Microsoft has unveiled a slew of new features that will appear in the Release Candidate of Windows 7 that didn’t make an appearance in the beta. ‘We’ve been quite busy for the past two months or so working through all the feedback we’ve received on Windows 7,’ explains Steven Sinofsky, lead engineer for Windows 7 in his blog. A majority of these features are user interface tweaks, but they should add up to a much smoother Windows 7 experience

When Professor and media researcher Roger Wallis left the stand yesterday, the court asked whether he wanted to be reimbursed for his appearance. “You are welcome to send some flowers to my wife,” he responded. In the hours that followed, many Pirate Bay supporters took this suggestion to hand.

At a local flower store in Stockholm they had received 100 orders by 20.30 last night. Owner Kristian Skald said that two nearby stores had received an equal amount of orders.

The Fertility Institutes recently stunned the fertility community by being the first company to boldly offer couples the opportunity to screen their embryos not only for diseases and gender, but also for completely benign characteristics such as eye color, hair color, and complexion. The Fertility Institutes proudly claims this is just the tip of the iceberg, and plans to offer almost any conceivable customization as science makes them available. Even as couples from across the globe are flocking in droves to pay the company their life’s savings for a custom baby, opponents are vilifying the company for shattering moral and ethical boundaries. Like it or not, the era of designer babies is officially here and there is no going back.

Microsoft has warned users that yet another critical vulnerability has been found in its popular Office spreadsheet program Excel. The flaw could allow remote hackers to open and run malicious code on an unsuspecting user’s computer through an infected spreadsheet file.

The attack effects users of Microsoft Office Excel 2007 but also those using any of the older binary .XLS files. A user opening a file, probably through an email, will be asked to open a malicious spreadsheet. They’ll then begin downloading at least two files onto their system, one valid, the other the malicious binary. Once the new and infected file is opened, unsuspecting users will unfortunately execute a hidden Trojan horse downloader that could be used by hackers to log user keystrokes and any sensitive personal data, including financial information.

Vudu has become the first on-demand service to offer high-definition movies for download to own rather than just rent.

Under agreements with such independent film companies as Magnolia Pictures, FirstLook Studios and Kino, Vudu will begin by offering 50 HD titles, including best documentary Oscar winner “Man on Wire,” for purchase.

Vudu already offered a library of more than 1,400 HD movies for rental. Vudu’s new collection, being unveiled Tuesday, will be available for rental as well as purchase in both instant HD and Vudu’s HDX format.

In addition to Magnolia’s “Man on Wire,” other titles include FirstLook’s “Transsiberian” and “War, Inc.”

High-definition titles purchased from Vudu can be stored on the consumer’s Vudu box or in the Vudu Vault, a free online storage option for movies and TV shows that enables consumers to free up disk space while retaining access to all their purchased titles. Movies are priced from $13.99 to $23.99.

Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has confirmed that the company’s upcoming Office package, codenamed 14, won’t land in 2009.

He told Wall Street analysts at Redmond’s annual “Strategic Update” briefing today that the Office suite “will not be [shipped] this year.”

Just last month Microsoft spun out an Alpha version of the server products that will eventually be folded into Office 14 to a select bunch of customers.

However, Microsoft declined to disclose information about when it expected a beta version would arrive.

If CDs really are on their way out, Sony is ready with their replacement: Blu-spec CDs.

Although details about the new format, launched in Japan in November, are somewhat scant, we do know that users won’t need a new player for Blu-spec CDs.

“The Blu-spec CD format boasts a new approach to the faithful reproduction of music by utilizing the leading-edge blue laser diode technologies optimized for the manufacturing of Blu-ray,” according to CDJapan. The new discs’ polycarbonate plastic, optimized for Blu-ray discs, is used “to ensure accurate reading of the data.”

Sony doesn’t claim that the Blu-spec CD sounds any better than a CD or how the new discs compare with Sony’s previous and nearly dead super-CD format, Super Audio CD (SACD).

Google on Tuesday released a new version if its software toolbar for Internet Explorer. Included is a feature carried over from the company’s desktop search product–a search box that runs whether or not you have your browser open. This special box sits next to the Start button on your taskbar, and lets you search the Web, your browser bookmarks, and any files and applications you have on your PC.

In a blog post, the company said this release is an attempt to put the focus back on search. More importantly, it’s getting people to start a Google search whether or not they’ve got their browser open–giving the company more chances to serve up ads. Part of that is already apparent, as users get sponsored results through desktop searches, just like they would when searching from Google.com.

Other new features include the recently visited pages and bookmarks start page that first shipped with Chrome, then came to Firefox with its latest Google toolbar release. Google has also added its synchronization service, which will let you access your same Google bookmarks and autofill form information from multiple computers.

Advanced Micro Devices will announce Wednesday that its first six-core processor in on track to launch later this year.

AMD’s “Istanbul” processor will be targeted at server computers. With the release, AMD will be playing catch up to Intel, which began offering its six-core “Dunnington” processor for servers last fall. Intel’s first Nehalem-architecture server processor is also due soon, which, on a per-core basis, is expected to offer better performance than Dunnington.

“The silicon is healthy and we’re targeting a launch in 2H09,” AMD spokesperson Jake Whitman said Tuesday.

“The new 6-core version of the AMD Opteron processor is…everything we had hoped for–and more,” John Fruehe, director of business development for server/workstation products at AMD, wrote in a blog.

The “socket 1207″ platform and six-core Direct Connect architecture will allow servers with 12, 24 or 48 cores per server in the future, Fruehe said.

Google Inc. is making amends for an e-mail outage by giving 15 days of free service to businesses, government agencies and other subscribers who pay for an expanded version of the product.

The concession is meant to placate customers who were cut off from their e-mail accounts Tuesday for as long as four hours. The outage began at 9:30 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, causing more inconvenience in Europe and Asia than in the United States.

Citrix announced today that they are giving away their Xen OSS based virtualization platform XenServer with all the goodies included for free. The big highlights are XenMotion, which lets you move VMs from box to box without downtime, and multi server management. The same stuff in VMware land is $5k. They plan to sell new products for XenServer and also the same stuff on Microsoft’s virtualization technology called Hyper-V.

Sourcefire security researcher Lurene Grenier has published a home-brewed patch for the critical Adobe Reader vulnerability that hackers are exploiting in the wild using malicious PDF files, beating Adobe Systems Inc. to the punch by more than two weeks. Grenier posted the patch on Sunday with the caveats that it applies only to the Windows version of Adobe Reader 9.0 and comes with no guarantees. Also, PhishLabs has created a batch file that resets a Windows registry key to de-fang the hack by disabling JavaScript in Adobe Reader 9.0, giving administrators a way to automate the process.