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.

If you're an Amp'd Mobile subscriber, you're officially out of luck at midnight, when Amp'd stops providing customer service. Not that the bankrupt wireless carrier was providing much before. The Amp'd FAQ page, for example, tells customers that they can use their phones with Sprint and Verizon Wireless — but those carriers are telling would-be subscribers that the models are incompatible. There's no graceful exit from Amp'd, in other words. Unless you're former CEO Peter Adderton. Here's how he's planning a comeback, according to a well-placed source.

The good news: Microsoft's annual revenues clocked in at a record $51 billion for the just-ended fiscal year. The bad news? Windows XP, Microsoft's six-year-old operating system, will still account for more than one in five copies of Windows sold next year. Previously, Microsoft thought XP would only be 15 percent of the mix. XP sales, in other words, are 40 percent higher than Microsoft had predicted. That's the clearest sign yet that the millions of programmer-hours Microsoft threw into Vista have been largely wasted. Aside from the people getting Vista automatically — without any choice, really — with a new PC, there's just not a lot of demand. The "Wow" is no.

Valleywag has already noted the curious resemblance of Andrew Frame, the founder of VOIP startup Ooma, to "Arrested Development" character George Oscar Bluth II, a failed magician. But that's not the only curious resemblance we've spotted, now that Ooma's launched its long-delayed product. It turns out that Ooma's Hub, a $399 pice of hardware for making cheap Internet calls, competes with a $99 product that does the same thing and is already on the market.

Why does eBay subsidiary Skype have a Swedish military transport in its Estonian development center? Could it be preparing to take the fight for VOIP customers against new competitors like Ooma to a new battlefield? Read more.

Hate to say it, but Jason Calacanis had it right: NYT gadget reviewer David Pogue's "iPhone: The Musical" was a trite, derivative, and boring piece of Apple propaganda. But a group of San Francisco webheads have come up with a pitch-perfect take on the iPhone phenomenon. Behold the glory that is "Dontcha Wish Your Cell Phone Was Hot Like Me?" — and after the jump, my take on why this spoof gets it right while Pogue's flopped.

Someone has spooked Fake Steve Jobs. Drifting in and out of character as Apple's CEO, Fake Steve has posted some rambling accusations on his blog about Valleywag publisher Nick Denton. I'm pretty sure FSJ is pulling another one of his over-the-top jokes, but for the record, Denton is far too cheap to shell out money to pay a private investigator to tail Fake Steve.

Months after Valleywag named Mac columnist and book author Andy Ihnatko as a possible writer of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, people have started fingering him as Fake Steve Jobs, the pretend Apple CEO, again, based on nothing more than some skimpy IP-address data. My pesky journalist instincts kicked in: Why not actually ask him? My lazy blogger instincts kicked in: Why not just do an IMterview? So I did. He warned me that he wouldn't give me any real answers about Fake Steve. And he delivered on that promise. But even so, I came away doubting that he's FSJ. A transcript of our AIM conversation follows.

Witness the dueling goatees! The raised eyebrows! The utter failure to reveal any new facts about the man behind The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs! News.com's Tom Krazit and I duke it out in trying to explain the Fake Steve Jobs phenomenon for CNBC's Melissa Francis. (Video by CNBC)

Although fans of high-definition video had already been deriding the Hollywood in Hi-Def site, created by backers of the Blu-ray disc format, for days, it appears our Friday post may have helped provoke a response. The site's masthead now clearly states "Built for Blu-Ray, Powered by Blu-Ray Supporters" and the About Us page has been thoroughly revised, removing any doubt that this "forum" is actually an advertisement. Although much of the site still uses generic "hi-def" headers which could fool newcomers, we are happy to have contributed a small part to the eventual demise of this deceptive promotional campaign. The site description from the About Us page, before and after our post, following the jump:

There is a new web site focused on unbiased coverage of high-definition entertainment. The only problem: it's a Blu-Ray promotional campaign — exclusively covering Blu-Ray — created by its backers: Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, and others. Hi-def fans spotted the campaign immediately and are decrying the site as propaganda.

Hewlett-Packard announced a color-matching mobile technology yesterday, pitching it as a tool for picking the perfect makeup for a given skin-tone using a color index and a mobile phone. Here are some other uses they considered and wisely rejected.

On her blog, Kara Swisher is running a cartoon comparing Walt Mossberg to Anton Ego, the "dour, humorless" food critic from the Disney/Pixar movie Ratatouille. Mossberg, of course, is the gadget reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, and Swisher is a hyperconnected Valley reporter extraordinaire, and the two have a long-lasting friendship, as well as a partnership running AllThingsD.com. But can it possibly endure this jab from the acid-tongued Swisher? (Illustration by Adam Tow for AllThingsD.com)

Jim Louderback is out as editor-in-chief of PC Magazine; Lance Ulanoff, the magazine's reviews editor, is now in charge. Why the change? The cause seems obvious. Louderback, who helped launch the TechTV cable channel and launched Internet TV shows for PC publisher Ziff-Davis, but his multimedia experience wasn't enough to save his job — or PC's still-lucrative print business. Louderback, installed a year ago, presided over a disastrous 34 percent drop in advertising pages, according to Publisher's Information Bureau data. As for Ulanoff's hire, perhaps the reviews czar was deemed friendlier to the magazine's advertisers — though making PC's softball tech coverage softer yet seems like a challenge. Louderback, meanwhile, whose new job has yet to be announced, may have to live off the $900 week rental income from his vacation home in Vermont for a while.

While most movie-tie in toys are conceived with no loftier goal than the draining of an indulgent parent's bank account, on last night's Late Show, David Letterman enthusiastically demonstrated Transformers's Optimus Prime-themed My First Orgasm playset, designed to help preadolescent males become comfortable exploring their rapidly changing bodies.

In this undated photo, uploaded to a Russian pic-sharing site back in December, Linux creator Linus Torvalds shows off his pecs in a Speedo. We're betting it's at least a couple years old, though. Lately, Torvalds has been bearing an increasing resemblance to the Linux icon, Tux the Penguin. Add this to our collection of embarrassing geek photos. (Photo from m0sia.ru)

The computer maker has missed filing its last 3 quarterly reports and 2006 annual report. The delay comes from the continued investigation into accounting irregularities, and as a result, Dell now faces delisting. Few care because Michael Dell is no Steve Jobs. [The Register]

The clock is ticking on early adopters. If, like Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner, you've already tired of your iPhone, you only have seven more days to get your money back under Apple's strict returns policy. (Photo by Dan_H)

New York Times technology columnist David Pogue is a not-very-critical critic — except, possibly, when it comes to his own biography. Pogue, or someone claiming to be him, is in fact editing his own Wikipedia entry. And every sign points to it, in fact, being Pogue: The poster's IP address, 67.86.88.246, has been removing anything negative about Pogue and making other curiously detailed revisions to the entry since June 30. Here are the details that suggest it really is Pogue.A search on IP2location.com reveals that the IP address belongs to Optimum Online, a broadband ISP, and is located in Norwalk, Conn. That's suspiciously close to the Stamford, Conn. address where Pogue has his domain name registered. And the Wikipedia user at that IP address has noted information about Pogue that's not easily verified, like the fact that he studied computer science at Yale. It's a major no-no to put information that can't be attributed to other sources on Wikipedia, whose users insist on linking only to publicly available information. It's also a major faux pas to edit your own Wikipedia entry; even Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales has gotten in trouble over such a move. The only remaining question: Could the thin-skinned Pogue really have made such a dunderheaded move?

Perhaps we're just cranky from the Steve Jobs-addled fanboy who IM'd late last night to test his new iPhone's SMS. Amidst the tweets and texts and Facebook status updates we've gotten from new iPhone owners, we're left wondering one thing: How many of them are, at this very moment, using their iPhones to watch illegal copies of Ratatouille — the new Pixar release from Disney, where Apple CEO Jobs is, of course, a board member and major shareholder?