A group of academics will be among the first people outside Microsoft to see Sphere, a spherical surface computer developed by Microsoft Research.

On Tuesday, Microsoft plans to post actual videos from its "Mojave Experiment" -- an effort to dispel negative stereotypes about Vista -- on a recently set up "teaser" Web site, BetaNews has learned.

In about two weeks, Redmond has managed to turn a marketing idea into something that may just shock you. Microsoft blogger Ina Fried is reporting that Microsoft managed to trick XP users in San Francisco into loving Vista simply by telling them a small fib. The company told these users that they were using a new version of Windows, codenamed "Mojave." When asked about their experience with using Mojave, over 90 percent said they were impressed with what they saw. Then Microsoft told them they had been using Vista all along.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday in the US that its on-again, off-again talks with Yahoo were firmly in the "off-again" phase.

On August 24, 2001, Microsoft released to manufacturing the final version of Windows XP. 6 years and 11 months later, a new version of XP has gone gold, this time for the OLPC XO computer, also known as the "$100 laptop."

Security researcher Aviv Raff said on Wednesday that the iPhone's Mail and Safari applications are prone to URL spoofing and could allow phishing attacks against users.

REDMOND, Wash.--After months of searching for ways to defend its oft-maligned Windows operating system, Microsoft may just have found its best weapon: Vista's skeptics.

Do you block your phone number from appearing on Caller ID? If so, don't count on it. At The Last HOPE hacker conference, Kevin Mitnick, arguably the most famous hacker of all, demonstrated how call blocking can be hacked, and the hidden phone number exposed.

Researchers led by BT security expert Bruce Schneier have shown that deniable file systems — designed to hide data so effectively that there is no trace of its existence on a user's system — may not be so deniable after all, due to the interference of standard applications and of the operating system itself.

One of the players in the burgeoning malware industry has apparently crafted itself a new "super" Trojan, and is offering it up for sale as a guaranteed detection evader—or your money back. At least, one assumes there's an "or your money back" clause in there somewhere, since black hats willing to pay $1,300 for an illegal software license are probably also willing to pay a desperate Russian peasant $1,300 to beat a malware author to death with a leftover bust of Lenin, before tossing his body in the Volga river.

Government departments have been asked to take 18 steps to reduce the carbon emissions generated by ICT.

The UK's privacy watchdog could get new powers to raid organisations under government proposals to "sharpen its teeth".

Microsoft issued two critical security bulletin revisions on Wednesday related to vulnerabilities in Microsoft DirectX.

Rambus is suing Nvidia, accusing the company of violating 17 Rambus-held patents on memory controllers. The suit was filed on Thursday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

VMware shareholders received a double-whammy of bad news earlier this week. A combination of reduced growth forecasts for 2008 and the surprise announcement that CEO and cofounder Diane Greene was being ousted saw VMW lose 24 percent of its value on Tuesday. VMware still expects revenues to grow healthily—"modestly below the previous guidance of 50 percent growth"—but it's clear that EMC wants more control of the company it purchased in 2003. Greene will be replaced by Paul Maritz, formerly of Microsoft. Maritz has been at EMC since it purchased his startup Pi Corporation earlier this year. Prior to being made VMware CEO, he ran EMC's cloud computing unit.

I've certainly given them a hard time about it, so it's only fair to point out that as of Friday morning, Microsoft's Vista Compatibility Center Web site is now live.

Seagate on Thursday unveiled 1.5TB desktop and half-terabyte notebook hard drives, claiming industry firsts for both.

Asus has released the final specifications and UK pricing for its two new Eee PC models, the 904 and the 1000.

Earlier this month Microsoft confirmed that some computers with Microsoft Office 2003 installed were having trouble grabbing updates from servers running either Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 or WSUS 3.0 SP1. Although there was no specific security vulnerability associated with the problem, Microsoft released a security advisory since the inability to install security updates in itself warranted some sort of notification. In just over a week, the company has found a solution to the problem:

In the wake of ISO's controversial decision to grant fast-track approval to Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format, the national bodies of several participating countries attempted to appeal the vote. The formal complaints submitted to ISO by these countries will now be reviewed by a Technical Management Board (TMB), which has until August to decide whether further action should be taken.

Microsoft has warned of a potential vulnerability in Word that has reportedly been the subject of targeted attacks.

Every once in a while, an article gets posted somewhere in the blogosphere about how Microsoft needs to release a complete Windows rewrite, something along the lines of what Apple did with Mac OS X. Most people realize that Microsoft is in no position to pull a stunt like that at the moment; it's hard to see Microsoft phasing out support for a billion-Windows-PC-strong user base, but that day may one day come, perhaps thanks to robust virtualization technology.

Microsoft issued a security advisory on Monday warning about targeted attacks being launched that exploit a hole in the ActiveX control for the Snapshot Viewer in the Microsoft Access database management system.

Google is making its Google Talk instant-messaging application available for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, however these new applications come in light of new security scares.

Windows Update infrastructure updates occur usually about once a year. Starting at the end of July, and continuing over the next few months, Microsoft will be rolling out this year's infrastructure update to Windows Update. Like all updates to Windows Update, this one consists of two parts: the back-end infrastructure that supports the service and the client-side code. This year's update will improve how quickly Windows Update scans for updates and how quickly the user receives signature updates. Microsoft claims that on certain computers scan times will decrease by almost 20 percent.

In its monthly advance notice the weekend before the second Tuesday of the month, Microsoft said it will only be addressing four security issues this time around, two dealing with Windows. But a surprisingly big Vista bug fix is under way.

Barclays Bank is to offer its two million online customers free security software.

Microsoft said on Monday that it is offering a new licensing option, dubbed 'Select Plus' and targeted largely at medium-sized firms.