Microsoft is advising users of Netscape 8 to either uninstall the software or edit their computer’s Registry files because of a bug in America Online’s new browser.

According to a Microsoft engineer, Netscape 8 disables the XML (Extensible Markup Language) rendering capabilities in Internet Explorer, meaning that some Web pages will not be visible in IE after Netscape 8 is installed.

In a posting today to the Internet Explorer Weblog, Microsoft’s Dave Massy, senior program manager for Internet Explorer, said that his company had confirmed the problem, which had previously been reported on Internet newsgroups and forums. “If you navigate in IE to an XML file such as an RSS feed… rather than seeing the data you are presented with a blank page,” he wrote. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format widely used to keep track of updates to Web sites.

Massy offered two workarounds to the problem: uninstalling Netscape 8, or deleting the XML node from a Registry file entitled HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Plugins\Extension.

Source: PCWorld

A simple and legal way of harvesting personal data from many sites was described to me by Blue Security, an Israeli company, which calls the technique “hostile consumer profiling.” A marketer or would-be identity thief begins by obtaining someone’s e-mail address, in this case, fred_fluffernutter@hotmail.com. Many sites that require registration use your Net address as a user name; in other cases, people are likely to choose login names, such as fred_fluffernutter, based on their Net address.

FRUSTRATING AVAILABILITY. Partly because of that convention, it’s all too easy to find out who is registered for what activities. For example, if you attempt to register at NARAL Pro-Choice America with a name already in use — say, Fred’s — a message pops up on the screen, saying: “Thank you for confirming your membership.” An impostor or a marketer building a profile can now infer that Fred is a likely supporter of abortion rights.

Microsoft debuted on Thursday its MSN Postmaster Web site, which offers tools and services designed to combat spam.

MSN Postmaster marks the software giant’s latest effort to increase its presence in the security arena, a lucrative area that has attracted a large swath of competitors.

An online resource, Postmaster offers tools to help Internet service providers, e-mail service providers and legitimate bulk e-mailers combat junk e-mail, streamline the reporting process for spam and assist in delivering legitimate bulk e-mail to MSN Hotmail users.

Postmaster will also include the software giant’s new Smart Network Data Services, which will provide reports on the types of e-mail being sent to MSN Hotmail accounts. The tracking service will inform ISPs of the volume of e-mail being sent from their IP address to MSN Hotmail users and the percentage of that e-mail that has been tagged as spam by either Hotmail filters or the user themselves.

Source: News.com

ABC News and NBC News each plunged into the world of podcasting on Wednesday with plans to offer TV newscasts as on-demand audio programs over the Web.

Podcasting software allows listeners to download audio shows for free, play them on computers and digital-music players when they want and subscribe to updates. The term comes from Apple Computer’s iPod, the digital-music player that’s taken the consumer electronics market by storm.

ABC News is now offering podcast versions of “Good Morning America,” “Nightline” and other programs via ABC News.com. The network is also creating several podcast-only shows. One, “The AfterNote,” offers political commentary every evening and builds on “The Note,” the network’s morning newsletter. It also plans to deliver four one-hour podcast exclusives, including “Real Life Desperate Housewives with ABC’s John Stossel” and “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith–The End of an Era.”

Intel Corp. lowballed its way into the mainstream dual-core market on Thursday, launching the Pentium D at a price that’s less than half of AMD’s own dual-core chip.

As expected, Intel introduced three models of the Pentium D on Thursday: the 2.8-GHz Pentium D 820, the 3.0-GHz Pentium D 830, and the 3.2-GHz Pentium D 840. The three chips are priced at $241, $316, and $530, in lots of 1,000 units.

Intel also introduced the Pentium 4 670, a 3.8-GHz 64-bit chip that will round out the top end of its single-core platform, at $851.

Source: ExtremeTech

Toshiba and Sony this week as near as makes no odds confirmed there is no chance their rival blue-laser optical disc formats will be combined into a single offering.

The two companies’ presidents, along with the head of Matsushita, met this week to see if they could thrash out a solution to stalled negotiations on bringing Toshiba’s HD DVD and Sony’s Blu-ray Disc formats together.

However, all three executives appear to have taken much the same line chosen by their underlings. In essence, each told the others to abandon their preferred format and embrace the other.

Source: The Register

Yahoo on Thursday is expected to begin testing improvements to its free e-mail service that will let subscribers more easily send and share digital photos.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which hosts the top-ranked Web-based e-mail service, has created a new beta program designed to scan the photos on a user’s hard drive, and if a user so chooses, drag and drop selections into an e-mail message, without adding cumbersome attachments. Its new service can also scour for photos in a user’s Yahoo storage locker and Yahoo’s image database of 1.5 billion pictures.

Source: News.com

Following confusion surrounding its Windows x64 Advancement Program, which offers a free upgrade from the standard 32-bit version of Windows XP to the recent 64-bit release, Microsoft has clarified the language on its Web site. All users, whether they purchased or built their PCs, are now eligible for the 64-bit upgrade.

Source: eWeek

update Ask Jeeves has added new features to its search engine with the aim of setting its service apart from rivals, the company said Thursday.

One new feature builds on Ask Jeeves’ long-standing clustering technology, which parses search results into concepts or ideas related to any given query. Called Zoom, the new feature lets people narrow or broaden the field of search results, as well as view results for related concepts. For example, for a search on the term “cancer,” visitors can narrow it to types of the disease, or they could expand it to related illnesses.

Source: News.com