A small Norwegian software company says with a level playing field it can take on mighty Microsoft in a new battle of the browsers because it has a better product, picking up where the now-defunct Netscape left off in the 1990s. Opera, which like Microsoft and Firefox manufactures Web browsers, says the humble browser has become increasingly more important to consumers as the years have passed.

IBM’s Almaden Research Center is cooking up new search software that unearths the most relevant information in a search query to help people find information buried in their email applications. IBM calls OmniFind Personal Email Search–or IOPES–semantic, or "smart" search, because it uses special algorithms that can rationalize incomplete queries to retrieve information such as phone numbers, people, meetings, presentations, documents and images.

IOPES, unveiled Dec. 20, also allows users to create, save and share personalized searches for future use. The software, though not initially positioned as a competitive product, is the latest innovation in an enterprise search market loaded with rivals Google, Microsoft, Fast Search & Transfer, and Autonomy.

For the third time this year, a remotely exploitable zero-day vulnerability has been found in software pre-installed on brand new Hewlett Packard notebook computers. The flaw, which puts millions of Windows users at risk of serious attacks, affects every HP laptop that ships with HP Software Update, the computer’s built-in patch management utility.

There’s a lot of mystery still surrounding service-oriented architecture. Many people–even in IT–say they don’t fully understand what it can do, or how to go about building one. For a subject that is being hyped to incredible levels by vendors and analysts, there is precious little information about the fundamental implications of this new approach. Here are some of the unsolved mysteries that still persist around SOA.

A U.S. man sued office-products retailer Staples and printer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard in federal court, charging they broke antitrust laws in collaborating on the sale of replacement ink-jet printer cartridges.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, Ranjit Bedi charged that the two companies had reached "an illegal agreement between competitors to stop competing" when HP paid Staples, the biggest U.S. specialty retailer of office supplies, "market development funds" to stop selling non-HP-branded ink-jet printer cartridges for HP printers.

The suit contends that HP paid Staples more than $100 million to stop selling lower-priced printer cartridges for HP printers. The suit does not make clear how Bedi, of Pacific Palisades, California, determined the $100 million number.

A dialog spoofing vulnerability in Google Toolbar could be exploited by malicious hackers to execute malicious files or launch identity theft attacks, according to a warning from security researcher Aviv Raff. Raff, a well-known hacker who regularly finds and reports software vulnerabilities, figured out a way to use a booby-trapped Web page to trick Google Toolbar users into adding malicious buttons to the toolbar.

Symantec is prepping the launch of the beta version of the next Norton 360, and is arming it with a host of new features aimed at keeping users secure while allowing them to walk the tightrope between ease of use and granular control. The beta of Norton 360 Version 2.0 includes a number of changes designed to make the product easier to use, such as new QuickTask Menus from the main user interface and streamlined navigational settings, company officials said. In the same vein, Symantec has expanded backup options to include support for Blu-Ray discs and iPods. Multiple PCs can also now be backed up to a shared driver as well.

IBM expects to make about US$1 billion in revenue from India this year, as the company’s hardware and services businesses in the local market soar. IBM made $700 million in revenue from India last year, a company spokesman said Monday. In the first three quarters of this year it posted revenue growth of 39 percent over the previous year. "At the current growth rates, we expect revenue of $1 billion for the year," the spokesman said.

IBM has added a new social networking visualization and analysis tool called Atlas to Lotus Connections, the company’s social software suite for large enterprises that packages together technologies such as blogs, bookmarks and profiles. IBM hopes Atlas will help users map their relationships with other employees using Connections, but analysts wonder if overall social network adoption needs to improve first before Atlas will become useful.

Our own Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz is back on the air Friday with a special pre-holiday broadcast. He’ll be joining host Carole Nelson on WMEL 920AM radio at 1:00 pm on Friday, sharing stories of White House Internet security with the Space Coast in Central Florida.

If you’re not lucky enough to enjoy the balmy weather of Central Florida in person, you can tune into David’s interview on email, national security, and Internet safety via the station’s Web player.

One note: listening to this over the Web will mean you need to install the Abacast plug-in. Although we don’t have a whole lot of experience with Abacast, it’s got a good reputation and we think it’s a safe install. Simply click on the red, white, and blue Listen Live button on the radio station’s home page and follow the installation instructions.