On Wednesday Microsoft announced that it had reached a settlement with Primax Electronics, a mouse manufacturer of which Microsoft sued in July for patent infringement. Microsoft said that it had sued Primax Electronics after it had failed to negotiate a suitable licensing deal with the Taiwan-based company.

The patents Primax Electroncics are accused of infringing relate to two mouses technologies. The first allows a mouse to connect to both USB and PS/2 ports and auto-detect which type of port it is connected to. Another technology called TiltWheel relates to controlling cursor movement by tilting a mouse.

Microsoft has been licensing patents since late 2003 and it currently licenses over 30 to companies in the mouse and keyboard industry.

Source: Cnet

Microsoft has been the target of a lawsuit in the United States in relation to a major fault with the Xbox 360 gaming system which has caused serious damage to games played in the machine. The suite alleges that Microsoft was aware of the problem when the Xbox 360 was launched and has made not effort to correct the fault, causing users to fork out on replacing damaged discs.

The lawsuit alleges that even a slight tilt of the the Xbox 360 will cause damage to game discs inserted into the system.

This is not the only problem that Microsoft has had with it’s Xbox 360 gaming console. It has also had problems with consoles failing, resulting in a “red ring of death” appearing on the units rings.

Microsoft program manager Hiroo Umeno said in a statement to stuff.co.nz:

This is … information that we as a team, optical disc drive team, knew about. When we first discovered the problem in September or October [2005], when we got a first report of disc movement, we knew this is what’s causing the problem

After Microsoft performed further investigation into the fault, they determined that the disc inside would collide with parts of the disk drive, causing severe gasges to occur.

Microsoft found three solutions to the problem. Firstly, installing small bumpers, slowing disc rotation speed, and increasing the magnetic field of the disc holder. Microsoft did not put these solutions into action, citing they were either to expensive to implement or would create new problems.

Microsoft has instituted a game replacement program. However, it only applies to Microsoft games and users are charged a replacement cost of US$20 per disc.

Source: Stuff.co.nz

Microsoft has issued an out-of-cycle update for Windows and Internet Explorer in relation to a ‘zero-day’ vulnerability which has potentially exposed millions of Windows computers to exploitation and infection.

It is rare for Microsoft to release an out-of-cycle update and the critical nature of the security hole which has the potential for ‘remote code execution’ has forced Microsoft’s hand into providing this emergency fix. The vulnerability allows malicious websites to crash Internet Explorer, and violate memory space and execute dangerous code. Seemingly innocent websites may also be compromised by this vulnerability and used as drones to attack web surfers.

It is estimated that approximately 10,000 websites are known to be compromised at this time. The vulnerability has been used by criminals to steal gaming passwords, but could potentially be used to steal more sensitive information such as banking passwords and other private information.

The vulnerability specifically targets Internet Explorer 7, but Internet Explorer 5, 6, and 8 are also at risk. The patch will automatically be downloaded to users via Automatic Update, but is also available from the Microsoft Download Center here. The full advisory from Microsoft is available here.

Source: The New Zealand Herald, The Register, PC World

Microsoft have released their first application for the iPhone, with no equivalent version for their own mobile platform at this stage.

The application is called Seadragon. Seadragon is an application which is used for browsing images, but includes some advanced features such as ‘deep zoom’ allowing users to quickly zoom in and out through online photo gallery’s.

Microsoft appears to have leveraged the inbuilt accelerated graphics capabilities included in all iPhone phones.

Alex Daley, group product manager for Microsoft Live Labs, told TechFlash:

The iPhone is the most widely distributed phone with a (graphics processing unit),” Daley explained. “Most phones out today don’t have accelerated graphics in them The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do. I couldn’t just pick up a Blackberry or a Nokia off the shelf and build Seadragon for it without GPU support.

Seadragon is the backbone behind Microsoft’s Photosynth system, which allows people to digitally stitch together photos to form a mock-up 3D environment, of which users can traverse.