Microsoft adCenter Desktop goes into beta, for some

Ealier this month, Microsoft started letting some beta testers try out its in-text advertising solution, Gaze. Now the company has released the Microsoft adCenter Desktop beta, an offline tool that enables seamless integration with adCenter online, to select individuals. Only US or Canadian advertisers with fewer than 100,000 keywords in their combined adCenter accounts, (Microsoft is hoping to target advertisers with keyword totals that exceed the 100,000 limit in summer 2009) may be offered to download the beta via a "What's New" banner on Microsoft adCenter, according to the adCenter Blog for Advertisers.

Hands on: Xoopit adds Facebook data to Gmail

Xoopit is a Firefox add-on that is known for breaking down the barriers between e-mail, the stuff in our e-mail, and our social networks. We covered it briefly in December 2008 as a Yahoo tool that allows users to see and forward all the photos and other files in their inboxes. Now, Xoopit is combining Facebook contact and status info with Gmail, so Ars took the add-on for a spin and spoke with Jonathan Katzman, co-founder and COO of the company.

Xoopit injects a few panels throughout Gmail, such as a media aggregation toolbar just above Google's Web Clips panel, a sidebar panel (that really isn't necessary), and a custom Google search panel for easily injecting links and maps into your messages.

With this new release, Xoopit now also adds Facebook to the Gmail experience with a collapsible panel for setting your Facebook status at the top right of Gmail, as well as a Facebook panel in the right sidebar that displays basic profile info for everyone involved in a Gmail conversation. Receive an e-mail from someone new? If he or she is on Facebook, Xoopit will display whatever profile info it can find, allowing you to learn some basics about that person without having to leave Gmail.

Second "Rookies" ad features 7-year-old Alexa

Microsoft keeps reminding us that this $300 million ad campaign is nowhere near done, as it is split into many stages. The third (and current) stage is called "Rookies," and it features cute little kids using Windows Live programs.

Last week, we saw four-year-old Kylie using Windows Live Photo Gallery to make a picture of her pet fish Dorothy "better," then send it off to her mom and dad. A new ad now shows Alexa using Windows Live Photo Gallery to stitch photos together into one big picture of her homemade fort. Just as with Kylie, the ad finishes with Alexa saying, "I'm a PC and I'm seven years old." I've embedded the video for your viewing pleasure:

Upgrading to Windows 7: what XP and Vista users need to know

Last week, Microsoft finally announced that there would be six editions of Windows 7, just like there were for Windows XP and Windows Vista. The company will release Windows 7 Starter (worldwide only via OEMs), Windows 7 Home Basic (only in emerging markets), Windows 7 Home Premium (retail and OEM), Windows 7 Professional (retail and OEM), Windows 7 Ultimate Edition (retail only during promotions and OEM), and Windows 7 Enterprise (volume licenses).

However, as part of its initiative to simplify the lineup, the software giant will only market Home Premium and Professional to average users. Most will be getting Windows 7 with their next purchase of a desktop, notebook, or netbook. (Speaking of netbooks, Microsoft also noted last week that all editions of Windows 7 will work on netbooks and it will be up to the OEM's discretion as to what editions they want to offer on each product.)

If you won't be going through an OEM, you'll either want to purchase a full retail copy of Windows 7, a cheaper upgrade edition, or the OEM version (usually the cheapest and best way). While Microsoft has not given details on pricing for any of the three, the company has agreed to offer upgrade options to both Windows XP and Windows Vista users, and they are worth outlining in detail.

Outlook Live to support Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari

Earlier this week, we reported that the SkyLine mobile service would be called Outlook Live and would be aimed at small businesses. New details have now emerged that suggest Outlook Live has been with us for quite some time. It has previously gone under the name of Exchange Labs, a program initially rolled out to select universities via Live@edu. Microsoft gives the following reason for renaming the service: "One of the best benefits of Exchange Labs is the rich Outlook experience across the PC, the mobile phone, and now, multiple browsers. So as part of that we're renaming the service to Outlook Live." Right now, Outlook Live is still in beta.

As part of the announcement, Microsoft noted that it currently has 3.5 million students on the service, and that faculty and staff will now be able to get e-mail accounts on Exchange Labs for free. Furthermore, the company revealed that instant messaging has been added to the web experience, as well as a new conversation view (which puts new e-mails into threads). You can see both detailed in the video below (Silverlight required), which I grabbed from the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog.

Windows 7 UAC flaws and how to fix them

Unlike many, I'm a big fan of Vista's User Account Control. Truth is, I don't get a lot of prompts asking me to elevate, and those that I do get are legitimate. Sure, the implementation isn't perfect; there are some scenarios that cause a rapid proliferation of prompts that are a little annoying (such as creating a folder in a protected location in Vista RTM), and there are even a few places where it forces elevation unnecessarily, but on the whole I think it's a good feature.

The basic purpose of UAC is to annoy you when your software needs Admin privileges. The reason for this is simple: a lot of Windows software demands Admin privileges not because it needs to be privileged for everything it does, but rather because it was the quickest, easiest way for the developer to do some minor task. For example, games with the PunkBuster anti-cheat system used to demand Administrator privileges so that PunkBuster could update itself and monitor certain system activity. This was bad design because it meant that the game was then running with Administrator privileges the whole time—so if an exploit for the game's network code was developed, for example, that exploit would be able to do whatever it liked.

Six editions of Windows 7: better than Vista, still too many

After a ton of guesswork and rumors flying around, Microsoft has finally confirmed what much of the evidence was pointing to: there will indeed be six editions of Windows 7, just like there were for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Customers will be able to choose from Windows 7 Starter Edition, Windows 7 Home Basic Edition, Windows 7 Home Premium Edition, Windows 7 Professional Edition, Windows 7 Ultimate Edition, and Windows 7 Enterprise Edition. The news comes hot on the heels of the Windows 7 Ecosystem Readiness Program announced yesterday.

All editions will be available in worldwide markets except for Home Basic, which will be offered in emerging markets. Starter will be also available worldwide but only via OEMs.

Windows 7—what's the rush?

Steven Sinofsky this week reaffirmed that Windows 7 would only have a single public beta release—build 7000, still available for download for a few more days. The current expectation is that there will be a single Release Candidate in April, with RTM around July, and Windows 7 hitting stores a few months later.

This plan marks a significant departure from Microsoft's historic Windows release strategy. Previous editions have had at least two betas and two Release Candidates; even Windows XP, a minor update to Windows 2000, received this treatment. Windows Vista went even further during its extended development period. In addition to formal betas and Release Candidates, a number of "Community Technical Preview" (CTP) releases were made available, to allow third-party developers to track the progress more closely.

Google broke the Internet: Malware detector went haywire

Users of that search engine known as Google, gate-keeper of the Universe and master of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, experienced the inconvenience of Google's apparently fritzed Malware detector this morning. Around 9AM ET, it started labeling everything as malware, except YouTube videos which appears in search results. It didn't last long, however. By 9:16 the problem appeared to resolve itself.

Users who attempted to click through the sites shown in the search results were met with an error page that advised the following:

Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!

Suggestions:
Return to the previous page and pick another result. Try another search to find what you're looking for. Or you can continue to http://www.nytimes.com at your own risk. For detailed information about the problems we found, visit Google's Safe Browsing diagnostic page for this site.

For more information about how to protect yourself from harmful software online, you can visit StopBadware.org.

If you are the owner of this web site, you can request a review of your site using Google's Webmaster Tools. More information about the review process is available in Google's Webmaster Help Center.

Google has now given an account of what happened:

Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

Furthermore, the problem extends to Gmail:

Gmail's spam engine uses those filters (among hundreds of other signals) to help protect our users from malware, and so between 6:00 a.m. PST and 8:00 a.m. PST, we mistakenly sent some legitimate mail to people's spam folders. We're working to roll out an automated fix to put these legitimate messages back into your inboxes, and we expect this to happen within a day. In the meantime, if you were expecting a critical message this morning, please check your spam folder.

Response Point 1.0 SP2 adds a slew of features

In March 2007, Redmond released Microsoft Response Point, software that is designed to allow virtually any member of a small business (defined as a company deploying 50 or less handsets) to set up and manage a phone system that will be capable of interfacing with both Outlook desktop and Exchange Server software. Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for the product in July 2008 and has now put up SP2 on the Microsoft Download Center (98.8MB).

Hard drive manufacturers back new disk encryption standard

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) has released three final specifications for hardware-level data encryption, and virtually all the major storage manufacturers have declared that they intend to adopt the new standards in the near future. Self-encrypted disks are already available on the market— Seagate has been actively pushing its DriveTrust technology for several years—but there was no central standard for drive encryption developers to refer to. The two new encryption standards provide a blueprint for desktop, laptops, and enterprise-level protection, while the third (dubbed the Storage Interface Interactions Specification) details how self-encrypted drives should interact with various communication protocols.

These new encryption methods do not require the presence of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM), but it's hard to imagine why an OEM would bother to build a system using self-encrypting hard drives and not include one. The TCG expects self-encrypting drives (and presumably TPM modules) to become ubiquitous across the enterprise/business market over the next few years. "With 48 states and many countries enforcing data protection laws, it has become crucial for enterprises to protect all data to avoid fines, lawsuits or even being put out of business. Encryption with authentication directly in the drive or enterprise storage devices as outlined in the Trusted Computing Group specifications is one of the most effective ways to ensure data is secure against virtual and physical attacks,” noted Jon Oltsik, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.

Charter gets bragging rights with new 60Mbps broadband tier

Cable operator Charter Communications has just thrown down the gauntlet in the US Internet speed wars, offering a new 60Mbps download tier that makes it the fastest mainstream offering in the country. But users who want this sort of speed had better be prepared to pay up—Charter wants $140 a month for it.

The company is rolling out the DOCSIS 3.0 speed upgrades only in St. Louis at the moment, though it is also bumping other Charter subscribers with 16Mbps connections up to a new 20Mbps tier.

WHS January 2009 update better repairs backup databases

The Windows Home Server (WHS) team has released a small update to its product, according to KB Article 958926. WHS regularly checks home computer backups for abnormalities and asks the user to repair any backup database problems it finds (Settings > Backup > Repair).

This update slightly tweaks the operating system's ability to find problems that need fixing. Furthermore, the update will improve how efficiently memory is used when repairs are being performed on large databases (HDDs with more than 150 GB of used space), hopefully removing problems that users have been experiencing regarding the WHS Console not responding, or network connections being lost.

The update should be automatically downloaded and installed on your home server over the next several days, if you have Windows Update turned on. You can check if you have Windows Update turned on by opening the Windows Home Server Console > Settings > General page.

Screenshots of Messenger integrated with Hotmail

With the latest version of Windows Live Messenger finally out this month, the team has already started to focus on the next version (one which will hopefully have tabs). But first, the Windows Live Hotmail team is making sure that POP3 isn't the only feature it will roll out to its users this year.

Hotmail has been poised to get a web version of Messenger integrated (much like Windows Live Calendar is) into to its interface ever since the first news of the Wave 3 revisions broke. The team has promised that this would happen in the beginning of 2009, and now we've got screenshots to back that claim up.

AT&T; slips femtocell details

AT&T slipped up and revealed details of its upcoming femtocell service: a broadband-backed base station for the home that works with existing cell phones. The new offering will be called 3G MicroCell, supports voice and 3G data, and allows 4 simultaneous calls or data sessions.

AT&T, like its competitors Sprint Nextel (with its Airave femtocell) and T-Mobile (with its HotSpot@Home unlicensed mobile access service), will offer an as-yet-unpriced monthly fee to place and receive an unlimited number of calls while connected to the femtocell.