Symbian, maker of mobile phone software, has announced it will license synchronization software from Microsoft, swallowing its pride and shaking hands with its Redmond rival. The company hopes to bring corporate customers that use Microsoft Exchange for e-mail over to Symbian-based smartphones.

The synchronization tools will be made available to Symbian licensees, which include Nokia and Fujitsu. Symbian already supports RIM's Blackberry Connect and Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronization protocols.

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Following in the footsteps of Mozilla and Opera, Apple has issued its monthly Mac OS X security update with a fix for the spoofing vulnerability caused by Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). Apple's Safari Web browser will now only display URL characters from an approved list, which can be customized by the user.

The problem with IDN -- uncovered in early February -- stems from its use of the Unicode character set to enable domain names that include international letters. Unicode URLs must be converted by a Web browser into a format called "Punycode," which opens the door for a malicious Web site to mimic a trusted URL, including its SSL security certificate.

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Quickly responding to news that three programmers discovered a way to download songs from the iTunes Music Store stripped of their digital rights management protections, Apple has updated its software to block the hack. Legitimate customers must now upgrade to iTunes version 4.7 to continue using the service.

"The security hole in the iTunes Music Store which was recently exploited has been closed, and as a consequence the iTunes Music Store will now sell music only to customers using iTunes version 4.7," Apple said in a statement. The rogue software, called PyMusique, was partly developed by Jon Lech Johansen, who is known for breaking the copy protection used in DVDs.

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Microsoft officials acknowledged on Monday that the releases of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 have slipped yet again. The updates are now slated to ship towards the end of the year. Such a delay was largely expected after the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio 2005 missed the VSLive! Conference in February.

Development of the new Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005, code-named "Whidbey" and "Yukon" respectively, has been fraught with delays. Microsoft originally planned for a 2004 launch, but moved the roadmap into early 2005 last year. As recent as January, Microsoft was stating Whidbey would ship by summertime.

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Microsoft has expanded its Shared Source Initiative to seven additional European Union Countries, opening up the Windows source code to more businesses, OEMs, MVPs and academic institutions. Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia have joined the program, which shares Windows 2000, XP, CE and Windows Server 2003 code.

"Transparency leads to greater trust and opportunity," said Jason Matusow, director of the Shared Source Initiative at Microsoft. "Over the past four years we have constantly looked for ways to expand the Shared Source Initiative - across technologies, licence types and geographies to better listen to what our customers and partners are asking of us."

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Just days after announcing its plans to launch a blog service called 360, Yahoo confirmed it has purchased online photo sharing site Flickr. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Flickr will be integrated into the Yahoo Network, and many of its features brought to Yahoo Photos.

Flickr, currently in beta, allows users to upload their digital photos and place comments and tags within pictures, which become "Flickrized." The service is also tightly integrated with the so-called blogosphere, enabling users to easily post their Flickrized photos onto Web logs.

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From Apple to Microsoft, desktop widgets -- or small applications that display information such as weather or stock quotes -- are on everyone's mind. Both companies are slated to include such functionality in their next operating systems, but Stardock has taken the idea one step further with DesktopX 3.0.

Stardock, known for its Windows customization software such as WindowBlinds, this week launched the third generation of its DesktopX platform. The new release is being billed not only a as way to extend the Windows desktop, but also as a rapid development tool for designing stand-alone programs Stardock calls "Gadgets."

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At the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego Tuesday, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos introduced a new initiative to standardize search results. The goal, says Bezos, is to bring together thousands of specialized search engines using an open format that can be easily syndicated.

The first results of Amazon's OpenSearch effort have begun to take shape on its A9.com search engine. The site includes over 35 searches from other sites, including the New York Times and photo site Flickr, which can appear as columns alongside normal Web searches.

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Joining the ranks of Google and Yahoo in their efforts to monetize Web searches, Microsoft has announced a new platform for advertisers dubbed MSN adCenter. The first component of the program will be paid listings on the company's MSN Search, which will replace those currently powered by Yahoo in some markets.

Eventually, Microsoft plans to roll out MSN adCenter to most of its Web properties and provide a one-stop shop for advertisers to manage their campaigns. MSN is taking a slightly more targeted approach than its rivals, allowing advertisers to tailor their keyword buys to specific user information, including age, gender and location.

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A U.S. federal judge has sentenced a Louisiana man to six months in prison and another six months of home detention for sending malicious e-mails to 20 WebTV users. The e-mails caused the WebTV device to change its phone number to 911, forcing police officers to be dispatched on at least ten occasions.

The 44 year-old David Jeansonne pleaded guilty to the charges last month, which included intentionally damaging computers and causing a public safety threat. Jeansonne sent the e-mails in 2002, according to officials. Microsoft's WebTV has since been renamed MSN TV.

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In recent months, Microsoft's MSN online services arm has released several products that it sees as "very cool." Most of them, however, have received a lukewarm reception by both early adopters and the media, leaving some MSN employees frustrated and confused as to what exactly they are doing wrong.

An internal debate began within Microsoft after veteran engineer turned Google employee Mark Lucovsky wrote in his Web log that Microsoft no longer knew how to "ship" software. He noted that work from Microsoft engineers could take years to reach customers while "software as a service" companies such as Amazon and Google deliver improvements overnight.

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Microsoft's MSN unit is testing what it calls an "incubation experiment" of a new "start" page for Web browsers. The site, located at Start.com, serves as an aggregator for RSS feeds and allows users to custom tailor its content.

The project comes as MSN properties struggle to change a lackluster brand image brought on by fast-moving rivals such as Google. MSN employees recently called on users to give their opinions on what the company can do to improve its perception among early adopters and the media.

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As expected, the European Commission dropped its review of Microsoft's proposed purchase of digital rights management company ContentGuard and officials announced Tuesday the acquisition was complete. Microsoft, Time Warner and Thomson will each take a one-third stake in the company and appoint two seats on ContentGuard's board.

"We all worked closely and constructively with the European Commission throughout this process and are pleased to reach this resolution," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's General Counsel. "Content Guard will help promote broader access to DRM technologies that will benefit businesses and consumers in Europe and around the world."

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Research In Motion announced Monday it has inked deals with America Online and Yahoo to bring instant messaging to its BlackBerry wireless platform. RIM will pre-install full color, graphical IM clients for AIM, ICQ and Yahoo IM networks in the coming months to enable chatting while on the go.

RIM has joined AOL's Mobile Developer Platform to create a fully branded mobile AIM and ICQ interface, and says it will also give BlackBerry users access to AOL Mail via the device. Current BlackBerry users will be able to download the new applications free of charge, the company says.

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The U.S. government will join select partners of Microsoft in receiving security patches up to a month before they become generally available. The early-access program, already available to some customers, provides beta test versions of patches so customers can be prepared when vulnerabilities are publicly disclosed.

Microsoft signed a $500 million software deal with the Air Force last year, which stipulated that the Air Force will join the Security Update Validation Program and test patches before they are officially released. In turn, the military will become a beta tester for Microsoft's updates.

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