Ed Oswald

AOL on Monday release a free software-based virus scanning service powered by technology from Kaspersky Labs. The software includes technology to enable real-time scanning of files and e-mail, and would update automatically each hour.

Called Active Virus Shield, the product is available for download starting today. It arrives as part of AOL's new initiative to provide its products at no cost to users. "With so many consumers online with inadequate security safeguards, it is time to make things like virus protection a fundamental right, not a risk," Digital Services president John McKinley said.

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AOL's decision to release search data on 20 million searches performed over a three-month period is receiving criticism from across the Internet, and is renewing calls for greater privacy when it comes to Web searches. The data first appeared about ten days ago on the company's research site, but was not discovered until the weekend.

While the identities of the users were scrambled to protect AOL users, it is still possible to see what users were searching for by searching for that scrambled identity. This could include searches for personal information on the Internet, some say.

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Ahead of the start of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, virtualization software maker VMware announced a new product that will allow Intel Macs to virtually run any x86 operating system. The company said it plans to demo the product during the conference.

VMware is a little late to the party, however. Intel Macs have been out for nearly a year, and competing virtualization software maker Parallels released software that allows Windows and other x86-based operating systems to be run within Mac OS X. VMware says it is responding to demand.

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Google said Monday that it had signed an agreement with MTV Networks that will allow the search engine to distribute ad-supported content from the network to Web site publishers via Google Video. Through this program, Web sites will be permitted to showcase clips of programming from various MTV properties at no-charge.

Testing of the service will begin later this month. The agreement marks several firsts: it is the first time video would be transmitted over Google's AdSense network, while also the first time MTV-owned video would be permitted to be show on sites outside of the company's own network.

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The company behind the file sharing program LimeWire was sued by the RIAA in federal court Friday, which is accusing the New York-based Lime Group LLC of facilitating the trade of illegal music files between its users. The labels are seeking damages, including $150,000 per occurrence of an illegally traded file.

RIAA claims that LimeWire's business model allows it to profit from the piracy trade, and its failure to block copyright content is a sign that the company is actively encouraging its users to pirate music. "Defendants not only have known of the infringement, but have promoted and relied upon it to build their business," it said in the complaint.

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Google officially launched a feature Friday that will alert users of its search engine when they visit a site suspected of distributing badware. The service is a partnership between Google and StopBadware.org, an organization aimed at stopping the spread of malicious software.

Before accessing the offending page, a page will list what issues StopBadware had uncovered in its own investigation of the page. Additionally, the page will offer the owners of the page suggestions on how to have the page removed from the organizations list.

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Likely thought by many to be harmless, security researchers are now warning that RSS feeds can be used to launch attacks against unprotected computers. Hackers could insert malicious JavaScript in the feeds, which in turn would be delivered to the user.

The comments were made during a presentation at the Black Hat convention in Las Vegas, a yearly meeting of both hackers and security researchers. SPI Dynamics Security Engineer Robert Auger said that the issue could potentially affect any such information feed.

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Microsoft was criticized by users of its Windows Live Spaces blogging service after the company encountered several problems that locked some out of their sites for as long as a day after its release.

"We know we disappointed a bunch of you with the issues we had in our rollout last night," Spaces program manager Greg Phipps said in a blog post Wednesday. "We had a bunch of people working hard and late last night to address these issues that did not show up in any of our test environments."

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ABC's broadband video player will make a return this fall, albeit with a few changes, the company told Reuters Friday. Several more programs are planned to be added to those originally featured in the service. While "Alias" and "Commander in Chief" have been cancelled, "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" will remain.

Exactly what shows will be included was not disclosed, however one of the network's comedies and several dramas from ABC's new fall lineup could make an appearance. Also, more commercials will be added, although ABC says the amount in each stream would not increase significantly.

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Microsoft said Thursday that it would release twelve patches as part of its August Patch Tuesday, with ten of them intended for Windows and two fixing issues in Microsoft Office. Both groups of patches are expected to have at least one "critical" issue.

Patches for Microsoft's flagship productivity suite have become a regular occurrence as a bevy of zero-day attacks have surfaced in recent months. The most recent was a PowerPoint exploit that appeared shortly after the July patch release.

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Book publisher HarperCollins said Thursday it was launching a feature on its site called "Browse Inside," which would allow visitors to peer inside the works of some of its most notable authors. The company initially announced last year that it planned to digitize its catalog of books.

The company already allows prospective book buyers to read portions of its books through Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, however the new effort is a completely in-house initiative. By controlling the digitization, HarperCollins would also control how the books are is distributed.

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Napster disclosed that it is struggling to keep paying users Wednesday, saying it lost 7 percent of its subscriber base as it promotes the free portion of its site. In a conference call, Napster CEO Chris Gorog said it expected to continue to bleed users as some opt for the no-cost option.

Also in an abrupt turnaround from comments made in late January, Gorog said Napster did not "have its head in the sand" regarding a sale of the company. Several companies are expressing interest in Napster, and executives are "carefully" considering the risks and benefits.

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Apple's battle to keep its digital rights management system closed continued on Thursday as the French "iTunes Law" took effect. Norway also indicated that it was not happy with the response it received from the Cupertino company regarding opening up iTunes.

The Constitutional Council found portions of the French bill unconstitutional last week. The government accepted the changes and French president Jacques Chirac signed it into law earlier this week.

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Yahoo released a new version of its online music service Wednesday, merging its Yahoo! Music Engine and MusicMatch applications into a single program called Yahoo! Music Jukebox. which Yahoo acquired MusicMatch in 2004.

Among the enhancements to the software include a new equalizer, as well as improved playlist and usability enhancements. Popular features from MusicMatch Jukebox have been seamlessly integrated into the Yahoo product, the company said.

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In a unanimous decision, the Federal Trade Commission found memory chip maker Rambus liable for monopolizing the market through its conduct concerning four memory technologies that were used in dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.

The FTC found Rambus withheld information from the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council, a standards group.

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