Yahoo will make its Search Monkey platform available to all developers on Thursday, another step in its wide-ranging effort to open up its sites and services.

Search Monkey is Yahoo's initiative to let external developers create applications to enhance its Web search results and, in theory, make them more appealing and useful.

"We're responding to people's demands to be able to complete tasks in search results," said Amit Kumar, Director of Product Management for Yahoo Search. "We're focused on creating a better search experience for our users and want to let developers with an understanding of structured data jump start the system with their apps."

It is the first component of Yahoo's broad Open Strategy, announced last month and described as a long-range plan to open all Yahoo sites, online services, and Web applications to outside developers, and give users a "social profile" dashboard to unify and manage their Yahoo services.

With Open Strategy, Yahoo wants to improve its position in key areas like search and social networking, and compete better against Google, MySpace, and Facebook.

The Search Monkey development platform, which has been in a closed beta test for the past several weeks, can be used by any outside developer and doesn't require Yahoo approval.

At the moment, developers can create two types of Search Monkey applications. One type, called Enhanced Results, acts as a richer, more useful replacement for standard search results, and can only link to the site in question. The other type, Infobar, opens up below a search result and can include complementary data and links to other related sites.

Kumar said that for now, Search Monkey will be specifically for applications for Yahoo's general Web search engine and not for its specialty engines for specific results like images and news.

In a few weeks, Yahoo expects to launch a gallery of Search Monkey applications that users of its Web search engine can install, he said.

Although there is no revenue-generating potential for Search Monkey applications, Yahoo is holding a contest called the Search Monkey Developer Challenge with $20,000 in prizes. Developers have until June 14 to submit their applications for consideration. Prizes will be awarded in several categories, including Best Enhanced Result, Best Infobar and Best Data Service.

The European Commission amended its antitrust charges against Intel that were filed a year ago to include three new claims. While that news was expected, word that Hector Ruiz has been replaced as head of Intel rival AMD was not. That news broke on Thursday, which was a hopping-busy day for IT headlines, including the arraignment of a San Francisco IT administrator who authorities say is holding the city's network hostage by allegedly refusing to hand over passwords.

[ Video: Catch up on the week in tech with the World Tech Update ]

1. EU levels new antitrust charges against Intel: The European Commission sent a new set of antitrust charges to Intel as it seeks to bolster charges initially filed last July that involve claims Intel has practiced anticompetitive business practices to hurt rival Advanced Micro Devices. The Commission, which is Europe's top regulator, said that Intel paid big rebates to a European PC retailer on the condition that the retailer sell only Intel-based PCs and that Intel also paid a leading original equipment manufacturer to put off a launch of products with rival Advanced Micro Devices' CPUs. The third new charge is that Intel paid rebates to that OEM on the condition that it would get all of its laptop CPUs from Intel. Intel responded that the new charges are just the same claims AMD has been making for years and that Intel has always conducted business lawfully. The company is "confident that the worldwide microprocessor market is functioning normally and is highly competitive," it said.

2. AMD appoints new CEO as losses continue: Dirk Meyer replaced Hector Ruiz as CEO of financially struggling AMD. Ruiz will continue as executive chairman of the company and chairman of the AMD board of directors, the company said as it reported its seventh-consecutive quarter of financial losses. The company, which must contend with Intel as a rival, also is divesting its handheld and digital TV businesses. The personnel move could be just what AMD needs to get it back on track, analysts say.

3. IT administrator pleads not guilty to network tampering: Terry Childs, the 43-year-old San Francisco city IT administrator accused of holding the city's Fibre WAN hostage, pleaded not guilty to charges of computer tampering during his arraignment Thursday. Childs is accused of setting up an unauthorized access system, resetting administrative passwords to city network's switches and routers, and then refusing to hand over the passwords. Other administrators at the city's Department of Telecommunication Information Services have struggled to regain administrative control of the network. Childs is being held on $5 million bail, an unusually high amount for such a case. His next scheduled court appearance is a July 23 bail hearing.

4. Yahoo rejects MS proposal, seeks bid for entire company , Yahoo letter to shareholders slams Microsoft, Icahn and AOL a less challenging buy than Yahoo for Microsoft: One of the latest chapters in this ongoing saga actually happened last week, but missed the Top 10 and has spilled over into this week -- Yahoo last Saturday night released word that it rejected a proposal from Microsoft and investor Carl Icahn to restructure Yahoo and sell its search business to Microsoft. This week, news reports said that Microsoft is talking to AOL's parent Time Warner about possibly buying AOL. Absorbing AOL could be easier for Microsoft than bringing Yahoo into its corporate fold, analysts say, even though AOL wouldn't bring the search oomph that Yahoo would. All we can say at this point is stay tuned.

5. Apple sues Mac clone maker Psystar for copyright infringement and Apple's recall demand would probably kill Psystar, says IP attorney: Apple filed a lawsuit against Mac clone maker Psystar, claiming that the Florida company violated Apple copyright and licensing agreements by installing Mac OS X on its computers. Apple allows its operating system to be installed only on Apple computers. Defending itself against the lawsuit could drive Psystar out of business, according to one intellectual property attorney.

6. Huge rise in malware this year: Web-based malware increased by -- sit down for this one -- 278 percent in the first half of this year, according to the ScanSafe Global Net Report, which studied more than 60 billion Web requests the company has scanned, along with 600 million Web threats it blocked from January to June. The huge rise owes partly to a rash of infected sites at the hands of SQL injection attacks last month. But that's not even the worst news. ScanSafe warns that the malware plague will grow, and that a surge is likely after the planned August release by security researcher Dan Kaminsky of details on a long-standing DNS vulnerability. Which leads us to....

7. New worm transcodes MP3s to try to infect PCs: Windows users who download music files on peer-to-peer networks beware. New malware puts links to malicious Web sites in ASF (Advanced Systems Format) files. Opening an infected music file will cause Internet Explorer to launch and load a malicious site where the unsuspecting music fan will be asked if they want to download a codec. But the downloaded file is actually a Trojan horse program that has worm-like characteristics.

8.New Eclipse member looks to rival Visual Studio: Sonatype, one of the newest members of the Eclipse Foundation,.plans to offer a Java environment that can compete with Visual Studio. The company will lead development of the m2eclipse project, which is an Eclipse plug-in combining Maven and Eclipse. Also joining the Foundation was Excelsior, which is the first Russian company to join.

9. Google offers Android updates only to contest winners: Whoops! A Google employee meaning to send a note to winners of a developer's contest inadvertently sent the message to a wider group and honked off a lot of the unintended recipients. The note suggested that only certain developers have been quietly receiving updates to the Android software development kit, while the larger group of developers working on the mobile platform have been shut out of receiving the updates. Needless to say, this left a lot of developers unhappy. So much so that they say they've had it with Google and will turn their attentions to Apple's iPhone.

10. A tech tourist's guide to Beijing: Even if you aren't going to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing Aug. 2-24, you may be curious about technology in the capital of the People's Republic of China. Beijing is home to the world's largest mobile-phone and Internet-user markets, but has yet to be on par with other Asian cities such as Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul when it comes to Internet and telecom technology. Of course, putting on the Olympic Games is a huge technological endeavor in its own right.

Last Sunday, Terry Childs, a network administrator employed by the City of San Francisco, was arrested and taken into custody, charged with four counts of computer tampering. He remains in jail, held on $5 million bail. News reports have depicted a rogue admin taking a network hostage for reasons unknown, but new information from a source close to the situation presents a different picture.

In posts to my blog, I postulated about what might have occurred. Based on the small amount of public information, I guessed that the situation revolved around the network itself, not the data or the servers. A quote from a city official that Cisco was getting involved seemed to back that up, so I assumed that Childs must have locked down the routers and switches that form the FiberWAN network, and nobody but Childs knew the logins. If this were true, then regaining control over those network components would cause some service disruption, but would hardly constitute the "millions of dollars in damages" that city representatives feared.

Apparently, I wasn?t far off the mark. In response to one of by blog posts, a source with direct knowledge of the City of San Francisco?s IT infrastructure and of Childs himself offered to tell me everything he knew about the situation, under condition that he remain anonymous. I agreed, and within an hour, a long e-mail arrived in my in box, painting a very detailed picture of the events. Based on this information, the case of Terry Childs appears to be much more ? and much less ? than previously reported.

A man and his network It seems that Terry Childs is a very intelligent man. According to my source, Childs holds a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert certification, the highest level of certification offered by Cisco. He has worked in the city?s IT department for five years, and during that time has become simply indispensable.

Although Childs was not the head architect for the city?s FiberWAN network, he is the one -- and only one -- that built the network, and was tasked with handling most of the implementation, including the acquisition, configuration, and installation of all the routers and switches that comprise the network. According to my source's e-mail, his purview extended only to the network and had nothing to do with servers, databases, or applications:

?Terry's area of responsibility was purely network. As far as I know (which admittedly is not very far), he did not work on servers, except maybe VoIP servers, AAA servers, and similar things directly related to the administration of the network. My suspicion is that you are right about how he was 'monitoring e-mail'; it was probably via a sniffer, IPS, or possibly a spam-filtering/antivirus appliance. But that's just conjecture on my part.?

Like many network administrators who work in the rarified air of enterprise network architecture and administration, Childs apparently trusted no one but himself with the details of the network, including routing configuration and login information. Again, from the source's e-mail:

?The routing configuration of the FiberWAN is extremely complex. Probably more so than it ought to be; I sometimes got the feeling that, in order to maintain more centralized control over the routing structure, [Childs] bent some of the rules of MPLS networks and caused problems for himself in terms of maintaining the routing.

?Because the system was so complex (and also because he didn't involve any of the other network engineers in his unit), Terry was the only person who fully understood the FiberWAN configuration. Therefore, to prevent inadvertent disruption of this admittedly critical network, he locked everyone else out. I know most of the networking equipment ? does use centralized AAA, but I get the impression he may have configured the FiberWAN equipment for local authentication only.?

Childs' attitude toward other administrators is by no means unusual in the IT industry. This is generally due to the fact that admins who are tasked with constructing and maintaining networks of this size and scope care for them like children, and eventually come to believe that no one else could have the knowledge and skills to touch the delicate configurations that form the heart of the network.

Sole administrator A key point made in the e-mail is that Childs' managers and coworkers all knew that he was the only person with administrative access to the network. In fact, it was apparently known and accepted in many levels of the San Francisco IT department. Again, quoting from the e-mail:

?This is where it gets tricky for the prosecution, IMO, because the localized authentication, with Terry as sole administrator, has been in place for months, if not years. His coworkers knew it (my coworkers and I were told many times by Terry's coworkers, 'If your request has anything to do with the FiberWAN, it'll have to wait for Terry. He's the only one with access to those routers'). His managers knew it.

"Other network engineers for the other departments of the City knew it. And everyone more or less accepted it.

"No one wanted the thing to come crashing down because some other network admin put a static route in there and caused a black hole; on the other hand, some of us did ask ourselves, 'What if Terry gets hit by a truck?' If a configuration is known and accepted, is that 'tampering'??

My source appears to believe that Childs' motivation was the antithesis of tampering, and that Childs did everything possible to maintain the integrity of the network, perhaps to a fault:

?He's very controlling of his networks -- especially the FiberWAN. In an MPLS setup, you have 'provider edge' (PE) routers and 'customer edge' (CE) routers. He controlled both PE and CE, even though our department was the customer; we were only allowed to connect our routers to his CE routers, so we had to extend our routing tables into his equipment and vice versa, rather than tunneling our routing through the MPLS system.?

Dedicated engineer Like so many other high-level network administrators, Childs seems to have taken his job extremely seriously, to the point of arrogance and, perhaps, burnout.

?Terry was very dedicated to his career as an engineer. He is a CCIE (probably the only one in the City government), and spent much of his free time studying and learning more -- the MPLS for the FiberWAN, VoIP some of the departments are rolling out, other new technologies for our 311 and E911 systems, etc. He worked very hard, evenings and weekends in addition to full-time 8-5 work, and rarely took vacations. His classification is 'professional,' so he doesn't earn overtime pay, only comp time -- which like many of us he never really had the opportunity to use. He was on standby more or less 24-7-365; whereas in the private sector, in a company of 20,000 or more employees, you'd expect to find multiple engineers rotating that standby status, I'm pretty sure he was always the guy on call.?

This attitude is, again, not uncommon among high-level IT administrators. Neither is the fact that they tend to eschew what they perceive to be unnecessary questioning and bureaucratic ?nonsense.?

?Terry also, obviously, had a terrible relationship with his superiors. I should point out that he's not just a network engineer -- he was the lead network engineer for the entire City. His bosses were all managerial rather than technical, and while the other engineers did not actually report to Terry, they did defer to him in any technical matters. Even the network architect left it to Terry to actually figure out implementation. Terry felt that his direct superior was intrusive, incompetent, and obstructive, and that the managers above him had no real idea of what was going on, and were more interested in office politics than in getting anything done.

"[Childs] complained that they spent more time doing paperwork -- change requests, documentation, etc. -- than actually implementing or fixing anything (a common complaint among engineers, I know). He complained about being overworked (which he was, and which his colleagues are even more now) and that many of his colleagues were incompetent freeloaders (also not entirely without basis).

"You could see him getting red in the face whenever he started talking about his department. And once you were on Terry's bad side (which thankfully I never was), that's where you stayed, and you'd get only the most grudging assistance from him from then on. Whether any of his complaints were valid or not, I can't really say, but I don't think that's as relevant as how Terry felt.?

Keys to the kingdom If Childs' sole proprietorship of the FiberWAN network was normal operating procedure, how did the tensions between Childs and his managers come to a head? Why was Childs arrested on Sunday? There have been reports that the city?s newly hired head of security may have pushed for Childs to open the FiberWAN doors to other admins. My source doesn?t know for sure, but offers some insight:

?I don't know much about his actions in the last few weeks. It's been a couple of months, at least, since I've even spoken to him, and even then it was probably only in reference to some specific request or ticket. But I can imagine that being the subject of disciplinary action by his supervisors for 'performance' issues would be absolutely infuriating to him. I can imagine that his response would be, 'How can you say my performance is poor when I've been doing what no one else here was willing or able enough to do?'"

If Childs was pressured to give up the keys to the network that he had built and tended for so long, would he go so far as to explicitly prevent anyone else from tinkering with his charge?

?I can imagine that [Childs'] response to a demand to open up authentication to the FiberWAN would be, 'Why? So you can screw it up and bring the City network crashing to a halt?' I can even imagine that, under so much pressure, he'd take steps (deleting or hiding config backups, for instance) to make sure he was the only one in control.?

These tales offer significant insight into what may have occurred between Childs and the FiberWAN network hostage situation. Rather than a case of a rogue administrator attempting to cause damage to the network by locking out other administrators, this may be a case of an overprotective admin who believed he was protecting the network ? and by extension, the city ? from other administrators whom he considered inferior, and perhaps even dangerous. One important fact seems to be in Childs' favor, if reports that the network has continued to run smoothly since his arrest are true. My source corroborates this.

?As for the impact of [Childs'] actions to the rest of the City, the mayor's statement basically has it right. The network is completely up and running. No servers that I'm aware of are affected. No one has had any downtime (yet). But until they get back into those routers, they can't make any changes. I don't know yet if Terry's lockout applies only to the FiberWAN or also to the other routers, firewalls, switches, etc. in the City network.?

Laying the blame My source doesn?t appear to harbor any ill will toward Childs for this situation, and even believes that the city may be worse off with Childs out of the picture and that some of the blame should be shouldered by Childs' superiors.

?It's a real shame. The city is losing a good network engineer -- probably the best, technically, that they've ever had. Ultimately he has no one to blame but himself, but it's too bad his superiors weren't better about establishing and enforcing policies about authentication, backups, auditing, cross-training, and separation/rotation of duties.

"You'll note the papers have referred to the new information security manager. It's only been a month or so since the City even had an information security policy, and even that is a bare, unmodified template from CCISDA that's awaiting discussion and alteration by a committee that hasn't been formed yet. (When I asked Terry if we could get a copy of the City's network security policy some months ago, he told me, 'I've been trying to get them to approve one for years. I've written ones up and submitted them, but they don't want to do it, because they don't want to be held to it.')?

He also points out that by forcing the issue, the city may have significantly reduced its ability to use and control its own network.

?The one impact they haven't mentioned is that Terry was one of only two engineers assigned to special projects and to do major routing changes and perimeter firewall configuration. The service level, even after they regain control of the network, is going to be way down, until they can fill his mighty big shoes.?

My source had many good things to say about Childs, but did not shy from negative comments, noting that Childs has a bad temper and can be very defensive.

?As for Terry's character, I can imagine this happening. He takes great personal and professional pride in his work -- to a fault. He can be very defensive if someone suggests there's something wrong with the way his network is set up, and that's been a problem for us (as his customer) a couple of times. Terry has a bad temper.

"He's the sort of person who, while his bile is up, won't budge an inch ? and then will call you a couple of hours later and acknowledge that maybe your suggestion was right, after all, or maybe here's an even better way to handle things.?

The inner sanctum Later in the e-mail, my source offered some insight into what may be at the core of the issue: Childs was so paranoid about the security of the network that he even refused to write router and switch configs to flash, which would mean that if the device was powered off, all configurations would be lost.

?At one point he was concerned about the security of the FiberWAN routers in remote offices, so he had them set up without saving the config to flash. 'If they go down, I'll get alerted, and connect up to them and reload the config.' Great, except we have power outages all the time in this city, some of those devices aren't on UPSes, and what happens if you're on vacation? And what about the 15 to 60 minutes it might take you to connect up and reload? He eventually conceded and (ahem) decided that disabling password recovery was sufficient security.?

If Childs did this with some or all of the switches and routers comprising the FiberWAN network, then password recovery without significant network disruption becomes a bigger problem. Without firsthand knowledge of the state of those routers and switches, there?s no good way to know, unfortunately.

If the details given to me in this e-mail are accurate, it would appear that this case is not nearly what it seemed originally. Perhaps it comes with the pressure and responsibility of the job, or the belief that the network they?ve built is simply too complex for mere mortals to comprehend, but it?s not uncommon for highly skilled network administrators to become overprotective of their networks, or for networks of significant size to become an extension of the person who built them.

It certainly appears that Terry Childs believed San Francisco?s FiberWAN network was his baby, and that by refusing to allow others to access the inner sanctum was in the best interests of the city, the citizens, and perhaps most importantly, himself.

AMD is developing a low-power processor for mobile devices and sub-notebooks, the company confirmed Friday, quashing months of speculation that it had abandoned the project.

The chip will compete with Intel's Atom processor and potentially supplant AMD's low-power Geode x86 system-on-chip, which is included in One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop. Based on the x86 system-on-chip design acquired from National Semiconductor in 2003, Geode is also offered in thin clients and embedded equipment.

AMD declined to comment on release dates for the chip.

Plans to develop a low-power chip, code-named Bobcat, were first revealed by AMD last year. At the time, AMD officials described the chip as "designed for maximum energy efficiency and performance-per-watt for next-generation mobile devices, scaling as low as 1 watt."

The company has been quiet about plans for Bobcat ever since, leading to speculation among industry observers that it had abandoned the project as it tries to recover from consecutive quarterly losses and restructuring.

Further details about the new mobile chip are expected to be revealed in November at the company's analyst conference, said AMD's new CEO Dirk Meyer, during a conference call on Thursday to discuss the company's financial results.

"Clearly, when you talk about smaller form-factor notebooks and inexpensive notebooks that is a market segment we are interested in," Meyer said.

AMD could be a late entrant to the market of low-power chips for mobile devices rife with competition. Intel released Atom processors earlier this year, building the x86 architecture into low-power chips that are now being used in low-cost sub-notebooks and mobile Internet devices. Via also introduced the Isaiah processor for mobile devices and sub-notebooks. In June, Nvidia announced the Tegra system-on-chip for cell phones with an integrated graphics processor.

Apple is also taking a stab at the mobile chip market, using the recent acquisition of PA Semi to develop system-on-chips for the iPhone.

Intel is already working an Atom successor code-named Moorestown, due for release in 2009. The platform includes a system-on-chip code-named Lincroft, which is based on a 45-nanometer Silverthorne core, and puts a graphics, video and memory controller on a single chip.

Businesses should hold off on investing in WiMax until the technology is more widely deployed across the United States and until vendors produce more dual-mode cellular/WiMax handsets, says a new report from Gartner Research.

Overall, Gartner projects that while WiMax networks in the United States will start operating commercially over the next two years, WiMax itself will remain a "niche technology" that will best serve emerging or rural markets that don't already have access to broadband services. One of the big factors that WiMax has going against it, says Gartner, is that WiMax networks won't be able to provide nationwide coverage for quite some time, as Sprint and its Clearwire partners will only begin launching commercial WiMax services for the first time this September. Thus, says Gartner analyst Phillip Redman, businesses will have to wait until coverage extends to many more cities than the ones that will be covered by the end of the year.

Additionally, Redman says that enterprises that want both WiMax data and cellular voice capabilities will have to wait at least a couple of years until more dual-mode handsets are produced. Since WiMax is starting out as a data-only service, Redman says that unless businesses want to rely on VoIP for their mobile voice needs, they should look elsewhere until WiMax devices are upgraded to include cellular coverage.

"In competitive markets, WiMax is going to have a very tough row since it's starting from scratch," he says. "But WiMax still has great opportunities in different markets. I think it makes sense in developing markets and developing economies that don't have broadband comp from wireline carriers."

Sprint currently plans to offer its first commercial WiMax services in September in Baltimore, with launches in Washington, D.C., and Chicago scheduled for later in the fourth quarter. The company says other major metropolitan areas shouldn't expect WiMax to come to their cities until at least next year.

Samsung unveiled this week a high-endurance 8GB single-level cell NAND flash memory chip, jointly developed with Sun Microsystems, which can significantly boost the lifespan and performance of solid-state drives.

The new flash memory chip can increase data write and erase cycles by up to five times compared to standard server-grade SLC memory devices, noted Samsung officials in a statement. Typically, SLC NAND flash memory can last for 100K write/erase cycles before becoming unusable.

Product pricing and shipping dates for the new flash device were not disclosed. Samsung officials could not be reached for comment on the announcement.

Graham Lovell, Sun's senior director of Open Storage, confirmed that Sun jointly developed the SLC NAND flash memory technology but declined to discuss technical details of the chip or its launch timeframe. "It's their device, not ours," he said. He declined to disclose whether Sun plans to sell the jointly developed product.

Lovell did confirm that Sun has worked with Samsung over the past few months to make sure that the new flash memory chip can meet the high-transaction demands of corporate IT environments. He noted the new flash device is compatible with Sun's server and storage products. Sun also plans to unveil its own solid state technology later this year

Lovell said that Samsung expects the new chip will be used for high-end data processing applications, data intensive server operations and storage applications. Analysts have predicted that corporate customers will soon begin evaluating solid-state storage technology as an alternative to over traditional spinning drives.

Jeff Janukowicz, an analyst for market research firm IDC, admitted prices for solid-state drives are still "relatively high" compared to physical drives. That chasm, he noted, serves as the main hindrance adoption in corporate IT shops.

Janukowicz said Samsung's decision to focus on the problem of write/erase endurance of NAND in solid-state disks, and to partner with Sun could set the stage for similar industry partnerships, could mark the start of more widespread efforts to convince IT of the benefits of diskless storage systems.