Bill Gates bids a teary farewell to Microsoft

Redmond, Washington--Bill Gates said a teary goodbye on Friday to Microsoft, the software maker he built into the world's most valuable technology company based on the ambitious goal of placing a computer on every desk and in every home.

'.wow': ICANN to allow almost any domain suffix

At its meeting in Paris, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a not-for-profit organization that oversees the naming scheme for web sites, voted to accept a proposal that will allow companies to purchase new top-level domain names ending in almost whatever suffix they choose.

So, for example, instead of being restricted to sites ending in .com or .org., eBay could have a site that ends in .ebay, or New York City could end its website address with .nyc.

Bill Gates' legacy: A modern day Henry Ford

Bill Gates is arguably the individual who has had the biggest impact on the world of technology and his departure from Microsoft on 27 June will mark the end of an era.

During his career Gates has made Microsoft into one of the biggest companies in the world with products that have long been ubiquitous for computer users.

But the company has also suffered from accusations of anti-competitive behavior with well-publicized battles with US regulators and the European Union.

Yahoo creates three new teams to report to Decker

San Francisco--Yahoo unveiled on Thursday its fourth reorganization in the past 18 months as the embattled company seeks to focus on independent strategy after rebuffing Microsoft's takeover bid.

Microsoft finally launches Hyper-V

Microsoft has announced that its Hyper-V hypervisor is finally available, but analysts have questioned whether large enterprises will adopt the product as their sole virtualization technology.

Hyper-V, launched on Thursday, is not Microsoft's first virtualization product, and will face competition from vendors such as VMware, the market leader in virtualization.

Outlining the benefits of virtualization, Microsoft's general manager of Windows Server marketing, Bill Hilf, said: "Customers who buy Windows Server 2008 are not only getting the scalability benefits, the high performance, reliability and all the great things that Windows Server is known for, but, as of today, they're also able to get the benefits of integrated virtualization."

Sue Decker's super powers

Yahoo's not-so-secret reorganization got its official nod today, with three new divisions created to centralize operations and report to Sue Decker.

Jerry Yang still stars as Chief Executive in the companys statement, giving his blessing to moves he said will accelerate Yahoos ability to make money off the web.

Gates: Yahoo deal unlikely

NEW YORK--Microsoft's Bill Gates told journalist Tom Brokaw he does not think a deal with Yahoo was likely, CNBC reported on Friday.

Microsoft had sought a tie-up with Yahoo for more than a year and by early May had offered up to $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, to buy the Internet company.

Mobile phone battery dead? Try dancing

LONDON--What do you do if you are stuck in a field at a pop festival but there's trouble ahead because your mobile phone's battery is about to run out?

Thanks to a new gizmo, you now just need to face the music and dance.

Playing a video game? No, it's health therapy

Raleigh, North Carolina--Video games are known to improve hand-eye coordination but can they help someone quit smoking or lose weight?

First Symbian Foundation handsets due in 2010

The first devices using Symbian Foundation open source code for mobile devices will become available in 2010, Nokia has said.

On Tuesday Nokia announced it intends to buy out all the shares in Symbian that it does not already own, costing the handset giant around $410 million. It will set up the Symbian Foundation (SF) alongside a multitude of other manufacturers and operators, combining Symbian, Series 60 (S60), UIQ and MOAP into one unified platform, which will be fully open-sourced within two years. The move is seen as a major strike against Google and its nascent Android platform.

Shaolin temple kick starts online store

SHANGHAI--China's Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of kung fu and the star of many martial arts films, has set up an online store to flog its wares.

Named "Shaolin The Stage of Joy", a Web page has been set up by a unit of the temple on popular Chinese e-commerce site www.taobao.com, offering a range of goods including shoes, tea, T-shirts and slippers.

Microhoo talks on again--or not

Update: CNBC says no deal "whatsoever" on the table between Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp, citing unnamed sources.

NEW YORK--Microsoft Corp is back in talks to buy out Yahoo Inc, technology blog TechCrunch reported on Tuesday, citing multiple unnamed sources at both companies.

Nokia buys Symbian to form open-source Android killer

The mobile open-source world suddenly has a very major new player, after it emerged on Tuesday that the Symbian, Series 60, UIQ and MOAP platforms are to be merged into an open-sourced platform to rival Google's much-feted Android Open Handset Alliance project.

The major immediate difference for companies that deal with Symbian will be that they no longer have to pay a license fee to the company for using the platform.

Nokia is to buy out the remaining shares in Symbian that it does not already own for $410 million, and it will then contribute Symbian and its own Series 60 (S60) platform to a new not-for-profit organization called the Symbian Foundation. Sony Ericsson and Motorola will contribute the UIQ platform, and NTT DoCoMo will contribute its MOAP platform.

Start-up sues Google over e-mail switching tool

SAN FRANCISCO--Google was named on Monday in a trade secrets lawsuit alleging that the company's business software unit copied a tiny start-up's tool for moving customers off of Microsoft software onto Google's.

IT work is 'boring,' students

The majority of non-computing students perceive that information technology as a career would be "boring."

Currently, IT employers are struggling to fill vacancies, while the number of students applying for IT-related degrees is falling. Research by careers charity Crac shows that, while non-computing students think IT job prospects are good, and have few negative perceptions of IT professionals themselves, 63 percent believe a job in IT would be "boring."

More than 1 billion PCs now in use worldwide

There are now more than a billion PCs in active use worldwide, according to analyst house Gartner.

On Gartner's estimation that the installed base of PCs is growing at an annual rate of almost 12 percent, there will be two billion PCs in use by 2014, the analysts said on Monday. The findings are included in the Gartner report Forecast: PC Installed Base, Worldwide, 2004-2012.

According to Gartner, most of the one billion PCs in use--a separate estimate from that of the number of PCs that have been shipped--are mainly to be found in mature markets, but emerging markets are set to gain a larger share of the total in future.

Facebook overtakes MySpace globally

New figures from metrics firm comScore show that, in May, the battle of the social-networking sites may have gained a new front-runner: Facebook appears to have surpassed long-time rival MySpace in worldwide unique visitors for the first time. ComScore representatives said that Facebook's lead began in April, when the site passed MySpace by a hair, and widened in May.

Facebook, according to comScore, pulled in 123.9 million unique visitors in the month of May, beating MySpace's 114.6 million, and 50.6 billion page views, compared to MySpace's 45.4 billion.

FCC wants no-porn, free broadband wireless auction

WASHINGTON--The Federal Communications Commission on Friday said it wants to auction a section of wireless airwaves to buyers willing to provide free broadband Internet service without pornography.

Yahoo introduces two new e-mail address domains

SEATTLE--Yahoo Inc said it introduced two new e-mail domains on Wednesday, allowing users to select new, simpler e-mail addresses ending in ymail.com and rocketmail.com.

Overcoming hurdles to unified communications technology

Commentary--Normally, when Cisco, IBM and Microsoft move into a market, their presence does much to spur adoption. Their involvement might be expected to have a particularly positive impact on unified communications (UC), which industry analysts almost unanimously agree is poised for major growth.

How to maximize performance in virtualized environments

Commentary--Theres no doubt about the great potential of virtualization to cut IT hardware and management costs, and utilize IT resources even more efficiently--all-the-while providing a more agile IT infrastructure. Yet, so far, virtualization, especially for mission critical services at larger enterprises, has been more promise than reality.

One in three IT staff snoops on colleagues: survey

FRANKFURT--One in three information technology professionals abuses administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues' salary details, personal emails or board-meeting minutes, according to a survey.

HP to reorganize printer business

NEW YORK--Hewlett-Packard will reorganize its printer operations, trimming its five business units to three in a bid to become more efficient, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Gadget buyers more assertive, even arrogant

NEW YORK--Know someone who loves gadgets and can't wait to buy the newest model? Chances are you would describe them as assertive and a strong leader--and possibly arrogant, according a U.S. research.

IBM AlphaWorks: From software theory to fact

Semantic Web, rapid application development, data visualization, and health care applications are just some of the emerging software types being investigated by IBM's AlphaWorks division.

Established in 1996, AlphaWorks is a Web community for developers to preview and collaborate on emerging technology from IBM's research labs and turn them into commercial products. The IT giant claims much of AlphaWorks' activity is aimed at developing new software types and standards--particularly around open-source principles.

Google Gadgets for Linux appears

Google has announced the first release of Google Gadgets for Linux.

Google Desktop has been available for some time now on the Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. Until now, however, Google Gadgets--mini applications that can be placed anywhere on the desktop--have been available only on Windows and Mac. Jim Zhuang, of Google's software-engineering team, announced the first Linux version on Tuesday.

"Since releasing Google Desktop for Linux, we've added almost all of our most requested features, like 64-bit support and the ability to search applications and documents. All (but for) one major exception: Desktop Gadgets," Zhuang wrote on the company's open-source blog. "Gadget support is not just a single feature, but rather an entire platform for miniature applications. It's a complex undertaking, but we're now putting the finishing touches on the product."

Virtualizing onto mainframes: How to make it fit

Commentary--The flexibility, efficiency, and reduced cost of ownership virtualization provides makes it extremely compelling to large and small organizations alike. Increasingly IT organizations are contemplating virtualization across all platforms.

As this trend makes its way deeper and deeper into the data center, organizations are starting to leverage the fact that virtualization also lifts many of the constraints that govern which platform an application needs to run on. Different types of applications possess different workload personalities and these heavily influence how well an application will perform on a given virtualization model.