Microsoft has announced that its Sender ID Framework specification for e-mail authentication is now available under the company's Open Specification Promise (OSP), an irrevocable promise to every individual in the world that they can make use of the covered Microsoft technology easily and for free. This is another step forward in the company's commitment to delivering interoperability by design.

Very late on Wednesday Microsoft said it had released Internet Explorer 7 for XP, its first browser update in five years, hoping it bitch slaps Firefox back into line. The two-year-old open source descendent of Netscape now claims 11.5%-12.5% of the market depending on who's tracking the numbers.

Microsoft has released to the public Windows Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP, the latest version of the world's most popular Web browser. Customers can upgrade and browse the Web with confidence knowing that the new browser provides a greater level of security, makes everyday tasks easier, and works well with the Web sites they visit.

Capgemini Group and Microsoft have announced that they will extend their longtime alliance with a new agreement and enlist the services of the Sogeti Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Capgemini and a premier IT services provider.

ComponentOne and DiscountASP.NET have again partnered to provide ASP.NET developers with the leading suite of ASP.NET AJAX ready components for building next-generation Web interfaces. The company announced today that ComponentOne's award winning UI components, WebMenus and WebBars for ASP.NET, are now available to customers who purchase ASP.NET 2.0 hosting packages from DiscountASP.NET.

Microsoft has announced that the Get Net Safe tour, designed to help people learn how to become more safe and secure on the Internet, will stop in Philadelphia for several days. The multiple-stop tour, with events Oct. 17-19 in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, will give children, teens, parents, business owners and people over 50 the opportunity to participate in unique forums about how to be better protected online.

Santander Banespa has announced that it has selected a pair of IBM System z9 mainframes to increase its processing capacity, transaction speed and information integrity assurance. The investment amounted to approximately $21 million USD.

IBM has announced that just two months after its launch, the DB2 9 data server is rapidly gaining new customers and setting industry benchmark performance records. DB2 9?code named 'Viper'is IBM's new data server that incorporates the most significant database technology enhancements introduced to the industry in more than two decades.

IBM has unveiled details of the next-generation Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) data server-code-named 'Cheetah' IDS, a key element of IBM's Information Management portfolio, is a relational data server that delivers exceptionally fast OLTP performance, high reliability and near hands-free administration.

IBM has announced that Worldspan, a global travel technology company and the supplier of Internet-based travel offerings, has selected six new System z9 Enterprise Class (EC) mainframe servers to provide electronic data services that link approximately 700 travel suppliers around the world to millions of travelers. Worldspan's selection comes after the completion of an exhaustive review of all available options for their future capacity needs.

Microsoft has announced it has acquired privately owned Colloquis, a provider of conversational online business solutions that feature natural language-processing technology. Microsoft will offer services based on Colloquis technology to businesses with online operations, as well as incorporating the technology into its own products.

Microsoft has confirmed that it is on track to deliver Windows Vista for worldwide availability to its volume license business customers in November and worldwide general availability in January. The company also confirmed that it would be releasing Windows Vista in Europe and Korea on schedule, following what the company called 'constructive dialogue' with the European Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission.

IBM has announced a new version of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino designed to help businesses take advantage of advances in hardware and Internet technologies. Major portability and productivity benefits include the ability to carry email, Lotus Notes applications, and web collaboration tools on USB devices such as 'thumb drive' memory keys or iPods, plus powerful new Web extensions that speed collaboration via the Internet.

Microsoft and Pharos Science & Applications have unveiled a sleek new Global Positioning System (GPS) locator that will ship as part of MicrosoftStreets & Trips 2007 with GPS Locator Supplied by Pharos. The new SiRFstarIII GPS locator is more than 10 times more sensitive than the previous version. This improves the real-time navigation experience for Streets & Trips 2007 with GPS Locator customers whether they're in the city or mountains.

WebOrb for Rails, a server-side technology - installed as a Rails plug-in - enabling connectivity between Flex and Flash Remoting clients and Ruby on Rails applications, has caught the interest of many. So much so that in blogs developers are wondering why the company behind it, Midnight Coders, isn't being snapped up by Adobe for its ability to show that Flex/Flash/Apollo can support remote objects for multiple backends...including .NET.

Requirements impact every step of the development lifecycle, from design and coding to testing and deployment. Thus, the process of defining and managing requirements has become one of the most important challenges to overcome when building software. Because requirements have such an impact downstream, it's no surprise that so many studies cite inaccurate, incomplete, and mismanaged requirements as the primary reason for project failure.

.NET languages are becoming increasingly popular for driving the application logic for business-critical SOA and Web applications. In these contexts, functional errors are simply not acceptable, and reliability, security, and performance problems can have serious repercussions. Yet, few development teams have the resources to ensure that their code is free of implementation errors, let alone also worry about reliability, security, and performance. Whether or not your team has a satisfactory strategy for functional testing, you're taking several significant risks if you haven't yet implemented a comprehensive team-wide quality-management strategy:

Playing to the card the European Commission has dealt it Symantec has been accusing Microsoft to the press - without suing or filing a formal complaint but within hearing of the regulators - of abusing its monopoly by locking it out of Vista and not giving it the information it needs to build compatible products. The EC, of course, has already warned Microsoft about bundling its own security upgrades in Vista and foreclosing the market to competitors.

Over the last few years the Web has been going through another round of changes. Not only has the consumer Web sprung up with the Web 2.0 phenomenon, driven by new technologies such as AJAX and the philosophy of participation, but enterprise Web initiatives have also morphed. The information that businesses are publishing online is no longer limited to marketing collateral. Brochure-ware sites are quickly changing from static to dynamic and internal applications are being incorporated into corporate sites. As the Web touches every department from product development to finance, it has become an essential part of doing business for any organization.

SYS-CON Events (www.events.sys-con.com) announced today that the first international 'AJAXWorld(TM) Conference & Expo' (www.ajaxworldexpo.com), taking place on October 3-4, 2006, at theSanta Clara Convention Center, California, will offer AJAXWorld University - Developer Bootcamp program. The AJAX Developer Bootcamp will take placeon Monday, October 2, 2006, one day before the conference opens.

BizTalk Server provides many features that enable organizations to continuously improve their business processes, their level of customer service and their bottom line; however, most .NET developers and architects have never examined the product. This article will introduce the reader to many of BizTalk's features and discuss their benefits.

Mono 1.1.16, the third beta of version 1.2, has been released. The time span between the release of versions 1.1.15 and 1.1.16 is one of the longest in several years and the number of changes included reflects that, again System.Windows.Forms (SWF) and System.Drawing got the most attention.

This book is one of the newest self-paced training courses from Microsoft Press. It covers the 70-536 exam (.NET Framework 2.0 Application Development) which is required for both of the new Microsoft certifications, the Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist (MCTS) (for Web, Windows, and Distributed applications), and Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) (for Web, Windows, and Enterprise developers). It includes a DVD with a 90-day evaluation version of Visual Studio Professional Edition, a CD with a copy of this book in ebook form, sample code from the exercises in the book, and software for sample practice tests.

ComponentOne today released ComponentOne(R) Studio Enterprise(TM) 2006 v3, the world's most comprehensive component toolset for Windows, Web, and Mobile application development. This new version of ComponentOne's flagship development solution adds support for ATLAS, the latest emerging Web development technology, and delivers several new products and features focused on simplifying the design time experience and accelerating visual development.

'Ease-of-use' is one of those buzz terms that software marketeers routinely inject into their promotional copy to describe their product. The term is one of those unarguable concepts; after all, who's not in favor of ease-of-use?

Ousted Novell chairman and CEO Jack Messman, who was supposed to remain on the Novell board until October 31, has stepped down early, according to an 8-K that the company filed with the SEC on Tuesday. The filing offers no explanation why Messman is vacating the spot early merely that he notified the board last Friday that he was resigning effective Monday. Private merchant banker Thomas Plaskett, the head of Fox Run Capital Associates, has been non-executive chairman of the company since Messman was removed from office in June. Meanwhile, Red Hat, Novell's biggest competitor, has also lost a board member. Edward Kozel, the president and CEO of Skyrider, a P2P search marketing firm, has stepped down reportedly to devote more time to his company.

Developing custom applications using Microsoft's .NET Framework is a growing trend. According to Forrester Research, 56% of enterprises are choosing .NET versus 44% opting for J2EE, while IDC reports that 35.7% of large corporations use .NET for their most important applications compared to 25.3% for Java. While .NET lets your development team develop applications quickly and efficiently, it's still a challenge to make sure that:

According to our worldwide network of software development activists, evangelists, and executives, 2006 promises to be a vintage year for software development...with IE7, Atlas, and AJAX featuring prominently.

Hanselminutes is a weekly 30-minute podcast with Web developer and technologist Scott Hanselman hosted by Carl Franklin. The following is a transcript from show number 19 on BitTorrent. You can listen online at www.hanselminutes.com.

Forms Authentication for ASP.NET is extremely powerful in that it lets you quickly add a layer of security to your Web site. While the simplicity of setup and implementation makes this form of authentication extremely attractive, usability can sometimes be downright ugly. The core functionality of Forms Authentication relies on redirects - first redirecting anonymous requests to the login page, and then redirecting back to the originally requested resource. Constant redirects not only annoy users, they can disrupt your page logic. Mixing in some AJAX with your Forms Authentication will quickly eliminate the need for most redirects, and the associated negative effects.

Last month, we addressed platonic concepts in this space, albeit in as surface-level a way as possible. Just added a little pretentiousness to what could have otherwise been a deadly dull column. The topic of hand was 'ease-of-use' and the practical reality of achieving such a thing in the world of software development.

Enterprise Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are the next evolution of business application development. There are four different approaches to RIA development - AJAX, Java, Flash, and .NET - and many different RIA solutions available today. This article answers the following questions: What are enterprise RIAs? Which approach should you use? Which solutions are appropriate for you? And how are RIAs being adopted today?

The 4.0 release of DotImage premieres the DotImage Advanced Document Cleanup (ADC) and Advanced Photo Effects (APE) Modules. The Advanced Document Cleanup (ADC) Module is an add-on providing the ability to automatically remove specks and borders for improved image quality using unique proprietary algorithms developed by Atalasoft.

Apple the other day started pushing out a preview version of its sixth-generation operating system, Leopard, otherwise known as Mac OS X 10.5, to developers under non-disclosure expecting them to keep mum about a number of tantalizing new features that Apple claims it wants to keep secret from Microsoft's photocopiers.

In fact it says build 5472 was 'a pretty solid platform, and one that can be used for day-to-day activities, with little fear of serious disruption,' basically a lot better than the original Beta 2. But, it says, 'There are still a lot of holes under the surface' like graphic drivers and screen painting lacking polish and 'a large number of small glitches and failures which can't be reproduced, and while performance is much better, it is also unpredictable,' with Gartner's test system suddenly locking up for minute or longer.

The Mono project celebrates its 5th anniversary this month. The Mono project was launched in July 2001; I started following Mono in the press almost immediately, and soon started checking the homepage. In November I downloaded the source, and in February 2002 I started contributing to System.Drawing and System.Window.Forms.

Companies today are very aware of the high costs associated with managing stored data and keeping this data available to business-critical applications. These management costs are escalating at a time when corporate IT organizations are looking to streamline operations to ensure that infrastructure investments lead to increases in productivity and profitability.

Several years ago, when Microsoft recognized its security woes and institutionalized its response in the form of 'Patch Tuesday,' IT and security management had good reason for discomfort. It's now 2006, and if anything, the situation continues to deteriorate, with the number of crippling attacks skyrocketing.

This is a big book weighing in at over 1,200 pages. Note the 'Pro' in the title. If you want to learn how to design Web sites, this book is not for you; it's meant for the professional Web designer needing to build serious, real-world Web sites that are scalable and secure. This is the complete book for the professional; it covers all the basic parts such as the history of ASP.NET, Visual Studio 2005, upgrading old projects, and WebForm basics, but these are covered fleetingly and assumes the reader already knows the concepts and has enough experience to figure out the details for himself. For those getting started in ASP.NET or Web development in general, I recommend Beginning ASP.NET in C# 2005 from Apress (ISBN 1-59059-572-6) or Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Step by Step from Microsoft Press (ISBN 0-7356-2201-9).

BizTalk is a broad and inherently flexible product that can be used to build a large variety of applications; however, it exists to solve very complicated problems, it has a long ramp-up time associated with it, and many people simply find it too daunting to consider. As a reaction to these hurdles, this article will discuss different application styles that can be built with BizTalk instead of attempting to describe it and its features. A set of questions for determining when BizTalk Server could be used will also be presented.