Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the availability of Live Mesh, at first for a limited number of users, an idea that Ray Ozzie had mentioned at last month’s MIX Conference. The mesh concept suggests a new point of interest for Microsoft, rather than the “old” PC: the World Wide Web.

Mike Zintel, Product Unit Manager, Mesh and Storage Platform, unveiled on a blog that the project they have been working on is going to take competition by surprise, by allowing users to easily manage their information by combining their computing experiences (PCs, applications, web sites, phones, video games, music and video devices) in the context of different communities (i.e. myself, family, work, organizations).

“The PC era has given way to an era in which the Web is at the center of our experiences,” say Ray Ozzie in a memo to Microsoft employees, Information World reports. “It is our mission in this new era to create compelling, seamless experiences that combine the power of the Internet with the magic of software, across a world of devices.”

Live Mesh enables devices to work together and is in fact a software-plus-service platform that connects devices (PCs, and soon Mac and mobile phones) through the internet, making file sharing and folder synchronization a lot easier.

In addition to being able to access information from anywhere, Microsoft also introduced a “stay informed” feature which keeps track of all the activities on the mesh and keeps the user informed of all updates: online status of friends, who updated files or folders, check the status of his devices etc.

At first, the service will be available to a limited number of users, in order to get the necessary feedback and to make sure the system is reliable and responsive. At the same time, the interface will be in English only, as the data center hosting service is in United States (broader availability is expected within a few months). Although only supported on Windows XP and Vista machines, support for the Mac and mobile devices will be added.

Despite all the openness Microsoft wants to embrace with Live Mesh however, some are still raising eyebrows on exactly how open Mesh really is: an interesting concept, but needs a lot of testing and work to prove a point.

There are four more days until Grand Theft Auto IV will hit the store shelves and still, there is little known about the new title created by Rockstar.

So far, the company has released several trailers, but it seems like the gamers will have many surprises.

The story is revolving around Niko Bellic, an immigrant-turned-gangster from Eastern Europe, who is coming to Liberty City, a fictional city based on New York. There are several references in Liberty City on buildings and objects, as well as several distinct features, which make the city a replica of New York. For example, Liberty City includes replicas of the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Judging by one of the trailers available on GTA IV official website, Bellic is a former soldier, although it is unclear in which war he fought. “I was very young and very angry,‿ he says in one of the trailers.

Niko Bellic is invited by his cousin, Roman, to change his life and live the American Dream. “Life is complicated; I killed people, smuggled people, sold people. Perhaps here, things will be different,” he says in the first GTA IV trailer released by Rockstar.

However, our “anti-hero” seems to have an additional mission: he is looking for that special someone. “For ten years I’ve been searching,” Bellic says in another trailer.

Niko and Roman will live in the same mansion and it will not take long until they will run in some troubles with different gangs from Liberty City.

GTA IV’s website is listing names and locations like Vlad Glebov, Manny Escula, Bledar Morina or Super Star Café and Majestic Hotel. Still, it is difficult to say what will happen with Bellic in Liberty City and who are the bad or the good guys.

Apparently, the outcome of the story will be heavily influenced by the player’s decisions during the game and we can speculate that Grand Theft Auto IV might have different endings based on the choices made by the player during the game. Or not? However, nothing is known for sure.

In addition, besides what can be seen in the trailers, little is known about the gameplay. It seems like the players will have an unusual degree of liberty regarding their moves and the interaction with the surroundings. The trailers show lots of vehicles, weapons and fistfights, car chases, so definitely the life in Liberty City will be anything but boring.

According to an interview given by Rockstar’s Dan Houser to Variety, the gaming studio’s ambition was to create something more like a gangster movie then a game.

“We also felt over the last few years there hadn’t been a great standout gangster movie. Maybe we could do something ourselves that would live alongside that stuff,” he said.

Besides the story, GTA IV is bringing for all the gamers out there something they have been waiting for years: the multiplayer mode. Apparently, the game will have 16 multiplayer modes. Some of them need no explanation, such as Deathmatch or Team Deathmatch, while others seem to have been invented especially for GTA IV.

For example, the Hangman’s NOOSE mode is similar to a mission from the single player mode. The players will escort a mobster, while being pursued by a SWAT team. The map is the same as in single player mode. Cops n Crooks is a multiplayer mode in which a team of players will play the cops which are trying to prevent the crooks from escaping.

With this nice addition, there is little doubt that GTA IV will become an instant hit on Xbox Live.

GTA IV is expected to register sales of $400 million in the first week of availability. If the analysts’ forecast will turn true, GTA IV will gain not only the title of the best debut in videogames industry, but also the title of “the biggest debut ever for an entertainment product”.

Last year, Microsoft’s Halo 3, the last “chapter” of the trilogy created by Bungie Studios, grossed $300 million in the first week. However, GTA IV has the potential to surpass the record sales of “Halo 3″. Unlike Microsoft’s game, which was available only for Xbox 360, Rockstar’s creation also has a version for PlayStation 3.

For Take Two, the publishers of GTA, the success of GTA IV could also mean the possibility to avoid the tender offer from Electronic Arts.

On April 19, Electronic Arts extended the deadline of its tender offer for Take-Two Interactive Software. The company said Take-Two shareholders have until May 16 to accept its offer, which was lowered from $26 a share to a $25.74 share.Let us hope that the next week will bring some answers not only for Take Two, but also for all the gamers who are eager to play the new game.

AT&T, in comments filed Friday with the Federal Communications Commission, denied it throttles back peer-to-peer traffic using false “reset” commands, as was suggested by an analysis of Internet data by a P2P video distributor.

Vuze, a startup that distributes video files using BitTorrent-based software, this week submitted to the FCC a study finding that the networks of the eight biggest broadband providers—including AT&T—regularly generate commands that slow down file transfers.

“At a minimum, more investigation is required to determine whether these resets are happening in the ordinary course of business or whether they are the kind of throttling practices which target specific applications and/or protocols” to the detriment of P2P users, Vuze said.

But the Vuze report doesn’t take into consideration other network conditions that can reset P2P connections, according to AT&T.

AT&T vice president of Internet and network systems research Charles Kalmanek, in a letter addressed to Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa, said that peer-to-peer resets can arise from numerous local network events, including outages, attacks, reconfigurations or overall trends in Internet usage.

“AT&T does not use ‘false reset messages’ to manage its network,” Kalmanek said in the letter.

Kalmanek noted that Vuze’s analysis said the test “cannot conclude definitively that any particular network operator is engaging in artificial or false [reset] packet behavior.”

“Given that Vuze itself has recognized these problems…we believe that Vuze should not have published these misleading measurements, nor filed them with the FCC,” he wrote, suggesting that industry forums like the Distributed Computing Industry Association would provide a better means for addressing such questions.

Comcast, unlike AT&T, has acknowledged “delaying” P2P upstream traffic to conserve bandwidth but has pledged to change its management techniques to be “protocol agnostic” by the end of 2008.

The FCC is currently investigating the operator’s bandwidth management practices, which chairman Kevin Martin criticized this week as a “blunt means to reduce peer-to-peer traffic.”

A News Corp unit is currently involved in a trial, after being accused of hiring a computer hacker to develop pirating software.

 The hacker, Christopher Tarnovsky, testified against News Corp’s NDS Group, saying that he received a payment of $20,000 in cash sent from Canada inside some electronic devices. He stated that for the past 10 years he has been paid on a regular basis by the News Corp. One of his assignments was to develop a new security program for the DirecTV network.

The company, well known for providing security technology to a global satellite network strongly denies all the charges.

The lawsuit was started by EchoStar Communications, which is now formed by DISH and EchoStar Corp. The main accusation regards Tarnovsky’s alleged mission to hack into DISH’s satellite network and flood the market with pirated smart cards after stealing the security codes. The company also claims that their losses during the process were of over $900 million in lost revenue and system-repair costs.

“I never got money for reprogramming Echostar cards. Someone is trying to set me up,” Tarnovsky said according to Reuters, expressing his concern that the accusations are part of a large conspiracy mission.

In the days to follow many more will testify on the different matters concerning the accusations and according to officials, the trial is expected to last two or three more weeks.

The location set for the trial is in the U.S. District Court’s Central Division in Santa Ana, California as both Tarnovsky and NDS are located there.

Ubuntu’s first “Long Term Support (LTS)” rev in almost 23 months was pushed out the door this week along with the promise that another LTS rev would follow every two years from now on out and in between there would be point releases first at the three-month mark and then every six month after that. 

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth borrowed Intel’s “Tick Tock” metaphor to explain Ubuntu’s plans. 

The only thing that would upset the planned schedule, he said, would be if other major distributions aligned their releases. 

Ubuntu first experimented with an LTS platform two years ago when its Dapper Drake release, a k a Ubuntu 6.06, came out and it swore that it was stable enough for Canonical, Ubuntu’s commercializer, to support and maintain the thing for the next three years, a marketing gimmick that appears to have worked. 

Canonical claims its track record of delivering a commercial operating system – on schedule – every six months is “unique.” 

Shuttleworth gloated over the superior predictability of open source software compared to Microsoft. 

The new release, Ubuntu 8.04 or Hardy Heron, is supposed to be fit for large-scale desktop deployment and enterprise use in the face of widespread rejection of Linux on the desktop. 

Three-year support makes for longer corporate upgrade planning cycles. Otherwise the next Ubuntu 8.10 will be out in October. 

Canonical is now looking for greater ISV support besides IBM with its DB2 and Lotus Domino, Adobe, Google, RealNetworks, Skype, Corel and Parallels. 

The desktop distribution adds the beta of Firefox 3, an enhanced default photo manager, music sharing and better video and TV support. 

Canonical is generally associated with the desktop but it has a companion server distribution that it’s pushing to compete with Red Hat and Novell. 

Both the Heron desktop and server are LTS revs, but the server is supposed to be good for five years. 

With this iteration, Ubuntu is dropping support for Sparc as before it dropped Power. Sparc is a Solaris play, Shuttleworth said, although the relationship between Canonical and Sun as warmer to the point Sun is certifying the operating system on some of its x86 machines such as the Sun Fire X2100 M2, the X2200 M2 and the X4150. 

Ubuntu has yet to persuade a server maker to pre-install the stuff and Dell and HP, the largest of the x86 houses, have yet to even certify the widgetry. 

The Server Edition adds KVM for hosting virtualization and the cut-down Ubuntu JeOS (Just Enough Operating System) for virtual appliances supports both VMware and KVM.

Likewise is providing integration with Microsoft’s Active Directory and Heron is the first release to include Sun’s OpenJDK as an option.

Java has traditionally run on top of Linux. Shuttleworth said OpenJDK is integrated.

The code is also described as having expanded network infrastructure support such as authentication from FreeRadius, monitoring from Munin, VPN complements of OpenVPN and backup from Bacula.

There is also supposed to be increased storage capabilities including iSCSI and DRDB and enhanced security thanks to integrated AppArmor policies and kernel hardening. 

See http://www,ubuntu.com/download.