Here we go again. After a weekend without the cable modem, I'm back, and I've got the week's hottest news - just for you. I'm seriously thinking about turning this into a podcast, as well as adding a few other things, but I need bandwidth and storage space. Anyone know of a sponsor who'd be willing to front for a libsyn account? :-) Anyway, on to the week's biggest news.

There's news from the big three in search this week. Let's start with Yahoo. First, the next iteration of Yahoo! Messenger was released this week, with voice support. Can they compete with Skype? I'm not sure, but it sounds like it could at least stem the masses from fleeing IM clients to Skype.

One more Yahoo item. They announced they now have indexed 20,000,000,000 (billion) documents. That's a lot of pages. For reference, Google is at 11,300,000,000.

But that doesn't mean Google hasn't been busy. They've added syndication feeds to their news page. I'm still not sold on Google News. It's a nice service, but it doesn't always relate to what I would be interested. Which is why it's cool that I can now set up a news search and subscribe to it.

More Google. Based on some negative feedback, they're holding off their Google Print service until November to give copyright holders more time to exclude their book from the index. I don't get this - they are indexing books in the library. These copyright holders don't have a choice about the books being in a library, where anyone can get it for free, but they should have some say with Google indexing it? And why is Google pandering to these guys?

Now for some sillyness, this time from Google. News.com published some information about Google's CEO that they obtained from Google's search engine, and now Google isn't happy. The word is they won't be talking to News.com for a year. Ouch. But for who? Now if News.com get's a story about Google, who will they confirm the story? This could come back to bite them later.

Now it's time for the Rumor Mill. There were early reports that Google bought Meetro, an IM client. But Meetro denies it. I was going to say this makes it pretty obvious that Google is getting into the IM game, but since there's been no confirmation, who knows. If they did buy Meetro, well, then, I guess this means they're getting in the IM game. If not, well, it means nothing.

More Rumor Mill content. Technorati is close to being sold. Maybe. And no one knows who. A large search engine. Google? Yahoo? MSN? No one knows, and there hasn't been an official word yet.

Back to more stable news. MSN's turn to get in the news game. First, they have something called Filters. It's basically paid blogging, apparently an attempt to compete with Weblogs, inc, and those types of sites. It's either very new and still has some growing to do, or it's pretty lame. I'm subscribed to two of the Filters (Technology and Sports), but so far, I've found nothing of interest.

MSN did do some good this week, at least on the mobile front. First, you can now create and use your MSN Space on a mobile device. I'm not sure of the usefulness of this, but at least it's cool. Second, they launched mobile search - you can even get maps and directions on your mobile device. Now, that's both cool and useful.

Sticking with Microsoft for the moment, they've rebranded and renamed Internet Explorer - to Windows Internet Explorer. It's got a new logo too, which looks a lot like the old one. A rebranding to the same brand. Innovative!

One last Microsoft news story, and I'm only reporting it because I had to spend Saturday night ridding my wife's PC of Spyware. Despite no internet connection for me, she was connected (don't ask!) and basically, she infected the machine pretty badly somehow. She's usually pretty careful, but things just kept automatically loading for her. How nice. Anyway, I used both AdAware and Microsoft's Antispyware to get it all off, and the news is that Microsoft's Antispyware will remain free forever! If you want the total package (virus protection, spyware protection, etc.) you'll need One Care, but antispyware will continue to be free.

Lastly, in a move to bind the internet and TV together forever, TiVo has signed a deal with the Independent Film Channel to provide downloadable movies, and they'll be testing it out soon. A step closer to IPTV!

Ok. That's it. Show's over. Go to bed! Oh wait. Who knows when you'll read this. Maybe I'll just go to bed!