Edgelings Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Malone has suggestions for the incoming President regarding economic recovery and the importance of supporting entrepreneurship. One source of new ideas? California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Google says it has successfully implemented Optical Character Recognition technology enabling it to scan PDF files and index the documents for inclusion in Google search results. Scanned documents had rarely been included in search results because the company could not accurately verify the content. The OCR technology will open up vast amounts of information for inclusion in Google search and has enormous application in Google’s book scanning efforts.

It’s battery recall deja vu for Sony. In the face of reports about overheating, and pressed by the US Consumer Product And Safety Commission, Sony is recalling about 100,000 of its notebook batteries.  The recall covers units from Dell and H-P made in 2004-5. The companies have set up consumer hotlines to handle questions.

Reports coming from DC are that Google and Yahoo may abandon plans for a shared advertising partnership. From the beginning, the deal has raised concerns and an increasing number of consumer groups and law makers have weighed in against the proposal. Launch of the deal was scheduled for late October, but was pushed back by the companies as they worked with DOJ to find an acceptable solution to the objections being raised. Now, it seems that no solution will be forthcoming and it appears that the duo are ready to walk away from the effort.  Dissolution of the deal will have serious impact upon Jerry Yang’s turn-around efforts at Yahoo and is yet another interesting twist in the ongoing Yahoo saga.

The Justice Department has indicated its approval of the proposed merger of Verizon and Alltel.  Official DOJ approval hinges on Verizon selling off assets in 22 states and the FCC is scheduled to vote on the merger next Tuesday at the full commission meeting. The $28 Billion merger would create the nation’s largest wireless carrier.

A federal appeals court has ruled that “business method” ideas are not patentable. The decision came in a case where a patent was requested for an idea to hedge weather-related effects on business.  The court ruled that because the application didn’t include a machine or physically transform anything, the idea could not be patented. The debate continues whether patenting ideas hinders or promotes innovation.

Tech guru and Edgelings contributor Rob Enderle says that Microsoft's cloud computing announcement wasn't a product release as much as a declaration of war against Google and Apple. And this time, they're serious. Opinion

As the OpedID system gains favor, with the likes of Google and Microsoft signing on, questions are beginning to percolate about whether the system will be used as originally envisioned of if some of the nets biggest companies will bend the idea to their will. ARSTechnica’s John Timmer looks at the evolving issues.

Motorola announced a third quarter net operating loss approaching $400 Million due in large part to sagging cell phone sales.  Mobile Device sales came in at $3.1 Billion, down 31 percent year-over-year for an operating loss of over $800 Million for the segment.  Co-CEO Sanjay Jha noted that the separation of the company into two distinct units ( cell phones and infrastructure)  would probably be pushed back from its mid-2009 target date.

Some good news among the economic carniage - game giant Nintendo says that strong sales of Wii systems has it on track for record profits. A strong Yen has the company retreating slightly in projections  going forward but Nintendo still expects annual profits to rise about a third. The company says that sales of the wildly popular Wii now top 32 million units. Game on!

It’s the thing that would not die. Reuters is reporting that Yahoo and AOL have been spending time rummaging through financials, such as they are, to determine values and see where a merging of the two veteren Internet companies might make economic sense. It’s grand theater as discussions between the two continue with Microsoft playing coy in the interminable merger discussions surrounding Yahoo.  Yahoo rejected advances by Microsoft in the Spring and opened discussions with Time-Warner as a defence against any moves by Redmond but some observers believe that a merger of the struggling Yahoo with the foundering AOL would only create the Internets first egg laying woolly milk pig.

The UK Nano Forum has handed out its annual awards for advancements and innovation in the field of nano-technology. The applications are startling and brilliant.  It’s little wonder that some analysts predict that nano will be a trillion dollar industry in a decade.  Watch the story HERE

U.S. PIRG has weighed in on the proposed Google/Yahoo ad deal — and the consumer organization isn’t smiling. U.S. PIRG expressed its concerns in a letter to the U.S. Attorney General saying that competing companies would be forced to use more invasive information collection techniques to combat the 80% market share of the proposed partnership of the two search giants.  The deal is still under review by DOJ while Google and Yahoo have pushed back their proposed launch date.

And the pain doesn’t end. Piling on in the debate,  Texas Rep. Joe Barton, who sits on the House Commerce Committee, isn’t thrilled with Yahoo lately. Barton has joined the voices are asking DOJ to study the deal further. Barton charges Yahoo with trying to avoid questions about the plan and says that Yahoo’s answers  “seem designed to obscure rather than clarify how the Google-Yahoo partnership would work”.  Is that really surprising?  Story Here .  Given the volume of concerns expressed about the proposal, it’s difficult to see what Google and Yahoo can do to calm things in DC and move this deal forward.

FCC Chair Kevin MArtin is being pressured by nearly 75 members of Congress to postpone next week’s commission vote on the restructuring of telecom interconnect charges. The Congressional Representatives are asking for two months of public review and comment about the commission’s proposed wide-ranging changes in the fee structure that companies charge each other for network access.  Martin is also favoring an overhaul of the $7 Billion Universal Services Fund. The plan is facing stiff resistance from rural carriers who feel that the proposed changes will severely hurt their businesses.  Martin argues that most of the items in the plan have been debated for years and that the Commission is under court order to reform, by Nov. 5,  certain items that are included in the plan.

It took three years of posturing and wrangling about the dollars, but the copyright battle between Google and the publishing industry has ended. Publishers and authors had brought the suit against Google in an attempt to control the amount of out-of-print, but still copyright-protected material the search giant could legally use. Google had argued that exposure on search engines would be a windfall of exposure and possible sales for books that had fallen off sales charts. But publicity doesn’t pay the rent – and the writers filed the suit, which ended with Google paying for material and promising a split of ad revenues. Meanwhile the publishers will allow greater access and expanded volume of text results that can be used for Google searches. Money talks.