Microsoft News Tracker

Here’s the full title of the Microsoft press release: Microsoft Commends Turkish and Moroccan Authorities and the FBI on the Arrest of the Alleged Authors of the Recent Zotob and Mytob Worms. All the reports indicate that Microsoft’s Internet Crime Investigations Team played a significant part in tracking them down. See the FBI press release and the AP report. Ryan Naraine at eWeek has an interesting look Inside Microsoft’s Zotob Situation Room.

At the Microsoft Small Business Community Blog, Eric Ligman, the Microsoft US Senior Manager for Small Business Community Engagement previews the Launch Event on September 7:

Partners, here’s a great opportunity for you to invite your customers into your office for a “Launch day” event! View the webcast, show off your site and services, connect with local CPAs, etc.

You are invited to view the streaming video webcast of the launch event for Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 and Microsoft Office Small Business Management Edition 2006. Find out more about these powerful financial management solutions and how they can empower and enable small businesses. These solutions bring the ease of use of Microsoft Office to accounting, offering great Office integration and advanced management functionality. Join Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, and others as they welcome and demonstrate these exciting new products.

More by following the link. Mary Jo Foley notes that Intuit Preempts Microsoft SBA Launch by rolling out QuickBooks 2006 on Wednesday.

John Falcone at CNET reveals Gratis gaming: 10 real PC games you can download for free. They’re mostly from the 90’s, mostly have Windows 9X level requirements, and some aren’t exactly world class, but the price is right. I may not remember the original Grant Theft Auto, but I do remember Zork.

Paul Thurrott:

At its annual developer conference yesterday, microprocessor giant Intel announced a new initiative to brand digital home-oriented PCs with dual-core processors, chipsets, networking features, and software. The new branding, called ViiV (pronounced “vive” and rhymes with “five”) will identify these new machines, which will typically run Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and are designed to work with high-definition displays, surround sound systems, remote controls, and, optionally, TV tuner cards.

PC makers such as Dell, Gateway, and HP will offer Viiv PCs in the market starting in early 2006, which indicates that the products will likely be launched at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. The PCs will feature non-traditional form factors and will be designed to work in living rooms and other non-office scenarios.

The general feeling is that that Intel is trying to duplicate the success of its Centrino brand for laptops. Neowin points to the Intel press release and Anandtech’s summary of detailed Viiv requirements. Tony Smith at The Register is skeptical.

PC World:

Microsoft plans to release an add-on to MSN Search Toolbar aimed at protecting Web users from phishing scams. The technology is similar to an antiphishing tool the company has previously said will be available in Internet Explorer 7, which is not yet in public release.
…
The technology will be available in a test release in a few weeks on the MSN Search Toolbar add-ins site, but Osner could not give a more specific time frame for the beta release, or a subsequent production release of the filter. The technology may eventually end up as a permanent feature of the MSN Search Toolbar, but that has yet to be determined, he said.
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Published reports Wednesday said that the phishing filter expected to be included in IE 7 would soon be released as a download to MSN Search Toolbar for use with IE 6. However, these reports are only partly true, Osner said in an interview Thursday.

While the underlying technology of the antiphishing tool that is currently available in a beta test version of IE 7 for Windows XP also drives the add-in release that is forthcoming for IE 6, the way the MSN Search Toolbar filter is presented in the user interface is different, he said.

More details in the article and in this IE7 whitepaper. Microsoft also had some help in making both versions happen:

Microsoft, however, apparently did not develop the new feature itself.

“WholeSecurity provides the functionality for the phishing component that is part of IE 7,” said Ann Taylor, a spokesperson for WholeSecurity Inc., the developer, based in Austin, Texas.