James Niccolai

Novell Inc. took a swing at Microsoft Corp.

Google Inc. will soon begin selling video advertisements on the Web, opening a new front in its battle for a bigger slice of the online advertising market.

SAP AG and Microsoft Corp. announced the official name for Project Mendocino on Tuesday and said they plan to ship the jointly developed software on schedule in June. Mendocino will officially be called Duet, the companies said. The name is meant to suggest harmony between the two software makers, although some analysts are already posing the obvious question: Will they be able to sing in tune?

IBM Corp. plans to sell a lower-cost version of its z9 mainframe computer aimed at midsize businesses and emerging markets such as China, the company announced Thursday. The System z9 Business Class mainframe will be priced from about US$100,000, IBM said.

Opera Software ASA released the first public beta of Opera 9 on Thursday, giving users the go ahead to put its new Web browser through its paces.

Apple Computer Inc. has released beta software that lets Mac users run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating systems on Intel-based Macintosh computers, it announced. Called Boot Camp, the software creates a hard drive partition for Windows XP and lets users choose between the two operating systems at start-up time. It's available now as a free trial beta that works only for a limited time, and will be included as a feature of the next major Mac OS release, Leopard, Apple said.

EBay Inc. helped to shut down a Russian Web site this week that was offering to sell stolen customer account information for as little as US$5 each.

Sony Online Entertainment Inc. has signed a deal to use database software from EnterpriseDB Corp. in a vote of confidence for the open-source company and its biggest customer win to date.