WinInsider

Microsoft has started private testing of the next version of Office for the Macintosh, which is due out in the second half of the year. Office 2008 for Mac, as the product is known, helps bring the desktop suite back into compatibility with two key technologies. First, the product is the first version of Office that runs natively on both Intel- and Power PC-based Macs. The new software also adds support for the XML file formats that Microsoft added to the Windows version of Office--Office 2007, which hit store shelves in January.

A new security vulnerability puts Windows users at risk of serious cyberattacks, Microsoft warned late Wednesday. The vulnerability affects all recent Windows versions, including Vista, which Microsoft has promoted heavily for its security. The operating system software is flawed in the way it handles animated cursors, Microsoft said in a security advisory.

An attacker could exploit the vulnerability through a Web page or e-mail message with rigged computer code, Microsoft said.

"Upon viewing a Web page, previewing or reading a specially crafted message, or opening a specially crafted e-mail attachment, the attacker could cause the affected system to execute code," Microsoft said in its advisory.

Microsoft late Wednesday unveiled a mobile Web browser aimed at making surfing the Internet on wireless devices as convenient and feature-rich as browsing on a PC.

Code-named Deepfish, a preview of the technology is available from Microsoft's Live Labs Web site. The company said it is available on a first-come, first-served basis, and will close access to Deepfish once downloads reach a certain, unspecified number.

Microsoft unveiled Deepfish at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego. Live Labs is Microsoft's research division aimed at developing new Web-based services to help the company compete with Google and Yahoo.

Microsoft officials at the VSLive conference in San Francisco this week elaborated on where the company is headed with its software development tools, noting the planned Orcas and Rosario releases of Visual Studio, due later this year and a year afterward, respectively. InfoWorld editor at large Paul Krill sat down with Prashant Sridharan, Microsoft group product manager for Visual Studio, to discuss Microsoft's tool plans as well as issues such as the level of developer talent available.

InfoWorld: What about the Rosario and Orcas releases of Visual Studio? You mentioned refactoring and LINQ.

Sridharan: That's [in] Orcas, what you just mentioned is all Orcas. Rosario is different. So what's in Rosario? Rosario focuses on three primary areas. [The] first area is around organization, collaboration. And so what I mean by that is with Team System we helped your teams collaborate more effectively. And in most organizations you have many software projects and, therefore, many software teams working on those projects.

Microsoft on Wednesday released a minor update to its Zune software aimed at fixing several issues, including one that was causing some users to hear skipping when playing back purchased songs.

"We were aware a limited number of users were experiencing that issue, and we were able to address it," said Zune spokeswoman Katy Asher. The software maker had originally hoped to have the update by midmonth, but the patch took slightly longer than it had hoped to develop and test.

In what appears to be Microsoft's standard cart-before-the-horse style of information delivery, the leading console manufacturer of this generation confirmed nearly all of the rumors preceding today's announcement of the new black, HDMI-enabled Xbox 360 Elite.

Dubbed the Xbox 360 Elite (not the "Zephyr" as had been rumored), the new black, $479.99 Xbox 360 comes bundled with a 120GB hard drive, has an HDMI port, and will ship to the US and Canada Sunday, April 29, 2007, Microsoft told IGN today in an interview over the phone.

Intel on Wednesday confirmed plans to integrate critical system components and reintroduce hyperthreading technology in 2008, when it unveils a new chip blueprint.

In the past, Intel executives have spoken in broad terms about integrating components such as the memory controller and direct links between processor cores. But those technologies are on tap for Nehalem, the code name Intel has assigned to a chip family it will start producing in 2008, Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, said during a briefing for reporters here.

Microsoft announced it has expanded the company?s board by one seat -- from nine to 10 -- and elected Reed Hastings, 46, chairman and CEO of Netflix, to fill the new spot. Hastings has also been appointed to the finance committee.

At the meeting held Monday, the board of directors also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.10 per share, payable June 14, 2007, to shareholders of record on May 17, 2007. The ex-dividend date will be May 15, 2007.

Hastings founded Netflix in 1997, and the company had 6.3 million subscribers by the end of 2006, more than doubling over the last two years.

Microsoft's Office is a development platform, and don't you forget it. KD Hallman, a general manager in Microsoft's Visual Studio division, delivered a keynote address at the VSLive conference here extolling the benefits of Office 2007 and it components for developers.

Microsoft announced a new SDK for VSTA, a key tool in the Office repertoire. VSTA is the successor to VBA. And VBA is an embedded integration tool that has been in the market for 10 years and used by some 20 million developers, Hallman said.

A Russian schoolteacher is being forced to stand trial on charges he pirated software for a second time, as a regional court overturned an earlier ruling that had dismissed the charges against him.

The initial case drew the attention of former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who wrote an open letter to Bill Gates to ask that he show the defendant mercy. However, Microsoft responded and said they had nothing to do with the case, and it was later thrown out.

Microsoft further said that it was invited to file a civil suit against the man last year, however it declined.