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Microsoft says it didn't pay for the use of its Photosynth image-browsing software on Wednesday night's episode of the CBS series "CSI: New York." But it would be difficult to imagine a more valuable plug for the technology.

The software, which presents a collection of two-dimensional images in a three-dimensional environment, is used by the fictional CSI investigators to piece together and navigate camera-phone photos taken at a high school prom where a guidance counselor is slain.

Microsoft Thursday unveiled a version of its toolset for Web and multimedia designers that includes the first native support for its Silverlight technology across all of the products in the suite.

Expression Studio 2 includes five products: Expression Web for Web design; Expression Blend for multimedia and 3D design; Expression Design for graphic design; Expression Media for storing and sharing multimedia assets; and Expression Encoder for video encoding. The new release marks the first time Encoder is in the suite as a full-fledged product, said Wayne Smith, Microsoft group product manager for Expression Studio.

Microsoft said Tuesday it is cutting prices on the Xbox 360 in four Asian regions by as much as 20% in an effort to expand the audience for the video game console.

The reductions will take effect this week in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, Microsoft said.

"This price drop is part of Microsoft's ongoing strategy to bring Xbox's high-definition gaming and entertainment experience to an even wider user base," Microsoft said in a statement.

The price of the main Xbox 360 Premium model with a 20-gigabyte hard drive was cut nearly 20% in Singapore, 17% in Taiwan, nearly 11% in Hong Kong, and 5 percent in South Korea.

Microsoft's board met Wednesday, but failed to reach a decision on what to do next. Microsoft's board met on Wednesday to discuss its stand-off with Yahoo Inc over its $41.8 billion takeover bid, but failed to reach a decision on what to do next, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Microsoft's board of directors is still weighing whether to adopt a hostile approach and nominate a proxy slate of directors to replace Yahoo's board, sweeten its cash-and-stock offer for Yahoo, or possibly walk away from the deal, the Journal said.

Microsoft Wednesday said Service Pack 1 for System Center Configuration Manager will be released in May and the last beta of the R2 version would come in July with a final release to follow by October.

The company also said the next version of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack would be updated with new desktop virtualization capabilities sometime between July and Sept. 1, 2008.The company also previewed a service called Knowledge Services that is a knowledge database of server configurations using data from end users. The service is designed to show users the most efficient and effective configurations for deployments such as Exchange.

Microsoft has seen more than 200,000 downloads of technical documents that partners and rivals need to make their products interoperable with Redmond-made software since it posted the information in February, Microsoft senior VP Bob Muglia said Tuesday at the Interop conference in Las Vegas.

Interop Online Stay on top of breaking news and blog coverage from Interop in Las Vegas, April 27 to May 2, 2008 >> Interop Coverage << "We used to think that these were our great trade secrets," said Muglia, who oversees Microsoft's efforts around servers and tools.

Some bloggers this week are suggesting that Microsoft is handing out "backdoor keys" to Windows security to police officers. Although Microsoft is denying the bulk of the rumors, a full explanation still seems a bit elusive.In a statement to BetaNews this afternoon, a Microsoft spokesperson denied that a technology unveiled at a law enforcement conference in Seattle on Monday would be used to equip officers and investigators with "backdoors" into Windows systems, as various blogs and news sources have since speculated.

Microsoft's unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo Inc. is still up in the air, but maybe it's inevitable in the eyes of Bill Gates.

During an appearance Friday afternoon at the University of Washington, the Microsoft chairman at one point referred to his company as if it were second in Internet search. In reality, Microsoft is in third place in search market share -- although it would move into second place, still well behind Google, if it's able to bring Yahoo into its fold.

"Often if you're No. 2 -- and in this case, a distant No. 2 -- you can try harder, so to speak, and try out new things that are quite different," Gates said when discussing Microsoft's technological ambitions in Internet search.

While consumers are still not able to use the audio-visual features of Microsoft's instant messaging client for Macs, a new version adds support for AV for businesses.

In order for businesses with Mac clients to be running Microsoft's Messenger for Mac 7.0 with video support, an organization must be running Exchange server and Microsoft Communicator. Video and audio chats will be available, as well as multi-party conferencing.

Video and audio conferencing on the platform is something that the Mac Business Unit has been talking about for quite some time, in fact as early as 2006 in an interview with BetaNews.

Microsoft on Friday found itself trying to clarify that it has nothing to do with the poor coding practices that have enabled a massive SQL injection attack to affect Web sites using Microsoft IIS Web Server and Microsoft SQL Server.

"The attacks are facilitated by SQL injection exploits and are not issues related to IIS 6.0, ASP, ASP.Net, or Microsoft SQL technologies," said Bill Sisk, a communications manager at Microsoft, in a blog post. "SQL injection attacks enable malicious users to execute commands in an application's database." Sisk said that to defend against SQL injection attacks, developers should follow secure coding practices.