Archive for the ‘PC Software’ Category
November 16th, 2008 | 
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Microsoft, which has made billions of dollars selling packaged software, has opened its first online store in the US, selling its ubiquitous programs as downloads.
The Microsoft Store is a possible death knell for the practice of selling software on computer discs that buyers install on their machines.
The online store with EDS (electronic distribution of software) was launched on Friday with little fanfare. Microsoft already operates online stores in Britain, Germany and South Korea…
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Google is introducing new tools that will convert its free email service into a video and audio channel for people who want to see and hear each other while they communicate.
Activating the features, introduced on Tuesday, will require a free piece of software as well as a Webcam, which are becoming more commonplace as computer manufacturers embed video equipment into laptops.
Once the additional software is installed, Gmail users will be given the option to see and hear each other without leaving the email application…
Microsoft is ramping up its battle for internet popularity with plans to make Windows Live services more social and build bridges to Twitter, Flickr and other popular websites.
Windows Live will let users keep track of friends in ways similar to those at hot social-networking website Facebook, which has a partnership with Microsoft.
It will also apparently incorporate Live Mesh technology launched early this year to let people combine “smart phones”, personal computers and websites into de facto networks that allow data to be accessed from almost anywhere…
Security
vendor AVG said Thursday that the company will offer a free year of service, after its antivirus software misidentified a key Windows system file as malware.
Earlier this week, AVG identified user32.dll as a generic Trojan, offering to delete it. Those that did risked putting their PC into an endless reboot cycle.
AVG later apologized and offered workarounds for affected users.
Thursday, the company went one further. “As a follow-up to the rapid distribution of recovery instructions and repair CDs, AVG Technologies is offering all affected users a free license or license extension as follows,” AVG said in a statement.
Essentially, the offer covers a free year of AVG 8.0 service, or a free upgrade for AVG 7.5 users. The upgrade also includes users of the free AVG antivirus service. Not all customers will receive the license, just “affected users,” AVG said. The company said it will contact affected customers beginning Nov. 24, and advise them of how to obtain the free year of service…
Attacks on operating systems may be decreasing since last year, but attacks on applications, incidents of malware, and unwanted software are rising and account for 90 percent of vulnerabilities, according to the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, released Saturday.
The amount of malware and unwanted software removed from computers increased 43 percent in the first half of the year, according to the 150-page report, now in its fifth installment. Thirty percent of that malware was Trojan-based, usually in the form of a computer worm or virus disguised as another application that erases data, corrupts files, and reinstalls itself after being disabled.
China had the highest percentage of browser-based attacks at 50 percent, with the United States following with 23 percent. China’s infection rate of 6.6 percent, a 41 percent increase from the second half of 2007, was a bit lower than industry experts expected…
Microsoft on Thursday responded to user outrage over a new anti-piracy plug-in that blacks out the screen of computers loaded with pirated software.
“We are extremely grateful for our users’ attention. At the same time, we believe there are numerous misunderstandings about the Windows Office Genuine Advantage program,” the company said, responding to concerns that the software tool was notifying Microsoft of the identity of users who had installed non-authentic copies of Windows XP. Microsoft sought to soften users’ reaction to a “black screen” and reminder that they should use legitimate Microsoft products with an open letter in Chinese to its users, sent to IDG News Service by e-mail and published by numerous Chinese media outlets.
“We absolutely guarantee that we will not in any way collect the user’s name, e-mail address, or any other information that can be used to identify the user,” Microsoft said. The company said that participation in the Windows Genuine Advantage program is voluntary, and that users’ computers will not be deactivated or otherwise affected…
That song especially comes to mind with Google’s OpenSocial Foundation, a nonprofit that was officially established this week to promote the open developer platform OpenSocial. OpenSocial is a common set of application protocol interfaces (APIs) for social networks. It’s designed to make it easy for companies to create a social network or related applications and have them work seamlessly with other social networks using the platform. (Some argue it’s also designed to compete with Facebook’s developer platform.)
And if companies aren’t comfortable with the OpenSocial premise–for fear that it’s just an anticompetitive ploy–they now have a nonprofit foundation that will help ease their mind.
“This organization seeks to ensure that OpenSocial will remain implementable by all, at no cost, in perpetuity,” wrote Dan Peterson on the OpenSocial Foundation blog.
Specifically, the foundation will provide operational guidelines about the technology and details on intellectual property as the platform changes and grows…
Quote: On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.
Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers…
Microsoft has released a second test version of Internet Explorer 8, delivering a feature-complete upgrade to the world’s most widely used web browser.
The world’s largest software maker said the latest version – beta 2 – of Internet Explorer, which has a market share of about 75 per cent, comes with new features to enhance privacy, ease-of-use, and security.
Microsoft first released a test – or beta 1 – version of IE 8 in March, but that was aimed at letting web developers take a first look at the new browser. This latest version is aimed at a broader consumer audience…
A start-up led by former star Google engineers on Sunday unveiled a new Web search service that aims to outdo the Internet search leader in size, but faces an uphill battle changing Web surfing habits.
Cuil Inc (pronounced “cool”) is offering a new search service at www.cuil.com that the company claims can index, faster and more cheaply, a far larger portion of the Web than Google, which boasts the largest online index.
The would-be Google rival says its service goes beyond prevailing search techniques that focus on Web links and audience traffic patterns and instead analyzes the context of each page and the concepts behind each user search request.
“Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the Internet, placing nearly the entire Web at the fingertips of every user,” Tom Costello, Cuil co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement…
