The Tech Central

By the end of this month America Online plans to launch AIM Phoneline, a free service that will let AOL Instant Messenger users receive incoming calls from any phone. As we all know, Voice over instant messaging is not a new concept and is already available in Yahoo and MSN Messengers.

What makes it interesting is that AIM Phoneline would be the first to offer a free phone number. An AOL spokesman said, users will be able to pay $14.95 a month to upgrade to AIM Phoneline Unlimited, which would allow them to make calls to any number in the U.S. and 30 other countries.

Source: ZDNet News

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 is reported to break Web links in messages received in at least two versions of the Outlook email client. This problem has been discussed on IE newsgroups on Microsoft’s support site. The preoblem seems to affect Outlook 2000 and 2003.

If a user chooses any other browser other than IE as the default, IE 7 Beta 2 prevents Outlook from launching a browser from an email link. Switching the default browser to IE 7 corrects the problem.

Source: TechWeb

Even though HD-DVD are titles already trickling on to store shelves, titles on the rival Blu-ray format won’t be available until the end of June. The reason for the holdup? Samsung, manufacturer of the first commercially available Blu-ray player, says that its Blu-ray units won’t be on store shelves until June 25th. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment president Benjamin Feingold said that their first Blu-ray titles will be ready on May 23rd as planned, but at the urging of their retailers and hardware partners they have agreed to hold back on their release for a month in order to coincide with the availability of the players.

The first Blu-ray titles slated for release on June 20th are “Underworld Evolution” (arriving the same day as the DVD), “50 First Dates,” “The Fifth Element,” “Hitch,” “House of Flying Daggers,” “A Knight’s Tale,” “The Last Waltz,” “Resident Evil Apocalypse” and “XXX.”

More here: Reuters

Even if you’re reading All the News That’s Fit to Print on an ultra-mobile computer, it may soon look and feel the same way it does spread out with your morning coffee — minus the ink-stained fingers, perhaps. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, appearing at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference in Seattle, showed off a new feature of Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista operating system that promises improved “on-screen reading.”

He shared the podium Friday with Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, which is partnering with Microsoft to develop a prototype application dubbed Times Reader. Microsoft plans to release development tools by the end of this summer for other newspapers and “whoever wanted to do these things,” Gates said.

Read more at Seattle Times