Microsoft Corporation

We've still got a hand­ful of posts in the pipeline, but with the gates closed and ev­ery­one in the air head­ing back to their re­spec­tive homes, our ad­ven­tures at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona have come to a close. The good news is we can re­turn to our reg­u­lar four of hours of sleep each night (a fig­ure that was cut in half this week). The bad news is the heartache of leav­ing be­hind gor­geous scenery and de­li­cious pael­la. Take a look at some of our high­lights be­low! Microsoft Microsoft (...)

Nokia's fight­ing an uphill bat­tle to re­tain its com­mu­ni­ty of de­vel­op­ers as it switch­es fo­cus to Windows Phone and Microsoft's Windows Phone Developer Tools from what was a joint Symbian / MeeGo smart­phone strat­e­gy uni­fied un­der the Qt de­vel­op­ment frame­work. As such, Espoo just no­ti­fied its Launchpad mem­bers that they'll be re­ceiv­ing about $1,000 in free hard­ware in the form of Nokia's new flag­ship E7 QWERTY slid­er and a "Nokia WP7 de­vice" just as soon as it's avail­able. Nokia's al­so toss­ing (...)

The jQuery li­brary pro­vides sev­er­al tech­niques for adding an­i­ma­tion to a web page. These in­clude sim­ple, stan­dard an­i­ma­tions that are fre­quent­ly used, and the abil­i­ty to craft so­phis­ti­cat­ed cus­tom ef­fects. In this ar­ti­cle we've gath­ered 24 bril­liant and ad­vanced jQuery ef­fects that can re­al­ly sur­prise your vis­i­tors by their beau­ty and us­abil­i­ty. 24 Brilliant and Advanced jQuery Effect iCarousel iCarousel is a beau­ti­ful and sim­ple hor­i­zon­tal im­age slid­er, with a beau­ti­ful (...)

At LeWeb yes­ter­day, Microsoft demon­strat­ed a pret­ty, new way to cu­rate the web’s in­for­ma­tion: Montage. Montage looks and feels a lot like a glossy magazine web or tablet app. It works by al­low­ing the user to pick a key­word or two; the ap­pli­ca­tion then pulls data and con­tent from a va­ri­ety of me­dia-rich and re­al-time sources, in­clud­ing YouTube, RSS feeds, Twitter and Bing News. . The con­tent is then ar­ranged on the page in a grid for­mat — you get to choose the ex­act lay­out — for your own (...)

The Spark of Genius Series high­lights a unique fea­ture of star­tups and is made pos­si­ble by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your star­tup con­sid­ered for in­clu­sion, please see the de­tails here. Name: Urban Interns Quick Pitch: Urban Interns is a na­tion­al mar­ket­place that con­nects grow­ing com­pa­nies with peo­ple look­ing for part-time jobs, in­tern­ships and free­lance po­si­tions. Genius Idea: Online job sites date back to the ear­ly days of the web, but most fo­cus on help­ing com­pa­nies (...)

"Good ideas" can come from a va­ri­ety of sources of in­spi­ra­tion. But ac­cord­ing to Bryce Roberts, the Managing Director of O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, "dis­rup­tive ideas" in tech­nol­o­gy often come from "hob­by­ists, hack­ers, and al­pha geeks." In a blog post to­day, Roberts lays out some of the in­vest­ment themes and sig­nals that are of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est to him and his part­ners, Mark Jacobsen and Tim O'Reilly. Sponsor Citing Tim O'Reilly, he writes that "Over our years watch­ing the al­pha (...)

Nortel, a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions giant that con­trols some ma­jor patents on the next gen­er­a­tion of wire­less tech­nol­o­gy, is auc­tion­ing off the re­main­der of its patents to suit­ors like Research in Motion, Apple and Microsoft, ac­cord­ing to a re­port from Reuters. The 4,000 patents, 7 of which are part of 105 patents that are con­sid­ered im­por­tant for the de­vel­op­ment of Long Term Evolution (LTE) wire­less tech­nol­o­gy, that are be­ing auc­tioned off are worth around $1 bil­lion. For Apple and Microsoft, (...)

Online ad tech com­pa­ny Undertone has ac­quired dig­i­tal pub­lish­er rep firm WWN. Terms of the deal, New York-based Undertone’s sec­ond in the past past, were not dis­closed. The pur­chase of Paris-based WWN is in­tend­ed to ex­pand Undertone’s glob­al reach, as the com­pa­ny works to evolve from an ad net­work—it dumped the “net­works” part of its name not too long ago—in­to a more gen­er­al on­line ad ser­vices provider to pub­lish­ers and ad­ver­tis­ers. “There’s noth­ing in­her­ent­ly neg­a­tive or wrong with the ad net­work (...)

There’s an­oth­er turf war brew­ing in the mo­bile space, and this one isn’t over con­sumers–it’s over the top smart­phone man­u­fac­tur­ers. Consider this: In 2009, HTC, Samsung and LG ac­count­ed for 67 per­cent of Windows Mobile ship­ments. In the third quar­ter of 2010, those same com­pa­nies ac­count­ed for 44 per­cent of Android hand­set ship­ments. Motorola and Sony Ericsson, al­so long­time Windows Mobile li­censees, ac­count­ed for an ad­di­tion­al 30 per­cent. With Android com­mand­ing that kind of OEM at­ten­tion, (...)

<img align='left' src="http://pho­tos.mac­nn.com/news/1012/zune­hd-avatar.jpg" bor­der='0' width='176' height='120' /Microsoft to­day opened up its Zune Originals cus­tomiza­tion to take cus­tom im­ages. Zune HD buy­ers can ei­ther upload a pho­to of their own or use their Xbox Live avatars in one of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent pos­es. The cus­tomiza­tions are etched in grayscale and, for pho­tos, al­low four dif­fer­ent etch (...)

<img align='left' src="http://pho­tos.mac­nn.com/news/1012/twit­ter-dick­cos­tolo.jpg" bor­der='0' width='176' height='120' /Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his Twitter coun­ter­part Dick Costolo were re­port­ed­ly seen to­day hav­ing break­fast and have sparked ru­mors that Microsoft might ac­quire or land a deal with Twitter. The na­ture of the dis­cus­sion wasn't known, but the two com­pa­nies have both de­clined com­ment, hint­ing that it was busi­ness and not sim­ply a per­son­al dis­cus­sion. It's un­known (...)

the week in type Perhaps you thought ‘The Week in Type’ was dead. Well, this post marks its res­ur­rec­tion. It won’t be week­ly just yet, but from 2011 it will be: a week­ly roundup of new re­leas­es, type and let­ter­ing to in­spire, type tips, videos, and lots, lots more. If you haven’t yet sub­scribed to ILT, then do so now — that way, you’ll nev­er miss a thing. So, ladies and gentle­man, with­out fur­ther ado, I pre­sent The Week in Type. Enjoy. The biggest news from my camp is that ILT will soon be a (...)

Ballmer to de­but sec­ond up­date Microsoft will un­veil a sec­ond up­date to Windows Phone 7 in February, crack­ing open the op­er­at­ing sys­tem in an ef­fort to put it on par with ri­vals.…

Steve Ballmer and Dick Costolo had break­fast to­geth­er. Forbes won­ders if that means Microsoft is look­ing to ac­quire Twitter. Join the con­ver­sa­tion about this sto­ry »

While Sony says it's seen "block­buster suc­cess" with its PlayStation Move con­troller, it's not clear how many have ac­tu­al­ly been sold through to con­sumers. The com­pa­ny has shipped 4.1 mil­lion units since launch. Kinect, mean­while, has sold 2.5 mil­lion in 25 days, and ac­cord­ing to Wedbush an­a­lyst Michael Pachter, when look­ing at con­sole bundles for Kinect and Move, Kinect is win­ning by far. "About one fifth of PS3 sales in­clud­ed bundles with Sony’s Move con­troller, sug­gest­ing a mod­est (...)

<img align='left' src="http://pho­tos.mac­nn.com/news/1012/air­gui­tar­in.jpg" bor­der='0' width='176' height='120' /On his web­site this mon­th, Chris O'Shea re­vealed he has hacked Microsoft's Xbox Kinect ac­ces­so­ry to al­low users to en­gage in air gui­tar ses­sions. There is video proof of the work­ing hack (em­bed­ded be­low), which was port­ed over to the pe­riph­er­al from a pro­ject O'Shea per­formed back in 2007 with a stereo cam­era. The pro­gram was writ­ten in C++ in open­Frame­works and openCV for (...)

As I in­stalled my Logitech Google TV box, I checked my e-mail — I mean Gmail — on my G2 Slide. Someone need­ed some in­fo, so I pulled up the in­for­ma­tion from a file stored on Google Docs us­ing my browser of choice, Chrome. Then it oc­curred to me. I’m sur­round­ed by Google and for the most part, I like it. It took the G2 Slide, with Android and a de­cent key­board to fi­nal­ly dump my Sidekick. I can’t type quite as fast on it as I did on my Sidekick but the fea­tures and apps make me just as, if (...)

According to an­a­lyt­ics firm NPD Group, Microsoft’s Xbox gam­ing con­sole has out­sold Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3 for the six­th con­sec­u­tive mon­th. Microsoft moved rough­ly 1.37 mil­lion con­soles dur­ing November, rep­re­sent­ing a 68% in­crease from the same pe­ri­od last year. Several weeks ago, the Redmond com­pa­ny an­nounced that it had sold over 2.5 mil­lion Kinect mo­tion-con­trollers since its November 4th launch. “The 360 plat­form ac­count­ed for over 40 per­cent of to­tal in­dus­try sales driven (...)

Updates are in the works for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 plat­form that may make it more en­tic­ing to mo­bile de­vel­op­ers, ac­cord­ing to Tom Warren at WinRumors. Sources tell Warren that the up­date, which is ex­pect­ed to be an­nounced at the Mobile World Congress event in February, will of­fer de­vel­op­ers more free­dom with their apps by open­ing up greater mul­ti­task­ing sup­port, in-app down­loads and bet­ter cus­tomiza­tion for users. The news is buoyed by a Business Insider re­port from yes­ter­day that (...)

Groupon CEO Andrew Mason was on Charlie Rose last night. He re­fused to an­swer any ques­tions about why Groupon spurned Google’s $6 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of­fer, but he did re­veal a few stats and his think­ing on what makes Groupon suc­cess­ful. Groupon now boasts 40 mil­lion sub­scribers for its dai­ly deals, and added 3 mil­lion last week alone. In the be­gin­ning of the year, it was adding on­ly about 100,000 new sub­scribers a week. Mason at­tributes Groupon’s hy­per­growth to the fact that it is (...)