Windows has had it’s share of vulnerabilities in the past, so now Microsoft is offering more than $250,000 in cash and prizes for contestants who can come up with new ways to mitigate exploits. Anonymous and LulzSec are out there after all, taking companies down.

Microsoft will pay $200,000 for the best “novel runtime mitigation technology designed to prevent the exploitation of memory safety vulnerabilities.” Two runners up will also receive $50,000 and a MSDN Universal subscription valued at $10,000. I’d say that is lots of incentive to come up with some new tricks, wouldn’t you?

If you are a fan of Time Inc’s publications, you’ll be happy to know that it will be bringing all its 21 publications out as tablet editions before the end of the year. Time Inc. is the first major U.S. magazine publisher to make all of its titles available specifically for tablet devices.

Time Inc. has also announced a new agreement with Barnes & Noble to sell digital subscriptions of its publications on the NOOK Color e-reader. No surprise there. The new e-reader editions will be available toward the end of August.

LG Revolution users on Verizon LTE are about to get a new OTA update for their smartphones very soon. Not Gingerbread on the Revolution just yet, but VS910ZV6 has new apps, updates, and bugfixes in the meantime.

Verizon will provide you with its latest VCAST media apps, as well as provide updates for some of the pre-installed titles on the Revolution. None of the bugfixes address any serious problems with the phone itself, but they’ll make sure that it works the way you expect it to, with proper call notifications when in vibrate mode, auto-correct not turning on by default, album art displaying correctly etc.

The iPhone upgrade coming this fall “could be a bigger upgrade than we expected,” according to Sterne Agee’s Shaw Wu. The analyst cites Apple’s supply chain, which indicates that the new model will feature a display “slightly larger” than the 3.5-inch size Apple has used since the first iPhone. That would be great news.

He says that the phone should “retain a similar form factor and size but with thinner bezel,”. The info suggests a 2011 iPhone will in all likelihood forego 4G (LTE). And problems are said to remain with battery life and “spotty” network coverage. Of course Apple is good at tackling problems like this.

Today students have many more tools at their disposal for research and studying. For example Samsung will be offering 1,000 Galaxy Tab 10.1 units to 1,000 students at the University of South Mississippi. The tablets will be given to selected Honors College, McNair Scholars, Southern Style and Gulf Coast students, and the goal is to give students and educators mobile access to their courses, textbooks, grades and schedules.

It will be interesting to see if grades improve after they receive the tablets or if it just means more playing of Angry Birds.

According to Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, the company is planning to implement paid downloads for both the 3DS and Wii U. Iwata said that developers will have access to the system for the 3DS by the end of the year and he said Nintendo was thinking about extending the life of some games by making new levels available.

Iwata said that Nintendo will not support low quality content either, as in unlocking keys or stat increases. Don’t worry though, he also seemed to indicate that free games won’t have added chargeable content later.

Google has unveiled another enhancement to its Google+ social network with stars which can be used to bookmark memorable posts with Google+. It works like an internal bookmarking system for personal use rather than using the +1 button which is more for public bookmarking.

The new star is located in the top right hand corner of each post with a “Starred” option added to the bottom of the circles list in the left menu list.

The Sharp FX Plus is an Android powered QWERTY-slider smartphone with entry-level specifications. It’s the successor of the original Sharp FX messaging phone. It will be shipping pre-installed with Android 2.2 Froyo, which is dissapointing and it’s powered by a 600MHz processor.

Other features include a 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen display, 512MB RAM, a landscape sliding-out QWERTY keyboard, 3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, 802.11 Wi-Fi b/g/n, microUSB 2.0, microSD card slot for memory expansion up to 32GB, Android Market, audience’s earSmart noise cancellation technology, and a bunch of Google and AT&T services.

Remember when Anonymous had a beef against Paypal last year for freezing Wikileaks‘ account and launched DDoS attacks against the billing and payment company? Well, some of the attackers have left behind enough information to be traceable. And now Paypal has handed over a list of 1,000 IP addresses to the FBI.

There’s no way to know whether the list of IP addresses are just a dump of attacking systems or whether Paypal’s investigation actually turned up some indication that these thousand IP addresses were orchestrating the attack. They have alluded to the notion that the addresses they handed over are some of the IPs that sent the most data.

Apple’s iPad 2 and Samsung’s new Galaxy Tabs are among the thinnest tablets on the market today. Well, there’s a new thinnest tablet on the scene according to an announcement made by a Chinese manufacturer known as Shenzhen Guangxuntong Communication Technology.

They have developed what they claim is the “world’s thinnest tablet PC’, and it comes in the form of its new EKing T9 device. The EKing T9 sports a 9.7-inch IPS capacitive touchscreen display and Intel’s Z670 processor which is clocked at 1.5GHz. The EKing T9 tablet is also said to feature 2GB of memory, along with both front and rear-facing cameras.

Redbox has announced that it will add video game rentals to an additional 5,000 kiosks starting August 1st. The company announced last month that game titles for the Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation and Nintendo Wii would be added to 16,000 more redbox kiosks by the end of June, and the total after this next round of additions will approach 27,000.

Redbox owns and operates about 33,000 rental kiosks around the country, and the company did not indicate if or when video games might be added to the remaining 6,000 kiosks that will not have them. All games carried in redbox kiosks are $2 per night.

Razer has a new set of gaming headphones called the Razer Electra, which are specifically designed for tablet and smartphone gamers. They have enhanced bass response with optimized drivers, as well as replaceable sound-isolating leatherette ear cushions.

It also has a detachable rubber sheathed audio cable and detachable inline microphone audio cable for voice communication. However the combined inline cable microphone only works in a port that mixes audio and microphone capability, like many smartphone and tablet jacks.

Looks like there has been some potential photo leaks of what is claimed to be the prototype device of a cheaper and lighter iPhone 4. This would replace the iPhone 3GS as Apple’s entry level iPhone. Yes, it looks just like an iPhone 4, except for the identification numbers on the back being X’d out, which could indicate that it is a prototype device.

The source of the leak admitted that it would be hard to convince people that this is the real deal since it looks so similar to the iPhone 4.

Still upset about the Netflix price hike? Well, maybe this will help. They are busy trying to get more content. Netflix has reached an agreement with CBS Corp. that will allow some of the network’s programming to be streamed to foreign markets. The deal includes CBS shows like “Californication,” “Dexter,” “Numb3rs” and “Twin Peaks.”

Many of the networks’ most popular series are excluded of course. Netflix operates in Canada and is expanding to 43 countries in Latin America, with other foreign markets coming soon. Netflix has also added “Mad Men” to its streaming option. Starting today, the first four seasons of the show are available to Netflix’s US customers.

The first solid images of HTC’s upcoming 10-inch slate have surfaced, called the HTC Puccini. Looks pretty sweet. We don’t have much in the way of confirmed specifications, but the tablet will feature an 8-megapixel camera with what appears to be a dual-LED flash, as well as stereo speakers and a microphone.

The Puccini also supports stylus input just like the HTC Flyer. Other rumored specs include a 1.5GHz processor, Android Honeycomb, HTC Sense and a 4G LTE radio. Nothing on a launch date, but we hope it will be soon.