When the iPhone 3G S debuted in June, Apple simultaneously announced that the iPhone 3G, the new device's year-old, 8 GB predecessor would be dropping to a scant $99. What the Cupertino computer maker didn't announce was that the price for refurbished iPhones (i.e., phones that were previously owned, but returned within 30 days) would also be dropping to a price less than 15% of the 3G device's original cost.

AT&T is now offering refurbished 8 GB iPhone 3G for only $79 with a two-year contract, a considerable drop from the $150 price tag from six months ago.

Tomorrow, Microsoft has a Patch Tuesday collection slated to include a fix for a hole known to Microsoft and outside security researchers for nearly a year and a half. Today, Redmond's got another, newly revealed, major flaw to contend with.

The vulnerability in Office Web Components' ActiveX implementation, versions 10 and 11, is currently known to be under attack, according to a post by Fermin J. Serna of Microsoft Security Response Center's Engineering team. If a user running Internet Explorer goes to a malicious Web site that hosts the exploit, the attacker could gain whatever rights the user has (translation: owned) and execute malicious code in the usual fashion.

Now that the latest chatter coming from the UK surmises that streaming music services such as Spotify are hot among teenagers, while p2p-based music sharing is not, Microsoft is reportedly about to debut its own contribution to Britain's music streaming boom.

The Telegraph reported today that Microsoft's UK Web portal MSN will be launching a streaming music service this month that is "similar in principle to Spotify."

Welcome back, Microsoft. After a few years of getting your butt kicked by Google, it's nice to see you waking up from your monopolistic slumber. You seem to finally get it that both Windows and Office don't have indefinite or guaranteed futures, and you're willing to hang yourself out over the edge a bit to keep them both relevant.

This week, Office 2010, the new version of Microsoft's productivity suite, is being shown to developers and media this week at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. It includes browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that should forever banish bitter memories of Microsoft's initially half-hearted online productivity efforts.

Perhaps it was an accident that Microsoft released a series of Office 2010 preview videos this morning, instead of another chapter in its non-revealing "Office 2010: The Movie" theatrical trailer. The videos themselves were pulled down from Microsoft's servers, along with the micro-site that accompanied them, but not before search engine caches everywhere captured them, and not before blogger Long Zheng gathered them in one place.

This morning, these Microsoft-produced videos show extensive screen shots and demos of each primary Office 2010 component at work, although the appearance of the early code-name "Office 14" in a few of those shots indicates that videos may not necessarily be depicting the most recent build, being distributed to Technical Preview participants as soon as today.

Beloved Japanese role playing game franchise Dragon Quest has enjoyed frenzied launches for more than twenty years, with lines that make Apple's launch queues look piddly by comparison.

Last Friday, Dragon Quest IX: Hoshizora no Mamoribito, the latest installment in the series was launched for the Nintendo DS, and long lines of customers shelled out their ¥5,980 for a copy of the game.

Adobe Systems today released the public beta of ColdFusion 9, the company's application development platform and has unveiled the Eclipse-based ColdFusion Builder Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Adobe went for three simple categories of improvement with this release: Increase user productivity, improve integration with popular enterprise software, and simplify the workflow between Adobe products.

To increase user productivity, server administration has been simplified in this version, with the Server Manager application, which lets multiple ColdFusion servers be managed centrally through an AIR-based app. New tools seek to simplify the development process, such as ColdFusion-as-a-Service which gives access to ColdFusion services through AMF (Action Message Format) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) without having to write ColdFusion Components (CFCs). Also, integration with Hibernate's object relational mapping (ORM) lets developers build database-independent applications without the need to write any SQL.

First rollout of Office 2010 code due today

Morning of July 13, 2009 • If you're feeling a bit damp this morning, look around you, because there could be a leak going on. Yes, as fully anticipated, there's clear evidence of a leak in the latest build of Office 2010, which is expected to be officially shipped to certain select Microsoft partners as soon as today. The leak indicates that shipment has already begun, and that Microsoft's "friend" is not cooperating.

If only the French government had had this much determination against the Nazis. The French Senate last week once again passed a version of the HADOPI online copyright infringement bill, this time adding a step after the three accusations in which a judge may choose among three penalties: a ban from the Net, a two-year prison sentence, or a $415,000 fine.

Those accused of "allowing" illegal downloading -- if a third party used their connection to do so -- would face a $2,075 fine or a month's cutoff from the Net.

The creative end of the music industry is drawing ever closer to a nexus: a point where composing, recording, distributing and publicizing music meets. You could be holding it in your pocket right now, and it's not the same point of convergence sold by the ounce that drove the industry in the past. It's the ubiquitous, lionized, and oh-so-lucrative iPhone.

Recording

This episode of Recovery is not brought to you by unfortunate war-and-revolution metaphors for what are, in the end, simply disagreements over operating systems, professional sports, reality television competitions, or other non-combat-related features of life in the developed world. May these be as close as these metaphors' creators ever get to enduring actual warfare.

Even if neither you nor I are ever apt to be invited to a TED gathering -- which brings together leaders from Technology, Entertainment, and Design -- the TED organization's Web site has a marvelous collection of video of presentations made at its conference over the years. It's a great way to spend ten minutes or so when YouTube's leaving you feel a little slimed and Hulu is... look, you cannot keep re-watching the Warehouse 13 premiere. They'll air another episode next week. Until then you will simply have to calm down, and I'm suggesting that you're better off with TED, and not least because it's... applicable.

Download Microsoft Silverlight 3 from Fileforum now.

After going live just a little bit early, Silverlight 3 is now an official release. The third iteration of Microsoft's rich internet application platform largely viewed as the chief competitor to Adobe Flash (but really an AIR rival) was officially launched this morning at a Microsoft event in San Francisco alongside Expression 3, the latest version of the company's design and development studio.

Mobile network operator and ISP Orange UK announced that it has begun to offer DRM-free downloads in the Orange Music Store. Content is available from major labels Universal Music and EMI initially, as well as "a number of independent labels," filling out the catalog with more than 700,000 tracks.

Like Verizon's V Cast with Rhapsody in the United States, Orange Music Store downloads are delivered simultaneously to the mobile handset and PC, and can be transferred and burned at will. Verizon's parent company Vodafone went from protected WMA to unprotected MP3, last March.

Research in Motion's BlackBerry Tour world phone will be released this weekend on both Verizon and Sprint for $199, and while the device has been received warmly by reviewers and BlackBerry fans, a point of consistent criticism has been the device's lack of Wi-Fi.

A report from Sprint has arrived, saying that Wi-Fi is a necessary feature in major devices, but the Tour was actually rushed out. Bringing the new BlackBerry to Sprint in a timely fashion outweighed the carrier's desire to wait for Wi-Fi, according to the report. Consequently, a version of the BlackBerry Tour will be released next year equipped with 802.11.

Microsoft has known about 0-day vulnerability for months

Since spring 2008 • Really, Microsoft? All the work you've put into getting right with the security community, and this is the result? Computerworld's mighty Gregg Keizer leads the charge on the news that Redmond has known about the recently publicized DirectX vulnerability for years. Years.