Google and Yahoo Joint venture

Google and Yahoo are reportedly moving closer to striking an advertising deal that could foil Microsoft's takeover bid. The proposal would see Yahoo hand over its search advertising operation to Google in a deal that could yield Yahoo as much as $1bn in new revenues, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal.

The publication cited anonymous sources within Yahoo as saying that the outsourcing deal had been granted initial approval and will move forward. The arrangement would give Yahoo another weapon in its effort to ward off a takeover attempt by Microsoft.

The Redmond giant has been attempting to push Yahoo's board to accept its $42bn proposal since February. Yahoo's board has rejected the offer several times, causing Microsoft to issue an ultimatum threatening to oust the board if it does not agree to the proposal by 26 April.

Since the acquisition offer was first made, analysts have speculated that Yahoo would seek out a deal with former rival Google in attempt to preserve its independence.

The two companies confirmed those suspicions earlier this month when they announced a two-week trial of a search advertising program. Yahoo has also been rumored to be in talks with AOL and News Corporation for other deals which could raise cash to fend off Microsoft.

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Vista Hardware requirment will drop : Microsoft

According to an email sent last February by Microsoft general manager John Kalkman, the software giant lowered Windows Vista's minimum hardware requirements to ridiculous levels only because Intel needed to sell more graphics chipsets.
The email was just one of many released in response to a federal class action suit that accuses Microsoft of misleading the world with those "Windows Vista Capable" logos it slapped on new PCs in the run-up to the operating system's debut. The logos appeared on system more than nine month before the OS was unveiled.
Judging from these emails - unsealed by the court this week and spewed to the digerati by Todd Bishop of Seattle Post-Intelligencer - the case has a pretty good chance.
"In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded," John Kalkman wrote to Scott Di Valerio, who oversaw Microsoft's dealings with PC partners.
Intel told The Wall Street Journal that the bit about its earning was not true, arguing that Kalkman "is not qualified in any shape or form to have knowledge about Intel's internal financial forecasts related to chipsets, motherboards or any other product".
Meanwhile, Microsoft informed the paper that it included the Intel 915 chipset in the Windows Vista Capable program "based on successful testing of beta versions of Windows Vista on the chip set and the broad availability of the chip set in the market." And it said the unsealed emails showed how its execs "were trying to make the marketing program better for Microsoft partners and consumers".
You could argue, however, that Kalkman's email is far from the best of the lot. In another message, a Microsoft board member tells Steve Ballmer he's decided against "upgrading" one of his machines to Vista. "I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is such a shortage of drivers," he says.
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Image Search is now available for Vodafone Mobiles

Search isn't just about text anymore. At the Cebit trade show in Germany, Vodafone is demonstrating Otello, a search engine that uses images as input.
Instead of entering a word or phrase users send pictures via MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) from their mobile phones.
The picture can be anything from a historical building to a CD cover, according to Vodafone. Otello then returns information relevant to the picture to the mobile phone, just like a normal search engine.
Vodafone's reasoning behind image search is that it's more convenient to take a picture than to enter search terms with a phone that lacks a normal keyboard.
Starting Monday Vodafone is conducting a trial with German paper Bild. Readers can find out more about specially-marked articles by photographing them with their mobile phone camera and sending the image to Bild.
This gives the reader access to additional multimedia content, such as photos or videos.
The next step for the service remains to be seen. Vodafone won't to comment on when Otello will be used in more than trial.
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