Elizabeth Montalbano

Microsoft Corp. is hoping to lure hobbyist programmers and young children to the Windows platform through a Web site and forthcoming version of Visual Studio aimed at making Windows development easy and fun, a company spokesman said Thursday.

The new Treo smart phone running Windows Mobile 5.0 will help both Palm Inc. and Microsoft Corp. persuade more enterprises to purchase mobile devices for their employees, top executives from both companies said.

Microsoft Corp. and Qwest Communications International Inc. Tuesday revealed they are collaborating to provide VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) and other telecommunications convergence services to small and medium-sized business customers (SMBs), making Qwest the first service provider to leverage Microsoft's recently launched VOIP software suite.

Microsoft Corp. Thursday made available two new preview releases of forthcoming technology, including the latest build of the next version of the Windows Server operating system (OS), code-named Longhorn.

Microsoft Corp. is expected to reveal new products for midmarket customers and more details of Project Green, its long-term plan for its financial applications portfolio, at a conference for small and medium-size business customers Wednesday.

Security experts have found a vulnerability in the Windows operating system that could allow malware to lurk undetected in long string names of the Windows Registry. According to a security advisory by Denmark-based IT security company Secunia, the weakness is caused by an error in the Windows Registry Editor Utility's handling of long string names.

The next release of Microsoft Corp.'s Virtual Server product will support the virtualization of both Linux and Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Solaris operating systems on servers running the Microsoft Windows operating system (OS), a company spokesman said.

An attorney with experience in noncompetition lawsuits said that Microsoft Corp. has a good chance of winning its case against Google Inc. and Kai-Fu Lee, despite the fact that Google is attempting to get a court in its home state of California to nullify the basis for the suit.