It seems that 2007 will be the year of flash-based drives finally starting to nibble into the market share of the only current logical candidates, magnetic platter-based hard disk drives. With all the advances in NAND field, companies have started to introduce flash disk models of usable capacities for the commercial notebook space, not just industrial ones. Adtron Corporation has just introduced some newcomers to its Flashpak family – 2.5-inch flash disk models in capacities of 32GB, 96GB and 160GB.

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Source: The Inquirer via Flexbeta

Earlier this week, Microsoft published a list of 800 applications that should run properly on its new Windows Vista operating system. On its Web site, Microsoft says the number of applications certified for use with Windows Vista is constantly growing and that its list "will be update weekly."

Virtually all of Microsoft's own offerings are on the list. Also included are a host of business and security applications from vendors ranging from Intuit to Trend Micro. Desktop applications from Google made it in, but some of the world's biggest software companies, including Adobe Systems, IBM, and Symantec didn’t make the cut. Tech industry analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group blames the fact that IBM and Adobe are becoming increasingly competitive with Microsoft in the desktop applications market. Also absent from the list is any software from Apple. Enderle thinks Apple has purposely chosen not to make some of its more popular applications, such as iTunes, Vista-compatible.

View: Applications that Microsoft has approved for Vista
Source: InformationWeek via Neowin

After spending nearly 3 years in a detention center fighting his extradition from Australia, a leader of notorious warez group ‘DrinkorDie’ was yesterday arraigned before a U.S. District Court to face charges of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of actual criminal copyright infringement. If found guilty he faces 10 years in jail & a $500,000 fine.

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Source: TorrentFreak via Flexbeta

uTorrent is an efficient and feature rich BitTorrent client for Windows sporting a very small footprint. It was designed to use as little cpu, memory and space as possible while offering all the functionality expected from advanced clients.

Download: µTorrent v1.6.1 build 490
View: Change Log
Homepage: µTorrent
Source: MSFN

Until now nobody could have an Gmail e-mail address unless he/she got an invitation from another Gmail user. From today anybody can have a @gmail account. After a period of nearly three years, you can apply for an e-mail address without invitation. Since the introduction of Gmail in April 2004 the web mail service became one of the biggest rivals of Microsoft Hotmail. The big advantage of Gmail was the 1Gb of storage space they had over other providers. Now the storage space has increased to 2814,522021 MB and is still increasing every second.

For now the service still has the beta tag, and if they will get rid of that in a short time isn't known for now. It's also possible that Google has to deliver it's Gmail in Europe under another name because of the law suit filled by Daniel Giersch, owner of the company G-mail. German and British users will have a @googlemail.com account instead of a @gmail.com account, and there is a chance that the whole Europe will suffer this fate.

View: Make your own account
Source: MSFN via Tweakers

The disappearance of a renowned computer scientist has sparked a massive online manhunt, with thousands of volunteers poring over satellite images in search of clues.

James Gray, 63, a Microsoft researcher and winner of the prestigious Turing Award, failed to return home from a sailing trip on Sunday, January 28.

He left from San Francisco Bay aboard a 40-foot sailing boat, and had intended to scatter his mother's ashes at the nearby Farallon Islands.

Several days of intensive searching by the US Coast Guard and private planes revealed no sign of Dr Gray or his boat, so desperate friends and colleagues turned to the internet for help.

On Friday, engineers from NASA, online retailer Amazon and technology companies such as Google and Microsoft organised a satellite and high-altitude aircraft to photograph the area where he was believed to be located.

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Microsoft has sent out e-mails regarding the closing of the Window Live Messenger 8.1 Beta that began September 7, 2006. The e-mail states that 3,009 beta testers submitted 1010 bugs and 456 suggestions as well as 6000 posts in the newsgroup. The final build number and final release date are currently unknown. There will be no prizes given out at the end of the beta because of budget limitations for this specific program. Although there are plans for another beta, it is unclear if "it will be a minor release (such as an 8.x ) or a major release (such as a 9.0)" and no date is available either. The plan is to invite current testers to the next managed beta. The beta newsgroup will be available for a couple of more weeks while the public newsgroup microsoft.public.windows.live.messenger will remain the primary location for discussing Windows Live Messenger.

Download: Windows Live Messenger 8.1.0178
View: Windows Live Messenger Home Page
Source: Neowin

CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. That removes unused and temporary files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more hard disk space. The best part is that it's fast! (normally taking less that a second to run) and Free.

Download: CCleaner 1.37.456 Standard (2,622KB) | Basic (607KB – No Toolbar) | Slim (450KB – English Only, No Toolbar)
View: Changelog | Screenshots | CCleaner Homepage

Microsoft urges users to download and install the fix if they notice the browser mysteriously slowing down while surfing. Microsoft released a non-security update for Internet Explorer 7 two weeks before the next patch day, and urged Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 users to download and install the fix if they notice the  browser mysteriously slowing down while surfing.

Earlier this week, the Redmond, Wash. developer pushed several updates to Windows Vista users, the new operating system that launched to consumers on Tuesday, including one to fix performance problems with IE 7's anti-fraud filter. The update has also been posted for IE 7 on Windows XP and Server 2003.

"Some users [have experienced high] CPU usage when they are navigating a page that contains multiple frames or when multiple frames are navigated simultaneously," said Steve Reynolds, an IE 7 program manager, on the group's blog. "This occurs when the phishing filter evaluates the page for each navigation, resulting in multiple simultaneous evaluations for the same page." The XP and Server 2003 IE 7 anti-phishing filter fix will be included in the Feb. 13 updates, but users can download the patch manually from the company's support site.

Source: InformationWeek