According to a report in Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper, Apple is planning to bring its iTunes Music Store across the Pacific and target the largely untapped Japanese music market. The new iTunes store would offer 100,000 tracks - making it Japan's largest music download service. Apple recently expanded its European reach with stores tailored for 12 different countries, and the iTunes Music Store for Canada is expected to launch soon.

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Despite media reports and industry pundits over the years relegating Netscape to Internet history books, AOL has restarted the browser's development. The company plans to bring back a refreshed Netscape browser based on Firefox, which will incorporate an enhanced user interface and several new features.

A prototype of the new Netscape will debut on November 30 to a limited number of beta testers, AOL told BetaNews.

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Through a partnership with GarageBand.com, MSN Music has begun offering users free legal downloads from independent musicians. Initially, 150,000 songs will be made available, which comprise the former MP3.com archive. More tracks from GarageBand.com will be added in the coming months, Microsoft says. In addition, a GarageBand.com page on MSN Music will showcase five up-and-coming musicians. Microsoft is the first major online music store to open its doors to unsigned artists.

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Microsoft has made a minority investment in Linux management firm Vintela, sources say. Microsoft Watch, which broke the story, reports that the two companies are working together Microsoft's Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to add interoperability with Unix platforms. ADFS, code-named "TrustBridge," will arrive with Windows Server R2 in late 2005. Vintela is also developing a plug-in to Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, which the company unveiled today at IT Forum 2004 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

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Editor's Note: This is part two of a two-part interview. In part one, Schare discusses what changes to expect in Internet Explorer and how Microsoft views the release of Firefox 1.0.

With no major updates to Internet Explorer scheduled until Longhorn arrives in 2006, Microsoft has found itself having to evangelize the current merits of IE while competition heats up from newcomers such as Firefox.

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In the first step to encouraging broader support of its DomainKeys anti-spam technology, Yahoo! has announced it will integrate the e-mail authentication method into its Web-based e-mail. DomainKeys uses public and private keys to verify the origin of an e-mail, requiring both the sender and recipient mail servers to utilize the technology. Thus far, Earthlink and Google have said they will adopt DomainKeys, but giants AOL and Microsoft are backing alternate anti-spam proposals - namely SPF and Sender ID.

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Editor's Note: This is part one of a two-part interview. In part two, BetaNews asks more questions including what browser interface Schare himself uses; surprisingly it's not IE.

With no major updates to Internet Explorer scheduled until Longhorn arrives in 2006, Microsoft has found itself having to evangelize the current merits of IE while competition heats up from newcomers such as Firefox.

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Although a final release of the next Windows Server, code-named "R2," won't debut until late 2005, Microsoft partners are being briefed on what's to come.

R2 is slated to be a fairly minor interim release between Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Longhorn Server, which is not expected until 2007. But the upgrade will include some new functionality along with the base service pack and security updates.

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UPDATED America Online has begun to notify customers in nine Southern states that it will cease its broadband Internet service on January 17, 2005.

The change affects members who have been receiving a bundle of DSL connectivity and AOL. Current customers must find a new broadband carrier by the cutoff date, or they will automatically become standard AOL dial-up members. AOL cited lower prices as a primary reason for abandoning its DSL package.

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Despite reports to the contrary, Microsoft has confirmed to BetaNews that it has made no changes to its Windows Genuine Advantage program to lock out users with invalid or pirated keys.

"We need to be very clear, Microsoft has no plans to lock users out of their PCs, nor does it have the technical capacity to do so," David Lazar, Director of Genuine Windows at Microsoft, told BetaNews.

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Coinciding with the preview of Microsoft's new MSN Search, Google has announced its search index has nearly doubled to a massive 8 billion documents. The company says users will now find more results on obscure topics that previously returned just a handful of Web pages. The new index places Google's search scope far beyond its rivals, but as Google V.P. of Engineering Bill Coughran notes, "The real test is how well we do in finding what you want from within those pages. We'll keep improving that too."

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UPDATED Microsoft has unveiled a revamped beta version of MSN Search, which utilizes Redmond's own algorithmic search engine. MSN Search previously provided a front end for Yahoo! results, but last February, Microsoft committed considerable resources to develop in-house technology entirely from scratch.

Touting over 5 billion indexed Web documents, Microsoft says its search results are updated weekly, or even daily. The search can answer direct questions through Microsoft Encarta, and the company has also integrated MSN content such as music into results.

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Google has begun to roll out "e-mail portability" to its Gmail accounts, which enables users to download and send messages over POP3 using any external e-mail client. The added feature is the latest move by Google to ramp up its free service and better compete with giants Yahoo! and Microsoft. Gmail's initial offer of massive storage space was soon matched by its e-mail rivals, but Yahoo! currently charges for POP3 access and MSN recently abandoned the feature due to abuse. E-mail portability is expected to be available to all Gmail users within two weeks.

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The last members of the original Winamp team have said goodbye to AOL and the door has all but shut on the Nullsoft era, BetaNews has learned.

Only a few employees remain to prop up the once-ubiquitous digital audio player with minor updates, but no further improvements to Winamp are expected.

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The day has finally arrived for the Mozilla Foundation and its sleep-deprived developers; Firefox 1.0 is out the door, ready to make its official debut. Billed as a faster, more secure alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Firefox has already garnered rave reviews and ignited the browser war flames once again.

Firefox is built upon the open source Mozilla platform, with a focus on usability and security. The browser brings to the table innovative features such as tabbed browsing and extensions, which take Firefox beyond its core functionality. More than 100 extensions are available to serve a variety of purposes ranging from "skinning" the browser to checking spelling, or even searching through eBay listings.

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