Federal Trade Commission raps spyware company for false detection

The US Federal Trade Commission is targeting a company offering free spyware detection, for fraudulently claiming to detect spyware infections and selling spyware removal software that failed to clean infections. The FTC is seeking a permanent ban on MaxTheater's sharp marketing practices: it describes them as 'phony' and 'deceptive'. It is also seeking redress for those that stumped up nearly $30 for the poor quality removal software. ...more

Instant messaging, with pictures

Yahoo! is adding a video feature to its instant messaging service so that you will be able to see just who it is you are communicating with. It's not yet full video because the images that accompany the live chat will only appear at the rate of one frame per second, but the idea is to help users convey the meaning and emotion of messages. (A different take on the Emoticons for email that we have reported on before, but the principle is the same. ...more

Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 7 pre-Beta

Microsoft has publicly released what it is calling a Pre-Beta 2 version of Internet Explorer 7. Although dubbed a 'pre-Beta' it seems very stable and usable for the great majority of casual users. The first thing that strikes you about IE 7 is that the interface is considerably slicker than IE 6 and sports the kind of interface we can expect from Windows Vista later this year. ...more

Comment: Customer confidence in Microsoft at risk

Microsoft is very good at the belated stable door slam. Fling a few Outlook-reliant viruses around the Web and a security patch will appear, inevitably within the week. Break into Hotmail, its Web-based e-mail system, and only a day or two will pass before the system is back up and running. ...more

Squeeze is on for MPEG-4 and Flash video

Sorensen has released two new Squeeze applications for encoding video either in MPEG-4 or using Macromedia Flash MX. Sorenson Squeeze 3 for MPEG-4 is the Variable Bit Rate (VBR) compression application with a drag-and-drop interface that makes MPEG-4 video compression as simple as selecting a preset data rate setting. Fully compliant with the ISMA MPEG-4 specification, Sorenson Squeeze 3 includes tools for MPEG-4 Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile. ...more