Edwin Perello discovered that Bing, the Microsoft search engine, could find addresses in his rural Indiana town when Google could not. Laura Michelson, an administrative assistant in San Francisco, was lured by Bing’s flight fare tracker. Paul Callan, a photography buff in Chicago, fell for Bing’s vivid background images.

Like most Americans, they still use Google as their main search tool. But more often, they find themselves navigating to Microsoft’s year-old Bing for certain tasks, and sometimes they stay a while.

“I was a Google user before, but the more I used Bing the more I liked it,” Mr. Callan said. “It’s more like muscle memory takes me to Google.”

Bing still handles a small slice of Web searches in the United States, 12.7 percent in June, compared with Google’s 62.6 percent, as measured by comScore, the Web analytics firm. But Bing’s share has been growing, as has Yahoo’s, while Google’s has been shrinking.

And while no one argues that Google’s dominance is in immediate jeopardy, Google is watching Microsoft closely, mimicking some of Bing’s innovations — like its travel search engine, its ability to tie more tools to social networking sites and its image search — or buying start-ups to help it do so in the future.

Google has even taken on some of Bing’s distinctive look, like giving people the option of a Bing-like colorful background, and the placement of navigation tools on the left-hand side of the page.

When Microsoft introduced it last year, Bing made a splash with its vivid background images.
In June, Google presented searchers the option of a colorful background rather than the stark, white page.

The result is a renaissance in search, resulting in more sophisticated tools for consumers who want richer answers to complex questions than the standard litany of blue links.

The competition is a remarkable and surprising twist: Microsoft, knocked around for so long as a bumbling laggard, has given the innovative upstart Google a kick in the pants. As the search engines introduce feature after competing feature, some analysts say they have set off an arms race, with the companies poised to spend whatever it takes to win the second phase of Web search.

“There is a cold war going on,” said Sandeep Aggarwal, senior Internet and software analyst at Caris & Company, who watches both companies. “Clearly, you can see how Bing’s competition is forcing Google to try and catch up in some places.”

Google officials agree there is more competition, but say they are not simply reacting to the younger search engine.

Google’s new features have not been in response to Bing, said Marissa Mayer, the company’s vice president for search products and user experience. “A lot of these things have been in the works for a long time,” she said. “Left-hand navigation we worked on for almost two years. We wanted to make sure we had it exactly right.”

Microsoft’s gains are far from staggering. Its share of searches has grown to 12.7 percent, from 8 percent, since Bing was introduced in May 2009, and Yahoo, which has a search deal with Microsoft, still handles a larger share of searches than Bing. And in the newest search frontier, mobile devices, Google has even more market share than on the Web at large.

Still, Bing’s gains have impressed analysts, who have watched Google fend off repeated assaults on its lucrative search and ad business, which accounts for some 95 percent of its revenue.

Building a more comprehensive, faster and more accurate search engine than Google is a daunting challenge, and a long list of big companies and start-ups have failed in their attempts. Microsoft endured plenty of ribbing as it spent years building and then scrapping search systems meant to help it compete against Google. But it kept experimenting until it found a way.

Microsoft has spent billions of dollars building the computing centers needed to power search and advertising systems and acquiring start-ups with niche expertise. In addition, it has thrown money at consumers, through cash-back programs on purchases, and at partners willing to promote Bing ahead of Google. Over the last year, Microsoft’s online services division lost $2.36 billion on revenue of $2.2 billion.

With Bing, Microsoft has tried to attract people like Mr. Callan by excelling at answering frequently asked questions, like those related to travel, health, shopping, entertainment and local businesses. For example, Bing has flight search and prediction tools that reveal price fluctuations for certain routes, and advises customers whether to buy or wait. Bing Health uses data from sources like the Mayo Clinic and Healthwise.

The hope is that “somebody would come back just for that and then, down the line, they would do other types of searches, too,” said Danny Sullivan, a longtime industry analyst and editor in chief of the blog Search Engine Land.

People do not always want to click on links and dig through pages to hunt out information, so when Bing started in May 2009, it pulled relevant information and stuck it on the top and left-hand side of the results pages. Search “Angelina Jolie,” for instance, and see a slide show and a list of her movies on top and related links on the side.

“We said, ‘Let’s change the entire way we lay out pages,’ ” said Yusuf Mehdi, a senior vice president for Microsoft’s online audiences business. “We will not be shackled by blue links.”

Google, meanwhile, has quietly introduced its own new features that have in several instances looked a lot like Bing’s.

For example, in May, it too added the left-hand navigation tools — though Ms. Mayer of Google pointed out that many of the tools had already been available, just not easily visible from the search page.

“Certainly there’s been increased competition in the space,” Ms. Mayer said of Bing. “When there’s more competition, everyone’s search gets better, that serves the users a lot better.”

Bing’s travel tool uses technology from Farecast, which Microsoft bought in early 2008. In July, Google announced plans to acquire ITA Software for $700 million; ITA makes the same comparison shopping software for flights that Bing’s Farecast uses.

Then there is the look of the main search pages for each site. Microsoft has argued that the vivid images ever-present behind the Bing search box have helped its appeal; young people and women have shown a particular fondness for Bing. In June, Google offered people the option to have a colorful background image like the Golden Gate Bridge on its main search page rather than the stark, white page that helped make Google famous.

Google has also played catch-up to Microsoft in offering ways to search for and digest more images in one go, and has trailed in adding some tie-ins to social networking sites.

“Google’s new innovations have come at a slower pace,” Mr. Aggarwal said. “There was no one challenging Google until Microsoft decided it was a business they would not give up.”

Still, Mr. Sullivan and other analysts also say Google has been making many significant but subtle behind-the-scenes changes that make it better at responding to obscure and complex queries. Google made 500 tweaks to its secret search algorithm last year and introduced personalized search, which customizes results based on what users frequently click on.

Google executives often chide Microsoft that it overengineers software like Office and bombards people with needless features. But now Google has swapped its clean, simple approach to search in favor of a feature war with Microsoft.

“Google seems to do things because Bing has done something,” Mr. Sullivan said. “It’s a kind of knee-jerk thing — we have to do this product now because we don’t want people to think we’re weak.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com

Yahoo Inc. engineers began testing keywords in Microsoft Corp.'s search advertising system for the first time last week, a key step toward implementing a comprehensive search agreement the two companies hope will reshape the industry.

The so-called "shadow tests" replicate how keywords will perform when Yahoo's advertisers are plugged into Microsoft's adCenter system, which will soon power the paid search businesses of both companies. The test results will help determine whether Yahoo and Microsoft can flip the switch on their unusual partnership this fall, as they hope.

"The next couple of weeks are going to be critical," said David Karnstedt, who runs search engine marketer Efficient Frontier.

The tests, which come almost one year after the alliance was announced, are part of a meticulously planned blueprint that Yahoo and Microsoft hope will position them as an effective counterweight to industry leader Google Inc.

Though the partners will have less than a third of the $12.4 billion U.S. search market, they want to achieve enough scale to generate better returns for advertising clients, more revenue for themselves and greater profits for investors.

Microsoft hopes the 10-year revenue-sharing pact will help turn its ailing online services division into a profitable business. Yahoo says the agreement will enable it to cut costs, focus on display advertising and deliver search results in more innovative ways.

Microsoft's Bing search engine will power searches on Yahoo Web sites. The two companies' small and midsize advertisers will use Microsoft's adCenter paid search platform to buy keywords and put ads on Web pages. Yahoo's sales staff will handle the largest advertising accounts for both companies.

While Yahoo is free to choose any partner for mobile search and search advertising, the company said it will rely on Microsoft in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and France. Yahoo said the shift in each market is expected to coincide with the desktop migration schedule and it may soon add other markets.

For the past two months, Yahoo and Microsoft have been shadow-testing the algorithmic search technologies that generate the non-paid search results on their Web pages, according to Mark Morrissey, who runs Yahoo's integration team.

The project remains on schedule as engineers eliminate bugs in the system, he said. They aim to gradually increase the volume of Yahoo traffic that passes through Bing, eventually fabricating imaginary queries so they can stress-test the system beyond full capacity.

"The most challenging time is when we get to 100%-130% (of full capacity) because it tests not only the functionality, but the limits of the infrastructure," Mr. Morrissey said.

Shifting Yahoo's advertisers to Microsoft's adCenter will be far more complicated. Microsoft must beef up adCenter to process four times the traffic it currently handles. Engineers also have been adding features from Yahoo's Panama search advertising system that weren't in adCenter, such as giving advertisers more control over where their ads appear.

Key questions remain. The most critical is whether the alliance will generate better returns for advertisers, as well as more revenue per search for the companies.

Second-quarter data from Efficient Frontier shows Microsoft's advertisers get an average return on investment that is 21% higher than Google--the industry standard--while Yahoo returns 25% less than Google. Advertisers focus on ROI because it enables them to measure the performance of search ads against the overall cost of such campaigns.

Chris Lien, who runs search marketer Marin Software Inc., said Yahoo's relatively low ROI might simply cancel out Microsoft's, reducing the combined platform's appeal to advertisers.

Still, Yahoo and Microsoft aim to make the transition in the U.S. and Canada by Oct. 15, giving advertisers, ad agencies and search-engine marketers enough time to switch over before the crucial holiday shopping season. Mr. Morrissey said the two companies have hit every major milestone on schedule. But they won't flip the switch until they are comfortable the combined market place can deliver adequate ROI for advertisers.

Source: http://online.wsj.com

The stats seem to support Steve Jobs' contention that Adobe's video format is fading fast

In the Thoughts on Flash essay that Steve Jobs posted last week, Apple's CEO took on Adobe's oft-repeated contention that Apple's (AAPL) mobile products — the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch — don't offer access to the "full Web" because they don't support Adobe's Flash format. 75% of the video on the Web, Adobe's supporters point out, is encoded in Flash.

"What they don't say," Jobs wrote, "is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264" — which iPads and iPhones do support.

"Almost all" may be an exaggeration, but the chart above, posted Saturday by TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld, suggests that the trends are headed Apple's way.

The chart was produced by Encoding.com, which does on-demand Web video encoding for a variety of clients, from MySpace to MTV Network. It encoded some 5 million videos last year, so it has a pretty good handle on which formats are up and which are down. Schonfeld explains:

As the chart shows, in the past four quarters, the H.264 format went from 31 percent of all videos to 66 percent, and is now the largest format by far. Meanwhile, Flash is represented by Flash VP6 and FLV, which combined represent only 26 percent of all videos. That is down from a combined total of 69 percent four quarters ago. So the native Flash codecs and H.264 have completely flipped in terms of market share (Flash also supports H.264, however, but you don’t need a Flash player to watch H.264 videos).

Once again, Apple may be skating not to where the puck is, but where it's going to be.

See also:

• Steve Jobs' Flash manifesto
• Has Steve Jobs gone mad?
• Why Is Steve Jobs Flash-obsessed?

Email

• 90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
• 247 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
• 1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 100 million – New email users since the year before.
• 81% – The percentage of emails that were spam.
• 92% – Peak spam levels late in the year.
• 24% – Increase in spam since last year.
• 200 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).

Websites

• 234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.
• 47 million – Added websites in 2009.

Web servers

• 13.9% – The growth of Apache websites in 2009.
• -22.1% – The growth of IIS websites in 2009.
• 35.0% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2009.
• 384.4% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2009.
• -72.4% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2009.

Domain names

• 81.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
• 12.3 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
• 7.8 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
• 76.3 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
• 187 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
• 8% – The increase in domain names since the year before.

Internet users

• 1.73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
• 18% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
• 738,257,230 – Internet users in Asia.
• 418,029,796 – Internet users in Europe.
• 252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.
• 179,031,479 – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
• 67,371,700 – Internet users in Africa.
• 57,425,046 – Internet users in the Middle East.
• 20,970,490 – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Social media

• 126 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 84% – Percent of social network sites with more women than men.
• 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
• 57% – Percentage of Twitter’s user base located in the United States.
• 4.25 million – People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter’s most followed user).
• 350 million – People on Facebook.
• 50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
• 500,000 – The number of active Facebook applications.

Images

• 4 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (October 2009).
• 2.5 billion – Photos uploaded each month to Facebook.
• 30 billion – At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

Videos

• 1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.
• 12.2 billion – Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (November 2009).
• 924 million – Videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US (November 2009).
• 182 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
• 82% – Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
• 39.4% – YouTube online video market share (USA).
• 81.9% – Percentage of embedded videos on blogs that are YouTube videos.

Web browsers

Malicious software

• 148,000 – New zombie computers created per day (used in botnets for sending spam, etc.)
• 2.6 million – Amount of malicious code threats at the start of 2009 (viruses, trojans, etc.)
• 921,143 – The number of new malicious code signatures added by Symantec in Q4 2009.

Data sources: Website and web server stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet World Stats. Web browser stats from Net Applications. Email stats from Radicati Group. Spam stats from McAfee. Malware stats from Symantec (and here) and McAfee. Online video stats from Comscore, Sysomos and YouTube. Photo stats from Flickr and Facebook. Social media stats from BlogPulse, Pingdom (here and here), Twittercounter, Facebook and GigaOm.

Zune HD is the latest player in the Zune device family, available in 16GB and 32GB capacities and is the first touch screen Zune with HD functionality and powerful technology to give consumers a different way to experience music and video on-the-go.

• HD Radio –Zune HD comes with a built-in FM HD Radio receiver enabling users to tune to more free stations with even better clarity and sound quality.
• HD Video Out – Connect your Zune HD to the optional Zune Premium A/V docking station and watch HD videos, TV shows and movies in your large screen TV in 720p high definition
• Internet Browser and Wi-Fi - Zune HD includes a full-screen Internet browser optimized for multi-touch and Wi-Fi connectivity

Zune Software

• QuickPlay – A whole new user interface that offers one-click access to your favorites, and recent activity on both the PC and your Zune HD
• Smart DJ -  With one click, Zune becomes your personal DJ, creating and serving you an endless playlist based on the genre, style and influences of the song or artist you choose

Zune Services (Zune Marketplace and Zune.net)

• For the first time, Zune Marketplace is offering full-length movies in HD and SD format for download and rental; download HD TV shows and movies and watch them on your Zune or PC.  Or with the optional A/V docking station, watch them in high definition on your HDTV
• Zune.net Streaming - With a Zune Pass, stream music directly from Zune.net from any internet-connected computer.  No client software download needed
• Zune Pass - Access nearly 6 million songs for only $14.99 a month and keep 10 free MP3 downloads each month 
• Zune Pass + SmartDJ - If you have a Zune Pass you can use SmartDJ to stream an endless playlist from the nearly 6 million song Zune catalog from any internet connected PC via Zune.net, no download required

Expansion into Xbox

• Later this fall, Microsoft will bring the Zune video service to the nearly 20 million Xbox Live users as Zune becomes the video store for Xbox Live
• “Buy Once, Play Anywhere” - Consumers will be able to buy a movie once and watch it on multiple devices:  Xbox 360, Zune device and PC

Pricing

• Zune HD 16GB for $219.99 on Amazon (as of 9/17/09)
• Zune HD 32GB for $289.99 on Amazon (as of 9/17/09)

Zune HD is available in the retail channel on Sept 15, but for the time being the Zune HD device will remain US only.

Learn more: http://www.zune.net/en-us/products/zunehd/default.htm

SUNNYVALE, CA and REDMOND, WA — 29 July, 2009 — Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.

For Web users and advertisers, this deal will accelerate the pace and breadth of innovation by combining both companies' complementary strengths and search platforms into a market competitor with the scale to fuel sustained development in search and search advertising. Users will find what they care about faster and with more personal relevance. Microsoft's competitive search platforms will lead to more value for advertisers, better results for web publishers, and increased innovation and efficiency across the Internet.

Under this agreement, Yahoo! will focus on its core business of providing consumers with great experiences with the world's favorite online destinations and Web products.

"This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo!, our users, and the industry. And I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of Internet innovation and development," said Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz. "Users will continue to experience search as a vital part of their Yahoo! experiences and will enjoy increased innovation thanks to the scale and resources this deal provides. Advertisers will also benefit from scale and enjoy greater ease of use and efficiencies working with a single platform and sales team for premium advertisers. Finally, this deal will help us increase our investments in priority areas in winning audience properties, display advertising capabilities, and mobile experiences."

Providing a viable alternative to advertisers, this deal will combine Yahoo! and Microsoft search marketplaces so that advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search. With the addition of Yahoo!'s search volume, Microsoft will achieve the size and scale required to unleash competition and innovation in the market, for consumers as well as advertisers.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the agreement will provide Microsoft's search engine, Bing, the scale necessary to more effectively compete, attracting more users and advertisers, which in turn will lead to more relevant ads and search results.

"Through this agreement with Yahoo!, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company," said Ballmer. "Success in search requires both innovation and scale. With our new Bing search platform, we've created breakthrough innovation and features. This agreement with Yahoo! will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness. Microsoft and Yahoo! know there's so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search."

"This deal fits the long-term strategic direction of Yahoo! to remain the world's leading online media company and Carol Bartz has the full and unanimous support of the Yahoo! Board behind this deal," said Roy Bostock, chairman, Yahoo! Inc. "This is a significant opportunity for us. Microsoft is an industry innovator in search, and it is a great opportunity for us to focus our investments in other areas critical to our future."

The key terms of the agreement are as follows:

• The term of the agreement is 10 years;

• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!'s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms;

• Microsoft's Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.

• Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft's AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter's automated auction process.

• Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.

• Yahoo! will innovate and "own" the user experience on Yahoo! properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology.

• Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!'s network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites.

  • Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo!'s O&O sites during the first 5 years of the agreement.

  • Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.

• Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!'s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country.

• At full implementation (expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory approval), Yahoo! estimates, based on current levels of revenue and current operating expenses, that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual GAAP operating income of approximately $500 million and capital expenditure savings of approximately $200 million. Yahoo! also estimates that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual operating cash flow of approximately $275 million.

• The agreement protects consumer privacy by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform, and restricts the use of search data shared between the companies. The agreement maintains the industry-leading privacy practices that each company follows today.

The agreement does not cover each company's web properties and products, email, instant messaging, display advertising, or any other aspect of the companies' businesses. In those areas, the companies will continue to compete vigorously.

The transaction will be subject to regulatory review. The agreement entered into today anticipates that the parties will enter into more detailed definitive agreements prior to closing. Microsoft and Yahoo! expect the agreement to be closely reviewed by the industry and government regulators, and welcome questions. The companies are hopeful that closing can occur in early 2010.

The companies have established a website at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com to provide consumers, advertisers and publishers with additional information about the benefits of the agreement.

Conference Call – 5:30 a.m. PDT, Wednesday, July 29

Yahoo! and Microsoft will host a conference call with Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss the agreement at 5:30 a.m. Pacific/8:30 a.m. Eastern Time today. To listen to the call, please dial 1-866-515-2908 in the U.S. and Canada; +1-617-399-5122 international, reservation number: 47968026. A live webcast of the call can be accessed through Yahoo!’s Investor Relations website at http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/results.cfm. The companies have also established a website at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com to provide consumers, advertisers and publishers with additional information about the benefits of the agreement. In addition, an archive of the webcast will be available through the same link. An audio replay of the call will be available for two weeks following the conference call by calling 1-888-286-8010 in the U.S. and Canada; +1-617-801-6888 international, reservation number: 91217610.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

This release refers to operating cash flow (operating income before depreciation, amortization of intangible assets, and stock-based compensation expense, or OCF), which is a non-GAAP financial measure. The most comparable GAAP measure is income from operations. The estimated annual OCF benefit of $275 million included in this press release is the estimated annual benefit in income from operations of $500 million less approximately $225 million of estimated annual savings in depreciation, amortization and stock-based compensation expense.

Source: http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com

BOSTON, June 10 (Reuters) Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) is getting ready to unveil a long-anticipated free anti-virus service for personal computers that will compete with products sold by Symantec Corp (SYMC.O) and McAfee Inc (MFE.N).

A Microsoft spokesman said on Wednesday that the world's biggest software maker is testing an early version of the product with its own employees. Microsoft would "soon" make a trial version, or product beta, available via its website, he added, but declined to provide a specific date.

Symantec shares fell 0.5 percent on Nasdaq and McAfee fell 1.3 percent on the New York Stock Exchange, while Microsoft was up 2.1 percent. The Nasdaq composite index .IXIC was down 0.47 percent.

Investors are closely monitoring the free service, code-named Morro after Brazil's Morro de Sao Paolo beach, amid concern it could hurt sales of products from Symantec and McAfee, which generate billions of dollars of revenue a year protecting Windows PCs from attacks by hackers.

"It's a long-term competitive threat," said Daniel Ives, an analyst with FBR Capital Markets, though he added that the near-term impact was minimal.

Microsoft has said that Morro will offer basic features for fighting a wide range of viruses, which would likely make it comparable to low-end consumer products from Symantec and McAfee that cost about $40 per year.

Their top-selling products are security suites that come with features including encryption, firewalls, password protection, parental controls and data backup.

Three years ago, Microsoft entered that market with Live OneCare, which turned out to be a commercial flop. It announced plans in November to kill that product suite, saying it would launch the free Morro service by the end of 2009.

Analysts said they are looking forward to Morro's beta to see exactly how its features compare to those in products from competitors.

Microsoft has said it will provide protection from several types of malicious software including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans.

Officials with Symantec and McAfee have said they do not see Morro as a threat. 

"Microsoft's free product is basically a stripped down version of the OneCare product Microsoft pulled from the shelves," said Symantec Consumer division president Janice Chaffin. "A full Internet security suite is what consumers require today to stay fully protected."

Joris Evers, a spokesman for No. 2 security software maker McAfee, said his company is already enjoying strong growth despite competition from free anti-virus products that are on the market.

"On a level playing field, we are confident in our ability to compete with anyone who might enter the marketplace," he said.

A spokeswoman for Trend Micro Inc (4704.T), the No. 3 player, declined to comment. (Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Steve Orlofsky, Brian Moss, Richard Chang)

Source: http://www.reuters.com

[QUOTE]
After a nearly five month search, Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said it has found a new executive to lead its charge against Google Inc. in the online search and advertising business: Qi Lu, a technologist who was previously a top executive at Yahoo Inc.

The move represents a switching of teams for Dr. Lu, whose former employer was the target of a $47.5 billion acquisition offer that Microsoft abandoned earlier this year. When he begins work as president of the online services group at the Redmond, Wash., company on Jan. 5, Dr. Lu, 47 years old, will face the formidable task of improving Microsoft from a distant third place position in Internet search, behind Google and Yahoo. His familiarity with Yahoo could make that easier if Microsoft is able to strike a deal to acquire Yahoo's search business, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said he's keen to do.

In the first joint interview together, Mr. Ballmer and Dr. Lu on Friday morning discussed their plan for making Microsoft more competitive on the Internet. Mr. Ballmer also reiterated his interest in acquiring in Yahoo's search business and how it would be better for both companies if they can do a deal "sooner than later."

Excerpts of the telephone interview with both men follow:

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Steve, was this a difficult or particularly long search to find the right person to run your online business?

STEVE BALLMER: I'll say, no, actually to both. Somebody might have a different point of view. I think people would have wished, hey, just fill the job quickly. But "difficult" would imply it was tough to find the right guy. I think it was important for me to take the time to get to know many people in the online industry, which was great.

 
Steve Ballmer

And yet, it was not a difficult choice, I think, for what we need to accomplish, you know, sort of four key things. There's general management, and I've got great confidence in Qi [pronounced "Chee"] as a leader and manager. There's technology, certainly Qi has an unparalleled background. There's product as opposed to technology, and really what it takes to build a winning product. And if you want to build a winning product in search, again, there's no better guy on the planet than Qi, so I felt very good about that.

WSJ: His predecessor running Microsoft's Online Business had more of a sales and marketing background. Did you decide that deep technical skills first and foremost were the most important thing for improving your position in search?

Mr. Ballmer: There's a difference between technical skills and product skills. Both were important. There are a lot of people in our industry who understand the technology, but don't actually understand really what it takes to build a winning product. So perhaps the most important thing was the product skills, and really the understanding of what people want, and what they're trying to accomplish and get done. Then it's also great to have the skills to map that back into the technology itself.

We did restructure the job some, which made it easier to focus in on product, and general management as opposed to other things. We did take our sales force and move it so that we could manage it under our chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner, and that made it more pure to focus in on this issue. Also, because we moved the Windows Live pieces into the Windows group, which I think is appropriate, it created clear focus on search, portal and advertising as the product.

WSJ: Qi, what are your first priorities for helping Microsoft improve its competitive position on the Internet?

QI LU: I haven't started yet, but looking from outside, at the fundamental level, product quality, user experience is the key to being competitive in this space that we're in. Focusing on fundamental areas such as talent, core infrastructures, basic processes of doing things will be very important areas for me to focus. The way I do things I usually always prefer to have a very clear strategy and be very focused. At the same time to be very rock solid, and crisp in execution.

Qi Lu

WSJ: At Yahoo you were obviously in a competitive position against the dominant player in this business, Google. Do you feel like at Microsoft you will have better resources to more effectively compete against Google?

Mr. Lu: In my interaction with Steve the one thing that impressed and won me over is the level of commitment they are investing. They're investing resources, they're investing in our ability to distribute a product, investing in things that we can do to ensure we have at the highest quality of user experience, and that's very, very important.

WSJ: Do you feel at Yahoo that level of investment wasn't as high as it needed to be?

Mr. Lu: Yahoo was operating in a slightly different situation. The company has a different profile, type of business, and the operating margin structures it needs to operate with. So it's different.

WSJ: Steve, should a Yahoo search deal come to pass with Microsoft, would Qi's hiring make it easier for Microsoft to integrate whatever assets it acquired from Yahoo?

Mr. Ballmer: I think a search deal makes great sense for Microsoft, and Yahoo, and I think I've been very open about that. That's as true with Qi joining us as it was before Qi joined us. Obviously the logistics of any such integration…can only be simpler by having somebody who will know both sides. But, that was not a factor in hiring Qi.

Our focus on portal and search is super-strong, and even if we never do a Yahoo deal or anything else, I wanted to have Qi come on board. It is kind of a bonus that if something happened with Yahoo I'm sure it's somewhat simpler.

WSJ: In your last comments on this, you said that there are no talks going on with Yahoo. Has that changed? Are there any kind of talks about a search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo at the moment?

Mr. Ballmer: The answer is no, but I wouldn't tell you if there were. But in this case it's easy.

WSJ: Do you feel like you're in a situation where you can go slow with regards to Yahoo and any conversations, or do you need to move quickly?

Mr. Ballmer: We're fully prepared to compete without any partnership with Yahoo. We don't need to act. Would it be advantageous for both of us to make a deal? Look, the fundamental basis for doing the search deal with Yahoo has to do with critical mass in the advertising marketplace. It doesn't have to do with technology, or any of these other things, it really is a market phenomenon. Together we would have more advertisers….which means we'd have more relevant ads on our page. We'd have higher monetization levels possible in front of us because there would be more people bidding on more key words. Most importantly, Google would have perhaps a real credible competitor sooner.

I think good ideas are usually better done quickly than slowly, so it would probably be better for both us, and certainly for Yahoo, if we were to do it sooner than later. But at the end of the day, that would have be something Yahoo would be as interested in as I have expressed our interest.

WSJ: Do you think that that's unlikely before Yahoo finds a new CEO?

Mr. Ballmer: It's not my place to speculate there, I'm afraid.

WSJ: Qi, let me turn this around. You were at Yahoo when Microsoft made its acquisition bid. I'm curious what it was like being on the other side, and how you, as a Yahoo person, viewed Microsoft and how others inside the company viewed Microsoft?

Mr. Lu: For me, Microsoft has been one of the most, if not the most, successful technology companies. And the one thing you can say about Microsoft is about their competitiveness. They may not get it right in the first version of the product, but they're coming at and they'll keep coming at it and improving the product. And so we always respected that, and viewed Microsoft as you can never count them out as very worthy competitors.

With regards to the acquisition, certainly the management team and the board of directors made their decisions, and we all know about that now. Sometimes the employees, different people have different views. That's perhaps all I have to say.

WSJ: Do you think if the scenario that we talked about should come to pass, some kind of collaboration between Microsoft and Yahoo on search, that top talent would remain, and that there would be a relatively smooth integration of their assets with Microsoft?

Mr. Lu: Based on what I know of, I think certainly a case can be made that a lot of employees will remain, and they will be able to put together a smooth transition. Just to add to what Steve said earlier, the key value of consolidating the two search assets is by combining the supply and demand in the ad marketplace so that you have more advertiser base, and given that you will have ads that are more relevant, serve the user better, and create more [return on investment] for the advertisers, and certainly provide more yield, economic value for all parties involved.

WSJ: Should we look at an improvement in Microsoft's market share position in search, or are there other measurements by which you'll judge that the Internet business is headed in the right direction at Microsoft?

Mr. Lu: To me, ultimately in the search case, it's market share. Beside search share, there's a different set of metrics that can tell us how competitive our products are. There's a lot about measuring the quality of the search experience, and there's also a lot of measurements you can use that will tell us how effective our ad marketplace is at being able to provide yield.

Mr. Ballmer: The only thing I would add is, on the portal side of the business -- that's where we actually have our biggest revenue stream today -- we have a lot we think we can do to continue to drive page views.

WSJ: Can you set some expectations for how much you think you can improve your market share in the absence of a deal with Yahoo?

Mr. Ballmer: I don't choose to make forecasts on that kind of stuff ever. It's a function of a lot of things – how rapidly the product improves, how quickly we can sort of capture user imagination on the kinds of improvements we're making, how effective we are in getting our search product distributed. I said to our shareholders that we are prepared to invest significant amounts of money in our online business, 5 to 10 percent of operating income if we had to, for the next five years.

WSJ: Steve, are you concerned that with the departure of Brian McAndrews, the former senior vice president of Microsoft's advertiser and publisher solutions group, and before him Steve Berkowitz, that Microsoft may seem like a inhospitable place to outside executives who come in to run your online business?

Mr. Ballmer: No. You probably should ask Qi. He's an outside exec who is coming in to run our online business.

WSJ: But he doesn't start until January.

Mr. Ballmer: Yes, that's right. So if you want to scare him away, this is the call, I guess. I'm teasing.

No, I don't think so. I mean, Brian, we acquired his company [aQuantive]. And Brian is a CEO, he's been a CEO for a long-time, and you've got to make a judgment. It's different than acquiring a small startup, and when Brian came in he said, hey, look, I'll help you with the transition and I'll see what I think. And he had a chance to do that, this is sort of the right time for him to make a transition. We don't say he's retiring because I suspect he'll be a public company CEO again someplace in the not too distant future, but he's been a great facilitator of the integration of aQuantive, for which I'm very thankful. He's a good friend. Our sons play on the same basketball team.

In general, I would say we have a very good track record in terms of executives coming in from the outside, but a very good record is never 100%. I was talking to the CEO of a Fortune 10 -- the head of HR for a Fortune 10 company – and I said what's your track record? He said we keep about 50%. I said, well, we do a lot better than that we keep about 70-75%. So I think we do pretty well.

WSJ: It was pretty widely known that Brian McAndrews was interested in this job, running the online business. Did you make any effort to try and keep him in some other role?

Mr. Ballmer: I love Brian. It would have been great to have him stay at Microsoft, but I respect the decision he made for his career goals and ambitions.

WSJ: Microsoft I think has hired another Yahoo, former Yahoo technologist, Sean Suchter. Are you specifically attempting to hire talent away from Yahoo?

Mr. Ballmer: I should take that, because Qi has had absolutely nothing to do with any recruiting we've been doing as a company to date, because he hasn't started. We have an A team in search. We have a great competitor, but we have an A team. Sean, who I had a chance to talk with during the process, is another great talent. I'm sure there's other people we've hired from Yahoo. I've been reading there's people they've hired from us. It's a small industry, so some of the talent will flow that direction.

WSJ: Steve, does the souring economy affect your ability to improve your position in search, either on the upside or the downside?

Mr. Ballmer: I don't think it makes a material difference.

WSJ: I'm curious if any pull back in spending on advertising will negatively affect your goals here.

Mr. Ballmer: You asked about market position, which to me implies share. Will online advertising suffer with the economy? The answer to that is sure, of course it will. It makes the P&L tougher. There's no question about that.

On the other hand, relative to building share and position in search and portal, and share of advertising, I don't think the economy is really a factor for us. I don't know if you know the old story about the two guys out in the woods who see a bear, and one guy says, boy, we'd better really run fast, or that bear is going to get us. We've got to run faster than the bear does. And the other guy says, no, I've just got to run faster than you do. In this economy, maybe that's the right way to think about it.
[/QUOTE]

Source: online.wsj.com

In addition to stating that PlayStation 3 owners are most likely to have other "next-generation" consoles than Wii and Xbox 360 owners, NPD claimed that only 10% of PS2 owners have a PS3. In the realm of portables, 45% of PSP owners have a Nintendo DS, but only 21% of DS owners have a PSP.

Despite the broad declarations, NPD did not provide specific figures for console and PC playtime. Likewise, an exact breakdown showing the ownership patterns of those that have multiple "next-generation" consoles was absent from the release.

Using information gathered back in January and February, the report separated the North American game-playing populace into the following seven categories, totaling 174 million gamers:

• Young Heavy Gamers: 22%
• Seconday Gamers: 20%
• Console Games: 17%
• Offline PC Gamers: 15%
• Online PC Gamers: 14%
• Avid PC Gamers: 9%
• Extreme Gamers: 3%

The segments are categorized by usage, ownership and frequency numbers, though the specifics definitions were not provided.

Though PCs were "used more than any single console for gaming," NPD stressed that "Console Gamers, Young Heavy Gamers and Extreme Gamers are more likely to use consoles than a PC to play video games."

As for sales, NPD reports that 14% of games purchased between November 2007 and January 2008 were digital downloads. Extreme Gamers bought nearly 24 titles across the three month period, with NPD claiming that figure is "over seven times more than the second leading purchasing segment.""Although Extreme Gamers are heavily involved with the industry, they represent a small portion of the potential market for any new game that comes to market," commented analyst Anita Frazier. "In order to promote continued growth, we must better understand all of the gaming segments."

Details on the methodology of the report are as follows:

"The data was collected from more than 20,000 members of NPD's online consumer panel, ages two to 65+. Responses for consumers ages six to 12 were captured by instructing a parent to take his or her child in this age range to the computer to answer the questions, either with or without the parent's assistance. Qualified respondents reported they personally play video games on a PC, on a console or portable system, or on another device such as a mobile phone. The following four key variables were used to create the gamer segments: ownership; usage; frequency; and purchased/received video games. Final survey data was weighted to represent the U.S. population of individuals ages 2 and older. Fieldwork was conducted from January 11-February 5, 2008."

Note: This study was conducted in January, meaning that questions that refer to consumer behavior in the past three months include the Christmas/Hanukkah holidays.

[/QUOTE]

Source:www.shacknews.com

For those who missed Steve Jobs WWDC keynote, here's a nice 60-second summarized version that basically shows everything you need to know about the iPhone 3G. 

>> From an interview with Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, on sfgate.com:
[QUOTE]

• Q: It sounds like you are also seeing advertising opportunities with the Xbox. How do you do that without alienating or aggravating your users?
• A: Whether it's a phone or the Xbox or the PC, the ideal goal is to make the ad relevant in a part of the experience, as opposed to something that intrudes on the space. In the game space, one of the things we have found is making ads part of the game. If you're in the car racing game and you're driving around the city, product placement works. There are ads in a city. There are billboards in a city. We can place those and we can actually dynamically rotate ads to those locations.
  We've done some very successful campaigns with big, national brands like Nike, Doritos and Toyota that want to get their brand in front of a very desirable target audience. They want to do it in a way that's relevant. People are sponsoring game development contests. They are sponsoring tournaments. Toyota has done that. Toyota has actually launched products in our games where the car will appear in a game. People can race the car and it's a special car that you get for achieving a certain level in the game. There are really creative ways to get people exposure to these things.
• Q: In January, Warner Bros. announced that it was going to support Blu-ray, the high-definition DVD format. Since then, the rival HD DVD format has gone away. Microsoft supported HD DVD with an Xbox HD DVD attachment. What is your plan there?
• A: Our plan continues to focus on high-definition experiences. Xbox 360 has a great ability to deliver those through the Xbox Live (online download) service. It's a great way to get the high-definition concept because it's right there. There's no additional media. There is nothing you need to purchase.
  If you look at the Blu-ray player market, you haven't seen the acceleration everybody expected (since the demise of HD DVD). It's not as much about whether all the content is in a Blu-ray format or a HD DVD format. You have to look at how fundamentally compelling the difference is between a progressive scan DVD player and the picture that it can produce and what you get on a high-definition player. The reality is there is some difference, but most people look at it and say, "I am not going to pay extra for that."
• Q: So no plans for Blu-ray in the next generation Xbox?
• A: No. There is nothing to even talk about right now with regard to the next generation. That is so far out that there isn't anything to talk about.
• Q: Just the same, we are coming up on a few years now with the Xbox 360. Is there some point when you start to say that we need to start looking at its replacement?
• A: There is no real projection on that. The last generation for the Xbox was a little short because we entered the market a little bit later in the cycle. I suspect this time the cycle will be a little bit longer for us.
  In terms of our actual thinking about that, we started thinking about the next generation before we finished creating the last one. It's a continuous process. We're always thinking about new ideas and new things. We don't have anything specific to talk about. There are so many things going on in the current generation that will keep us more than occupied for the foreseeable future.

[/QUOTE]

Source:sfgate.com via xbox-scene.com

[QUOTE]
Dear Members of the Board:

It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.

While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement. We understand that you have been meeting to consider and assess your alternatives, including alternative transactions with others in the industry, but we've seen no indication that you have authorized Yahoo! management to negotiate with Microsoft. This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.

During these two months of inactivity, the Internet has continued to march on, while the public equity markets and overall economic conditions have weakened considerably, both in general and for other Internet-focused companies in particular. At the same time, public indicators suggest that Yahoo!'s search and page view shares have declined. Finally, you have adopted new plans at the company that have made any change of control more costly.

By any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today. We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment, even after reviewing your public disclosures relating to your future prospects.

Given these developments, we believe now is the time for our respective companies to authorize teams to sit down and negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies that will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders, creating a more efficient and competitive company that will provide greater value and service to our customers. If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board. The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.

It is unfortunate that by choosing not to enter into substantive negotiations with us, you have failed to give due consideration to a transaction that has tremendous benefits for Yahoo!'s shareholders and employees. We think it is critically important not to let this window of opportunity pass.
[/QUOTE]

Source: microsoft.com

Definition: Software Update =  A new release (or version) of a piece of software that is generally understood to be an error correction release and does not contain new functionality. (as opposed to Upgrade) Updates are usually numbered by a change in the digit after the decimal. eg: V1.1 to V1.2

So far so good .... but some companies are redefining this. Example Apple:

[QUOTE]
What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong. It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that’s bad — not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole Web. What they did yesterday was to use their updater for iTunes to also install their Safari Web browser –what follows is some background and analysis.

Keeping software up to date is hard — hard for consumers to understand what patches are for, how to make sure they’re up to date.

It’s also critically, crucially important for the security of end users and for the security of the Web at large that people stay current. If people don’t update software regularly, it is impossible for them to remain safe; good software developers are creating improvements constantly. That’s why Mozilla spends so much time making sure our own Automatic Update Service works, and why we spend so much time agonizing over the user interface for the updates. We look at the data every time we do an update; we obsess about what we call “uptake rates” — the percentage of Firefox users who are on the most current version of the browser a day or a week or a month after release. As a result, Firefox users are incredibly up to date, and adopt very quickly.

There’s an implicit trust relationship between software makers and customers in this regard: as a software maker we promise to do our very best to keep users safe and will provide the quickest updates possible, with absolutely no other agenda. And when the user trusts the software maker, they’ll generally go ahead and install the patch, keeping themselves and everyone else safe.

Anyone who uses iTunes on Windows has Apple Software Update installed on their machines, which does just what I’ve described above: it checks for new patches available for Apple-produced software on your Windows machine, alerts the user to the availability, and allows updates to be installed. That’s great — wonderful, in fact. Makes everyone more likely to have current, patched versions of Apple’s software, and makes everyone safer.

Here’s screen that comes up on Windows XP if you’ve got iTunes installed:

(photo credit CNET)

The problem here is that it lists Safari for getting an update — and has the “Install” box checked by default — even if you haven’t ever installed Safari on your PC.

That’s a problem because of the dynamic I described above — by and large, all software makers are trying to get users to trust us on updates, and so the likely behavior here is for users to just click “Install 2 items,” which means that they’ve now installed a completely new piece of software, quite possibly completely unintentionally. Apple has made it incredibly easy — the default, even — for users to install ride along software that they didn’t ask for, and maybe didn’t want. This is wrong, and borders on malware distribution practices.

It’s wrong because it undermines the trust that we’re all trying to build with users. Because it means that an update isn’t just an update, but is maybe something more. Because it ultimately undermines the safety of users on the web by eroding that relationship. It’s a bad practice and should stop.

(I’ll make 2 points that I want to make very clear: (1) this is not a criticism of Safari as a web browser in any way, and (2) I have no objections to the basic industry practice of using your installed software as a channel for other software. This is specifically a criticism of the way they’re using the updating system. I’d much prefer to be writing about Firefox, but this practice hurts everyone and is important to note.)
[/QUOTE]

Source: http://john.jubjubs.net/

[QUOTE]
Microsoft stepped up to deliver iHD (later renamed HDi), which was a trademarked implementation of HD DVD's XML markup language. Toshiba liked it. They made HDi functionality a standard for HD DVD players, and eventually partnered with Microsoft to expand HDi's reach by founding the Advanced Interactivity Consortium. The primary goal of this group was forging industry relationships to further promote HDi in emerging outlets like downloadable and streaming media.

The deal gave HD DVD its competitive next-gen features, but here's the rub: Microsoft didn't need physical media to implement HDi. All of HDi's interactive bells and whistles could theoretically be applied to downloadable video content, as long as a runtime environment was available. Even as the disc format war raged on, elements of HDi's runtime environment showed up in Microsoft products like the Xbox 360 and Vista.

So, let's put everything together. Microsoft has a popular gaming console and an operating system that are HDi compatible. It also has a group of developers working on HDi applications, and a 360-accessible HD video library that could feasibly be outfitted with next-gen interactivity features. All that's left is the dog and pony show needed to convince content providers that HDi-enhanced content and Microsoft's video outlets are key to making HD video downloads a viable revenue stream.
[/QUOTE]

Full Story: thestandard.com

[QUOTE]
Apparently, even subliminal exposure to the Apple logo can make you 'think different.' Researchers at Duke University subjected participants to subliminal images of the iconic Apple and IBM logos (during what subjects thought was a visual acuity test), and those who were shown the Apple logo generated more creative ideas after the test than did those who were shown the IBM logo. In a second test, subjects exposed to the Disney logo acted more honestly than those who saw an E! Channel logo.
[/QUOTE]

Here's a preprint of the paper (PDF) due for publication in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Source: http://apple.slashdot.org/

[QUOTE]
Microsoft today announced it is lowering the estimated retail price (ERP) for its Xbox 360™ family of consoles in Europe. Now with an entry-level ERP of €199.99/£159.99, Xbox 360 is a mass market entertainment proposition with something to offer for every interest and budget.

From Friday, 14th March, Xbox 360, which includes a 20GB hard drive and one wireless controller, will have an ERP of €269.99/£199.99 - a saving of €80/£50 on the current ERP. The Xbox 360 Elite, which comes with a massive 120GB hard drive enabling consumers to store huge quantities of content downloaded from Xbox LIVE™ Marketplace as well as their own music, will have an ERP of €369.99/£259.99 - a saving of €80/£40. The Xbox 360 Arcade console, perfect for those wishing to make their first foray into the gaming and entertainment world of Xbox, will have an ERP of €199.99/£159.99 - a saving of €80/£20.

Xbox 360 is the number one next-gen console in EMEA, owning 42% of the market in terms of life-to-date revenue. Xbox 360 continues to enjoy the highest software attach rate of any game console in Europe with more than 7.0 games sold per console (PS3: 3.8; Wii 3.5) after 26 months on the market .
The new ERPs are part of Microsoft's ongoing strategy to open up the ultimate in high-definition gaming and entertainment to an even wider audience, with an offering for everyone:

Best Choice for Families:

• Xbox 360 grows as your family does, offering games and entertainment for every member of the family - from movies to games to music videos.
• With over 150 3+ rated games and unparalleled parental controls, parents can feel good about their kids playing Xbox 360
  

Most Diverse Entertainment:

• Xbox 360 offers great choice in high-definition entertainment
• Xbox Live Video Store offers a wide variety of movies to download, both in HD and SD, enabling great entertainment in the living room at the press of a button
• It's easy to view and enjoy video and photos on Xbox 360 as well as connect wirelessly to share content with a Windows Media Center PC
  

The Best Games:

• There will be over 1,000 games available on Xbox 360 by the end of the year, with something for every skill level, interest and taste.
• New community games allow gamers to sample the best of indie games, providing innovative new ways to play and enjoy
• Blockbuster franchises like Grand Theft Auto IV, with exclusive downloadable episodes on Xbox LIVE, and Rock Band make Xbox 360 the place to be this Spring
• Xbox 360 exclusives for 2008 include Fable 2, Gears of War 2 and Too Human, setting new standards for next-generation gaming

"Xbox 360 is now mass market in Europe," said Chris Lewis, Vice President, Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Business Europe. "We have reached and surpassed several key milestones that form part of our long term strategic plan to achieve critical mass in Europe; and our portfolio now offers the kind of mainstream entertainment experiences that secure wider appeal for Xbox 360. These factors allow us to execute on our strategy to widen the market for Xbox 360, as planned.

"We continue to offer intense, immersive gaming experiences for gamers - but now we're priced in a way that will allow new consumers to find out for themselves why Xbox 360 is the ultimate in high-definition entertainment." said Lewis. "History shows that €199/£159 is the price point where a console's audience begins to expand, and with these new ERPs in place we're ready to bring more consumers into the Xbox 360 world."
[/QUOTE]

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/

[QUOTE]
Microsoft Corp. is poised to try a hostile takeover of Yahoo Inc. by nominating its own slate of directors if the Sunnyvale Web portal fails to start negotiating its sale, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Microsoft's plan comes a little more than a week after Yahoo formally rebuffed a $44.6 billion acquisition proposal that would combine the two technology industry pioneers. The unsolicited offer substantially undervalued Yahoo and was not in the interest of its shareholders, Yahoo's board said.

Unwilling to take no for an answer, the Redmond, Wash., software behemoth is preparing a hostile bid - a proxy fight - that would ratchet up what is already among Silicon Valley's most high-profile takeover sagas. Such a tactic would open the door to months of campaigning by both companies for the hearts and minds of investors, who would be buffeted by conflicting viewpoints about Yahoo's future.

For Microsoft, trying to install a new board has its obvious advantage, aside from stacking a merger vote in the company's favor. The cost would be around $20 million to $30 million - mostly for legal and adviser fees - compared with spending billions dollars on a sweetened merger offer, according to the source, who is not authorized to speak publicly about the developments.

A Microsoft spokesman would say only that a hostile bid is one of many options being explored. A Yahoo spokeswoman reiterated that her company is evaluating several alternatives to the Microsoft bid, which, according to people familiar with the matter, include a potential partnership with News Corp., the owner of social-networking company MySpace.

To initiate a proxy fight, Microsoft would have to nominate a slate of Yahoo directors by March 14, the deadline for putting forward candidates. Investors would vote on the board's makeup in June during Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting.

Unlike many companies, Yahoo's board is structured so all 10 board members come up for election at the same time. Rather than having to wait years to get a majority, Microsoft therefore could wrest control in one fell swoop.

Simultaneous with the boardroom fight, Microsoft also plans to appeal directly to Yahoo investors to buy the Microsoft shares in what is known as an exchange offer, the source said. The process would require Microsoft to publish the number of shares it is willing to buy and the price it is willing to pay in its own shares.

Microsoft executives have repeatedly called their offer a full and fair price, although it has dropped in value to around $40 billion since it was originally offered Feb. 1 because it is pegged to Microsoft's share price. Executives have indicated that they won't increase their bid, although analysts say the company is likely to do so.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at University of Richmond who follows proxy fights, said that Microsoft is probably using the threat of a hostile takeover to scare Yahoo's board to the negotiating table. He cautioned that hostile takeovers, even when successful, often make bad business sense because they breed ill will among employees at the acquired company.

"These kinds of takeover bids aren't always successful, and they tend to be nasty," Tobias said. "Even if Microsoft wins, it may lose in terms of merging the corporate cultures."

Separately, Yahoo's board voted to provide employees with a more generous severance package if the company is acquired. Any full-time workers who are laid off without cause or who resign for good reason within two years of a merger will be able to collect their salaries for four months to two years, depending on their position.

With the plan, Yahoo, which is cutting 1,000 jobs, is trying to avoid any mass exodus of workers because of uncertainty surrounding Microsoft's potential takeover while adding extra costs onto the back of any company that takes over.

"It's a way of protecting you and putting your minds at ease so you can all focus on creating value for Yahoo," Jerry Yang, Yahoo's chief executive, said in an e-mail to employees Friday.
[/QUOTE]

Source: sfgate.com

[QUOTE]
Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."
Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.
This decision will not impact on Toshiba's commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.
[/QUOTE]

Source: www.toshiba.co.jp

[QUOTE]
Toshiba Corporation has decided to withdraw from next generation high-definition DVD production.

The company said it will continue to sell HD-DVD products for a while but will stop further development of HD DVD. Meanwhile, it said its DVD factories in Aomori Prefecture, northern Japan, would be closed.

Market observers said that Toshiba could suffer a loss of hundreds of millions of US dollars.
[/QUOTE]

Full Story: nhk.or.jp

[QUOTE]
With Microsoft’s announcement today to buy cell phone software maker Danger Inc., the deal may not only strengthen the software giant’s position in consumer mobile phones and strengthen defenses against Google’s Android platform, but also mean a new addition for gamers.

The acquisition will provide more applications to Xbox through existing Danger services, Microsoft said. However, the possibility of a portable Xbox arises from Danger’s wide range of software, which can be made capable of playing some Xbox games, with the company’s gadgets used as the foundation for a portable gaming device capable of making phone calls.

“Microsoft is a global leader with our Windows Mobile software and expanding mobile services,” said Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. “The addition of Danger serves as a perfect complement to our existing software and services, and also strengthens our dedication to improving mobile experiences centered around individuals and what they like.”

Microsoft intends to combine Danger’s applications, including HTML Web browsing, instant messaging, games, multimedia, social networking, and Web email into Xbox, as well as MSN, Zune, Windows Live, and Windows Mobile.

Danger’s broad software portfolio also provides the opportunity to play lightweight Xbox games in future versions, according to Dan Frommer from Forbes.

“Another plus: Because Danger doesn’t build its own gadgets, Microsoft can pick the manufacturing strategy that makes the most sense,” Frommer said. “For now, it can keep outsourcing devices to partners like Motorola, which also makes Windows Mobile phones. And later, if it wants, Microsoft can merge Danger’s gadgets into its Zune line -- or use it as the basis for a portable Xbox that also makes phone calls.”
[/QUOTE]

Source: gamerush.zoomshare.com

[QUOTE]
Yahoo has formally rejected Microsoft's USD 44.6 billion takeover bid.

In a statement, Yahoo said that its board "unanimously concluded that the proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo and our stockholders."

Yahoo also said that the offer substantially undervalues the company, failing to take into account its strong brand and global audience. "The board of directors is continually evaluating all of its strategic options in the context of the rapidly evolving industry environment and we remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all stockholders," the statement read.
[/QUOTE]

Source: gamesindustry.biz

[QUOTE]
[...]
"It's about time. Great for Microsoft. Great for Yahoo shareholders. These Internet markets are winner-take-all markets and they cannot be built. Time is too valuable. Yahoo has one of the best positions on the Internet because it's integrated brand (advertising) with search.
[...]
"They have to do it because they've tried everything they can do to fix MSN. Yahoo is the most visited site in the world, so it goes without saying that given the current valuation, this is the perfect time for them to buy it. "Google is running away with the search market and that's obviously the best part of the market. The likelihood that Google gets caught is slim to none. "You might not catch Google, but you can still be a legitimate player."
[...]
"We think it is great for Yahoo shareholders. This consolidates the marketplace down to Google versus Microsoft. Their multiple areas overlap -- not just search but also applications. Google's been pushing hard into the application space. "Yahoo mail continues to be much slower than the Gmail product. Yahoo search continues to lose share to Google. Asked whether Google might counterbid for Yahoo he said, "There is really nothing there that Google wants that they (Google) don't have."
[...]
"Microsoft has been getting more aggressive with acquisitions. We've seen them start to step up and buy large public players. Strategically, it makes sense. "It's a fair price. Clearly Yahoo shares have been under pressure. Microsoft wants to get it done, and get it done quickly. Trying to offer them a 10 percent premium would be kind of foolish. You'd create a problem, you'd let other bidders get into the fray.
[...]
[/QUOTE]

More on: http://www.reuters.com/

[QUOTE]
The openness of the Internet is what made Google -- and Yahoo! -- possible. A good idea that users find useful spreads quickly. Businesses can be created around the idea. Users benefit from constant innovation. It's what makes the Internet such an exciting place.

So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers.

This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first -- and should come first -- as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.
[/QUOTE]

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

[QUOTE]
Microsoft Corporation has announced that it has made a proposal to acquire Yahoo! for approximately USD 44.6 billion. The offer of USD 31 per share represents a 62 per cent premium over the stocks's January 31 closing price.

"We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

If the deal was accepted by Yahoo! and approved by regulatory agencies, it would be completed in the second half of calendar year 2008.
[/QUOTE]

Full Story: gamesindustry.biz

[QUOTE]
Want to know about how privately held Facebook is doing from a financial point of view?

Well, just ask Mark Zuckerberg!

This afternoon, at an all-hands meeting held in a Palo Alto, Ca. theater near the social networking site’s headquarters, the 23-year-old founder was quite voluble on that topic, outlining numbers that a more experienced CEO might think twice about unveiling to a large audience.

With an open dial-in number! Many employees, in fact, were horrified that Zuckerberg would be so blabby about such important financial information. Others loved it.

Most were simply surprised (although, to be fair, Google Co-Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin used to give a lot of detailed company info to their employees before going public, but in coordination with other execs).

“I can’t believe he was doing it,” said one. “It was really unbelievable.”

Believe it! Some highlights?

Revenue for Facebook for 2007 will be $150 million, as has been widely reported. But for 2008, Zuckerberg projected revenue to be increased to $300 to $350 million.

More interesting was the news that Facebook would spend $200 million next year on capital expenditures, which is a whole lot of servers.

By the way, more expenses, noted chatty Mark, those employee levels would rise to more than 1,000 in 2008 from 450 now.

And Zuckerberg also said the company’s EBITDA–earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and a number widely used by Wall Street as an indication of operating performance–would be $50 million in 2008.

That means, the company would have a negative cash flow of about $150 million (EBITDA minus CapEx), rather than break even, as it does now.

But who’s counting? Zuckerberg apparently said he did not care about maintaining EBITDA anyway.

That’s because Facebook collected $300 million in investments recently from Microsoft and other investors, which pegged the valuation of the company at $15 billion.
[/QUTOE]

Source: http://kara.allthingsd.com/

[QUOTE]
Adoption of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system is starting to pick up among businesses in the U.S.

Just under half--48 percent--of IT decision makers in the U.S. are using or evaluating Vista, according to a poll by IT services firm CDW.

CDW's third Windows Vista tracking poll since October 2006, this survey shows a 19 percentage-point increase in adoption since February 2007.

Vista migration is also increasing, with 35 percent of those surveyed saying they are in the process of moving to Vista. Just 12 percent said this last February. Thirteen percent of these migrations are complete and another third are due to be finished by May 2008.

CDW claimed this shows Microsoft's latest operating system is now seen as a more viable option in the mainstream business market.

Of those still testing and migrating to Vista, almost half said its performance and key features are "above expectations," with the top-rated features being security, performance, productivity, search, and updates.

Mark Gambill, CDW vice president, said the past year was one of "adaptations and learning for Microsoft, industry partners, and adopters alike."

Gambill added that, since people have begun to understand the benefits of the operating system, there has been a "steady move towards adoption."

The CDW survey also found an increase in Microsoft Office 2007 adoption, with 24 percent of businesses saying they'd made the move, compared to just 6 percent in the last survey.

The poll was conducted by Walker Information and covered 772 IT decision makers.
[/QUOTE]

Source: http://www.news.com/

[QUOTE]

Sun Microsystems is taking the plunge into the database market with the purchase of open source database developer MySQL for $1 billion ($800 million in cash in exchange for all MySQL stock and assumption of approximately $200 million in options).

With the move, announced Wednesday, Sun takes a big leap into the $15 billion database market and pits it against the likes of Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. MySQL (all resources) also gives Sun entry to some customers that may be interested in buying more equipment and software. MySQL counts Facebook, Google, Nokia and Baidu as customers.

During a conference call this morning Sun and MySQL executives sang kumbaya. On the call, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz called the MySQL deal the “most important acquisition in history of company” and added that the database firm will have “a central role” as Sun rolls out its open source strategy. Sun is in the process rolling up a complete open source stack, becoming the largest open source organization of world.

Here’s what makes MySQL interesting to Sun. About 20 percent of MySQL deployments run on Solaris, according to Sun estimates outlined on a conference call. Seventy five percent of MySQL deployments are not on Sun hardware. That gives Sun an opportunity to bundle hardware software and services. Although Schwartz noted that the software and hardware business operate separately MySQL could give Sun some leverage as customers look to consolidate vendors.

Sun (all resources) can also distribute MySQL through its channel and OEM partnerships and create various bundles. The overarching goal is to give MySQL more “commercial appeal” and boost adoption of open source software in the enterprise.

In a statement, Schwartz said the MySQL purchase puts his company at “the center of the global Web economy” since the open source database provider is entrenched at Web giants. MySQL is included in that platform that includes Linux, Apache and PHP/Perl commonly known as LAMP.

Schwartz followed up on his blog:

We’re putting a billion dollars behind the M in LAMP. If you’re an industry insider, you’ll know what that means - we’re acquiring MySQL AB, the company behind MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database.

You’ll recall I wrote about a customer event a few weeks ago, at which some of the world’s most important web companies talked to us about their technology challenges. Simultaneously, we gathered together some of the largest IT shops and their CIO’s, and spent the same two days (in adjoining rooms) listening to their views and directions.

Both sets of customers confirmed what we’ve known for years - that MySQL is by far the most popular platform on which modern developers are creating network services.

One big question is what Sun does next to build out its stack of open source software and other applications covering middleware, storage and virtualization. Sun’s software lineup now includes Java, MySQL, OpenSolaris and GlassFish.

The company can now pair MySQL with Solaris and could fill out its roster with other targeted acquisitions. A large scale merger with a company like Red Hat is probably a non-starter though given Sun’s infatuation with Solaris.

Sun plans to integrate MySQL into its software, sales and service groups and MySQL CEO Marten Mickos will stay after the acquisition.

Mickos on the conference call added that the deal makes “wonderful sense” because the combined company can offer a diversified software stack to multiple platforms.

In a statement Mickos said, “Sun’s culture and business model complements MySQL’s own by sharing the same ideals that we have had since our foundation — software freedom, online innovation and community and partner participation.”

Marten Mickos, MySQL CEO, joins the Sun open source soul train and managed a healthy exit for his company’s founders and investors, which includes Benchmark Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, Index Ventures, Holtron Ventures, Intel Capital, Presidio STX, Red Hat, Scope Capital and various angels.

Other questions about the deal remain. Among them:

How will the MySQL community handle being part of Sun? Sun is a member of the open source community, but has been controversial and viewed as late to the game on taking Java to the masses. Sun has contributed a lot, but folks don’t like change. Sun plans to optimize and bundle MySQL with its software and hardware, but if this is viewed as a sales pitch there will be issues. One talkbacker in this post is already skeptical. I’m curious to see the community reaction here.

Schwartz wrote:

MySQL is already the performance leader on a variety of benchmarks - we’ll make performance leadership the default for every application we can find (and on every vendor’s hardware platforms, not just Sun’s - and on Linux, Solaris, Windows, all). For the technically oriented, Falcon will absolutely sing on Niagara… talk about a match made in heaven.

Can Sun bridge the enterprise-startup divide with MySQL? Schwartz on his blog noted the following:

CTO’s at startups and web companies disallow the usage of products that aren’t free and open source. They need and want access to source code to enable optimization and rapid problem resolution (although they’re happy to pay for support if they see value). Alternatively, more traditional CIO’s disallow the usage of products that aren’t backed by commercial support relationships - they’re more comfortable relying on vendors like Sun to manage global, mission critical infrastructure.

That’s an excellent point and presents a conundrum. If Sun makes MySQL more enterprise acceptable does that diminish its mojo with startups? Does it matter?

Mickos said the enterprise-startup bridge is a “big opportunity” and Sun can capitalize on because the MySQL roadmap will be sped up as the two companies focus on scale, performance and integration. “We stand out from most databases,” explained Mickos. “MySQL was developed for online world. Our relevance grows in the enterprise as they shift to Web-based architectures.”

Separately, Sun said it expects to report fiscal second quarter revenue of $3.6 billion and earnings of 28 cents to 32 cents a share. Wall Street is expecting earnings of 29 cents a share on sales of $3.58 billion.

[/QUTOE]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/

[QUOTE]
ZURICH (Reuters) - Shares in Swiss-based computer peripherals maker Logitech International SA rose as much as 12 percent on Thursday based on speculation Microsoft Corp would launch a takeover bid, traders said.

Analysts dismissed rumors of an $8 billion takeover bid as unlikely and Logitech board member Daniel Borel, the company's largest shareholder, said he had no reason to sell his 6 percent stake. He declined to comment on the speculation.

Such a deal would be Microsoft's biggest ever and while the world's largest software maker has recently shown a willingness to do bigger deals, it has focused most of its acquisitions on higher-margin Web and business software.

"I am a co-founder of Logitech. Would you be willing to sell your child?" Borel told Reuters in an interview.

"I have no reason to sell. But I will not be the one to decide. I own only some 6 percent so I will neither enable nor prevent a sale of Logitech."

Traders said rumors circulated that Logitech, with a market capitalization of about 7 billion Swiss francs ($6.3 billion), would receive a takeover bid at 48 francs per share from Microsoft.

This would be a premium of 38 percent to Wednesday's 34.80-franc closing price and value it at 9.16 billion francs.

"Rumors are rumors. I can't make any specific comment on them," Borel said. 

Continued...
[/QUOTE]

Source: http://www.reuters.com

[QUOTE]
Microsoft Corp's Xbox video gaming unit still fully backs Toshiba Corp's HD-DVD high-definition DVD format but could consider supporting Sony Corp's rival Blu-ray technology should consumers want it, an executive said on Tuesday.

"It should be consumer choice; and if that's the way they vote, that's something we'll have to consider," Albert Penello, group marketing manager for Xbox hardware said when asked whether Microsoft would support a Blu-ray DVD accessory in the event that HD-DVD failed.

Microsoft does not believe the surprise decision last week by Time Warner Inc unit Warner Bros, the top seller of home movies, to abandon HD-DVD format in favor of Blu-ray should affect sales of its Xbox 360 video game console, Penello said.

"I fundamentally don't think ... this has a significant impact on Xbox 360 versus (Sony's) PlayStation 3," Penello told Reuters in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
[/QUOTE]

Source:guardian.co.uk

[QUOTE]
The weekend saw devastating news arrive that's all but killed off HD DVD as a next-gen video format - Warner Bros. has dumped HD DVD and will release its films only on Blu-ray from May of 2008.

But insiders over at the AVS Forums - who are proper, actual insiders who work for companies like Microsoft, Universal and representatives of the Blu-ray consortium - reckon the decision could've gone either way.

Warner dumping HD DVD for Blu-ray went down to the wire - and it could've been persuaded, along with 20th Century Fox, to go exclusively with HD DVD instead.
In fact, they both nearly DID - an agreement was apparently in place between Warner, Fox and HD DVD backer Toshiba for the HD DVD WIN SCENARIO, only for Fox to pull out at the last minute and go crying off to Sony instead. Which gave Warner cold feet, so it went Blu-ray as well. It really was that close to being an HD DVD victory.

So if Warner and Fox had gone for HD DVD it'd be Blu-ray that'd look like the failed format today, and perhaps Bill Gates just might've pulled out an HD DVD-packing Xbox 360 from under his podium at CES last night, rather than blather on about a few new downloadable films instead.

In fact, I'd bet money that Microsoft's much-rumoured HD DVD-enabled Xbox 360 was one of the deals on offer to tempt Warner to support HD DVD exclusively in a "you support our format, we'll send out a few million more players over the next year" kind of deal.

But now Warner has dumped HD DVD, effectively killing the format, Microsoft has binned the prototype HD DVD 360 as well. Out of SPITE (and business sense).

No doubt we'll find out what really happened here in a few years, once the anger has subsided and the council has helped drain all the tears away. It's all been a terribly exciting weekend in the HD format war, in the geekiest and saddest way possible.

Related posts
Microsoft literally GIVING AWAY five HD DVD movies
Paramount dumps Blu-ray support and goes HD DVD exclusive

[/QUOTE]

Source:xboxer.tv

Direct from retailers all over the world, www.vgchartz.com present the latest next-gen console sales:

Source: www.vgchartz.com

[QUOTE]
The downside [of 2007] is that it was also full of disappointments large and small, from new memory technologies to nearly-broken operating systems (and we're not talking about Windows Vista). 2007 saw some hotly-awaited technologies sputter; they failed to live up to their lofty potential. That's not to say they never will; they just didn't by the end of this year.

10. DDR3
9. The VoIP Revolution
8. Safari for Windows
7. Mac OS X Leopard
6. Tech Piling Up in Landfills
5. The Never Ending Format War
4. DirectX 10
3. Games for Windows Live
2. AMD's CPU Lineup
1. Gaming as the Universal Boogieman

[/QUOTE]

Source: extremetech.com (2 pages)

[QUOTE]
To some music lovers, the fact that Josh Groban's Noel was the highest-selling album of 2007 is all the proof they need that major-label music is dying. To shareholders and label execs, though, the numbers are more important, and the numbers are grim: music sales are down 21 percent this Christmas season.

Variety has the latest music numbers from Nielsen Soundscan on music sales from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve. In 2007, 83.9 million albums were sold, down 21.4 million from last year. A 20 percent drop in sales is more than a blip; it's serious trouble.

The industry has been under pressure for years, of course. Back in August, we took a detailed look at trends in the movie, music, and video game businesses and noted that RIAA companies have seen sales drop by 11.6 percent between 2002 and 2006, even as movies hold steady and games are showing sales increases.

Data sources: RIAA, MPAA, The NPD Group

The recent news suggests that people are turning away from the CD as a Christmas present, due in large part to the rise of online music services like iTunes, eMusic, and the Amazon MP3 shop. Now that non-DRMed music is widely available from many popular artists, giving the gift of digital downloads can be an attractive option for holiday shoppers. Certainly it's becoming more mainstream; even my local supermarket now stocks iTunes gift cards.

Music buying has certainly been migrating online, and the spectacular decline of CD sales is putting extra pressure on labels to move more online copies of the music they publish. This is clearly one of the reasons that Warner, traditionally a staunch DRM defender, agreed to strip DRM from its tracks offered on Amazon; it needed to do something (anything) to shore up flagging sales.

But as albums move online, the "album" is also losing its luster. Download services let consumers pick and choose, and many buyers seem to do just that, snagging the hits and leaving the rest behind. While digital distribution enables this, it's hard to blame digital for the common perception that most top 40 albums contain their share of filler.

Padding out discs with mediocre tracks just won't work anymore, but it might also keep listeners from discovering the deeper cuts on quality discs. It's not just a sad day for music companies when customers decide to cherry-pick one Josh Ritter song, for instance; it's a sad day for the buyers as well, as they miss out on the complete album experience of a consummate artist.

Sadly, Ritter and his kind are the exception; so long as they are, music fans will continue to grab the hits, and they'll do so online. At least now they can get them DRM-free.
[/QUOTE]

Source: http://arstechnica.com

[QUOTE]
On the console front, last-gen consoles still rule in US households in terms of usage. PS2 captured 42 percent of all measured console minutes, while Xbox garnered 14 percent. Xbox 360 had 12 percent while PS3 had 3 percent.

Video Game Console Usage April-November 2007:

1. PS2 42.2%
2. Xbox 13.9%
3. Xbox360 11.8%
4. Gamecube 7.1%
5. Wii 5.5%
6. PlayStation3 2.5%
7. Other 17.1%
   

[/QUOTE]

Source: next-gen.biz

[QUTOE]
Google has announced the acquisition of communications security and compliance company Postini for $625million.

Postini offers a number of on-demand communications security and compliance solutions and serves more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users worldwide. Postini’s services include message security, archiving, encryption, and policy enforcement tools which can be used to protect a company’s email, instant messaging, and other web-based communications platforms. Notably Google was already utilizing Postini technology with Gmail; the acquisition would appear to be a case of Google wanting to own a technology it was already using under license.

The acquisition of Postini comes as a surprise following rumors in June that the company was working towards an IPO.

Dave Girouard, Vice President & General Manager, Google Enterprise wrote on the Google Blog of the need for Google to deliver products that support complex business rules, information security mandates, and an array of legal and corporate compliance issues.

We realized that we needed a more complete way to address these information security and compliance issues in order to better support the enterprise community. That’s why we’re excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Postini, a company that offers security and corporate compliance solutions for email, IM, and other web-based communications. Like Google Apps, Postini’s services are entirely hosted, eliminating the need to install any hardware or software. A leader in its field, Postini serves more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users, and was one of our first partners for Google Apps. Their email and IM management services include inbound and outbound policy management, spam and virus protection, content filtering, message archiving, encryption, and more. We will continue to support Postini’s customers and we look forward to the possibilities ahead.

The acquisition is expected to be finalized by the end of the third quarter 2007.
[/QUOTE]

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/

[QUOTE]
We've officially acquired Postini
9/13/2007 03:07:00 PM
Posted by Dave Girouard, Vice President & General Manager, Google Enterprise

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

[QUOTE]
Two closely timed events—today's release of Mac OS X Leopard and yesterday's big Microsoft earnings report—raise questions yet again about how Microsoft and Apple are perceived.

Apple it seems can do no wrong, while Microsoft can do no right. If someone passes gas in the room, someone blames Microsoft. Yet Apple can "brick" iPhones for which customers paid $400 to $600 and sales just soar.

Microsoft reports solid earnings quarter after quarter—and yesterday beat earnings estimates by more than $1 billion. Yet Microsoft's stock price is stuck at 2001 levels. Apple earnings results are good, but nowhere near what Microsoft delivers. Yet Apple's stock just climbs and climbs—this morning to more than $185 a share, up from about 77 bucks 52 weeks earlier.

A decade ago, things were different. Following the release of Windows 95, Microsoft could do no wrong. The company got huge preferential press treatment. I recall the week that Corel released the first new version of WordPerfect Suite since the acquisition from Novell. Microsoft talked up the unreleased Office 97, which got the majority of the press coverage.

By contrast, Apple was perceived as gasping for air, as being an also-ran. During the Gartner Symposium in October 1997, Dell CEO Michael Dell said how he would solve the Apple problem: "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." A decade later, Apple's market capitalization is about two-and-a-half times Dell's.

Apple's success is one of perception, spurred on by some very smart marketing and branding decisions made over the past six years. Apple is a cool brand that people want to be associated with. When people really like something, they also tend to be more forgiving of faults.

By contrast, Microsoft has huge perceptions problems, many of its own making. For years, Microsoft rushed OK products to market, leading to a popular (and usually right) perception that the company wouldn't get it right until the third release. Marketing 101: The products are the company, and its image. I hear people complain about buggy, crashy Windows, years after Microsoft released the very stable and reliable XP and, later, its Service Pack 2 update; the days of perennial crashes are long gone, but not forgotten.

Microsoft's past behavior has created some perception that its products aren't good enough, that the company doesn't care for customers. Windows Vista is a poster product for Microsoft's perception problems: It's got an undeserved bad reputation.

Perhaps a good analogy for comparing perceptions about Apple and Microsoft is to look at Beatles leaders John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Lennon could do no wrong, even when he really did no right (other than the Beatles being greater than Jesus fiasco). Lennon had a reputation for being a man of the people, a champion of peace and love.

But what did he really do? Lennon's idea of peace: sleep-ins and singing a song about peace for which he made millions. Lennon later lived in a posh apartment off Central Park, far removed "the people." By contrast, the more conservative (an arguably more boring) McCartney did more and toured more. His song, "Hey Jude," was written for Lennon's son Julian, who was essentially ostracized from his father after the Yoko Ono affair. Lennon was perceived to be the better Beatle, but McCartney showed more character, and he is the better songwriter.

Perception often isn't reality.

This week, a number of tech journalists gave glowing reviews of Leopard. They received the software on Mac Book Pro laptops provided by Apple. Nowhere have I seen anyone gripe about conflicts of interest. But when Microsoft's PR agency sent bloggers preloaded Vista notebooks ahead of the operating system's launch, there were ridiculous accusations of attempted bribery. The accusations made it difficult for those receiving the Vista units to say anything positive about the operating system.

Yesterday, I casually spoke (nothing through official channels) with a developer from PlantCML, which provided the reverse-911 system used to warn people in San Diego County to evacuate; wildfires ravaged the county this week. He praised Microsoft, which provided technicians throughout the weekend as PlantCML prepared for impending trouble. It's that kind of behind-the-scene support and service to partners for which Microsoft delivers but doesn't get enough credit.

Contrast Microsoft to Apple, which has a reputation for secrecy and being partner unfriendly. Apple's nearly 200 retail stores compete with loyal dealers and resellers. For years I've heard developers complain about Apple information disclosure; iPhone is the most recent example. Apple's move to Intel processors forced its two largest development partners, Adobe and Microsoft, to switch development tools and do massive recoding to port software.

Apple is perceived to be a progressive company. But it has a spotty record for green computing—even though one of its board members just won a Nobel prize for environmental work. Its record of giving is OK, but not exceptional. Apple has few programs (actually none that I know of) for helping people in emerging markets. Oh, but it's cool, though, and has style.

By contrast, Microsoft's focus for years has been the conversion to digital documents, which is hugely environmentally friendly. The company's chairman is trustee for a charitable organization with billions of dollars to give away. Microsoft's Unlimited Potential program seeks to use technology to empower people in emerging markets.

There's perception, and there's reality.

No question, Microsoft makes lots of boneheaded decisions, for which it is rightly vilified. But the company also deserves more praise than it gets. Meanwhile, strong brand perceptions—and their feel good association—lets Apple off even when it screws up.

Today will be no exception. The blogosphere will praise Leopard as the next best thing ever and use it as more proof why Vista sucks (It doesn't). Meanwhile, there will be little good said about Microsoft's colossal 2008 fiscal first quarter results. Those people acknowledging the earnings results will blame Microsoft for trying to kill Linux and babies in Africa as reasons for its success. The perception: When Microsoft competes, it cheats.

There is a double standard.
[/QUOTE]

Source: http://www.microsoft-watch.com

[QUOTE]
As Microsoft meets with financial analysts today, discussing its prospects in areas including consumer products, one subject clearly on the minds of analysts is the recent $1 billion charge taken by Microsoft from Xbox 360 malfunctions.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer addressed the topic on stage: "We have to learn from our mistakes. It was painful to announce the write-off that we had to announce, and yet we knew we had to take care of our customers," he said. He promised that Microsoft will be "world-class when we do hardware."
[/QUOTE]

Full Story: seattlepi.nwsource.com

[QUOTE]
Sony's Playstation 2 accounted for 42 percent of video game console usage during June far outstripping the Xbox, which had the second highest usage at 17 percent, according to Nielsen's latest GamePlay Metrics. The Xbox 360 had 8% usage.
Rounding up the list of consoles

[/QUOTE]
Full Story: kotaku.com

[QUOTE]
The PS3 isn't the only console with problems. Microsoft has an equal share of issues with the Xbox 360 that could prove just as harmful as Sony's. Here are six reasons why the Xbox 360 is in trouble, though not necessarily doomed.

1. It's unreliable.
2. It only sells marginally better than Xbox.
3. A recent string of bad publicity.
4. It has limited appeal.
5. It bleeds money.
6. It still doesn't sell in Japan.

Looking ahead to fall of 2007, the Xbox 360 has the biggest games lineup in recent memory, a lineup that includes BioShock, Mass Effect, Madden 08, Assassin's Creed, and more in addition to the hugely anticipated Halo 3. Master Chief's last adventure could easily be the best-selling game of the year and shift hundreds of thousands of 360s in the process. If there's one thing that sells consoles, it's great games, and Xbox 360 has them. Sadly, Microsoft's ongoing string of mishaps may keep them from truly ending the year (or the season for that matter) on a high note.
[/QUOTE]

Full Story: gamepro.com

At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, CEO Steve Ballmer gave a few more details about the company's move toward hosting services.

[QUOTE]
Microsoft's top executive outlined the company's plan to transition from a traditional software company to offering software plus services for the first time on Tuesday, giving some roadmap details for how the strategy will play out in the next year.

In a keynote at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shed more details on the plan other executives, such as Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, have been teasing out over the past year -- but not many more. He gave a time frame for the early part of the transition but mostly echoed what other executives have said about Microsoft's slow transition to adding hosted business services to its traditional software portfolio.

"For software plus services, the time is now," Ballmer said, finishing off the first of a raft of keynotes on the first day of Microsoft's annual partner conference. He said that over the next year, Microsoft will continue to sell mostly on-premises software, but there will be more evidence of the transition to its hybrid model as the year goes on.

Since Microsoft began talking about its plan to gradually transition to offering more hosted services last year in a speech by Ozzie at its TechEd Conference in Boston, many noted that the company had no choice. With such an entrenched business in enterprise and consumer desktop software, it would be impossible for Microsoft to be as nimble in offering hosted services as rivals like Google and Salesforce.com, which started their businesses as Web-based services providers. And a warmer reception for hosted services is clearly the direction the enterprise market is heading as businesses become more comfortable accessing Web-based services beyond the traditional consumer staples of e-mail and search that have been popular for years.

The transition to providing more services will touch every part of Microsoft's business, but some changes will be more obvious than others, Ballmer said. The user interface will be an important place for innovation in this area, and Microsoft's Silverlight technology is the cornerstone of that, he said. Microsoft introduced Silverlight, a browser plug-in that allows for rich video and interactive media experience to be delivered within Web sites, in April.

A solid services platform on which partners can build services and also that they can resell with Microsoft managing and hosting them also will be a clear sign of the transition, Ballmer said. Microsoft already is offering a combination of consumer-oriented services, such as Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Local Search, but will begin bulking up its portfolio of enterprise services as well, he said.

Microsoft already has unveiled business services like Exchange Hosted Services for enterprise messaging and Office Live hosted service for small businesses. There will be new and expanded services like these as Microsoft progresses further with its software plus services strategy, Ballmer said.
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Found on: www.infoworld.com

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Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter stated in a note to investors today that Microsoft will announce an Xbox 360 price cut tomorrow at the start of the revamped E3 Media & Business Summit, which takes place all week. He said that the price cut will affect all three Xbox 360 models. The $299 Core pack will drop to $249; the $399 Premium pack will drop to $349; and the recently released $479 Elite model will drop to $399.

Such a price cut would be a likely move for Microsoft following the PS3 pricing announcement today. Sony dropped the price of the 60GB PS3 from $599 to $499 and announced an 80GB PS3 with MotorStorm bundled for $599. The price drop appears to be in response to lower-than-expected sales of the console.
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Full Story: next-gen.biz

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Here's a trade secret that Microsoft is unlikely to publicly acknowledge. Sony's cutting the price on the PlayStation 3. How will Microsoft react? We'll find out soon. But a key part of the strategy is going to be a project code-named Falcon.

Falcon is the name for the latest internal electronics in the Xbox 360. It will have an IBM microprocessor and an AMD/ATI graphics chip that are manufactured in a 65-nanometer production process. These are cost-reduced chips that do the same thing as their 90-nanometer predecessors, but they're smaller.
Microsoft is in the process of qualifying the new Falcon chips and motherboard this summer. I expect it will launch Xbox 360s with the new Falcon innards this fall. That is why the company has been able to say that it has solved its manufacturing quality problems. Microsoft is likely to spend a little more money on heat sinks to make sure that the overheating problem doesn't resurface with Falcon.

The good thing about the smaller chips is that they will likely be easier to make in mass quantities and they shouldn't fail as often. Quality should automatically go up. That's what folks said about the 90-nanometer generation. But the 65-nanometer production process is a known quantity at this point at places such as IBM for sure and possibly at other suppliers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. So rather than fix the problems with the 90-nanometer machine, Microsoft has the easier problem now of getting a 65-nanometer machine to work right. I suspect that is why Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment & Devices group, said on Thursday on a conference call with analysts that the company has "its hands around it at the engineering level."
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Found on: www.xbox-scene.com
Full Story: mercurynews.com

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Mexico's telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim has overtaken Bill Gates to become the world's richest person, according to a respected Mexican financial website.

Carlos Slim Helú

Mr Slim is now worth $67.8bn (£33.6bn), above Microsoft founder Mr Gates' $59.2bn, Sentido Comun says. It said Mr Slim's wealth has rocketed into top place after the recent 27% surge in the share price of his largest company, America Movil.
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Full Story: bbc.co.uk

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BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA—Thursday, June 28, 2007—On Friday, June 29, not everyone in the continental U.S. will be waiting in line to purchase a $500 iPhone. In fact, hundreds of thousands of digital aficionados around the globe won't be standing in line at all, for June 29 marks the release of version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Version 2 of the GPL governs the world's largest body of free software—software that is radically reshaping the industry and threatening the proprietary technology model represented by the iPhone.

The author of the the GPL is Professor Richard M. Stallman, president and founder of the Free Software Foundation, and creator of the GNU Project. With his first revision of the license in sixteen years, version 3 of the GPL fights the most recent attempts to take the freedom out of free software—most notably, version 3 attacks “Tivoization”—and that could be a problem for Apple and the iPhone.

Now, from China to India, from Venezuela to Brazil, from Tivos to cell phones: Free software is everywhere and it is slowly building a worldwide movement of users demanding that they have control over the computers and electronic devices they own.

Tivoization and the iPhone?

“Tivoization” is a term coined by the FSF to describe devices that are built with free software, but that use technical measures to prevent the user from making modifications to the software—a fundamental freedom for free software users—and an attack on free software that the GPLv3 will put a stop to.

The iPhone is leaving people questioning: Does it contain GPLed software? What impact will the GPLv3 have on the long-term prospects for devices like the iPhone that are built to keep their owners frustrated?

Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF said, “Tomorrow, Steve Jobs and Apple release a product crippled with proprietary software and digital restrictions: crippled, because a device that isn't under the control of its owner works against the interests of its owner. We know that Apple has built its operating system, OS X, and its web browser Safari, using GPL-covered work—it will be interesting to see to what extent the iPhone uses GPLed software.”

You can help spread the message

The GNU GPL version 3 will be released at 12:00pm (EDT)—six hours before the release of the iPhone—bringing to a close eighteen months of public outreach and comment, in revision of the world's most popular free software license.
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Found on: http://www.fsf.org/iphone-gplv3

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Six months is a much more interesting time frame, and gives us the opportunity to see if the early trend indicators are holding up, or if the early signs of progress were a short-term gain.  Also, I thought it was worth going a little deeper in the analysis to look at the total fixed and unfixed vulns as I did last time, plus these additional views:

• Include a comparison view of Linux distribution workstation builds that exclude vulnerabilities non-default optional components as well as OpenOffice and other applications that do not have equivalents on Windows XP.
• Include a comparison view that excludes Low and Medium severities to just focus on High severity vulnerabilities fixed and unfixed in the first 6 months, and
• A comparison view that combines both of these

For the full details, or to print the report, you can download the report in pdf.

For those that only want the executive summary, here is a key chart that shows the publicly disclosed High severity vulnerabilities during the first 90 days of availability, broken down by vulns fixed and vulns unfixed.  Note that this chart is showing the reduced Linux builds that exclude non-default and optional components without equivalents on WIndows.  (clicking the chart also gets you to the full report.)

The results of the analysis show that Windows Vista continues to show a trend of fewer total and fewer High severity vulnerabilities at the 6 month mark compared to its predecessor product Windows XP (which did not benefit from the SDL) and compared to other modern competitive workstation OSes (which also did not benefit from an SDL-like process).

If you share the opinion that Windows and applications ported to Windows get a higher level of researcher scrutiny than other OSes, then the 6-month results are even more positive.  If you don't share that opinion, then they still stand on their own ...
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Found: http://blogs.csoonline.com/

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London and New York, 21 June 2007 - The global entertainment & media (E&M) industry is experiencing sustained growth and will increase at a 6.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to $2 trillion in 2011, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2007-2011, released today.

Double-digit growth is expected for digital and mobile spending in each territory during the next five years rising to $153 billion by 2011. Spending related to the distribution of entertainment and media on convergent platforms (convergence of the home computer, wireless handset and television) is also growing at double-digit rates and will exceed 50% of global spending by 2011. Within the next five years, nearly half of the total industry growth is expected to be generated through online and wireless technologies and, during the same period, broadband households will grow by 300 million to 540 million subscribers and wireless subscribers will increase by 1.1 billion to 3.4 billion. The migration to digital formats is having an adverse impact on competing revenue streams while consumer-generated media is accelerating content fragmentation, the report says.

Jim O’Shaughnessy, Global Chairman, Entertainment & Media practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers, said:
“Content, distribution and technology companies need to aggressively seek out new relationships to accommodate the shift towards convergence. Furthermore, companies will need to test new business models to address increased fragmentation and intellectual property in a digital era. Deal activity across the entertainment and media sector is accelerating, driven by the migration to digital formats.”

Global advertising will increase at a 5.4% CAGR during the forecast period, rising to $531 billion in 2011 from $407 billion in 2006. Internet will remain the fastest-growing advertising medium, with a projected 18.3% compound annual increase to $73 billion in 2011. Advertising on the internet has truly come of age, and by 2011 will comprise 14% of the global advertising market. Out-of-home will be the second fastest growing advertising medium, with a projected 6.5% compound annual increase.
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Study: http://www.pwc.com/

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Blu-ray players are in roughly 1.5 million homes -- five times more than its high-def DVD rival, HD-DVD.
That's according to the research firm Digital Entertainment Group, as reported by Video Business.

DEG says the 1.5 million Blu-ray homes include about 100,000 standalone Blu-ray players with the rest PlayStation 3 game consoles, which include Blu-ray players inside.

The research firm says there 300,000 HD DVD homes in the United States -- evenly split between standalone players and HD DVD XBox 360 attachment drives.
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Full Story: tvpredictions.com

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Blockbuster's decision to support Blu-ray in all of its 1,450 stores is having a bigger impact than it seems. A tipster at an unnamed retailer tells us they've had more HD DVD player orders canceled over the last few days than they've seen over the entire life cycle. The kicker? All of them were canceled because of the Blockbuster announcement. Not only that, new sales of HD DVD players are nonexistent, with Blu-ray being the only things moving now.
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Source: gizmodo.com

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Billed as "Microsoft's premier annual conference for IT pros and developers," the Microsoft TechEd 2007 show gets under way in Orlando, Fla. Monday, June 4.

Although Microsoft declined an InfoWorld request for a preview of TechEd, a look at the extensive list of sessions reveals Microsoft will focus not only on expected topics such as Windows Server 2008, SQL Server and Silverlight multimedia technology, but also will give a nod to concepts such as SOA, open source and dynamic languages.

The opening keynote on Monday morning will feature Microsoft's Bob Muglia, vice president of the company's Server and Tools business. He will discuss how IT has evolved from a cost center to a strategic asset and how to help an IT department embrace its new role in fueling growth and driving innovation.

In the SOA arena, TechEd features a session that asks, "Will SOA replace ERP?" Microsoft Dynamics applications and BizTalk software will be part of this discussion about "Real World SOA."

Another session entitled, "Open Source Software in Enterprise Development," ponders the role of open source and whether companies can manage licensing and support issues.

TechEd also will feature discussion on the next release of the SQL Server database and how it will evolve to go beyond relational data and OLAP to support digital data types of the future.

Other topics on the agenda include Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, Java-.Net interoperability and Visual Studio "Orcas," which is the next release of Microsoft's software development platform. Microsoft's ASP.Net AJAX and Windows Communication Foundation technologies also will be featured.
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Source: weblog.infoworld.com

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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apple chief executive Steve Jobs have appeared on stage together for the first time in more than two decades.

Bill Gates (left) and Steve Jobs have a 30-year history

Billed as a public "conversation" between two giants of the computer industry, the event at the All Things Digital conference, hugely anticipated by technology buffs, was seen as a long overdue opportunity for two of the greatest pioneers in the industry to go head to head. But would they re-live old feuds or shuffle uncomfortably in their seats if touchy subjects cropped up? It was not to be. The question and answer session at the D: All Things Digital conference, turned out to be more of a love-in between old pals. The pair reminisced about how their respective businesses had grown over the years.

"We've kept our marriage secret for over a decade now" Steve Jobs jokes.

Asked what Gates' contribution to computing had been, Jobs said: "Bill built the first software company before anybody in our industry knew what software was, and that was huge.". Returning the compliment, Gates said Jobs' development of the Apple II computer in 1977 "was an incredibly empowering phenomenon."

Apart from a few wrinkles and receding hair, both Gates and Jobs seem to have changed little over the years - especially in the style department. Jobs, the showman, appeared unshaven in his trademark black turtleneck, jeans and trainers. The more reserved Gates wore a striped, button-down shirt, slacks and black shoes. Perhaps the most uncomfortable moment for the Microsoft chairman was when Apple's current series of TV ads was introduced into the discussion. The Mac vs PC commercials portray the PC as a somewhat portly and decidedly inept character. Jobs, rather unconvincingly, said the point of the ads was not to be mean, rather for the guys to like each other. Grimacing somewhat, Gates defended the PC character: "His mother loves him."

Asked to describe their visions of the future, Gates said in five years time, people would not depend on a single computer. They would have multiple devices, such as a tablet with "voice and ink", along with "a phone, a pocket-sized device".

"It telescoped their experience as friends, partners, competitors and creative problem solvers over a 30-year period "

Jobs predicted an "explosion" of what he described as "post-PC devices", such as the iPod. He said such devices represented "a clean slate" that lacked the legacy of many applications and are more focused. "But you have to temper it, because you have users who don't want a car with six wheels," he added. The event also generated some quick-witted humour. Asked to define the greatest misunderstanding in their relationship, Steve Jobs said: "We've kept our marriage secret for over a decade now." Responding to a question from the audience about his charitable work, the Microsoft chairman said developing the PC had led him to create his charitable foundation to benefit people "who haven't had technology, including medicine, working for them". The discussion ended with Gates predicting that things that are currently the stuff of science fiction will, eventually, come true. It was session that clearly inspired the audience of computer professionals and enthusiasts. "I thought it was a moment of distilled history," said Nina Lytton, a computer consultant. "It telescoped their experience as friends, partners, competitors and creative problem solvers over a 30-year period." Arthur Ceria, who works for a start-up company in San Francisco, described the conversation as "inspiring and historical". "You had two of the biggest figures in Silicon Valley coming together and giving us their insight... here they are as myth and gods and the audience was there to witness that."

"They have such a respect for one another and it was visible."
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Source: news.bbc.co.uk