SystemShock

Seattle - Microsoft will sell four versions of the forthcoming Office 2010 software, due out in June, for prices ranging from $99 to $499.

The company said on Tuesday it will sell Office Home and Student edition, which comes with four core programs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, for $149 as boxed software that can be used on three computers in the home.

A "Product Key Card," which has a code to unlock one copy of Office 2010 pre-loaded on new PCs, costs $119.

Steam pre-purchase customers will also receive access to the Open Beta and the Early Start Program, which allows players to get a leg up on other interstellar explorers by accessing the Star Trek universe the weekend prior to the game launch.

In Star Trek Online, the Star Trek universe will appear for the first time on a truly massive scale. In this massively multiplayer online game from Cryptic Studios, players can pioneer their own destiny as Captain of a Federation starship. Or, they can become a Klingon Warlord and expand the Empire to the far reaches of the galaxy. Players will have the opportunity to visit iconic locations from the popular Star Trek fiction, reach out to unexplored star systems, and make contact with new alien species. With Episode Missions, every moment spent playing Star Trek Online will feel like a new Star Trek episode in which you are the star. Immerse yourself in the future of the Trek universe as it moves into the 25th century: a time of shifting alliances and new discoveries.

Mountain View - Google on Tuesday unveiled its new Nexus One smartphone, in a direct challenge to heavyweight Apple's iPhone handsets.

The touch-screen device was billed by Google as a "superphone" and the next step in the evolution of its Android software.

The internet giant worked with Taiwanese electronics titan HTC to make the Nexus One.

Microsoft has been accused of infringing patents owned by another company, i4i. The legal dispute centres around the way Microsoft Word handles certain kinds of documents.

i4i, based in Toronto, Canada, claimed that Microsoft "willingly violated" a patent granted in 1998 concerning methods for reading XML, a kind of programming language. XML allows users to customise the format of word-processing documents, enabling them to be read by various word-processing programs. Microsoft Word's ability to read and write XML documents is a crucial feature of the popular software.

For some time now, Google Chrome has been working with a number of extensions — but unofficially. That’s about to change in a big way, maybe as soon as tomorrow. And some digging through backchannel chatter reveals some of Google’s intentions here.

As first spotted by DownloadSquad earlier today, Google appears to have tipped its hand a little early. In the newest builds of Chromium across all the platforms (yes, even Mac and Linux), you can clearly see the jigsaw puzzle area in the lower right hand corner. This is in the same place that the colorful stripes usually appear to take you to the Theme Gallery. But clicking on this area currently redirects you back to google.com — but as you can see when you hover over it, clearly there will be something at https://chrome.google.com/extensions, presumably an Extensions Gallery.

It's been four months since Google fired a shot across Microsoft's bow, with the announcement of its Google Chrome OS. The Web-centric operating system targets the perpetually-connected, and will blur the line between browser and operating system. Or so we've been told. Up until now, Google has only dropped morsels of details on its coming OS.

It's about time Google showed what's up its sleeve: TechCrunch reports that the search magnate will be offering the first real look at Google Chrome OS this Thursday, with technical demonstrations for the media. Reportedly, we should also hear about Google’s launch plans for Chrome OS.