Tech Roundup: Free Games, Yahoo's News for the Bored, and More

(MoneyWatch)  Free computer game model reaches US -- Everyone loves free, but gaming companies in Korea seem to have figured out how to make it pay and they're going to give it a try in the US. Nexon, out of Seoul, supports its offerings through micro-transactions in which players buy weapons, armor, and other accoutrements for their digital alter egos. The company is bringing a first-person shooter game to challenge the various domestic gaming companies that have made tidy sums through subscription models. [Source: AFP]

Yahoo unveils news for the easily bored -- Yahoo News has a beta of its new design -- larger fonts and more space between the lines, for example -- and you can expect more video and audio. But the interesting angle is that the company notes from whence the audience member came. If the previous location was social media sites Digg or Yahoo Buzz, then only a few paragraphs of a story appear, rather than the full article that is normally shown. After all, everyone knows that people who use social media sites don't read. They get around from one place to the other by looking at the pretty pictures. [Source: TechCrunch]

The Google-Yahoo beat doesn't go on for now -- Given the ongoing Department of Justice investigation into the Google and Yahoo advertising deal, the two companies are delaying the arrangement, apparently at the DoJ's request. Not that outsiders will really know what that means because the two companies got the SEC to OK redacting most of the information about the deal from their public filings, at least for three-and-a-half years. And by then, who knows, maybe Google will have gained 117 percent of the search advertising market leaving nothing to gain from the deal. [Source: InfoWorld, Silicon Valley Insider]

Lawyers push Microsoft to find class action potentials via Windows update Since February Microsoft has faced a class action suit over the company's allowing PC vendors to call machines "Windows Vista capable" even if they couldn't run all of the operating systems features. Part of a class action involves getting someone -- usually the plaintiff -- to go searching for the people who may have been wronged. But the plaintiff lawyers have asked the judge to let Microsoft do the work via Windows Update. One week, along with the invariable security update, would be a message about the suit. It would be much cheaper than a traditional media campaign. The question is who actually pays attention to update messages anyway? [Source: Computerworld]