CIO reports that “

[t]he editor of the Open Document Format (ODF) standard has written a letter that strongly supports recognizing Microsoft’s Open Office XML (OOXML) file format as a standard, arguing that if it fails, ODF will suffer.  ‘As the editor of OpenDocument, I want to promote OpenDocument, extol its features, urge the widest use of it as possible, none of which is accomplished by the anti-OpenXML position in ISO,’ Patrick Durusau wrote.  ‘The bottom line is that OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses. … Passage of OpenXML in ISO is going to benefit OpenDocument as much as anyone else.’”

ZDNet.com reveals that “[a]nother Google Inc. executive is leaving the Internet search giant for social networking start-up Facebook Inc.  Facebook on Tuesday confirmed that Ethan Beard, the former director of social media at Google, will join the privately held company as director of business development. Mr. Beard is the second high-profile executive this month to leave Google, a company that was widely considered one of the best places to work in Silicon Valley.  Meanwhile, Facebook has become the fastest growing and second-most-popular social network. The Palo Alto, Calif., company is currently valued at $15 billion and has grown to more than 500 employees.”

Internetnews.com writes that, according to a new report by security researcher WhiteHat Security, “a staggering nine out of 10 Web sites have some type of serious vulnerability that a hacker could potentially exploit.  The study, which examined more than 600 sites including those of Fortune 500 firms, found a number of different vulnerabilities common across the Internet, with Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities dominating the rankings.  In fact, Whitehat claims that 70 percent of the Web sites it surveyed were at risk from some sort of XSS attack. That figure dwarfs the No. 2 culprit in the firm’s survey, SQL injection, which comprised only 4 percent of the firm’s total surveyed vulnerabilities.  XSS flaws have been reported in recent years on a number of big-name sites, including IBM and Google.”

According to the Mercury News, “[a] group of Google investors is proposing that the Internet company create a committee on human rights and establish policies that forbid it from engaging in censorship.  Google will let shareholders vote on the measures at its May 8 annual meeting, according to a regulatory filing made Tuesday.”

eWeek.com reports that “[a]s part of its overall effort to promote greater interoperability, Microsoft is posting additional documentation of the Extensible Application Markup Language formats for advanced user experiences, enabling third parties to access and implement the XAML formats in their own client, server and tool products. The documentation is publicly available for free here. ”