Knowledge's Blog

Some of tech’s biggest battle lines may soon be shifting. Apple is in talks to make Bing the iPhone’s default search engine, according to a report published in BusinessWeek today. Microsoft’s search would replace the iPhone’s current default — yep, you guessed it — Google.

The story, which cites the always-popular “people familiar with the matter” for its information, says talks between Microsoft and Apple have been underway for weeks. If true, it could mark a monumental shift in one of tech’s most relentless wars.

Apple and Google: A Changing Story

Let’s start by setting the stage: Google and Apple, you see, used to be pals. They played nicely together, with Google holding valuable spots as the default search provider for both the iPhone and Apple’s PC-based Safari browser. The real rivalry, of course, was always between Apple and Microsoft — just look to the ads if you need any proof.

It wasn’t until Google began testing the waters of mobile development that the tides began to turn. With the open-source Android platform, the plethora of Google-supported anti-iPhones, and that one Google-sold super-duper-phone, the G-Force suddenly stopped looking so sympathetic to Apple’s interests.

Throw in the spats over mobile apps (e.g. Apple saying “We don’t want Google Voice or Google Latitude for vague reasons that don’t quite make sense”) and the rumored native maps app coming to iPhone 4, and our former buddies suddenly don’t seem so chummy. Click here to read more.. »

Either Apple isn’t operating on the Gregorian calender, or these updates are just straight-up late. Either way, we’re pretty stoked to see the suits in Cupertino finally wise up and allow Microsoft’s best OS ever to work on its machines, as it has today issued new Boot Camp software (v3.1) for both 32-bit and 64-bit users of Windows 7. The updates add native support for Win7 Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate, and in case that wasn’t enough, they also fix “issues” with the Apple trackpad and add support for Apple’s wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse. You’ll also find model-specific drivers floating around to add even more support, and the Boot Camp Utility for Windows 7 Upgrade is said to “safely unmount the read-only Macintosh volume on Windows Vista” when upgrading from Vista to Windows 7. Hit those links below for all the bits and bytes that you’ve been so desperately waiting for.

Last week’s cyber attacks, that targeted Google and several other large U.S. companies, has certainly gotten Microsoft’s attention. The attack was orchestrated, in part, through a zero-day flaw in Internet Explorer (IE). The flaw seems to be obscure, and restricted to IE 6 and IE 7, but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from releasing an out-of-cycle patch for IE.

Microsoft has acknowledgde the flaw, and says the “vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference within Internet Explorer. It is possible under certain conditions for the invalid pointer to be accessed after an object is deleted. In a specially-crafted attack, in attempting to access a freed object, Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution.”

Microsoft, in an announcement posted today, says the confusion surrounding this particular attack has compelled Microsoft to act now. Microsoft’s primary advice: upgrade to IE 8, which is not affected by this flaw. If you don’t plan to upgrade, then updates for earlier versions will be made available, with specific timing of the updates to be announced tomorrow. In the meantime, Microsoft suggests using the workarounds and mitigations provided in Security Advisory 979352.

Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it would shorten the time it stores Internet users’ addresses from Web search queries from 18 months to six months following a request from a European Union data privacy panel.

It said the change would make its Bing search a better choice for privacy-conscious users than the world’s leading search engine Google Inc., because Microsoft will delete the entire Internet Protocol address from search queries — the string of numbers that shows a computer’s location.

“We believe that the balance between privacy and efficiency is very much in the mind of consumers,” Microsoft’s associate general counsel John Vassallo told reporters. “Getting the balance right does make the search engine more attractive.”

Microsoft says its search engine has some 2 percent of the European market, well below Google on 80 percent.

Google says keeping data from search queries is important to improving the way it processes search results and “represents a crucial arm in our battle to protect the security of our services against hacks and frauds.”

It says it makes users’ search details anonymous after nine months and allows people see and control some of the information that is stored on their searches.

Yahoo says it deletes IP addresses and makes user log data anonymous after 90 days, with some exceptions to fight fraud, secure systems and meet legal obligations.

EU data protection officials have questioned the need for search engines to keep data on searches and had asked for a six-month limit.

Microsoft’s announcement comes days after the German government warned users against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser until it fixes a security flaw.

The company will also likely see more competition for the browser, the most widely used, when European users start to see a box urging them to choose between Internet Explorer and rival browsers in coming months — a move that helped end an EU antitrust investigation into the browser.

A critical zero-day flaw in Internet Explorer was exploited as part of the attack on Google and other companies, according to both Microsoft and McAfee.

The flaw allows for a Web-based attack against IE 6 SP 1 on Windows 2000, along with IE 7 and 8 on XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. According to Microsoft’s security advisory, the company has only seen active attacks against IE 6 so far.

Those attacks were part of the campaign against Google, Adobe and other major companies that sought to break into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. In response, Google has threatened to stop censoring search results on its Google.cn site, or to shut it down entirely.

The invalid pointer reference flaw allows for remote code execution, according to Microsoft, which means that viewing a malicious Web site could allow an attacker to execute any command on a vulerable computer. Typically that would mean installing a Trojan or other malicious software. According to the bulletin, IE’s Protected Mode on Vista and later versions of Windows mitigates the threat, which could also be leveraged by a banner ad.

Setting IE’s Internet zone security to high will protect against the threat, according to Microsoft, as of course would using an alternate Web browser. Redmond says it may release an out-of-band patch for this threat outside of the normal monthly patch cyle.

Also, while antivirus maker McAfee warns that “there very well may be other attack vectors that are not known to us at this time,” the company says that its investigations into the attacks “have not shown a vulnerability in Adobe Reader being a factor in these attacks.” According to McAfee’s analysis, the malware that hit the IE flaw opens a back door on victim PCs, which allowed the attackers to take complete control. (Note: the link provided by McAfee for its post is not currently responding.)

Market niches become filled after awhile. And when they do anxious manufacturers, hoping to wring a few more dollars out of their product, will look to expand their usability. Gaming consoles, while widely used, are still a niche product–they appeal to people who want to game. Once gamers have had their fill, what’s Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony to do? Teach their consoles a new trick is what. Make them devices that are equally at home with fraggers and media viewers by broadening their ability to stream media from the Internet.

True enough, Xbox, PlayStation, and the Wii already have such capabilities. But their repertoire is limited. What’s needed is a broader selection of media content, so that more people will be inclined to purchase. PlayStation users, for example, can watch the BBC and Weather Channel, while Xbox and Wii users can tap into Netflix. But what about regular TV? There the options are more limited.

Microsoft is hoping to rectify this. It’s now in ‘secret’ negotiations with Disney to bring ESPN to the Xbox. Microsoft is taking the view that Xbox Live is more than a gaming community. It’s also a cable channel, with 20 million monthly subscribers, and 1 million daily users. (Numbers comparable to the Cartoon Network and TBS.) Microsoft already has an interactive game show, “1 vs. 100”. And it is looking to make itself a “bigger player” in film and television viewing.

There’s a definite logic to such moves by console makers. There are a lot more of us who watch TV than game. And gaming consoles, already present in many households, are reasonable platforms for streaming media from the Internet. But what happens if this new market focus supplants gaming? Right now console gamers are getting a lot of TLC from console makers. Should they no longer be the industry’s ‘golden child’, will console gamers be orphaned in favor of soap operas and reality TV?

Just three short years after the CES 2007 announcement that Microsoft’s Mediaroom software would turn your Xbox 360 into an IPTV set-top box, Microsoft is finally ready to deliver on that promise (and no, the 2008 BT rollout doesn’t count). “I’m happy to announce that later this year AT&T will also enable subscribers to U-verse to enjoy [the new Mediaroom 2.0] service on their Xbox 360 consoles,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told his keynote audience. This was in addition to U-verse support for Windows 7 and Windows Mobile, though the details on all three platforms end there.

We’ll be digging for more details at CES this week, but this is certainly promising news for the country’s 2 million U-verse subscribers (and the “more than 20 million living units” that the service is purportedly available in).

According to a press release summing up Microsoft’s CES 2010 keynote that dropped just before Ballmer took the stage, the company will be releasing Project Natal in “holiday season 2010.” We heard earlier today about what year the future controller would be arriving, but now, folks, now we know during which group of months it’ll be arriving at retail.

The release explicitly states that the still-codenamed Natal project is “scheduled to be available in holiday season 2010,” adding that Natal “is only the most recent example of Microsoft’s work creating natural user interfaces.” With any luck, by E3 we’ll have an actual name and maybe even a specific month for when we’ll get to check it out at home! Until then, we’ll have to get by with the inspirational video about Natal’s origins created for today’s release, embedded above.

During its CES 2010 keynote, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach announced 30 arcade titles will be available in the Xbox Game Room when the service launches this spring for the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows Live.

Hours following a leaked interview featuring Robbie Bach, Microsoft has confirmed the existence of a virtual arcade room for Xbox Avatars via this trailer unveiled at CES 2010. The Xbox Game Room is slated to hit the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows Live this spring, allowing players to visit a virtual room filled with classic arcade titles. According to the video, users will be able to customize their arcade rooms (presumably for Microsoft funny money) and challenge friends to a plethora of original arcade versions of games such as Centipede, Outlaw, and Star Raiders.

The news that Game Room will also launch for Games For Windows Live raises the question, will the service see Avatars added in the near future? As the upcoming arcade is centered around entertainment for your virtual identity, we’d hope the service would see an interface upgrade bringing it closer to the Xbox’s current NXE, rather than locking our poor Avatars up inside of an executable program.