Microsoft has been sued by a Chicago man who bought the company's new Xbox 360 game console over alleged overheating and lockup issues. The suit, which asks for class-action status, accuses Microsoft of rushing to market a flawed system to ensure it beat competitors Sony and Nintendo to the punch.

According to Reuters, the suit seeks damages and litigation related expenses, as well as a replacement or recall of Xbox 360 consoles.

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WiBro, short for wireless broadband, will receive a test run in Italy during the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, Telecom Italia said on Monday. The company has signed a deal with Samsung Electronics to test out South Korea's answer to WiMax technology. The implementation would be the first for the nascent technology in Europe.

WiBro can offer wireless data speeds of up to 30 megabits per second, and work is being done to make the standard compatible with WiMax. Samsung launched a trial version of the service in South Korea last month and unveiled the first WiBro-enabled phone at that time. The 2006 Winter Olympics will run from February 10 to 26.

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In order to avoid infringing on a controversial patent that it has been struggling to battle in court, Microsoft has decided to change the way Internet Explorer loads embedded ActiveX controls. An update for IE will be rolled out early next year, the company says.

The patent involving the mechanisms used to embed interactive programs in a Web browser is owned by Eolas Technology and backed by the University of California. Eolas successfully sued Microsoft in 2003 alleging IE's plug-in architecture infringed on its patent and was awarded $521 million in damages, which has ballooned to $560 million due to interest.

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AOL announced on Monday that it now offers RSS feeds of video programming from MTV Networks. Content will be added to the company's search engine from the MT, Comedy Central, Logo, MTV, MTV2, mtvU, The N, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Nick Jr., Nicktoons, Noggin, Spike, TV Land and VH1 networks.

Video content is available through AOL's video on demand tab on its main site, through AOL Search and Singifish, the company's video and audio search engine. AOL's video on demand archive now includes over 18,000 video clips, including content from the company's own library.

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British cable company NTL on Monday offered 817 million pounds ($1.4 billion USD) to purchase Virgin Mobile, and announced plans to create a media giant under the Virgin brand consisting of TV and Internet, as well as fixed and mobile phone service.

Richard Branson, the billionaire entrepreneur that owns 72 percent of Virgin Mobile, would become NTL's largest shareholder with a 14 percent stake in the combined company.

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Now that Visual Studio 2005 is out the door and the .NET Framework 2.0 has been released, Microsoft has issued an updated build of WinFS Beta 1 to MSDN subscribers. WinFS is Microsoft's new SQL-based file system technology that is slated for release as an add-on shortly after Windows Vista.

The idea of WinFS is to create a "sea of data" that abolishes the need for the standard file and folder hierarchy. For example, no longer would documents need to be stored in My Documents or images in My Pictures; instead, Windows would simply display the files associated with a particular request on demand.

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RealNetworks said Monday that it planned to offer a Web-based version of its Rhapsody subscription music service, opening up the service to Mac and Linux users. It also answers a growing call by consumers for services that can work anywhere regardless of location.

No desktop application aside from a Web browser will be required to access Rhapsody via the Web, the company said. A beta version of the service will be made available on Monday.

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Following two fairly high profile incidents regarding the anonymous editing of articles on the popular open-source online reference tool Wikipedia, the site said that it would make changes to how it operates to prevent future problems.

On November 29, an op-ed piece appeared in USA Today penned by John Seigenthaler, a former aide to Robert Kennedy. Seigenthaler said that for 132 days, the Wikipedia entry under his name falsely accused him of being a suspect in Kennedy's assassination.

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If you're already sick of the chirp-chirping of push-to-talk phones, you'd better get prepared to hear a lot more of it.

Cingular on Friday put to rest months of speculation that it would offer a push-to-talk feature by confirming to the Wall Street Journal plans to launch the service on Monday.

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Adobe said late Thursday that it had received clearance from the Justice Department to complete its $3.4 billion merger with software company Macromedia. In July, the DOJ indicated it was looking into the merger and requested more information on the companies' products in authoring and design, as well as vector graphics illustration.

Completion of the merger is expected on Saturday, ending a seven-month process that would create arguably the most powerful multimedia and design company in the industry. Adobe also announced that it would provide analysts a look into the newly combined company's finances in a conference call scheduled for December 15.

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In an effort to better protect its members from the ever-increasing tide of worms, viruses, spyware and other security risks, AOL on Friday rolled out a standalone application called Safety and Security Center. The tool fills the gaps in Windows with antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall protection.

AOL has tapped McAfee to provide the virus scanning engine and firewall, which is designed to protect both dial-up and broadband Internet users. AOL Spyware Protection 2.0, meanwhile, utilizes Computer Associate's PestPatrol technology to remove over 28,000 different spyware and malware programs.

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Microsoft announced two new MSN Messenger bots this week, but took a noticeably different approach in introducing them to users by first asking. Competitor AOL caused quite a stir last month when it automatically added two AIM bots to its users' Buddy Lists, which resulted in a flood of complaints.

The bots from MSN offer answers to questions from Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia, as well as BBC television listings. Users can start sessions with the automated services by saying "hello" and following the prompts. Those interested can add encarta@conversagent.com and bbcbackstage@hotmail.com to their contact lists in order to test out of the bots.

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AT&T has indicated it would be open to allowing cable subscribers to purchase TV channels on an a la carte basis, however it would be dependent on whether the company would be able to obtain programming contracts that would allow it to do so.

The FCC recently indicated that providing a la carte cable and satellite programming would not cost cable providers extra, and could help parents shield children from programming they do not want them to see. For quite a long time, the industry has resisted offering such an option, citing cost and the death of niche channels as a possible consequence.

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Jason Matusow has headed up Redmond's Shared Source initiative for the past five years, but now Microsoft has tasked him with a more important job: evangelizing its embrace of open standards. Matusow announced in his blog that he has taken a new role as Director in the Corporate Standards Strategy Team.

Although Matusow didn't detail what he would do in the position, it's likely the shared source veteran will help with Microsoft's new open standards efforts in Office 12. "I'll still be opining about OSS, particularly as it is so closely related to what I am going to be doing in the standards space," Matusow assured. Microsoft Linux Lab head Bill Hilf will take over as "the Shared Source guy."

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Internet Explorer is not having a good week. After the discovery of an unpatched flaw in the ubiquitous Web browser and code to exploit it prompted Microsoft to issue a public advisory, a new vulnerability has been found that puts users of Google Desktop at risk -- even if they are running a fully patched system.

Uncovered by Israeli hacker Matan Gillon, the security hole involves a problem with the way IE imports cascading style sheets (CSS) from other Web sites, a technique referred to as cross site scripting (XSS). IE will import any type of file with a bracket, regardless of whether or not it's valid CSS.

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