Skype withdraws support for Windows Mobile

The firm has not made much of a splash about the decision, and there is no obvious announcement on the Skype and Skype Lite download pages. However, a forum discussion posted on the Wmpoweruser site drew a comment from a Skype marketing guy, Peter Parkes. Reading between the lines and looking at Statcounter's user figures,
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Microsoft announces three new BlueTrack mice

Today Microsoft

announced that it will be releasing three new BlueTrack versions of its mice, at its lowest price point ever.  The three new mice, Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500, Wireless Mouse 2000 and Comfort Mouse 4500 will be available in March and April. Wireless Mouse 2000:
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Verizon to allow unlimited Skype over 3G

Today, at the Mobile World Congress, Verizon decided to change the game a bit. Beginning next month, users with data plans will have unlimited access to Skype over 3G. This means that people can now call any Skype user directly from their phone without having to pay an extra cent.
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Adobe confirms no Flash support in Windows Mobile 7

Adobe has confirmed that there will be no Adobe Flash support in Windows Mobile 7, at least at the initial launch. However, Microsoft and Adobe are working very closely together to add in support for Adobe Flash 10.1, shortly after the launch of Windows Mobile 7.
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Windows Phone 7 Series announced

Microsoft has announced Windows Phone 7 Series at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.  The software was built from the ground up and will provide a new look and feel as not only has the interface changed, but so has the base code it is built upon.
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Visual Studio 2010 RC and .NET Framework 4.0 RC released

Visual Studio is a development environment that allows developers to create GUI applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications

, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft Silverlight.
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Bing Maps - a big geographical update

Microsoft released a major geographical update for Bing Maps, adding in well over 1 million square kilometers for 19 different countries around the world.  The update adds bird’s eye-view, enhanced bird’s eye-view, and even aerial to select countries.
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Google Chrome for Mac Beta

Google said on Thursday that it has made a new Chrome for Mac Beta available which includes extensions support. The new beta release of Chrome for Mac offers extensions, bookmark sync, and more. Google's extensions gallery currently includes over 2,200 extensions and these are available for Mac users too.
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Sony launches a 3D Blu-ray player

JAPANESE CONGLOMERATE Sony has a launched the BDP-S470 stand-alone 3D-ready Blu-ray player, just a day after Panasonic's slew of 3D Blu-ray player announcements.The 3D in the cheap as chips $200 (£130) Sony Blu-ray player comes courtesy of a firmware upgrade that the company will roll out in the summer
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Google announces Google Buzz

Today in a live press event, Google announced Google Buzz. They're calling it "a new way to share." It is launching today and will continue rolling out over the next few days. Google notes that this is not a finished product. They are continuoulsy pushing it to integrate with more and more services. Buzz will also launch as an enterprise product and "will change the way businesses communicate."
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China shuts a hacking school

THE GLORIOUS PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC of China has shut down what is believed to be the biggest training site for hackers in Central China and arrested three people, according to China Daily.  Up to 50 Chinese police were investigating the Black Hawk Safety Net training site, which openly recruited potential hackers online. For a small fee, hackers were given lessons in cyberwarfare including honing their skills on Trojan attacks.
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Notepad++ 5.6.6

Notepad++ is a free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the MSWindows environment

. Notepad++ supports the following languages: C, C++ , Java , C#, XML, HTML, PHP, javascript , RC resource file, makefile, ASCII art file, doxygen, ini file, batch file, ASP , VB/VBS source files , SQL , Objective-C , CSS, Pascal, Perl, Python and Lua.Read more »

KeepSafe 2.01

KeepSafe protects your important documents and data with a seamless and real-time backup solution.  It does not backup your entire system, but focuses on the documents and files you work on so you can quickly recover in the event of a file corruption, lost document, etc.
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Facebook takes back control of its adverts from Microsoft

Microsoft confirmed today that it had reached a mutual decision with Facebook, allowing the social network

to take over responsibility for selling display advertisements on its own site. In October 2007 Microsoft announced a $240 million investment in Facebook for a roughly 1.6 percent stake in the Web phenomenon.
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No more Gmail support for IE6

On January 30th, Neowin reported that Google would begin dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 due to its inability to handle modern-day web technologies. At that point, it was unclear which services were included in this. ComputerWorld reported that, yesterday, a Google spokesman confirmed that Gmail will be among the apps that Google will no longer support in IE6.
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Microsoft to end original Xbox game support

For a while now, Microsoft has allowed people to purchase and download original Xbox games (appropriately named Xbox Originals) on Xbox Live, in order for them to be played on their Xbox 360 console. As you'd imagine, this support could only go so far, and now it's official – according to The Gamerscore Blog, Microsoft will be ending support for the originals, beginning April 15.
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Microsoft Office 2010 will be 'free' with 2007

Microsoft has pulled down a blog post that detailed a promotional offer for a free upgrade to Office 2010 if punters buy Office 2007 in a limited time frame . According to Arstechnica, the post was by Charles Van Heusen on his 'In the Know' blog at Microsoft's US Partner Community website.
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Microsoft investigating Win 7 battery warning issues

Microsoft has confirmed it is investigating a problem causing some Windows 7 users to receive incorrect battery warnings on their laptops. The warning is triggered when a laptops BIOS detects a battery replacement is required. Windows 7 provides the following alert: "Consider replacing your battery.
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Windows 7 RC expiration prompts begin in two weeks

Microsoft has issued a reminder that in two weeks Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) users will begin receiving expiration notifications.Windows 7 RC does not expire until 1 June 2010 but from February 15 users will begin seeing expiration notifications in the task bar one time per day and then a Notification Wizard one time every four hours and then one time every hour.

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Google proposes new DNS protocol extension

An interesting proposal was announced on the official Google Code Blog this week. In a lengthy draft, a group of DNS and content providers (including Google) outline the concept of extending the DNS protocol to include part of a user's IP address. DNS works by translating friendly domain names to a numeric address.
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