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The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Thursday launched a broadband test service to help consumers clock the speed of their Internet.

Located at the site www.broadband.gov, the test is aimed at allowing consumers to compare their actual speeds with the speeds advertised by their providers. The FCC release follows an FCC meeting in September where officials said that actual speeds were estimated to lag by as much as 50 percent during busy hours. ”The FCC’s new digital tools will arm users with real-time information about their broadband connection and the agency with useful data about service across the country,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement.

The FCC is also collecting information about where broadband is not available. Consumers can email the FCC at fccinfo@fcc.gov or call the FCC.

The last week or so has been filled with information from Microsoft. One of the cooler things to happen came out during the keynote presentation at TechEd Middle East in Dubai. The softie Eric Rudder played the same Indiana Jones style game on a Windows computer, a Windows Phone 7 phone, AND an Xbox 360. Gaming is about to get to blow up and MS is making it’s power play.

Not only is the game itself playable on all three platforms, but the session is maintained when you move from each device: if you’re playing on your Xbox and have to run out the door, you’ll be on the same level when you fire it up on your Windows Phone 7 Series phone. Basically, you’ll never have an excuse not to be gaming.

This all seems utterly wicked from a technology perspective and simultaneously devastating from a “get anything done/have a social life” angle. I can’t imagine a game like… Civilizations… where you have that “just one more turn” mentality!!!

Google Voice is about giving you more control over your communications, through dozens of features — ranging from call screening to voicemail transcription to the ability to send and receive SMS by email. While we’ve heard from users that they love our growing list of features, we’re conscious of the fact that Google Voice can seem overwhelming to people trying it for the first time. So we’ve created a short video that gives an overview of what Google Voice can do.

In addition, we’ve created a set of short videos that dive into more detail about ten features of Google Voice:

1. Voicemail transcription
2. One number
3. Personalized greetings
4. International calling
5. SMS to email
6. Share voicemails
7. Block callers
8. Screen callers
9. Mobile app
10. Conference calls

The videos show why you might want to use each feature and basic instructions for getting started. And each video focuses on just one topic so you can learn about the features that matter to you.

Finally, we just launched our own YouTube channel at youtube.com/googlevoice. You can view all of the videos mentioned above in a custom video gadget we built for this channel, which will help you keep track of which videos you’ve already watched.

MSMobiles say they have the low down on Microsoft’s Mobile World Congress announcements, and what they leaked makes quite a bit of sense.

First the bits we think we know already:

Windows Mobile 7 will be introduced with Zune, Xbox, Bing integration. It will feature a new kernel,Games and Music improvements and a new user interface, based on Windows Presentation Foundation. Development will take place in the latest version of Visual Studio.

Now the new bits:

Clearly in a direct response to Nokia and Android, Windows Mobile (not sure which version) will come with free navigation (presumably turn by turn). Also clearly in a response to all the open source mobile OS’s, Windows Mobile 6.X will be free to developing markets.

As mentioned above, these changes make perfect sense, and shows a Microsoft prepared to respond much more rapidly than before to changes in the mobile market.

Read more at MSMobiles.com here.

A 17-year-old bug in Windows will be patched by Microsoft in its latest security update.

The February update for Windows will close the loophole that involves the venerable DOS operating system.

First appearing in Windows NT 3.1, the vulnerability has been carried over into almost every version of Windows that has appeared since.

The monthly security update will also tackle a further 25 holes in Windows, five of which are rated as “critical”.

Home hijack

The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run programs that date from the DOS era.

Mr Ormandy has found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The patch for this vulnerability will appear in the February security update. Five of the vulnerabilities being patched at the same time allow attackers to effectively hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it.

As well as fixing holes in many versions of Windows, the update also tackles bugs in Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2004 for Apple Macintosh machines.

The bumper update is not the largest that Microsoft has ever released. The security update for October 2009 tackled a total of 34 vulnerabilities. Eight of those updates were rated as critical – the highest level.

In January 2010, Microsoft released an “out of band” patch for a serious vulnerability in Internet Explorer that was being exploited online. The vulnerability was also thought to be the one used to attack Google in China.

Following the attack on Google, many other cyber criminals started seeking ways to exploit the loophole.

Also this week, a security researcher has reported the discovery of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer that allows attackers to view the files held on a victim’s machine.

Microsoft has issued a security bulletin about the problem and aims to tackle it at a future date. At the moment there is no evidence that this latest find is being actively exploited online.