Sony announced recently a partnership with Smashwords and Author Solutions which will allow any author to upload a book to their eBook store, giving self published authors unprecedented access to the market place that is the e-reader.

Sony’s eReader version will only vet content for hate speech, plagiarism, improper formatting or public domain books offered by another other than the legitimate author. Other than that you are free to upload anything in the form of eBooks to this store. When book shelves are made digital it opens doors to everyone who wants to gain access to the mainstream public and many will rise to fame just like many bloggers have in the recent years and many more video entrepreneurs have become YouTube phenomena. To publish a book on Smashwords an author or a publisher uploads a manuscript in a specific word format and sets a price and selects affiliates such as Barnes and Noble, Aldiko on Android and Stanza on iPhone and now the Sony eBook store. Once this is done it’s up to readers to rate your book and decide if it is a success or a failure.

For Sony, since digital shelf space is infinite there is no downside to this deal. “We’re committed to providing our customers access to the broadest range of eBook content available and believe these collaborations will allow us to expand the store selection with a host of compelling works from independent sources,” said Sony eBook Store director Chris Smythe. That being said, authors who have already uploaded their content to Smashwords will have to wait some time until Sony migrates it’s platform to the standard EPUB format.

Google thinks the news is too slow, and they might just be right. Twitter keeps you informed about breaking news, but click through any news site for a more detailed update and it does take a while for the page to load. Likewise, flash widgets, sidebars, twitter feeds and everything else you get on a usual news site equates to longer page load times.

To make accessing news much faster, Google News has come up with an interestingly new alternative they call Fast Flip. Part of Google Labs, Fast Flip is an experimental way of browsing the news which is almost similar to that of an old microfilm browser. Fast Flip displays news pages almost as if they were pages from a magazine, scrolling side-to-side. Loading time is absolutely fast as opposed to typical news sites. Fast Flip lets you browse according to popular topics, publisher, news section and many more. Currently the results are limited to only a small number of partners providing content. The list includes only three dozen publishers, but big names include The New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post and Newsweek.

Fast Flip is cool to play around with it, but after a while you tend to notice to the downside of it, like for instance, a lack of working hyperlinks. So currently, Fast Flip has nothing to do with a better web browsing experience, but is just static images loaded on a novel interface that would only be exciting to someone who has never used the internet before. It does bring you the news faster, but coming from a company like Google who does understand the web, it is a bit hard to fathom.

Continuing the apparent trend of a few very large companies dominating the market share, Yahoo and Microsoft intend to work together on Yahoo’s search engine. Together, the two represent roughly 30% of the search engine market share, impressive if not quite approaching Google’s still-dominant 65%. The deal has sparked the usual collection of rumors, including some analysts’ predictions that Yahoo intends to abandon search engines entirely. Yahoo has staunchly denied any such plans.

Relying on Microsoft’s technology will enable Yahoo to change their focus. Yahoo has always sought to make itself a portal to the Interne, to provide everything its users need on a single page. To that end, their new search engine will feature much more integration with other social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and YouTube. Yahoo hopes to specialize in searching for people, enabling users to see Facebook messages, Twitter updates and follower lists, and other such details when searching for a specific name. The new material will be available in a sidebar to the left of Yahoo’s new search engine. “Yahoo’s goal is to be the center of people’s lives online,” said Tapan Bhat, senior vice president of integrated consumer experiences.

This deal is generally considered to be a good one for Microsoft, giving them and their Bing engine a needed boost in the public eye. Yahoo, in turn, may be conceding the field of actual search engines to up-and-comers, but they will remain a recognizable brand name and still be able to turn a tidy profit in advertising and referrals.

Originally proposed by the Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne on November 2, 2006, Air Force Cyber command (AFCYBER) was held in provisional status for two years until late 2008 when plans were put on hold for the October 2008 opening of AFCYBER due to readiness issues. However, that hold is over. On Wednesday, August 19, 2009, AFCYBER was established with a “Numbered Air Force for cyber operations.” Upon the dedication and announcement that a form of AFCYBER would go forward, San Antonio Mayer Julian Castro said that “what Silicon Valley is to software… San Antonio is to cyber.”

Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas is the location for this new body. With AFCYBER dead, a downgraded version of the original proposal is going online, over 400 staffers (including infrastructure and security personnel) will be transferred to Lackland to support this new effort, pending an environmental impact report that was released on August 19, 2009. The new version of the previously suggested AFCYBER will be part of the 24th Air Force.

The primary goal of AFCYBER is to protect the United States Air Force from computer disruptions and from all forms of hacking and cyber disruption in contemporary computer networks. Although Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has noted that he is considering forming a centralized Cyber Command based at Fort Meade, Maryland that will serve all branches of the military in their defense against cyber attacks, no public progress has been made in making this a reality.