cell sites in the area have generators that last up to 36 hours, the AP reported, and Sprint installed generators at 1,300 cell sites in the Southeast last year.

Hurricane Gustav bears down on Cuba on Saturday evening local time.

During his Road Trip 2008, CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman visited New Orleans this summer, viewing the work to rebuild the city’s levees and its housing.

With Hurricane Gustav headed straight toward New Orleans, emergency officials and telecommunication companies are preparing for the worst.

Gustav’s winds had reached 150mph as of midday Saturday, making it a dangerous Category 4 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center. The NHC predicted that Gustav could reach Category 5–the highest level possible.

Although mandatory evacuations have not yet been ordered in New Orleans, thousands of residents were getting out Saturday.

According to the Associated Press, the nation’s wireless carriers have been preparing for such a storm since Katrina, which devastated their networks and left trapped residents without communications.

Gustav is pounding Cuba right now. It is expected to reach the Gulf Coast on Monday afternoon.

On Friday, the AP said, Sprint Nextel’s emergency response team was heading down to the Gulf Coast in a caravan of trucks that can act as cell towers. Meanwhile, the wire service said, Verizon Wireless has spent $137 million over the past year to beef up its network in the Gulf Coast. And AT&T, the main landline provider in the region, has added capacity, replaced some cables with waterproof ones, and replaced copper wiring, which can short out when wet, with optical fiber.

Hurricane Gustav is being closely followed by Tropical Storm Hanna.

We usually do these things on Tuesdays, but figured we’d put together a special one commemorating the Mac, which is finally old enough to rent a
car. Brian and I will be on camera taking your questions, so make sure to stop by here.

Clarification at 7:25 a.m. PST: The time of Friday’s show has been updated.

In the meantime, check out our entire package on Mac at 25 with new info on the Mac’s technical lineage and that famous Super Bowl ad that started it all.

Regardless of whether you’re into Macs, check out the upcoming schedule of Editors’ Office Hours shows here.

Tune in (browse in?) to CNET TV at 11:30 a.m. PST Friday for a special edition of Editors’ Office Hours with Brian Tong and me, where we’ll talk all about the 25th anniversary of the
Mac.