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Samsung Galaxy Tab pricing shows up on Amazon UK, and it's well over a thousand dollars U.S., presumably to force you toward subsidized prices so you'll end up paying the same amount or more for with-contract tablets. Which ... seriously? No. Also, Craigslist says the adult services section is gone for good, and Google's music service appears to be imminent--much to Spotify's demise--er, dismay.

First Take:

After several months of teasing Internet Explorer's upgrade with a series of feature-free developer's previews, Microsoft has unleashed on the world an Internet Explorer 9 beta (32-bit Windows 7; 64-bit Windows 7; 32-bit Windows Vista; 64-bit Windows Vista) with some impressive new features. Like any properly named beta, though, there are also some bugs to be ironed out.

This is the biggest overhaul to the browser since Internet Explorer 7 landed. The changes to the interface are enormous, the browser's overall usability has greatly improved, it's more secure, and it's significantly faster and … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Although he wasn't on stage for the launch of the Internet Explorer 9 beta yesterday, Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky was paying close attention to the product's release and to initial public reaction.

It's a sign of just how important the browser has become to the overall success of Windows. By any measure--and Microsoft does plenty of research--Web browsing is one of the main things that people do with their computers. Although Internet Explorer still is the most used browser, it has been ceding share in recent years to Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers.

In a … Read more

Adobe Systems released a preview version of its widely used Flash Player plug-in that catches up to newer trends in Web browser development: 64-bit designs and support for the newly Internet Explorer 9 beta.

The new Flash beta, code-named Square, is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, siad Adobe's Paul Betlem in a blog post today. The download is on Adobe Labs; note that if you install Square, you'll have to manually update it on your own.

The move isn't a big surprise--in June, the Adobe said 64-bit Flash is a "top priority"… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Among the many partners touting the new version of Internet Explorer on Wednesday was the rock band The Killers, which has a new HTML 5-based Web site that screams in Microsoft's latest browser.

But the Killers haven't always been such big fans of Redmond's work.

Naveen Jain, CEO of Oakland-based Sparkart, which designs the band's Web site, says a huge chunk of his time in the past was spent testing and tweaking the site to make sure it worked with Internet Explorer.

"Historically, as Web developers, my team hasn't had the best relationship … Read more

On today's show, it turns out that people and not just computers are looking at some of the super-private data you give to Google. And some of those people are hipsters in ironic t-shirts. Yeah, scary. Also, the new Twitter debuts, and it's better than the iPad version. Plus, IE 9 and Nokia's new attitude (and personnel): too little too late?

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft launched the beta of Internet Explorer 9 on Wednesday, promising to use the whole power of the PC to set Web sites free from the constraints previously imposed on them.

"The Web is about sites," Corporate Vice President Dean Hachamovitch said at an event here. "Browsers should be too. Today, Web sites are boxed in."

The new browser features a minimalistic user interface, hardware acceleration, and broader support for Web standards including HTML 5 and CSS 3.

For Microsoft, the arrival of IE9 is an attempt to compete more fully with Mozilla's Firefox, … Read more

After several months of teasing Internet Explorer's upgrade with a series of feature-free developer's previews, Microsoft has unleashed on the world an Internet Explorer 9 beta on Wednesday (from CNET Download.com: 32-bit Windows 7; 64-bit Windows 7; 32-bit Windows Vista; 64-bit Windows Vista) with some impressive new features. Like any properly named beta, though, there are also some bugs to be ironed out.

This is the biggest overhaul to the browser since Internet Explorer 7 landed. The changes to the interface are enormous, the browser's overall usability has greatly improved, it's more secure, and it'… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Just days after launching Internet Explorer 8 in March 2009, Microsoft's Dean Hachamovitch wrote a memo about what the company really needed to do with the next version of its browser.

"A browser is only as good as the underlying operating system," the head of the IE team said in an e-mail to his staff and others at Microsoft. "We have amazing opportunities to differentiate IE because of the underlying strengths of Windows. Our broad opportunity is making Windows the best place to experience the web."

Internet Explorer, he knew, needed to run much … Read more