Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a free plug-in for Firefox to translate Open XML documents, an update to its document translator and a toolkit for Java developers that was built under the umbrella of its Document Interoperability Initiative.

If any software market deserved to be shaken up by open source alternatives, it's enterprise data integration. Commercial, enterprise-grade integration tools -- typically cobbled together from M&A and legacy patchworks -- are notoriously unwieldy and impose an arduous learning curve. Complexity frequently stalls deployments by months, and aftermarket consulting can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the TCO.

Hackers have managed to load Linux on to Apple's iPhone.

The terrorists that attacked various locations in south Mumbai last week used digital maps from Google Earth to learn their way around, according to officials investigating the attacks.

The market share of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) dropped under the 70 percent mark last month for the first time since Web metrics vendor Net Applications started keeping tabs on browsers, the company said Monday.

Mozilla will probably add a third beta to the development schedule for Firefox 3.1 to get a better handle on remaining bugs and give several new features, including a faster JavaScript engine and a private browsing mode, more testing time, the company's browser director said Tuesday.