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News

• Microsoft unveils try-before-buy Mac Office

  Four months after it debuted Office for Mac 2001, Microsoft on Tuesday launched the first free trial of the application suite.

• Netflix reveals challenges in the Cloud

  Technology managers at video distributor Netflix Inc., which last year took a big plunge into the public cloud, have started a remarkably candid blog about their experiences with mission-critical cloud computing.

• Amazon readies launch of Android Market competitor

  Amazon is preparing to open an Android app store to compete with Google's Android Market, and has launched a beta portal where developers can submit applications for Android-based smartphones, according to a company blog post.

• Kindle Sales 60 per cent higher than expected

  Amazon is on track to sell eight million Kindles this year. That's 60 percent more of the electronic readers than analysts predicted would be sold, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-12-21/amazon-com-kindle-sales-are-said-to-exceed-estimates.html">Bloomberg Businessweek reported</a> today. By contrast, Apple sold 7.6 million <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/389929/review/ipad_with_wifi_32gb.html">iPads</a> from April to September of this year.

• Amazon moves VMware's virtual machines to the cloud

  Amazon Web Services has announced a new feature called VM Import, which allows IT departments to move virtual machine images from their internal data centers to the cloud.

• Apple pushes color e-books; Where's Amazon?

  Playing up one advantage of the iPad over E-ink readers, Apple said on Tuesday that it will launch more than 100 color e-books in its iBookstore. And not just children's books, either -- among Apple's new offerings are "Ad Hoc at Home," a cookbook by famous chef Thomas Keller; "Beginnings," by photographer Anne Geddes; and Ansel Adams' photo collection, "In the National Parks."

• Wikileaks attacks prove the Cloud is reliable

  It's a strange world. When Amazon Web Services booted Wikileaks off its servers last week, many people (including me) said it raised significant questions about the rush into cloud services.

• Internet Society says attacks against WikiLeaks are illegal

  Takedown attempts against WikiLeaks undermine what the Internet stands for, and those responsible should be tracked down and prosecuted, says the Internet Society, a non-profit group dedicated to the open use of the Internet.

• Hacker group defends attacks on WikiLeaks foes

  Anonymous, a loosely affiliated group of Internet vigilantes that has claimed responsibility for a series of Internet attacks against organizations perceived as hostile to WikiLeaks, today sought to cast itself as more focused on symbolic protest than outright disruption.

• Amazon's S3 can now store files of up to 5TB

  Amazon Web Services (AWS) has increased the maximum size of files that can be stored on its Simple Storage Service (S3) to 5TB from 5GB, Amazon said in a blog post on Thursday.

• Anonymous attack on Amazon.com appears to fail

  This morning's planned distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against Amazon.com by Anonymous, a hacker group that has launched similar attacks against organizations it sees attempting to censor WikiLeaks, appears to have failed.

• Fake receipt program targets Amazon retailers

  Amazon retailers are being targeted by fraudsters who have created a custom-built a program that generates fakes receipts for nonexistent orders, according to researchers from GFI Software.

• Amazon integrates Apple iPhone, iPad and Android with cloud

  Amazon Web Services (AWS) is making it possible for developers to directly integrate mobile applications for Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, and also apps for Android-based smartphones, with its cloud using two new beta SDKs (software development kits), it said in a blog post on Thursday.

• Hot e-reader sales will continue into 2011, Gartner says

  Global sales of e-readers like Amazon.com's Kindle will reach 6.6 million devices by the end of 2010, and then jump 68 per cent to 11 million devices in 2011 as it battles popular media tablets such as Apple's iPad, Gartner said Wednesday.

• Amazon responds to Google eBookstore with Kindle for web

  Amazon isn't accepting the launch of Google's eBookstore without a fight: the company will unveil a revamped Web-only version of its Kindle app today, according to a Computerworld report.