The executive board of the INCITS standards body voted yesterday to approve the recommendation of Microsoft's Office Open XML standard to the International Standards Organization as Draft International Standard 29500, once concerns voiced by some of its members have been attached and adequately addressed by Microsoft. The vote was 12 yea, 3 nay, and one abstention - again by the IEEE.

Voting in the negative were Oracle; standards consulting body Farance, Inc.; and IBM, which had earlier indicated it would change its vote to "Yes, with comments" if others would do the same.

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After postponing the release of Manhunt 2 for the PS2, PSP and Wii back in June, Rockstar Games said Friday that it would release the game on October 31. The move follows an announcement by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) that it would rate the game "M" for Mature. It previously had been marked with an "AO" rating, for Adults Only.

With such a rating, the distribution of the game would have been severely limited. Both interest groups and review boards took issue with the extreme violence in the initial version of the game, which puts players in the shoes of a deranged man who kills his enemies in search of answers regarding what happened to his family. While the rating change only affects the North American release, no announcement was made about the British rating, which also was an "AO."

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A statement to BetaNews today by one of Seagate Technology's top managers indicates that some of the content of yesterday's Wall Street Journal story -- whose original online headline was "Seagate to Enter Flash Memory Market," prior to having been edited -- may have been inaccurate.

Josh Tinker, market development manager for Seagate's Personal Compute division (not a typo), told BetaNews this afternoon that his company does indeed plan to enter the solid-state disk drive market, but has no plans to shift production -- as reports yesterday indicated -- away from traditional hard disk drives any time soon.

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Those waiting for a solution to use the iPhone on a network other than AT&T may have found it: a six-man team of researchers has claimed to crack the SIM lock. This means the iPhone will work on T-Mobile and other GSM carriers overseas.

The crack was produced by iPhoneSIMfree.com, which has invited press organizations to allow the group to unlock their phones for them. Tech Web log Engadget was one of them, and it wrote a post Friday describing the process.

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The latest version of a well-reviewed third-party security policy enhancement system for Windows Vista claims to solve what its manufacturer characterizes as "not a secure solution" to a critical problem Windows historically had with administrator privileges on programs. But in the announcement of the upgrade earlier this week, a key Microsoft product manager is quoted as having acknowledged Vista's own take on the solution was not quite enough, effectively reversing his company's stand on User Account Control.

The product is BeyondTrust Privilege Manager 3.5, and its key new feature is the ability to run Vista's UAC transparently without prompting the user for privilege elevation. In Monday's press release, Microsoft director of client security product management Austin Wilson is quoted as not only endorsing the product, but appearing to agree with BeyondTrust's key contention: that the UAC prompts were not only a nag but an insecure solution in itself.

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Sony said Friday that it had developed a bio-conscious battery that is encased in vegetable-based plastic and runs on sugars. The sugars are poured into the battery, and are then broken down by enzymes in order to create electricity. It outputs about 50 milliwatts, and has enough power to run a music player and a set of speakers. The battery measures 1.5 inches on each side.

Sugar is a naturally occurring energy source, the company says. "It is therefore regenerative, and can be found in most areas of the earth, underlining the potential for sugar-based batteries as an ecologically-friendly energy device of the future." Sony hopes to eventually produce them for commercial use, although no date was given.

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Microsoft said Thursday that it would be recalling the Xbox 360 steering wheel over concerns that it was overheating and smoking, according to a statement.

About 50 incidents have been reported so far related to the $130 accessory, of which Microsoft has sold approximately 230,000 units worldwide. The steering wheel's AC/DC adapter was the issue, and was overheating when it was plugged in.

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NPD Group's July numbers for game console sales have arrived, and the news is good for Sony and Nintendo. The struggling PlayStation 3 saw a 60 percent sales boost thanks to a $100 price cut on the 60GB model that is being phased out. But Nintendo still held the sales lead with its Wii.

Although the PS3 is still in last place among the next-generation consoles, Sony did gain some ground against Microsoft. The company sold 159,000 units, far surpassing June's sales of 98,500. But it was still unable to top Microsoft's Xbox 360, which sold 170,000 units - slightly lower than June's 198,400 thanks to last month's extra week in NPD's counting.

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The Skype representative who first invoked the phrase "perfect storm" to describe the confluence of events that led to 48-hour service outage on August 16, told BetaNews today that circumstances such as those we experienced in our own tests yesterday could indeed have contributed to triggering that storm, if only in a minor way.

Villu Arak, who works in Skype's global public relations department, told BetaNews this morning that the incident we experienced, and which we described to Skype at length, was the first he'd heard about unusual client-side update behavior. "Still, while what you described could have played a small role in the disruption," he wrote us, "the series of events that led to the outage was triggered by unattended automatic reboots."

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Microsoft has decided to axe its "Get The Facts" site, instead replacing it with a less corrosive "Compare" page that compares Windows and Linux in a less confrontational way.

The former site was quite controversial, as it included parts of a study conducted in 2002 that was later revealed to have been influenced by Microsoft to look at Windows more favorably. Even in light of the controversy, Microsoft kept the site up, using it in the company's increasingly hostile battle with open source.

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Nikon on Thursday officially announced two new digital SLR camera models that target professionals and those wanting to be professionals while saving a few thousand dollars. The Nikon D3 features the first full-frame sensor on a Nikon digital camera, while the D300 bumps the D200 up to 12.3 megapixels.

The D3 replaces Nikon's previous top-of-the-line D2x, adding a new EXPEED image processor, second CompactFlash memory card slot, 12.1 megapixel full-frame sensor and ISO capability up to 6400. The 3-inch VGA LCD also offers a live view of what the camera lens is seeing, and the D3 can shoot up to 9 frames per second.

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Nokia and Microsoft said late Wednesday that they had partnered to bring the Redmond company's suite of Windows Live services to Nokia devices.

Those using compatible S60 devices will be able to download the specially customized application that provides access to Hotmail, Messenger, Contacts, and Spaces. Next year, compatible Series 40 phones begin shipping with Windows Live included.

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The creators of the hit game BioShock have responded to criticisms that widescreen users aren’t getting the whole experience.

Apparently, the full game window is only shown in 4:3 resolution. When users play the game on a 16:9 widescreen HDTV, the top and bottom of the scene is cropped slightly to compensate for the difference in monitor size.

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AT&T is finally putting an end to the odd practice of sending its iPhone customers extremely detailed bills, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of pages.

The carrier's lengthy bills were first highlighted by Pittsburgh iPhone owner Justine Ezarik, who posted a one minute video to YouTube nearly two weeks ago. Her bill numbered 300 pages long.

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Hackers have infiltrated the database of online job seeker site Monster, the site disclosed Thursday. According to a statement by the site, those involved set up a server that was accessing contact information of job seekers through a compromised login of one of its employer clients. The rogue server has since been identified and shut down, Monster said. Information that may have been disclosed was limited to names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

The exact number of those affected is not yet known, although Monster will contact those affected as needed. “ Protecting our users from malicious activity is one of Monster's top priorities. Regrettably, opportunistic criminals are increasingly using the Internet for illegitimate purposes. This problem spans the Web, particularly impacting high profile, heavily trafficked websites that serve a variety of users on a global basis,” it said in a statement.

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