Broadband Advisor

Microsoft Thursday said it would issue a release candidate (RC) for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) in the first three months of 2009, indicating it will ship its newest browser sometime in the first half of the year.

Marking the two-year anniversary of their controversial interoperability agreement, Microsoft and Novell this week are announcing upcoming availability of both the beta version of Moonlight, which puts Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application technology on Linux, and the general release of Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.

Companies like Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil and the makers of Motrin have all learned the hard way that online assaults from external users on Web 2.0 sites like Facebook and Twitter can damage their brands.

Mozilla Tuesday unveiled a Web application that speeds Firefox customization by offering users several sets of pre-selected add-ons.

JavaFX, Sun Microsystems' entrant in the rich Internet application (RIA) space, is nearly ready for prime time and, by the way, the company is making money off of Java, company officials said Monday afternoon at the Adobe Max 2008 conference in San Francisco.

Microsoft has quietly launched a new online store where U.S. customers can buy its software and hardware products.

OpenSocial supporters celebrated on Thursday what they consider major progress in this project to establish a common set of standard APIs and tools for developing social networking applications.

Google launched a new application for Apple's iPhone that uses voice recognition technology to enter queries in the company's search engine. The free app should be available now from the iPhone's App Store and through iTunes.

Microsoft Thursday unveiled a revamped Live Search API that developers can use to embed search on Web sites with more support for frequently used Web-development technologies and less restrictions on how third parties use the technology on their Web sites.

Sun Microsystems is partnering with cloud services provider Joyent to give Bebo developers one year of free Web hosting for their applications.

People who download Sun's Java Runtime Environment will be offered the MSN Toolbar as well, through a search distribution deal Microsoft has struck with Sun, the companies will announce Monday.