In a presentation at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Microsoft CFO Peter Klein said that the Office 2010 Technology Guarantee program would kick off before the end of March.

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Last month, details of the free Office 2010 upgrade program leaked to the Web when a Microsoft technology specialist posted information to the firm’s partner community site. The site said that Microsoft would launch the Office 2010 upgrade deal on March 5 and run the program through Sept. 30.

According to the leaked information, customers who purchase an eligible copy of Office 2007 during that period will be allowed to download a corresponding edition of Office 2010 for free when the new suite launches in June. Users who want a DVD installation disc will have to pay a small shipping-and-handling fee.

Buyers of Office Home and Student 2007 will receive a free copy of Office Home and Student 2010, while buyers of Office Standard 2007 will be eligible for a free copy of Office Home and Business 2010, a new addition to the Office lineup. Purchases of either Office Small Business 2007 or Office Professional 2007 will be eligible for a free copy of Office Professional 2010.

Although Klein did not specify a launch date for the offer, it will come this month, and likely earlier rather than latter, since he told Wall Street analysts today that Microsoft would defer $300 million to $350 million from the quarter that ends March 31 to cover the costs of the upgrade.

Klein cited the increased integration of SharePoint and Exchange with the suite as a reason why enterprises should upgrade to Office 2010, and pointed to the integration with the impending free Office Web applications as a boon for consumers. “[An] Office [launch] is always a big deal for our company,” Klein said. «There’s something for everybody in [Office 2010].”

Free upgrade programs are nothing new for Microsoft. Last summer, Microsoft used the Windows 7 Upgrade Option to maintain sales of Vista, giving customers who bought a copy of the soon-to-be-replaced Vista between June 26 and Oct. 22 free copies of Windows 7 when it launched. The company also offered similar deals prior to releasing Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac.

Office 2010 is set to ship in June, and will be the first of its suite line to forego less-expensive upgrade editions. Some analysts have argued that Microsoft dumped upgrades to prevent business customers from using a loophole to avoid paying Microsoft’s pricey software maintenance fees.

Office 2007 Home and Student currently sells for $104 at Amazon.com, $45 less than the planned $149 list price for Office Home and Student 2010.

Google says state censorship in countries like China should be put on the United States’ trade agenda.

Nicole Wong from Google told the Senate Judiciary Committee that web censorship could favour local companies.

The US is considering to raise China’s censorship with the World Trade Organization, according to Bloomberg.

Google is reviewing its operations in China following hacking attacks that targeted the Google accounts of political activists.

At the start of this year Google said it was no longer willing to censor the Chinese language version of its search engine.

When Google launched google.cn in 2006, it agreed to censor some search results — such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Tibetan independence or religious group Falun Gong — as required by the Chinese government.

China has said it welcomes international internet companies, provided they «respect the Chinese public’s interests, the nation’s traditional culture and its laws and regulations».

Google currently holds about one-third of the Chinese search market, far behind Chinese rival Baidu, which has more than 60%.

China has more internet users — about 350 million — than any other country and last year had a lucrative search engine market worth an estimated $1bn (£614m).

Yes, PSN was inaccessible over that extremely stressful day (for PS3 owners, the rest of us have been quite fine, thank you), but we’re hearing from Eurogamer that the villain in this story was an ARM chip inside the console — the very same one, in fact, that led to a few Zunes losing their minds back in 2008.

The big problem here was simply a bit of hardware that couldn’t get its bearings straight after expecting 2010 to be a leap year, and the arrival of March 1 «fixed» everything for all eight affected PS3 SKUs (of a total of eleven). That leaves Sony with four years to make sure this problem isn’t heard from again, and if it doesn’t, we’ll be placing blame for the real 2012 apocalypse firmly on Howard Stringer’s shoulders.

The SanDisk Ultra SDXC has a memory capacity of 64GB, the highest in the market. It also features a 15MB/ second read speed, a Class 4 speed rating, and an exFAT file structure, making this memory card ideal for storing 1080p HD-quality video files without any glitches and transfer them to a PC quickly.

With its 64GB capacity, this memory card can store up to eight hours of high-definition videos. Because SDXC cards are based on the latest SD 3,0 specification, it only works on a handful of SDXC-compatible devices, but expect more to be developed in the future.

GE is the pioneer of this new mobile device called the Vscan. It is designed for doctors who are making house calls. Instead of bringing the patient to the hospital or doctor’s office, the device can come to the mother. I’ll bet that they have to use that really cold creamy stuff that is the bane of pregnant mothers everywhere.

GE has just unveiled this device at the Web 2,0 summit, and they estimate that its cost will be about $250,000. That is not enough for every expectant father to own one of these, but at least low enough so a hospital could have at least one handy.

Personally, I like the idea of every expectant father owning an ultrasound device. I heard Tom Cruise purchased a Sonogram machine when he was about to have baby Suri, and I think every new dad should watch with expectation the birth of their children. Perhaps the technology will improve and the ultrasound will be an iPhone app in a few years.

The Archos A14VG features a 1,4 inch display, 4GB of storage and a built in FM tuner, whilst the A15VS Vision is one of Archos’s thinnest portable media players measuring just 6mm thick.

The Archos A30VC features a 3 inch touchscreen display and a built in camera and comes with 8GB of storage. The Archos A43VB Vison features a 4,3 inch touchscreen display, has 8GB of built in memory and also comes with a microSD card slot.

Pricing starts at $47 for the Archos A14VG, $54 for the A15VS, $122 for the Archos A30VC and 136 for the Archos A43VB.

The Click and Grow will be a plastic nursery-box which look very much like Apple’s Mac Cube. Instead of a pot of soil, the Click and Grow grows plants using aeroponics: the plants are grown in air with nutrients and water delivered together in a fine mist.

To grow a plant, you buy a seed-pod, a capsule which contains both seeds and nutrients. You then hook up the box to your computer via USB (we told you this was nerdy) and download the correct program. The Click and Grow then does the rest, although you will still need to add water from time to time. Because food and water delivery are taken care of by the box, and the care programs are tailored for each plant-type, its hard for things to go wrong.

Or is it? You could still neglect to water the plant, you could put it in a place with too much or too little light and you could put it in a drafty corridor when it should be in a sun-dappled corner. In fact, pretty much anything you could do to kill a regular plant you could also do to the Click and Grow.

Still, I signed up to be notified when these go on sale: To my geek-brain, anything, even a pot-plant, is cooler when hooked up to a computer. Now, if only I could hack it to Tweet me when its thirsty.

Click and Grow will be around $23, with seed-capsules starting at $3.50.

Nordberg apparently wanted to protect the Sony Ericsson brand. He said that the company would only produce phones under its own brand, and that it wouldn’t be a subcontractor to anyone.

The news leaves me sort of speechless, because Sony Ericsson hasn’t been doing all that well lately — the company recently closed down four facilities, and laid off 2,000 workers. It also has yet to make a splash in this recent generation of smartphones. Its first Android device, the Xperia X10, won’t be released until later this year.

The hubris displayed by Sony Ericsson’s decision shows that the company would prefer to fail on its own, rather than team up with someone else to succeed. It also reminds me of VentureBeat writer Paul Boutin’s piece on why Nokia has had such a hard time succeeding in America, where excessive corporate pride likely played a role.

Before the iPhone, and before HTC started kicking butt with its smartphone designs, I was always a fan of Sony Ericsson’s phones. Its phones were the height of design for standard cellphones — each one seemingly had a personality of its own. The company also developed a great looking Windows Mobile smartphone, the Xperia X1, but by that point, Windows Mobile was on its way out.

Ericsson could have made a huge impact with Google’s flagship phone. Instead, the company is going to have to fight off the Nexus One, and other high-end Android phones, whenever the Xperia X10 is released. Good luck with that.

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What Toktumi has done is build a back end similar to that of Google Voice — but unlike Google, it’s gotten Apple’s blessing. It’s one of the more complete mobile VoIP apps currently available for download; I especially like the fact that it allows you to receive calls straight to your mobile phone over a cellular network even if you don’t have 3G or Wi-Fi coverage. It comes with its own features such as call waiting, conference calling, call transfer and even voice mails — in other words, the service is like a virtual second line on your phone. The service costs $14,95 a month for unlimited calls in the U.S. and Canada.

Toktumi, which launched at DEMO 2008, has had to traverse a difficult path to get to where it is today, and Sisson is understandably excited about the kind of exposure the approval from Apple of its app will bring. Sisson, a veteran of the VoIP business, sold his last company, Teleo, to Microsoft.

MILESTONE is without compromise, setting new standards for how fast, smart and multi-tasking a modern smartphone should be. Powered by Android 2,1, it offers the ability to use multiple applications at once1 and the world’s thinnest QWERTY slider (13,7mm). The MILESTONE also boasts a hi-resolution, multi-touch, pinch and zoom display with twice the pixels of the leading competitor.

A suite of Google™ mobile applications including Google Search™, Google Maps™, GMail™ and YouTube™ are also integrated onto the device. Plus users have access to thousands of apps and widgets from Android Market™1.

«MILESTONE is a smart phone without compromise, delivering a wiser, richer web and messaging experience. This is possible through the combination of Motorola’s expertise in design and a truly differentiated Android experience,” said Oscar Roriguez, General Manager at Motorola Spain.

«As an Android 2,1 device, MILESTONE does what other smartphones don’t. It was designed to enhance consumer experiences — and its full screen web browsing experience, ability to juggle between multiple apps, and suite of Google applications deliver. We have been delighted with the anticipation and demand for MILESTONE across the world and pleased to announce its arrival in Spain in mid-march.”

Key MILESTONE features include:

• 3,7» widescreen display with 854 pixel width and more than 400,000 total pixels

• High-speed, cortex A8 processor

• Multi-touch, pinch and zoom, double tap zoom

• 5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash

• Motorola Media Link and Motorola Phone Portal to manage and share media content across desktop, phone and the Web2

• Stereo Bluetooth^® / BT 2,1, USB 2,03

• 3,5mm headset jack

• CrystalTalk™ Plus for superior talk quality

• 8GB memory card

Additional functionality and apps include:

• Full suite of the Google applications: Google Search, Google Maps with Latitude, Google Mail, YouTube, and Google Talk™,

• Unified Google and Microsoft Office Contacts

• Navigation: GPS, MOTONAV * turn-by-turn navigation, Google Maps, E-Compass Latitude

• Email Support: IMAP and POP, GMail

• IM Support: Google Talk

• Calendar: Exchange, syncs with Google Calendar™

Accessories included:

• Use the multimedia station to transform MILESTONE into a clock, movie player or digital picture frame.

Optional accessories include:

• Place MILESTONE in the car mount to instantly launch a full-blown GPS navigation device.