Since last June, Microsoft has been actively courting independent developers who might have an interest in building what the company calls "line-of-business" applications - essentially, functions that extend the Office applications platform into new niches.

Analysts perceived Microsoft's drive toward Office Business Applications (OBA) as one component of its Office Open XML campaign that was without equal in the open-source, OpenDocument realm. Today, the ODF community answered in kind, with the creation of a "toolkit" that beckons developers to build new functionality around the ODF platform.

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Norway's Consumer Ombudsman has ruled that Apple's digital rights management and its refusal to support competing music services on the popular iPod are illegal in the country.

A complaint was filed with ombudsman Erik Thon by Forbrukerradet, the Norwegian Consumer Council. It argued that Apple's FairPlay was illegal in the country. According to previous statements by the Norwegian government, interoperability is a requirement for operation.

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As part of its promotional efforts surrounding the launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft said Wednesday that for 90 days after the debut of the next-generation operating system, customers would be able to use T-Mobile Hotspot Wi-Fi for free on laptops running Vista. Those with advance copies of the operating system would be able to take advantage of the program beginning January 26, Microsoft said.

The service would be available at any of T-Mobile's 8,234 locations across the United States, including Starbucks, Borders bookstores, FedEx Kinko's location, select Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, airports, and the airline clubs of American, Delta, United and US Airways. The only requirement to access the service is a computer with Windows Vista installed.

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The demand for smaller portable components with higher storage capacity is only growing faster, and as soon as this year, miniature devices residing on keychains may be able to boast the storage capacity of what can now be described as "larger" iPod nanos.

Toshiba announced today it's on schedule to produce 16 Gb flash memory components, in a new 300 mm fabrication facility just completed as a joint project with flash competitor SanDisk. Mass production of 8 Gb flash memory at 1 GB capacity will begin this month, to keep up with #1 producer Samsung's introduction of 8 Gb components last July.

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Microsoft on Wednesday added Firefox support to its Photosynth technology preview, which is capable of taking hundreds of photographs and building a three-dimensional model in which users can "fly" through like a virtual world. Support for user-created models is still in the works, however.

Photosynth was first announced at SIGGRAPH 2006. Microsoft describes it as "a hybrid of a slide show and a gaming experience that lets the viewer zoom in to see greater detail or zoom out for a more expansive view."

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Google has dropped the "beta" moniker from the new version of its Groups service, which brings a number of new social networking features in over 12 languages. Users can now customize the look of their group, create and edit Web pages, upload and share files and photos, and view member profiles.

"And for your discussions, there's no need to struggle to follow interrupted conversations, as Google Groups now includes the same style of organization that Gmail users love," said Google software engineer Griff Hazen. The company has put together a tour showcasing the new features, including Web page creation and file sharing.

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HBO has filed a $90 million lawsuit against EchoStar, the parent company of DISH Network, over what it calls late and underpaid licensing fees. The premium network has accused the company of being consistently late in payments, and improperly calculating licensing fees. EchoStar has shot back, saying HBO filed the suit in response to a FCC complaint filed by the company.

In that complaint, EchoStar accuses HBO of charging them higher rates than the cable companies for identical services. However HBO denies that its suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York earlier this month, has anything to do with EchoStar's complaint. It also expressed confidence that the FCC would rule in its favor.

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Last Friday, in a vote even some veteran observers of the networking industry weren't expecting, members of the IEEE 802.11 Working Group voted unanimously -- 100-0, with five abstentions -- to advance what's currently being called Draft 1.1 of the 802.11n high-speed WiFi standard. A subsequent vote in the spring could move the draft to 2.0 status, even though as recently as last November, the ratification of Draft 1.06 left behind, by one official count, 370 outstanding catalogued technical issues for further discussion.

With so many issues on the table, what's expected to be the final ratification of a Draft 3.0 standard, in which those issues are resolved, is tentatively scheduled for October 2008, according to a report in InfoWorld. The WiFi industry can't wait that long, and is apparently allowing last week's vote to serve as the starting gun for a new wave of "Draft-N" equipment.

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Apple patched a QuickTime exploit Tuesday that was revealed by researchers who were investigating bugs within the Macintosh operating system and third-party products for it as part of the "Month of Apple Bugs" program. In total, 31 vulnerabilities will be listed. In this specific flaw, a specially crafted Web site could be used to cause a buffer overflow vulnerability in order to execute arbitrary code.

The fix would force QuickTime to perform additional validation of the RTSP URL, which should prevent the application from launching malicious ones. As of Wednesday, the QuickTime bug was the only issue patched by Apple itself.

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Microsoft is finding itself in hot water after it was revealed that the company offered to pay an Australian blogger to correct information on Wikipedia regarding its Office Open XML standard.

The company said it spotted several inaccuracies in articles on the standard, and decided against editing them on its own. Generally, editing your own Wikipedia articles is considered a conflict of interest, and is frowned upon by the community.

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Although it has still yet to replace the aging Hotmail system, Microsoft's new, AJAX-enabled Windows Live Mail service received a minor upgrade yesterday, reaching Milestone 9. The M9 version of Live Mail brings a number of new features, including full compatibility with Firefox 2.0.

Unlike previous builds, as of M9 Microsoft is leaving the "Classic" interface for users migrating from Hotmail. The company doesn't want to scare users away with fancy new features, although such a decision could mean the far majority never see the AJAX interface. Other changes include a new Today page that mirrors the one in Windows Live Messenger, new icons, improved right-click menus and an updated search bar.

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In the first two years of its business in the server CPU space, AMD was able to capture about 20% market share. But in the wake of tremendous competition from Intel, AMD's executives Tuesday afternoon were forced to admit that revenues from servers fell and unit shipments remained flat in the prior quarter over the end of 2005.

With Intel having answered the challenge, the company whose language at this time last year evoked images of a high-noon duel on a main street in old Texas, sounded a lot more cautious, measured, quiet. Even CEO Hector Ruiz, who said he opted this time to speak to shareholders "from the gut" with a speech ostensibly reaffirming his enthusiasm for his company's coming year, ended up mocking his competitor, promising to focus only on innovations that are "truly relevant," to follow Moore's Law "in an intelligent fashion," and taking credit for forcing Intel "to become more efficient."

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After its inception among members of the World-Wide Web Consortium as early as September 1999, their proposed crown jewel of the XML toolkit had been scheduled for formal adoption five years ago. Software vendors have already been selling Web services database development kits using primitive versions as a reference. Now, at long last, the W3C has formally adopted version 1.0 of XQuery, an XML-oriented query language that, a very long time ago now, seemed poised to change the history of Web applications.

The W3C catalogs some 48 commercial implementations of XQuery in commercial software. But years have passed, and many of the contributors to the XML Query Working Group - including IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft - have drifted apart in their concepts of online database architecture. Has time already run out for what had been one of the Web's most ambitious projects?

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As the January 30 launch date of Windows Vista nears, more and more companies are announcing support for the next generation operating system. The latest is AOL, which said Tuesday its suite of applications is "Vista Ready."

A beta of an AOL Mail & AIM Gadget for the Windows Vista sidebar is now available, and would allow the user to check his or her e-mail and instant messages. The mini-application would allow users to read e-mail messages, receive new mail and incoming IM alerts, as well as including other AOL-related features.

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Microsoft on Tuesday released the final version of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, the company's Web development toolkit for Asynchronous JavaScript. The software integrates with the .NET Framework 3.0 and the resulting code is browser independent.

The company's goal was to develop a series of small libraries that a browser can load into memory as necessary -- rather than loading one huge library -- that will give Web developers the framework for implementing on-page controls. These controls provide animated functionality, and more importantly, can be loaded with variable amounts of new content as necessary by resuming HTTP contact with the Web server; thus, the "asynchronous" aspect of the language.

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