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Microsoft said on Friday it is testing a patch to fix a new hole in Internet Explorer 6 and IE 7 following the release of exploit code on the Internet.With the announcement it seems increasingly likely that the company will be issuing a patch for the hole before the next Patch Tuesday in about four weeks, if the testing of the patch goes quickly.

Microsoft warned about the hole, which it said was being targeted in attacks and could allow an attacker to take control of a computer, in an advisory on Tuesday. The next day, Israeli researcher Moshe Ben Abu released exploit code for the vulnerability after using clues in a McAfee blog post to find existing exploit code and pinpointing the weakness from there.

"We have seen speculation that Microsoft might release an update for this issue out of band. I can tell you that we are working hard to produce an update which is now in testing," Jerry Bryant, senior security communications manager lead at Microsoft, wrote in a post on the Microsoft Security Response Center blog.

"This is a critical and time-intensive step of the process as the update must be tested against all affected versions of Internet Explorer on all supported versions of Windows. Additionally, each supported language version needs to be tested as well as testing against thousands of third party applications," he wrote. "We never rule out the possibility of an out-of-band update. When the update is ready for broad distribution, we will make that decision based on customer needs."

Microsoft included workaround information in its initial advisory on the hole, which does not affect IE 8, and on Friday updated Security Advisory 981374 to add more information on workarounds following Ben Abu's work.

"With today's update, we have added a Microsoft Fix It to automate this workaround for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 customers," Bryant said. "As always, customers should test this thoroughly before deploying as certain functionality that depends on the peer factory class, such as printing from Internet Explorer and the use of Web folders, may be affected."

Microsoft's year-old Elevate America program, which offers free technology training and certification, is coming to California.The program was announced by Microsoft a year ago as the country was gripped by recession, with Washington state as the first government partner.

Since then, other states have slowly been coming on board.
Seven states have already distributed training vouchers, while five are still in the process of issuing the vouchers, according to a map on Microsoft's Web site. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is set to detail California's participation in a Webcast due to begin at 10:15 a.m. PST.
A second component, offering Web-based tips on things like creating a resume or sending e-mail, has been up and running for all Americans since the program began.
Update 10:25 a.m. PST: At a press conference at Microsoft's Silicon Valley office in Mountain View, Calif., Schwarzenegger said that Microsoft has awarded 166,500 vouchers that will be good for technology training. The tech training will be helpful, he said, as the state grapples with 12.5 percent unemployment.
"We want to put people to work," he said. "So many people lost jobs in this economic downturn."
He then launched into a tirade on legislators in Sacramento for not doing enough to create jobs. "People deserve the security of a paycheck."
Schwarzenegger also praised another Microsoft program, the Elevate America veterans' program, which Microsoft announced earlier this week.
Update 10:30 a.m. PST: "Microsoft believes that technology can be an incredible catalyst for economic growth," Corporate Vice President Dan'l Lewin said, speaking after Schwarzenegger.
But Lewin also added that technology alone isn't enough, nor can either government or the private sector solve economic issues alone. "This requires effective public-private partnerships."
Microsoft's overall goal with Elevate America, Lewin said, remains to offer technology training to more than 2 million people over the life of the program.

This year's Mix trade show won't be the first time that people hear about Internet Explorer 9 or Windows Phone 7 Series, but it is the event where developers will get enough information to start creating products targeting the new browser and mobile operating system.

The three-day Las Vegas event kicks off on Monday, with Windows Phone executive Joe Belfiore talking about the new phone operating system. On Tuesday, Internet Explorer head Dean Hachamovitch is slated to talk IE 9 and I would not be surprised at all if actual code is offered up this time. Microsoft offered a brief glimpse of IE 9 in November, highlighting its ability to use hardware acceleration for improved text and graphics rendering.

On the phone front, Microsoft has already tipped its hand on the basics of writing software for its new mobile operating system, confirming last week that XNA and Silverlight will be the means of developing software that works on the Windows Phone 7 Series devices that start shipping later this year.
There are more than a dozen sessions on the topic and Microsoft has promised that--although existing Windows Mobile apps won't naturally run on the new phones--Microsoft wants to make it as easy as possible for developers to start writing code for the new operating system.
Although Microsoft hasn't gone into much detail about the tools needed to write Silverlight apps for Windows Phone 7 Series, the company did say at this week's Game Developer Conference in San Francisco that writing XNA games for Windows Phone will require the new version 4.0 of the XNA Game Studio. The company also confirmed that games can be hardware accelerated, connect to Xbox Live and bring in a user's gamertag, achievements and avatar.
More broadly, Mix remains Microsoft's event centered around design and once again attendees will hear from Microsoft researcher and design expert Bill Buxton, who is speaking on Tuesday.. Expect to hear a little bit more on Microsoft's Windows Azure-based cloud efforts, but I'm hearing we will have to wait a little longer to hear about Windows Live Wave 4--the next version of Microsoft's consumer Web services. And we'll probably have to wait longer still to hear anything about the next version of Windows or even when Microsoft plans a significant update to Windows 7.

Computing industry pioneer Chuck Thacker was honored Tuesday with the industry's highest prize--the A. M. Turing Award.
Thacker, who these days works in Microsoft's Silicon Valley research lab, helped create personal computing at Xerox's famed Palo Alto Research Center and is one of the co-creators of both the Alto personal computer and Ethernet networking.

In an interview Tuesday, Thacker said he was surprised that he would even be considered for the Turing Award, which typically goes to folks on the software or theory side of things.
"I was flabbergasted," Thacker said. "The last one who was given the award whose primary technology focus was in the technology machinery was in 1967."
At Microsoft, Thacker helped set up the company's lab in Cambridge and has worked on projects ranging from the early prototypes of the tablet PC to his most recent project, a programmable $750 computer that university students can use to design their own systems. Typically students can write papers on a new computing architecture or write a new operating system that works on existing architecture. Thacker's latest project, known as the Beehive, lets students design a system using a computer that can essentially be reprogrammed.
"if you teach architecture these days," he said, "you learn about these very complex things but you never get to build these things."
Thacker said a corollary project in networking done by a Stanford professor has become a standard in the teaching of that subject. He hopes that Beehive might have similar success. In January, Microsoft helped teach a class at MIT using Thacker's project.
As for the tablet PC, Thacker said that there are some people who love tablets, such as university professors who want to write on their presentation slides or doctors who hate to type. But he acknowledged that handwriting recognition hasn't advanced enough to make it useful for all, particularly given the fact that good penmanship is not widely focused on in school these days.
"I think that the tablet has been a qualified success since we did the early prototypes in the late 1990s," he said.
I asked Thacker what it would feel like to have done so much work on the tablet at Microsoft only to see a company like Apple have the first commercial hit. Thacker said that he hasn't yet seen the Apple iPad, but added, "A lot of the things I've done in my career were commercialized by others."
Indeed, Thacker said his biggest impact on the company is from the work he did at Xerox PARC.
"They were in years long before Microsoft existed," he said.
As for what's next, Thacker said he isn't sure.
"I tend to operating in an opportunistic mode and attack problems as they appear," he said. "Right now, no such problem has appeared."
But retirement isn't one of the things under consideration.
"It's hard to imagine retiring," he said. "I think my wife would be very unhappy if I did."
Thacker was nominated by Microsoft Research colleague Butler Lampson, himself a Turing Award winner. The award, given by the Association for Computing Machinery, is often described at the Nobel Prize for computing. Thacker is the fourth person from the company to have won the award, joining Lampson, 1980 honoree Tony Hoare and 1998 winner Jim Gray, who went missing on a sailing trip in 2007 and is now presumed to have died.
Thacker said he was honored by the award, but even more honored to have created a body of work that would make someone think of giving him such a prize.
"I'm glad that I've been able to have a significantly large impact on the technology that the world uses that the ACM would choose to give me the award," he said.

Microsoft is discontinuing its Windows Essential Business Server product, a bundle aimed at midsize businesses, the company said Friday.
The product combined Windows Server 2008, the Exchange e-mail server, and management tools into a single software package.

"We are streamlining our portfolio and will discontinue future development of EBS," Microsoft said in a note on its Web site. The company said it will stop selling the current version of the software as of June 30.
Though fairly new to the market, the product had been a long time in development. It was first announced in 2005 under the code-name Centro.
Microsoft said it will continue its lower-end Windows Small Business Server, which combines Exchange and Windows Server in a package for smaller companies.
The software maker also announced an offer that will allow EBS customers to get licenses for free for the individual products that make up the bundle. The offer runs from June 30 through the end of the year.
Microsoft said it will continue to support the product through the normal lifecycle.
"This decision not to ship future versions of EBS does not come lightly and will not impact any other Windows Server products and solutions, including the next version of Windows Small Business Server," Microsoft said Friday in a blog posting. "We are working hard to build the next version of SBS and look forward to a second decade of success with this award winning small business offering. There is a tremendous amount of talent and expertise on the EBS product development team and Microsoft is committed to transitioning members of the EBS product team to work on other projects within the Microsoft Server and Cloud division."