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Another factor Intel mentioned: Companies building out on the back-end to take advantage of so-called cloud computing. Maybe Facebook isn’t the only young outfit planning to spend big this year to improve its data centers. Like I said, selling shovels (or servers) is a great business during a boom.

It’s easy to say Intel is benefiting from problems at its faithful rival AMD. But optimists would like to think Intel’s forecast is indicative of continued spending on PCs and servers. The forecast could indicate that while many consumers may have given up on buying a new house, they haven’t given up on buying a new PC. And big companies, even the Wall Street financial institutions reeling because of the mortgage crisis, are still buying new servers.

Now here’s the good news: Intel executives aren’t as freaked out about the economy as the rest of us. In earnings news that had to have had many breathing a sigh of relief, Intel announced Tuesday afternoon that its first quarter, while admittedly difficult, beat Wall Street expectations. More importantly, Intel executives signaled confidence in the year ahead.

There’s an old joke about being an economist: You never have to say you’re wrong. You’ve just changed your analysis based upon new data. Right now, Intel is only one part of the data puzzle. If the national and global economies continue to worsen, only a fool would think tech could avoid taking a hit.

(Credit:
Intel)

That’s not to say everything is rosy in tech. While Intel was optimistic in the face of skeptical questioning from analysts Tuesday, storage manufacturer Seagate lowered its forecast for the current quarter. And we’re waiting on earnings news from some of the other bellwethers: IBM reports Wednesday, and Google reports Thursday.

Intel, of course, has long been a bellwether for the high-tech industry, along with other giants like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Cisco and–dare I add to the list–Google. But for people who follow the tech economy, the chip giant’s sales forecast is usually the single best gauge of how the industry will fare in the coming months. It is, as CNET News.com’s Tom Krazit wrote Monday, tech’s canary in the coal mine. (Tom has a more detailed look at Intel’s earnings on his blog, One More Thing.)

That’s the tricky thing about forecasts: You can only go on what people tell you. That chief information officer at a big bank may think he’s buying a truck full of new x86 servers, but if his CFO panics because bad sales reports are starting to trickle in, the servers are going to stay in the truck.

Crude oil prices are at an all-time high. The housing market keeps getting worse. Your 401(k) is probably in the tank, and, oh yeah, unemployment is up.

“What we’re seeing is growing strength in the core business,” in the second quarter and through the rest of the year, Intel Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said in a conference call with Wall Street analysts. In an offhand comment, CEO Paul Otellini intimated that the biggest fretting is probably taking place in Manhattan (read: Wall Street), but Intel’s global business is still going strong, including in mature markets such as the United States and Europe.

Don’t let anyone fool you: While Silicon Valley is atwitter over social networking and varied Web 2.0 doodads, the real indicators of tech’s health are the companies that sell the stuff everyone else builds on. As pundits often said in the Web 1.0 boom, it wasn’t the gold miners who got rich during the California gold rush, it was the guys who sold them the shovels.

Another reason for caution: The last time there was a tech bubble, executives at even the biggest companies said everything was just fine…right until it wasn’t. And even the most enthusiastic of Web 2.0 boosters would have to admit this year is going to be make or break for plenty of companies relying on advertising for their revenues.

But chastened honchos at companies like Intel would be happy to blame bad news on a souring economy if they felt a need to do so. At the moment, it seems clear at Intel at least, there’s no need.

Intel's Otellini is still confident about 2008.

They’re also a way for “old” bands to reach younger audiences, the Times noted. An executive for Anthem Records, which releases music for ’70s prog-rock group Rush, said young people have started showing up for the band’s concerts after hearing their music for the first time on Guitar Hero or Rock Band.

The Times points out that games like Rock Band, and Activision Blizzard’s rival Guitar Hero, have been a bright spot in an otherwise dismal atmosphere for the music business. They’re more profitable for record labels than digital downloads from places like iTunes, because a Rock Band track typically costs more. Sometimes they sell more copies, too. Motley Crue’s “Saints of Los Angeles” sold more than three times as many tracks on Microsoft’s
Xbox Live Marketplace as a Rock Band song than it did in Apple’s iTunes Store.

We’ve heard about songs getting released on iLike, Imeem, MySpace, and a whole lot else. But Rock Band?

(Credit:
MTV/Harmonix)

This post has been updated to confirm the song’s release.

Now it’s been confirmed. The long-delayed new Guns N’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy, is on the way too, and the band has chosen the game, which hits stores this fall, as the venue to release its new single.

That’s on the way, according to Microsoft’s press conference at the E3 Expo. The New York Times reported that that it could be on the way as rumors swirled that Rock Band 2, the second iteration of the music video game from MTV, would include a track called “Shacklers’ Revenge” from legendary hard-rock group Guns N’ Roses.

Social news site Digg just posted some preliminary results from the site activity since launching its recommendation engine last month. According to a post on the official Digg blog from engine creator Anton Kast, all-around voting on the site has gone up by 40 percent since launch.

Also quietly launched was a new version of Digg’s mobile site (m.digg.com), which still looks best on iPhones. New to the party is an improved topical categories section, and the option to view more than just the top five comments as ranked by the community. You can now load five more comments at a time, although there’s still not a way to rate or view all the comments from your phone.

Other numbers that have gone up include commenting (an 11 percent increase) and some of the social networking, which went up nearly a quarter within the past 30 days. Part of the reason for the additional “friending” and profile views are due to the recommendation engine’s suggestion of not only stories, but other users you should befriend based on past voting. Kast says more of this will be prevalent on the front page of Digg for registered users as the engine continues to be tweaked.

Still missing as of Thursday is the Facebook connect integration that was announced as part of last week’s f8 conference. When in place it will allow Facebook users to log into Digg without registering–something we should be seeing from many third-party sites in the coming months.

So, to those that do join this service, have fun. But make sure, when you go on dates with your fellow smart people, that you don’t say anything too dumb.

Well, snark aside, this is an interesting notion, this dating site for smarties.

I’m sitting here, reading my morning e-mail and what pops up but a press release for a new dating site that purports to be “exclusively for intelligent people.”

The site also says you can only take the test twice. What this doesn’t address is that people can study for IQ tests, and I daresay, could probably cheat on them, as well. I wanted to check out this IQ test to see if you could, in fact, cheat, but I realized I didn’t even want my name going in their database.

That means the test “will test intelligence while minimizing cultural or educational biases.”

Fortunately, IntelligentPeople.com says it has made its IQ test “culture fair,” one of the most bland, awkward terms I’ve come across in some time.

Now, my first instinct was to look at the calendar. It’s not April Fools’ Day, right? No, I think that happened already. Maybe the people behind this site weren’t smart enough to notice that it’s way past April 1.

Of course, as anyone who’s ever dated a smart person knows, intelligence isn’t any kind of guarantee of a good date. Sure, smart people generally prefer to date other smart people because it probably makes for better conversation, and the potential earning power is greater.

(Credit:
IntelligentPeople.com)

Besides, maybe figuring out how to cheat on their IQ test is a sign of intelligence.

Well, that’s good, at least. This ensures the site will welcome a multicultural party of IQ test snobs.

Called, wonder of wonders, IntelligentPeople.com, the site says that to sign up you must first “pass the IQ test required for admission.”

On the other hand, would you really want to date someone who would be inclined to limit their partner trolling to a site that restricts anyone who doesn’t pass an IQ test? Perhaps this was actually someone’s clever notion of how to wall off a really annoying demographic from the rest of the dating pool.

I suppose it’s no surprise. After all, there are plenty of affinity networks out there already, social networks for people who went to this college, or who play that game or who like to dress up as giraffes. So why not throw dating and high IQs into the exclusivity mix?

IntelligentPeople.com purports to be a dating site only for people smart enough to pass an IQ test.

A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday on the matter for the Delaware case.

Yahoo and shareholders suing the company don’t see eye to eye about how public some documents involved in the case should be.

Also included in the documents are notes from a conversation between Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer, the respective chief executives of Yahoo and Microsoft, and of comments top executives made about the severance plan, the AP said. The information was gathered during the discovery phase of the lawsuit.

The documents involve details of a severance plan Yahoo adopted after Microsoft launched its attempt to acquire the Internet company in February. Yahoo wants to keep the documents redacted, but Joel Friedlander, the attorney representing the shareholders, accused Yahoo of trying “to whitewash embarrassing documents” so they couldn’t be used to undermine its effort to fend off activist investor Carl Icahn’s attempt to oust Yahoo’s board, according to The Associated Press.

The severance plan was one sticking point in discussions between Yahoo and Microsoft, a source familiar with the negotiations said.

Let’s face it: Video search blows. It’s easy to use YouTube’s search box to find straightforward Internet video memes like cats playing pianos, skateboard tricks, or Rick Astley remixes; try for anything more intricate and you might be out of luck. There are established companies in the space, like the U.K.-based Blinkx, but none of them has captured the market share that video search potentially could.

VideoSurf CEO Lior Delgo told the Times that instead of only being able to search text tags and descriptions, the company’s search technology goes frame-by-frame to recognize specific people. Additionally, VideoSurf says it has already indexed multiple video sites, from hubs like YouTube and Hulu to the digital libraries of networks like Comedy Central and ESPN. The company has attracted investment funding from former Vice President Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, the co-founders of Current Media; Hyatt is chairman of VideoSurf’s board of directors.

But there’s a caveat: nobody in the tech press has actually seen this company in action yet. Search Engine Land was very impressed by a demo, calling the company “genuinely radical,” but doesn’t appear to have done anything hands-on. The last shadowy video company that was this hyped was arguably Joost, which is still trying to stay afloat after failing to catch on. So don’t count the chickens before they hatch, even if we’re talking about a grainy cell phone camera video of chickens playing “Never Gonna Give You Up” on a piano.

Enter VideoSurf, a company launching later on Wednesday at the TechCrunch50 conference that’s been getting a choice spot in the tech-blogger limelight thanks to a Los Angeles Times preview.

AOL on Wednesday unveiled a new e-mail feature designed to allow users to access multiple e-mail services from one location on the site.

The new features follow efforts earlier this year to shore up the company’s user traffic by revamping the design of its Web sites, from Money & Finance to its News and Sports pages.

The e-mail service is part of AOL’s plans to debut new features to the site over the coming weeks; the features aim to provide customization and give users more control, such as adding Web links to the main navigation bar and accessing custom feeds from a variety of sites from AOL.com’s main page.

Someone poaching in your favorite abalone patch? A frogman can be warned that he is in a restricted area and should surface immediately by “underwater loudhailer.” If that doesn’t work, deploy the “nonlethal interdiction acoustic impulse,” an underwater shockwave emitter–which, despite its name, can be set on stun or kill.

The system is designed to protect commercial piers, government and military vessels, cruise ships, terminals, and other high-value assets, but it’ll work just as well for your hideaway surf break. You know it’s good if the oil sheiks buy it. Kongsberg installed an integrated system at a “High-Value Seaside resort” in the United Arab Emirates; the exact location is classified.

(Credit:
USCG)

You can’t really say you have a private beach until you’ve installed a SM 2000 Underwater Surveillance System by Kongsberg to keep out the riffraff.

You’ll be relieved to know that the Coast Guard and the EPA have concluded that the system will not “adversely affect threatened or endangered species or critical habitat.” Whether a diver could do enough damage to justify the multimillion-dollar investment is open to debate.

The U.S. Coast Guard just picked up $2 million of Kongsberg gear to enhance its Integrated Anti-swimmer Systems (IAS) program at the nation’s ports. The purchase follows the initial IAS contract worth $3 million.

Using software and sonar the system can detect and differentiate between “malicious swimmers and divers” and other targets, such as marine life and debris, at up to 1000 meters, according to the British Columbia-based company. A processor “captures a wide acoustic swath” to positively identify and localize the threat, then notifies security (PDF).

Now, Apple’s Software Update has two separate boxes, one labeled “New Software” and the other labeled “Updates.” Before Safari 3.1 was under the “Updates” box and there was no “New Software” heading.

In a blog, Lilly said that Apple’s practice was “wrong” and bad for the industry “because it undermines the trust that we’re all trying to build with users.”

Last month, Apple started to include Safari 3.1 in a list of applications available from its Software Update program.

(Credit:
Asa Dotzler, Mozilla) That practice got many people riled up, complaining that Apple was essentially deceiving people into installing a new program–Safari 3.1 for Windows XP–through a program meant to update already installed applications, namely iTunes and QuickTime.

Following a storm of criticism, Apple has changed its Software Update software to mark a distinction between new programs, such as its
Safari on
Windows browser, and updates to existing ones.

An Apple representative told Computerworld that the change was done to distinguish new software from updates but declined to say whether it was in response to criticisms or whether Apple may leave the “New Software” box unchecked, as Mozilla’s Dotzler suggested.

Now Apple Software Updates distinguishes between new software and updates.

The old way: including new programs like Safari in with updates of already installed programs.

(Credit:
CNET Networks) The folks at Mozilla noticed the change but don’t appear fully satisfied.

“This is a good first step. Now Apple needs to stop checking the box for “New Software” items by default. With that change, I think I’d be pretty happy to let the Apple Software Update service back on my Windows machine,” Asa Dotzler, director of Mozilla community development, wrote Thursday.

Among those complaining was John Lilly, the CEO of Mozilla which makes the competing
Firefox browser.

“Microsoft looked at 31 variables in narrowing its site selection to San Antonio, including the availability of fiber-optic networks, affordable energy rates, and a work-life balance for our employees that the city offered,” Microsoft General Manager Mike Manos said in a statement.

Microsoft on Monday officially opened its San Antonio, Texas, data center, the latest in a string of giant facilities aimed at powering Microsoft consumer and business online services.

The facility joins other Microsoft data centers, including one in Quincy, Wash. Another site, due to open later this year in the Chicago area, will be Microsoft’s first to employ containers of servers, in addition to traditional rack-based set-ups.

The company said the data center occupies nearly half a million square feet and cost $550 million to establish.

Microsoft also recently announced plans to build a center in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Microsoft touted some of the environmental features of the facility, including the fact that it is using 8 million gallons of recycled water per month as part of its cooling system.