More than 60 teams from nine countries have lined up to chase a -million prize for making a green supercar that smashes records for fuel efficiency, organisers of the competition said on Thursday. ”We’re not talking about concept cars,” said Peter Diamandis, chief executive of the X Prize Foundation.
Microsoft and Intel said on Tuesday they are teaming with United States universities to unleash the mighty potential of multicore computer chips. A recent trend is to increase computing power but reduce electricity use and heat production by crafting multiple processors, or computer brains, into each chip.
Microsoft has posted a major package of updates and security fixes for Windows Vista. It said that "Service Pack 1" will improve Vista’s reliability, security and performance, though many components already have been released during monthly updates since the operating system went on sale just more than a year ago.
It seems that the £200 (about R3 150) ultraportable Asus Eee PC can do no wrong. The size of a paperback, weighing less than a kilogram, with built-in Wi-Fi and using Flash memory instead of a hard drive for storage, the Eee PC has been winning positive comments from both reviewers and users.
Google expanded its power in online advertising on Tuesday when it completed its takeover of DoubleClick, a move that increases the pressure on rival Microsoft to win its hostile bid for Yahoo!. The merger came after European regulators signed off on the deal, and strengthened Google’s domination of the lucrative online ad business.
Savvy office workers frustrated that their on-the-job computer tools don’t function as smoothly as, say, an Apple iPod are taking matters into their own hands. No longer are they relying on company technicians, or information technology (IT) administrators, to choose the software needed to get the job done.
It must count among the world’s most genial rivalries. Two of the planet’s richest men regularly play epic games of online bridge and collaborate over handing out their billions. But Warren Buffett has unseated his friend, Bill Gates, to become the wealthiest individual on the globe.
Facebook has raided Google to hire a new chief operating officer, providing the popular online social network with more seasoned management and advertising savvy as it strives to make more money without alienating its audience. Sheryl Sandberg’s defection from Google, announced this week, represents a coup for Facebook.
In a dramatic about-face, Ask.com is abandoning its effort to outshine internet search leader Google and will instead focus on a narrower market consisting of married women looking for help managing their lives. As part of the new direction outlined on Tuesday, Ask will lay off about 40 employees.
Microsoft announced on Monday that it is expanding the range of business software it makes available as a service on the internet. The move comes as people increasingly use writing, accounting, email and other programs online instead of buying packaged software and installing it on their own machines.
Google, already the world’s most popular spot for finding websites, is aiming to become the go-to place for creating websites too. It is taking its first step toward that goal with the debut of a free service designed for high-tech neophytes looking for a simple way to share information with other people working in the same company.
Microsoft has announced steep price cuts in its Vista operating system in a bid to spur sales of its year-old operating system. The move, announced late last week, came as the company is facing a troubling class-action lawsuit that alleges it colluded with Intel to market computers as being ”Vista-capable”.
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/ 28 February 2008
Microsoft is to stop making HD DVD players for its Xbox 360 video game system after Toshiba ceded the high-definition video-format battle to Sony’s Blu-ray. Microsoft said on Saturday it will continue to provide standard warranty support for its HD DVD players.
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/ 28 February 2008
Google will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that is likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the internet search leader. The pilot project will involve 1 500 to 10 000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic in the United States.
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/ 28 February 2008
Microsoft launched a new version of its server operating system with great fanfare on Wednesday, but analysts said Windows Server 2008 is an incremental update rather than a giant leap forward. It also unveiled a new edition of Visual Studio 2008, used by computer programmers to create desktop and web applications.
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/ 27 February 2008
The European Commission fined Microsoft a record €899-million on Wednesday for failing to comply with a 2004 antitrust ruling against the United States software giant. The fine comes on top of the €497-million that Microsoft already had to pay after Europe’s top antitrust watchdog found the company guilty in 2004 of abusing its dominant market power.
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/ 23 February 2008
A federal judge has said consumers may go ahead with a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft over the way it advertised computers loaded with Windows XP as capable of running the Vista operating system. The lawsuit said Microsoft’s labelling of some PCs as ”Windows Vista Capable” was misleading.
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/ 21 February 2008
Microsoft says it will make Xbox 360 video games developed by players available for download through the console’s online service. The new service will double the size of the Xbox 360 game library, to 1 000 games within a year of its launch, scheduled for this holiday season, the company said on Wednesday.
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/ 19 February 2008
Japan’s Toshiba conceded defeat on Tuesday to rival Sony in a long-running DVD format war, ending consumer confusion but leaving about one million people with expensive machines doomed to become obsolete. Toshiba said it will stop selling its HD DVD machines by the end of March.
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/ 19 February 2008
Microsoft unveiled a new initiative on Monday that will give college and high school students around the world free access to technology tools used to develop and design software. The development and design tools are available immediately to college students in the United States, Western Europe and China.
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/ 15 February 2008
Art collectors opened their wallets on Thursday and shelled out ,6-million at a Valentine’s Day charity auction spearheaded by rocker Bono and British artist Damien Hirst to benefit the fight against HIV/Aids in Africa. Spirited bidding and prices far in excess of pre-sale estimates marked ”The (Red) Auction” at Sotheby’s, where all but one of the 83 contemporary works found buyers.
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/ 14 February 2008
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (News Corp) is negotiating to rescue embattled internet company Yahoo! through an alliance that could set up a heavyweight business showdown between the Australian-born media mogul and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. News Corp has begun tentative talks about merging its online division with Yahoo!.
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/ 12 February 2008
Yahoo!’s rejection on Monday of Microsoft’s buyout offer sets the stage for the United States software giant to up the ante or attempt a coup by ousting the internet firm’s board of directors. Yahoo!’s board of directors spurned Microsoft’s takeover bid, saying the $44,6-billion offer is too low.
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/ 12 February 2008
The first cellphones fitted with Google’s Android software platform made their debut at an industry trade show on Monday, a milestone for the internet giant as it looks to dominate the wireless world. A handful of chip makers showed off prototype handsets at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
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/ 11 February 2008
Yahoo! is set to reject Microsoft’s unsolicited bid, now worth -billion, as too low, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Saturday — the first clear signal the board might be prepared to negotiate and sell the internet media giant. The Wall Street Journal had quoted an unnamed source as saying Microsoft’s offer of per share was an attempt to ”steal” the company.
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/ 4 February 2008
Microsoft’s ,6-billion bid for Yahoo! raises ”troubling questions” about the future of the internet, Google has warned. A takeover would also create a business with an ”overwhelming share” of online communications services of web-based email and instant messaging, wrote David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer.
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/ 2 February 2008
With a market value of -billion, Google’s power has become awe-inspiring. Its profits rocketed by 40% to ,2-billion last year and it swallowed the popular video-sharing website YouTube. Through Microsoft’s ,6-billion takeover bid for Yahoo!, the technology establishment hit back at Google’s seemingly unstoppable rise.
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/ 1 February 2008
Technology giant Microsoft said on Friday that it had offered to acquire internet media company Yahoo! for ,6-billion in cash and stock. Microsoft said it had offered to buy Yahoo! for per share, which it said represented a 62% premium above the company’s closing stock price on Nasdaq on Thursday.
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/ 22 January 2008
Internet protocol (IP) addresses, a string of numbers that identifies a computer, should generally be regarded as personal information, the head of the European Union’s group of data privacy regulators said on Monday. Google insists an IP address merely identifies the location of a computer, not who the individual user is.
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/ 22 January 2008
Microsoft on Monday announced several moves it says will help its business customers take advantage of a technology called virtualisation, and in the process help the software maker catch up with VMware, the front-runner in that area. Virtualisation allows one physical computer to house multiple ”virtual machines”.
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/ 14 January 2008
European Union competition regulators said on Monday they would launch two new antitrust probes against Microsoft, opening fresh fronts in their battle against the United States software giant’s dominant market power. The European Commission said one investigation targeted the interoperability of a broad range of software with rival products.
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/ 14 January 2008
Advances in digital technology are set to transform the automotive world, making cars safer, more efficient and more fun to drive, says General Motors chairperson Rick Wagoner. His speech at last week’s Consumer Electronics World, the world’s largest technology fair, signified how fast cars are integrating electronic gadgets.