Microsoft to Acquire Powerset

Microsoft reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company.

Powerset will join Microsoft’s core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technology that nicely complements other natural language processing technologies in Microsoft Research.

“We're buying Powerset first and foremost because we're impressed with the people there. Powerset CTO and cofounder Barney Pell is a visionary and incredible evangelist. When he introduced our senior engineers to some of the most senior people at Powerset — Search engineers and computational linguists like Tim Converse, Chad Walters, Scott Prevost, Lorenzo Thione, and Ron Kaplan — we came away impressed by their smarts, their experience, their passion for search, and a shared vision.” said Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President, Search, Portal, and Advertising. “Working with our existing Search team and other Microsoft teams that focus on natural language, Powerset will help us address all of those problems and opportunities.”

You can find the complete announcement here as well as here.

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Microsoft To Acquire Mobile Solutions Provider, MobiComp

Microsoft Corp. announced it intends to acquire MobiComp, a company that helped pioneer technologies allowing the backup and restoration of mobile data and mobile posting of social content to Web sites such as Facebook. The acquisition would combine MobiComp’s expertise building innovative mobile data protection and sharing services with Microsoft’s vision to provide compelling experiences that span work and play across mobile phones, the Web and PCs. Terms of the planned acquisition are not being disclosed.

“People expect their phones to deliver the best experiences from PCs and the Web right to their pockets,” said Todd Peters, corporate vice president in the Mobile Communications Business at Microsoft. “Investing in the right solutions from companies like MobiComp will extend the capabilities of Windows Mobile and Windows Live to help us provide the most innovative and seamless way to stay connected.”

The Portugal-based company is known for a variety of breakthrough mobile services including MobileKeeper Backup & Restore, MobileKeeper Sharing & Communities, and Active mTicker. These services help mobile operators and people around the world back up personal content stored on a phone, publish updates to online communities, and get entertainment and news content delivered to phones.

“Like Microsoft, we’ve always believed in an open and innovative mobile platform and deep industry partnerships,” said Carlos Oliveira, co-founder and CEO of MobiComp. “We’re thrilled that our work over the past eight years can now be extended by partnering with Microsoft’s world-class portfolio of mobile services.”

MobiComp will contribute to a rapidly expanding list of offerings from Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business while continuing to serve its existing partners and customers, which include 11 mobile operators worldwide. Fifty handset makers build on the Windows Mobile platform, and 160 mobile operators in 55 countries carry Windows Mobile phones. The services of Windows Live, including one of the largest free instant messaging services and blogging services, run on every major mobile operating system worldwide.

“We’re extremely pleased with this announcement, which reflects our country’s leadership in innovative technology,” said Nuno Duarte, general manager of Microsoft Portugal. “It highlights the success of our prime minister’s economic policies and serves as proof of Microsoft’s commitment to the partnership signed between Portugal’s government and Bill Gates two years ago. Following several top companywide awards for Microsoft Portugal, this is further evidence of our visibility in Microsoft’s worldwide efforts.”

About MobiComp

MobiComp is a Braga, Portugal-based software services company, founded in 2000, that provides mobile operators and consumers innovative security and access to information while mobile.

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Microsoft Announces Acquisition of Navic Networks

Microsoft Corp. announced the acquisition of Navic Networks, a leading provider of television advertising solutions. Navic’s technologies include sophisticated campaign management tools that use relevant data to optimize the delivery and placement of targeted interactive television media and through Admira provide a unified ad network for targeting audiences across television advertising inventory. With the addition of Navic solutions, Microsoft’s comprehensive advertising platform will be able to facilitate enhanced digital advertising across online and offline environments.

“Television media represents the largest percentage of advertisers and agencies’ media budget today,” said Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of the Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group at Microsoft. “Together, Navic and Microsoft will deliver addressable television advertising solutions to help our partners better manage media spend by increasing advertiser reach and ROI, and maximizing publisher yield on television advertising.”

Together, Microsoft and Navic plan to consult and work with the key constituents in the television advertising industry to better understand how its campaign management and advertising platforms for digital television can help advertisers, content owners and distributors maximize yield and achieve their media objectives.

“Viewers across North America are engaging with relevant advertising and interacting with their TVs in ways never before possible. Joining forces with Microsoft will enable our common vision of addressable television advertising solutions to continue to flourish and better meet the needs of our industry partners,” said Chet Kanojia, CEO of Navic Networks. “While our current business relationships will continue to grow, we look forward to extending our technology into a vast array of new markets and software solutions.”

With this acquisition, Navic Networks becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft and will join Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions (APS) Group, the group responsible for Microsoft’s comprehensive advertising platform that spans all digital media including television and video advertising. The APS Group includes Atlas, a pioneer of Video-On-Demand advertising solutions.

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Microsoft Introduces First Embedded Operating System Optimized Specifically for PND Manufacturers

Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of Windows Embedded NavReady 2009, Microsoft’s first embedded operating system designed specifically for OEMs building handheld portable navigation devices (PNDs). Windows Embedded NavReady 2009 delivers innovative technologies to help developers and OEMs quickly bring to market smart, connected, service-oriented PNDs that easily connect to online services, mobile phones using Bluetooth, Windows-based PCs and the Internet. Based on Windows Embedded CE, Windows Embedded NavReady 2009 builds upon a decade of experience and success that the Windows Embedded Business has achieved by helping developers and OEMs simplify the development, user experience and maintenance of their PND designs.

“As demand for personal navigation devices continues to increase, and existing owners look to upgrade from their original devices, original equipment manufacturers must continue to innovate and enhance their products with features that will attract a variety of users,” said Chris Jones, Canalys vice president and principal analyst. “Personal navigation solutions will increasingly become connected, which will open up new opportunities to add value through the delivery of dynamic information and location-based services. But this is a highly competitive market and it is important that businesses like Windows Embedded help OEMs and others bring these rich devices to market quickly and efficiently.”

Windows Embedded NavReady 2009 Key Features

This release also provides a number of benefits that can help developers and OEMs quickly bring to market new scenarios in which the PND connects to other devices and online services. Features include the following:

• Live Search delivers OEMs and partners key elements enabling Internet-based Live Search on devices to find up-to-date points of interest similar to the ones provided by the Live Search Maps service.

• Bluetooth technologies enable OEMs to provide rich, hands-free scenarios to users with the following profiles: Hands Free, Pairing Service, Phone Book Access, Advanced Audio Distribution, Audio and Video Remote Control, Dial Up Networking and Bluetooth Connection Manager. Users will be able to use their PND device as a hands-free device to make phone calls or data connections when the device is paired with a compatible phone enabled with Bluetooth.

• MSN Direct enables OEMs to incorporate MSN Direct technologies. These technologies can reduce users’ commute time while enhancing the travel experience by providing up-to-date information such as traffic alerts and fuel prices.

• Windows SideShow functionality helps enable the PND as a secondary display screen for many Windows Vista-based PCs^*, allowing Windows SideShow gadgets to interact and exchange information with the PND and providing a rich user experience at home or work.

“As a leading designer and manufacturer of portable navigation devices we have relied on Windows Embedded CE as a proven real-time operating system for our Mio product line,” said Samuel Wang, president of Mio Technology Corp. “With the launch of Windows Embedded NavReady 2009 and the introduction of features including Live Search, MSN Direct and Bluetooth capabilities, we are looking forward to bringing our next-generation PNDs to market with a richer end-user experience and in a reduced timeframe.”

“Windows Embedded powers many of the portable navigation devices in the marketplace,” said Kevin Dallas, general manager of the Windows Embedded Business at Microsoft. “Our commitment to this segment has always been about providing the platform and tools that give our OEM partners the most innovative technologies while reducing the complexity of development. We firmly believe the release of Windows Embedded NavReady 2009 helps us fulfill this promise by taking the PND experience to the next level. Adopting Windows Embedded NavReady 2009 today will allow device-makers and solution providers to focus on innovation while bringing smart, connected, service-oriented portable navigation devices to market in time for the 2008 holiday retail season and beyond.”

With the addition of the Windows Embedded NavReady 2009 solution, Windows Embedded now presents two device category-specific offerings: Windows Embedded NavReady 2009 and Windows Embedded POSReady. Windows Embedded POSReady, the next generation of Windows Embedded for Point of Service, is scheduled to ship in 2009.

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Windows Live Writer Update

Windows Live Writer (WLW) is one of the best applications for blogging. I am using it since i started blogging and i am very much impressed by it’s features and flexibility. Yesterday they released an update which covers lots of interesting features.

As per the announcement “This release is largely about updates to the Writer SDK, which now includes hooks for pre- and post-publish events. These updates are still experimental and these APIs are not stable--we may make changes based on your feedback that break plug-ins that use these new methods. However, we’re really excited about the new set of scenarios have been unlocked and look forward to hearing feedback from all of you Writer plug-in developers out there.”

What’s New ?

Video and Image Publishing Enhancements

• Upload videos to Soapbox
• Image cropping and tilting
• Additional border styles
• Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
• Support for centering images

Editing Enhancements

• Auto Linking
• Smart quotes/typographic characters
• Word count

UI Improvements

• Revised main toolbar
• Tabs for view switching
• Improved category control with search/filtering

You can download it from here.

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Microsoft To Release Social Bookmarks For MSDN & TechNet

John Martin, Lead Evangelist for Server & Tools Online (STO) at Microsoft, said that Microsoft is planning to release a preview version of Social Bookmarks for both MSDN and TechNet this week and showcase it at TechEd North America the following week.

While the preview will not have full functionality (it is also English-only), it will allow members of the community to...

• Bookmark any URL on the web
• Apply tags
• Save bookmarks in the new My Bookmarks tool

All bookmarks, bookmarkers, and tags will also be enabled as links and can be “surfed” to discover new content and people.

Social bookmarks will also be integrated into the new Profile page and give every member of the community a great new way to increase their visibility, impact, and influence.

(See screenshots of the Social Bookmarks home page from a test build below; the bookmarks themselves are not real - created just for testing)

You can discuss more on this at Social Bookmarks forum.

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Microsoft Is Ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic Projects

Satya Nadella, Senior vice president search, portal and advertising at Microsoft today announced that they shutting down their Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects. Below is a post published by Satya on Live Search Blog. Microsoft is also closing down their book digitization initiative, which launched in 2006.

"Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes.

This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users.

Given the evolution of the Web and our strategy, we believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer, and content partner. For example, this past Wednesday we announced our strategy to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers. With Live Search Books and Live Search Academic, we digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles. Based on our experience, we foresee that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling content repositories created by book publishers and libraries. With our investments, the technology to create these repositories is now available at lower costs for those with the commercial interest or public mandate to digitize book content. We will continue to track the evolution of the industry and evaluate future opportunities. 

As we wind down Live Search Books, we are reaching out to participating publishers and libraries. We are encouraging libraries to build on the platform we developed with Kirtas, the Internet Archive, CCS, and others to create digital archives available to library users and search engines. 

In partnership with Ingram Digital Group, we are also reaching out to participating publishers with information about new marketing and sales opportunities designed to help them derive ongoing benefits from their participation in the Live Search Books Publisher Program.  

We have learned a tremendous amount from our experience and believe this decision, while a hard one, can serve as a catalyst for more sustainable strategies. To that end, we intend to provide publishers with digital copies of their scanned books. We are also removing our contractual restrictions placed on the digitized library content and making the scanning equipment available to our digitization partners and libraries to continue digitization programs. We hope that our investments will help increase the discoverability of all the valuable content that resides in the world of books and scholarly publications."

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Microsoft Introduced Cashback For Live Search

Now you can get cashback savings by using Live Search to find great deals on the products you want from the stores that you know and trust. Microsoft Live Search cashback is "The Search That Pays You Back".

You will be able to earn cashback savings based on a percentage of the product price. Your savings will be paid to you via your choice of a deposit to your PayPal account, direct deposit to your bank account, or a check in the mail.

Here's how Live Search cashback works:

1. Search

Search for cashback deals at Live Search cashback. Each time you click a Live Search cashback listing, you'll find great deals on the product you chose. Your results will clearly list the cashback savings you'll receive off the store price, and your final bottom-line price that includes tax and shipping costs. Also look for this icon when you search for a product on Live Search to find great cashback deals.

You can also search directly for cashback deals and participating stores at the Live Search cashback site.

2. Shop

Compare and sort products by the bottom-line price. Click the best deal to go to the store. Everything you buy during that store visit will be eligible for Live Search cashback. On your first time using Live Search cashback, we will ask you for an email address so we can tell you how to quickly set up your free cashback account.

3. Save

Keep saving money each time you use Live Search cashback. Every time you make a qualifying purchase, we'll send you an email to confirm your Live Search cashback savings. When your cashback account reaches a balance of at least $5, you can claim your cold, hard cash. Terms and conditions.

Live Search cashback account is completely FREE. There are no costs, hidden fees or extra charges to you.

To learn more, read the FAQs.

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Xbox 360 First Gaming System to Reach 10 Million in U.S. Console Sales

Microsoft Corp. yesterday announced that the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system has sold over 10 million units in the U.S., making it the first current-generation gaming console to break the 10 million mark in the U.S. The U.S. install base contributes to global sales of over 19 million.

“This year will be the largest in the history of the video game industry, with Xbox 360 leading the charge in the U.S. and abroad,” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. “History has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry.”

This announcement comes on the heels of one of the biggest entertainment launches in history, “Grand Theft Auto IV,” on April 29, 2008. Gamers eager to experience “Grand Theft Auto IV” online helped boost Xbox LIVE global membership to over 12 million this month. Fueled by an unparalleled combination of access to friends and family, the best online gaming features, and the best entertainment content, the Xbox LIVE service has doubled in membership in only one year’s time.

“Reaching an installed base of 10 million consoles in the U.S. is a significant achievement and an essential milestone on the road to market leadership,” said Billy Pidgeon, research manager at IDC. “Perhaps more important is the Xbox 360 worldwide online base — 12 million Xbox LIVE gamers is the largest community in the connected console games sector, which represents the greatest growth opportunity in the console market and where Microsoft has been the leader for two generations.”

Xbox 360 leads with the industry’s highest software attach rate, more than any other console this generation, and is home to the best-selling games. With the launch of “Grand Theft Auto IV” in April, Xbox 360 is now the home to more than 16 platinum titles that have sold through 1 million units or more, including hits such as “Halo 3,” “Madden NFL 07” and “Madden NFL 08,” “Gears of War,” “Guitar Hero II” and “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock,” and “Call of Duty^® 2,” Call of Duty 3” and “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare,” giving Xbox 360 two times more platinum-selling titles than the Wii and a 16:2 lead over the PlayStation 3 in game titles topping one million in sales. Games not only sell better on the Xbox 360, they play better, too: Xbox 360 has 91 titles with a Metacritic review score of 80 or higher, compared with just 22 titles for Wii and 50 titles for PlayStation 3.

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Microsoft Officially Launched The Public Beta of WorldWide Telescope

Microsoft Corp. officially launched the public beta of its WorldWide Telescope, which is now available at http://www.worldwidetelescope.org. WorldWide Telescope is a rich Web application that brings together imagery from the best ground- and space-based observatories across the world to allow people to easily explore the night sky through their computers. WorldWide Telescope has been eagerly anticipated by the astronomical and educational communities as a compelling astronomical resource for students and lifelong learners, and as a way to make science fun for children.

“The WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe,” said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. “By combining terabytes of incredible imagery and data with easy-to-use software for viewing and moving through all that information, the WorldWide Telescope opens the door to new ways to see and experience the wonders of space. Our hope is that it will inspire young people to explore astronomy and science, and help researchers in their quest to better understand the universe.”

The application itself is a blend of software and Web 2.0 services created with the Microsoft high-performance Visual Experience Engine, which allows seamless panning and zooming around the heavens with rich image environments. WorldWide Telescope stitches together terabytes of high-resolution images of celestial bodies and displays them in a way that relates to their actual position in the sky. People can freely browse through the solar system, galaxy and beyond, or take advantage of a growing number of guided tours of the sky hosted by astronomers and educators at major universities and planetariums.

“WorldWide Telescope brings to life a dream that many of us in Microsoft Research have pursued for years, and we are proud to release this as a free service to anyone who wants to explore the universe,” said Curtis Wong, manager of Microsoft’s Next Media Research Group. “Where is Saturn in the sky, in relation to the moon? Does the Milky Way really have a supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy? With the universe at your fingertips, you can discover the answers for yourself.”

The service goes well beyond the simple browsing of images. Users can choose which telescope they want to look through, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Spitzer Space Telescope or others. They can view the locations of planets in the night sky — in the past, present or future. They can view the universe through different wavelengths of light to reveal hidden structures in other parts of the galaxy. Taken as a whole, the application provides a top-to-bottom view of the science of astronomy.

“Users can see the X-ray view of the sky, zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then cross-fade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago,” said Roy Gould, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “I believe this new creation from Microsoft will have a profound impact on the way we view the universe.”

Microsoft Research has formed close ties with members of the academic, education and scientific communities to make WorldWide Telescope a reality. NASA along with other organizations coordinated with Microsoft Research to provide the imagery, provide feedback on the application from a scientific point of view, and help turn WorldWide Telescope into a rich learning application.

Microsoft’s mission to make the universe accessible to everyone was begun years ago by renowned Microsoft Senior Researcher Jim Gray. WorldWide Telescope is built on top of Gray’s pioneering development of large-scale, high-performance online databases including SkyServer and his contributions to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project to map a large part of the Northern sky outside of the galaxy. Microsoft Research is releasing WorldWide Telescope as a service free of charge to the astronomy and education communities as a tribute to Gray with the hope that it will inspire and empower kids of all ages to explore and understand the universe in an unprecedented way.

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Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo!

Microsoft Corp. recently announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc.

“We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo! and the market as a whole. Our goal in pursuing a combination with Yahoo! was to provide greater choice and innovation in the marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and employees,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft.

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” said Ballmer.

“We have a talented team in place and a compelling plan to grow our business through innovative new services and strategic transactions with other business partners. While Yahoo! would have accelerated our strategy, I am confident that we can continue to move forward toward our goals,” Ballmer said.

“We are investing heavily in new tools and Web experiences, we have dramatically improved our search performance and advertiser satisfaction, and we will continue to build our scale through organic growth and partnerships,” said Kevin Johnson, Microsoft president for platforms and services.

Below is the text of the letter from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang.

May 3, 2008

Mr. Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Dear Jerry:

After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!.

I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo!’s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal. I appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and I especially appreciate the time that you have invested personally. I feel that our discussions this week have been particularly useful, providing me for the first time with real clarity on what is and is not possible.

I am disappointed that Yahoo! has not moved towards accepting our offer. I first called you with our offer on January 31 because I believed that a combination of our two companies would have created real value for our respective shareholders and would have provided consumers, publishers, and advertisers with greater innovation and choice in the marketplace. Our decision to offer a 62 percent premium at that time reflected the strength of these convictions.

In our conversations this week, we conveyed our willingness to raise our offer to $33.00 per share, reflecting again our belief in this collective opportunity. This increase would have added approximately another $5 billion of value to your shareholders, compared to the current value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over 70 percent compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31. Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another $5 billion or more, or at least another $4 per share above our $33.00 offer.

Also, after giving this week’s conversations further thought, it is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo! undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:

• First, it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!’s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them. This would undermine the reliance on your display advertising business to fuel future growth.

• Given this, it would impair Yahoo’s ability to retain the talented engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our interest in a combination of our companies.

• In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among other things, this would consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace.

• This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.

• It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search provider that is not already relying on Google’s search services.

Accordingly, your apparent plan to pursue such an arrangement in the event of a proxy contest or exchange offer leads me to the firm decision not to pursue such a path. Instead, I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft’s proposal to acquire Yahoo!.

We will move forward and will continue to innovate and grow our business at Microsoft with the talented team we have in place and potentially through strategic transactions with other business partners.

I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.

But clearly a deal is not to be.

Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.

Sincerely yours,

Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation

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Microsoft Introduce 'Live Mesh', Connecting All Your Devices & Access Your Data Anytime Anywhere

Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about. With Live Mesh, you can spend less time managing devices and data and more time connecting with family and friends or collaborating with colleagues.

All your devices working together

No more e-mailing attachments to yourself. Instead, synchronize the  information you need across all your devices. The most up-to-date versions will be at hand when you need them—at home, at the office, and on the go.

Just install the Live Mesh software on each device. Then add folders to your mesh. Folders are automatically synchronized, always available.

Access from anywhere

Anything you add to Live Mesh is available from anywhere, including  the web from your Live Desktop. Your Live Desktop comes with 5 GB of free storage, and can be used from most web browsers.
Need a program that's only on your home PC? With Live Mesh, access to all your devices—and any programs on those devices—is at your fingertips, no matter where you are.

Simple to share

Easily share files and photos with friends, family, and colleagues— invite them to a folder. Everyone is kept up to date because files can be synchronized automatically with all your devices and all their devices.

Update documents, post comments, or send instant messages, all right from the folder. The Live Mesh bar helps you connect instantly with other folder members.

Stay informed

Keep track of all the activities in your mesh. See the online status of  friends and colleagues, find out who has updated which files or folders, post and read comments, and check the status of your devices.
News about your mesh is easy to access. You can view news items in the notifier, from the mesh bar, and on the Live Mesh website—available whenever, wherever you are.

Protection you know

Your mesh is password-protected with your Windows Live ID, so only  you have access to it. When you share a folder with family and friends, they sign in with their own Windows Live ID to access it.

All file transfers are protected using Secure Socket Layers (SSL), the same technology your online bank uses.

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Microsoft Acquires Seattle Based Travel Search Site Farecast

Farecast recently confirmed that it has been acquired by Microsoft! This acquisition creates tremendous opportunities for the Farecast team and our customers.

No financial details were disclosed about this acquisition. However published reports said the microsoft acquired the farecast for $115 million.

More details can be found here and here.

About Farecast

Farecast.com™ is the smart travel search site that helps you buy with confidence. Launched in 2006, Farecast.com empowers you to Know When to Buy™ with airfare predictions and Know Where to Stay™ with the hotel Rate Key™.

Farecast® was recognized as one of Web 2.0's "Best Travel Sites," one of PC World's 20 Most Innovative Products, "Best of What's New" by Popular Science, one of TIME Magazine's "50 Coolest Websites" and one of the "Best Trip Planning Tools" by Business Week readers. Farecast is headquartered in Seattle, WA.

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Microsoft Comments on Yahoo! Announcement

Microsoft Corp. issued the following statement from Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel, related to an announcement made by Yahoo! Inc. on yesterday:

“Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands. This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo! We will assess closely all of our options. Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo! 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.”

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Microsoft Releases Preview of New Version of Its Robotics Platform

Today, at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition in  Pittsburgh, Microsoft Corp. released the first community technology preview (CTP) of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, the new version of its robotics programming platform. Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 contains improvements in its runtime performance, distributed computational capabilities and tools.

Scheduled for release later this year, the first preview of the product is now available for evaluation and testing by developers, customers and partners. Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 is a Windows-based environment that can be used by academic, hobbyist and commercial developers for the creation of a variety of robotic programs and testing scenarios.

“We launched Microsoft Robotics Studio in 2006 in response to the robotics community’s request for a mature platform and toolset that would provide for stability and portability, allowing more people to participate and contribute,” said Tandy Trower, general manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group. “Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 demonstrates Microsoft’s continued commitment to help catalyze the emerging new markets for robotics by delivering even better performance and enhanced tools.”

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 includes the following new elements:

• Increased runtime performance. Performance improvements of 150 percent to 300 percent in message throughput between services within a node and between DSS nodes. Services now load 200 percent faster.

• Improved distributed computational capabilities. Support for distributed language integrated queries (LINQ), which reduces network utilization and simplifies service authoring. LINQ support enables advanced filtering and inline processing of sensor data at the source.

• Improvements to tools. The ability to visually define computational domains within the Microsoft Visual Programming Language (VPL) tool, providing for easier accessibility to managing distributed execution. The Visual Simulation Environment (VSE) tool adds the ability to record and play back simulations, which allows for easier sharing of running simulation experiences. In addition, VSE adds a new floorplan editor to simplify the definition of complicated structures and interiors.

The latest version of the software bears a new name to better reflect its objective to support software development for robots and to better align with Microsoft’s other development tools.

Previous versions of the software gained widespread support throughout the robotics industry, with more than 200,000 copies downloaded and more than 50 companies pledging their support by joining the Microsoft Robotics Supporting Partner Program.

Aldebaran Robotics has joined the Microsoft Robotics Supporting Partner Program. Microsoft is working with Aldebaran to bring services and simulation capabilities for the Nao robot to the Microsoft robotics platform. Developers can take advantage of the detailed simulation to validate motion sequences, or test image recognition algorithms.

Aldebaran’s Nao robot is designed to be an affordably priced, humanoid robot with first-class mechanical, electronic and cognitive features and up to 25 degrees of freedom.

“A persistent challenge for the robotics industry up till now has been the limited choice within development platforms that would allow developers to easily create robotic applications,” said Bruno Maisonnier, president and founder of Aldebaran Robotics. “Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 will contribute greatly to expand the robotics industry and encourage more developers to design new robot applications. We are pleased to support these efforts.”

Microsoft also announced that RoboChamps, a virtual robotics competition built atop Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, will be launched on April 21 at http://www.robochamps.com. RoboChamps was developed in conjunction with members of the partner community, including SimplySim, whose simulation environments are used in the competition.

“RoboChamps will allow users of all levels to experiment with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, while discovering the underlying technologies and solving real-world problems with simulated robots in immersive 3-D environments,” said Nicolas Dalmasso, CEO of SimplySim.

Microsoft Robotics Studio and Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 are available as a free download for use in noncommercial applications. Licensing details for commercial robot developers are available at http://www.microsoft.com/robotics.

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