Microsoft Corp. Wednesday began offering Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1) to users who had downloaded the Beta 2 of the next-generation operating system in June.

“The final major pre-release of Windows Vista — Release Candidate 1 (RC1) — is now available for priority access by Customer Preview Program (CPP) participants only,” Microsoft said on the CPP Web site Wednesday.

“If you registered for this program in June, please look for a recent e-mail message from Microsoft (sent in early September) with information regarding RC1,” the site stated.

Source: InformationWeek

Former Microsoft security strategist Window Snyder is joining Mozilla to lead the company’s effort to protect its range of desktop applications from malicious hacker attacks.

Snyder, who was responsible for security sign-off for Microsoft’s Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003, will spearhead Mozilla’s security strategy, eWEEK has learned.

The hiring of Snyder is a coup for Mozilla Corp., the for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, based in Mountain View, Calif.

The group has seen its flagship Firefox Web browser chip away at the market dominance of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, largely because of high-profile security flaws in and attacks on IE, and the addition of Snyder is sure to help beef up Mozilla’s security process and improve its communications with bug finders.

Source: eWeek

Technology giant Cisco Systems is planning a new re-branding campaign complete with a new logo and new advertisements targeted at consumers.

The company unveiled the new logo and brand to employees at a Las Vegas event earlier this summer. And executives are expected to show off the new look to investors and analysts in New York City this week before the new campaign kicks off later this fall.

Source: News.com

Microsoft on Tuesday released a beta test version of Expression Web, a new design tool expected to debut next year.

The tool, that replaces FrontPage, originally called Expression Web Designer, will compete with tools such as Adobe’s Dreamweaver, and allows developers to build Web sites linked to Microsoft’s ASP.NET server technology.

Source: News.com

Korean Air has forbidden the use of Dell and Apple laptop PCs during flight due to the risk of battery explosion.

The Korean national flag carrier said yesterday that the ban was put in place from Aug. 30, after the two U.S. computer manufacturers announced the recall of batteries used in some of their laptop models. The batteries, manufactured by Sony, were reported to have caught fire while in use on several occasions.

“Due to the risk of onboard fire, we are not allowing passengers to use certain brands of laptops on the plane. Safety always comes first for us,’’ a Korean Air spokesperson said, adding they were unsure when the ban would be lifted.

The airline prohibited all models of Dell laptops and Apple’s Powerbook and iBook series, while users can still carry them if they separate the batteries into checked baggage.

Source: The Korea Times

Thanks to new directory software, Windows Vista could put a greater load on Internet servers. But experts disagree over whether we’re headed for a prime-time traffic jam or insignificant slowdown.

Microsoft’s launch of Windows Vista could slow down or stall traffic on the Net, said Paul Mockapetris, who is widely credited with inventing the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS). Mockapetris believes Vista’s introduction will cause a surge in DNS traffic because the operating system supports two versions of the Internet Protocol, a technology standard used to send information over computer networks.

“If you adopt Vista, your DNS traffic is going to double,” Mockapetris said in an interview. It is going to try a DNS lookup for the IPv6 address and then a DNS lookup for the IPv4 address. With many DNS servers already running close to capacity, this can have serious consequences, he said. “You’re going to see brownouts. All of a sudden, it is going to be mud season on the Internet, where things will just be kind of slow and gooey.”

Source: News.com

Vivendi’s Universal Music, the world’s largest seller of recorded music, is vaulting to the top spot in music publishing, too, after agreeing to buy BMG Music Publishing for 1.63 billion euros ($2.1 billion).

German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG, BMG Music Publishing’s parent company, also said on Wednesday it would pay Vivendi $60 million to settle litigation related to financing it once provided to file-sharing service
Napster.

Source: Yahoo

SpiralFrog, a new online music service, said on Wednesday it had signed an agreement with EMI Music Publishing to authorize SpiralFrog’s use of EMI’s music catalog for legal downloading in the United States via SpiralFrog’s advertising-supported service.

SpiralFrog said the agreement with EMI Music Publishing follows its deal with Universal Music Group, a unit of Vivendi, announced last week, which allows SpiralFrog to offer free downloads of Universal’s songs.

Source: Reuters

Google Inc. is expanding its online news index to include stories published years ago, continuing the Internet search leader’s recent efforts to create new sales channels for long-established media while it strives to make its own Web site even more useful.

The news archive to be unveiled Wednesday includes old articles provided by a long list of media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and The Washington Post.

Other leading information storehouses like LexisNexis, Factiva and HighBeam, also have opened up sections of their databases to Google’s expanded index.

Until now, Google’s 4-year-old news search service has focused primarily on stories posted on the Web during the past 30 days.

The new archives feature will only share excerpts from stories related to users’ requests, which are expected to range from seminal moments in history to minutiae about sports and science.

To see the full stories, Google’s visitors will be sent to the Web sites that own the content. Those referrals figure to provide media outlets with more opportunities to charge for access to the full stories - a common practice when people want to read historical information.

Source: AP

Sony’s upgrade video-game console PlayStation 3 will be delayed until March in Europe, but will go on sale in November as planned in the U.S. and Japan, the executive in charge of the project said Wednesday.

The sales delay is caused by a problem in mass producing a key component in the Blu-ray disc laser part of the machine, the next-generation successor to Sony Corp.’s hit PlayStation 2, Sony Computer Entertainment Chief Ken Kutaragi told reporters.

“We decided to focus on the Japanese and U.S. markets,” he said at the gaming unit’s Tokyo headquarters. “I am so sorry not to be able to answer to all the expectations.”

The company is still sticking to its initial global target of shipping 6 million PlayStation 3 machines by March 2007.

Source: AP

Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox gained half a percentage point in market share at the expense of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer during August, continuing the steady climb of the open-source browser, a Web metrics firm said.

Firefox now owns 11.8 percent of the global browser market share, said Aliso Viejo, Calif.’s Net Applications, a jump of .5 percent from July’s 11.3 percent. Internet Explorer, meanwhile, now accounts for 83 percent of browsers used to surf the Web; that’s down from July’s 83.5 percent.

Source: InformationWeek