Latest Technology News

While there is no evidence of an exploit as of yet, Mozilla is taking a proactive measure to fix the issue before it could be.

A problem with stability which resulted in crashes and evidence of memory corruption was remedied in Firefox 2.0.0.13, however apparently the fix did not completely close any holes.

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Corel today rolled out WordPerfect X4, a suite designed to remain feature compatible with Microsoft Office while adding more interoperability with Adobe Acrobat. Added to the suite is a new spreadsheet in addition to Quattro Pro.

Among the new features of Corel's principal office suite, announced today, is a business intelligence (BI)-enabled spreadsheet called Visual Intelligence.

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Firefox is the single most prevalent open source software package, and Ubuntu 7.10 leads the way among Linux distributions. Those are some of the very early findings of a new project called the Open Source Census, which went live today.

First unveiled in December, the Open Source Census is a collaborative undertaking to find out how much open software enterprises are using these days, and what kinds of organizations are using it. It's spearheaded by open source software vendor OpenLogic.

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TrafficLand, a site providing free access to a network of over 6,000 cameras, is now offering its live highway feeds as embeddable widgets. How much closer will this widget make users feel to their Facebook buddies?

Whether it's for travel or event-planning purposes or simply for the morbid possibility of witnessing a live car accident, TrafficLand's cameras, which are in place in over 60 worldwide markets, can now be placed in Facebook and other sites.

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The very fact that there may still be problems to iron out with what used to be Microsoft's XML-based file format suite, is the justification for the creation of a managing body to manage it as a standard, reads a fresh statement from the ISO.

A newly published FAQ from the International Organization for Standardization, which on the surface would appear to address questions regarding the standard now known as ISO/IEC 29500, actually goes all out and responds to concerns individuals may still have about how fairly its predecessor, Microsoft's Open XML format, may have been judged.

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The Pirate Bay has asked a Dutch court to order music industry group IFPI for monetary compensation for a block placed on it by ISP Tele2..

If the site wins its case, any monies received would go towards supporting independent artists who use file sharing to promote their music. Currently the original case between IFPI and Tele2 is under appeal.

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While Congress looks into the strange way the FCC chairman advanced his first, failed attempt to inject channel-by-channel programming into US law, cable programmers set up a proactive defense against a possible second attempt.

During his regular testimony before a US House Appropriations Subcommittee last Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin happened to be asked whether he would still favor a move toward an "a la carte" programming arrangement for cable systems. Chairman Martin responded, as first reported by Multichannel News, by saying he remains a vehement supporter of the idea.

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Google Earth 4.3 for PC, Linux, and Mac has been released in public beta, with an official release expected in a few weeks. Some of the additional features include real-time day and night lighting effects and enhanced POV controls.

The unofficial Google Earth blog notes this is not a major release, but it still shows off some eye-catching tweaks. The real-time lighting effect illuminates the Earth according to the time of day, and actually creates a sunrise and sunset effect on other layers at appropriate times when turned on. Skies change colors, and rendered buildings cast shadows on one another.

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Looking to take on Google News, the Redmond company on Tuesday silently launched its own news aggregator. While Live Search News looks much more basic than what Google currently offers, it's a start.

The layout of the new Live Search News is somewhat similar to Google News, but also may remind some of Techmeme, another aggregator. Sections are listed across the top, with news headlines listed down the left column. Users are able to drill down from the major headlines by clicking "more on this story," which returns news articles having to do with the topic of the headline article.

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The FTC's controversial new behavioral advertising guidelines are drawing conflicting responses from entities ranging from Microsoft to consumer privacy advocates and a newspaper lobbying group.

Geared to industry self-regulation, the US Federal Trade Commission's proposed principles call for businesses to provide a "clear and conspicuous notice" to consumers about which data is being collected, along with a way for consumers to opt out of providing information to Web sites and advertisers.

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Is it still a UMPC, or is it just a decent version of a shrunken laptop? While very small form factors have often failed, Asus may have found the perfect niche, and is exploiting it for all it's worth.

Yesterday in Hong Kong, Asus launched the newest version of its Eee ultra portable PC, the Eee PC 900.

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It has reclaimed the honor of being the world's leading CPU manufacturer in every important respect. But like a kid with a hole in his Easter basket, Intel's leaving a trail behind it: Its flash memory business could be its Achilles' heel.

There's a point where you can't help but laugh at the night-and-day difference between Intel's business status and that of its singular competitor, AMD. Then there comes a point where you stop laughing and almost start to cry in sympathy for AMD's position, having been pushed back an entire process generation, fighting hard from its traditional stronghold in the value segment.

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The CTIA telecom trade group has now joined Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile in calling for FCC licensing around "white space" spectrum, against the wishes of major device makers to open up the spectrum for unlicensed wireless access.

The wireless telecom trade group CTIA has chimed in on the growing debate over the use of unused "white space" in already licensed spectrum, siding -- for the most part -- with Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile. Essentially, the group views possible device interference in the unlicensed white spectrum as a threat to operators' investments in future 4G broadband networks.

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Comcast and partner Pando Networks are leading an effort to push the industry to adopt some common practices when it comes to dealing with file sharers.

Pando is providing the cable operator with its Network Aware P2P technology so that it can analyze traffic moving through its network. Comcast plans to publicize those test results so that other cable operators can optimize their networks to better handle P2P traffic.

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Microsoft has made Vista Service Pack 1 available in all of the company's 36 supported languages, where there had previously only been five: English, Spanish, French, German and Japanese.

x86 and x64 versions are available for manual install through Windows Update or from the Microsoft Download Center as a standalone installer, and DVD images are available to TechNet Plus and MSDN subscribers as well as those with a volume license. The two standalone installers can be downloaded here: x86, x64.

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