The Microsoft Translator team has given up and concluded that "no matter how many machines you throw at translation, it is still impossible to get the correct, error-free, contextually accurate translation every time." Microsoft's solution to this problem is the Collaborative Translations Framework, which supposedly combines the scale and speed of automatic machine translation with the accuracy and context awareness of human translation.

At MIX 2010, Microsoft Translator API version 2 was announced. In addition to the collaborative features, version 2 includes a batch interface to translate large amounts of data, support for communicating with the service securely via SSL, and a "Translate-and-Speak" feature (text-to-speech functionality). The translation APIs are available at no cost to developers and partners in SOAP, HTTP, and AJAX flavors so that developers can choose the one that best fits their requirements. All you need to get started is a Bing Developer AppID.

Since the Microsoft Translator team works closely on Bing, the Translate-and-Speak functionality will be available on the Bing Translator user site after you hit translate (you should notice a speaker icon that you can click on to hear your translation). Currently, this feature is only available in seven of the 30 languages Bing supports: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian.

The Microsoft Translator widget, released just under a year ago, offers real-time, in-place translations on your website into the languages your users choose. Built on top of the new translation API, version 2 of the translator widget also adds collaborative features that help tailor the translations of a website. This means website owners can not only offer their site in multiple languages, but they can also ask their community or professional translators to improve those translations of their site's content.

Each MIX10 attendee received an exclusive invite code in their attendee bags to enable Collaborative Translations features in their widget. If you are not attending MIX, you can add yourself to the Collaborative Translations feature invite list after you get the widget.

Microsoft still plans on polishing the translation widget, toolbar, and alternatives UI as well as analytics for site and app owners based on user feedback. There is also more customizability on the way, such as limiting the number of languages site owners can show as part of the widget. In addition, Microsoft is working on making the Silverlight translator control available as part of the Silverlight toolkit release that will ship when Silverlight 4 goes final.

All this new functionality is still considered prerelease, so you'll want to check out the known issues list before diving in. You can submit bugs and suggestions on the MSDN forums or via This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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The big theme at Microsoft's MIX10 developer conference today was developing for Windows Phone 7 Series, and key to this was the new Silverlight 4. For the first time, Microsoft showed off third-party applications for the forthcoming phone platform, and talked about how third-party applications integrate with the platform.

Silverlight is becoming increasingly widely available for the browser, with Microsoft claiming 60 percent of all Internet devices now support it (up from 45 percent in October last year). The new version, available as a Release Candidate today with a final version next month, boasts new features to make it more useful for developing both in-browser and standalone applications, including support for microphones and webcams, printing, and the clipboard.

Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday a new flaw affecting version 6 and 7 of its Internet Explorer web browser that could allow remote code execution. The security advisory noted that targeted attacks using the flaw were already in the wild.

This information was confirmed by McAfee, reporting that exploitation of the flaw was originating from the domain topix21century dot com over both HTTP and HTTPS. The drive-by attacks install a backdoor which connects to a command-and-control server.

Analysis by Symantec reveals that the exploit works effectively on IE 6. IE 7 tended to crash instead, and IE 8 is, as stated in the Microsoft advisory, immune. The attack loads some malicious code, and then makes repeated changes to the HTML document eventually provoking execution of the malicious code.

The best solution is to upgrade to IE 8, as one of the many improvements found in this browser also seals off the security hole. Failing that, enabling Data Execution Prevention in IE 7 should provide some level of mitigation, as the current exploits do not circumvent DEP (though they could probably be combined with DEP bypass techniques). Removing access to the file iepeers.dll using either of the mechanisms described in Microsoft's advisory prevents Internet Explorer from loading the flawed code, but may also break print and web folder functionality. Finally, disabling of scripting and ActiveX in the Internet and Local Intranet security zones should also provide protection against exploitation.

Microsoft has still made no indication whether this flaw will receive an out-of-band update, but with exploits in the wild and documented analysis of the exploit, clearly this flaw is something that needs fixing, and soon.

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The CodePlex Foundation has announced the arrival of several new board members, including Jim Jagielski, the Chief Open Source Officer of SpringSource. Jagielski, who was one of the original cofounders of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), brings a lot of credibility and leadership experience to the CodePlex Foundation.

When the CodePlex Foundation was established by Microsoft last year, an interim board of directors was assembled to help get the organization off the ground while permanent board members were being chosen. A number of the interim board members, including Novell's Mono project leader Miguel de Icaza, will be turning their seats over to new representatives. Former Microsoft open source evangelist Sam Ramji, currently VP of strategy at Sonoa, will be remaining on the board, along with Microsoft .NET Framework program manager Davies Boesch.

The Microsoft browser ballot released this month to Windows users in the EU is already doing Microsoft's rivals a favor. Two of the major competitors to Internet Explorer have seen an increase in downloads, while the other two are not willing to share data. We contacted the makers of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera; here's what they had to say.

Opera, the Norwegian browser maker that first filed a complaint with the European Union in December 2007, accusing Microsoft of violating EU antitrust law by bundling IE with Windows, is pleased with the progress its browser is making. "Since the browser choice screen rollout, Opera downloads have more than tripled in major European countries, such as Belgium, France, Spain, Poland, and the UK," an Opera spokesperson told Ars. The company said it currently did not have more detailed numbers but plans on sharing more as they become available.

Mozilla, which has a particularly solid foothold in Europe, was slightly more specific in the progress it was seeing with its browser downloads. "Early data suggests 50,000 to 100,000 new users chose Firefox as a direct result of seeing the Ballot Choice screen," a Mozilla spokesperson told Ars. "We expect these numbers will increase as the Ballot Choice rolls out in additional countries and will share updated metrics as they become available."

Apple did not respond at all, and while Google was happy to respond, the company wouldn't get specific: "We generally don't share download stats on that granular of a level," a Google spokesperson told Ars. The company did not respond to a follow-up question if Chrome saw an increase in number of downloads period. While Apple and Google haven't said much, we think it's likely that both have also seen a bump in the number of downloads of their browsers. Hundreds of thousands of users who may not have known of a world outside of Internet Explorer are being confronted with the alternatives.

The browser ballot will be presented on Windows computers across the EU for at least the next five years. Microsoft's rivals are, however, already pushing to have it appear outside of Europe as well.

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Microsoft today began rolling out its new MSN homepage, but not everyone will be getting it at once: the update will trickle out over the next few weeks to the site's 100 million US customers. The software giant is touting the new version as "its most significant homepage redesign in over a decade." It comes with a new MSN butterfly logo (which complements the Bing logo), a larger Bing search box and tighter integration with the search engine, local information from a new feature dubbed MSN Local Edition, as well as the addition of three social network streams: the Windows Live "What's New" feed of course, Facebook, and Twitter.

The above was previewed in November, but Microsoft says the redesign includes more than 30 updates that are based on 70,000 pieces of customer feedback. These new features include TrendWatch, which highlights the day's top trends and movers on Twitter, Hyper-local Tweets, which uses Bing to highlight tweets from your location (available on the new Local Edition), and My Cities, which allows you save up to three cities to keep up with your friends or family across the entire country in your MSN Local Edition.

Microsoft says it has seen double-digit increases in Bing search queries coming from the new homepage thanks to changes that make the decision engine more prominent. As for the MSN Local module on the homepage, the software giant says it is driving over 50 percent more traffic to the MSN Local Edition and that the main module on the new homepage also received over 50 percent more clicks than the original homepage. Microsoft made improvements to these sections based on the data it was seeing. For example, the company says the social networking additions were welcomed with open arms, so it has made sure the default social network tab is the one that the user frequents the most.

The real test, not only for the servers but for the designers, will come in the next few weeks as the majority of users start to see the new version. As we've said before, we think the new look is much cleaner than the old version, but—as Facebook knows all too well—users aren't always happy with huge revamps of major websites.

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Microsoft's mid-market server bundle, Essential Business Server, is being discontinued, with no further development after June 30. EBS shipped in November 2008, aimed at organizations with up to 250-300 desktops. The bundle includes a range of Microsoft server products, including Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, Forefront Security, and ISA Server. The discontinuation was announced on the EBS blog.

Redmond's Small Business Server product, aimed at companies with fewer than 75 desktops, has been a significant and popular part of its server software line-up for many years. The company hoped to replicate this small business success with EBS, but after just 16 months has chosen to terminate the package, citing changes in the demands made by the mid-size companies and a desire to streamline its product lineup. The growth of virtualization in this market means that corporate needs are better met by other products in the lineup.

An EBS R2 release, updated to include Windows Server 2008 R2 and other technology, was originally expected in the second half of this year. With this announcement, that's no longer going to happen. Instead, existing customers will be able to replace EBS with the equivalent standalone software for a six-month period from July 1 through to the end of the year. EBS itself will continue to be supported for a further five years.

This decision will not have any impact on SBS; an update to that package is expected later this year.

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Let's look back at the week that was in Microsoft news. Here were the top stories:

Coding error leads to uneven EU browser ballot distribution: The distribution of browser choices on the EU browser ballot released this month to Windows users is uneven. Internet Explorer shows up in the right-most position 50 percent of the time for current IE users, an outcome that's due to Microsoft attempting to shuffle the browsers using JavaScript's sort function.

Microsoft rivals push to send browser ballot on world tour: The lobbying group European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), which is composed of many Microsoft rivals including Opera, is urging the rest of the world to push Microsoft into offering the browser ballot screen.