Microsoft Corp. has unveiled an early version of a new Web browser for mobile devices that it said will make browsing full-sized Web pages faster and easier on small smart-phone screens.

Deepfish, as the software from Microsoft’s Live Labs group is called, takes a Web page intended for a desktop Web browser and turns it into a small image that fits on a mobile phone’s screen. Users can zoom in on the part of the page they want to read or click on.

Apple Inc., the company that popularized selling songs online for 99 cents apiece, now hopes to buoy interest in albums, giving customers credit for purchases of full albums from which they have bought individual tracks.

Apple introduced the “Complete My Album” feature Thursday on its iTunes Store. It now gives a full credit of 99 cents for every track the user previously purchased and applies it toward the purchase of the complete album.

For instance, most albums on iTunes cost $9.99 so a customer who already bought three tracks can download the rest of the album for $7.02.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is planning a new version of the PlayStation 3 game console with a higher-capacity hard-disk drive, according to a U.S. regulatory filing made by the company.

The filing to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission was made earlier this month to notify the FCC of a change to the game console’s Bluetooth module. The FCC is the radio regulator in the U.S. and as such all new products that use radio or changes to these products must be submitted to the organization for approval before they can be sold.

Included in the filing’s cover letter is notification of the new model: “The model CECHE01 to be added by the difference of the capacity of hard disk.” It then says the new model will have an 80G-byte drive.

Yahoo is opening up its Web mail platform to external developers, so that they can create plug-ins, utilities and applications for the popular Yahoo Mail service.

Late on Wednesday, Yahoo plans to deliver application programming interfaces (APIs) for Yahoo Mail, said Chad Dickerson, head of the Yahoo Developer Network. The move comes on the heels of an announcement to offer unlimited storage capacity for Yahoo Mail users starting from May.

Yahoo officials had indicated in September of last year their intention to let external developers write applications for Yahoo Mail, and the tools will now be available at the Yahoo Developer Network Web site.

Philips Electronics is introducing a mobile phone with a built-in compartment for an ordinary AAA battery to power the device when the main battery runs low.

The Xenium NRG handset was developed in collaboration with battery maker Energizer Holdings Inc. and Techtium Ltd., an Israeli chip maker specializing in battery management technology.

The AAA battery inserted into the phone can be of any brand or type, whether rechargeable or disposable. In the case of a rechargeable, the phone will recharge both the main battery and the backup AAA when it is plugged into an electrical outlet.

The companies say the AAA battery can provide up to three extra hours of talk time. They did not disclose how much the Xenium NRG would cost, when it would go on sale, or in which countries.

More than two months after first disclosing that hackers accessed customers’ financial data from its computers, discount retailer TJX Cos. has revealed that information from at least 45.7 million credit and debit cards was stolen over an 18-month period.

In a regulatory filing that gives the first detailed account of the breach initially disclosed in January, the owner of T.J. Maxx, Marshall’s and other stores in North America and the United Kingdom also said another 455,000 customers who returned merchandise without receipts had their personal data stolen, including driver’s license numbers.

The data that was stolen covers transactions dating as far back as December 2002, TJX said in the filing Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Codegear (now a subsidiary of Borland) has just released version 1.0 of Delphi for PHP, a RAD development environment (running on Windows) that produces standard PHP code. It features a large set of built-in components, including ones that use AJAX for database access; and Codegear is encouraging users to develop their own components.

Apple’s iTunes software might not be totally ready for Windows Vista just yet, but Mac users will now be able to run Vista on their Intel-based systems with a new release of Boot Camp.

It’s still officially a beta product, but the newest version of Boot Camp now works with the 32-bit version of Vista and also includes support for updated drivers and the Apple Remote.

Bullies are no longer content to taunt their victims in the playground but are turning to cyberspace, according to Canadian researchers.

They are using e-mail, text messaging and social networking sites in new forms of victimization.

Cyber bullies are even forcing their girlfriends to undress in front of webcams and then sharing the images with others online.

“They’re pressuring each other. This is particularly (true) for girls to send pictures of themselves with their tops off,” said Professor Faye Mishna, of the University of Toronto, who has been researching the cyber abuse of children.

“Girls might send it to their boyfriend and she is pressured to do it thinking he’s just going to see it. So she gives in and the next thing you know it’s all over (the place).”

A Web browser that promises to help the user surf to explicit Web sites bundles malicious software, a researcher has warned.

“It comes with its very own rootkit,” Chris Boyd, director of research at FaceTime Communications wrote on his blog Wednesday.

The program, called NetBrowserPro, is advertised in poor English on a Web site as a tool with a purpose: “NetBrowserPro is the internet browser which aimed to the one thing–help you to watch porn. Secure, confidential, quick and free.”

When installing NetBrowserPro a rootkit gets dropped on the PC, Boyd found. A rootkit could provide a cloak for cybercrooks. Also, the browser asks to install an application called MovieCommander which, according to Boyd, is associated with fake codecs that are known to install spyware on computers.

Google on Tuesday made moves to beef up its Google Pack service. The free collection of software applications now includes antivirus, antimalware, and antispyware tools.

Google Pack provides basic virus protection from Symantec’s Norton Security Scan, which offers automatic security updates and scheduled scanning. No subscription fee is required. The company also added PC Tools’ Spyware Doctor Starter Edition, an antispyware utility that offers scheduled scanning, threat removal, active protection, and automatic updates.

Microsoft wants to buy New York-based online advertising firm DoubleClick, according to the Wall Street Journal.

DoubleClick, which is majority-owned by private equity firm Hellman and Friedman, is said to be exploring options and working closely with Morgan Stanley to secure a possible sale with Microsoft.
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A $2bn price tag has been placed on DoubleClick by the private equity firm. DoubleClick, which was founded in 1996 and went private in 2005, has seen revenue of $150m in the last year.