As Microsoft aggressively starts to prepare the market for the debut of Windows Vista, it will use the Digital Life trade show to announce the holiday availability of PCs, software, hardware and games that will work with Vista, even though the operating system will not be available to consumers until early next year. The software giant will also announce that more than 250 hardware and software products from over 50 industry partners have received the "Certified for Windows Vista" or "Works with Windows Vista" logo. The logo program lets customers know that these products are compatible with the new Vista operating system.

YouTube’s enormous popularity has created a big headache for another "utube"–a company that sells used machines that make tubes. Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment’s Web site, utube.com, was inaccessible for most of the week, overwhelmed by millions of people looking for the popular online video site. The confusion took off a couple of months ago, said Ralph Girkins, Universal Tube’s president.

If you don’t like what your favorite Internet search engine or e-commerce site does with information it collects about you, your options are limited to living with it or logging off. Major search engines, for instance, all keep records of your searches for weeks, months or even years, often tied to your computer’s Internet address or more. Retailers, meanwhile, generally presume the right to send marketing emails. Although online companies have become better at disclosing data practices, privacy advocates say the services’ stated policies generally don’t give consumers real choice.

A hacker broke into Google’s main official blog and posted a false message on Saturday, saying that the company had decided to cancel a joint project with eBay. The intrusion marks the second time this year that Google’s official blog has fallen into unauthorized hands. In March, Google staffers deleted the so-called Google Blog by mistake and someone briefly took control of the Web address.

Networking problems have kept Microsoft from distributing its latest security patches to users of its automatic update services. The updates, released at about 11 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday, fix a whopping 26 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office and the .Net framework. Many of these flaws are considered critical, but as of 2 p.m. they were still unavailable via many of Microsoft’s most popular update services. The problem is due to "some network issues on the Microsoft Update platform," according to Microsoft’s Craig Gehere, who wrote about the issue in a blog posting.

With the help of Pharos Science and Applications, Microsoft has improved the GPS functionality in a new version of its travel and mapping software. Microsoft Streets & Trips 2007 with GPS locator includes a new Pharos receiver, the SiRFstarIII, for mapping locations to GPS coordinates. The new GPS locator is 10 times more sensitive than the capability available in the previous version of Streets & Trips, according to Microsoft.

Is your email bursting out of your inbox? Feeling cc’d into submission? Here’s how to reclaim your life.

Windows Live is the most important initiative at Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, told the audience at the annual Gartner Symposium and IT Expo. Windows Live is a growing collection of service add-ons for Windows. Some of the services are shipping, such as Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Expo online classifieds. Nearly a dozen services are currently in beta test on the Windows Live Ideas Web site.

It isn’t over yet, but 2006 is already a record year when it comes to security vulnerabilities. There is, however, a silver lining: A smaller chunk of the flaws are high risk. Last year, researchers at Internet Security Systems identified 5,195 vulnerabilities in software. On Monday, the count for this year stood at 5,450, according to the company’s survey, and the projected total for the whole of the year is almost 7,500 bugs.

According to BayStar Capital’s managing partner Larry Goldfarb, Microsoft allegedly assured BayStar that it would somehow ##"guarantee" BayStar’s $50 million investment in SCO.## Specifically, Goldfarb has testified to the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City that Microsoft senior VP of corporate development and strategy, Richard Emerson, "discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would backstop, or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment… Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO."