Microsoft has released the first Service Pack for Office for Mac 2011 yesterday. SP1 updates Office to version 14.1.0. It fixes a number of security problems and includes enhancements for the various applications in the office suite. The overall stability of Office for Mac 2011 is improved and refinements to performance and reliability help to make the suite more enjoyable to use.

Across the suite a bug that allowed attackers to inject malicious code into memory has been patched, and the ability to add alt text to shapes, images, movies and other objects has also been added. Excel users can benefit from the Solver analysis tools which can be used to run 'what if' scenarios with data, and various problems with pasting, conditional formatting, printing and page settings have been fixed.

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Do you subscribe to Microsoft Developer Network? Then perhaps you received the same email as I got late yesterday.

"Effective immediately: Windows Azure benefits have been granted to Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN subscribers. Windows Azure benefits have been expanded for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN subscribers."

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Google found itself fending off criticisms from competitor Microsoft on Monday over whether or not its Google Apps product truly had an important government security clearance. Called the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) standard, the Mountain View, Calif. company claimed on its webpage that the Government version of Apps had it. It didn't.

Instead, Google Apps Premier had the proper certification, while the more restrictive Government version was still in the process of getting FISMA certified. This is required by some government agencies in order to participate and win bids for any IT contract.

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Less than one month after arriving in beta, Opera 11.10 has been given a final release. One standout feature is an overhaul of Opera's Turbo function, which is designed to speed up browsing on slow networks such as dial-up connections, 3G networks and crowded WiFi hotspots.

Opera Turbo, which works by reducing the size of the web page being requested before its sent to the browser, now uses Google's new WebP image format. This helps speed up browsing further while better maintaining the quality of the page's images after compression. Opera claims that in testing the changes introduced in version 11.10 produce pages that are 35 percent smaller and subsequently 15 percent quicker to load than before.

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While Microsoft is expected to roll out the Kinect SDK beta at Mix 2011 this week, the Khronos Group announced it has begun work on a free and open standard for new input technologies that will include 3D cameras just like Kinect.

Khronos, the PC industry group best known for inventing OpenGL and WebGL, will create a platform agnostic, royalty-free standard for advanced input devices including everything from Kinect-like 3D cameras and motion sensors, to iPhone-like touchscreens and haptic devices.

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Rootkits are the ultimate in stealthy malware, burying themselves so deep into your system that they're often very hard to spot. If you're unlucky enough to encounter one then your antivirus package might detect it, but there are no guarantees, and so it may be wise to equip your PC with a second line of defence in Kaspersky's TDSSKiller.

As the name suggests, TDSSKiller is designed to target a few, specific threats (TDSS, Sinowal, Whistler, Phanta, Trup, Stoned). These can be very dangerous, though, so having another way to pick them up isn't going to hurt -- and the program can also detect hidden services, forged files, MBR changes and other suspicious signs that could indicate infection by a brand new rootkit.

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The wait is over. Microsoft's MIX11 conference kicked off today in Las Vegas, with Dean Hachamovitch's opening keynote. Hachamovitch is a Microsoft corporate vice president and the man with a plan when it comes to Internet Explorer.

During MIX10, Hachamovitch debuted the IE9 platform, which got its official release last month. Today, along with Windows divisional president Steven Sinofksy, he debuted IE10 platform. "We're about three weeks into development of IE10," Hachamovitch said. Hachamovitch's clothing foreshadowed what was coming, about half-way through the keynote. He wore a T-Shirt with "Ten,", where the Internet Explorer logo replaced the "e." In another surprise move, Hachamovitch announced that an IE10 preview is available now at the Internet Explorer Test Drive website.

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Check out Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview in Fileforum now!

Fulfilling the hints Microsoft dropped back in March, the Redmond software company unveiled the first platform preview of Internet Explorer 10 at MIX 11 in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

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Somebody surely will blame iPhone in today's analysis, although the move reflects broader problems Cisco is looking to fix. Hey, the dot-com boom of the 1990s, when Cisco router sales soared, is long over.

"We are making key, targeted moves as we align operations in support of our network-centric platform strategy," Cisco CEO John Chambers said in a statement. "As we move forward, our consumer efforts will focus on how we help our enterprise and service provider customers optimize and expand their offerings for consumers, and help ensure the network's ability to deliver on those offerings."

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With top-of-the-line EliteBook laptops launching on Tuesday, HP is adding sexier DreamColor displays to the already sexier FORGE bodies it rolled out in its latest ProBook notebook PC series.

Originally developed with animation studios like DreamWorks and Disney for HP desktop displays, the new DreamColor screen option for HP's EliteBook 8760w and 8560w mobile workstations supports more than 1 billion colors.

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For all the griping about Apple's restrictive subscriptions plan, news organizations are beginning to embrace it. News Corp. debuted tablet-only "The Daily" in early February. The New York Times ended March like a lion, with new paywalls that included an iPad subscription. Yesterday, Bloomberg Businessweek app debuted on Apple's App Store, also with subscription pricing.

For this reviewer, the $2.99 monthly price is the most exciting thing about the app. Definitely it's a price I'd like to see more weekly magazines adopt. I'd ditch print The New Yorker, which costs me 29 bucks for a year, for iPad digital version, if available for three bucks a month. Last I checked, the magazine was available only per issue -- for $3.99. Get a gun so I can shoot the dog, too.

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Amazon on Monday announced it had dropped the price of the third generation Kindle e-reader by $25. If this reduction in price came as a result of the usual maturation of technology (where declining manufacturing costs are passed along to the consumer), it would not be an especially newsworthy event. However, the price was reduced for a different reason: because the Kindle e-reader can now display sponsored advertisements.

The Kindle's famous screensavers can now be replaced by full screen advertisements which are customizable in the "Manage Your Kindle" section on a user's Amazon.com account. Users can indicate the amount of screensavers they see that include elements such as landscapes and scenery, architecture, travel images, photography, and illustrations.

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Intel on Monday announced the availability of its "Oak Trail" Atom processors, designed for use in mobile tablets, convertible notebooks, and fanless environments that run Windows, Chrome OS, or Meego.

With more than 35 design wins to its name so far, Intel's Oak Trail Atom chipset (Z670) is expected to make its first appearance next month, and continue to appear throughout 2011.
Companies such as Asus, Samsung, Evolve III, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Motion Computing, Razer, and Viliv have all announced products based on the platform.

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Once upon a time, not so very long ago, software firewalls would essentially carry out just a single task: monitoring your network, and blocking any unauthorised connections. That's no longer enough to make your product stand out from the crowd, though, and firewalls like Online Armor 5.0 now cram in so many other functions and features -- keylogging detection, behaviour monitoring, browsing protection, script blocking and more -- that they begin to look more like security suites.

The extra functionality is apparent as soon as you launch the Online Armor installer. This doesn't simply unpack its files; its Safety Check Wizard first scans your PC for known dangerous processes that might interfere with the program's operation. This takes a while -- 55 minutes on our test PC -- but is probably worth it, just to be sure that we were starting with a clean system (although if you know you're malware-free then the wizard can be skipped altogether).

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This morning, I tweeted San Francisco Chronicle article "1 million homes cut cable, switch to antenna, Web," which showed up in my RSS feeds. The story is actually three days old. A surprising number of people tweet-replied that they had cut the cable, completely or partially. I've been thinking about doing the same and wondered about Betanews readers. Would you go or have gone from cable to online video streaming (from networks and services like Hulu or Netflix) and over-the-air HD broadcasts?

You can answer the question in comments or email joewilcox at gmail dot com. I'll be swapping out that email address in a day or so as I seek to create, at least temporarily, a Google-free zone. Messages will forward after the switch. Your answer could benefit other people considering a similar move, but struggling to cross that psychological barrier of "What will I give up?"

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