WinInsider

Microsoft is readying a new file conversion tool for Office that is designed to strip out malicious code embedded in a document. The company says businesses will be safer from exploits in older file formats, and, in turn, Microsoft could see more upgrades to Office 2007.The tool, dubbed Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment, or MOICE, can be associated to the older file formats like those used in Office 2003. When the document is accessed, it is upconverted by MOICE and handed off to the new version of Office.

Microsofts aim to seek patent royalties from open source distributors and users may be an attempt to use legal threats to deflect attention from larger questions surrounding its business, including lack of interest in new versions of core products and lackluster profit from new wares.

Microsoft's claims that it will ask distributors and users to pay royalties for up to 235 of its patents included in open source software, including Linux, is clearly an attempt to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt and make people hesitant to use open source as an alternative to commercial products, intellectual-property attorneys said. But the claims also raise questions about the business strategy behind Microsoft's aggressive moves to seek licensing money from patents amid rumbles that customers have been slow to adopt Windows Vista and Office 2007, while new products such as the Xbox 360 remain unprofitable.

Just four months after its big coming out party at CES, U3 -- a platform for running applications from USB thumb drives -- has already been put on the chopping block by parent SanDisk. The company has decided to join Microsoft in creating a new standard.U3 was first introduced in 2005, backed by a host of supporting software and hardware vendors. Popular applications including AOL's Winamp, Cerulean Studios' Trillian, McAfee Antivirus and Skype among others were offered in U3 versions to spur its adoption.

In recent years, tech enthusiasts have turned to Microsoft's spring hardware conference as a chance to get juicy tidbits on where the software maker was headed with the next version of Windows.

With Windows Vista having hit store shelves in January, things will be a little different this week when more than 2,000 people descend on downtown Los Angeles for the annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. There, the software maker is expected to split its attention between talking about how Vista is doing and looking forward to two server releases--Longhorn Server and Windows Home Server, both due later this year.

Microsoft is once again inviting members of the hacking community into its Redmond, Washington, campus to show the software giant where it's gone wrong. The company's latest Blue Hat conference kicked off Wednesday with talks on mobile security, hardware hacking, Microsoft's security tools, and the underground vulnerability economy.

Microsoft began hosting these events two years ago as a way to foster dialogue between the company's security team and external security researchers, many of whom have been critical of the company's approach to security.

Microsoft may have slipped up Thursday afternoon and inadvertently posted the official name of its next server operating system, currently codenamed 'Longhorn.' In a list of links on the WinHEC Virtual Pressroom, the second item on the original list said "Windows Server 2008 reviewers[sic] guide".

Clicking on the link brought up a page titled "Windows Server Code Name 'Longhorn' Beta 3 Reviewer's Guide"; it made no reference to Windows Server 2008. Someone at Microsoft eventually noticed the slip; by 5:52 p.m. ET Thursday, the link was gone.

Facing what he called "universal truths about product development," Microsoft general manager for virtualization strategy Mike Neil concluded a multi-page blog post this afternoon touting the progress made with Windows Server Virtualization, code-named "Viridian," by announcing the removal of three of the service's most highly anticipated features: live migration of running virtual machines between servers; "hot-adds" of virtual components such as storage, processors, and memory; and support for more than 16 logical processing cores.

"With all this progress comes the occasional tradeoff," Neil wrote this afternoon. "Earlier this week we had to come to grips with some universal truths about product development: *) Shipping is a feature, too; *) The quality bar, the time you have, and the feature set are directly correlated."

Lenovo announced Thursday it has signed a deal whereby the largest Chinese computer maker will continue to ship fully licensed copies of Windows and other Microsoft products on all PCs sold inside China.

Saying it "renews the strategic cooperation between the two companies," the deal is a follow on from an earlier agreement signed in 2005, according to a Lenovo statement. That pact made the firm the first Chinese manufacturer to pre-load all of its domestically sold PCs with licensed copies of Microsoft Windows.

Microsoft is establishing a mostly virtual institute in Latin America that will allow academic researchers to pool information on breakthroughs and find funding for projects in a variety of disciplines.

On Wednesday, Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, is scheduled to launch the Latin American Collaborative Research Federation. He will do so at Microsoft Research's Latin American Academic Summit in Vina del Mar, Chile.

Microsoft, maker of the Office word-processing and spreadsheet programs, acquired SoftArtisans Inc.'s OfficeWriter to add software that creates data reports.

OfficeWriter works with Microsoft's SQL database server to add data to Office spreadsheets and documents over the Internet using a Web browser. Terms of the purchase weren't disclosed.

Microsoft said Wednesday morning that the next version of SQL Server, code-named "Katmai," will be released in 2008. Financially speaking, the database management software has been one of the most consistent performers for the company in recent years, a key product in the Server & Tools Division.