microsoft

More advertising dollars are flowing to the Internet, in a trend that started years ago. Advertising Age has come out with its annual look at the United States top-100 advertising spenders. There are few surprises, but it's confirmation of what you've probably been seeing and expecting. Internet ads now account for 5.5 percent of total spending by the top 100 advertisers in the U.S. That adds up to nearly $10 billion, and the Internet's about even with radio and ahead of outdoor.

What are the biggest losers? TV's share of ad spending has been … Read more

I guess there's life in them old proprietary software bones yet. At least, there is for Oracle. As "cave men" go, Oracle is evolving very quickly, as Jason Maynard (Credit Suisse) notes:

Some of the key highlights from the call were 21% y/y cash flow growth, a re-acceleration of the technology business to 15% growth, and 46% operating margins in Q4. We think the vertical applications acquisition strategy is proving to be an effective tool to win both new accounts and pull through additional middleware and database products. Oracle appears to be gaining share in the … Read more

Microsoft has just announced two new Windows Live products, Windows Live Folders and Windows Live Photo Gallery. Windows Live Folders is Microsoft's online storage solution, set to compete with AOL's Xdrive, Box.net, and a lot of other startups in this market. Windows Live Photo Gallery acts as an upgrade to Vista's Windows Photo Gallery, providing tight integration with Windows Live Spaces and Windows itself.

Windows Live Folders features a 500 MB storage limit, which is a below the industry norm, compared to competitors like Xdrive which provides 5 gigs or Box.net which … Read more

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:38 a.m. PST

WASHINGTON--A federal judge refused on Tuesday to rule on a last-minute Google antitrust complaint about Windows Vista's desktop search, saying she trusted government attorneys who said they were already satisfied with Microsoft's planned changes.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she would rely on the U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys to alert her if any further action is needed to address antitrust allegations lodged on Monday by Google that the search function still won't allow for adequate "user choice.&… Read more

A colleage e-mailed me over the weekend, wondering if the video he saw highlighted (lowlighted?) on the Fake Steve Jobs blog is really a Zune advertisement. OK, he wasn't exactly wondering...more hoping not.

Yes, it's real. It's not a TV spot, but it is available for download on Zune Arts, a promotional Web site that Microsoft created. The idea was to get some cutting-edge video designers to create videos, pair them with modern music, and hope that users would download and share and point others to the site. A viral marketing campaign, in other words.

This … Read more

Fluther is a social question and answer site. Like similar services, it gives people a place to ask and answer questions amid a community of users. Fluther has taken this idea and given it an interesting twist, in adding a built-in tracking service. This service keeps track of your activity on the site and will let you monitor questions you've asked or answered in real time. The service also promises to direct questions toward so-called experts once they've successfully answered several questions in a certain topic or area of interest.

Oh, and if you're wondering what that … Read more

An attack by consumer groups on the way that companies like Microsoft target advertisements to Internet users has attracted some notice from federal regulators.

Last November, the Center for Digital Democracy and U.S. Public Interest Research Group asked the Federal Trade Commission to review the growing use of business models built on, by their description, technologies that "aggressively track us wherever we go, creating data profiles to be used in ever-more sophisticated and personalized 'one-to-one' targeting schemes."

In a letter dated June 21 to the leaders of the two groups, FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Lydia Parnes … Read more

Google on Monday said it's still not convinced that Microsoft's planned tweaks to Windows Vista go far enough to head off its antitrust concerns.

"It appears that more may need to be done to provide a truly unbiased choice of desktop search products in Vista and achieve compliance with the Final Judgment," attorneys for the search giant wrote in a seven-page amicus brief obtained by CNET News.com and filed with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

The filing arrived one day before Kollar-Kotelly, who has been overseeing Redmond's compliance with a 2002 antitrust consent … Read more

Textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin said Monday it signed a pact with Microsoft to develop a new digital education system for school districts. Under the deal, Houghton Mifflin will build its learning system with Microsoft technology, including the.Net framework 3.0 and its latest SharePoint servers.

In 2001, Houghton Mifflin, an American institution in education publishing, bought instructional technology from IBM. That technology became what it called Learning Village, a system for school administrators and teachers to access curriculum, among other features. Now used by 45,000 schools in roughly 30 countries, the software is due for an update, according … Read more