It's official: AOL is now Aol. As the fading Internet giant nears its 20th anniversary, the newly independent media company is prepping for another revamp. The latest step is a new logo, as seen below. The corporate name is now spelled with an upper case "A," a lower case "o" and "l," and a period:

Today's AOL, er, Aol. -- my spell checker sure hates that period -- is a shell of its former self. Last week the company announced plans to cut a third of its staff, or up to 2500 employees, as it prepares to spin off from parent firm Time Warner. The pricey restructuring is expected to cost AOL some $200 in the coming months.

The new Aol. brand will be unveiled December 10 when AOL common stock starts trading on the New York Stock exchange, the company announced.

More: http://pcworld.com/article/182861/

A newly discovered threat that doesn't yet have any patch can allow for a Web-based attack against up-to-date Internet Explorer 6 and 7 browsers, according to security companies.

Both Symantec and Vupen Security have posted alerts about the bug, which involves the way IE handles cascading style sheets, or CSS. According to the posts, browsing a Web site with embedded attack code would trigger the assault. The site could be a specifically created malicious site, or one that was hijacked and had the attack code inserted.

According to Vupen's post, the flaw affects both IE 6 and 7 on a fully patched XP SP3 computer and could allow for running any command on a vulnerable system, such as installing malware. There aren't yet any reports of active attacks, but exploit code is publicly available.

More: http://pcworld.com/article/182860/

Last week, Microsoft showed off some browser technology that could help Internet Explorer leapfrog the competition. But if Mozilla succeeds in its hope, Microsoft could be playing catch-up instead.

The technology in question is hardware-accelerated graphics and text using interfaces called Direct2D and DirectWrite that provide an easy way to use graphics cards' computing power. They're built into Windows 7, and Microsoft is bringing them to Windows Vista but not Windows XP.

The performance boost from Direct2D and DirectWrite was the centerpiece of Microsoft's demonstration of Internet Explorer 9 goodies shown last week. Online maps flashed on the screen quickly and tracked mouse movements responsively; text was clearer and changed sizes more gracefully.

More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10403604-264.html

Another week, another worm hitting jailbroken iPhones. As with the previous exploits, which Rickrolled your phone's wallpaper and stole your data, this nasty piece of work burrows its way into your jailbroken device if you haven't changed the password for the iPhone's root account--you have changed your root password, right? Right?

A source who's seen the worm in the wild tells Macworld that, after compromising the phone, the worm goes on to replace the phone's copy of the SSH remote login software, changes the root password (so you can't stop the worm without wiping the phone), skims your SMS database, checks in with its Lithuania-based overlords via the network, and then starts running a piece of software that searches for other vulnerable phones on both the local network and known IP address ranges of specific Internet Service Providers (mostly European). Somebody should have told the worm that nobody likes overachievers.

More: http://pcworld.com/article/182843/

eBay Inc said on Sunday it had restored a search function on its website overnight Saturday after a glitch led to searches returning either limited or no results throughout the day.

The technical issue on eBay.com resulted from a surge in live listings as sellers ramped up for the holiday season, the global e-commerce and payments company said in an e-mailed statement.

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AL1P720091122

Spotify, the popular music streaming service available only in select European countries, introduced on Monday a mobile application for the Symbian operating system, which includes Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung phones.

European owners of various Nokia phones, such as the N97, E72 or XpressMusic, can now download the Spotify app and enjoy music streamed to their phones. Several other phones will be able to run this app, including the Sony Ericsson Satio and Samsung Omnia HD (i8910). A full list of supported devices can be found here.

On the par with the iPhone and Android Spotify apps, Symbian users will have to pay the equivalent of $16 per month to access the mobile service, though the mobile application is free to download. Songs can be downloaded on the handset for offline listening when out of network coverage.

More: http://pcworld.com/article/182833/

The Nintendo Wii remains a force to be reckoned with in the video game world and new survey statistics along with new revenue streams suggest that Nintendo has still has something up it's sleeve.

New survey data from Lottay, an online wish-list and gift giving site, shows that the Wii and its associated accessories will regain momentum during this year's holiday season.

The Wii and Wii-related gear were wished for twice as much as the Sony PS3 and Xbox 360 combined though 38 percent of people wanted something other than products--namely cash, and in one case, Satan (I assume for a visit, not as a full-time family member.)

And while a wish, or a request for a gift, is no guarantee that a product will actually sell, there is a dearth of exciting gifts for this holiday season, leaving room for the Wii and other less-new products to be successful.

More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10403347-62.html

A hacker has posted attack code that could be used to break into a PC running older versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

The code was posted Friday to the Bugtraq mailing list by an unidentified hacker. According to security vendor Symantec, the code does not always work properly, but it could be used to install unauthorized software on a victim's computer.

"Symantec has conducted further tests and confirmed that it affects Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7," the company wrote on its Web site Saturday. "We expect that a fully-functional reliable exploit will be available in the near future."

Security consultancy Vupen Security has also confirmed that the attack works, saying it worked on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 system running IE 6 or IE7. Neither company was able to confirm that the attack worked on Microsoft's latest browser, IE 8.

More: http://pcworld.com/article/182821/

Steven Sinofsky may not be talking about Microsoft's future Windows plans, but the Windows Server team appears to see more value in letting customers know its road map.

In at least two slides apparently shown at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week, Microsoft suggests that a major release update to Windows Server is due around 2012, with one of the slides confirming the Windows 8 code name.

I've asked both the desktop and server teams for more context on the slides, which were noted this week by blogger Stephen Chapman. A similar slide cropped up--that time in Italian-- in August.

For his part, Sinofsky sat completely stone-faced when I asked him in our interview Wednesday where Microsoft was at reƖative to Windows 8--later noting that he hadn't even used the word Windows next to the numeral 8.

More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10402783-56.html

Twitter is now allowing its externally built applications to provide geolocation features to end users, after announcing its intention to do so in August.

The functionality is provided via a specific geotagging API (application programming interface) that external developers can use to build geolocation features in their applications.

Some applications like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, and Twittelator Pro already have activated geolocation features.

"We are really looking forward to seeing the creative uses emerge from the developer community," wrote Twitter official Ryan Sarver in an official blog post on Thursday.

More: http://pcworld.com/article/182748/