Speaking in San Francisco Thursday, Microsoft's senior vice president of server applications Paul Flessner outlined the company's future vision for its SQL Server database in order to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile lifestyle. As part of that effort, Microsoft announced SQL Server Everywhere Edition for smartphones and other embedded devices.

Microsoft released SQL Server 2005 in November, and since that time has counted two million downloads of the free Express Edition. Flessner said sales of the database to businesses even surprised company executives and have led to 20 percent revenue growth in the past two quarters.

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The European Union's .eu top-level domain name was opened to the public Friday, with businesses and individuals rushing to stake their claim on the Web's newest frontier. Over 700,000 registration applications were received in the first four hours of the domain going live. The EU hopes to provide a real rival to .com after excitement over other new domains largely fizzled out.

Registrations for .eu domains run between 12 and 100 euros through over 1,500 registrars partnered with EURid, the company charged with managing the Internet's latest addition. Britons were the quickest to grab .eu names, followed by Germans and the Dutch. .eu is not intended to replace country-specific domains such as .uk or .de, but rather provide companies who operate across multiple countries a useful alternative.

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Normally, one would associate the word virus with something negative, whether it is a malfunctioning desktop computer or a sickness. However, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have "trained" viruses in a lab to create a miniature battery.

By manipulating a few genes within the virus, researchers were able to get the organism to grow and then assemble itself into a functional electronic device. They hope to be able to build a battery that could be as small as a grain of rice.

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Norway said Friday that it plans to wean itself from dependence on large corporations like Microsoft by increasing the use of open source software within government agencies. The Norwegian government also plans to organize a panel of experts to set standards for access to public information and how operating systems can interoperate.

The northern European country is not the first to move towards open source; Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, and South Korea already have plans in place to do the same. The allure of open source to governments is great -- a lack of licensing fees means much lower IT costs, and greater flexibility to adapt programs to their specific needs.

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While nearly every current PC will be able to run Windows Vista, only half will be able to take full advantage of all of it's features, a recent study by research firm Gartner suggests. In turn, the firm is urging IT managers to take caution when ordering new PCs.

Today's average processor and hard drive should be sufficient to install and use Vista, Gartner says. However, a newer graphics card is likely required if the user wishes to take advantage of the Aero user interface, and the computer should have at least 1GB of memory installed for the operating system to run smoothly.

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Court filings show that a former technician with AT&T testified that the company cooperated with the National Security Agency in 2003 to install surveillance equipment. The equipment, located in a separate room in AT&T's San Francisco hub, was capable of performing large-scale surveillance of the company's customers.

The former employee's statement, as well as several documents saved by him after he left the company in 2004, shows further evidence of domestic spying initiatives by the federal government. News that the NSA was working with major telecommunications companies first surfaced shortly before Christmas.

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At the LinuxWorld Conference in Boston on Thursday, Microsoft announced the opening of a new Web site that will provide a glimpse into the company's once-secretive Open Source Lab. The idea of the site, dubbed Port 25, is to create a community for customers running mixed operating system environments.

Microsoft may outwardly attack the value of UNIX and Linux, but the company recognizes the significance of the open source moment and the danger to its core business. In turn, the company established a 300-server Linux installation on its Redmond campus, which it uses to do analysis and see how Linux software interoperates with Windows.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration questioned a Swedish study that claimed a heightened risk of cancer from cell phones, but said Thursday it would review the study anyway. Calling it "difficult to interpret," the agency said it was concerned with the study's methodology. Researchers used mail-in questionnaires in lieu of in-person meetings.

Numerous queries were received by the agency following the study's release. A meeting has been scheduled for the near future to discuss the findings, as well as possible research in the area. Industry representatives lauded the FDA's move, saying most scientists already agree that cell phones are safe.

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Microsoft said Thursday that it plans to release five security patches as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday program next week. With this month's advanced notice, the Redmond company disclosed the nature of at least one of the fixes, a break from its normal policies.

Microsoft normally does not provide details of specific fixes to prevent hackers from taking advantage of flaws before it has a chance to address them. However, with the "CreateTextRange" vulnerability, exploit code is already available, and third parties have even gone as far to create their own patches for the flaw.

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Google on Thursday released a beta of its second Toolbar revision for Firefox, adding RSS feed integration with the Google Personalized Homepags and improving search functionality with previous queries, spell checking and suggestions. Toolbar v2 for Firefox also catches mailto links and opens them within Gmail rather than a desktop e-mail client.

"As a dedicated Firefox user, I think that the latest version enhances an already innovative browser. Meanwhile, you IE Toolbar 4 fans may notice that the feature sets aren't identical. That's because Firefox and IE users have different needs," said Google software engineer Justin Voskuhl. "Rest assured that we're working to get the most popular features in both versions."

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Discovery Communications said Thursday that video content from its library would be included in Google Earth through a deal signed with the search engine. Initially, video would be available for ten American National Parks.

Some of the parks in the initial release include Yellowstone, The Everglades, Mt. Rushmore, Alaska National Parks and Dinosaur National Park among others.

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While Apple has given its users an option to choose between Windows or Mac OS X at startup, other companies are working to give Mac users the ability to run Windows from directly within Apple's operating system using virtual machine technology.

Herdon, Va.-based Parallels said Thursday that it would begin a beta test of its Workstation product for Intel based Macs that would not only allow users to run Windows, but also Linux, FreeBSD, OS/2 or just about any other operating system with the Mac OS X environment.

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Microsoft announced Thursday it had acquired British game developer Lionhead Studios, creator of the popular "Fable" role-playing game. The news came alongside a promise that Microsoft would remain committed to the Japanese market, where RPGs are far more popular than the first person shooters preferred in the United States.

Lionhead will develop games exclusively for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft's Windows desktop operating system. The studio's founder Peter Molyneux said the deal will give Lionhead "the stability and opportunity to focus on creating world-class next-generation titles." Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

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Lucent sued Microsoft on Wednesday over technologies within the Xbox 360 that allegedly infringe on patents held by the company. The suit was filed with the U.S. District Court in Sand Diego, Calif., on March 28, asking for an injunction and monetary damages.

The patent in question is titled "Adaptive Coding and Decoding of Frames and Fields of Video," and revolves around MPEG-2 video technology. Microsoft acknowledged that it had received a copy of the lawsuit, but declined further comment.

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EarthLink said Thursday that its joint proposal with Google to build a Wi-Fi network in San Francisco had been approved by the city's TechConnect Committee Wednesday night. The two companies submitted a joint proposal in February.

In the proposal, EarthLink and Google proposed a two-tier solution: a slower, open network operated by the search giant and a faster fee-based service to be run by the ISP. Previously, the two companies had submitted separate proposals during a six-week period in August and September 2005.

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