Business

A new book by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen reveals a lot about the company and the people who ran it during those heady days in the early 1980s. Some of the most fascinating content focuses on Allen's impressions of Microsoft's 'wunderkind' ... leader, Bill Gates -- and not all of it is complimentary. Along with Gates, Allen helped found Microsoft in 1975, though the latter left the company in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a form of cancer. Allen beat the disease but never formally returned to Microsoft, instead pursuing a number of other ventures with his newfound ... (view more)

A new report predicts Apple will surpass both IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP) in revenue and sales by mid-2013. In fact, the man responsible for the report -- Forrester Research founder, George Colony -- says that Apple is "going to be a $200 billion ... revenue company." Colony made the bold prediction in a recent interview with Bloomberg. He went on to suggest that Apple's mobile sector (which is known for the ludicrously popular iPad and iPhone) could propel the company to 50 per cent growth per year over the next 24 months. Apple Growth Already Underway When it comes to market capitalization, ... (view more)

A new study suggests that the web browser you choose to use may have an impact on the energy consumed by your laptop. If you're a user that's on the go, this study could prove newsworthy, but it's not without its caveats. Watt Consumption, ... Efficiency Measured In the study, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), Mozilla Firefox 4, Google Chrome 10, Apple's Safari 5, and Opera 11 were tested. Each browser was run on an Intel laptop that measured the watt consumption when the browser was a) left idling, b) displaying a news website or c) running a number of graphics-based web tests. For the ... (view more)

The European Union (EU) has come under harsh criticism of late for upgrading its computer networks to Windows 7 without first considering other operating systems. It's just emerged that at a "secret meeting" last December, the European Commission ... (which is the administrative wing of the EU, responsible for applying the laws produced by elected politicians) decided to upgrade computers across the European political system to run Windows 7. (Source: pcworld.com ) Controversial Decision Gives MS Big Boost The controversial element of the decision was that it was made without putting the ... (view more)

To the surprise of many, Microsoft finished well in a recent World's Most Ethical Companies award list, recently unveiled by the Ethisphere Institute. Ethisphere is a think tank whose mandate is to improve standards for business ethics. It looked at ... 110 different companies, some being nominated by the Institute and others applying for nomination. A number of the firms included in the list are from the software industry, including Adobe, Microsoft, Symantec, Teradata Corp and Salesforce.com. Hitachi Data Systems was a winner in the computer hardware category, with other notable mentions ... (view more)

A 17-year-old California high school student has been awarded a $100,000 grand prize for a math project that could be used by tech companies to help encrypt information. The award is part of Intel's nation-wide Science Talent Search. $1.25 Million ... Awarded to Talented, Young Scientists Also winning a big cash reward was second-place finisher Michelle Hackman, a 17-year-old from Great Neck, New York whose study of the psychological relationship between teenagers and their cell phones shed new light on technology's impact on mental health. Hackman, who is blind, used ten helpers to conduct her ... (view more)

Microsoft looks to be working on an interactive television product, likely in the form of a set-top box. That would put it in direct competition with rivals Apple and Google. Speculation about the move has been spurred by the fact that a Microsoft ... executive's company bio has been revised. Tom Gibbons, who'd previously worked in Microsoft's general hardware and mobile devices divisions, is now listed as the company's "corporate vice president of TV & Service Business". Given his background, it does seem logical that he'd be working on physical devices in the new role. According ... (view more)

There are currently about 100,000 different applications (commonly known as "apps") available for the Apple iPhone. The running total, however, is constantly changing and has probably increased since this article was written. But it's rare to see an ... app removed from the list, which was the case for a new application which speaks out against homosexuality. The app, which is available for both the iPhone and iPad, was designed by the Christian organization Exodus International and released for download last month. It reportedly advocates "freedom from homosexuality through the power ... (view more)

Hoping to entice new users to make the switch from Google, Microsoft has invested a great deal of time and resources in the promotion of their Bing search engine. It now appears that all of the strenuous efforts are finally paying off, as Microsoft ... (via Bing) has become the second-most popular online video site in the US. February's comScore Video Metrix statistics indicate that Microsoft's Bing is now in second place, surpassing such established competitors as Yahoo! and AOL. Even Facebook, given its sheer appeal and the number of user accounts it continues to retain, pales in comparison to ... (view more)

Self-proclaimed cranky technology and business journalist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (whose articles have also appeared in the Washington Post, PC World and ZDNet) recently put together a list of five reasons not to upgrade to Microsoft's newest web ... browser, Internet Explorer 9 . Topping the list of reasons are operating system incompatibilities and performance issues. We've known for some time that Internet Explorer wouldn't be compatible with Windows XP, but that doesn't make it any easier for Vaughan-Nichols to swallow. Even though Windows XP is slowly declining in market share, it remains ... (view more)