Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 to be released

A third service pack for Office 2003, promising improved security and enhanced compatibility with Windows Vista, Office 2007, Internet Explorer 7 and Windows SharePoint Services, will be available on September 18, 2007.

The download will be 120MB for the U.S. version and will be free of charge. SP3 appears to address a variety of generally minor annoyances and bugs across the suite.

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Google Calls for Global Online Privacy Standard

Google proposes that governments and technology companies create a transnational privacy policy to address growing concerns over how personal data is handled across the Internet.

Google envisions the policy to be a product of self regulation by companies, improved laws and possible new ones. Google's increasing power in search, Internet commerce and software services has place its privacy policies under scrutiny. In June, Google Inc. said it would delete the data it stores about end users anonymous in its server logs after 18 months.

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Skype Worm Virus Warning

A new worm is sending convincing fake Skype Instant Messenger chats in an attempt to infect victims, the company warned today. The worm affects users of Skype for Windows.

The worm sends chat messages that attempt to trick victims into thinking they were accidentally sent a file with messages tempting the recipient to look at the message. The displayed link attempts to download a file ending with a .scr extention, used for screen savers. If double clicked, the malware known variously as Skipi, Pykspa and Ramex will first attempt to disable securty software, and then install another, data stealing piece of malware.

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Man Arrested in Online ID Theft Scheme

A Seattle man has been arrested in what federal authorities described as their first case against someone accused of using file sharing computer programs to commit identity theft.

Gregory Thomas Kopiloff used peer-to-peer file sharing programs to scan other people's computers for financial information that he then used to open credit cards for an online shopping spree.

Kopiloff bought more than $73,000 worth of goods such as iPods and laptop computers online, then resold those items at half-price and kept the proceeds.

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Microsoft's answer to the iPhone?

An executive in Microsoft's entertainment and games division today hinted that Microsoft may be developing its own rival to Apple's iPhone, based on Windows Mobile OS.

Microsoft's idea with Windows Mobile has been to move every day business capabilities, such as accessing email, from the PC to the mobile device.

Microsoft is rumored to be evolving its Zune multimedia player with new features out by the holiday time at the end of the year. Microsoft has already worked with hardware partners to develop Windows Mobile handsets with touchscreen capabilities that are similar to the iPhone's.

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Windows Vista SP1 hopefully released soon

The Microsoft Windows Vista blog reported official news of SP1 last week.

Microsoft product manager Nick White first says out that the company no longer relies on service packs as the sole way of updating Windows. Windows Update makes sure this happens fairly constantly. But with SP1 White says "In addition to updates we’ve previously released, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues we’ve identified via customer feedback, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards."

There is news of a SP1 beta, due in the next few weeks. SP1 itself is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2008.

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Microsoft claims only 12,000 PCs affected by validation bug

Around 12,000 Windows Vista customers across the globe were denied access to a range of features in the new operating system as a result of a shut down in Microsoft's ability to validate their systems under its Windows Genuine Advantage program.

By about 11:15 a.m. Pacific on Saturday morning the issue affecting the validation service had been analyzed and resolved such that validations were again being processed properly and that many of the affected computers have already revalidated and are fixed.

Apple's iPhone unlocked by teen

George Hotz, 17, of, New Jersey has managed to unlock the iPhone so it will work with T-mobile instead of just AT&T.With a little soldering, a lot of command line computing and about two hours of time, Hotz was able to switch an iPhone over to T-Mobile. The iPhone runs on GSM networks, which only T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless run in the U.S.

Hotz collaborated online with four other people, two of them in Russia, to develop the unlocking process. Hotz is selling one hacked iPhone on eBay, mostly to recoup costs from his summer long project. He has posted detailed instructions on how to do it on his blog.

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