Microsoft Wednesday showed off four experimental technologies that it is developing at adCenter Labs, its advertising research group.

The developments are designed to help deliver "the right ad to the right person at the right time," said Alex Gounares, corporate vice president of advertising research and developmentcid:image001.gif@01C9A955.0D2606C0. When that happens advertising is fun for end-users, he said.

In 2001, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously referred to open source software, specifically the GPL, as intellectual property cancer.

These days, Microsoft has moderated its stance. "Open source is neither an industry fad, nor a magic bullet," the company explains on the open source section of its Web site. "Rather, the development methods commonly encompassed by the term open source have provided customers and developers with additional options among many in the technology ecosystem."

Microsoft Corp. opened its Convergence conference today in New Orleans with a message and a string of new offerings meant to ease the suffering of its recession-battered ERP and customer relationship management customers.

Microsoft said on Wednesday that it has released an update to the developer kit for its Windows Azure cloud-based operating system.

Microsoft issued an advisory late Monday confirming a remote code execution vulnerability affecting its SQL Server line.The vulnerability affects Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000), Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (WMSDE), and Windows Internal Database (WYukon).

Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed. The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say. Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it. Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world's computer users.