PC World - Microsoft Corp. has quietly released pre-beta code to two forthcoming Windows service packs to testers in the past week, but the company continues to remain vague about when the final code for Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Vista SP1 will make it to end users.

TechWeb - Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a point of contrasting the typical PC, tangled in cables, with the clean design aesthetic of the new iMac, which is housed in aluminum and glass.

NewsFactor - Google is once again going head-to-head with Microsoft, this time to thwart an implicit threat that Microsoft made earlier this year to sue Linux users for violations of the software giant's patents.

InfoWorld - IBM and Novell are beefing up their existing partnership on two fronts with Linux distributor Novell increasing support for IBM's Notes desktop collaboration software and its open-source WAS CE (WebSphere Application Server Community Edition).

NewsFactor - Lenovo said this week that it has been seeing more customers using open-source software on laptops for education, government, and business, and in response will be selling notebook PCs with a preloaded version of Linux later this year.

If you went through a divorce during your life, you know it can be painful. Who will keep the house or the kids? How the money will be distributed? Even if professional mediators are involved, the process can really be unpleasant. According to LiveScience, two programs developed by Australian researchers…

TechWeb - Francisco Partners' massive investment in DarwinSuzsoft is a ringing endorsement of the opportunities for software outsourcing and development in China.

PC World - Google Inc. has increased its support for the open-source Linux operating system by becoming Open Invention Network's first end-user licensee. Set up in 2005, OIN is an intellectual property company focused on acquiring and pooling patents to protect Linux against patent infringement attacks.

PC Magazine - Dell on Tuesday announced the acquisition of mobile entertainment software provider Zing, a move likely intended to help Dell establish itself as more of a player in the portable music device market.

InfoWorld - Google has increased its support for the open-source Linux operating system by becoming Open Invention Network's first end-user licensee. Set up in 2005, OIN is an intellectual property company focused on acquiring and pooling patents to protect Linux against patent infringement attacks.

Reuters - A U.S. judge on Monday threw out a
record $1.5 billion verdict against Microsoft Corp ,
ruling the world's largest software had not infringed on audio
technology patents held by France's Alcatel-Lucent.

I’ve long suspected that leading SaaS vendors were doing the right thing by plowing money into sales and marketing rather than reporting net profits at this stage in their growth cycle. As I wrote in February, commenting on Salesforce.com’s financials:”Cutting back now would be like a star forward taking his…

A research engineering company like the one we’re imagining would typically be founded by a senior researcher whose name earns the funding request its DARPA audience and one or two graduate students who see the underlying research as a potentially profitable way of combining their PhD work with service…

The boys from Redmonk (James Governor and Michael Cote) and I recorded our 11th MonkCast today and as usual, we were all over the technology map. Being the hot topic that it is just about everywhere, we covered a wide range of “green” subject matter. As a part…

Virus Bulletin security certification body tested a number of antivirus software solutions for 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and discovered that security firms are struggling to provide satisfactory protection for the operating system and users.Here’s how an article on vnunet.com describes the situation:Of the 20 antivirus product tested, 35 per…

(This is a guest post by Stephen Walli, a software consultant specializing in open-source, and a former Microsoft program manager for the Shared Source implementation of the ECMA Common Language Infrastructure.)Bill Hilf, Microsoft General Manager of Platform Strategy, announced two things last week at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference in…

Microsoft said on Wednesday it will offer a free, advertising-supported version of its basic productivity software, Microsoft Works, as part of a test program with computers manufacturers.The world’s largest software maker has been pondering the future of Microsoft Works, its basic spreadsheet and word processing software, in the face of…

Are there people out there who really do pay full retail price for Microsoft Works? I find that very hard to believe — even at the pocket-money price tag of $39.95. Works is the low-end business software suite that gets bundled with new PCs. The manufacturers buy it at an…

Jim Dalrymple, reporting at MacWorld announced the following news from Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit:Microsoft will delay the release of Office 2008 for Mac until mid-January 2008, representatives of the company’s Macintosh Business Unit announced Thursday.The long-awaited Intel-native Office, featuring programs such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Entourage, was originally scheduled…

Dell said Thursday that it has acquired ASAP Software, which provides applications to manage software licenses and renewals, for $340 million. ASAP is currently a subsidiary of Corporate Express, an office supplies vendor.  In a statement, Dell said the acquisition, which will close during the fiscal third quarter, will help…

Looks like Microsoft’s FUD campaign against Linux and open source is paying off, according to a new IDC study. Matthew Lawton, director of IDC’s Worldwide Software Business Strategies Group, revealed some interesting tidbits from the non-public study in a conference call this week:The potential for copyright and patent infringement is…

AP - Microsoft Corp. will delay the release of Office 2008 for Apple Inc.’s Macintosh computers until the middle of January 2008, in order to fix lingering bugs in the software.

AP - Apple Inc. has issued a software patch to fix some security holes that independent security researchers recently discovered for the company’s vaunted iPhone.

They say August is the beginning of the dog days of summer. The time when everything slows down, too tired from the heat to do much of anything productive. Obviously, “they” have never met The Jay (down by the bay). I’m in the middle of a flurry of out-of-nowhere projects that have left me little time to write two-handed celebrity stupidity zingers. But fret not, as I have some big stuff lined up, both for TheJay.com and elsewhere. In the meantime, and with my promise not to bring up “those girls” set firmly in my mind, I thought it might be a good idea to take a step back and try something I’ve been avoiding for some time. A link post. Though I prefer writing long columns about inane pop culture, but without enough time to lovingly craft 2000 word opusi on the proper ways to hate Reese Witherspoon, pointing out some things on the net that I have enjoyed recently proves to be an easier conceit at the moment.

I may do this once a month (maybe on the 1st of every month, call it the Links of the Rent Day, or something MUCH funnier), or I may never do this again. But until my schedule clears, here’s hoping you enjoy some things that have caught my eye.

• Here’s Episode 8 of The Offseason Adventures of Michael Vick, from the damn funny guys over at Kissing Suzy Kolber.

• A great mashup of Lost, House and 24 from esteemed comedy writer (/legend) Ken Levine.

• GOONIES ACTION FIGURES!!!!

• If you can get to the Crazy 4 Cult art show, I highly reccomend it.

• Learn about wine and fight the Oak Monster over at Wine Library TV. Say hi to my boy Gary Vay-ner-chuck while you’re there.

• Televisionary has a great round-up of all the TV panel at Comic-Con.

• You can peep the first two episodes of the great new FX drama Damages (starring hottie Rose Byrne, Sam Malone and a man dressed up as Glenn Close), over at Yahoo TV. By the way, Frobisher is fan-tastic name for a villain. Can’t believe no one’s thought of that before.

• HARRY POTTER SPOILER ALERT!!! Do NOT click on this unless you have finished Deathly Hallows. J.K. Rowling gives us the scoop on all the questions left unanswered from the HP series. A great, thoroughly satisfying chat wrap (I was dying to know the fate of the Malfoys).

• If you aren’t reading Gilbert Arenas’s NBA Blog, you are missing out.

• My older brother first made me read this, and it might be the best present he’s ever given me (I don’t count all the free suplexes and figure-four leg locks he gave me from our old childhood wrestling days. Those weren’t gifts, they wonderful little moments in time that my shrink will use to put his kid through private school.). My favorite line from this piece: “I will treat the valet with contempt and make sure that he knows that I am superior to him in life! I will tell him to “Take it easy on the brakes, Champ”!”

• Ronnie Coleman is ridonkulously ripped. Watch his YouTube clips and cry from your punyness. He has the best catchphrase of all time: “Everyone wants to be a bodybuilder, no one wants to lift this heavy ass weight!” That’s a good motto for life in general.

• McSweeney’s, while more pretentious than a double chai latte, can still occasionally bring the funny. Here’s guest writer and VH1 clip show whore Michael Ian Black’s “Complete Idiot’s Guide To Meeting People More Famous Than You“.

• In what is probably my most anticipated moment from the new Fall TV Season, CBS has put up a Slap Bet Countdown! I can’t wait to see Marshall get his “premature slapulation” revenge by dropping slap number three on the Barnacle (aka “Swarley”). Hopefully Robin Sparkles will be on hand to sing a song for the occasion.

• R.I.P. Harvey Birdman

• Finally, if you haven’t purchased your copy of Monster Squad on DVD yet, then your just a flaming d-bag of suckitude, and I don’t want you bothering coming around here. We don’t take kindly to you non-Monster Squad owning folk. Until you’ve figured out a second way to kill a werewolf, click the red “X” in the corner and be gone.

Bangarang!

Reuters - Microsoft Corp. said on Wednesday it
will offer a free, advertising-supported version of its basic
productivity software, Microsoft Works, as part of a test
program with computers manufacturers.

PC World - Researchers are looking for formal European Union sponsorship of a new project that would keep an eye on malicious software and computer attacks around the world.

InfoWorld - Metastorm acquired Proforma on Wednesday, combining two companies that make software for improving business processes in large organizations.

TechWeb - Cost cuts of a quarter of a billion dollars are expected over the next five years through reduced energy use, software, and system support.

TechWeb - The winners of the contract can compete for individual government IT projects ranging from software applications to networking deployments.

PC Magazine - Is the love back? It appears so. TiVo said this week that it will develop a software upgrade for DirecTV Series 2 TiVo-branded DVRs, "to enhance the user experience".