Following Yahoo into the murky depths of online-finance video, AOL is launching a revamp of its AOL Money & Finance site with video prominently included. Yahoo Finance and Microsoft's MSN Money are the top two finance sites by a wide margin. AOL is hoping to give its users compelling reasons to stick around, rather than risk their discovery of better sites like the woefully underpublicized Google Finance.
Microsoft is releasing an early version of Hyper-V, its virtualization software, ahead of schedule. Microsoft is competing head-on with high-flyer VMware, which went public in a much-hyped IPO earlier this year. The company, which is majority owned by EMC, is off 20 percent from its all-time high last month. For the 99 percent of you whose business card doesn't say "IT Peon," here's what this means.
Opera Software, maker of a feature-laden but forgotten Web browser, is complaining to the European Commission about Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It's an old gripe: Opera points out — duh — that IE is bundled with Windows. Opera claims this is illegal and that IE holds back the web with lousy support for standards. This smells like a publicity stunt meant to remind people Opera still exists.
The Web is deriding Microsoft's decision to rename PlaysForSure, its digital rights platform, as "Certified for Vista." It's actually a rare sign of intelligent life in Redmond's marketing cubes. PlaysForSure never spawned the hoped-for army of iTunes killers, and Microsoft itself created another format for its own Zune, kneecapping any stores foolish enough to adopt PlaysForSure.
It's hard to recruit the software engineers of tomorrow when your corporate image elicits visions of pocket protectors and blue screens of death, not rooftop foam parties and drunken nights aboard a corporate jet. To stop trendy Web 2.0 startups from stealing its best minds, Microsoft is pretending its the hip company we all know it's not. Its Hey-Genius campaign, awash with hipster kitsch and perpetual MIDI noise generation, invites young geeks to tour "the-not-so-little startup company up here in the great Northwest."
Wannabe online-ad giant Microsoft has scored a deal to serve ads for CNBC.com. The site's previous ad provider was soon-to-be-Google-subsidiary DoubleClick. This would be more impressive if Microsoft and NBC didn't already share considerable Web ties, like their MSNBC.com joint venture. [Silicon Alley Insider]
Back in the '90s, Jim Plamondon used to push Windows on software developers. Now he's trying to stir up capital to back the Thummer, his venture into musical instruments. It's supposed to be easier to learn and more expressive due to Wii-like motion sensitivity. But so far, not so good. Plamondon's Wall Street Journal profile points out it's been nearly a half-century since the electric guitar took off. Before that, Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone for the French army in the 1840s.
A month and half after its big deal, Microsoft executive Bruce Jaffe told the audience for his keynote at a conference in Seattle yesterday that, yes, Microsoft "paid a premium" with its $240 million Facebook investment, setting the social network's valuation at a "rich" $15 billion. Does Microsoft already have buyer's remorse?
Microsoft tried to capitalize on the Christmas holiday with a gimmicky IM identity powered by artificial intelligence. Predictably, it backfired. Eventually the robots will rise up to enslave their human overlords, but not this Christmas. Kids could chat with Santa under the identity northpole@live.com. The canned responses were not only limited, but far more troubling — The Register and others also found the robot could be coaxed into discussing fellatio. The software maker quickly ensured that the Redmond version of Father Christmas did not engage in pedophile patter, but soon after, they also wisely decided to abandon the idea altogether.
The browser wars continue — but no one cares. Unless, that is, you're in the wireless world, where industry observers avidly watch tiny scraps of Web activity, as if they're divining prophecies from the clouds. Computerworld notes an interesting trend. Apple's iPhone browser has grabbed a 0.09 percent share, which might not seem like much until you compare it to the competition. Windows CE, which encompasses every Windows Mobile device shipped, holds a 0.06 percent share; Danger Research's Sidekick product family holds a tiny 0.02 percent share; and the Symbian S60 smartphone platform, favored by Nokia, has 0.01 percent.
There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Microsoft executive Mark Wolfram told a breakfast table full of VCs this week that no startup is too small to acquire if its founders are "smart technical leaders" and it has "key intellectual property," according to Beyond Binary. If there's a sweet spot, Wolfram said, it's a company with 50 to 100 employees worth around $50 million.
When I read Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's deposition in one of his pending lawsuits with the founders of ConnectU, who claim he stole the idea for the social network from them, my first thought was, "Did anyone at Microsoft read these before investing $240 million in Facebook?" Zuckerberg is at his worst in these transcripts — by turns arrogant, befuddled, condescending, and obfuscating. And then it hit me.
Microsoft is preparing to launch a $300 million ad campaign to promote its Windows Live Web services. The software giant is challenging three ad agencies to develop the best campaign. "The challenge for whichever agency gets the creative assignment is helping consumers understand what Windows Live is in relation to its other Web offerings." A tall order considering Microsoft's own fragmented strategy has done little to advance that goal. [New York Post]
Greenpeace has found a couple of new targets in its latest "Guide to Greener Electronics": Microsoft and Nintendo. Particularly Nintendo, which scored the first perfect zero rating. The environmentalist group, once remembered for facing down fisherman armed with machine guns with rubber dinghies and rainbow flags to save the lives of endangered whales, has been hanging on to its diminishing relevance by attacking Apple for more than a year. The manufactured notoriety has backfired. Steve Jobs tore apart Greenpeace's charges in an open letter. Critics have savaged the organization's Electronics Guides as arbitrary and unscientific. So how is Greenpeace to remain relevant?
An Apple ad bashing Microsoft's Vista OS, captured in the video above, became a viral sensation almost immediately after its launch, AdWeek reports. Running on CNET, Engadget and PCWorld, video of the the ad caught on with YouTube and blogs, including Valleywag. The only problem? While Vista may crash your PC, according to Apple, Apple's ad tended to crash users' browsers. Engadget editor Ryan Block went so far as to pull the ad temporarily and apologize to readers.
So how bad is Windows Vista? The delayed, bloated Microsoft operating system is "very good," according to CNET, earning a 7.4 rating for its Home Premium version. But if you've actually installed it and want a second opinion, you should know that it's one of the "top ten terrible tech products" ... also according to CNET. Whom should we believe? By process of elimination, not CNET.
Meet Ivan Morrison, a Canadian IT worker and moderator at Ivan's Support Haus Forum. For his recent 31st birthday, he treated himself to a detailed, multicolor tattoo of the iGoogle logo on his right deltoid. Why did he give over his own fleshy real estate to the search engine's customizable homepage? He tells Valleywag:
