Google Social Search Quickly Outdone by Facebook in Microsoft Bing Bar

Microsoft’s latest upgrade to Bing Bar, with a deeper integration to Facebook, immediately grabs attention and outpaces Google’s upgrade to its Social Search feature.
Google made a promise to start combining Social Search results on results pages according to relevance, pulling content even from the tail of results pages, and gauging how many times links and videos circulate a user’s friends list.
This effort came late for Google when it launched Social Search over a year ago; however, …

Your Next Laptop PC Could Be a Mac

edans / Flickr / (CC BY)

Your next laptop PC could be a Mac – that is, in terms of design.
According to Jen-Hsun Huang, NVidia’s chief executive, the MacBook Air hints at the design of future laptops.
“You’ll have trouble finding one that doesn’t look like the MacBook Air. I think the Macbook Air is a good mental image of what a clamshell laptop will look like,” Huang told CNet in a recent interview.
“They’ll be thin because you won’t need any heat pipes, …

Obama Meets With Leaders of Biggest US Tech and Innovation Companies

rob.rudloff / Flickr / (CC BY-NC)

United States President Barack Obama met with the leaders of leading US companies in the technology and innovation sector in a private event yesterday night in San Francisco to discuss his plans to revitalize the recovering US economy.
The White House has not revealed the names of the business leaders who attended the event, but various news reports claim that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Eric Schmidt were at the private dinner.
According to …

Nokia Projects Prices of Microsoft Windows Phone-Powered Smartphones to Fall Fast

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Saying it was a key topic on why Nokia decided to forge a deal with Microsoft, chief executive Stephen Elop detailed recently that the Finnish company sees the prices of smartphones running the Windows Phone (WP) platform to likely decrease soon.
Terhi Kinnunen writing for Reuters says that a key factor in Nokia’s decision was convincing the company that WP-powered smartphones “could reach ‘a very low price point.’”
“We have become convinced that we …

Stephen Elop Sells Microsoft Shares, Buys Nokia Shares

Stephen Elop by luca.sartoni / Flickr / (CC BY-SA)

Critics saying Nokia CEO Stephen Elop had a conflict of interest in the recently announced Nokia-Microsoft pact seemed to have gotten to the Canadian executive.
According to reports, Elop has sold his Microsoft shares and have bought Nokia shares worth 1 million euros.
Criticism raged when it was found out that Elop was the ranked 7th in a list of individuals having the most Microsoft shares.
The Canadian citizen was also the head of …

Microsoft Bans Open-Source from WP and Xbox Apps

Robert Scoble / Flickr / (CC BY)

Fans of open-source software will not get such programs on their Windows Phone devices and on the Xbox console in light of a recent discovery of a stipulation on Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace Application Provider Agreement.
The software giant has banned open-source GPLv3 Licenses from its Windows Phone mobile operating platform and Xbox apps, according to open-source evangelist and Red Hat employee Jan Wildeboer.
Wildeboer broke the news and …

Microsoft and Nokia Chief Executives Excited to Rival Apple and Google

luca.sartoni / CC-BY-SA-2.0

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop talked “with excitement” about the tie-up between the world’s largest software company and the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer during the Mobile World Congress 2011 held in Barcelona, Spain, an emotion triggered by the new alliance’s intention to develop a third “ecosystem” of smartphones, directly challenging rivals Apple and Google.
In Elop’s own words, “The world is shifting from …

Confidential Dell 2011 Smartphone Roadmap Leaked

jerryluo0520 / Flickr / (CC BY)

Dell’s 2011 smartphone roadmap has been leaked by WP Central, detailing planned release timeframes for Android and Windows Phone-powered smartphones from the US consumer electronics Giant.
According to the sister sites, “a reliable tipster” had sent them the 2011 Dell roadmap for “both the tablet and smartphone fronts”.
According to the roadmap, the Venue Pro MLK which will bring “additional features and enhancements” will arrive by mid-April.
The …

Compared to Office, Google Apps Weak in Enterprise Sales – Microsoft Office Chief

Kurt DelBene by Microsoft PDC / Flickr / (CC BY)

Microsoft Office head Kurt DelBene said in the Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference in San Francisco Wednesday that Google Apps was weaker in enterprise sales than Microsoft’s Office suite.
Google has “probably made more traction in the consumer space,” said DelBene, due to the popularity of the free version of the product, but that it was limited there and did not extend to sales in the business market.
The Microsoft Office …

Microsoft On-Premises and Partner-Hosted Dynamics CRM 2011 Launched

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Microsoft has launched its latest iteration of the Dynamics CRM software, the Dynamics CRM 2011, for on-premises and partner-hosted use.
The Redmond, Washington-based company had originally intended to release this latest version by the end of February to give it more time to test the suit.
This latest version of the Dynamics CRM 2011 offers “sub-second response times” even with up to 150,000 users simultaneously using the service.
The version is …