A rapidly growing number of modern-era software users in an economically revitalized China has catapulted that country's own state-sponsored XML-based office file format, called Uniform Office Format, into world prominence in just a matter of a few months.

Now, in the wake of Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy's call to consider merging UOF with the other open-source format, ODF, Microsoft revealed yesterday (Monday morning Beijing time) that it had already launched a project with Beihang University to create an open-source, two-way translator between UOF and the Office 2007 Open XML file formats, just two weeks after McNealy's speech.

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Blizzard plans to release a sequel to the popular WarCraft-based space multiplayer game StarCraft, the company confirmed over the weekend.

A preview event in Korea showed off the new game, however the company remained light on specifics. It will be the first major update for the title since StarCraft was released in 1998.

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The highly-anticipated 80GB version of the PlayStation 3 will launch in South Korea on June 16 as the sole version of the console available in that country.

The launch indicates that the higher-capacity PS3 model could be the company's standard console from here on out, as well as possibly signaling an imminent debut elsewhere in the world within months.

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Microsoft has fixed some early issues in its Halo 3 beta offering for those who purchase the game Crackdown, as well as agreeing to extend the beta period by one week to June 10..

The beta of the next Halo game has been much hyped by Microsoft since November of last year when plans were first announced. Crackdown was released in February with the promise that those who had the disk would be rewarded with first access to the code.

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When Microsoft introduced Silverlight -- its new platform for building rich Internet applications -- at MIX last month, consumers had one key question: Why should this interest me? Microsoft made its first attempt at an answer Friday with the alpha launch of "Popfly."

In simple terms, Popfly enables users to create mashups (a single service that utilizes multiple services), gadgets, Web pages, and even applications. But the real power of the new online service -- and what sets Popfly apart from Yahoo Pipes -- is the ease in which it can be done, without any technical know-how or development experience.

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Apple is fighting off another lawsuit, this time over claims that its advertising surrounding Macbook displays are misleading.

The suit was filed May 3 by California residents Fred Greaves and Dave Gatley in San Diego County Superior Court. It claims Apple's assertions that the displays can support "millions of colors" are false, as those colors are made possible through a process called dithering.

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For the second time, adware provider Zango has sued a software developer over its anti-spyware solution, this time targeting PC Tools and its popular Spyware Doctor program that comes with Google Pack. Zango, previously known as 180solutions, sued Zone Labs in late 2005.

Like its previous lawsuit regarding ZoneAlarm, Zango claims Spyware Doctor illegally removes Zango software from users' PCs without their express permission. PC Tools has rated Zango an "elevated" threat currently, but is in the process of reclassifying the software, perhaps to a more critical rating.

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For the fourth month in a row, the Nintendo Wii outsold its competitors, even showing impressive strength at a time that is traditionally one of the slower periods for video game sales.

Nintendo sold some 360,000 units of the $249 USD next-generation console in April, up 39 percent from the previous month and its highest monthly sales total since January, retail data from research firm NPD Group shows.

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AMD is set to start shipping a competitor to Intel's Centrino processor by the end of this year, which it is calling Puma.

The chipset has similar energy efficiency characteristics to Intel's, and will start appearing in notebooks by the middle of next year. AMD has mainly concentrated on desktop systems where it has seen considerable success.

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Gamers with modified Xbox 360 consoles are getting a nasty surprise: their consoles are being blocked from accessing Microsoft's Xbox Live service.

Until last week, modifications to the console were undetectable by Microsoft, allowing enterprising gamers to open up the next-generation console and tinker with its settings. However, a software update has seemed to change all that.

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Secunia says that over one-quarter of applications on users' PCs lack the necessary patches released by software vendors to address critical issues.

Media players seem to be the most commonly vulnerable, with over 33 percent of all Quicktime, and 27 percent of Winamp installations missing important security updates. Browsers do better, with a little over five percent of Firefox, 5.4 percent of IE7, 9.6 percent of IE6, and nearly 12 percent of all Opera 9 installs missing security updates.

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Google on Friday released a new Partner Edition of its online applications, which enables ISPs, portals and other service providers to offer specially branded versions to their customers. For example, an ISP could utilize Gmail instead of building and supporting their own webmail platform.

Aside from Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets will be available with the service. "All you have to do is point and click in the easy admin control panel and figure out what branding you'd like to layer on top of the products in order to create a customized look and feel," says Google Apps product manager Hunter Middleton.

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Apple attempted to squash the confusion surrounding a fake memo published on AOL blog Engadget Wednesday, which claimed both the iPhone and Leopard were being delayed and temporarily led to a major drop in Apple stock. The company says the memo was not sent from its servers.

Instead, the fake memo was simply crafted to look like it came from Apple and contained the same wording that typically accompanies legitimate internal communication from the company's Bullet News system. The e-mail was then sent to a handful of employees, one of whom passed it to Engadget.

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Furthering the pace of consolidation in the Internet advertising industry, Microsoft on Friday announced it will acquire aQuantive for around $6 billion - its largest acquisition in history. Microsoft is paying nearly an 85 percent premium for the company.

Microsoft was rumored to be bidding for 24/7 Real Media, one of the smaller advertising firms up for sale, however WPP Group announced it won the deal Thursday for a price of approximately $649 million. Last month, market leader DoubleClick was acquired by Google, and Yahoo purchased ad firm Right Media.

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LOS ANGELES - Last Monday, we entitled our WinHEC preview, "Time for Vista to Deliver the Goods." The truth ended up being, although goods were indeed delivered, the surprise was that Vista wasn't the delivery vehicle this time around. Windows Server "Longhorn" got a name, but it got more than that: a mission to change the nature of Windows itself, in both the enterprise and the home.

Without a major new consumer-driven client operating system coming hanging out there in the distance, and with Windows Server 2008 now clearly upon us, this week was the first Microsoft conference in a handful of years not to depend on a truckload of promises of future technologies.

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