Seeking to bolster its business analytics modules, Microsoft has acquired technology from business partner Professional Advantage, the software giant said Monday. The technology Microsoft has acquired is called Analysis Cubes for Excel. It will be one of several extension modules for Microsoft’s Great Plains 8.0. The modules are designed to aid customers in examining and analyzing data from various aspects for a more rounded view of the information.

A software vendor that tried to drum up sales by offering to clean up nonexistent computer spyware has been temporarily shut down, U.S. regulators said on Friday. The makers of Spyware Assassin tried to scare consumers into buying software through pop-up ads and e-mail that warned their computers had been infected with malicious monitoring software, the Federal Trade Commission said.

A Louisiana man who wrote malicious emails that caused some computers to dial the 911 emergency number was sentenced to six months in prison. A U.S. federal judge sentenced David Jeansonne, 44, to the prison term as well as six months home detention after he admitted sending emails to about 20 subscribers of Microsoft’s WebTV, a television Internet service since renamed MSN TV.

Sony Electronics is working with Intradyn to further build exposure for a combined archiving and retrieval solution tailored to address demanding record retention requirements for small and medium sized businesses (SMB) such as brokerages, medical clinics and legal firms. The all-in-one email archiving system couples Intradyn’s ComplianceVault Email Archiving and Retrieval Appliance with Sony’s Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) automation technology, offering a cost-effective and plug-and-play solution for SMBs that need to tackle regulatory compliance.

Thousands of con artists, grifters, fraudsters, and other denizens of the dark are trolling for victims online. Can you recognize online fraud when you see it? Here’s a quick guide to the Top 5 scams and schemes you’re most likely to find on the ‘Net.

Microsoft said it will acquire Groove Networks and make Groove’s founder, Ray Ozzie, a chief technical officer at the software giant. Microsoft said it will incorporate Groove’s "virtual office" collaboration software into its Office line of productivity applications. Ozzie, the inventor of Lotus Notes and a collaboration guru, will report to Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and chief software architect.

Microsoft this week lost a key software engineer to Amazon.com, following another recent departure to Google. Pat Helland, a longtime Microsoft software developer, announced last week through his blog on Microsoft’s MSDN developer network site that he left the software giant on March 4 and planned to start at Amazon on March 7. Microsoft’s loss of Helland followed news of another departure. Marc Lucovsky, Microsoft’s "distinguished engineer" who headed up a group working on the company’s .Net technologies, now works for Google, the search company confirmed.

Women represent nearly half the workers in the U.S.–46.6 percent. However, they always have been underrepresented in IT. Even more discouraging is the fact that the percentage of women working in IT jobs is not growing but dropping. That is bad news indeed for employers seeking hard-to-find technical candidates and the women who might otherwise fill those well-paying jobs.

O’Reilly’s Personal Trainer guides offer all the advantages of working under the guidance of a qualified trainer without any of the disadvantages. The newest books in the series, "Word 2003 Personal Trainer", "Outlook 2003 Personal Trainer", and "Access 2003 Personal Trainer", provide short, focused lessons on specific tasks that can be read in any order, depending on your objectives and skill level. The task-specific lessons–or "workouts"–are laid out in two-page spreads designed to boost individual learning and retention.

The technology industry is guilty of failing to fully understand IT bosses and the pressures that come with their role, according to silicon.com’s CIO Jury user panel. Three-quarters (nine) of the CIO Jury said IT vendors and suppliers do not understand what the CIO role is and what their own internal pressures are, while only a quarter (three) said the IT industry is in tune with what they are trying to achieve.