Microsoft Wants Yahoo

Stung by the loss of Internet advertising firm DoubleClick to Google last month, Microsoft has intensified its pursuit of a deal with Yahoo!, asking the company to re-enter formal negotiations, The Post has learned.

While Microsoft and Yahoo! have held informal deal talks over the years, sources say the latest approach signals an urgency on Microsoft's part that has up until now been lacking.

The new approach follows an offer Microsoft made to acquire Yahoo! a few months ago, sources said. But Yahoo! spurned the advances of the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. Wall Street sources put a roughly $50 billion price tag on Yahoo!.

"They're getting tired of being left at the altar," said one banking source who has recently had talks with Microsoft. "They now seem more willing to extend themselves via a transaction to get into the game."

Part of the reason for that is because Google keeps trumping Microsoft on the deal front, beating out the company on not just DoubleClick, but also for a renewed search advertising pact with AOL in 2005 that Microsoft lusted after.

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India Looks To Produce World's First $10 Laptop

Forget the one hundred dollar laptop. India has bigger, but cheaper, plans. Ten times cheaper to be exact: India's Ministry of Human Resource Development is spearheading the project, with help from Semiconductor Complex, a state-sponsored designer and manufacturer of integrated circuits. Officials from those organizations are presently weighing system designs submitted by an engineering student from India's Vellore Institute of Technology and a researcher from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. The Times of India on Friday reported that the efforts thus far have yielded designs for a laptop that would cost about $47, while a $10 system remains the ultimate goal.

Last year, Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child Organization submitted a proposal to the Indian government under which the group would have worked to produce laptops for Indian students starting at $100. Indian officials at the time criticized the proposal as insufficiently mature to be taken seriously and rejected it.

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Google Checkout on Google Sponsored Links

Caught this today on my Blog. Google has added an icon on the links which support Google Checkout on their list of sponsored links.

CD Music Sales Down 20% from 2006

The Wall Street Journal notes that CD music sales are down 20% from the same week a year ago. The seven year decline in CD sales doesn’t look to be turning around anytime soon.

And while legal music download sales are increasing by 50% or so a year, overall industry revenue is still down 25% from a year ago by some estimates.

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Laptops Set to Outsell Desktops

Analysts IDC have said that by 2011 laptops will outsell desktop computers as portable machines become quicker and more efficient. The report predicts that laptop sales will grow 16.1% year-on-year until 2011, compared to 3.8% for desktop PCs. There will also be a short burst in desktop sales this year, due to the release of Vista, it predicts.

More than 82 million portable computers and nearly 140 million desktop PCs were shipped around the world in 2006, according to the report. The gradual shift away from fixed machines may reflect the needs of an increasingly mobile workforce and the ubiquity of wireless networks.

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Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Interesting video about Web 2.0

Google Cell Phone

If the above screenshot shows the actual mobile phone that Google is developing in association with Samsung, Apple iPhone or the Nokia Internet Tablet may be in for some serious competition.

The phone specs say that "it combines the traditional voice and SMS capabilities of phones with all the exciting Google services from the PC such as Search, Gmail, Maps, Blogger"

And check the screenshot of that paid Google survey that actually caused this "Google Phone Storm" in the blogger community.

More details on ZDNet and Dirson.

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GoogleTalk Gadget Added to Personal Pages

Google just announced integration of their instant messaging service, Google Talk, with Google IG, their personalized home page. The flash-based widget plugs into your Google Personal Home Page as an integrated buddy list and IM window. The new widget can be added to your page here.

Google IG is still only 1/7th or so the size of Yahoo’s competing product according to worldwide Comscore numbers. But Google’s integration with it’s own widget platform puts it ahead of the personal page giant Yahoo, which hasn’t integrated with it’s own konfabulator widget platform. Yahoo widgets have also been tough for others to wrangle. Netvibes’ Universal Widget API won’t include the platform in its first iteration.

The widget isn’t just a copy of the Gmail version, it also has some of its own cool new features. Compared to popup message windows in the Gmail version, the widget’s conversations open up tabs instead. The new widget will also will also intelligently parse Picassa and YouTube links, displaying the content embedded right in the conversation.

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A World Time Clock for your System Tray from Microsoft

If you have friends, co-workers and clients in different cities of the world, Microsoft has a small desktop utility for you that will come very handy when making telephone calls or scheduling online meetings.

This free tool called Microsoft Time Zone runs as a tiny icon in your system tray and allows you to watch the current date and time of upto 5 cities around the world simultaneously.



Microsoft Time Zone also lets you compare times at different places in the world without changing your system time. Would be of great help when you are scheduling that next meeting with a client who's on the other side of the Pacific.

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India leads Asia billionaire club

India has the most billionaires in Asia with a total wealth of $191bn between them, according to the Forbes magazine annual list of richest people.

With 36 billionaires, India has overtaken Japan's 24 billionaires, after two decades of Japan topping the Asian rich list.

Steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal leads the Indian billionaire club, with a net worth of $32bn.

Globally, there are a record 946 billionaires, up from 793 last year.

"It was a sizzling year in Asia. Both India and China saw huge gains, " Forbes associate editor Luisa Kroll was reported as saying by the AFP news agency.

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Adobe, Give Us A Lite Version of Photoshop for Free

Adobe has decided to put Photoshop online for free. Adobe plans to generate revenue from online advertising (like GMail) though the web based version of Photoshop will not be as sophisticated (or complex) as the desktop application.

Plot Your EMail Trajectory on Google Maps

Wondering what physical path an email message (from a friend or some spammer) had followed before reaching your inbox ? Try the Email graphic traceroute service.

You copy-paste your email headers in the Email Routemap web interface and the service draws the path of your email message on Google maps.



For the above screenshot, we used a test mail sent via yahoogroups.com.The orange icon (destination) denotes the location of Yahoo! Mail servers while the green pin indicates the origin or the location from where that email message was sent.

Another very interesting Google Maps mashup is Google Maps Traceroute - type in any IP address and the service will show the exact physical location of that IP on Google Maps.

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Download Windows Vista Fonts Legally from Microsoft Office Website

Windows Vista includes several new fonts based on ClearType that can be used on Windows XP as well as Macs. These beautiful typefaces were created especially for improving the on-screen reading experience in Vista.

Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't provide a direct way to download these fonts without buying Windows Vista.
But here's a simple trick to download the Vista fonts for free and legally without buying a Vista license:

Download either the free Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 Viewer or the Microsoft Office Compatibility pack - both the software include the new Windows Vista fonts.

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Earth seen from 4 billion miles away

Earth seen from 4 billion miles away, photographed by Voyager 1 on June 6, 1990.

Microsoft Hits 100 Million IE7 Installs

Microsoft announced Friday it has hit the 100 million installation milestone for Internet Explorer 7, a figure that makes the new browser the second most used behind IE6. Web analytics firm WebSideStory reports that 25 percent of all Web surfers in the United States are now running IE7.

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$100 laptop project launches 2007

The first batch of computers built for the One Laptop Per Child project could reach users by July this year.
The scheme is hoping to put low-cost computers into the hands of people in developing countries.
Ultimately the project's backers hope the machines could sell for as little as $100 (£55).
The first countries to sign up to buying the machine include Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand.
The so-called XO machine is being pioneered by Nicholas Negroponte, who launched the project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab in 2004.
Test machines are expected to reach children in February as the project builds towards a more formal launch.

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Scan shows how brains plot future

Brain scans have given US scientists a clue about how we create a mental image of our own future.
The Washington University team say that specific areas of the brain are active when thinking about upcoming events.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study could help doctors trying to understand damage inflicted by strokes, injuries or diseases.
The findings tally with damage spotted in the brains of patients who have lost the ability to 'think ahead'.

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