With a slew of new products planned, digital media firm SONICblue is looking for beta testers to trial their next generation hardware. Because some of the beta programs run concurrently, the company is looking to build a large pool of testers of all types - not just those with tech savvy.

Upcoming beta tests could potentially include SONICblue's replayTV line, OEM versions of Rio flash memory players, the Rio Riot hard disk player and multiple Go-Video products.

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Redmond today unveiled the Federated Security and Identity Roadmap outlining plans for standards-based security in Microsoft products, and announced an upcoming set of technologies code-named "TrustBridge" that will enable the sharing of user identity information between applications and organizations.

TrustBridge technologies will run on Windows .NET Server and build upon Web services protocols including the WS-Security specification introduced in April.

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Microsoft on Wednesday made available to testers the first beta of Service Pack 1 for Windows XP Home and Professional editions. Company officials downplayed reports of a radical upgrade, calling SP1 "in most ways a traditional service pack" that is slated to include security fixes, compatibility updates and new drivers issued since XP's launch last October. Over 10,000 beta testers will be given access to download the SP1 beta starting today.

"Of note, included in the security updates will be fixes developed during the security push done by the entire Windows division as part of Microsoft's renewed emphasis on security for customers," a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews. "In addition to these traditional elements, Microsoft is fulfilling its commitment to implement the changes required by the consent decree signed with the Department of Justice and nine settling states."

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Centercode is looking for people to beta test an innovative and new storage product designed for operation with USB 2.0. Applicants must have USB 2.0 support embedded on the motherboard or via adapter card. The next-generation USB connection increases available bandwidth for devices to 480Mbps, thus making the technology ideal for attached storage. Testers must run Windows 98 or later, or Mac OS 8.6 or later.

Qualified applicants must:

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An announcement that has sent many venturing outside to look for the passing pig, mozilla.org today released the final version of Mozilla 1.0. In development for over four years, the open source cross-platform browser suite was built by a community of thousands of programmers. At the core of Mozilla lies Gecko, a powerful rendering engine that is already used in many third party applications. A notice on the Mozilla Web site summed up what the masses have been waiting to hear: "Stick a fork in it. It's done."

Mozilla includes a Web browser, e-mail reader and chat client. It additionally serves as a cross-platform toolkit that can be utilized by developers to create Internet-centric applications - from Web browsers to anything that uses HTML or XML. Netscape, the company that founded mozilla.org, has based its own browser around the open source project and Netscape version 7.0 will mark the commercial release of Mozilla 1.0.

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Despite ongoing negotiations with MPEG LA over MPEG-4 licensing fees, Apple on Tuesday issued a Public Preview of QuickTime 6 - the first mainstream media player to support MPEG-4. For both Windows and Mac, the beta includes instant-on streaming and support for AAC, the next generation MPEG-4 audio format.

"QuickTime 6 delivers the world's first complete media solution for creating, streaming and viewing MPEG-4 content," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in the announcement. "MPEG-4 is an open standard being adopted by wireless, computer and entertainment companies around the world because it delivers the highest quality digital video, and allows content creators to scale the quality/bandwidth tradeoff all the way from MPEG-2 quality to dramatically lower bandwidths for streaming over the Internet."

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Microsoft today released the second beta of the Java Language Conversion Assistant (JLCA), designed to automate conversion of Java source code to its .NET-based C# language. Microsoft hopes to ease the transition for Java developers looking to build XML Web services by migrating existing language syntax and library calls. Redmond has been working hard to lure developers away from Sun's Java technology and establish .NET as the dominant platform for Web services.

"Microsoft is committed to providing a path for developers to build XML Web services in the programming language of their choice," said Tom Button, Microsoft's vice president of the Developer Platform, in today's announcement.

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DirectX 9.0 Beta 1 made its long awaited debut this week, with Microsoft issuing the release to partners and beta testers. The Beta 1 SDK download was made available last weekend, with the end-user runtime appearing Friday via Web-based setup. DirectX is Microsoft's suite of application programming interfaces used by developers to take full advantage of Windows' multimedia capabilities.

Version 9.0 most notably adds a new high-level shader language -- based on C -- designed to simplify development.

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In order to better meet the needs of business customers and promote enterprise adoption of the open operating system, Linux vendors Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, and Turbolinux announced Thursday they would team up to create a unified Linux distribution dubbed UnitedLinux. Each company will market UnitedLinux with added services under its own brand, but all derivatives will contain a common core - meaning hardware and software vendors need only certify on a single version.

Absent from the coalition is Red Hat, the largest Linux distributor, but the group said it has sent an invitation to the market leader. The four founding companies will be the only ones initially involved in development, however. "We want as many Linux distributors to join this effort as possible. That means not just Red Hat but also Mandrake, Red Flag and all the others around the globe," reads the UnitedLinux Web page.

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The consumer division in Network Associates' McAfee Business Unit on Thursday announced the first public beta release of its consumer products line, which includes the popular McAfee VirusScan suite. The company has opened participation to all interested parties, and is also looking for suggestions from testers as it revamps the beta program.

The list of betas includes McAfee VirusScan Home Edition 7.0, McAfee VirusScan Professional Edition 7.0, McAfee Internet Security 5.0, McAfee Firewall 4.0, and McAfee QuickClean 3.0. Each program is expected to run until mid-July and contain two beta phases and a release candidate. Release notes are available, along with a "Getting Started Guide" for those not familiar with the product.

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After a long break between releases, Microsoft on Tuesday issued the Windows 2000 SP3 Release Candidate, marked build 3.140. The long awaited update weighs in at 17MB and 30MB for Professional and Server versions of the operating system, respectively.

This third service pack for Windows 2000 began beta testing late last year, and was originally slated to be a maintenance release including no new features. However, SP3 will end up as quite a significant update, adding support for Automatic Updates and a new configuration pane to comply with Microsoft's antitrust settlement with the Department of Justice and nine states.

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Zone Labs, known for the popular ZoneAlarm firewall, is seeking additional beta testers and is offering prizes as an incentive to bug hunters. Two top testers for the month of June will each receive a $500 gift certificate from Amazon.com.

The company is specifically looking for individuals with a minimum level of software and operating system expertise, and experience with multiple versions of ZoneAlarm. Testers must be willing to submit bug reports, be comfortable with editing the registry, and be able to reinstall the operating system if need be.

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Set to debut in Fall of this year, Xbox Live will enter beta testing this summer and a select few will be chosen for the trial. Xbox Live is Microsoft's upcoming online subscription service for the Xbox gaming console, which is slated to feature services that potentially go beyond online gaming. Testers will be given early access to Xbox Live services and pre-release Xbox games. Microsoft has opened sign-ups for those interested in being involved in the beta test program.

Making heavy use of broadband, Xbox Live will utilize a headset, dubbed the Xbox Live Communicator, not a keyboard or mouse. Match-making will be a prominent feature, allowing gamers to make friends and find other players with similar interests. The ability to instantly switch between games is also rumored to be a key inclusion.

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Over four months after it originally removed PowerToys for Windows XP from download, Microsoft developers have finally released the long awaited update to the popular tools. PowerToys are a group of small applications that add extra functionality to Windows XP by taking advantage of hidden settings.

A Microsoft spokesperson at the time cited the need to make minor improvements as the reason for pulling PowerToys and promised an update in the spring. However, Windows enthusiasts are sure to be disappointed by this latest release, as it lacks many of the tools that made its predecessor such a hit.

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In a major step towards broad adoption of the company's media codecs, Microsoft announced Tuesday that video card makers ATI and NVIDIA have signed on to support the upcoming version 9 of its Windows Media Technologies, code-named Corona. Corona video decoding will be embedded into new graphics chipsets, allowing for playback at six times the resolution of DVDs. The performance improvement will be due in part to DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) found in Windows XP, which has been enhanced to off-load video processing from the CPU to the graphics card.

Corona was announced late last year and is set to introduce two new advanced audio and video codecs. "Corona Video" boasts a 20 percent efficiency improvement and the ability to provide HDTV-like quality video at half the file size of a DVD. The new Windows Media Audio Professional codec will feature streaming 6-channel surround sound with full resolution 24bit/96kHz sampling.

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