microsoft

In Part 1, Microsoft attempted to takeover Yahoo, but withdrew after discussions proved unfruitful. In this installment, Carl Icahn rides in to resurrect the deal and investors start to line up behind him. Will Jerry Yang and his crew fall to the ... Icahn raiders? We'll find out soon enough. May 3, 2008: After four months of phone calls, sit downs, dueling press releases and letters, Steven Ballmer officially withdraws Microsoft's offer to acquire Yahoo. (Source: microsoft.com ) May 5, 2008: Billionaire investor and hostile takeover veteran, Carl Icahn begins to increase his ownership of Yahoo ... (view more)

Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft and current MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional), has reportedly published a tool designed to detect and fix PCs that may be susceptible to "endless reboots" if they ... are updated to Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3). Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard (HP) have yet to issue a fix or a patch for the endless reboots that, as previously reported by our own Brandon Dimmel, primarily affects HP machines running Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processors. Johansson posted a link to the tool (a small, 16K Visual Basic Script file ... (view more)

Carl Icahn recently announced he was initiating a hostile takeover for Yahoo, and Microsoft released a statement on Saturday that they would be open to a transaction with their rival after backing off from their own takeover bid earlier this year. ... (Source: nypost.com ) This is just the latest development in a saga that has lasted so long you need a scorecard to keep track of the drama. So in the spirit of helping you navigate this epic boardroom battle, we are proud to present Infopackets' "A Brief History of the Yahoo Takeover Bid" Part 1. January 31, 2008: Microsoft CEO makes a late night ... (view more)

Microsoft's new WorldWide Telescope (WWT) uses Microsoft's Virtual Experience Engine to combine images from various telescopes and observatories into a seamless panorama of the night sky. Launched Monday, the brainchild of Microsoft's research ... department is a downloadable desktop application that brings the universe to your home computer. (Source microsoft.com ) Forget Google Earth, the WWT combines images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the Two Micron All Sky Survey. Users can investigate the night sky in several different ... (view more)

Microsoft could be in even more trouble with European Union competition regulators after a complaint by a British government agency. The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA), which oversees computer purchasing in schools ... and colleges, says Microsoft Office doesn't work smoothly enough with other programmes. They argue that Microsoft should use the independent OpenDocument format which makes it easy to transfer files such as spreadsheets or word documents between rival software packages. Microsoft has its own 'open' format, Office Open XML, but critics say it's too ... (view more)

Microsoft is launching an online service giving users access to images from space telescopes. It could mean yet another battle with Google, which has its own service, Google Sky. Bill Gates says the WorldWide Telescope project should be online by ... the end of the month. The free service is based on Microsoft's Visual Experience Engine, the same technology which runs the Microsoft Virtual Earth mapping software. By combining this software with thousands of images taken from space cameras, the service effectively acts as an interactive telescope. Where appropriate there will also be links to ... (view more)

Yesterday, our own Bill Lindner reported on rumored difficulties with Microsoft's most recent update to its Windows XP operating system. According to reports, the most fiendish of these problems has affected AMD chipsets. What Bill Lindner reported ... yesterday was devastating enough. According to his article , updates through Windows XP Service Pack 3 barred users from reverting back to Internet Explorer 6 from Internet Explorer 7. That has annoyed many users already, especially businesses. Many are also reporting that those affected machines are predominantly Hewlett-Packard computers. (Source ... (view more)

If you are a Microsoft Outlook user and let your emails build up by the dozens (like me), going back to locate an important message in a sea of junk mail can be an arduous task. Even if you are meticulous about storing and filing your emails, saving ... hundreds of "important" messages and having to locate a specific one can have the same effect. Xobni is here to help. Xobni -- "inbox" spelled backwards -- is a small Internet start-up company based in San Francisco and is introducing a new application that works together with Outlook to give users a better emailing experience. The software ... (view more)

In a shocking turn of events, Microsoft has withdrawn its bid to take over rival Yahoo. The decision appears to be costing the Internet portal's investors dearly; yesterday, Yahoo's stock price plummeted $4.20, finishing the day at $24.47. It's a ... new low for a stock price fluctuating around $28 since Microsoft and Yahoo began their stand off. (Source: microsoft.com ) The nosedive that Yahoo's stock took seems to contradict claims made by CEO Jerry Yang that Microsoft's offer, at $33-per-share, substantially undervalued the company. The Yahoo board was holding out for a price that would have ... (view more)

Though it boasts the most impressive game library and some of the most successful franchises the industry has to offer, Microsoft has struggled to win the hearts of Asian gamers with its Xbox 360. Though North Americans swoon over Halo, Mass Effect, ... and the cars of Project Gotham Racing, few overseas players are all that interested in breaking ties with Sony or Nintendo. That's surely the reason Microsoft recently announced it would be slashing prices on its console across the Pacific. First reported by the Wall Street Journal and later confirmed by the Redmond-based powerhouse, Microsoft ... (view more)