Wolfgang Gruener, the founder of TG Daily, has a pretty good track record when it comes to building sites that are interesting, informative, and professional. Now, he is taking off on a new venture, one that takes him out of the realm of the tech world for the very first time. Today, Wolfgang is launching Single Parent Gossip, a new site for single parents, and it’s pretty damned good.

It was a pretty ordinary day in Ann Arbor. Sure, the city known as A2 to its friends had just lost its last daily paper after 174 years, but the folks from Time Magazine had an ace up their sleeves - they were reporting on the story from the future.

Slideshow – The IAA is one of the trend-setting automobile tradeshows in Europe and we are expecting an impressive lineup of new cars. Here is our Top 10.

 As more and more counties are replacing power hungry incandescent traffic lights with LEDs, the northern states are discovering a potentially serious problem that is believed to have already caused at least one death in a car accident.

 Is it just a blip or the beginning of a trend? NPD’s U.S. game console shipment numbers for June showed a slight uptick in sales over the catastrophic results for the preceding two months, but it seems that both Microsoft and Sony are gaining much faster than Nintendo. The Wii dropped to its weakest competitive position since January 2008.

Mozilla can celebrate a decent launch of its latest browser, Firefox 3.5. The software has cleared the 2% barrier over the weekend, topping Google’s Chrome browser for the very first time. However, even if Mozilla’s version transitions seems to be on track, Firefox has lost steam and is not gaining market share as quickly anymore as in previous months.

Opinion – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday gave a casual speech in front of more than 1500 members and guests of the Executives Club of Chicago, explaining the importance of innovation during a “reset” of the economy. The pitch for Microsoft products was careful, and, not surprisingly, focused on the next Xbox and Bing. What about Windows 7?

Analyst Opinion - This is an interesting idea.  Do a reality TV program on the web using Jack Welch, who is arguably a more famous success than Donald Trump and focus on a real problem. In this initial segment. Hertz Connect is the target for their efforts. There is no Microsoft product placement in the show, but ads show up on the side making general statements about Microsoft's technology. The layout is creative, the talent is world class with Jack Welch, but the question is: Does it work?

I still doubt that Bing will be enough for Microsoft to attack Google’s dominating role in the search market, but if we believe data published by Comscore then it seems that Bing has increased Microsoft search market share and, more importantly, it was able to hold on to those gains in the first week after launch.

Opinion – Now that we all had a chance to play with Microsoft’s new Bing engine, are we ready to ditch Google? Are we binging instead of googling? I’d like you to chime in and let us know what you think of the search discover engine, but here is some food for thought and why I am pretty sure that Bing will be just another name in Microsoft’s odyssey for a search engine that can conquer the world. 

Analyst Opinion - We are on final countdown for the launch of the Palm Pre which was the device that easily took the entire buzz from CES this year much as the iPhone initially did a few years ago.  In addition, Microsoft has launched an in-your-face competitive ad using a financial argument to drive on Apple's inability to do a subscription music service.   This ad would have likely been vastly more powerful before the Slacker service was available on the iPod Touch and iPhone.  This ad campaign comes in advance of what is expected to be the killer Zune, a product that bridges the connected Xbox experience with a music player.

Analyst Opinion - When I wrote last week’s column suggesting Apple consider a move downmarket to expand its computer/OS market share and avoid being perpetually marooned in niche territory, I suspected it might touch off a bit of a kerfuffle. But like any debate involving Apple, small kerfuffles quickly become big ones. Few companies these days generate the level of passion that Apple does.

Opinion – Yawn. Apple replied to Microsoft’s Laptop Hunters ads. Apple replied with Megan to Lauren and a PC Choice Chat to highlight the weaknesses of a PC. And yes, Apple forgot to mention its own weaknesses. And we wonder how dumb computer buyers really are why Apple’s creative team is convinced that these ads are still funny. We got it, Apple. Time to move on.

Analyst Opinion - Making games differently – from production, to financing and distribution: Many have noted that the gaming industry seems to be recession-proof. Monthly sales figures continue to show growth in the market. Even though NPD’s figures for March are off 17% from the same period last year, NPD themselves noted that Easter generally provides a spike in sales, which fell in April this year and March last year. If you look at overall Q1 08 figures, there was 0% change from Q1 09, while software was down just slightly at 2% for the quarter, hardware and accessories were up 1% and 3% respectively.

Analyst Opinion - A couple of months back, I raised a bit of a ruckus with my column – Kindle shmindle – that suggested the high up-front cost of Amazon’s book reader would be its ultimate downfall. As Amazon prepares to launch an even bigger-screened version, supposedly to cater to the newspaper market, my original thesis still stands. Consumers don’t need yet another expensive, limited-function device to buy, maintain and keep charged.