Adobe on Monday announced an extension to its Photoshop product line designed to organize and share photos on a PC. Dubbed Photoshop Album, the new application joins other one-stop solutions for digital camera owners, such as Apple's iPhoto.

Photoshop Album takes photos from a camera, scanner, or CD and uses a tagging system to categorize photos by date and customized keywords. Users can then assemble slide shows or photo albums, and even create cards and calendars.

Continue reading →

The Beta 2 release of the next version of Microsoft's Exchange messaging and personal information software was made available to the public on Monday. The long-awaited upgrade, code-named Titanium was also christened with an official title: Exchange Server 2003.

In order to push early adoption, customers may download Beta 2 free of charge. To ease the upgrade process even further, Exchange Server 2003 will coexist with Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000 environments. Although Microsoft has deployed Exchange Server 2003 internally, the company does not recommend utilizing the beta in a production environment.

Continue reading →

In a preliminary injunction handed down Monday by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz, Microsoft was ordered to carry Sun Microsystem's latest Java revision in Windows. Microsoft had dropped Java support in Windows XP, citing previous litigation from Sun, and made available an outdated Java release via Windows Update.

The injunction comes as part of a $1 billion private antitrust lawsuit filed by Sun against Microsoft last March.

Continue reading →

In a single security bulletin issued late Wednesday, Microsoft disclosed eight new security vulnerabilities discovered in its java virtual machine. Build 5.0.3805 and older are at risk, containing one flaw rated "critical," two "important," two "moderate" and three classified as "low" severity.

The critical vulnerability stems from the ability of an un-trusted Java applet to access COM objects, which control many Windows functions. According to the bulletin, "This would enable the attacker to take any desired action on the user's system; for instance, the attacker could add, delete or change data on the user's system; communicate with web sites; load and run programs; reformat the hard drive, and so forth."

Continue reading →

The pcAnywhere group at Symantec is hard at work on the next release of the company's PC remote control software and has opened the beta program to some corporate customers. The pcAnywhere 11.0 beta is currently available to select small, medium and large businesses, but Symantec may later open the test to individuals.

"The Symantec pcAnywhere team invites you to participate in the Symantec Enterprise Development Alliance Program (EDAP)," reads a notice in the pcAnywhere newsletter. "As an EDAP participant, you will have the opportunity to provide technical feedback during pcAnywhere 11.0 corporate beta cycles. You will be provided information about the project, instructions on obtaining the beta build(s), and a dedicated project email address to submit comments and feedback."

Continue reading →

Continuing efforts it began last July with the release of the Helix DNA Client, RealNetworks this week opened the source code to Helix DNA Producer, the company's tool for creating RealAudio and RealVideo content.

Developers can use the source code to build content creation applications for any operating system using any media format such as QuickTime and Windows Media. Support for RealAudio, RealVideo and Ogg Vorbis is natively included with Helix DNA Producer.

Continue reading →

Microsoft announced on Monday an upcoming set of developer tools, code-named "Visual Studio Tools for Office," which enable the creation of applications that run in Microsoft Word and Excel. Developers will be able to write code in Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# that executes behind documents and takes advantage of Office 11's XML support.

"Microsoft is focused on creating great opportunities for developers, and 'Visual Studio Tools for Office' enables developers to build solutions that provide an intuitive end-user experience," said Microsoft's vice president of the Developer Platform and Evangelism Division, Tom Button. "With .NET-connected software and the power of Office, developers can create a broad range of applications that span from devices to datacenter servers, and now to Office."

Continue reading →

To get into the spirit of the holidays, Microsoft has released special "Fun Packs" for Windows XP featuring winter-themed skins, sounds and templates. The three Fun Packs integrate with Windows Media Player 9 Series and Movie Maker 2 betas, along with Internet Explorer 6.

Windows Media Player 9 Series Winter Fun Pack adds new Ginger Man and Ice skins, winter visualizations, and holiday themed Auto Playlists that use the Smart Jukebox feature.

Continue reading →

AOL this month debuted in beta form a standalone e-mail client bundled with a new version of AOL Instant Messenger and an address book, a package collectively dubbed AOL Communicator.

Code-named Photon, Communicator has been in development for close to two years, although AOL has made no decisions on how to market the product. But sources say a faction of the company is pushing for Communicator to succeed Netscape, which has all but disappeared from users' screens.

Continue reading →

Sun Microsystems announced a program to give customers an early look at the next version of its Solaris 9 operating system for Intel processors, due out in December.

New features in Solaris 9 include improved performance using an enhanced threading library and the ability to utilize additional CPU resources. Sun has upped the operating system's security with Kerberos 5 and Secure Shell for administrators. A new Solaris Volume Manager will enable easy setup and maintenance of complicated disk arrays. Sun has also integrated its Sun ONE Directory Server into Solaris 9 x86 for LDAP services.

Continue reading →

Macromedia on Monday announced the latest addition to its MX product line, an enhanced version of the company's Director multimedia authoring tool. Director MX includes seamless integration with Flash MX and sports the same new user interface found in Macromedia's other MX products.

Macromedia Director enables developers to create rich multimedia presentations across numerous mediums including the Internet, which can be accessed using Macromedia's Shockwave Player. Users can build content experiences utilizing audio, images, text and more. Director can even stream full-length videos using QuickTime, RealVideo, or AVI formats.

Continue reading →

Prompted by a report from security company Foundstone, Microsoft on Wednesday issued a security bulletin and patch for a buffer overrun vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer. The flaw actually lies in the Microsoft Data Access Components package, which is installed by default on Windows Me and Windows 2000, but MDAC is utilized by IE for remote database connectivity.

All versions of Windows running IE 5.01 and higher are potentially at risk - except Windows XP. If successfully exploited using a Web page or HTML e-mail, the buffer overrun could give an attacker complete control over an IIS server or client system running Internet Explorer.

Continue reading →

An internal alpha build of Microsoft's next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, made its way onto Internet sites early Tuesday. The leaked build, which is numbered 3683, appears to be from late September and sports quite a few new feature concepts - although many are not yet functional.

Microsoft experienced a similar leak during the alpha stages of Windows XP, then code-named Whistler.

Continue reading →

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Bill Gates announced at COMDEX Fall 2002 that the first Windows Powered Smart Displays, a technology formerly code-named Mira, will debut on January 8, 2003. ViewSonic will be the first manufacturer to bring the product to market and is accepting pre-orders for its airpanel V110 and V150 Smart Displays.

The wireless touch-screen LCD monitors run Windows CE for Smart Displays and enable a user to work on a PC from anywhere in the home. Along with ViewSonic, Microsoft partners creating Smart Displays include NEC, Fujitsu, Philips, LG Electronics and National Semiconductor.

Continue reading →

For the third time since the product entered beta testing, Microsoft has pushed back the release of Windows .NET Server 2003. The news was delivered at COMDEX Fall 2002, where testers expected Redmond to debut Release Candidate 2. But RC2 has been moved to December, and the final release of Microsoft's next-generation Windows server will not hit store shelves until April 2003.

Windows .NET Server was originally on a concurrent release track with Windows XP. Microsoft planned to ship a final build before 2001 drew to a close, but the release was moved to early 2002 when development fell behind. Release to manufacturing was again rescheduled last April to the end of this year due to delays caused by a security review. The new timeline now places RTM in early 2003.

Continue reading →