November, 2006 Issue

The first customer migrations to BT's next-generation communications network have begun in the Welsh village of Wick.

A security flaw in Google's search appliances could expose websites that use the products to information-stealing phishing attacks, experts warned Monday.

Salesforce.com on Monday announced three products designed to ease integration of on-demand applications with customers' own in-house solutions.

Sales of Microsoft Office in South Korea may be disrupted, at least temporarily, after a court ruled against Microsoft in a patent case covering technology for automatic translation between English and Korean.

True on-demand TV has been a long promised dream of many, and that dream appeared to move closer this week when Microsoft launched its Video Marketplace service. Offering TV programs for keeps and movies to rent, the service quickly became a popular component of Xbox Live.

A school in Quebec, Canada, has banned personal electronic devices in the classroom after students videotaped a teacher yelling at a student and the footage ended up on YouTube.

One small step for man, one giant leap for video chat. On November 28, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter will converse with space enthusiasts, live via the Web, from the International Space Station some 250 miles above Earth.

"Police blotter" is a weekly News.com report on the intersection of technology and the law.

Microsoft has no plans to add a controversial Windows Vista antipiracy feature directly to its Office 2007 suite, but will consider offering it as an add-on system, the company said today.

Company wants access to San Francisco light poles for separate test while building citywide net.

U.S. regulators are satisfied, but European Union continues to study Vista specs.

Symantec on Wednesday released the public beta of its bundled security suite of software known as Norton 360. The service combines software to protect against viruses, spyware and fraud, as well as data backup and restoration and computer tune-up tools.

Mozilla's Firefox 2 and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 are vulnerable to a flaw that could allow attackers to steal passwords.

Microsoft's competition to find the best student software designers around the world is now open, with $170,000 in prize money up for grabs.

With a new image format, Adobe Systems believes it can improve the quality and longevity of digital photographs--but the software maker faces serious challenges.

A posting to the iRows blog on Tuesday announced that Israeli service iRows will shut down on Dec. 31 and that the company's founders will join Google.

Bill Gates is pretty confident that when he spots an emerging technology, it will emerge. Exactly when that happens, though, is sometimes a question mark.

SAN FRANCISCO--Norm Edwards was so excited at the prospect of buying a PlayStation 3 that he was willing to wait nearly 40 hours to do so, even though he wasn't particularly impressed with the event put on by Sony here.

As Google's share price neared $500 Thursday, analysts were unfazed by the fact that the search king's market capitalization is greater than its three biggest Internet rivals combined and about double that of media companies Walt Disney and Time Warner.

In a wide-ranging stream of announcements this week, Microsoft has added substance to its plans for the future of Windows Server and formally launched a new scripting engine, PowerShell.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--There were two Bill Gateses on stage Wednesday at Stanford University: the philanthropist, and the hypercompetitive Microsoft co-founder and chairman.

Prerelease versions will expire without proper activation, Microsoft says.

Under pressure from corporate users, Microsoft has announced a new industry consortium aimed at tackling the problem of interoperability between software products. Surprisingly, one of the first vendors to sign up was Sun.

BT will not offer the next generation of faster fixed-line broadband services until summer next year at the earliest, with some people having to wait until 2011.

In a development that could shake up the software industry, Sun is releasing the Java programming language under the General Public License (GPL).

A UK law has been passed that makes it an offence to launch denial of service attacks, which experts had previously called "a legal grey area."

Software company Good Technology will join Symbol on the list of recent Motorola acquisitions.

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende may get booted out of office in national elections this month, but he can lay claim to being the first person in the world to get an authorized fresh Windows Live Mail account, Microsoft said on Friday.

Down in Australia they've been looking at updating their copyright laws to catch up to the digital age (read: to make the laws more favorable for an entertainment industry that refuses to adjust to the market), but seem to be doing so in a way that pretty much guarantees the opposite would occur.

BANGALORE, India (AFP) - Two of India's top software firms have announced the signing of technology outsourcing deals worth 144.4 million dollars with Australia's Qantas Airways.

SAN FRANCISO -- YouTube succeeded where Google Video didn't because users were able to see their videos posted immediately, Google executive Marissa Mayer said at the Web 2.0 Summit here on Thursday.

SEC filing reveals ongoing copyright infringement suits against company's video, news, and book search services.

SAN FRANCISCO--Now that AOL has moved to a free, ad-supported model, it wants to evolve its portal into something more useful to Web surfers, Jonathan Miller, chairman and chief executive of AOL, said Wednesday.

The tools and frameworks required to write applications for the latest, as yet unreleased, incarnation of Windows are now available

Last week London was named the most expensive city in Europe for Wi-fi access in hotels. And with some guests in the capital paying £10 for every half an hour they're online, it's easy to see why.

Microsoft will hand out three developer toolsets on Tuesday, in hopes of spurring programmers to create applications for Windows Vista, Office 2007 and the Web.

News aggregator Topix.net is set to announce Monday that it has received an additional investment of $15 million from the three newspaper groups that already own a majority stake in the company.

New app improves Gmail access on Java-enabled devices, adds features.

David Bank of RBC Capital Markets has some advice for Google: Buy a stake in Clear Channel Communications.

We love our Wi-Fi, but we aren't going to be seeing it built into a broad range of consumer electronics anytime soon.

The FBI plans on Friday to announce the arrest of at least 16 individuals in connection with a global cybercrime investigation.

Two years after opening its MSN Music store to compete with Apple Computer's iTunes, Microsoft plans to stop selling downloads from the site, CNET News.com has learned.

It's possible that Thursday's deal between Microsoft and Novell could conflict with a provision in the General Public License (GPL), according to Eben Moglen, the attorney for the Free Software Foundation that created and oversees the Linux license.

Business users will be able to get their hands on the new software on November 30.

ATHENS, Greece--While many countries block off some Web sites, China has long drawn heightened scrutiny because of the breadth and sophistication of its Internet censorship.

ATHENS, Greece--When the pioneering engineers who invented the Internet began crafting the modern domain name system, they came up with a rule that was reasonable at the time: Domains must use only English-language characters.

With JotSpot purchase, Google enhances its Web-based collaboration offerings.

Company goes after software pirates who sell illegal copies on auction sites.

Seamless network hopping gets closer with software that makes Wi-Fi and cellular phones easier to use.