The Top 5 Coolest Things About the New Xbox Experience

By now you’ve had a little bit of time to mess around with the New Xbox Experience. Sure, you already know about the full size Mii’s…er…avatars and streaming videos from Netflix, but after sorting through about a hundred new blades, what does Microsoft’s latest update really have to offer?

GamePro Arcade is here to help. Listed below are the Top 5 coolest features of the New Xbox Experience. Make sure you take advantage of them.

Avatars – Get over the fact that they’re a Mii rip off, the Xbox avatars are a nice new feature and are a natural fit with the always community friendly 360. Players can already use their avatars in four games (Uno, Scene It: Box Office Smash, Hardwood Hearts, and A Kingdom for Keflings), and on the Friends blade you can take a look at all your buddies avatars and see who they’re playing and/or partying with as a picture sits behind them. The customization is pretty limited at the moment (Where’s the curly hair? Why can’t I wear a Master Chief helmet? When will I get to wear a skeleton costume like the Cobra Kai’s on Halloween?) but I’m sure more options will be available soon…for a price. full post here

Microsoft Launches Hardware to Complement Vista

To complement its Windows Vista operating system, software giant Microsoft Corporation recently launched its latest suite of hardware products composed of two mouse pads, a keyboard and a webcam. In a press briefing last week, Katherine Teu, regional marketing manager of Microsoft Hardware Southeast Asia, said the products were made with a combination of innovation, style, and functionality aimed at delivering high performance and comfortable use, be it for work or entertainment.

Teu said the products were designed to enhance the PC user’s experience and complement the capabilities of its Windows Vista operating system.

Showcased during the launch at the Xbox room of Microsoft Philippines office in Makati City, are: the next-generation Explorer Mice with Blue Track Technology; the Arc Mouse, and the SideWinder X6 Keyboard.

Teu claimed the new keyboard is the “most versatile” gaming keyboard in the market today, while she described the Arc Mouse as “fashionable and functional.”

“At Microsoft, we are constantly looking for ways to make computing easier and faster,” she said. “We are excited to bring the latest Microsoft Hardware products to consumers here in the Philippines to meet the ever-changing business requirements of local companies across all industries.”

Blue Track Technology

Along with the release of the hardware products, the company is also introducing Microsoft BlueTrack Technology, an advanced tracking technology which, the company claims, allows consumers to take their “mice” anywhere and work with confidence on virtually any surface — be it a rough kitchen countertop, an uneven park bench or the living room carpet. Blue Track combines the width and power of optical technology with the precision of laser tracking to allow consumers to mouse freely on more surfaces than before.

“Research shows that people aren’t sitting at a desk all day, but they’ve gone mobile. PC shipments today are being driven by laptops and consumers need a mouse that can go with them anywhere,” Teu explained. “BlueTrack Technology excels in areas where optical and laser technologies were falling short. Laser mice, for example, have a difficult time working on some common home surfaces, including granite and marble.”

BlueTrack Technology will debut in the new high-end Microsoft Explorer Mini Mouse. The latter, pairs revolutionary tracking technology with a sophisticated design which brings the mice to life. A chrome trim and blue lighting around the bottom rim of the mouse create a soft glow.

Meanwhile, the Arc Mouse with its revolutionary design, such as its foldable shape, combines the comfort of a desktop mouse with the portability of a notebook mouse. Its shape is thin crescent and is available in two color options — black and red.

However, Teu reported that the Sidewinder X6 Keyboard is the most versatile gaming keyboard in the market with the first-ever switchable key pad that can be attached to the left or right side of the keyboard for ultimate flexibility.

Tailor-fitted for gaming, Teu said the keyboard also has productivity features as it functions as a standard num pad in normal keyboard mode, but becomes a programmable macro pad in game mode. Its switchable key pad allows gamers to program up to 90 macros per game with the help of a set of dedicated macro keys as well as a fully programmable key pad. With mode switching, gamers can instantly go from Microsoft Office Excel to their favorite game — and place the macro pad on whichever side they prefer for gaming.

Yet Microsoft’s new webcam the LifeCam Show, is described to be one of the sleekest webcams today with a mirrored finish and ultra thin design. The product displays a new attachment system that includes a laptop clip, desktop stand and two attachment discs, allowing the webcam to be used with any computer.

And with a 2.0-megapixel (MP) video sensor; 8.0MP stills; glass element, wide-angle lens; and outstanding low-light performance, LifeCam Show promises to deliver vibrant, rich video and picture quality that is always focused.

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Search in Windows 7 will go beyond local

In August, Windows Search 4.0 (WS4) was released to the masses. According to recent tests, the performance improvements were significant: 26 percent faster for Windows XP and 84 percent for Windows Vista. We already know that WS4 will be bundled in Vista SP2, so it’s natural to expect that the Windows 7 Find and Organize team is using WS4 as the base for further improvements.

But the team won’t be limited to performance tweaks. When Vista was released, its search features were significantly better than XP’s. It’s time to take a look at what Microsoft is planning to do for search for Windows 7; according to information Microsoft has released to developers, search in Windows 7 can go beyond a local network:

Windows 7 supports searching for documents beyond the user’s own PC. Developers and IT professionals can enable their search engines, document repositories, web applications, and proprietary data stores to be searched from Windows 7 without needing to write and deploy client code. This enables end users to search their corporate intranet or the web as easily as they can search for their local files—all from within the same familiar Windows interface.

Furthermore, developers can add Windows 7 compatible OpenSearch support to any existing searchable web application by adding RSS or ATOM output (the desktop client can then have a Search Connector for the service). SharePoint Search Server can also query these compatible OpenSearch services (as shown at PDC 2008).

Microsoft released this information early so that developers can get a head start on creating their own search plug-ins. This is mainly aimed at enterprises, but it can be used in consumer situations as well. For example, Microsoft blogger Long Zheng has already put together a Windows 7 Search Connector for Flickr. Imagine being able to search through pictures, videos, and other files on your favorite repositories, all from Windows Explorer.

Windows Vista, Multimedia Codec Vulnerabilities Found

Security researchers at Phion AG, an Austrian firewall company, report that Windows Vista has a TCP/IP vulnerability that could allow a local attacker to take control of an affected system. The vulnerability has been tested on Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Windows Vista Enterprise (32-bit and 64-bit) and Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit). The researches consider it likely that other versions of Vista are affected. Windows XP, however, is not affected.

In our Chalk Talk with Avocent CTO Ben Grimes, we get a first-hand look at some of the challenges with managing power, including a look at some of the tools Avocent offers to help with this. In our Chalk Talk with Avocent CTO Ben Grimes, we discuss some of the challenges managing virtual environments. BMC believes its leading the charge toward business process management. Bishop describes the future of the open CMDB (bleek) and other enabling technologies
In our Chalk Talk with Avocent CTO Ben Grimes, we get a first-hand look at some of the challenges with managing power, including a look at some of the tools Avocent offers to help with this.
Certain administrative rights are required for the vulnerability to be exploited. This makes it a risk primarily in malicious insider scenarios.

“To execute either the sample program or the route-add command, the user has to be member of the Network Configuration Operators group or the Administrators group,” the security advisory explains. “Since this buffer overflow overwrites kernel memory, it could be possible that members of the Network Configuration Operator group exploit this and take control over the operating system without any restriction.”

The advisory states that Phion notified Microsoft on Oct. 22. It’s not immediately clear when Microsoft will address the issue. In any event, Phion’s advisory includes details about a temporary fix.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese security research group Bach Khoa Internetwork Security (BKIS) has identified a buffer overflow vulnerability in the open source ffdshow multimedia codec that can be used compromise computers using any Internet browser in which the Windows Media Player plug-in has been installed.

The flaw has to do with the way the ffdshow software handles media streams. Upon parsing an extremely long link, ffdshow runs out of memory and returns a buffer-overflow error. This could be exploited by an attacker to execute remote code on the victim’s computer.

A person visiting a malicious Web site using a browser with the vulnerable codec installed would be subject to attack without further action.

BKIS says that users should update to the latest version of ffdshow. That includes those using software packages that make use of ffdshow, like K-Lite Codec Pack, XP Codec Pack, Vista Codec Package, and Codec Pack All in one.