David Worthington

The Mozilla Foundation has awarded $2,500 USD in "bug bounties" to a German man who tracked down five separate security flaws in the Mozilla browser's code. The bounty program is an effort to make open source software more safe and secure.

Since the program's inception in 2004, five individuals have received compensation. Michael Krax, the latest recipient, uncovered bugs in Mozilla's chrome privileges. Funding is provided by Linspire and Mark Shuttleworth.

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IBM is prepared to lend a helping hand to companies that will use its Cell microprocessor in their products. Big Blue has introduced design services for its clients and will provide a Cell simulation environment available through IBM E&TS and Deep Computing Capacity on Demand centers.

Cell was jointly developed by IBM, Toshiba and Sony for placement in next-generation computing application and consumer electronics. The processor, which has reached clock speeds exceeding 4GHz, will be used in Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3 gaming console.

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Microsoft has granted clemency to the 19 year-old author of the Blaster worm. Rather than pay $500,000 in restitution, the youth will be sentenced to 225 hours of community service, which may not involve computers.

The Blaster, or MSBlast, worm was the culprit behind massive denial of service attacks against Microsoft's Web properties and infected over 50,000 unpatched Windows systems in the summer of 2003.

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Answers.com has ported its referenced-based search engine to mobile devices. A beta of the service is formatted to fit consolidated screen space and is available for a variety of handhelds including Treo, BlackBerry, as well as Windows CE and other browser-based telephones.

"Were taking our goal of supplying 'Answers at Your Fingertips' pretty literally," explained Bob Rosenschein, Founder and CEO of GuruNet.

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Google announced late Monday it will acquire Urchin Software, a developer of analytic solutions for Web sites. Urchin produces tools to track the performance of marketing, examine the user experience and optimize content. Google intends to offer the tools to Web site owners and marketers as an enticement to use its services.

"This technology will be a valuable addition to Google's suite of advertising and publishing products," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product management at Google. Google expects that the acquisition will close before the end of April. The terms of the sale were not disclosed.

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Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court will hear opening arguments in the fight to classify what constitutes an "information service," and whether cable companies and voice over IP providers deserve to be treated differently under a separate set of government regulations.

The case is the result of "Internet service provider X" challenging rules approved by the Federal Communicated Commission (FCC) that shield cable operators from paying the mandatory fees paid by traditional telecoms that operate Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN) and opening their networks to outside access.

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Fresh off of last week's acquisition of Retek, Oracle has reached into its wallet and acquired identity management solutions provider Oblix. The move complements the existing identity and access management technology that is already available as part of Oracle Application Server 10g.

Oblix software will continue to be independently available, but will also be weaved into Oracle's broader identity infrastructure offerings. Oracle intends to draw on Oblix's technological assets to position itself as a leading vendor of identity management solutions.

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IBM has one-upped itself. Big Blue has revealed that it has broken through the 100 teraflop mark and developed the world's fastest supercomputer for the United States National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

The system is a derivative of IBM's BlueGene/L supercomputer, which won the supercomputing crown back from NEC's Earth Simulator. The NNSA machine is used to simulate nuclear tests as part of an ongoing maintenance program for the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

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For all of those who cannot get enough unfinished software, McAfee is serving up a host of betas with promises of more to come. Currently, McAfee PortalShield 1.0, Virex 7.6, McAfee Desktop Firewall 8.5 Beta 2 and McAfee NetShield for NetWare 4.6 are immediately available for testing.

McAfee's Beta program manager has told BetaNews to expect a new batch of tests in April including: GroupShield for Microsoft Exchange 6.0.2, SpamKiller for Microsoft Exchange 2.1.2, McAfee Entercept Linux Agent and McAfee Secure Content Management Appliances 4.0. The betas listed above are linked directly to the product homepages.

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America Online has refreshed its AOL Browser beta with new navigation features, improved tabbed browsing and many other general improvements. AOL Browser fits into the company's emerging portal strategy, and serves as a strategic gateway to AOL Web properties for consumers outside of its subscriber base.

Unlike the forthcoming Netscape Browser that is based on Firefox, AOL Browser is built upon Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine. Since its overriding theme is simplicity, AOL has endeavored to form an interface that is more straightforward and convenient than other Web browsers.

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Yahoo is pulling together a confluence of search capabilities into its desktop search application. A new beta release of Yahoo Desktop Search now includes a feature that sifts through Yahoo Messenger instant message archives and adds Yahoo Address Book contacts to the search index.

Aside from the latest Yahoo integration points, the software searches for over 200 commonly used file types including Microsoft Office formats, PDF files, HTML, text, cached Web pages, ZIP files and many more. E-mail and attachments within Outlook or Outlook Express are also indexed. Like other desktop search products, results are available offline.

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UPDATED It was midnight madness at consumer electronics retailers throughout the United States early Thursday morning, as thousands of gamers lined up to get their hands on Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP). Citing deep consumer interest, Sony estimates that over one million units will be sold within days of the release.

The PSP is a multipurpose entertainment device that plays 3D games, movies and music. A single PSP, including stereo headphones, 32MB Memory Stick Duo, battery and charger, wrist strap, soft carrying case, and the Spider-Man 2 movie will retail for $249.99 USD.

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The Mozilla Foundation has preemptively patched its Firefox Web browser to guard against attacks that could conceivably exploit a hole in Netscape-era legacy code.

The code was used by Netscape engineers as a method to animate GIFs, but lacks protection against specially crafted images that can be used to execute arbitrary code. The exploit was first disclosed by Internet Security Systems.

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Following an interview with Orlando Ayala, senior vice president of Microsoft's small and midmarket solutions group, Microsoft Watch is reporting that a new Windows Server edition will target mid-sized businesses.

Known as Windows Midmarket Server (MMS), the SKU may an attempt to duplicate the success Microsoft experienced with Windows Small Business Server, which bundled together several server products into a single deliverable.

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As expected, a beta program for the Microsoft Update (MU) service has opened up to solicit feedback from testers and troubleshoot prior to the site's scheduled launch later in 2005.

The site unifies Microsoft's patching services and will be the primary destination for updates to Windows, Office and other applications. Microsoft Update was first announced by Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates during his RSA Conference 2005 keynote.

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