In one more demonstration that it's taking a different stance with regard to the intellectual property it uses, Microsoft has dropped its objection to an IEEE working group making use of a Web services protocol it developed for Vista.

Removing a roadblock that might have continued to prevent an alliance of printer and tools manufacturers from implementing a Web services-based specification for document scanning devices, Microsoft announced yesterday it will go ahead and provide its Scan Service Definition 1.0 for Web Services on Devices, to the IEEE's Printer Working Group.

After South Africa voiced its objections to how the Open XML standards ratification proceedings were conducted, the standards bodies of both India and Brazil are registering similar complaints.

The IEC has confirmed that it received two additional appeals from India and Brazil before the deadline. A fourth country is said to have considered filing an appeal, but the standards body has not confirmed this, and declined to say how many appeals it had received.

Can the recent plague of technical problems affecting text communications service Twitter be blamed on the language on which its platform was designed? Earlier, the company said no...but some within the company are hinting otherwise.

Two weeks ago, following the rapid spread of rumors that the Twitter service -- recently besieged with technical troubles -- may be abandoning the Ruby on Rails development platform in building a replacement platform for itself, the company's co-founder Biz Stone flat out refuted those rumors in a comment to BetaNews.

The update to Apple's operating system fixes a multitude of its security vulnerabilities, but some users are reporting issues with graphics and Adobe CS3 after upgrading.

Along with fixing issues with incorrect fonts, video and audio playback, and wireless network connectivity, at least two dozen security issues were patched.

Members of Google's Android team leveraged Google's I/O conference this week as a launch platform for demos of new Android features, ranging from an application launcher called Notifications to a compass-based StreetView application.

The Android mobile development will probably become available in the second half of this year, said members of Google's Android team at the company's I/O conference in San Francisco this week, who gave a first-time demo of an Android prototype device.

As the Beijing Olympics approach, the testing deadline draws nearer for a technology infrastructure which has been built exclusively for the games by Lenovo. So the company is staging a dress rehearsal.

Lenovo reports over 30,000 pieces of its equipment will be used (desktop and notebook systems, servers, monitors, etc.) during the 2008 Summer Olympics, with some 580 of its engineers working on site.

An effort to effectively benchmark the relative speed of OpenOffice applications has turned up evidence that its applications have become slower with each new version.

Users wanting to break away from Microsoft Windows and Office have had little viable alternatives when looking for competing products. Many of those interested in something other than Microsoft Office have chosen the OpenOffice suite of software, which offers programs and services similar to Microsoft's software suite.

The PostScript era may at last have shuffled off its mortal coil, as the next generation of Adobe's printing workflow and reproduction system for PDF gets set to roll out to OEMs this summer.

At one time -- longer ago than it sometimes seems -- the software print engine of the modern world was based around PostScript, and Adobe was on top of the world as the champion of that format. The first editions of PDF were perceived as not so much an encapsulated PostScript but as an abbreviated alternative to it, mostly for ordinary text documents. But as that standard evolved into the format of choice for Web-based brochures and marketing literature, its capability to reproduce images and graphics eventually exceeded that of PostScript.

Visitors to Comcast's Internet portal were greeted with a cryptic message for several hours overnight Thursday.

Checks by BetaNews indicated that the problems as a result of the hack were continuing even into Thursday afternoon, including problems with accessing Web-based e-mail and the company's support forums.

A recommendation to the European Parliament regarding implementation and support for IPv6 addresses clearly states that legislators should, pretty soon, most definitely, whenever they can, do something.

European and Japanese Internet policy experts are now in agreement that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority will likely run out of possible octet-based IPv4 addresses to assign to prospective registrants as soon as 2010. A recommendation by a task force led by the European Commission (PDF available here) states that as of January 2008, only 16% of the span of IPv4 addresses will be available in the IANA pool.

Sony is a company well known for creating new and innovative products, and has done it again with a new transparent tube speaker that will be released in Japan for a hefty price tag.

During a press event at Sony headquarters in Tokyo, the company introduced an innovative speaker design that uses hard glass instead of paper and magnesium used in regular speaker designs.

Letters have been sent to both the International Standards Organization and the International Electrotechnical Commission saying the standardization process was flawed.

South Africa is believed to be the first country to file a formal appeal with the world's two leading technology standards organizations, protesting the ratification of what had been called "Office Open XML" as ISO/IEC 29500, and contesting its validity as a standard. The South African Bureau of Standards argued in both cases the process was rushed, and too much information was needed to be analyzed in too short a time.

In a variation of a plan it previously shot down, the Federal Communications Commission has proposed that the winner of a newly planned spectrum auction be required to offer free wireless Internet service.

The FCC's proposal essentially sounds similar to a suggestion made last year by M2Z Networks, the first company to suggest free wireless Internet nationwide. The free wireless network would be required to cover half of the country's citizens within four years, and 95 percent within a decade. FCC officials told the Wall Street Journal that content restrictions would be placed on use.

If sub-notebooks weren't so small, it would be getting very crowded in here. The second addition to the ultra-portable PC category in as many days comes from Acer and its "Aspire One."

Acer's low-cost sub-notebook lacks firm specifications thus far, but the screen looks to be 8.9" with 1024 x 768 resolution. Further information is expected to be revealed at the Computex trade show in Taipei next week. UMPC Portal suspects it is an Atom/Diamondville device like the 1.6 Ghz MSI Wind, and Digitimes expects it to carry a price tag under €200.

Google's Web services project has been renamed simply "Gears," and the company has announced that MySpace will use the technology in its e-mail platform.

"We want to make it clear that Gears isn't just a Google thing. We see Gears as a way for everyone to get involved with upgrading the web platform," software engineer Chris Prince said.