At the Mix’07 conference in Las Vegas—Microsoft’s annual event for web designers and developers—the spotlight has largely been on Microsoft’s Silverlight platform, formerly known as Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere. Silverlight is a set of tools for developing rich, Flash-like web applications. Less talk has focused around the web browser that will provide the primary user interface for all this new technology. On the Internet Explorer blog, Chris Wilson hinted at some of the things that might be coming in IE 8, while declining to give specific details.

Microsoft has been ordered to stump up $1.5bn for violating MP3 patents owned by Alcatel and Lucent Technologies.

US federal judge Rudi Brewster told the software giant that it’s time to pay damages, after a trial jury found Microsoft guilty in February.

The judge ordered the $1.5bn to be split between Lucent and Alcatel - the latter inherited the case along with its 2005 purchase of Lucent. According to Brewster the court finds “no just reason for the delay and therefore enters final judgment on these patents”.

Yahoo on Thursday launched a web-based version of its free instant messaging service for Internet users who want to stay connected while away from their home computers.

Yahoo Messenger for the Web lets people use the online search titan’s service from any Internet-linked computer without needing to download or install software, as was the case previously.

The service is tailored for use by travelers, workers whose employers block software downloads to company machines, cyber-cafe dwellers and people who simply cannot afford their own computers.

Searching for a sign that quad-core processing is heading to the mainstream? Look no further than Gateway putting PCs based on Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6600 chip on the shelves of major retailers.

Best Buy’s site lists the $2,100 Gateway FX8020 model, while Circuit City is selling the $2,300 FX8030, which adds a second 500GB hard drive for an even terabyte of storage. In addition to the quad-core 2.4GHz Q6600 chip, both models feature 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 memory, a 512MB ATI Radeon X1950 Crossfire-capable graphics card, and Vista Home Premium.

The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board has pushed back the date on which a contentious fee hike for Internet radio broadcasters takes effect.

In a 32-page final rule (PDF) formally published Monday, the three-judge panel within the Library of Congress set July 15 as the date that the new royalty rates required of Net radio operators will kick in–two months later than the original deadline.

A Scottish church which featured in the best-selling novel “The Da Vinci Code” has revealed another mystery hidden in secret code for almost 600 years.

A father and son who became fascinated by symbols carved into the chapel’s arches say they have deciphered a musical score encrypted in them.

Thomas Mitchell, a 75-year-old musician and ex-Royal Air Force code breaker, and his composer and pianist son Stuart, described the piece as “frozen music.”

“The music has been frozen in time by symbolism,” Mitchell said on his Web site , which details the 27-year project to crack the chapel’s code.

Apple on Tuesday released a QuickTime update to fix a security flaw that was used to breach a MacBook Pro at a recent security conference.

The media player vulnerability lies in QuickTime for Java, Apple said in a security alert. The hole could be exploited through a rigged Web site and let an attacker commandeer computers running both Mac OS X and Windows, the Mac maker said.

“By enticing a user to visit a Web page containing a maliciously crafted Java applet, an attacker can trigger the issue, which may lead to arbitrary code execution,” Apple said. Only computers running an unfixed version of QuickTime would be at risk.

Digg.com users, very upset at the news aggregate site for deleting articles containing an encryption key that could be used to crack the digital rights management on HD DVDs, have inundated the site with thousands of recommendations to pages that contain the code. The protest was apparently heard by Digg administrators, who later reversed the ban.

On Tuesday night, the “All topics” category contained several pages of the most popular articles recommended by Digg readers populated only by links to sites that contained the code, as well as messages deriding the Motion Picture Association of America, a proponent of digital rights management and antipiracy measures. Many of the articles had upward of 4,000 recommendations from users.

Later, a message headlined with the code and credited to Digg co-founder Kevin Rose called Tuesday “a difficult day for us” and explained that site had reversed its earlier stance and would reluctantly allow articles containing the code to be referenced from the site.

“We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code,” according to the posting. “…You’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”