(Photo: Microsoft)

Was that a bellow of rage we just heard from the direction of Redmond? The Wall Street Journal reports that the DOJ and SEC are poking around Microsoft as part of an investigation into business partners (like resellers and consultants) who maaaybe secured software contracts by bribing foreign officials.

Well, that would be one way to keep Windows running on every desktop.

Microsoft was quick to throw up its hands and tell the Wall Street Journal "nuh-uh, not us":

"Like every large company with operations around the world we sometimes receive allegations about potential misconduct by employees or business partners," said John Frank, Microsoft's vice president and deputy general counsel. "We cooperate fully in any government inquiries," he added.

This doesn't mean that Microsoft has been charged with anything yet, or even formally accused. But the feds are following up on a hot tip from a former employee:

The tipster, who worked to land potential new business, alleged that an executive of Microsoft's China subsidiary instructed the tipster to offer kickbacks to Chinese officials in return for signing off on software contracts.

But sources tell the Journal that Microsoft already had an outside firm investigate the allegations and turned up zilch. The feds are also sniffing around deals in Italy and Romania. So if you're a Microsoft reseller in an emerging nation, now might be the time to burn all receipts marked "bribe."

Hope you don't get cancer, CEO guy. (flickr.com/perspective)

Italy's Supreme Court has issued a ruling that could have a ripple effect for cellphone manufacturers all over the world by declaring a "causal link" between an Italian businessman's non-cancerous tumor and his daily cellphone usage.

The businessman, Innocente Marcolini, said he used his cellphone as much as six hours a day for work. Now his face his paralyzed on one side.

Testimony from oncologists and researchers on Mr. Marcolini's behalf might spook even the most hardcore cellphone user:

"They said electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobile and cordless phones can damage cells, making tumours more likely."

One of Mr. Marcolini's experts told a U.K. paper that the court's decision will "open not a road but a motorway to legal actions by victims. We're considering a class action."

Even though the World Health Organization has expressed caution regarding cellphone use, government agencies like Britain's Health Protection Agency are not too concerned, a spokesman telling the Telegraph that the "scientific consensus is that mobile phones do not cause cancer."

We hope that last part is true, because the alternative might see a new rise in Bluetooth headset use, and no one wants that.

(flickr.com/mattmangum)

This morning an intriguing project crossed the Hacker News transom: Hornify.it, a bookmarklet that replaces every image on a page with, um, nude photographs. Of course we immediately experimented with our own homepage and found more breasts than you'd see on Bourbon Street on Fat Tuesday. So it's a little like Cornify, but for adult content rather than Lisa Frank-like sparkle ponies.

Betabeat could not let such a thing pass without delving a little deeper. We reached out and got a little more detail from creator Matteo Caberlotto, who described it, via email, as "a button that transforms any website into a pornsite (kind of...)." Well, it's not that much worse than anything you'd see on HBO, but it's certainly softcore at the least.

As for why? Duh: "why not?" he responded. Mr. Caberlotto built the bookmarklet and landing page, as well as doing the serverside coding, while a colleague offered an assist with sysadmin and social integration activities. All the images are Creative Commons licensed, he said, and come from softblog.it. They gather, catalog, and prep the photos themselves. Hands on, if you will.

The pair (who are Italian) work together as developers, and "the website itself is intended to give a sort of pleasure to internet experts." They dreamed up the idea last summer, having lunch on the grass outside their office, then built it using HTML5, CSS3, 3-dimensional transitions and "some other stuffs," Mr. Caberlotto told us. (Originally the name was pornify.it, but someone else snapped up the domain.) He added that the bookmarklet is "nothing new" and the technologies they used "old and mature," but thought it would give people a laugh.

More "target-specific versions" are in the offing--though sadly, an option for the dude-inclined is not what Mr. Caberlotto has in mind.