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Well, it looks like Group Sense’s once mighty line-up of Palm OS-based handsets has finally been shown the door with the whole lot now replaced by a single, Linux-based device. From the looks of it though, it doesn’t seem like the new handset is about to work any wonders for the company, with the “real smart” Xplore WF100 boasting only a 1.5-inch 128 x 128 display, and such exciting features as a built-in antenna, speed dial, and “call shock.” No word on price or availability just yet, but we’re guessing most folks won’t have much trouble containing their excitement over this one.

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A U.S. judge’s order to Google Inc to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom Inc sparked an outcry on Thursday from privacy advocates in the midst of a legal showdown over video piracy.

Viacom, owner of movie studio Paramount and MTV Networks, requested the information as part of its $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against the popular online video service and its deep-pocketed parent, Google.

Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered Google on Tuesday to turn over as evidence a database with usernames of YouTube viewers, what videos they watched when, and users’ computer addresses.

Privacy activists from the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post the order “threatens to expose deeply private information” and violated the Video Privacy Protection Act, a 1988 federal law passed after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s video rental habits were revealed.

Representatives of both companies said they were looking to work out how to comply with the court order to share video data while ensuring personally identifiable information is secure.

Viacom responded in a statement that it needs the data to demonstrate video piracy patterns that are the heart of its case against YouTube. But it sought to diffuse privacy fears, saying it had no interest in identifying individual users.

“Viacom has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any user,” Viacom said.

“Any information that we or our outside advisors obtain … will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner.”

Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said her company was looking to resolve the issue quickly in a way that balanced Viacom and other plaintiffs’ need for evidence in the case while “carving out some space for user privacy.”

Lacavera said her company was pleased the court’s decision had put limits on evidence discovery, including refusing to allow Viacom access to YouTube’s search technology or to users’ private videos on the site.

But the Google attorney called on Viacom to allow YouTube to anonymize user data — in other words, redact rows of data containing usernames or unique computer Internet addresses.

In closed-door hearings ahead of the ruling, Google attorneys had argued against turning over such data without eliminating personally identifiable information.

“We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history,” she said. “We will ask Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court’s order.”

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Apple is now selling its super slim MacBook Air for $2598, down from the $3098. The cut was the result of a cut in price for two of the MacBook’s components. The Intel Core 2 Duo processor upgrade for the Air’s 1.8GHz was reduced to $200 from $100. The second reasons being that cost of the Flash memory based 64GB SDD drive upgrade to $599 from $999, That’s nearly a 50% slash of the original price. Oh and my be the sales of that particular SKU were not no hot… Now, customers may now configure a 1.6GHz MacBook Air with a SDD Drive starting from $2398.

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Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc have been holding separate talks with other potential media partners after their negotiations with each other broke down, sources familiar with the companies’ thinking said on Wednesday.Microsoft — rebuffed this year in efforts to buy all of Yahoo and then just its search business — is talking about alternative deals with Time Warner Inc, which owns AOL, and News Corp, parent of MySpace, a source close to Microsoft said, but any negotiations remain in preliminary stages.

Meanwhile, talks have continued for months between Yahoo and Time Warner over a potential merger of AOL with Yahoo to create a more formidable advertising and media player, but they are no closer to a deal, a source close to the matter said.

Shares of Yahoo jumped as much as 9 percent on Wednesday after the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft, positioning for a new run for Yahoo’s search business, had in recent days approached media companies to join together on a deal that would effectively lead to Yahoo’s breakup.

However, a Reuters source and a CNBC report, citing unnamed sources, later said there were no new talks or negotiations.

The Journal also said Microsoft met with activist investor Carl Icahn in recent days to encourage him to press his proxy battle for control of Yahoo’s board, the first sign Microsoft welcomed his month-old campaign. This development also was attributed to unnamed sources familiar with the talks.

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A forum poster over at Macrumors has posted photos of a fake iPhone that’s close enough to the real hardware that you might believe it at first glance. Its proportions are off, the screen’s not wide-sized and there’s a mini-USB connector instead of an iPod dock one, but even the packaging is mocked-up to look Appleish. The UI is glossed-up to look very real, with some differences of course. And sure, you can imagine it would be not so sweet to operate… but you can’t argue with the look of the thing. Steve’s famous “start your photocopiers” call has gone a lot further than Redmond. Wonder how soon we’ll see photocopy iPhone 3Gs?

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Microsoft is beefing up its upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser with several security improvements against hackers and phishers.  Eric Lawrence, Microsoft’s program manager of Internet Explorer security, says IE 8 Beta 1 will have more defenses against cross-site scripting, malware protection and URL highlighting.  File upload paths will also be changed to read only.  This will prevent hackers from reading direct paths to important files.

Perhaps the most important addition will be the cross-site scripting or XSS Filter that will provide defense against exploits that can steal cookies, credentials and even keystrokes.  Despite this protection, Lawrence warns that web developers shouldn’t get too complacent about letting IE take care of security.  He adds, “because this feature is only available in IE8, it’s important that web developers provide additional defense-in-depth and work to eliminate XSS vulnerabilities in their sites. Preventing XSS on the server-side is much easier that catching it at the browser”

IE 8 will also include beefed up malware protection thanks to third-party reporting sites.  When you visit a site, the url will be checked against a database of websites known to contain malware.  Suspicious sites will come up with a red background and a very large and noticeable warning box.  This is designed to replace the rather innocuous warning box we currently see in IE 7 – the one that most people just ignore.  URL highlighting will further protect users by highlighting good web addresses in black, while suspicious ones will be in gray.

You’ve probably had to upload files from your browser at some point in your life and usually a nice dialog box or window pops up asking for the path to the file.  Lawrence says skillful hackers could trick users into sending the complete file path to valuable documents and files.  In order to counteract this threat, IE 8 now has file upload control.  When uploading a file, you can type/select the file name, but the directory path will now be read-only.  Lawrence adds that IE 8 will now only submit the filename and not the full file-path.

You can download IE 8 Beta version one on Microsoft’s website here.   The download weighs in at approximately 14.5 megabytes.  Lawrence promises version two should be available sometime in August.

Razer has released its Aurantia gaming keyboard that will target only the China market, so it won’t be available anywhere else on an official basis. This gaming keyboard comes with a red backlight color in a relatively small package measuring 446mm x 205mm x 29mm, featuring a removable wrist rest attachment, the ability to record macros while storing up to 10 game profiles within. The Windows key which gets in the way of a frantic gaming session often can now be disabled. Each Razer Aurantia keyboard will be accompanied by a Razer Salmosa mouse, retailing for approximately $60 when it arrives in China sometime in the middle of this month.