Microsoft News Tracker

Elizabeth Montalbano at PCWorld:

Microsoft’s research arm today released a free tool to help users slog through e-mail messages in their inbox in the order of importance, according to one of the researchers who developed the software.

Created within Microsoft Research, the Social Relationship and Network Finder, or SNARF, is an application that uses the same database as a user’s e-mail client to count the number of times users send and receive messages from people, says A.J. Brush, a researcher in the community technologies group at Microsoft Research.

Calling this kind of e-mail triage process “social sorting,” researchers worked with graduate students, at least one of whom is studying sociology, to come up with the tool so that it will help users prioritize the e-mail in their inbox based on how often they send and receive messages from contacts, she says.

More by following the link. You can download SNARF here:

SNARF requires Microsoft Outlook (2003, 2002) as a MAPI source. It has been tested with Exchange and MAPI servers, Hotmail, POP, IMAP, and the OL Connector for Lotus Notes.

December 2 is the European launch for Xbox 360 and all indications are that there will be a level of hysteria similar to the North American launch on Nov. 22. Well, if not hysteria, then at least desire - Chris Noon at Forbes:

This Friday marks the arrival of 300,000 Microsoft Xbox 360s in stores across Europe. A fallacious statement if ever there was one; most of the platforms will be unloaded from trucks straight into gamers’ hands–those that were shrewd enough, nay, rich enough, to pre-order.

Microsoft’s regional vice-president, Chris Lewis, augurs the next-generation console will be sold out from word go. So Forbes did a spot of investigating itself. First stop, Richard Branson’s Virgin Megastore chain, Piccadilly Circus. “We’ve had plenty of advance orders, but there should be a few in store come Friday,” the assistant told us. And will there be folks camping down for a night on London’s freezing pavements? “We doubt that,” sniggered the assistant. Undeterred and unconvinced, Forbes slogged up Oxford Street through the Siberian chill–they call it “brass monkey weather” in these parts for some reason–to Branson’s flagship emporium on Oxford Street.

No dice, we’re afraid. “We won’t have any in store on Friday, pre-orders only,” the assistant told us. And how many did you preorder, Forbes asked, hoping to linger in the warmth a few seconds longer. “Eighty plus,” replied said assistant. So there’s no point pitching a tent outside? “None at all,” came the reply, adding that the earliest European troglodytes could expect their fix was sometime in January or February.

Meanwhile back in N. America, Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson), the Xbox Live Director of Programming, was doing his best to quell some of the rumors in a blog post titled “Replenishments, Recall Rumors, and Replacements.” Excerpt:

In the Xbox forums and in my comments I am seeing (incorrect) theories that we are holding back inventory to keep the price inflated/keep hype going. We have shipped every console we’ve made, and we’re making more as fast as we can. The reality is that there is significantly more demand than supply, and will be for some time.

Veruca Salt is also mentioned.

Update: The Xbox Team Blog links to a report that Britain’s ASDA chain (subsidiary of Wal-Mart) has queues and is offering them “seating, drinks and mince pies.” Other stores are expecting queues except for those that are “pre-order” only.

Ryan Naraine at eWeek:

Microsoft Corp. is working on a plan to release an out-of-cycle patch to cover a gaping hole in its dominant Internet Explorer browser.

Sources say the MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) is aggressively aiming to release the emergency IE fix ahead of the December 13 Patch Tuesday schedule.

Officially, the company isn’t commenting on a timeline for the IE patch.

IE security flaws are usually not particularly newsworthy, but this one is exceptional.

Microsoft late Tuesday updated its security advisory to confirm it was aware of a zero-day exploit and a drive-by malware attack targeting the unpatched vulnerability.

Alex Eckelberry, president of anti-spyware vendor Sunbelt Software, said his company first detected the drive-by downloads earlier this week and reported its findings to Microsoft.

“This is a pretty nasty exploit. You just have to visit the [malicious] site and your computer gets hosed. It’s dropping a Trojan downloader that takes control of the victim’s machine,” Eckelberry said in an interview.

Sunbelt Software researchers have confirmed the exploit is being launched from a handful of malicious Web sites.

More by following the link. The revised security advisory has suggestions for workarounds and remediation.

As promised, Microsoft Live Meeting gets massive product placement on tonight’s episode of Donald Trump’s TV show, “The Apprentice.” From the press Q&A:

But tonight, Live Meeting’s visibility will soar to new heights, as RTC Group executives join Trump center stage. They will pose a challenge to the competing teams in the form of a task surrounding Live Meeting and then judge the results.

Todd Bishop has some background:

Marketers from the company analyzed ratings from the past two seasons of the program, broken down by week and region, to choose the specific episode on which they wanted their product to appear. They settled on tonight’s show — which begins with only four contestants left, raising the possibility of high ratings.

People at Mark Burnett Productions, the company behind the reality show, told Microsoft they weren’t accustomed to other companies going to quite those lengths for the program.