Last month Microsoft has teased many users with a new “touchy” and “flat” mystery device, some users even believed that Microsoft was preparing a competitor to Apple’s Magic Trackpad. Finally the unknown device and it’s details are revealed by a German website notebooksbilliger.de, the device is called as “Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse”.

Age of Empires III is one of  my favorite game and one of the world biggest best selling strategy game developed by Ensemble Studios. Even now when I got bored with other new games, I will play Age of Empires(AOE) III on my XP desktop. Similar to other AOE fans I expected Age Of Empires 4 and till now there is no sign about AOE 4 from Microsoft.

Microsoft released an out-of-band security update  that addresses a  critical Windows shortcut vulnerability which affected all currently supported versions of Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

10 months back Microsoft released a free & Lightweight Antivirus called “Microsoft Security Essentials” (MSE), which had top rated AV and received top ratings from allover the web. Now Microsoft released the beta of next version MSE 2.0 with light change in the  interface and added new features like network protection engine and new protection system…e.t.c.

Microsoft has released a new version of Visio Viewer and it is available for free download. Visio 2010 Viewer allows you to view Visio drawings and diagrams created with Visio 2010 and previous versions from Visio 5.0, in Internet Explorer web browser.

Microsoft announced the first beta for  the successor to  Windows Home Server Code Named as “Vail” and it is now offered for public download. “Vail” is the version 2 release of Windows Home Server,  based on Windows Server ® 2008 R2. This  release is of a pre-beta public preview and it is not intended for use by everyone.

Microsoft press released another free ebook called “Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2″, by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner. This ebook lets you learn major new features in the “R2″ the successor of SQL Server 2008.

Last Month at MIX10 conference Microsft released the Silverlight 4 release candidate (RC), as expected  yesterday  Microsoft released the final version of  Silverlight 4 and it is now  available for  download.

Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline.

Yesterday Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 RTM and .NET Framework 4, which are now offered for download. Both .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 brings significant improvements compared to their previous versions.

.NET Framework 4:

The .NET Framework 4 is Microsoft’s comprehensive and consistent programming model for building applications that have visually stunning user experiences, seamless and secure communication, and the ability to model a range of business processes.

Microsoft released an out-of-band patch on Tuesday to fix nine security holes in Internet Explorer.  Among the holes, KB981374 is considered as critical which affects IE6 and 7, that allows remote users to gain control of a computer. An Israeli security researcher published the code for that vulnerability earlier this month and claimed the exploit had a 60 to 70% success rate.

Microsoft released two reliability updates for Windows Media Center for all editions of windows 7 OS.These updates are intended resolve liability issues such as Windows Media Center displaying Low Bit Rate overlay messages and fixes some problems in
TV tuner functionality.

Update to the TV tuner functionality (KB981129):

At Microsoft’s fifth annual MIX10 conference , Scott Guthrie, Microsoft Corporate Vice President announced the availability of Silverlight 4 release candidate (RC) an alternative to Adobe Flash.The final release is slated for April and this is the first RC version that follows the Silverlight 4 beta, which was released at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in November 2009.