On July 10, Microsoft announced that Asian Linux distributor Turbolinux is the latest Linux company to join its Ecma Open XML-Open Document Format Translator Project.

Unlike the earlier Microsoft/Linux partnerships–Novell, Xandros, and Linspire–there’s no patent agreement or any other technical partnerships. This project seeks to create tools to build a "technical bridge" between Microsoft’s Open XML Formats and ODF (Open Document Format).

Microsoft is spending another $50 million to pump up sales, marketing, training and other support for its Forefront line of security products, the company announced July 11 at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver. It’s also expanding eligibility so that more partners can take advantage of the up to 30 percent additional fees that they can receive through its Security Software Advisor program.

Forefront is Microsoft’s battering ram when it comes to breaking into the enterprise security market. When the Redmond, Wash. company launched the first pieces of Forefront Dec. 8, analysts such as Gartner’s John Pescatore predicted that Microsoft’s entrance into the market would not only cause pricing pressure, but would also give industry stalwarts like McAfee and Symantec a swift kick in the pants, innovation-wise.

After more than $75 million in bogus credit card charges, several Cuban nationals in Florida have been arrested with more than 200,000 credit card account numbers, many of which came from the TJX and Polo Ralph Lauren data breaches, according to U.S. Secret Service officials, commenting on the July 9 announced arrests.

The numbers were sent to the Florida defendants, who specialize in manufacturing bogus credit cards complete with embossing, logos, holograms and properly encoded magnetic strips, from a group of Eastern European residents who specialize in collecting the stolen credit card numbers, the Secret Service said.

Together, Firefox and Internet Explorer are brewing up some security trouble. That’s the latest update from security researchers who initially laid the blame on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for the latest zero-day exploit that also can afflict those using the Firefox Web browser.

Users could face a "highly critical" risk if they have both IE and Firefox version 2.0, or later, loaded on their computer. The trouble begins when browsing a malicious site while using IE and it registers a "firefoxurl://" URI (uniform resource identifier) handler, which allows the browser to interact with specific resources on the Web. As a result, users may find their systems remotely compromised.

Earlier Tuesday, security researcher Thor Larholm, who discovered the IE flaw, and security research giant Symantec put much of the blame on IE, while Secunia’s Thomas Kristensen, chief technology officer, attributed the problem to Firefox versions 2.0 or later.

Microsoft has issued patches for seven critical flaws in Excel, Windows Active Directory and the .Net Framework.

Those seven vulnerabilities cover the worst-hit applications. The July 10 Patch Tuesday saw a total of 11 vulnerabilities fixed in six security bulletins.

Analysts were warning about the critical .Net flaw ahead of the bulletin release, given the framework’s core role in supplying code to a vast array of Windows applications, such as in pre-coded user interfaces, data access components, database connectivity, cryptography, Web application development, algorithms and network communications modules.

Aiming to rally its partners around the reality of hosted software, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner told them it was a matter of financial life and death.

"We have to change faster internally than the world is changing externally or we will be obsolete," Turner said, as part of his speech, which kicked off Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference.

While change is hard, Turner said Microsoft’s partners need to be ready to offer customers the choice of running software on their own servers or subscribing to hosted services. "It doesn’t mean locally based software is going away, but customers want the choice."

MSN declared itself the new record holder for the biggest online entertainment audience, reporting more than 10 million streams Saturday for its coverage of Live Earth. The Microsoft-owned portal also claimed to have reached "the most simultaneous viewers of any online concert ever," but declined to specify a specific total. Streams do not equal viewers, just the number of requests made for a video feed.

Scribe Software, a provider of data integration and migration software technology for leading mid-market business applications announced the availability of the Scribe Adapter 3.7 for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0. This release leverages the key features of Dynamics GP and eConnect, providing partners and customers with powerful and flexible data integration and migration without having to write a single line of code.

With Scribe’s integration product, Scribe Insight and the Scribe Adapter for Dynamics GP, customers can achieve a deep and rich integration solution that is powerful enough for large customers, yet affordable and accessible to small and mid-sized businesses. Version 3.7 of the Scribe Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics GP is available immediately and fully supports version Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0.

IceWeb is offering users a 30-day free trial of IceMail for iPhone. IceMail is a hosted Microsoft Exchange email subscription service.

"There has been much press regarding how the iPhone might be ‘shunned’ by enterprise email users because of the lack of perceived compatibilities with Microsoft Exchange implementations. We’re working to ensure this will not be the case," he said.

Google’s acquisition of Postini is another clear sign that the search giant is staking a claim in the on-demand enterprise applications market and ratcheting up the heat in the already sizzling software as a service sector, especially against Microsoft.

With Postini, which began as an email filtering company and evolved into compliance technology that enforces a company’s communications policies, Google can now address the perception that its nascent portfolio of email and messaging applications aren’t quite ready for prime time.

What’s more, Google can take advantage of Postini’s huge customer base–35,000 customers and 10 million users–to become a contender in the desktop applications market where Microsoft lives.