14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, Microsoft made a partnership with Facebook to enable the giant offer search and advertising banners to the company's 9 million customers. "Facebook is a social directory that enables people to share information. People on Facebook are who they say they are and behave the way they do in the real world. Facebook gives people control over what information they share and with whom they share it. Using Facebook's privacy settings, people can limit the information visible to someone or block that person from seeing it completely," is mentioned on the company's website.
"We're excited to be innovating with Microsoft to build a world-class advertising solution that allows Facebook to deliver the best advertising experience in social media," Owen Van Natta, chief operating officer of Facebook, sustained in a statement. "More than 7.5 million people registered. Over 2,200 colleges, 22,000 high schools and 2,000 companies supported." This is a sign that Microsoft is aiming to attract another category of users. It seems that colleges, high schools and all other educational institutes will represent the best target for Microsoft to develop new software and solutions.
On Tuesday, the trouble with MS06-042 continued with an alert posted on Microsoft website.
"On August 15, 2006 Microsoft announced that it would be re-releasing Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-042 Tuesday, August 22, 2006 to address an issue affecting Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 customers as discussed in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 923762. Due to an issue discovered in final testing, Microsoft was not able to re-release MS06-042 on August 22, 2006. On August 24, 2006, Microsoft completed testing to ensure the update re-released for Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 met the appropriate level of quality for broad distribution.
On August 22, 2006 Microsoft also became aware of public notification on the exploitable nature of this vulnerability. Microsoft has completed the investigation into the vulnerability, and has revised Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-042 with information on this vulnerability, and the availability of revised Internet Explorer Service Pack 1 security updates. Customers are encouraged to apply the revised update to Internet Explorer Service Pack 1 systems immediately."
Related to the compatibility between Vista and Firefox, this advisory comes to reduce the user's patience with the giant's browser. What do you think: is Internet Explorer going to face the challenge with the other browsers?
On Wednesday, Sam Ramji, Open Source Software Lab Director at Microsoft, sent a message to Mozilla to discuss the compatibility between Windows Vista and Firefox.
"I am the Director of the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft, and I'm writing to see if you are open to some 1:1 support in getting Firefox and Thunderbird to run on Vista.," Ramji started his message. "As part of my mission as an advocate for open source applications on Windows, I've gotten spaces set aside at the Windows Vista Readiness ISV Lab. In the past the company has only invited commercial software developers to these labs. I'm committed to evolving our thinking beyond commercial companies to include open source projects, so I went to the non-trivial effort of getting slots for non-commercial open source projects," he continued.
As a reply, Mike Beltzner from Mozilla Corporation, said: "I think we're already in discussion with someone on your team about this, but for the record: yes, we'd definitely be interested in getting some 1:1 support."
Maybe Microsoft is starting to understand that forcing all Windows users to use Internet Explorer is useless. In the future, there will be so many, and yes!, more safe and secure browsers available, that almost no one will still be using IE.
On Thursday, Microsoft released an add-on for Windows Live solution offered as a video search feature, included in its beta search service. The giant is aiming to challenge two other big rivals, Google and AOL, companies that are offering similar services.
Microsoft has included a parental filter that is turned on when you start using the service and which is meant to protect kids and other people when searching various words and expressions. "With Windows Live Search Beta, you can quickly find the information you want and need across any variety of categories: news, maps, product and shopping data, information in academic journals, images, and more," is mentioned on the official website.
On Friday, Microsoft made available for the public new details about Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 which is "a major step forward in ease of use and security."
"The purpose of RC1 is to get the latest release out to the developer community so they can continue to test their sites...as we get closer and closer to final release," sustained Margaret Cobb, group product manager for IE. "Robust new Internet Explorer 7 architecture and improved security features help protect you against malicious software, and help to keep your personal data safe from fraudulent websites and online phishing scams," it is mentioned about IE security.
Week's Conclusion: again, not too much action at Microsoft. After the company is working hard to end MS06-042 trouble, the week ended with IE 7 details, a new version of the browser that gives headaches with its security flaws.
