Ed Oswald

One spammer's misfortune could be an Internet user's dream as AOL plans to give away a fully-loaded Hummer H2 and nearly $100,000 in cash and gold bars. The online service received the loot through a provision in the CAN-SPAM act, which allows courts to seize property obtained through profits from the sending of unsolicited e-mails.

In addition to seizing the spammer's assets, AOL also won a $13 million judgment against the company, and will donate the seized computer equipment to schools in Northern Virginia.

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An error in the file that patched several critical vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer on Wednesday prevented users from installing the update, causing Microsoft to remove the patch for a period of time while the problem was fixed, according to representatives of the company.

"Shortly after we released the updates this morning we found that several of the Internet Explorer updates provided only to the Download Center were corrupted, breaking the digital signature and preventing them from installing," a post on the IEBlog read.

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Google News has introduced RSS feeds as a way for users to receive headlines shown on its pages through a feed reader, or for headlines to be integrated into e-mail and Web applications.

Google is offering three types of feeds: one feed that will aggregate all the headlines in a section, a feed based on search terms, and a feed that is based on customization the user may have made to a Google News page.

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Sources close to discussions between Chinese e-commerce site alibaba.com on Wednesday said Yahoo is very close to paying $1 billion for a 35 percent stake in the company. An announcement is expected within 24 hours according to reports.

Alibaba runs business-to-business auctions where foreign companies and individuals sell their products at wholesale to customers. Alibaba also has an eBay-like consumer component, taobao.com, which the company claims is the most popular e-commerce site on the Web in China.

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Microsoft released six security patches Tuesday as part of its monthly initiative to fix vulnerabilities within the Windows operating system. Three of the vulnerabilities have been marked "critical," one "important," and two as "moderate" in severity.

One of the critical software patches fixes a flaw within the print spooler that could allow for remote code to be executed.

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UPDATED A public interest lawyer who is also intending to run as a Republican in the 2006 Illinois gubernatorial race is taking his fight to Microsoft in hopes of preventing the company from releasing what he calls "bad code."

Andy Martin of The Committee to Fight Microsoft on Tuesday announced his intentions to block Microsoft from releasing Windows Vista. Martin intends to ask Microsoft for an unconditional warranty that the operating system is free of bugs that could result in security vulnerabilities.

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Sunbelt on Monday advised computer users to ensure that they are running an outbound firewall to prevent themselves from becoming victims of a massive identity theft ring that is gathering personal information from "thousands of machines" according to the company's research.

The FBI is also stepping in, and is currently looking through data sent to it by Sunbelt.

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Apple Canada announced on Monday that it would happily refund money collected for a tax imposed on iPods and other similar digital music devices. This comes after a Thursday Canadian Supreme Court ruling sided with a lower court that overturned the tax late last year.

A fee of anywhere from $2 for under 1GB to $25 for over 10GB capacity was placed on digital music players from December 2003 to December 2004 under the law, which had been successfully lobbied for by the Canadian music industry. "Apple is pleased that the Supreme Court of Canada let stand a lower court ruling that blank media levies on iPods are invalid," the company said in a statement.

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PalmSource, the company behind the Palm OS, and MontaVista, maker of Linux telecommunications software, announced on Tuesday they would join forces to develop mobile phones based on Linux. While the two companies will not be producing the hardware themselves, they will use their combined expertise to create solutions for vendors to build Linux handsets.

Albert Chu, vice president at PalmSource, said the agreement demonstrates' the company's commitment to allow its Palm OS to run atop Linux. "Partnering with MontaVista will enable faster time to market for our mutual customers who want to deliver compelling, cost effective Linux-based mobile phone solutions."

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Microsoft on Tuesday said it had reached a settlement agreement with Scott Richter, more commonly known as the "Spam King." As part of the agreement, Richter and his company, OptInRealBig.com, will pay over $7 million in damages to Microsoft and have agreed to change their mailing practices.

In 2003, Richter was sued by New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer, who at the time said that within a two-month period special e-mail addresses set up to catch spam received over 8,000 messages containing over 40,000 fraudulent statements. Spitzer called Richter one of the three biggest spammers in the world at that time.

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Yahoo on Monday officially released version 7 of its popular Yahoo! Messenger that will enables users to both search the Web and make telephone calls without leaving the client. Analysts say the new release is aimed at attracting and retaining a youthful user base for Yahoo's IM network.

A beta release of the new version first debuted in May.

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Macromedia on Monday announced an updated version of its suite of multimedia creation tools -- dubbed Studio 8 -- heralding the first overhaul of its product line in two years. The suite includes its Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, as well as the Contribute and FlashPaper products.

Also announced was a public pre-release of the Flash 8 Player, which Macromedia calls a major update to the technology.

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AOL on Monday announced its second acquisition in as many weeks after buying privately held Wildseed, Ltd. for an undisclosed sum. The Washington based company was founded by Microsoft veteran and DirectX pioneer Eric Engstrom, and most recently marketed a phone to teens that could display content based on the faceplate attached.

AOL says it does not intend to market phone operating systems with Wildseed technology, however it plans to investigate how to allow users to access AOL features easier from mobile phones. "Wildseed's advanced technologies will help AOL enhance the value of its wireless properties," said Craig Eisler, head of the newly formed AOL Wireless division.

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Without much fanfare, MSN last week released a preview version of MSN Filter, a service based on MSN Spaces that has been described as a cross between a blog and a wiki.

"MSN Filter is a collection of community-driven blogs built on the MSN Spaces platform," lead Program Manager for MSN Spaces Mike Torres said.

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By all accounts, it appears as if the launch of Apple's iTunes Music Store in Japan has been a success. Apple on Sunday announced that the music store had sold one million tracks in just four days - the best start for any of its 20 international music stores.

In comparison, it took the United States version of the store a full week to hit one million downloads.

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