Emboldened by the state of Massachusetts’ decision last month to require the use of open-standard document formats in all state offices by Jan. 1, 2007, a group of open standards advocates Monday created a special interest group to promote the OpenDocument format. OpenDocument is an open-standards document format created by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards to store data from desktop applications, such as word processing, presentation, and spreadsheet software. OpenDocument is used by the open source OpenOffice.org desktop business application suite and is supported by Sun Microsystems’ StarOffice 8.

Microsoft is about to give Media Center PCs a new point of view. The Redmond, Wash., software giant is expected to unveil an update for its Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system that will boost the computers’ abilities to tap online entertainment such as movies, access email, and even let users go shopping via the special user interface, designed to allow easy access to multimedia.

Microsoft on Tuesday issued fixes for 14 flaws in Windows, including a security hole that one expert says is ripe for exploitation by a major worm. The majority of the vulnerabilities addressed in nine security bulletins from Microsoft require some user interaction for an attack to succeed. That means an attacker would have to trick people into visiting a malicious Web site, clicking on a bad link, or opening a malformed file to exploit the security holes.

Microsoft and Yahoo are set to announce a blockbuster interoperability deal that will reshape the landscape of the fragmented instant messaging market. The companies will connect their IM networks so users on each can communicate with one another using text and voice chat free of charge. The agreement marks the first time major players in the highly-competitive IM industry have officially partnered up to enable cross-network communication.

Microsoft’s proposals for a redesign of the RSS icon is creating more controversy than the company’s strategy for adding RSS support to its Internet Explorer and Windows Vista products. Microsoft set off a storm of comments and feedback when officials requested feedback on a proposed RSS icon redesign for the Internet Explorer 7.0 toolbar.

Seagate Technology has brought its desktop Barracuda drives into the ninth generation, adding a half-terabyte model and 3-Gbit SATA technology to its lineup. The Barracuda 7200.9 drives, as they’re known, have begun shipping in 40GB to 500GB capacities, with cache sizes ranging from 2MB to 16MB. Manufacturer suggested pricing will be $61 for a 40GB parallel drive, $75 for an 80GB SATA drive, and $429 for the high-end 500GB SATA drive.

Google has fixed a security flaw on its Web site that opened the door to phishing scams, account hijacks, and other attacks. The flaw, known as a cross-site scripting vulnerability, existed on the Web site for Google’s AdWords advertising program and a customer training site, according to security company Finjan Software, which discovered the problem.

Longtime adversaries Microsoft and RealNetworks scheduled a joint news conference Tuesday amid indications that the companies had settled Real’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. The news conference in Seattle was scheduled to include the heads of both companies. RealNetworks sued Microsoft in December 2003, accusing the software giant of illegally forcing Windows users to accept Microsoft’s digital media player. RealNetworks said its music player suffered as a result. A settlement in the works between the companies would cost Microsoft $750 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Research In Motion and PGP Corporation are working together to allow BlackBerry users to send and receive PGP-secured email. The new PGP Support Package developed for BlackBerry is expected to be available later this year. This solution enables enterprises to extend PGP email security to individuals who use both laptop/desktop computers and BlackBerry wireless devices. It provides customers with sender-to-recipient email security, and thereby complements the industry-leading wireless transmission security and device protection security inherent in the BlackBerry architecture.

Beta 1.5 of the open-source Thunderbird email client is looking a lot better, but it still lacks calendar functions. The current Thunderbird has problems with memory leaks, search and filtering problems, and a variety of bugs ranging from minor to program-stopping. And, while it is not as vulnerable as Outlook, Thunderbird has had its share of security holes. Fortunately for its users, the Mozilla Foundation is much faster at fixing the bugs in its programs than Microsoft is at fixing the ones in its software.