Yippee! No more crappy, blurry YouTube videos! No more pixelated garbage filling every corner of the Web! Adobe's addition of the advanced H.264 high-definition codec — "codec" being a fancy way of saying "video algorithm" — to its popular Flash software. Flash, of course, has become the ubiquitous means of distributing video on the Web. Adding H.264 will finally bring high-quality moving images into the Web mainstream, and put an end to the rein of amateurism in online video. Or will it? Not so fast.

How long will it take the corporate suits at Viacom to realize that MTV Networks will never, ever, ever succeed in digital music? The latest move, folding MTV's Urge online music store into RealNetworks' Rhapsody service, is just another example of its fumbling. One could point out that MTV doesn't actually broadcast much in the way of music these days; to the extent it's holding onto its youth demographic, it's doing so with a TV schedule packed with reality shows and teen soap operas. Do its viewers even know that the "M" in "MTV" stands for "music"? But never mind that. The reality of MTV is a decade-long history of complete and utter failure in digital music. The timeline of missed opportunities, botched deals, and general cluelessness, after the jump:

Every PC user has the words of Microsoft's infamous "Blue Screen of Death" — the screen displayed when Windows crashes — virtually tattooed in their retinae. But, Fox News reports, An Auckland, New Zealand man, not content with that visual reminder, has actually tattooed the text on his arm.

"If I were, I wouldn't say anything, and if I weren't, I wouldn't say anything." — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, when asked by newsman Charlie Rose if the tech goliath was in talks to buy internet megasite Yahoo. [Tech Trader Daily]

Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff, giddy with new-found profits, trashes Microsoft's competing offering, saying it "promises to do for on-demand [software] what Zune has done for media players." Ouch, that's low. [MarketWatch]

Competitors' efforts have failed to dent Google's search market share. A survey of customer satisfaction paints a different picture — which just goes to show you that it's not, as Google likes to claim, all about the users. The newly released American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) from the University of Michigan has Yahoo regaining its lead over Google with an increase of 3.9 points, while Google fell 3.7 points. ACSI attributes the improvements to Yahoo's ratings to well-received design and feature enhancements. Ask.com experienced the biggest improvement, jumping 5.6 points, leaving it tied with Microsoft's MSN.

Microsoft wants to beam broadband Internet using dormant television airwaves, claiming it won't interfere with broadcasts. One small hitch: The sample device it sent to the FCC for testing to prove its claim was broken. [The Inquirer]

Microsoft and Google are getting into the healthcare business, according to Steve Lohr, the New York Times' most reliable transcriptionist of big tech companies' plans. Both tech giants want to put patients' health records online and help them search for medical information on the Web. But Lohr entirely misses the point. Tech and healthcare have a long, parlous history, intertwined with the industry's laborious regulations. If change in the industry comes about, it's going to emerge from hospital halls and the lobbies of Congress, not from Silicon Valley. So why are Microsoft and Google putting some of their biggest brains on the project?

Since Google began openly logging your search history, navigating the Internet has become an ever-creepier proposition. Anonymity, for the most part, is feigned. Your privacy is an illusion. And with behavioral marketing seen as the holy grail of online advertising, it won't be long before someone rips open and sells your history of search requests — it'd be as exposing as, say, revealing the racier parts of your Netflix queue. This site's editor, for example, certainly doesn't want Google knowing how often he searches for topless photos of Jakob Lodwick. (Oh puhleeze. So not my type. -Ed.)

How does the tabloidtastic New York Post spice up a boring story like the ascent of new Microsoft advertising chief Brian McAndrews?

This parody video pokes fun at Microsoft Paint, the aging art software included with Windows. YouTube commenters already point out that Vista Paint, the latest version, isn't much of an improvement. But that's not what makes it so funny to me.The real humor in the clip is its reminder that no one gets this excited about desktop software anymore. Take Apple's announcement earlier this week of iLife '08: The only real selling point of Apple's newest iLife software, used to manage photo collections, edit movies, and so forth, is that it's integrated with Apple's .Mac Web service. Yes, Microsoft Paint seems hilariously out of date. But to today's Web generation, it's not Paint that's outdated — it's the entire field of programs written to run on a PC instead of on a website. If you're in your 30s, this video will make you laugh out loud. If you're in your early 20s, I'm betting it will just bore you.

Tech behemoth Microsoft has signed, alas, not signed Australian beauty queen Erin McNaught as an IT spokeswoman this week, contrary to prior reports that she was going to promote the "sexy" image of IT professionals. McNaught, known to the Australian press as McNaughty, does have a few tech qualifications — more than many other beauty queens, anyway. She currently hosts the Aussie gaming show "Cyber Shack" and was a student at Queensland Institute of Technology before she left to pursue a modeling career. It turns out, however, that she was just a last-minute replacement speaker at a Microsoft-sponsored conference. Too bad. We were anxiously waiting to see how she would take on Google's right-wing Australian spokesman, Rob Shilkin.

Microsoft's Web portal runs PC World's rundown of the 25 worst websites — including two owned by Microsoft. [MSN]

Instead of a private beta release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Microsoft is dribbling out some updates as "hotfixes." With such a slow pace for the beta, is it any surprise that some are whispering about a staggeringly late 2009 final release for SP1? [All About Microsoft]

People say that Facebook might be the new Microsoft as if that's a good thing. The Windows operating system, after all, has been an immensely profitable platform for third-party developers, and Facebook, with its F8 platform, hopes to do the same. But there's another side to Microsoft as platform owner — the side that willfully enters a software arena and destroys independent developers working in that market. That's the cruel face that Facebook is now presenting. Here's what it looks like.

There was a time, back in 1998 or so, when AOL was synonymous with email for most ordinary folks. That time, of course, is long past. But AOL's tireless flacks are trying to bring it back with a press release outlining which cities' residents are most addicted to email. Surprisingly, Washington, D.C. comes in first. But unsurprisingly, the release doesn't mention the reality AOL now faces: Today's email users, by the hundreds of millions, spurn AOL's offerings in favor of Yahoo Mail, Microsoft's Hotmail, and Google's Gmail.

Kevin Johnson, who runs Microsoft's Windows and Web businesses, is a master salesman. And making a sale, of course, requires a fine-tuned ability to bullshit on demand. Nowhere is that ability more on display than in Microsoft's announcement of a deal to buy AdECN, a supposedly neutral marketplace where advertisers and publishers can buy and sell online ads. AdECN is also a competitor to recent Yahoo acquisition Right Media and DoubleClick, which Google is trying to buy. Johnson claims Microsoft won't favor its own websites, or partners like Facebook or Digg. Of course, that's nonsense. How do I know that? AdECN told me so.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer urges shareholders not to sell the tech goliath's stock. Unreported is the level of enthusiasm he showed while making that request. [Forbes]

With the CEO of PC maker Acer proclaiming Vista a disappointment and rumor of a long, long wait for an upgrade to Vista, it's no surprise Microsoft would issue a press release encouraging everyone to purchase a Vista PC. Microsoft's marketers suggest a range of models, all surely obsolete by December. Is Vista so disappointing that they can only find holiday gift giving — in the middle of the summer — as a reason to make a purchase? Or are they simply so inept they don't see that such an outlandish excuse just serves to highlight Vista's plight? You can tell that Bill Gates, while still chairman, is no longer a presence at the company. Microsoft's famously rude cofounder would have shot down the press release's credulous opening question, "Holiday gift giving in July?" with a simple "No."

The tip, incredible. The source, ironclad. Microsoft has apparently told executives at one of the world's largest PC makers not to expect a formal release of Windows Vista SP1 — the first major set of upgrades and bug fixes to its Vista operating system — until 2009 at the earliest. That explains why Microsoft was so desperate to correct erroneous reports, spread by a careless team of developers at Microsoft, that a beta version of SP1 would be out last week. Microsoft now says it "currently anticipates" a beta of SP1 later this year. Anticipations, of course, are not always met. Especially if you're a sluggish beast like Microsoft, with thousands of developers to keep in train on a release. And this delay would have wide aftershocks.