Apple’s Finickiness on Flash May Help Microsoft
SAN FRANCISCO - Bad news for Adobe may mean a victory for Microsoft , if Apple CEO Steve Jobs throws his company’s support behind Microsoft’s Silverlight technology on Thursday.
Comments from the Apple chief executive late Tuesday that Adobe’s Flash player in its current form would not be welcome on the iPhone leaves the door wide open for the iPhone to support Microsoft’s Silverlight software.
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Microsoft targets the mobile web
The software firm has signed a deal with handset manufacturer Nokia to bring its Silverlight platform to millions of mobile phones.
Silverlight is seen as a competitor to Adobe’s Flash, which is already used by popular websites such as YouTube.
The software will first be available on Nokia’s high end smart phones running a Symbian operating system.
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Microsoft to expand its Web services for businesses
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp , faced with Web rivals looking to poach its business customers, said on Sunday it plans to broaden the availability of its online services for e-mail and collaboration software.
Last year, Microsoft started subscription-based online services to run its Exchange corporate e-mail program and SharePoint collaboration software on Microsoft’s own computer systems as an alternative to customers buying their own hardware to run licensed software.
Microsoft initially limited those services to companies with more than 5,000 workers, but the company said it will now offer the service to businesses of all sizes in the second half of 2008, after a testing period. The company did not disclose how much it will charge customers for the services.
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Microsoft enters virtualization with Windows server
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp released the latest version of its Windows operating system for powerful servers on Wednesday, thrusting itself into the red-hot market for virtualization technology that allows one computer to act like many machines.
Windows Server 2008 marks Microsoft’s first major challenge against VMware Inc, the leader in virtualization, by building the technology into its core operating system.
For the time being, Microsoft will ship Windows Server 2008 with a test version of its “Hyper-V” technology, which adds an extra layer of software that sits between the operating system and hardware, but it expects to add the full feature to the software within six months.
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Users having trouble accessing Microsoft’s Hotmail
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday certain users of its Windows Live e-mail, also known as Hotmail, are having difficulty accessing their accounts.
“We’re actively investigating the cause and are working to take the appropriate steps to remedy the situation as rapidly as possible,” said a Microsoft spokesman.
U.S. and Canadian users are reporting outages of the free Web-based e-mail program, which has more than 300 million active users.
Microsoft to stop making HD DVD players for Xbox
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp will stop making video players based on the HD DVD standard for its Xbox 360 game system, a move that comes days after Toshiba Corp pulled the plug on the high definition movie technology.
The move, announced on Saturday, follows recent decisions by Hollywood studios such as Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros and retailer Wal-Mart to exclusively back Sony Corp’s Blu-ray, a high-definition video technology rival to HD DVD.
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Microsoft to give out development tools to students
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp unveiled a new initiative on Monday that will give college and high school students around the world free access to technology tools used to develop and design software.
The world’s largest software maker said the initiative will allow students to use Microsoft’s developer and designer tools to write software applications, design elaborate Web pages or create new video games to run on the Xbox 360 console.
The development and design tools are available immediately to college students in the United States, Western Europe and China, but Microsoft said it will eventually extend the program to other countries and high school students, potentially reaching 1 billion students.
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Bets against Microsoft-Yahoo deal may be waning
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Skepticism about Microsoft’s prospects of buying Yahoo may be waning, as short sellers appear to have backed away in the last few days from bets against Yahoo’s stock rising.
When Microsoft’s $42 billion (21.4 billion pound) offer for the Web company was made public on February 1, the amount of Yahoo shares loaned out to short sellers and others spiked, but it has been falling since last Tuesday, according to Data Explorers Ltd, which tracks securities lending data.
Though stock-lending figures are slightly delayed, they are often viewed as a proxy for the interests of short sellers who are typically the biggest borrowers of stock.
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Gates calls for “creative capitalism”
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates called on Thursday for a new “creative capitalism” to help the world’s 1 billion poorest who live on less than $1 a day.
Gates, one of the world’s richest men, said he was not dumping the basic tenets of capitalism but argued market forces must be better used to address the needs of those left behind by advances in technology and healthcare.
“We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well,” he told the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. “I like to call this idea creative capitalism.”
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Microsoft profit rises 79 pct
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft signaled confidence to a rattled stock market by raising its full-year earnings outlook above Wall Street targets and reporting a 79 percent rise in quarterly profit on Thursday.
Analysts took the results as a good sign for technology companies in the face of a slowing economy, and Microsoft shares rose 4.5 percent in after-hours trade. That followed a 4 percent gain in regular trade, representing a gain of more than $26 billion in its market value for the day.
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