There can be little doubt that the provision of an effective and free service for BitTorrent anonymity would prove hugely popular. Today we bring you a detailed report on BitBlinder - a brand new open source project which promises to cloak your torrents, hide your browsing and get round many obstructive filters.

BitBlinder is a new and free cross-platform (Mac support coming soon) open source project which not only claims to make anonymous BitTorrent transfers a reality but also hides your IP address while browsing the web. Its functionality also extends to the bypassing of some web filters and in the future will be compatible with more applications, such as email, IRC and instant messaging clients.

Although anonymity with the previously-mentioned TOR is good, using it for torrents is a big no - it’s too slow and the operators of the network do not appreciate it. BitBlinder was born to solve the problems that TOR couldn’t. TorrentFreak caught up with Josh Albrecht, one of the creators of BitBlinder, for the lowdown.

“BitBlinder is an attempt to address the aforementioned issues with Tor - we want to make online anonymity fast, usable, and ubiquitous to the point that organizations give up on spying and filtering us,” Josh told TorrentFreak. “BitBlinder is actually built on much of the same technology as Tor, though we have a completely separate network.”

The anonymity itself is provided by BitBlinder’s own P2P network, inside which everyone is required to contribute their own bandwidth to proxy other users’ data.

Countering pressure from European regulators, Microsoft Corp plans to ship the newest version of its Windows operating system in Europe without its Internet Explorer web browser.

The abrupt reversal comes shortly before the European Commission is due to rule on antitrust charges brought against Microsoft in January, claiming that the world’s largest software company abuses its dominant position by bundling its Internet Explorer browser, shielding it from head-to-head competition with rival products.

Until now, Microsoft has claimed that the browser was an integral part of the operating system and should not be pulled out, but it now plans to do that for a European version of Windows 7, due to be rolled out later this year.

“Given the pending legal proceeding, we’ve decided that instead of including Internet Explorer in Windows 7 in Europe, we will offer it separately and on an easy-to-install basis to both computer manufacturers and users,” said Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner in a blog post on the company’s website on Thursday.

News Corp’s MySpace refused to comment on Thursday on a report the previous day that said the online social network will fire a “massive” number of employees.

The online social network is preparing to lay off as many as 500 of its 1,600 workers, the TechCrunch blog reported on Wednesday, as it cuts costs while trying to stay ahead of growing competition from rival Facebook.

The next version of Firefox will include next-generation features Mozilla hopes will help the browser stand apart from competitors.

Firefox 3.5, which is due out in final release at the end of the month, will allow people to edit digital images from within the browser without need for a third-party application, thanks to a new Javascript engine Mozilla has built for the browser, said Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla, during an interview in New York.

The software also will include the ability to run videos directly in the browser without the need for a third-party viewer or player, and will allow other elements of a Web page to interact with that video content, he said.

As an open-source company, Mozilla aims to give people technologies based on open standards that help them leverage the Web as both a content-delivery engine and platform for developing applications, Beltzner said.

“The more people we see using Firefox as their modern, standards-compliant browser, the better it is for the Web as an ecosystem,” he said.

The new Javascript engine, called TraceMonkey, is twice as fast as the one in Firefox 3.0, and allows for image editing from within the browser without need for software such as Adobe Photoshop, Beltzner said. Javascript is a standard scripting language for Web applications.

“We can do this just as well with an online Web application as well as you could on a local application,” he said, thanks to TraceMonkey. “Especially for those complex, power-hungry Web applications, people will find Firefox 3.5 a lot faster.”

Microsoft Corp is getting ready to unveil a long-anticipated free anti-virus service for personal computers that will compete with products sold by Symantec Corp and McAfee Inc.

A Microsoft spokesman said on Wednesday that the world’s biggest software maker is testing an early version of the product with its own employees. Microsoft would “soon” make a trial version, or product beta, available via its website, he added, but declined to provide a specific date.

Microsoft has said it will provide protection from several types of malicious software including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans.