Microsoft Research has released a new tool to help pinpoint large-scale typo-squatters that are known to be gaming pay-per-click domain parking services. The lightweight prototype, called Strider URL Tracer, builds on the work within Microsoft’s Cybersecurity and Systems Management group to keep tabs on a sophisticated typo-squatting scheme that uses multilayer URL redirection to make money from Google’s AdSense for domains program.

The database titans are at it again, duking it out this time in the realm of storage and backup. For its part, IBM told eWEEK in an interview that Viper, its upcoming update to its DB2 database server software, has been infused with technology that compresses data throughout the system, including on disk and in memory, thus resulting in a 54 percent savings on storage costs with no performance hit. On the same day, Microsoft’s Paul Flessner, senior vice president of data and storage platforms, announced that SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 will ship with the final version of database mirroring. Database mirroring is a long-anticipated feature–many listed it as their top pick on the long list of coming attractions in the next-generation SQL Server 2005–that didn’t ship in a final, production-ready form when SQL Server 2005 first came out.

Back in the day, if you had a few hundred or a few thousand customers, clients, or even authors, you could just bang out an email in Outlook and send to everyone. But with ISPs blocking even small mailings (say, 50 people), we’ve got a new problem: how do we get the word out? In this important and exclusive article, we turn to Missy Lucnik, one of the industry’s leading experts, to get you that answer.

Read this OutlookPower article.

Microsoft has acquired Lionhead Studios, whose founder, Peter Molyneux, is one of the best-known independent video game developers in the business. The acquisition was announced jointly on Thursday by Microsoft Game Studios and U.K.-based Lionhead, the developer of such hit titles as "Fable," "The Movies," "Black & White" and others. The integration of the two outfits is official as of Thursday, the companies said. They would not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

As part of its monthly patching cycle, Microsoft plans on Tuesday to release five security bulletins with fixes for flaws in Windows and Office. At least one of the alerts is deemed "critical," Microsoft’s highest risk rating, the software maker said in a notice posted on its Web site on Thursday. It tags as critical any security threat that could allow a malicious Internet worm to spread without any action required on the part of the user.

Microsoft said it was reviewing a lawsuit filed against it by Lucent Technologies alleging Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console contains technology that infringes on a Lucent patent. Lucent filed the suit in the U.S. District Court in San Diego on March 28, and asked for injunctive relief and unspecified damages, Lucent spokesman John Skalko said. A spokeswoman for Microsoft did not provide additional details in an emailed comment.

Digital Dynamics Software, the makers of an IP Telephony Application Suite for Cisco IP Telephones, announced the release of their new Toast Caller Contact Identification add-in for Microsoft Outlook. When Outlook is running, incoming callers are identified on-screen via pop-up "toast" alerts. Users can click on the pop-up to answer and terminate the call and to also create a new contact entry if the caller is new. Optionally, when a known contact calls, the Outlook contact record can automatically be opened when a contact calls and journal entries can be automatically created to log the call duration for accurate call accounting.

MSNBC.com will test an ad-subsidized news service for cell phones in a bid to gain a wider audience. U.S. wireless service providers now put everything from Web surfing to video and music on cellular phones. Media firms have been eyeing this trend as a potential opening for using the mobile phone to expand ad revenue and viewership. MSNBC.com, a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal News, is one of the first U.S. media companies to test the theory with a three-month experiment that it hopes to expand into a full-on service by the end of summer.

A security flaw in software that ships with two of Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet printers could open a door for cybersnoops, HP has warned. The vulnerability lies in the Toolbox software that comes with HP’s Color LaserJet 2500 and 4600 printers, the company said. The flaw could allow a remote, unauthorized malicious user to retrieve arbitrary files from a Windows computer when the software is running in the default configuration. The Toolbox is software that installs on a PC along with the drivers.

2X announced that it will offer 100,000 free versions of 2X ApplicationServer–its application publishing solution–in a bid to make application tunneling affordable to all. With 2X ApplicationServer companies can seamlessly tunnel any Windows application onto remote desktops, without having to install the application onto each user’s machine. Companies can save significantly on administration and support, as well as allowing remote users to connect to corporate applications easily and securely.