I'm a UC Blog

It seems that Microsoft and Yahoo! deals are still not off the cards with yet another spate of Microhoo! rumours emerging. In a recent report made by Kara Swisher at AllThingsD Microsoft’s top execs are down in Silicon Valley attending talks.

Kara mentions that “While sources at both sides stressed that this was in no way a merger, a deal
would bind their fates together rather strongly” and continues “In any case, if it does not work out, the source said, “this will be it…we
will all finally go our separate ways and be done with it.” The Wall Street Journal stated “that a deal was “imminent.”

Source: here

Completely off topic I know, but like most people I was shocked when I heard the news that Michael Jackson had died (I was actually working into the early hours at the time – we were migrating an application between data centres). Fans believe that Michael’s health deteriorated after performing at a Pepsi shoot where his hair caught fire, this left Jackson with 2nd/3rd degree burns and a growing addiction for pain killers.

The video of this shoot can be seen below (be aware this is uncensored and not for the faint hearted)

Early last month Sony very quietly launched “VidZone“, an application that streams reasonably high quality music videos for free (from what I can see subsidised by very discrete advertising). I know it is not Netflix (don’t get me started), but it is definitely worth a look and good for when you have friends over.

To download – access the PS3 Store and head to the media section. If you have an XBOX 360 then just be smug and greatful that even though Sony makes movies you got a video store first!

Back in May Steve Riley, an ex-Microsoft security guru come probably the best speaker I have ever seen was taken hostage by recent layoffs. He now works for Amazon Web Services, as mention on his Blog.

Living inside the EU? Want to run an Internet browser on Windows 7? (of course you do) If the answer is YES then you were probably hoping for Microsoft to invent some sort of clever mechanism for you to add your chosen browser (in my case Internet Explorer 8). Unfortunately this does not appear to be the case, basically download it, place on removable media and load –  thanks EU commission!

I am hoping that as with Windows N (a version of Windows without Windows Media Player) I can download both flavours via the Microsoft volume licensing site.

The official guide published by Microsoft is here.

In the public spotlight Apple continuously mocks Microsoft’s laptops hunters campaign. However Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s COO uncovered that privately this is not the case! In a recent statement made at the Worldwide Partner Conference he stated,

“And so we’ve been running these PC value ads. Just giving people saying, hey, what are you looking to spend? “Oh, I’m looking to spend less than $1,000.” Well we’ll give you $1,000. Go in and look and see what you can buy. And they come out and they just show them. Those are completely unscripted commercials.

And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.” They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business. (Applause.)

I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, “Is this a joke? Who are you?” Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we’re just going to keep running them and running them and running them”.

Update: Apple drops to 5th place in US PC sales

For a full transcript see Microsoft PressPass