Yahoo updated its map service to include more data about specific neighborhoods, broader international coverage, and stylistic changes, but it’s still not the easiest map on the eyes.

The neighborhood details cover 12,000 areas in 300 cities in North America, and more of Eastern Europe is included. Points of interest like schools and ski resorts are highlighted now, and Yahoo is using more pastel colors.

Any takeover bid for peripherals maker Logitech by Microsoft would be “an operation without sense,” Logitech’s chairman was quoted as saying in an Italian newspaper on Sunday. Shares in Swiss-based Logitech rose in January based on speculation Microsoft would launch a takeover bid. Analysts dismissed rumors of an $8 billion takeover bid.

Logitech is the market leader in PC mice, while Microsoft is its biggest competitor with “30 percent of our market,” Logitech Chairman Guerrino De Luca told Corriere della Sera in an interview. When asked whether Microsoft had bought any stake in Logitech, De Luca replied: “It would not be opportune seeing as we are competitors.”

SplashData announced a Windows Mobile version of its SplashMoney personal finance application. Until now, SplashMoney’s mobile finance features, wireless online banking and two-way synchronization with companion desktop software has only been available for users of Palm OS handhelds.

With SplashMoney, Windows Mobile users now have the ability to instantly download their most recent banking account activities through a wireless connection. SplashMoney is a complete personal financial manager for handhelds and desktop computers that allows users to securely record transactions, track account balances, generate reports and budgets, and manage finances while on the go. SplashMoney features a streamlined user interface, charting of financial data, the ability to assign icons to transactions, transaction filtering, and bank account reconciliation. The software supports most account types, including checking, savings, credit card, cash, asset, liability, and money market accounts.

The security of personal financial data on mobile devices is of chief concern to many, and SplashData has built-in secure password protection using 256-bit Blowfish encryption to protect against malicious hacking or other threats.

They operate from a bare apartment on a Chinese island. They are intelligent 20-somethings who seem harmless. But they are hard-core hackers who claim to have gained access to the world’s most sensitive sites, including the Pentagon. In fact, they say they are sometimes paid secretly by the Chinese government–a claim the Beijing government denies.

“No Web site is one hundred percent safe. There are Web sites with high-level security, but there is always a weakness,” says Xiao Chen, the leader of this group.”Xiao Chen” is his online name. Along with his two colleagues, he does not want to reveal his true identity. The three belong to what some Western experts say is a civilian cyber militia in China, launching attacks on government and private Web sites around the world.

Enterprise bans on iPhones may be lifted with the announcement on Thursday that the iPhone will support Microsoft Exchange email. When the iPhone initially came out, some enterprises banned workers from using it for fear of security problems that could come with users accessing their corporate email from the devices. But with Apple’s licensing of ActiveSync, Exchange email can be securely pushed out to iPhones.

Apple joins a host of other prominent phone makers, including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola, among ActiveSync licensees. The Exchange capability is being released as part of a beta of the iPhone 2.0 on Thursday to hundreds of companies. Apple expects to ship the new software as a free update to iPhone customers in late June.

In comments made the week of March 3 at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting, CEO Steve Jobs said Adobe Systems’ Flash media format was not suited for Apple’s iPhone and that his company was not currently planning to support Flash on its popular mobile platform.

The Flash player itself can stream video, show animated and interactive content, and work with entry forms and other client-side data. However, all this requires a great deal of CPU power and RAM, more than most mobile devices currently on the market are packing.

It’s official: Daylight Saving Time is a bust. Designed (and recently extended) as a measure to save energy in a period of inflated electricity prices, an in-depth University of California study has now shown that DST doesn’t save anyone any money at all. In fact, it’s costing consumers extra, to the tune of $3.19 in extra utility bills per year.

The study was made possible because of the peculiarities of the state of Indiana, which was only partially on DST until 2006. When the whole state finally went DST (to sync with the national business day), some comparisons vs. the prior method were made apparent. The study calculated that the shift costs Indiana residents an extra $8.6 million in electricity bills in total.

While millions swooned over the iPhone, a number of people, especially those with visual impairments and some with physical disabilities, felt either left out of the hoopla or angered by Apple’s apparent lack of consideration for universal design in the state-of-the-art cell phone. But there are alternatives. In this important article, Denise Lance shares some recommendations.

Read this Computing Unplugged article.

Google has launched Google Gears for mobile–an open-source browser extension for wireless devices that will enable developers to build rich Web applications with the ability to run in an offline mode.

Google’s initial Google Gears release for Internet Explorer Mobile will run on devices powered by the Windows Mobile 5 and 6 operating systems, said Google Mobile Team Product Manager Charles Wiles. However, Google is also working “to bring Google Gears for mobile to Android and other mobile platforms with capable Web browsers,” he added.

Google just updated their “What’s New” page with information about a yet unreleased feature that will let you sync your Outlook calendar with Gmail and vice versa. This is a huge feature that Google Calendar users have been missing–and even more-so for enterprise Google Apps users.