News to know: Microsoft; Yahoo; Google; IT contractors

Notable headlines:

Larry Dignan: Microsoft's search plan: It's about semantics and possibly for naught.

• Dennis Howlett: Powerset’s smarts are Microsoft’s gain
• Paul Miller: Powe

  

  rset really does go to Microsoft... but for how much?
• Mary Jo Foley: Confirmed: Microsoft buys Powerset natural-language search
• Techmeme

Foley: New Microsoft program to make volume licenses 'evergreen'

WSJ: Microsoft Seeks Partners For a New Run at Yahoo

Matthew Miller: First impressions of the HP iPAQ 910 Business Manager. Gallery (right).

Deb Perelman: In lean times, a tale of two IT contractors

Ryan Naraine: Study: 637 million Google users surfing with insecure browser

• Google ships open-source Web security assessment tool
• Garett Rogers: Google retires AdSense referral program

Heather Clancy: Part 2: Green tech and corporate ethics

Silicon Alley Insider: AOL For Sale (TWX)*

Dennis Howlett: Oracle's BEA strategy: reassuring the market

Nate McFeters: Researcher claims thousands of identities stolen during Social Engineering pentests

• McAfee S.P.A.M. experiment and more ridiculous HackerSafe failures

Joe McKendrick: Analyst: Microsoft 'tone deaf' about SOA

• Ten ways to tell it's not SOA

Webware: Adobe unveils Reader 9 with Flash

Jason Perlow: Hyper-V: The no-brainer virtualization stack for Windows

• Gallery (right)
• Larry Dignan: VMware: The Hyper-V assault is underway, but the war is a long one
• Dan Kusnetzky: Microsoft Hyper-V and Spin Marketing - Sun's Comments

John Morris: AMD Phenom gets (a little) faster

• Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: PhysX on the Radeon? Seems that it's possible!
• Today we see AMD release three new high-performance quad-core desktop processors.

ReadWriteWeb: Gnip: Grand Central Station for the Social Web

Paul Murphy: Costing Sun Ray vs Wintel

Paul Miller: ThomsonReuters' OpenCalais increments to version 2.1

Dana Blankenhorn: Why Microsoft might win in mobile

Tom Steinert-Threlkeld: Thinking -- Or Feeling -- Like A Computer

Michael Krigsman: Scathing report slams UK gov't data loss

Jason Perlow: Pssst! ... wanna save up to 40 percent on a robotic massage chair?

Forbes: Apple Spurns Intel, For Now

Phil Wainewright: UK builder switches email to Google Apps

Nate McFeters: Snort Security Platform (Snort SP) 3.0 beta released

Infectious Greed: The VC Asset Class Crisis Thing

AT&T details iPhone plans; Rolls out 'iReady' tips (yes we're serious) Jason O'Grady: Apple posts iPhone 3G guided tour

• A boon to the Webtop: Adobe makes indexing Flash in search easier

Steve O'Hear: Could Twitter become the next PayPal?

Dana Blankenhorn: One pharmacy hub to rule them all

Images: Dubai's skyscraper in motion (right)

Roland Piquepaille: Towards eco-friendly fireworks?

Mitch Ratcliffe: McCain's campaign team has no Facebook chops

TechCrunch: Engadget's Ryan Block and Peter Rojas To Team On New Startup