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SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. is seeking to conceal large portions of a shareholder lawsuit alleging the Internet company’s board improperly thwarted Micrsoft Corp.’s $47.5 billion takeover offer, raising shareholder questions over the motives for the secrecy.

In a letter sent Friday to the judge overseeing the case in Delaware, a lawyer for the shareholders argued Yahoo is trying “to whitewash embarrassing documents” because the company thinks the information will damage the board’s efforts to repel a challenge by activist investor Carl Icahn.

Angered by the board’s handling of Microsoft bid, Icahn has nominated an alternate slate of candidates to oppose Yahoo’s 10 current directors — including Chief Executive Jerry Yang — at the Sunnyvale-based company’s July 3 annual meeting.

Yahoo is trying “to sanitize the public record and maintain a cloak of secrecy regarding unflattering evidence of breach of fiduciary duty,” shareholder attorney Joel Friedlander wrote in a letter to Chancellor William B. Chandler III.

The redacted documents include information about an employee severance plan that Yahoo adopted shortly after Microsoft made its initial bid Jan. 31 and notes about a conversation between Yang and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Friedlander wrote.

Yahoo had no immediate comment Friday. Generally, companies often seek to keep parts of publicly available lawsuits under seal for competitive reasons.

A hearing on the request to unseal the disputed material has been scheduled at 10 a.m. Tuesday in Chandler’s court, said Mark Lebovitch, another lawyer representing the shareholders. He declined further comment.

The concealed information was gathered during the discovery phase of the nearly three-month-old suit. If they’re made public, the documents could become fodder in Icahn’s campaign to remove Yahoo’s board.

The information would be particularly damaging to the board if it suggest the directors deliberately took steps to make Yahoo more expensive for Microsoft.

Friedlander’s letter says the redacted documents include estimates about how much Yahoo’s employee severance plans would cost Microsoft in a takeover — information that could be of particular interest to shareholders trying to figure out if the current board acted in their best interests.

Yahoo had previously disclosed the plans would give its 13,800 employees anywhere from four month to two years pay. Every $1.4 billion in severance cost theoretically would translate into about $1 per share less that Microsoft would have available to offer Yahoo shareholders.

Ballmer orally offered $33 per share, or $47.5 billion, but then withdrew the bid when Yang held out for $37 per share. Legg Mason money manager Bill Miller, whose fund is Yahoo’s second largest shareholder, has publicly said he would have happily supported a Microsoft offer of $34 per share.

Friedlander’s letter also indicated the redacted documents include comments that Yahoo’s top executives made about the severance plans.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. lawmakers raised privacy concerns on Friday about plans by cable company Charter Communications to track some subscribers' Internet visits and asked for a meeting before the program goes ahead.

“We respectfully request that you do not move forward on Charter Communications' proposed venture …. until we have an opportunity to discuss with you the issues raised by this proposed venture,” Reps. Edward Markey and Joe Barton said in a letter to Charter Chief Executive Neil Smit.

Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, is the chairman of the House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet. Barton, of Texas, is the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Charter recently sent some customers a letter outlining the pilot program, which is planned for June. In it, the company said the technique would provide “an enhanced online experience that is more customized to your interests and activities.”

In the letter, Charter said the service is anonymous and “does not collect or use any information that identifies you or your family.” Charter pledged to protect customers' privacy and offered an explanation of how they could opt out of the program.

But in a statement, Markey cast doubt on Charter's opt-out offer.

“Simply providing a method for users to opt out of the program is not the same has asking users to affirmatively agree to participate in the program,” he said.

Charter, the cable television operator controlled by former Microsoft Corpco-founder Paul Allen, issued a statement on Friday saying it would take an “open approach” with Markey and Barton.

“Our goal is to bring an enhanced Internet experience to our customer while meeting all privacy protection requirements. We believe we have done that but are pleased to discuss this matter with (them),” Charter said.

(Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

NEW YORK - A company rooted in bringing the Internet to the masses, AOL is shifting its focus toward serving niche audiences with the launch of dozens of specialty Web sites.

The latest — ParentDish for parents — formally launched Friday, with The Boot for country music and The Boom Box for hip hop and R&B to follow on Tuesday.

Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, branching out in hopes of doing a better job attracting crucial advertising revenue to offset its rapidly declining Internet access business, calls the niche sites “passion points.”

The sites reflect a growing sophistication of Internet users, who are spending less time at portals like AOL.com and Yahoo.com. and directly seeking specialized content at more focused sites. Examples outside AOL include Boing Boing, which keeps tabs on technology and the Internet; The Sartorialist, on street style; or Mom Logic, on parenting and being a mom.

“The consumer market is clearly fragmenting,” said Bill Wilson, AOL’s executive vice president for vertical programming. “We wanted to give people many front doors, not just one front door to come in.”

In a fourth-floor corner office at AOL’s new headquarters, once home to the grand Wanamaker department store in New York’s Greenwich Village, Wilson was passionate, even hurried, as he zipped through AOL’s plans to diversify its offerings.

Over the past several months, AOL has launched or revamped dozens of Web sites — from general portals such as Music and Sports to specialty sites like Spinner for indie music and StyleList for fashion. AOL plans to offer about two dozen more by year’s end, including BigDownload for downloadable video games.

AOL isn’t alone: Yahoo Inc. recently launched Shine for women ages 25 to 54. But, as the No. 4 Internet property behind Google Inc., Yahoo and Microsoft Corp., AOL has been more ambitious.

“The current problem with an awful lot of the mega sites is the fact that they aren’t well targeted,” said Rob Enderle, an industry analyst with the Enderle Group. “The material is written and designed for a general audience, and the reality is we are all individuals.”

AOL reigned over the Internet when it was known as America Online. It gave millions of Americans their first taste of the Net and had 26.7 million U.S. subscribers at its peak in 2002. But its mostly dial-up base quickly eroded as Americans adopted high-speed broadband services through cable and phone companies.

That forced AOL to change its mission. Instead of locking its news, music videos and other features behind a manicured wall for paying subscribers, AOL began giving away almost everything free through ad-supported sites.

Initially, it tried luring current and former paying subscribers to its free sites. But with ad revenue stagnant, the company is seeking new ways to boost traffic.

“If all you’re doing is keeping the people you have, that’s not a growing audience,” Wilson said.

There are some early signs of success.

According to traffic measurements by comScore Inc., AOL has had seven consecutive months of year-over-year growth in both unique visitors and page views.

For the entire first quarter, page views for AOL’s content-focused sites, which exclude e-mail, instant messaging and the general AOL.com portal, grew 22 percent to 9.5 billion compared with the same period in 2007. The content sites had 55 million visitors in April, up 12 percent.

Jack Flanagan, an executive vice president at comScore, said niche sites aren’t solely responsible for AOL’s growth but have quickly attracted sizable audiences.

The traffic growth, however, hasn’t translated to ad dollars, which were flat in the first quarter. In fact, non-search ads on AOL sites declined 18 percent compared with the same period in 2007. The big growth has been in ads that AOL brokers for third-party sites — such as the blogs vying for the same eyeballs as AOL’s new niche sites.

Executives have been blunt: AOL made key mistakes integrating $1 billion worth of corporate acquisitions into a single “Platform-A” advertising unit. Its sales forces weren’t aligned, and in some cases they were effectively undercutting one another on prices.

With new management, reorganized sales teams and new self-service tools for advertisers, AOL hopes to grow ad revenues on its sites again. The niche sites will be an important part of the mix, said Lynda Clarizio, president of Platform-A.

AOL already has behavioral-targeting technologies meant to let advertisers reach audience segments wherever they are on the Internet, but Clarizio said nothing can match reaching them when they are already engaged in a subject. The niche sites should help AOL attract sponsorship deals and other coordinated ad placements.

“That generally is the most valuable advertising inventory, the most expensive,” Clarizio said.

Wilson said launch decisions are primarily based on whether AOL can offer consumers an experience unmatched elsewhere. Advertising potential is also crucial — Wilson likens it to broadcast networks canceling shows that cannot draw ad revenue.

The individual sites are being given unprecedented freedom — in many cases even shedding the AOL brand — to best appeal to a particular community.

ParentDish, tapping into parental desires to connect, hopes to let visitors to share photos and ask one another questions. In a twist, ParentDish will use Yahoo’s Flickr rather than AOL’s own photo services.

The Asylum site for young men takes an irreverent tone — and devotion to the pursuit of women. The lead item recently: “How to Make Searches for Hot Babes Even Hotter.”

With the new site on country music, AOL is adopting a homier feel. The Boot plans to go beyond the better-known artists who have crossed into the mainstream, something that might not appeal to a broader audience.

Such genre-focused sites allow writers to make assumptions about the visitor’s knowledge, even posting jokes that would fly over the heads of a mainstream audience, said Bill Crandall, editor in chief for AOL’s music sites.

Most are adopting a blog-like format to engage its visitors, a formula that has worked extremely well with TMZ.com, the celebrity-gossip site jointly run by AOL and Time Warner sister company Telepictures Productions.

In a departure, the new sites routinely link to articles found elsewhere. AOL would rather have visitors start at one of its sites than bypass them completely for the blogs.

“A few years ago, if we didn’t have it, we didn’t want people to know we didn’t have it,” Wilson conceded.

Stand-alone sites also can be tailored to appear higher in search rankings. And executives believe that some bloggers would be more willing to link back to an item on, say, Asylum than on the AOL.com portal.

AOL’s plans also include integrating its popular AIM instant-messaging platform so users can see other AIM members currently on a particular site.

But Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research, warned that all of AOL’s niche offerings may not attract the total numbers they’re seeking.

“There’s no way they can possibly anticipate all the ways consumers will want to bend and shape their own content,” Epps said. But she credited AOL for trying.

“They need to do something different. They need to keep innovating and experimenting and sometimes fail (in order to) find things that do work.”

Before you even begin to look at engaging seriously in lots of networking effort, it is useful to look at your own temperament or disposition. This is the individual's internal desire to network and to find value and enjoyment from the whole process of building relationships.

For some people, this will be an almost irrelevant issue to debate. Their motivation to want to talk to people regularly and to network is naturally high. Talking to strangers in supermarket lines, at bus/train stops, or even in the elevators is characteristic of such people.

However, even if you really enjoy talking to people, it is a proven fact that most of us are not highly confident and highly motivated networkers. In fact, statistics reveal that only one in 10 people is actually comfortable in striking up a relationship with a complete stranger.

Unfortunately, this means that their own misgivings, fears and doubts potentially hinder the vast majority of people. And for successful sales professionals, networking is not a choice; it is a necessary part of the job.

Four Networking Types

In practice, you can divide people who attempt to build networking relationships into four distinct types: the Loner (little or no networking), the Socializer, the User, and the Relationship Builder.

Although a salesperson's aim is to become the fourth option, the “Relationship Builder,” let's briefly look at each of these types in turn.

Loners like to do most things by themselves. They may feel that they can do it faster or better, or perhaps they don't want to bother or worry other people. They feels that their knowledge and skills are often superior to most people, and they ask for help only as a last resort (and when it may be too late).

The Loner is an easily recognizable type, because there are times when we all believe that we will do better ourselves than if we ask others for help. The Loner will not usually want to bother anyone else, or necessarily see much point in doing so, believing that others will be slower and will set lower standards.

Unfortunately, the Loner attitude is a major obstacle to effective networking. We need to shift our thinking greatly in this area. We should be more willing to let others assist, and we should even ask for help more often.

Socializers try to make a friend of everyone they meet. They tend to know people's names and faces, but not what they do. Socializers are not usually systematic or ordered about following up on a sales lead - contact is random. Such a person may not listen too deeply and is quick to move on.

Although the Socializer may have a wide circle of friends and contacts, he or she knows little of substance about personal skills and resources. As a result, Socializers do not often share their skills.

The Socializer is also a random networker, following little or no formal contact system.

Users are likely to collect business cards without really connecting with people. They try to make “sales” or “pitches” on the first encounter. They talk about and focus on their own agenda rather than information about mutual needs. They often have superficial interactions, and keep score when giving favors.

Unfortunately, people of this type do network widely, but in a way that creates little benefit for themselves or others. Even worse, this kind of networker tends to create a bad impression, and therefore can give networking an image of being about selling, taking, bargaining and keeping score.

Relationship Builders have a “giving” disposition or abundance mentality. They are generally happy to ask others for help or guidance, and listen and learn about people carefully. Builders are regularly on the lookout for useful information for which others can also benefit. They have a well-ordered and organized networking system.

This type of networker is what this article is all about - an individual who takes a long-term perspective on relationships with others and thinks more about what he or she can give or offer than about the return.

This type is out there for others, or on call to offer help whenever it is needed. If they cannot help in person, they usually know someone else who can.

Maintaining High Self-Esteem

Apart from the Builder, one factor connects the other three types in preventing them from networking more effectively. This is the issue of self-esteem.

The Loner believes in himself or herself, but not necessarily in others (especially relative strangers). The Socializer likes people, but also very much wants to be liked by others (and therefore does not want to ask for favors). Finally, the User takes a relatively selfish view of, “If I benefit or gain, I might reciprocate; otherwise I won't.”

Of course, all of these types fear rejection, obligation, being too pushy or even looking weak. All of these fears or concerns about networking need to be lessened or overcome.

A topic as big and potentially complicated as a person's relative self-esteem cannot be covered at any level of detail in a short article. However, it is important to appreciate how low self-esteem can have a major impact on your networking efforts if it is not at least basically understood and addressed.

An individual with high self-esteem is likely to build his own confidence to want to network by having a positive, open and “can-do” attitude.

Conversely, an individual with low self-esteem is likely to lack confidence to start with. They will convince themselves (and others) that they have little that would be of interest to others in any network.

And in a successful sales career, this is too high a price to pay.

NEW YORK - Unless you’re looking carefully, you’ll likely miss the fact that the new Asylum Web site for young men is a creation of Time Warner Inc.’s AOL. Same for WalletPop on personal finance, Spinner on indie music and StyleList on fashion.

The AOL brand is taking a back seat as the company long associated with dial-up Internet access for the masses quietly launches dozens of sites targeted at specialized audiences.

AOL figures that to grow its audiences — and draw additional advertising the company crucially needs to offset plunging revenue from its shrinking base of Internet access subscribers — it must break from a one-size-fits-all model and let its specialty sites set their own designs and editorial tone, shedding the AOL brand when necessary.

Bill Wilson, AOL’s executive vice president for vertical programming, said the company has been retaining the AOL name for some sites — AOL Body is one, after research showed women 25 and up respond well to the brand.

And the brand isn’t completely invisible even if AOL isn’t part of the site’s name. There’s usually a small AOL logo somewhere, along with links to other AOL sites. The right mix, Wilson said, is the product of research on what makes the most sense for consumers.

Take Asylum, which has grown into a leading site for young men since its December launch. The name was chosen partly to convey humor and irreverence.

“If we put it out as AOL Men, we got the feedback it wouldn’t connect,” said Mike Rich, a senior vice president who oversees Asylum and other specialty sites. “People just didn’t connect this type of content with the AOL brand.”

Wilson said AOL’s unbranding can help potential visitors know that the site isn’t part of its subscription service, which AOL started breaking down in late 2004 in favor of free, ad-supported sites.

AOL parent Time Warner was more blunt in a regulatory filing:

“If AOL cannot effectively build a portfolio of alternate brands that are appealing to Internet consumers, AOL may have difficulty in increasing the engagement of Internet consumers on its Web products and services. AOL believes that the `AOL’ brand is associated in the minds of consumers with its dial-up Internet access service.”

AOL is by no means alone in promoting alternative brands.

Google Inc. has its homegrown Orkut social-networking service alongside its Picasa photo products and YouTube video-sharing site, both brands that came in through acquisitions. On the other hand, the Keyhole brand disappeared when Google bought the mapping concern, which became Google Earth.

Yahoo Inc., meanwhile, has Flickr photos and recently launched Shine for women.

Microsoft Corp. has a slew of brand names, including MSN, Hotmail and Live.

But unbranding represents a reversal for AOL after it tried to make its Moviefone and Netscape acquisitions more AOL-like. Type in “Moviefone.com,” for instance, and you’re automatically redirected to “movies.aol.com.”

“AOL currently implies legacy. It implies old. It implies out of date,” said Rob Enderle, an industry analyst with the Enderle Group. “If you want to attract a new, young audience to a site, attaching ‘AOL’ is probably a kiss of death. They are wise to use the new individual property brands.”

I've written about two separate trends that have just collided today: in-flight broadband and fixed-rate unlimited monthly Wi-Fi roaming. Perhaps collided is the wrong word when referring to airplanes, though. iPass, an aggregated remote access and end-point security provider, announced today that it will offer roaming with Aircell Gogo, likely to be the first in-flight broadband service launched in the U.S. At least two competitors are at work, but Aircell will likely be first with launches on American Airlines and Virgin America later this year, and maybe in a matter of weeks.As I wrote recently, iPass provides service to corporations that can distribute their costs for metered service by the minute, hour, day, or month from all their employees across iPass's system that includes dial-up, Ethernet, 3G, and Wi-Fi worldwide. The company recently added individual packages that have fixed rates for U.S. or international usage. The cheapest plan is $29.95 per month for unlimited U.S. Wi-Fi, dial-up, and Ethernet (typically in hotel rooms) and $44.95 for the worldwide version.iPass couldn't be pinned down today about pricing for the Gogo service, but expects to charge additional fees for Gogo access; a spokesperson said that prices haven't yet been set. Gogo plans to charge a retail price of $9.95 for flights of three hours or shorter, and $12.95 for all longer flights. (Correction: This article originally stated that iPass wasn't currently planning to charge extra for Gogo service, but that is incorrect. A spokesperson clarified earlier remarks to explain that additional fees will be likely, but that those haven't been determined yet.)

That's not out of line with the day rate at hotels and airports, where the walk-up rate can be from $7 to $15, but hotspot aggregators like Boingo (which owns many airport Wi-Fi operations) and iPass pay the provider a wholesale rate that can be as low as 50 cents per session. Wholesale providers and aggregators typically don't release these wholesale rate numbers.

After hurting the environment by drinking coffee from plastic cups for many years, buying an eco-friendly laptop bag seems like a path to redemption. While searching, I came across bags made from coconuts, recycled movie posters, recycled Coke bottles and wine corks. There are even stylish bags made of recycled newsprint, where people may get to read this article again.

Bag made of coke bottles

Plastic bottles to laptops bags, that's the story of Act2 GreenSmart bags. Act2 includes recycled plastic-bottle material in its laptop bags and lists the number of bottles used in each bag on its Web site. For example, a bag for laptops with 12.1-inch screens uses 11 16-ounce bottles, and 17 recycled bottles are used in bags for 17-inch widescreen laptops. The US$39.99 bags are made of 100 percent recycled material, according to the company. The interior of the bag is built to protect the laptop and the exterior has a pocket to store supplies and cables.

“In the United States alone, 230 bottles per person go to landfill per year. That's enough crushed bottles to fill the Rose Bowl Stadium in California every two weeks,” the company says on the Web site. The company also makes laptop sleeves for $24.99.

Superhero bag

Save Superman from a landfill– check out Modulab's Movie Billboard Laptop Messenger Bag, which is made of recycled vinyl movie posters. They may look colorful on the outside, but these bags are waterproof and include a padded compartment to protect the laptop. At $118, these pop-culture bags are available on Re-modern's Web site.

Archetype of a bag

The aesthetically pleasing Archetype bag from Tom Bihn is made of molded cork– yes, the same cork used on wine bottles. Cork is sustainable and biodegradable, and provides great protection for the laptop, the company claims. While not completely waterproof, the material can resist a fair amount of water and bear the elements, giving laptops a high level of protection. The $95 laptop bags are designed for MacBooks with different screen sizes and are available on Tom Bihn's Web site.

Sleeve me alone

Coconut and jute are the ingredients of Simple Shoes' Sleeve Me Alone laptop sleeve, which comes in two sizes for large and small laptops. Jute, a biodegradable fiber, forms the external part of the sleeve and is mixed with felt to protect laptops from the cold and heat. The material won't save laptops from massive falls– that's why it's a sleeve– so don't think of it as a bag. The button is made from a coconut. The sleeve is $30 and is available in four colors on Simple Shoes' Web site.

Really going green

To “distinguish green from granola” and to make functional eco-friendly products is the goal of Helen Riegle, the principal of Her Designs. Her boutique's Leaf laptop bags are made of recyclables such as plastic and come in two colors– green and brown– that make the bags resemble leaves. The bags accommodates 15-inch and 17-inch laptops, with pockets for files and cables.

The attractive bag is priced at $270. It is available on the company's Web site.

The good ole reliable bag

If chic is not your thing, try Targus' $60 Grove Sling laptop bag. The bag is made of recycled plastics and constructed of nylon to protect 15.4-inch laptops from falls. It is also made of nickel-free metal to “reduce the amount of toxins released into the environment,” according to the company. Sporting a messenger design, the bag's sling has a pocket to store an MP3 player. The $60 olive-green bag is available on Targus' Web site.

NEW YORK - Think twice before you sign up for an online service using a fake name or e-mail address. You could be committing a federal crime.

Federal prosecutors turned to a novel interpretation of computer hacking law to indict a Missouri mother on charges connected to the suicide of a 13-year-old MySpace user.

Prosecutors alleged that by helping create a MySpace account in the name of someone who didn’t exist, Lori Drew, 49, violated the News Corp.-owned site’s terms of service and thus illegally accessed protected computers.

Legal experts warned Friday that such an interpretation could criminalize routine behavior on the Internet. After all, people regularly create accounts or post information under aliases for many legitimate reasons, including parody, spam avoidance and a desire to maintain their anonymity or privacy online or that of a child.

This new interpretation also gives a business contract the force of a law: Violations of a Web site’s user agreement could now lead to criminal sanction, not just civil lawsuits or ejection from a site.

“I think the danger of applying a statute in this way is that it could have unintended consequences,” said John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor who leads a MySpace-convened task force on Internet safety. “An application of a general statute like this might result in chilling a great deal of online speech and other freedom.”

Drew, of O’Fallon, Mo., was indicted Thursday on charges of perpetrating a hoax on the popular online hangout MySpace. Prosecutors say Drew helped create a fake MySpace account to convince Megan Meier she was chatting with a nonexistent 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans. Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006, allegedly after receiving a dozen or more cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off without her.

Drew, who has denied creating the account or sending messages to Megan, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.

Prosecutors argue that to access MySpace’s servers, Drew first had to sign up for the service, which meant providing her name and date of birth and agreeing to abide by the site’s terms of service. Those terms bar false registration information, solicitation of personal information from anyone under 18 and use of any information gathered from the Web site to “harass, abuse, or harm another person.”

By using a fictitious name, among other things, Drew violated MySpace’s terms and thus had no authority to access the MySpace service, prosecutors charged.

“Clearly the facts surrounding this matter are awful and very upsetting, and I certainly understand the instinct of wanting justice to be served,” Palfrey said. “On the other hand, this complaint is certainly unusual.”

Drew’s lawyer, Dean Steward, said Thursday a legal challenge to the charges is planned. Missouri authorities said they investigated Megan’s death but filed no charges because no state laws appeared to apply to the case.

Andrew DeVore, a former federal prosecutor who co-founded a regional computer crime unit in New York, said Friday the interpretation raises constitutional issues related to speech and due process — in the latter case, because it doesn’t allow for adequate notice of when using an alias online is criminal.

Because corporations would end up setting criminal standards, a completely legal act at one site could be illegal at another, said DeVore, who has no direct involvement in the case.

“What clearly is going on is they couldn’t find a way to charge it under traditional criminal law statutes,” DeVore said. “The conduct that she engaged in they correctly concluded wouldn’t satisfy the statute. Clearly they were looking for some other way to bring a charge.”

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has entered into an agreement with Microsoft governing the installation of Windows XP on the nonprofit organization's low-cost XO laptops for use by impoverished children around the world.

The partners, which are scheduled to begin conducting pilot programs in emerging markets next month, expect the Windows-powered XO laptop to be ready for full-scale deployment in August or September, said James Utzschneider, manager of Microsoft's developing-markets unit.

“Initially it will only be available in emerging-market countries where governments or NGOs are subsidizing the purchase of a large number of PCs for students,” Utzschneider said. “But there is the possibility of making this available for other customers through a broader set of channels at a later point in time.”

Opening the Door

Microsoft announced last month that it would extend the life of Windows XP through the development of an abbreviated version to meet the needs of an emerging new class of mobile-computing devices known as ultra-low-cost PCs (ULCPC), which typically have smaller screen sizes and lower-powered processors than more expensive laptops. The XO laptop, in particular, posed a number of technical constraints that took a year for Microsoft to overcome.

“Windows was too big to fit on the 1GB non-flash module on the motherboard, so we are using a 2GB SD memory card,” explained Bohdan Raciborski, group program manager for Microsoft. “So we had to first create a BIOS, because at that time there were no PC BIOSs that supported SD cards.”

In a 2GB volume, Raciborski noted, it becomes possible have a complete Windows and Office experience running on the XO laptop. Moreover, it takes about 50 seconds for Windows XP to boot up on the XO, he said.

“We haven't modified Windows or Office in any way — we haven't removed any components to have them run on this hardware,” Raciborski said. “You can do almost anything that a student or teacher would want to do.”

The Ultimate Goal

Many members of the open-source Linux community will no doubt be less than thrilled to learn that OLPC is partnering with Microsoft and embracing Windows. However, the new partners point out that some XO customers and partners worldwide have been requesting Windows support.

“Windows support on the XO device means that our students and educators will now have access to more than computer-assisted learning experiences,” said AndrGonzalez D, governor of Cundinamarca, Colombia. “This will also develop marketable technology skills, which can lead to jobs and opportunities.”

Microsoft also believes that having Windows XP on the XO will improve the chances of users getting help should the device experience a technical problem or be in need of an upgrade. “There are hundreds of millions of Windows machines out there in the world today, which means there are thousands and thousands of people who know how to deploy, support, fix and upgrade them,” Utzschneider explained.

The ultimate goal, the two organizations say, is to build a version of the XO laptop by 2010 that can host both Windows XP and Linux. “Future plans for a dual-boot version of the XO laptop” will enhance OLPC's ability “to use technology to transform education by bringing connectivity and constructionist learning to the poorest children throughout the world,” said OLPC founder and Chairman Nicholas Negroponte.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Used goods are finding a new life on U.S. classified sites, as a growing number of consumers wary of a weaker economy search for bargains online, according to data from eBay Inc's Kijiji.com.

While not an official benchmark of consumer sentiment, activity on the site points to accelerated interest among consumers to find better values for their most expensive purchases in a period of steadily rising fuel and food prices.

Others are using the free classifieds site to pocket extra cash by cleaning out their cache of possessions, or to offer novel services to supplement their income.

For example, listings for motorcycles and bicycles have grown nearly 300 percent on the free site since January, compared with overall 60 percent growth for its wider “Cars & Vehicles” category in that time.

A spike of the same magnitude occurred in ads for cameras, phones and computers versus 80 percent overall growth of general “For Sale” items, Kijiji.com executives told Reuters.

“We've been growing quickly as a site, but 300 percent really pops out,” said Martin Herbst, general manager of Kijiji.com, adding that consumers may be selling higher-value goods first as they try to clear out what they don't need.

“The idea being, if I want to get extra cash in my pocket, I will get more from a Yamaha bike” than smaller-ticket items, Herbst said.

The rate of reply to the ads is also telling, with motorcycle and bike listings seeking a 200 percent surge in responses since January. Replies to ads informing users of local garage sales have also quadrupled in that time.

Kijiji launched last year in the United States as eBay expanded its global classifieds business. The site now attracts 4 million monthly unique visitors.

“Classifieds work well both in a recession and not in a recession since consumers are always looking for good values. I wouldn't say we are a recession-strong business,” Herbst said.

Kijiji is one example of Web companies whose businesses can shed more light on consumer behavior based on the data they collect.

Internet search leader Google Inc says it has not been hurt by the downturn. But it has described its auction for paid search listings as mimicking “what the GDP looks like” based on the decisions of its advertisers to pour more or less money into a given consumer category.

EBay is locked in a legal dispute with online classifieds leader Craigslist.com over its minority stake in the privately-held company. Craigslist has accused eBay of using its stake in the company to glean competitive information for its own classifieds business.