Meanwhile, Microsoft Buys Danger. they make the sidekick cell phones. interesting.

The Associated Press: Yahoo Formally Rejects Microsoft Offer. nothing like a formal rejection. and what happens when you put two flatlined companies together?

monkey boy’s three-legged race

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs is a great blog. It usually has some really funny stuff. On the weekend it posted the best commentary on the proposed Microsoft/Yahoo deal I’ve seen. The article is well worth reading but here’s some of the choice quotes:

It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.

But here’s the really dark part of all this. [Ballmer] knows it won’t work. He has to know this. He’s not stupid. [...] He has a mindset that was formed in Detroit, where he grew up. He’s a Big Three automaker kind of guy. And this is a Big Three move. It’s Ford buying Jaguar and Land Rover and Volvo because they can’t think of anything else to do.

Oh, and synergy. Yeah. They’ll talk a lot about synergy. You know, like when you hook together a bunch of data centers that run on completely different technology stacks.

Scariest to me is that in all the articles I’ve seen the one thing Ballmer keeps bringing up is how he’ll be able to save $1 billion a year in costs. Are you kidding me? Is this Microsoft or Dunder Mifflin? I mean, I don’t doubt he could save a billion a year. But it says a lot about the kind of company Microsoft has become that this is what they’re thinking about.

Microsoft challenges Google with audacious $44.6bn bid for rival Yahoo | guardian.co.uk. now that’s insane.

YouTube – Podtech MS Research clip. very cool, though you need a camera right above your keybord which doesn’t work for me.

Waxy.org: Sex Baiting Prank on Craigslist Affects Hundreds. appears there’s lots of stupid horny men in seattle and at least one at microsoft. via funkaoshi.

Techcrunch » Google Makes Its Move: Office 2.0. this looks like the opening salvo to microsoft exchange

Microsoft’s Acquisitions In The Last Fiscal Year: Total $689 Million. all in cash.

Anil Dash: Office 2007 is the Bravest Upgrade Ever

My experience has been the same as most of those who I know that are using the new version: Word went from being frustrating and confusing to fairly straightforward to use. PowerPoint went, in a single upgrade, from being the worst widely-available presentation software to being the best.

can this be true? i still don’t beleive it. via funkaoshi.

The iPod Observer – Microsoft Confirms it Originated iPod Box Parody Video. it turns out that ipod packaging parody which mocked microsoft’s inability to be cool turned out to be produced by Microsoft themselves. as previously mentioned here

Some absurdly detailed satellite photos from Windows Live Local. welcome to downtown seattle.

Xbox 360 Very Unstable. Microsoft, bringing the blue screen of death to new levels and new rooms of your house.

Google throws bodies at OpenOffice | CNET. Gentlemen, start your engines. I think a fire just broke out in Redmond.

2014, a media odyssey. An 8-minute flash movie reporting on the state of the media in the year 2014. The scenario is that Google and Amazon merged, they know everything about you, and have eliminated the usefulness of the new york times. gets somewhat ominous. None the less, food for thought.

mini-Micrsoft. Slashdot has had a couple posts in the last few days about shake-ups at MS. I linked to one the other day about Troubling Exits at MS. Now we’re on to the dirty gossip at an anonymous blog called MiniMsft. It’s essentially people venting about the low morale and “impending disaster” at Microsoft. See what happens when stock options go flat? Aaaaanyways, BusinessWeek is feeding the MiniMsft hype with an interview with Mr. Mini himself and even asks Ballmer if he reads MiniMsft.

Business Week has an excellent article about Troubling Exits At Microsoft. It mentions how there’s so many more MS employees who are now vocal about problems within the company and how top talent heads for googlemania.