Yahoo has always seemed like such a nice place. The sort of place where, if you happened upon it by chance, the inhabitants would sit you down, give you a cup of tea and a cookie, and ask you what brought you to its parts. They'd even ask you how to pronounce your name.

So how odd and strangely refreshing to see Yahoo roll up a little ball of competitive spit and blow it in the direction of Google.

Starcraft II fans who want to tout their strategies and winning scores will soon be able to conveniently do that in the usual place: Facebook.

Blizzard Entertainment announced Wednesday that its next-generation online gaming platform, called Battle.net, which hosts the upcoming and highly anticipated RTS StarCraft II, will integrate with Facebook to offer players an enhanced social-gaming experience.

A rise in fake antivirus offerings on Web sites around the globe shows that scammers are increasingly turning to social engineering to get malware on computers rather than exploiting holes in software, a Google study to be released on Tuesday indicates.

Fake antivirus--false pop-up warnings designed to scare money out of computer users--represents 15 percent of all malware that Google detects on Web sites, according to 13-month analysis the company conducted between January 2009 and February 2010.

The days of the 3.5-inch floppy disk are now officially numbered.

Sony, which boasts 70 percent of the anemic market, announced Friday that it would end Japanese sales of the ancient storage medium in March 2011, according to a report in the Mainichi Daily newspaper.

The 3.5-inch floppy was a ubiquitous and necessary component for storing and transferring files between personal computers for nearly three decades. Sony pioneered the 3.5-inch floppy disk in 1981, eventually replacing the 5.25-inch floppy disk that had previously been the popular storage format.

If you have ever custom-built a computer, you probably know that the fastest consumer-grade hard drive on the market has always been the Raptor from Western Digital. It's the most popular desktop hard drive that spins at 10,000rpm (as opposed to the 7,200rpm that mainstream hard drives spin). The only drawback of this drive is its limited capacity. However, that changed Tuesday when the company released its fifth generation of the drive, the WD VelociRaptor.

Sony reportedly believes that Nintendo's foray into the 3D space with its 3DS isn't a very good idea.

Speaking to IGN in an interview, Sony director of hardware marketing John Koller said that he's not quite sold on the 3DS and wonders if it will enjoy the kind of broad market appeal some of Nintendo's previous portables have, due to Nintendo's perceived young audience.

LAS VEGAS--Microsoft won't say just when it expects to ship Internet Explorer 9, but whenever it does, it won't be running on Windows XP.

"Building a modern browser requires a modern operating system," Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch said at a press conference at the Mix10 event.

Microsoft unveiled a "platform preview" of IE9 earlier on Monday. That early version, which contains the Chakra engine, but not the full user interface (or even a back button) requires Vista Service Pack 2 or later.

Game blog Joystiq has screens of what it says is an upcoming build of the Xbox 360 system software that will allow USB mass storage devices to serve as memory units.

Internet Explorer 6 is a relic, but many corporations continue to cling to it. Nonetheless, it's surprising to discover that Intel--Microsoft's long-time partner--is still using the ancient browser.

In a recent blog post walking through its implementation of Windows 7, Intel talked a lot about the "heavy lifting" involved in moving from XP to Windows 7.

Turns out the browser is part of the heavy lifting. Intel writes:

The requirement to use Internet Explorer 8 introduces even more challenges.

"In a windowless second-floor office in the stucco building that houses the Boynton Beach Police Department about an hour north of Miami, there's a computer monitor on the back wall displaying a full-screen version of Twitter client TweetDeck.

"Lots of real estate listings," commented Stephanie Slater, the BBPD's public information officer and chief media spokesperson, sitting in front of the monitor. "A few people are just tweeting news headlines about what's going on in town.