Microsoft's expansion into the retail arena may be a more difficult endevour than Apple faced when it opened its own retails stores back in 2001, according to Nick Wingfield of The Wall Street Journal.

This isn't due to lack of products or store locations, but the potential for Microsoft's stores to hinder relationships with its existing hardware and retail partners.

Wingfield told the Journal, "While Apple had fewer potential business conflicts because it had such weak support from retailers when it opened its first store in 2001, Microsoft depends on existing partners in the retail business that could be threatened by the company's expansion into their turf."

Steven Baker, an analyst with NPD Group, believes that Microsoft has nothing to be concerned about. "Everybody is in everybody's space" he told the Journal. However, Microsoft appear to be playing it safe, preparing hardware and retail partners by being vocal in the media on their plans to enter the retail arena.

It's clear that Microsoft's aim in opening retail stores is to make a large dent in Apple's growing market share, even going so far as to hire ex-Apple Store staff and former Apple retail executive, George Blankenship, to take Apple head-on.

Apple is preparing for the onslaught, having started renovations on a number of existing Apple stores, and commissioning an advertising campaign that aims to mock the upgrade process from Windows XP to Windows 7, Microsoft's latest and soon to be released operating system.

Microsoft plans to open its first retail store in Scottsdale, Arizona around the launch date of Windows 7 on October 22, 2009.

Google is preparing the shake-up the online book world, having announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair that it plans to infiltrate online book stores in the first half of 2010.

The new service will be known as Google Editions and aims to provide a large range of e-books to anybody that has access to a web browser.

To bring this venture to life, Google has partnered with a number of publishers to offer an initial range of around half a million books that can be purchased directly through Google or from a number of online bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Any profits made from Google Editions sales will be split between Google and the partnering publishers and online bookstores. Reports indicate that buying a book directly through Google will net the company 37% of the sale, with the publisher receiving the remaining 63%. If you buy a book through an online bookstore partner, Google will pocket next to nothing, with the publisher taking 45% of the sale and the retailer taking above 50%.

This seems a rather generous move from the online giant, and indicates that it has learned some valuable lessons on how to treat publishers from the Congressional hearings into its Google Books projects.

Google has indicated that it will make its e-books compatible with most devices, including PCs, iPhones, smartphones and netbooks. It is not planning to release a dedicated e-book reading device for the service at this time.

In a move to curb the alarmingly high rate of youth depression and suicide, social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter could be scanned for signs of "at risk" behaviour.

Researchers at New Zealand's Victoria University claim to have devised a program that is capable of scanning posts within social networking sites to identify keywords that could indicate that a poster is at risk of depression, self-harm, suicide or even harming others.

"Our technology picks up words and phrases such as 'depressed', or 'I don't want to live anymore' or 'I want to kill somebody'", Dr Tiong-Thye Goh said. To filter out those users who are using such terms in a jokingly sense or being overly dramatic, the program can rank phrases and keywords according to their frequency of use. Dr Goh said, "...if certain keywords are used a lot it is likely that the particular person may be emotionally depressed".

Dr Goh believes that social networking sites have, in recent years, become a significant avenue in which young people openly express their feelings and concerns with others. Therefore, a program with this technology is highly valuable.

In time, the project will be expanded to implement technology that allows a poster deemed to be at risk to be contacted. Dr Goh gave one possible example as a short message that asks, "How are you?" with three different response options being, "Good", "A bit down", or "Bad - need help". The option of needing help could link to a website with resources and contact numbers to assist the poster.

The program is still being developed.

At a sponsored dinner on Tuesday night, Dell Founder and CEO, Michael Dell, told of his dislike for netbooks and admitted that the "biggest mistake" of his career was not diversifying the company sooner.

When asked about the growing netbook market, Dell said that "a fair amount of customers" were unsatisfied with the poor performance parts and the smaller screen size when compared to traditional laptop computers.

"Take a user who's used to a 15 inch notebook and then give him a 10 inch netbook. He'll say 'Oh, this is so cool, it's so lightweight'. Then 36 hours later he'll say the screen's not big enough, give me my 15 inch back".

This reportedly got the room talking, given that Dell itself offers a range of netbook computers for sale.

When asked by a diner what his biggest mistake as an executive was, Dell said it was retaining the existing strategy of direct sales for too long and not diversifying the business sooner. "We probably should have - or could have - intervened a bit earlier and said 'we should hit the reset button here and try some new things to anticipate this challenge coming up'", he said.

The challenge Dell is talking about is the expansion of its competitors like IBM and HP into a broader market of hardware, IT services and "solutions".

Last month, Dell agreed to purchase computer services company Perot Systems for $US3.9 billion in an effort to better compete with IBM and HP. However, Dell was clear in his intentions not to emulate the rival companies business model. "We want to do it different to the other guys", he said, by offering more remotely managed services to consumers.

On a positive note, Dell took the opportunity during his speech to express his enthusiasm towards Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 7. "If you get the latest processor technology and you get Windows 7 and Office 2010, you will love your PC again...it's a dramatic improvement", Dell told the audience.

Dell predicted that the combination of Windows 7 with new chips from Intel will lead to a "very powerful refresh cycle" in the near future.

Apple's Time Capsule backup device has a lifespan of less than 18 months, if device users are telling the truth.

This figure comes from The Apple Time Capsule Memorial Register, which is a new site at which Time Capsule users log the serial number of their device, the date of purchase and the date at which the device ceased to function.

The site has currently logged over 260 dead Time Capsules since its launch less than 10 days ago.

Disgruntled Time Capsule user, "zmippie" created the register in response to the number of complaints he read in Apple's own support forum. "In the end, hopefully, by getting a better view on the size of this premature TC [Time Capsule] failure, we can poke Apple to take action", "zmippie" wrote in one forum post. He continues, "I don't think this problem ends after the first batch of TCs have all died, because apparently the design hasn't been changed since the initial release in early 2008".

There are presently two main complaint threads on the Apple support forums about the Time Capsule failures that hold more than 600 messages from users. Most speculate that the Capsule's power supply has failed, or an internal connection to the supply has failed.

In a credit to Apple, however, users have reported that Apple has been replacing dead devices under the standard 12 month warranty issued on purchase of a Time Capsule, as well as under the AppleCare replacement warranty, if the user has purchased it.

Apple's latest Time Capsules include a 1TB model and a 2TB model. The failing models are largely being reported as the older generation 1TB and 500GB models.

Apple has yet to release a statement in response to these claims.