C|Net: Microsoft prepares reply to iTunes. Services such as Pressplay, which uses Microsoft technology, have been put on the defensive with news that Apple has sold more than 2 million downloads since April 28, the day its iTunes Music Store launched. But Microsoft is betting that new security enhancements planned for later this year could make renting music, rather than owning it, more attractive to consumers. Oh yeah, that’ll work. I mean, I’m always going to the library to borrow CDs, aren’t you? And, just think, Microsoft is going to enhance that experience by charging us for it now. What’s next, is Microsoft going to start renting software now, too? Oh, wait… #

Speaking of Microsoft, you may have heard of thier FUD campaign last week against Linux due to the SCO intellectual property debacle. I came across this letter from an obviously unbiased and level-headed gentlemen. He’d obviously hadn’t read this insightful column from the editor of this week’s InfoWorld. #

Ryan Lowe: Google Blog Noise. Google is going to have a blog search soon to deal wth ‘blog noise’. Apparently Google’s algorithm wasn’t expecting the high amount of interlinking that goes on between blogs–understandable–which is giving blog posts high rankings in Google. Blog noise has been getting me 20 or so Google hits a day. I noticed it a few weeks ago. I’ve noticed that Google readjusted their site to account for blog interlinkage. It appears that “static” content is what Google ranks over “dynamic” blog content or interlinkage. It occurred to me that an “about” page would help to send users looking for “ken walker” back to this site. #

In case you hadn’t heard, Pez moved his family into the city last weekend. Jai has pictures here, with some lovely shots of the abortive sinus problems that day. It seems that he and Krissy are starting to adjust–dig the new, cosmopolitan web design, too. #

Jon Udell: SpamBayes knows spam. If you use Outlook 2000 or Outlook XP, it’s easy–and free–to give the SpamBayes Outlook add-in a whirl…It worked beautifully, installing SpamBayes plus the subset of the Python needed to run it. The project seems as though it’s about as old as the SpamAssassin for Outlook plugin project that I covered recently. Unfortunately, due to some bugs with the installer, I haven’t been able to get this working reliably either. I submitted the bug report and can’t wait to have client-side spam filtering. #

Oh, and Mozilla released Firebird 0.6 last week. Didja get it? A note of caution: since the name and path have changed to reflect the new name, you may want to click that button to “Set Mozilla Firebird as your default browser.” I was having some trouble opening external links from my newsreader and emails up until I clicked it. #