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River Horse Brewing Company, Lambertville, New Jersey

Blonde Ale Recipe for 5 gallons

6 lb extra-pale malt syrup
1 oz Crystal hops, 60 minutes before end of boil
½ oz Liberty hops, 30 minutes before end of boil
California ale yeast
¾ cup corn sugar

Dissolve extract in 3 gallons warm water, then bring to a boil. Boil 60 minutes, adding hops at specified intervals. Transfer to fermenter with enough cold water to make five gallons. Cool to 70°F, aerate, and add yeast. Ferment at 65-70°F for one week or until finished. Transfer. Dissolve corn sugar into finished beer, bottle, and store at room temperature for two or three weeks, then chill and enjoy.

Free State Brewing Company, Lawrence, Kansas

English Barley Wine recipe for 5 gallons

2 oz black patent malt
¼ lb medium crystal malt
12 lb pale malt extract syrup
1 oz Target hops, 60 minutes before end of boil
½ oz Northdown hops, 30 minutes before end of boil
2 oz East Kent Goldings hops, 10 minutes before end of boil
English or British ale yeast
¾ cup corn sugar

Bring three gallons warm water to 160°F. Crush grains and steep in hot brewing water for 30 minutes. Remove grains and add extract, then bring to a boil. Boil 60 minutes, adding hops at specified intervals. Transfer to fermenter with enough cold water to make five gallons. Cool to 70°F, aerate, and add yeast. Ferment at 65-70°F for one week or until finished. Transfer carefully into another container. Dissolve corn sugar into finished beer, bottle, and store at room temperature for two or three weeks, then chill and enjoy.

Note: For best results, use three packages of yeast, or make a starter. Because of the strength of this beer, you may find fermentation becomes sluggish toward the end, so be patient.

Microsoft said Friday that it was going to start testing a subscription service that combines its OneCare anti-virus package, the home version of its Office suite, and some other features in one package, called Albany, to be sold by subscription. Microsoft already sells OneCare in the form of annual subscriptions, but it represents the first time it will sell Office that way.

This seems like a useful experiment, but dreadfully late. And I’m not sure it confronts the major questions of value in the marketplace. Consumers are used to getting so much free these days that I wonder what they will be willing to pay for. Microsoft won’t answer the biggest question about the bundle: how much it will cost? So let’s think about the options. Right now OneCare has a list price of $50 a year, and Microsoft Office Home and Student lists for $150 in the version you can use forever. (Amazon is currently selling a one-year OneCare subscription for $30 and the home Office version for $120.) Read more »

Opera on Thursday added Google's Android to the list of platforms that can run its mobile browser. Opera released a technical preview of its Opera Mini browser for Google's mobile OS and middleware on its Web site, the company said Thursday. The company also released a software development kit for the platform.

Developers can test the browser and share feedback about it that will be considered before Opera releases a beta version, which it will do once it collects feedback from the community. In a company blog posting, Opera's Developer Relationship Manager Chris Mills explained why the company decided to create a version of its mobile browser for Android and the particulars and challenges of writing the code. According to the post, Opera considered the "cool factor" in providing a browser for Google's much-ballyhooed mobile platform, but also wanted to give users and developers the broadest possible choice for deploying its browser. Read more »

Microsoft on Thursday plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams. The new service’s software technology, called Clearflow, was developed over the last five years by a group of artificial-intelligence researchers at the company’s Microsoft Research laboratories. It is an ambitious attempt to apply machine-learning techniques to the problem of traffic congestion. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets.

The Clearflow system will be freely available as part of the company’s Live.com site (maps.live.com) for 72 cities in the United States. Microsoft says it will give drivers alternative route information that is more accurate and attuned to current traffic patterns on both freeways and side streets. A system for driving directions that Microsoft introduced last fall was limited, because without Clearflow there was no information available about traffic conditions on city streets adjacent to the highways. Because the system assumed that those routes would be clear, drivers were on occasion sent into areas that were more congested than the freeways. Read more »