It has been a while since we last provided you a Microsoft Update, so will be giving you a general overview of what is going on in the Bill-less world - jumping straight in with a seemingly light-hearted story from Mashable that talks about Perfect 10’s recent lawsuit against the software giants for allowing MSN search results to direct traffic to unauthorized content. Does the fact that Perfect 10 are pornographers make this story any stranger?

Thumbnails of Perfect 10’s images are made available through an MSN search, also providing access to the full size images. The case against Microsoft also seeks damages for the company’s inability to find web-pages that displayed passwords to the site, as well as for taking advertising money from companies that have displayed stolen Perfect 10 content. The publisher has lost a similar lawsuit against Google and Amazon, and claims to be losing $4 million a month as a result of the search engines leading people to free access to its content. Perfect 10 is appealing its case against Google and Amazon, and has already turned down settlement efforts from Microsoft.

This is an ongoing issue that many companies have, and it’s understandably frustrating to know that a search engine’s process can make or break your business. It’s a matter that all successful online companies must deal with, including Microsoft, Amazon and Google themselves, and it usually comes down to the implementation of better technology to prevent theft of content in the first place. Perhaps Perfect 10 could move to Belgium and sue the search engine companies from there.

Continuing our Microsoft update, it seems that the Download Squad picked-up on an interesting contradiction where Microsoft claimed that although their Windows Vista sales in China were better than any previously reported operating systems, they have slashed the price of Vista in China from US$ 120 to US$ 66, strange since we vaguely remember someone mentioning something about only having ever sold fourteen copies, but perhaps that was just our over active imagination taking control.

Did we say 14…? So sorry, it should have been 244:

So while Microsoft spent millions to promote Vista in China, the company apparently sold just 244 copies of the operating system during the first two weeks it was legally available in China.

And then there is the Computer World report that talks about the Massive Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage meltdown that left genuine owners of Vista labeled as pirates for nineteen hours:

Microsoft Corp. has blamed an unspecified server problem for a 19-hour stretch during which paying users of Windows XP and Vista were accused by the company’s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation system of running pirated software. Any Vista system fingered during the episode was stripped of some features, including the operating system’s Aero GUI.

“Customers who received an incorrect validation response can fix their system by re-validating on our site,” said Alex Kochis, senior product manager of WGA, in a blog posting. The site Kochis referred to is the Genuine Microsoft Software home page, which includes links to validation tests for Windows and Microsoft Office. “After successfully re-validating, any affected system should be rebooted to ensure the genuine-only features are restored,” Kochis continued.

Strangely enough, it was our new local technology news provider - The Malay Mail - who reported on a lovely new service that Microsoft Genuine users could utilise in preparation of the up-coming World Cup:

Latest tournament news, goals and schedules of upcoming matches will be brought to World Cup fans in real time. Once results are in, Scoreboard will automatically adjust the standings of selected favourite teams. Fans can then view their team’s position by clicking on Standings. Times and dates of upcoming matches will be localised to Malaysian time by Scoreboard.

If you think we had forgotten about the magnificent launch of the SilverLight empowered Tafiti search engine, we have actually gone and done quite the opposite - waiting to get a few different points of view in the process.

Starting off by thanking Lifehacker for being the first (at least for us) to bring this attractive experiementation to our attention:

Tafiti provides a dynamic and attractive interface for searching the web, photos, news, RSS feeds and books. The search tool is big on style, but doesn’t provide much new in substance.

The Download Squad were a little more descriptive:

When you first visit the site, you’re prompted to install Silverlight if you haven’t already. Then you’re presented with a lot of empty space and a search box. When you enter your search term, you’re subjected to a little flurry of activity. On the lower left side of the screen, a bunch of icons pop up. Click on them to see images representing your search results, RSS feeds that match your search terms, or a newspaper-like view.

You can also drag search results into slots on the right of the screen for saving, e-mailing, or blogging on Windows Live Spaces. If you’re interested in all the bells and whistles, Tafiti is great. If you just want quick search results, you’re probably better off with Live Search, Yahoo! or Google.

However, WebWare seemed the first to have also mentioned the Tree…

More prosaic (but still pretty) features include a secondary “filter” field that lets you easily winnow down search results and different display formatting for results from the Web, books, news sites, and RSS feeds. There are also “blog this” and “e-mail this” options for results you save on your shelf.

There’s also a highly experimental–borderline silly–”tree view” of search results. This view goes into my running list of weirdo search technologies. Tafiti is a Microsoft open experiment, not a Google killer. But Google should take notice: With Tafiti, Microsoft is telling us that a search site can be useful without being dull.

Read / Write Web are the only people to point out that Microsoft tried this same visually stunning concept in Flash with Ms. Dewey, which was a talking search engine… The innovations this company brings out, simply for the hell of it is incredibly humbling…