Technology

Microsoft and Google are living up to a promise they made in February by showing signs of OpenID support in its product code. Microsoft Passport and Google Accounts apparently have nothing on OpenID. The online account tool is showing signs of adoption in Microsoft’s new HealthVault beta as well as in Google Maps code

With many business and individual PC users rejecting Windows Vista, Microsoft took an unprecedented step this week by promising patches and updates for Windows XP for a full 13 years

Nokia has acquired the remainder of Symbian for $410 million and opened the popular mobile platform to challenge Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Open Windows, and even Apple’s iPhone

Since launch last week in excess of 17.3 million downloads of Firefox 3 have taken place. The browser saw 8 million downloads within the first 24-hours of its release, more than ever downloaded in a single day before and a statistic currently being considered for inclusion within the Guinness Book of Records. Firefox 2 was downloaded 1.6 million times in its first 24 hours of release; to date, it has been downloaded more than half a billion times, according to Mozilla

The Macintosh platform is again under attack by malicious code writers. This time, it’s multiple variants of a Trojan horse that could compromise machines running Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5. The Trojan, distributed as either a compiled AppleScript called ASthtv05 or as an application bundle called AStht_v06, exploits a recently discovered vulnerability with the Apple Remote Desktop agent. The ARD allows the Trojan to run as root

Hotmail’s full version doesn’t work with Firefox 3. Users get the following message when they try to log in: You are temporarily on the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail due to an error encountered during login. Before trying again, please clear your cache and cookies. (Clearing cache and cookies doesn’t fix it.) The fault apparently lies with the Hotmail site, not Mozilla — via Slashdot

The trickle of senior executives leaving Yahoo has turned into a flood. People close to the company confirmed on Thursday that three more senior executives — Qi Lu, Brad Garlinghouse and Vish Makhijani — were leaving. All were responsible for critical areas of Yahoo’s business

ISPs’ methods for managing P2P traffic have come under intense scrutiny in recent months after the Associated Press reported last year that Comcast was actively interfering with P2P users’ ability to upload files by sending TCP RST packets that informed them that their connection would have to be reset. Although Comcast has said it doesn’t actively block any P2P protocols and merely “delays” P2P uploads during times of heavy congestion, the company has agreed to change its P2P traffic management policies and stop targeting traffic such as that of BitTorrent

Dell will charge customers up to $50 for factory-installed Windows XP on some PCs after Wednesday. Buyers of the low-priced Vostro line of desktops and notebooks will pay $20 to $50 more for Windows XP Professional installed as a downgrade from Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate than they would for Vista only

More than 1.6 million copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded from the Mozilla site in the first five hours. That eclipsed the downloads total for Firefox 2 on its first day. Mozilla said its open-source Firefox 3 browser has more than 15,000 improvements, including a smart location bar, malware protection, and faster performance

Online DVD retailer, EzyDVD, has salvaged an internet movie download service from the wreckage of failed start-up ReelTime Media. EzyDVD plans to use ReelTime’s infrastructure to launch an online movie download service, EzyDownload in September after picking up the $5 million network for a few hundred thousand dollars last April

Four venture capital firms are betting internet startup LinkedIn is worth $US1 billion, highlighting the lofty hopes riding on online services that connect people with their friends, family and business associates. The 10-figure valuation is implied by a $US53 million investment being announced on Wednesday from Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partner

We all know men hate to ask for directions. Apparently they loathe putting directions in computer code, too. Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres-and one of Silicon Valley’s highest-ranking female programmers-insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more considerate of those who will use the code later. They’ll intersperse their code-those strings of instructions that result in nifty applications and programs-with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it. Men, on the other hand, have no such pretenses. Often, they try to obfuscate things in the code

Pressure is mounting on governments to resolve the internet address crisis amid fears the internet economy will stall as numbers run out in 2010-11. OECD telecommunications ministers, including Australia’s Senator Stephen Conroy, are gathering in Seoul this week and have been warned that only 16 per cent of the currently used IP address space remains unallocated