Joost, the video-on-demand program created by the founders of Skype and Kazaa, announced its commercial launch on Tuesday.

The software, which is based on a peer-to-peer model, is no longer in a private beta test, according to a release from the company. Existing beta testers, who now need to upgrade to a new version of the program, can invite an unlimited number of people to download the Joost console.

The latest version of the software includes commercial content from 32 advertising partners, such as Coca-Cola, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Nike, whose partnerships with Joost were announced earlier this week.

Despite the expanded availability and commercial partnerships, the new version of Joost is still considered to be a beta test. The service remains free.

Computers and music have been linked since the earliest days of the mainframe, when giant machines controlled primitive synthesizers. Recently, however, a significant advancement has taken place in the field of computer music with the development of software that can not only transcribe polyphonic music in real time, but can also play back complex harmonies alongside human performers. For instance, at the annual Music Information Retrieval Exchange (MIREX) competition, Christopher Raphael of Indiana University demonstrated a system that can understand live music well enough to accompany a musician.

International Business Machines Corp. plans to start selling products from smaller rival MySQL AB, a developer of an open-source database that is used to help run Web sites, including Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and YouTube.

Executives at IBM, the world’s No. 2 software maker, and MySQL told Reuters they will announce a technology and marketing partnership on Wednesday at a MySQL users’ conference in Santa Clara, California.

MySQL AB is a privately held company that develops standardized versions of the open-source MySQL database. It makes money by selling service agreements that cover upgrades, technical support and maintenance of those programs.

Research In Motion Ltd. is set to roll out new software that will let users turn smartphones running on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile platform into virtual BlackBerries.

RIM plans to offer the software for a number of devices running Windows Mobile 6.0. Once installed, it will provide users with access to BlackBerry applications like its e-mail, phone, calendar, address book, instant messages and other functions.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company will make the software available on devices offered by a number of telecom companies later this year, likely in the fall.

Mozilla on Thursday launched Thunderbird 2, the latest version of its free, open-source e-mail whose features include message tagging and customization.

Thunderbird 2, with its enhanced features, is intended to ease the organization of e-mail via message tags, advanced folder viewing, and speedier inbox and message searching.

Under its message tagging feature, users can assign single or multiple custom tags to their e-mail, such as “from mom” or “weekend projects.” Users would also be able to assign default tags, as well.

For years, computer makers have managed to wring a few extra bucks of profit out of each PC sale by bundling all sorts of third-party software.

While adding software, setting default search engines and including toolbars can all put money in PC makers pockets, the practice has also alienated some consumers who say all such “crapware” is clogging their hard drives and bogging down their systems.

For the moment, computer makers appear to be trying to walk a fine line, tweaking their approaches slightly but hoping not to have to slay a cash cow. Gateway, for example, offers only one program in each category, while Dell has added an option for some models that allow a user to configure a system with no trial software.

“We’ve seen the evolution,” said IDC analyst Richard Shim. “The desktop became kind of a billboard for internet service providers and software. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way.”

French researcher Xiti claims that Mozilla Firefox keeps winning terrain in Europe. 24.1% of Internet users in Europe use Firefox. Slovenia (44.5%), Finland (41.3%), Croatia (36.5%), and Germany (36.2%) lead the way, followed by a group of mostly Eastern European countries.

Remarkably, The Netherlands is only at 13.3%, right before Andorra. Oceania maintains a slight lead over Europe, at 24.8%; the rest of the world trails at 11.9% to 15.1%.

Microsoft Corp. this week will reveal new technology to deliver rich media applications on the Web, part of a broader strategy to go head to head with Web and design tools powerhouse Adobe Systems Inc.

As described by Forest Key, a director of product management for Microsoft’s Server and Tools Division, Silverlight is a browser plug-in that allows Web content providers to offer rich video and interactive media experience from directly within Web sites. The technology, which leverages Vista’s new graphics framework Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), will debut at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference, being held this week in Las Vegas.

Microsoft also will unveil Web content providers who have signed up to use the technology once it is available, including Akamai Technologies, Brightcove Inc., Eyeblaster Inc., Major League Baseball and Netflix Inc.

Adobe Systems Inc. unveiled on Sunday video-player software that lets consumers play back video online or offline, a move that could help reshape an acrimonious debate over video-sharing.

Adobe Video Player builds on the leading design software maker’s Flash player, already the dominant technology used to stream video online by sites ranging from YouTube to MySpace to MSN to Yahoo Video.

The video player is due to become available to consumers over the next several months, Adobe officials said.

Analysts hailed the new Adobe Video player as a technology breakthrough by allowing consumers to download and carry video from the Web to computers to mobile phones, while ensuring programmers can deliver advertising and track video usage.

Firefox’s exploration of bringing social networking features into the browser has moved forward a step. There is now a very rough prototype of “Coop�? available as a Firefox Add-on that tries out some of the ideas discussed on the Firefox Labs wiki.

The Add-on can be downloaded here. Only early adopters who want to see what Firefox is up to will be interested in trying this out - for now it simply pulls some basic Facebook functionality into the browser.

Yahoo this week released an updated version of its instant messaging application to fix a vulnerability in the audio conferencing feature. If exploited, the security hole could give an attacker full control over a Windows computer running the vulnerable software, Yahoo said on its Web site. All versions of Yahoo Messenger downloaded before March 13 are affected, the company said.

Mozilla has released details on The Coop, a new product that will incorporate social networking features directly into the Firefox browser. This is not good news for the privately-backed social browser Flock (also built on Mozilla), which is yet to release a 1.0 version of its browser. Many of the proposed features and some of the mockups created by Mike Beltzner (see above) suggest a significant overlap in the two products.

In fact, Coop even has an example screen shot of Flock on the wiki page describing the product, along with the description “The design will likely resemble [formerly of Flock] Chris Messina’s mockup for “People in the Browser�?, with a horizontal bar containing avatars for a user’s friends, and icons overlaid on those avatars to indicate the presence of new content.�?

The Coop product will allow Firefox users to “subscribe�? to friends in the browser, bringing those friends into a sidebar. Those friends can share content and web pages with you (receive content from you, and send content to you).