Last week, the German Government warned the users of Microsoft’s browser Internet Explorer that it’s unsecure and people should be using other browsers instead. Then, France joined the call and today also Australia. Bear in mind that it’s not bloggers, hackers or even private companies, but governments!
The problem is that Internet Explorer contains a serious security flaw that could be exploited by hackers.

A federal appeals court in the United States ordered software giant Microsoft to stop selling their Word program in January and pay a Canadian software company $290 million for violating a patent, Fox News reports.
But people looking to buy Word or Microsoft’s Office package in the US won’t have to go without the software. Microsoft said yesterday that they expect new versions of the product, with the computer code in question removed, to be ready …

The European Union dropped their antitrust charges against Microsoft today after the company agreed to give Windows users a choice of up to 12 other Web browsers, the AP reports.
Under the terms of the deal with regulators, Microsoft will avoid further EU fines if they provide a pop-up screen that lets European users—from March—replace Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or add another browser.
This will also allow computer manufacturers to ship PCs without Internet Explorer in Europe.
The deal …

Google announced that real-time news from Twitter and other information from the internet will start appearing in search results, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Under the new Google system, real-time information will feature directly in regular search results pages. The freshest tweets on any online search topic will scroll past in real-time, without any need to refresh the page.
The announcement follows Microsoft’s deal with Twitter and Facebook two months ago after they became the first to reach …

Microsoft are planning to release six patches next week in their monthly Patch Tuesday security update, covering 12 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office and Internet Explorer, V3.co.uk reports.
The company have rated three of the six patches as critical, the highest alert level, while the other three have been rated as important. Five address vulnerabilities which could allow an attacker to remotely execute code on a targeted system.
Among the three critical updates is a fix for the …

Malware could be behind an issue with Windows 7 that sees users experience a completely black screen when they log on to their computers, T3.com reports.
Microsoft have so far struggled to identify the cause of the the so-called “black screen of death”. Now, it appears that malicious software such as Daonol might be to blame for the problem, which is also affecting machines running on Windows XP and Vista.
Microsoft have issued a fix for the …

Microsoft are cutting off up to one million Xbox 360 users who modified their consoles to play pirated games over Xbox Live, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Any Xbox owners shown to have “violated terms of use” by installing hardware to play illegal games will be disconnected from the Live service – which allows multiple players to compete with each other over the internet.
Microsoft said that only a “small percentage” of the 20 million Xbox Live players …

Software maker Microsoft announced in a security bulletin advance notification that they will release four patches for Windows and two Office on 10th November, V3.co.uk reports.
The patches cover Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003 and 2008. Unlike the last “Patch Tuesday” release, there are no fixes for Windows 7.
The two Office patches apply to Word and Excel in both the PC and Mac versions. Three of the patches are rated “critical”, all for Windows, and …

Software producer Microsoft are cutting 800 more jobs in addition to the 5,000 lay-offs they announced in January, the Independent reports.
The cuts are being made in offices around the globe.
Microsoft said that in January they would continue to hire in key areas such as web search.
At the end of September, about 91,000 people worked for Microsoft.

According to security firm SophosLabs, a test showed that Windows 7 system on a clean PC was affected by 80 per cent of viruses, the Independent reports.
Sophos’ Chester Wisniewski said engineers loaded a full version of Microsoft’s recently launched operating system, and configured it to follow system defaults for UAC (User Account Control) without installing an anti-virus package.
Ten samples of net nasties that arrived in the SophosLab security feed were tested to, as Wisniewski put …

Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7 proved to be incredibly popular – Amazon said that pre-order sales have topped the latest Harry Potter book, and according to DSGi, Win7 has already outsold Vista’s first year sales.
Windows 7 officially went on sale today, but the pre-orders already topped the first year sales of copies of Microsoft’s previous operating system, the ill-fated Vista, DSGi’s category director Jeremy Fennell said, according to IT Pro. He credited this with the …

Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7 is going on sale tomorrow, Microsoft are hoping that the successor to Vista will be more of a hit with users when it launches, the BBC reports.
In the UK some computer stores are due to open at midnight so keen PC users can get their hands on the software.
Microsoft have also encouraged people to hold Windows 7 launch parties and have gone as far as to prepare party packs …

Software giant Microsoft are to offer a free version of their Office 2010 application suite called Starter Edition.
Office Starter 2010 will be upgradable to one of the three full versions of the suite (Office Home & Student 2010, Office Home & Business 2010, or Office Professional 2010), ITWire reports.
The full Office product will be pre-loaded on the PCs. All users will need to do to activate full functionality is purchase a product key card – …

Microsoft will issue their biggest ever security update tomorrow, the update will include 13 bulletins that between them tackle 34 vulnerabilities, the BBC reports.
Microsoft said that eight of the bulletins were rated as critical – the most serious sort of vulnerability.
The security patches will close loopholes in many different programs including different editions of Windows, Internet Explorer and some elements of Office. One update, rated as critical, tackles a loophole in Internet Explorer 8 running under …

The European Union have approved Microsoft’s proposal in the so-called “browser war” to allow computer manufacturers install as many internet browsers as they want, and give the customer a choice between them when they turn on the computer for the first time.
Microsoft proposed to the European Union to offer a browser ballot selection page to buyers of their operating system. This would mean that hardware manufacturers can install several browsers onto machines and let the …

Thousands of hotmail passwords have been hacked and posted online, the BBC reports.
Microsoft, which own the popular web-based email system, told BBC News that they were aware of the claims and that they were “investigating the situation”.
Details of over 10,000 accounts had been posted to a website. The accounts had probably been hacked or had been collected as part of a phishing scheme.
The list included details of Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail accounts with email addresses ending …