Strategic communications firm Capstrat has been up to quite the project lately. With Elvis week coming up from August 8th through the 16th, they have taken up the task of creating an image of the King with Post-It notes in their conference room. Quite the entertaining Flash presentation. You can view it on Capstrat's website. We can't come up with a better use for 2,646 Post-It notes either.

Within less than 24 hours of the release of Microsoft's Windows Advantage program which checks the product key before allowing users to install updates, the program has been cracked. The JavaScript, which prevents the key checker from being installed, is now available on a number of websites. According to reports from this evening, the workaround no longer works although the program has been cracked several times.

The Windows Advantage program was launched about a week ago, and applies to all updates except for security updates. Critical security updates have been offered to all users, whether they are running a genuine copy of Windows or not.

A year and a half after the initial partnership for HP to resell the Apple iPod, the company has decided that 'reselling iPods doesn't fit with the company's digital media strategy' according to an Apple spokeswoman. Although HP contributed around 5% of worldwide iPod sales, they are generally thought not to have made much money from the deal. HP now has a hole in its lineup as its agreement with Apple says that it is neither permitted to sell another manufacturer's player nor develop its own until August 2006.

The deal doesn't stand to hurt Apple that much, as consumers that would have purchased an HP iPod will now simply go to the Apple store. You can still get yours at http://www.apple.com/ipod.

AMD has just added an entry dual-core model to its lineup in the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor. The Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is designed to provide a jumping-in point for the dual-core desktop user without pricing the system out of range. The processor still uses the same 939 pin package as the single-core Athlon 64 processors, so most motherboards only need a BIOS upgrade in order to support the chip. The 3800+ X2 is priced at $354 in quantity, only $25 higher than the single-core Athlon 3800+.

In addition, AMD also cut the prices on several of the other offerings in its processor lineup. The Athlon 64 4000+ dropped 22% to $375, the X2 line received small reductions such as the 4800+ X2 dropping from $1,001 to $902, and the low-end Turion dropped from $525 to $354, a difference of 33%.

An open source rating system called Business Readiness Ratings (BRR) has been proposed to enable to the open source community to rate software in an open and standardized way. The initiative is being sponsored by many industry players, including Intel, O'Reilly, SpikeSource and the Carnegie Mellon West Center for Open Source Investigation.

From the website:
BRR will give companies a trusted, unbiased source for determining whether the open source software they are considering is mature enough to adopt. There are over 100,000 open source projects listed on SourceForge, CodeHaus, Tigris, Java.net and Open Symphony. Some widely adopted projects have become high-quality software suitable for mission critical production environments. Many others are less mature and pose potential risks. Today, companies evaluate open source suitability based on homegrown assessment methods without access to useful assessment data or methods.

The ultimate goal of BRR is to give companies a trusted, unbiased source for determining whether the open source software they are considering is mature enough to adopt. It will help adopters assess which open source software is best suited to their needs and enable them to share findings with the community. It promotes use and adoption of open source software and may assist developers in creating and delivering software geared to enterprise use.

Microsoft has confirmed that the Monad (MSH) shell will not be included in their latest version of Windows. Concerns arose last week when a hacker calling himself "The Second Part to Hell" announced he had written a virus that exploited the command shell. It is now likely that Monad will ship in late 2006 as part of the next edition of Microsoft Exchange.

With the changes made to Windows Vista, it is now clear that the viruses released last week will not affect users of the operating system. Microsoft has gone as far as to say these are not Windows Vista viruses at all, but MSH viruses.

Bug fixes and security will be Microsoft's main priority for IE 7, while adding support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Microsoft's development team leader Chris Wilson says that their plan is to create "a platform that fully complies with the appropriate Web standards, in particular CSS 2." However, it appears that support for other web standards is currently on hold so they can focus on fixing the critical issues within the browser.

Currently IE 7 beta 1 is out in a limited-release version not available to the general public. A beta 2 version release is planned for later this year, which is expected to be generally available.

Microsoft has announced that it purchased a VoIP startup called Telco in order to increase the capabilities of MSN Messenger. According to the company, the voice messaging features should be integrated in MSN Messenger before the end of this year. Teleo's technology will allow the software to integrate click-to-call services such as a local search for a restaurant, and a direct link to call the business.

"We've been making a lot of investments in voice, but as we looked at continuing...we had that build or buy discussion," said Brooke Richardson, lead product manager for MSN's communication services division. "We decided that if we wanted to do things rapidly, Teleo was a good fit."

Neither company elaborated on the financial details of the deal.