Microsoft

Microsoft today released critical security patches for its Office software, fixing a flaw in Excel that had been exploited by attackers for the past two months.

The bug fixes were released infour software updatesfor Excel, Outlook, Office 2000, and Office's Web components. Microsoft rates all of the updates as critical, meaning that an attacker could theoretically exploit these flaws in order to hack into a victim's computer.

In total, 12 vulnerabilities are fixed in the four updates.

With Vista about as popular as Kyle Sandilands and Firefox gaining ground in the browser space, Microsoft needs to up the wow factor in its next major software release.

Internet Explorer 8, just released as public beta, offers the opportunity for the company to make good on its promise to work better with online standards and make the Web the centre of your computing experience.

Microsoft had a message to send customers, developers and even investors today: Silverlight will live up to its "Flash killer" nickname. It's the only sense I can make out of a keynote that spent so much time on Silverlight, with emphasis on flashy demos, many from partners.

It's no coincidence that the demos painstakingly and methodically covered most of the areas where Flash is used for content development. But there was an undercurrent that should disturb Adobe: an emphasis on Microsoft's advertising platform.

I was expecting this, because I knew that Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager for Internet Explorer would be speaking about - and demonstrating - IE8 at MIX on Wednesday. Microsoft has released the first beta version of Internet Explorer 8 to the public, with a warning that this first release is intended for developers.

You can download the beta here. As I wrote earlier, IE8 will default to a standards-compliant mode. Thus, as Microsoft indicated earlier, you have to set it into an IE7 emulation mode if you want that behavior.

Microsoft is cutting the retail price of its Windows Vista operating system by as much as 39% here in New Zealand.
Prices in the US will drop 20% and in the UK and Europe, savings of up to 46% are available on some versions.

On Friday, Microsoft announced sweeping price cuts to boxed copies of Vista, saying then that the cuts would range from as low as 3% in developed countries to nearly 50% for some editions sold in poorer nations.

With Google beefing up its app business, we've been wondering when Microsoft would respond. We've been reporting on Microsoft's intention to support a mix of Web-based services and on-premise software. Now Nick Carr has word that the news may come down quite soon.

Microsoft Corp.'s big bet on Facebook's online social network isn't stopping Chairman Bill Gates from promoting other popular Internet hangouts.

Gates is helping out LinkedIn Corp.'s online professional network by setting up a profile on the service and posing a question to help draw more attention to a makeover of the Web site's front page.

The question, scheduled to be posted Thursday, will solicit suggestions on the best way to encourage more young people to pursue careers in science and technology.

Microsoft Corp. launched a new version of its server operating system with great fanfare Wednesday, but analysts said Windows Server 2008 is an incremental update rather than a giant leap forward.

At a Los Angeles event that opened with a speech by former news anchor Tom Brokaw, Microsoft also unveiled a new edition of Visual Studio 2008, used by computer programmers to create desktop and Web applications. The event also promoted a third program, Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 database system, which won't be available until the third quarter of this year.

The European Union fined Microsoft Corp. a record $1.3 billion on Wednesday for charging rivals too much for software information.

EU regulators said the company charged "unreasonable prices" until last October to software developers who wanted to make products compatible with the Windows desktop operating system.

Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) immediately said that these fines were about past issues that have been resolved and the company was now working under new principles to make its products more open.

A disk encryption system built into Windows Vista remains a viable way to protect sensitive files, according to Microsoft. In a blog posting, Russ Humphries, senior product manager for Windows Vista Security, outlined simple steps that users can take to prevent an attack laid out last week in a high-profile research report. He says the hack can be easily prevented.