I’ve never heard of Quest Software, but its a 25-year old company that last year it reported $857 million in sales and a $44 million net profit. Its speciality is creating management systems for enterprise software.

One product is called SharePlex, and its described as an Oracle replication product that promises to make a live copy of an Oracle database without slowing down its operation and availability. Another products for the Oracle environment is Toad. Its described tool that automates a lot of the maintenance tasks associated with running an Oracle database. Toad appears to be a flagship product as there’s a few other versions of it for Sybase, and SQL Server. Quest also builds tools to manage and maintain some Microsoft products like SharePoint and Exchange.

Quest’s market cap was just north of $2 billion as of yesterday. On today’s word of deal talks is shares surged by 95 cents or nearly 4 percent to $26.13. It’s been the subject of regular speculation all year that it might be taken out in an acquisition and as a result its shares have inflated by about a third during that time.

The purported offer from Dell is one of several coming in response to Quest’s agreement to be acquired by Insight Venture Partners in a deal to go private at $23 a share. The deal’s terms allow for a “go shop period” that allows the company to basically shop around for a better offer. It may get one. JPMorgan values Quest at $28 a share based on its sales and cash flow alone.

Also Quest is right in the wheelhouse of the sort of things that Dell is trying to emphasize as it seeks to transform itself into an enterprise hardware, software and services concern, and de-emphasize its reliance on its traditional PC business. By at least one metric that strategy is working, a little. Dell’s consumer PC business, for which it is best known, amounts to about one-fifth of revenue, while its enterprise-oriented businesses amount to about 50 percent. The wrinkle is that the enterprise bit includes PCs.

Now there’s some additional information on timing, thanks to a lawsuit between Activision and some former employees.

According to confidential agreements unsealed in the court case, Microsoft’s next game console, which is referred to as the “Xbox 720,” could be released in time for the 2013 holiday season.

The Los Angeles Times originally posted the documents on Monday, but it was Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times who came up with the theory on the timing.

The lawsuit is a complicated tale, involving Activision’s insanely successful first-person shooter Call of Duty. Former Activision developers are claiming they are owed hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties and bonus payments. Activision is claiming breach of contract.

The documents, revealed last week, detail a high-profile deal between Bungie and Activision in 2010.

The 27-page agreement calls for Bungie to develop four “sci-fantasy, action shooter games,” code-named “Destiny,” released every other year, beginning in the fall of 2013, according to the Los Angeles Times. Additionally, Bungie agreed to put out four downloadable expansion packs code-named “Comet.”

Bungie is the developer behind the successful Halo franchise, but is not the developer behind Halo 4, which Microsoft is developing and releasing in November.

Here’s what Dudley is suggesting based on the contract language:

Microsoft hasn’t said when the next version of the Xbox will go on sale, but the Bungie contract suggests that it could happen in the 2013 holiday season, with “Destiny” as a key launch title. That would be similar to the way Halo was a cornerstone of the first Xbox launch in November 2001.

An Xbox spokesman declined to comment on this theory, and referred questions to Activision and Bungie.

The document also says the game is expected to be released for the PlayStation 3 successor in the fall of 2014.

The big caveat to all of this guesswork is that the document is now two years old, so timing could easily change. Additionally, the name “Xbox 720″ could just be a code name or placeholder. Of course, console makers keep the timing of their upcoming hardware close to their vests, so that consumers don’t hold off on making purchases.

In March, Microsoft’s Corporate Communications boss Frank Shaw told AllThingsD that consumers probably shouldn’t expect new hardware at the E3 game conference, or “anytime soon.”

“For us, 2012 is all about Xbox 360,” he added.

That said, one thing has clearly shifted. Microsoft is now taking on Google directly, given that the Motorola deal closed on Tuesday. So a German court decision Thursday that certain Motorola Android products infringe on Microsoft patents can officially be chalked up as Microsoft’s first direct hit to Google.

The ruling was actually a split one, as the court ruled that Motorola does infringe on a patent related to text messaging but does not infringe on another patent related to localization.

“We’re pleased the court agreed today that Motorola has infringed Microsoft’s intellectual property, and we hope Motorola will be willing to join other Android device makers by taking a license to our patents,” Microsoft deputy general counsel David Howard said in a statement.

Motorola, meanwhile, was pleased that the court ruled in its favor on the other patent. As for the one it was found to infringe on, Motorola told AllThingsD that it “will explore all options, including appeal.”

“This is one element of a global dispute initiated by Microsoft,” Motorola said.

That’s the day Microsoft will learn whether anything has come of its challenge to the $1.14 billion penalty the European Union slapped it with eight years ago for failing to comply with its antitrust decision.

In just over a month’s time, the EU’s General Court will rule on Microsoft’s appeal of the fine, the culmination of a long, contentious legal battle over interoperability. Issued after it was determined that Microsoft had failed to comply with a 2004 antitrust judgment that required the company to charge fair and reasonable rates for its interoperability protocols, the $1.14 billion fine was the largest ever imposed by the EU against a single company, and the very first to be meted out for noncompliance with an EU court order.

It was also, in Microsoft’s opinion, “unnecessary, unlawful and totally disproportionate.”

“This case would not have arisen if the commission had been as explicit with respect to rates which it wanted Microsoft to charge as it had been with all other terms of licensing proposed by Microsoft,” Microsoft’s attorney Jean-François Bellis told the EU General Court at the time the company filed its appeal. “How can the Commission fine Microsoft for failing to apply reasonable rates from June 2006 to October 2007 when the final parameters were only determined on October 22, 2007?”

In short, Microsoft says it failed to comply with the order because EU regulators didn’t give it the guidance it needed to do so. Interesting argument, but will it carry any weight with the EU General Court?

The news was reported by CNET earlier this month, with additional details, including the cost, trickling out in recent days. Our sources confirm that Microsoft will offer $15 Windows Pro 8 upgrades to those buying a new PC with Windows 7 Home Basic or higher.

Redmond has offered these kinds of coupons with the past several releases, so it is not a shocker.

But with Windows 8 coming this fall — possibly as late as November — and with current license sales slowing, and Microsoft losing share to both Macs and iPads, the upgrade program could be even more important this time around.

Redmond and the PC makers are hoping that the promise of a guaranteed and easy upgrade will convince back-to-school shoppers to stick with Windows, rather than head to the competition.

The upgrade program is important for another reason: Microsoft needs Windows 8 to get off to a fast start in order to convince developers to write new Metro-style apps that only run on Windows 8. Getting more Windows 7 users on the new operating system would help that cause.

A big change this time around is how the program will operate. In the past, Microsoft has been the driving force behind the cheap upgrades, but the company left it up to computer makers to handle the specific pricing, timing and fulfillment. With Windows 8, Microsoft will handle all of those items, sources say.

Microsoft declined to comment on its upgrade program plans.

The other piece of preparing for Windows 8 is what is taking place on the hardware side. Windows 8, with its Metro user interface, is tailor-made for touch devices, though it will also work with a keyboard and mouse.

So far, this summer’s laptop offerings are punched-up versions of the same PCs that have been on the market for months, with upgrades to Intel’s Ivy Bridge chip line, and PC makers all trying to put their stamp on the trend toward thinner, lighter laptops.

Lenovo has announced more consumer-friendly versions of its business-minded ThinkPad laptop. Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, has expanded its Ultrabook line and has slapped the term “Sleekbooks” on another set of new laptops that fall into the ultra-thin-and-lightweight category but have innards that don’t meet Intel’s specifications for Ultrabooks. Sony’s new Ivy Bridge-equipped Vaio laptops will be made with lightweight materials, include larger displays, and offer optional accessories such as an extended battery.

But PC makers will clearly be gearing up for Windows 8 so that they can start pitching the new operating system as soon as it is ready.

This fall, some hardware makers will introduce convertible PCs that function as both tablets and laptops, as noted here, or will add things like touch sensors to existing displays, in order to bridge the two operating systems.

One company that has already announced a Windows 8 laptop is Lenovo. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January of this year, the China-based PC maker showed off the IdeaPad Yoga, a laptop with a 10-finger touchscreen and a full range of motion at the hinge so when fully folded it turns into a 13.3.-inch tablet.

Overall, one can expect a lot of Windows 8-ready machines to be part of the back-to-school lineups. But expect most PC makers to hold off on design overhauls for the Windows 8 launch.

At $183 billion, Apple is the world’s most valuable brand, a title it claimed last year as well, though at that time the brand was worth $153.3 billion. In the ensuing year, it has grown another 19 percent. IBM ranked second with $116 billion in value. Google, which ranked second last year, this year swapped places with IBM, after its brand value slipped 3 percent year over year. With a $76.7 billion brand, Microsoft claimed fifth place, ranking below McDonalds — the only non-tech company in the top five.

The biggest year-over-year gain also went to a tech company: Facebook, which rose from No. 35 in 2011 to No. 19 in 2012. A meteoric rise, and one that spiked the company’s brand value 74 percent to $33.2 billion.

Nokia, which ranked 81st in brand value in Millward Brown’s 2011 study after a 28 percent year-over-year decline in value, fell even further in 2012. So far, in fact, that it seems to have fallen right off the chart. Not a surprise, really, given the company’s current situation. But worth noting just the same; as recently as 2008, Nokia was the world’s ninth most valuable brand.

As long as they keep paying for TV.

But even if consumers go for that deal, the TV guys need to make sure that advertisers buy in, too.

And that won’t happen until the TV guys can get some basic stuff right. Like counting eyeballs, no matter where they watch a show.

That could still take a while. Witness Comcast’s announcement yesterday, made at the cable industry’s annual convention in Boston, that it has been working with Nielsen on a plan to count viewers when they watched video on an iPad*, using Comcast’s Xfinity app.

For various technical reasons, this is much harder than you’d think, and the two companies have already been beavering away at this for 18 months. Now they’re launching a trial, and Comcast executive Matt Strauss is optimistic that they can work the kinks out by 2013, and advertisers could have true “multiplatform measurement.”

But that only works if all of the big pay-TV providers sign on to the new technology. And the media-measurement business is full of different tests and initiatives, all shooting off in different directions.

Last week, for instance, Spanish-language powerhouse Univision announced a “video neutral” deal with media-buying agency Starcom, which is supposed to mean Univision gets credit for its stuff no matter where anyone watches it. But the announcement describing the deal doesn’t explain how Univision or Starcom will track those eyeballs.

Meanwhile, Nielsen’s rival eyeball-counter comScore recently announced that it had its own technology in place to measure mobile devices like phones and tablets. And earlier this year it announced its own “multiscreen research initiative,” where it paired up with AT&T.

But comScore isn’t tracking any traffic on connected devices, like Google TVs, Apple TVs or Microsoft Xboxes. So if any of that really is taking off, that’s yet another headache.

Shouldn’t this stuff be easier? After all, we’ve figured out how to get the video all of these places — why can’t we count it, too?

On the other hand, recall that the iPhone is still a mere five years old, and the iPad is only two. That’s a blink of an eye for the measurement guys, who move deliberately because there’s billions of ad dollars at stake, no matter what they do. But they may still have to speed things up.

*Or, theoretically, on another tablet.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Liewluck)

Ubisoft is releasing a free version of its popular Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon franchise on Facebook today, with the goal of attracting the same hardcore audience that will pay $60 for the console version coming out tomorrow.

In a teaser video, posted on YouTube, Ubisoft’s tagline is: “Finally, a gamer’s game on Facebook.”

Not many publishers have dared to release hardcore games on Facebook because of the technical limitations of Adobe Flash, but also because the platform is largely assumed to attract an audience of 40-year-old women — not exactly the hardcore demographic.

To date, companies such as San Francisco-based Kabam and Kixeye have carved out a niche serving these fanatics, who are small in numbers but tend to get pulled into the game and spend a lot in the free-to-play model.

Now Ubisoft is experimenting with the genre on the platform with the launch of Ghost Recon Commander, a companion title to Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier, which comes out tomorrow for Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation.

Creators of the Facebook version are promising to offer a multiplayer gaming experience that is similar to console play, while still being easy enough for a casual gamer to be interested.

“I wanted a place where you felt you could vacation and also blow it up,” said Brenda Garno Brathwaite, the co-founder of Loot Drop, which developed the game on Ubisoft’s behalf.

In practical terms, that means the Facebook game will have explosions and gunfire, but realistically, it will look and behave very differently from the console version, which will have superior game mechanics and graphics (benefiting from a much bigger budget).

The game is free to play and allows users to pay for additional virtual goods using Facebook Credits.

Still, if there’s anyone who can pull off a stunt like this, it’s Garno Brathwaite. Prior to founding Loot Drop, she worked as a creative director for two social media companies, Slide (acquired by Google) and Lolapps. Before that, she worked at a variety of companies, including Atari, Sir-Tech Software and Electronic Arts. What’s more, she’s a hardcore Ghost Recon fan, having racked up 170 hours of game play in the latest version of the console game.

Drawing from her experiences as a player and game maker, she believes that Ubisoft avoided aspects of social games that hardcore players hate while making it accessible to a large audience, including moms.

“I consider myself a hardcore player. I’m a 45-year-old mom that likes to blow my friends up,” she said.

Garno Brathwaite says the multiplayer social game uses traditional console play experiences by including true combat, including blowing stuff up and shooting other players, but also makes it accessible to players who don’t own a console.

Because of that, the game is slightly different. For starters, it is not a first-person shooter. Instead, the 2-D game is played from the viewpoint of an airplane, looking down at the players. Players form multiplayer alliances with real Facebook friends and then go on missions.

Another difference is that users can play for five minutes and walk away from their computer without exiting the game. If you did that in the console version, you’d be shot dead.

One part of the game that social gamers will recognize is a player’s base camp, where no combat happens. In base camp, the game play is more strategic. Players build buildings and manufacturer resources to bulk up on armor or other things that will allow them to do better in the field.

Here’s the teaser video for the game:

This patent dispute, one of several between the companies, centers on Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology. Ultimately, the ruling could lead to the ban of imports of Motorola products that infringe on the patent in question.

“Microsoft sued Motorola in the ITC only after Motorola chose to refuse Microsoft’s efforts to renew a patent license for well over a year,” Microsoft deputy general counsel David Howard said in a statement. “We’re pleased the full Commission agreed that Motorola has infringed Microsoft’s intellectual property, and we hope that now Motorola will be willing to join the vast majority of Android device makers selling phones in the U.S. by taking a license to our patents.”

The ITC issued an initial finding of infringement in this case back in December.

Motorola, for its part, notes that it can continue shipping products during a 60-day presidential review process and said it will ponder its options. It also noted that Microsoft had originally sought a ruling that Motorola had infringed on nine patents.

“Although we are disappointed by the Commission’s ruling that certain Motorola Mobility products violated one patent, we look forward to reading the full opinion to understand its reasoning,” Motorola said in a statement. “We will explore all options including appeal.”

Motorola said it will be required to post a 33-cents-per-unit bond for products it ships during the 60-day review period.

This dispute is separate from other conflicts between the two companies, including one related to Microsoft’s Xbox. Motorola has won an initial ruling it its favor from the ITC in that case.

Yahoo is in the final stages of selling a large chunk of its stake in the Alibaba Group back to the company — in a complex deal that is set to include a multibillion-dollar share buyback to investors of the Silicon Valley Internet giant and an eventual IPO of the Chinese company — according to multiple sources close to the situation.

The deal has yet to be officially approved by the boards of both companies, but sources said it is likely to be, and could be announced as early as Monday.

This all could change, of course, since negotiations between Alibaba and Yahoo have taken place in a variety of ways in recent years, without success and with much acrimony. Talks over a tax-free deal — also involving Yahoo’s Japanese partner, SoftBank — collapsed in February, for example.

But the 324th time is apparently the charm — so here are the details of what looks to be a nearly complete agreement that I have ferreted out thus far from lots of relieved sources familiar with the situation:

Yahoo will sell half of its roughly 40 percent stake in Alibaba, in a taxable deal. The transaction is likely to value that portion of Yahoo’s holdings at about $7 billion — or 20 percent of Alibaba’s $35 billion enterprise valuation. Alibaba is in the midst of raising capital to fund the sale.

After taxes of upward of 35 percent are paid on the long-term gains — remember that Yahoo bought the now-lucrative Alibaba stake for a fraction of that, many years ago — the company will likely use the funds to buy back its own shares. That stock has been caught in the mid-teens doldrums for quite a while.

A shareholder dividend is also being considered. It’s not clear if some of the cash will be held back for acquisitions by Yahoo, sources added, but it is unlikely.

As part of the deal, sources said, incentives have been put in place for Alibaba to move forward with a public offering, which sources stressed is without the contractual obligation or a time frame. Alibaba execs have already been publicly indicating such a direction recently, but this will put them more firmly on that path.

In return, Yahoo has agreed to sell the remaining quarter of its current holdings when that IPO does occur. It would then have an only 10 percent stake of Alibaba, which it could sell at any time after the IPO.

If finally struck, the transaction will finally bring to an end one of the more protracted and disputed relationships in the Internet world.

Once close, the pair have been wrangling over the large Yahoo ownership, which Alibaba CEO Jack Ma has been trying to dislodge in a variety of nice and not-so-nice ways. It has resulted in a number of very public disagreements.

That included a nasty back-and-forth over its Alipay unit with now-fired CEO Carol Bartz, threats of takeover of Yahoo with private equity firms and, more recently, making friendly with its just-ousted CEO, Scott Thompson.

Those talks with him in recent weeks, which included a visit to China by Thompson, led to the new deal, which was negotiated primarily between Yahoo’s CFO Tim Morse and legal head Mike Callahan and Ma and Alibaba’s Joe Tsai.

The talks continued even as Thompson was suddenly engulfed in a controversy over a fake computer science degree on his resume that quickly led to his departure from Yahoo on Sunday.

Ironically, the error was first discovered by activist shareholder Daniel Loeb, who will now vote on the deal as a newly named director of Yahoo, after successfully helping to oust Thompson.

He owns almost 6 percent of Yahoo, and is expected to approve the transaction.

But the final decision to approve the deal will be in the hands of a very new board of Yahoo, which has been drastically reshaped in recent weeks. It is meeting tomorrow and perhaps over the weekend to vote on it.

While the deal with Alibaba looks to be nearing an end, Yahoo’s talks to sell its 33 percent stake in Yahoo Japan is not part of this agreement. That’s due to what Thompson had called a “valuation gap,” which sources said is still an outstanding issue.

New interim CEO Ross Levinsohn has not been involved in the Alibaba deal in any significant way. But he certainly will benefit from its halo effect, if approved, especially given that it will likely boost Yahoo shares.

Next up for Levinsohn, who has just rejiggered Yahoo management again, other sources said, is an effort to settle the patent-infringement lawsuit with Facebook, and also to renegotiate its search deal with Microsoft.

And, oh yes, fix Yahoo’s rocky core-advertising business, which is still in distress and needs a major overhaul to push it back to growth.

But that, as they say, is yet another episode of Yahoo’s ongoing reality show.

In short, Comcast is moving from a flat cap to usage-based billing.

It is scrapping its 250-gigabytes a month cap and trying a couple different plans in its place. One version will introduce a 300-gig cap and offer additional tiers of service, with bigger caps, along with the ability to buy more chunks of data. Another version also uses a 300-gig cap and the ability to buy incremental blocks of data as needed.

Comcast, which has more than 18 million high-speed data customers, says it will experiment with the two plans in some of its territories.

It also says that in markets where it’s not trying the new plans, it will scrap its data cap entirely until it settles on a new plan.

The move comes as Comcast has taken heat about the way it treats data on some of its proprietary video services, in particular the Xfinity app for Microsoft’s Xbox console.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has argued that because Comcast doesn’t count data delivered via that service against its usage caps, it is violating “net neutrality” principles. Comcast says it’s in the clear because that data isn’t delivered via the public Internet but on its own network, and doesn’t plan on changing its policy.

Comcast executives referenced the debate as they introduced the new plans today. “There has been a little bit of noise along with the Xfinity Xbox plan,” said Comcast EVP David Cohen. But Comcast also insists that only a small handful of its users come close to using the 250-gig cap today. The company says median usage runs around 8 gigabytes to 10GB a month.

Other broadband providers, notably Time Warner Cable, have also moved to usage-based pricing. If you take the companies at their word, they’re doing it because they need to charge more money to provide more bandwidth because “our network is not an infinite resource, and it is expensive to build it,” as Cohen says.

But usage-based pricing is also a useful tool to have available if cable TV users really do stop subscribing in large numbers, and replace their pay TV packages with Web video. That gives the cable (and telco) guys a way to replace the video revenue they lose with more broadband dollars. A bonus for them: Broadband subscriptions are much more profitable than video subscriptions.

[Shutterstock/Janos Levente]

One consequence, in the eyes of these Microsoft executives, is to confer an advantage on the company’s main operating-system rival, Apple.

Now, Microsoft is doing something about the situation. In a program unknown to most computer users, the company has been using its small chain of retail stores and its online computer store to sell customized versions of popular PC models that have been streamlined for a cleaner look and better performance. It calls these machines “Signature” PCs. They retain the maker’s brand, but sport a special Signature desktop and configuration. And they cost about the same as the identical stock version of the machine sold elsewhere.

Microsoft also offers a program that, for $99, will turn users’ Windows 7 PCs into Signature versions, if the owner brings the computer into one of its 16 stores, due to grow to 21 outlets in coming months. All Signature computers come with 90 days of free phone support, as well as help at the stores’ “Answer Desks,” which are like the Genius Bars at Apple stores.

I’ve been testing three Signature models and comparing them with the same machines as sold elsewhere without the Signature modifications. I found the Signature versions much cleaner and easier to navigate and faster in a variety of tests.

A Folio 13 model PC desktop, as shipped by Hewlett-Packard, shows a cluster of third-party software icons.

I’d recommend that prospective Windows PC buyers who live near a Microsoft store, which are mostly in the West, or are willing to shop at the company’s online store, consider a Signature machine. Information on store locations, as well as a link to online PC shopping from Microsoft, is at microsoftstore.com. Information on Signature is at signature.microsoft.com.

Some important caveats are in order. The hardware makers presumably believe, and some consumers may well agree, that the extra software, utilities and settings, which Microsoft removes or buries, are beneficial. Some of these, like offers to join game or music services, may be viewed as welcome bonuses. Others, like customized networking utilities, or launchers for the PC makers’ own media software, may be viewed as better matched to the hardware, or superior to Microsoft’s approach, even though they duplicate Windows functions. Many can be turned off, or removed, by a user with sufficient skill and time.

Also, Microsoft loads Signature machines with its own add-on software, such as its free email, photo and video programs, its Zune music and video program, and a stripped-down “Starter” version of Microsoft Office, that includes only Word and Excel, plus ads, and an offer to buy the full version.

However, the company says the stores will remove any of these a customer doesn’t want and even help the customer install competing software, such as Google’s Chrome browser, or Apple’s iTunes for Windows.

The same PC as sold by Microsoft in its Signature configuration.

At my request, Microsoft supplied me with before-and-after laptops from Hewlett-Packard, Sony and Samsung. Over the past few days, I’ve been comparing the stock and Signature versions, and testing how much time it takes to set them up, start them and restart them in daily use, resume them from sleep, and shut them down.

The Signature desktop, which is labeled “Microsoft Signature,” features a picture of a sunset over a lake as its wallpaper. It contains no icons other than the recycling bin. The Taskbar contains only icons for Internet Explorer, the Explorer file browser, and Microsoft’s free email, photo and moviemaking programs. The system tray, to the right of the Taskbar, contains only the bare minimum of items, such as the network and battery indicators.

Signature machines are also configured with battery, audio and touch-pad settings Microsoft considers optimal. The usual third-party security software—which is typically provided for only 30 to 90 days, makes you go through some setup, and nags you to subscribe—is replaced by Microsoft’s own Security Essentials program, which is free, required no registration or subscription and updates itself automatically.

By contrast, my test HP Folio 13 had eight icons besides the recycling bin, including several that were come-ons for music and game services. It also featured several HP utilities.

A Sony EH37FX included an app from Best Buy that launched every time the PC started (though you could turn this off). Both stock machines festooned the IE browser with two space-hogging toolbars, including one from Microsoft’s own Bing search service; the Signature machine had none.

The Samsung Series 7 I tested came with 10 extra icons and a bunch of special utilities.

Signature isn’t the same on every machine. In most cases, it strips out some of the added software and utilities, and retains others, but hides them in a folder buried in the Start Menu. In some cases, however, where a utility is deemed essential for a computer’s particular hardware, it retains these.

Such decisions, and indeed all of the Signature settings, are controlled by a team of engineers housed in Microsoft’s retail division.

In my speed tests, Signature beat all the stock machines on all my trials, but the margins weren’t dramatic, usually from a few seconds to 25 seconds. On the HP, the differences were especially minimal. Across all three machines, the biggest differences were the time it took to set the PC up out of the box and the time it took to shut down the PC.

One Microsoft official told me that Signature represents “Microsoft’s perspective on Windows,” rather than that of the hardware maker.

In my opinion, although it may generally benefit Microsoft at the expense of the hardware maker, it also makes for a better experience for the user.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120515/microsoft-gives-windows-a-clean-sweep/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120515/bing-goes-sleek-and-more-social/ http://allthingsd.com/20120515/bing-goes-sleek-and-more-social/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 22:43:47 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=208634 If you’ve ever cleaned off a cluttered desk, replacing messy stacks of paper with framed photos of people who really matter, you have a rough idea of what Microsoft did with its new Bing search engine this week. Gone are the distracting, multicolored search results. Gone are the lists of recently searched terms that you never looked at anyway. Gone are the search results mingled with Facebook “likes.”

What’s left? A lot of white space, which creates a calmer environment for reading and digesting information. A new middle column, which Microsoft calls Snapshot, displays task-oriented content to help people do things like making restaurant reservations, getting directions or seeing movie times. And Bing’s most unusual new feature is a flush-right column called Sidebar designed to automatically surface names of relevant Facebook friends and others around the Web who could best help you with a specific query.

Bing's Snapshot column helps users do things like make a hotel reservation. Its Sidebar column, far right, shows friends who may have answers to help with a person's current search.

The new Bing is automatically available to about 20% of users starting Tuesday. If you’re not one of the 20%, you can see the new interface and Sidebar on Bing.com/new. By June 1, all features will be automatically available to everyone.

I’ve had access to this revamped Bing for the past week, and its prospects are promising. It feels cleaner and clearer. Sidebar’s integrated social knowledge of friends linked to Bing through a person’s Facebook account—or people from Twitter and blogs who are suggested by Bing—can turn the solitude of Web searching into a group activity. For example, a search for Napa Valley restaurants smartly brings up the name of a friend who recently posted a photo album from Napa, a colleague who lists Napa Valley as his hometown as well as a well-known blogger who reviews restaurants in that area. Sidebar maintains a neat list of your queries and the responses, saving you the trouble of hunting through past Facebook posts.

Compared with the way Google integrated Google+ “personal results” with regular search results—which ruffled a lot of feathers—Sidebar is more sophisticated.

But Bing’s Sidebar faces a challenge: People aren’t used to searching like this.

As fun as it is to poll people—even specifically suggested people—in queries, we usually search alone. Many of the things I type into Bing are quick ask-a-question-get-an-answer searches, and Sidebar’s format requires waiting for someone’s response. It’s possible that it just takes time to adjust to this new way of searching, but I’m comfortable with the Web sources that I already know and trust. (No offense, Facebook friends.)

Additional partners, including LinkedIn, Foursquare and Quora, will eventually be included to help with queries in Bing’s Sidebar. Some of these will work later this summer. For now, Twitter provides the biggest source of people from around the Web who might know the answer to your query.

Bing will continue to make improvements, according to Stefan Weitz, senior director of Bing search. By late June or early July, you’ll be able to tag friends in queries even if Bing doesn’t suggest those people as relevant to a query. This would have helped me when I searched for restaurants in Boston, where my foodie sister has lived for 11 years, though she didn’t automatically appear as a suggested source. Then again, when I searched for a Mexican restaurant in Kirkland, Wash., called Cactus, a friend who “liked” another Mexican restaurant in nearby Seattle popped up in my Sidebar.

I didn’t realize this friend had ever visited Seattle or that he enjoyed one of Seattle’s Mexican restaurants enough to “like” it on Facebook. These helpful, serendipitous experiences may be enough to keep people using the Bing Sidebar.

Bing’s Sidebar queries currently have a clumsy way of working with Facebook. If I query three people who are auto-suggested as friends who might know the answer to my question, the query only shows up on my Facebook page, not on the pages of people who were questioned. They must visit my Facebook page to see responses, an extra step that may discourage ongoing conversations. An Activity feed in the Bing Sidebar shows all Facebok friends’ query activity, but people look at Facebook more often.

The middle column of the rebuilt Bing, called Snapshot, doesn’t always display content. When it does, it is geared toward helping people accomplish specific tasks, like booking a hotel room or restaurant table. In a search for the Oval Room, a Washington, D.C., restaurant, Snapshot showed a map of its location, four ratings from websites like TripAdvisor, hours of operation and a link to OpenTable for making a reservation.

A shrunk-down version of this new Bing—including its cleaner look, Snapshot and Sidebar—will be available this week to run on smartphones including Windows Phone, Apple’s iPhone, Android phones and RIM’s BlackBerrys. Microsoft says it will work on tablets by early July.

The new Bing is sure to get people talking—and its Sidebar is likely to tell you something you didn’t know about a friend that may or may not help you make a decision. But until it gets more accurate and more partners, I’ll use Sidebar like a side dish: It won’t make a big impact on my overall search experience.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120515/bing-goes-sleek-and-more-social/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120514/at-28-few-tech-titans-could-hold-a-candle-to-zuck/ http://allthingsd.com/20120514/at-28-few-tech-titans-could-hold-a-candle-to-zuck/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 22:55:25 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=207748 It’s a big week for Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook, his baby of the past eight years, is expected to go public on Friday morning. He’s just coming off a cross-country road show speaking to investment banks hungry to scoop up shares of Facebook stock.

And on top of it all, it’s May 14 — Mark’s 28th birthday.

Aside from the intense scrutiny of the company by the tech and financial press leading up to the IPO, Zuckerberg is doing all right. Especially when stacked up against some of the biggest names in tech that came before him.

Consider Steve Jobs. He was zooming along just fine in his twenties. Until, that is, in his 28th year he recruited the man who would eventually become his — and Apple’s — undoing (temporarily, of course). That man was John Sculley, then CEO President of Pepsi-Cola, who traded the position to be the CEO of Apple Computer after intense courting from Jobs. Of course, Sculley would eventually play a part in Jobs’s ouster from Apple; Sculley would also oversee the company in what proved to be the darkest years in its 36-year history. Jobs was also in the process of launching the Lisa when he was 28, one of the biggest commercial computer hardware failures the company has ever released. In other words, 28 wasn’t the greatest year of Jobs’s career.

Amazon luminary Jeff Bezos’s best years were yet to come. At 28, he was still at his hedge fund gig, where he first saw the opportunity in the fast-growing Internet use around the country. Two years later, he would go off on his own to start Amazon.

Bill Gates, on one hand, had founded Microsoft in 1976 — then known as “Micro-Soft,” begun in a small Albuquerque office in partnership with Paul Allen — at the ripe age of 20. It’s the same age Zuck was when he officially founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. At 28, Gates was certainly upwardly mobile — the year before his 28th saw him begin to license MS-DOS — though his best years were yet to come: In two years, Gates would launch the first retail version of the Windows operating system.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still three years off from Google’s IPO when they turned 28 (Page in March of 2001, Brin in August). It was that year in which the two — who had run Google since they co-founded it in 1998 — decided to turn the reins over to Eric Schmidt, a learned executive well versed in leading technology companies. Unlike Zuckerberg, who retains full control over Facebook with his majority of voting rights, Page and Brin let a seasoned Valley veteran guide Google through its early days.

In all, it seems Zuck is doing just fine. Still two years off from the big 30, he’s number 35 on Forbes’ Billionaires List with an estimated net worth of $17.5 billion. Better still, he’s got a longtime live-in girlfriend and an adorable floor mop of a dog, “Beast.”

Happy birthday, Mr. Zuckerberg. And enjoy a quiet moment of reflection while you can; Friday isn’t too far off.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120514/at-28-few-tech-titans-could-hold-a-candle-to-zuck/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20120514/twilio-taps-say-media-vet-kirkpatrick-as-cfo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120514/twilio-taps-say-media-vet-kirkpatrick-as-cfo/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:37 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=207472 Something is going on at the telephony software start-up Twilio, and I guess the word to use is “growth.”

Barely two weeks after hiring former Jive exec Lynda Smith as its chief marketing officer, today it will announce that it has a new CFO. It’s Lee Kirkpatrick, and he’s leaving Say Media, where he had the same title. He started his new job on May 7.

Twilio is growing so fast that it’s a little hard to keep track of all the news coming out of it. In his new role, Kirkpatrick will be responsible for Twilio’s finances and worldwide strategy. The company recently added Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden to the steadily growing stable of countries where it is operating. It also recently struck a deal with Microsoft to add telephony features to its Azure cloud computing platform, so, yeah, maybe now might be the time to add a CFO.

What’s Job One? Well, here’s a funny tradition at Twilio: Every employee, no matter their level or level of technical ability, is required to build a Twilio application in order to become familiar with how the service works. So, part of this week will be devoted to that. Companies like eBay unit StubHub, Salesforce.com and Airbnb have used it to create some custom apps that include the use of a phone.

It’s a very Twilio sort of thing to do. When the company was in the process of raising its most recent funding round — a $17 million series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures — Bessemer partner Byron Deeter created a Twilio-connected number and asked CEO Jeff Lawson to call it. As VentureBeat reported at the time, when Lawson called, he heard an automated voice message asking him to press 1 for $5 million, press 2 for $10 million and press 3 for $15 million.

It turned out that C round topped out at $17 million late last year, bringing its total capital raised to about $34 million, so there’s a decent-sized pile of money to look after. Before Say Media, Kirkpatrick held executive jobs at Ofoto, the Kodak Gallery and Reuters.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120514/twilio-taps-say-media-vet-kirkpatrick-as-cfo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120513/ross-levinsohns-yahoo-plan-back-to-the-future/ http://allthingsd.com/20120513/ross-levinsohns-yahoo-plan-back-to-the-future/#comments Sun, 13 May 2012 23:08:16 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=207377 Ross Levinsohn wants to be known as more than a deal guy. Now he gets his chance.

Assuming Yahoo gives its interim CEO real power — either by making him its actual CEO, or at least letting him behave as if he has the job — then he’ll finally have full control of a giant media company. That’s something he’s been working toward for a long time, despite his rep as a guy who enjoys buying companies more than running them.

Just like his predecessors, Levinsohn will have to untie Yahoo’s knotty Asian problem. He’ll also have to spend time repairing relationships with Facebook and figuring out what to do with a Microsoft search deal that hasn’t been a huge success.

But if Levinsohn gets to run Yahoo the way he wants to run Yahoo, he’ll focus on getting the most out of its media business, because that’s his strength.

Bear in mind that this is still a huge business — the portal attracts some 700 million visitors a month, which helped it generate nearly $1 billion in ad sales last quarter. But that business is listing and under attack from Google, Facebook, and a swarm of nimble start-ups pulling eyeballs and dollars away.

If you want to get a sense of what Levinsohn may try to do next, it’s good to review what he did last year, when he had control of the company’s U.S. operations — and what he tried to do but couldn’t get done.

• Ads: Yahoo used to have one of the Web’s best sales operations, but those days are long gone. Levisonsohn spent much of 2011 trying to fix that. Part of that involved restaffing his team, and part of it was a strategy that was supposed to cut out some of the ad tech middlemen and allow the company to increase its yield on the ads it sold. Those moves, which included a would-be alliance between Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft, all went into a holding pattern when Scott Thompson took over in January. Levinsohn will try restarting that again now.
• M&A: Levinsohn has a reputation as a dealmaker because he’s made some pretty big deals. Most notably, he brought Myspace to News Corp. in 2005, then helped the company secure a $900 million ad deal with Google (News Corp. also owns this Web site). Last year, he tried to land another big fish, when he pushed to pursue Hulu. But Levinsohn couldn’t get buy-in from then-CEO Carol Bartz, and Hulu’s owners decided not to sell after all. I think Levinsohn would still be interested in the site under certain conditions, but he’d need more cash than he has on hand to do it. Selling off his Asian assets might make that possible. If he can’t land Hulu, I don’t see him chasing after Instagram-like companies with big price tags and no near-term revenue plans. I do see him making some plays on cheaper start-ups, as well as some technology plays, to shore up/replace the company’s very old infrastructure/platforms.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120513/ross-levinsohns-yahoo-plan-back-to-the-future/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120511/is-he-in-or-is-he-out-crunchtime-for-scott-thompson-at-yahoo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120511/is-he-in-or-is-he-out-crunchtime-for-scott-thompson-at-yahoo/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 15:15:28 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=206889

While he has only been CEO of Yahoo for less than five months, in the next several days Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is facing perhaps the most critical moment of his short tenure.

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the board of Yahoo is not likely to take long in assessing whether he will stay or if he will be let go, due to a controversy around how a non-existent computer science degree got on his bio and also in Yahoo regulatory filings.

A special committee of independent directors is now investigating the matter, including trying to assess the damage has had on Thompson’s ability to lead the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

How quickly the board moves is likely to be a sign of their intent. If within the next days, it is likely to let the former president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit go and replace him with a current company exec; if it waits longer and shows some public support of him — which the board has not done since the scandal erupted — Thompson’s chances are better that he will only be given some sort of censure.

One important task is also closely considering the impact of possible legal problems related to Thompson and others signing documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission that were not accurate.

One thing is clear from interviews with multiple sources, many members of the board have not been happy with how Thompson has handled the matter since activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point uncovered the problem a week ago.

While first tossing the borked bio as an “inadvertent error,” Thompson was then largely silent about the issue with staff, despite being in close meetings with them, which caused stress among key execs.

Then, he made a public announcement in which he apologized for only the “distraction” caused by the incident and not the error itself as some had hoped he would.

Yesterday, apparently feeling it was time to try to explain things face-to-face, Thompson made another attempt to explain what happened in two separate meetings with his direct reports and then his senior staff, apparently trying to get through to employees that he did not fake his resume nor did he give an inaccurate bio to Yahoo when he was being hired for the job earlier this year.

Thompson thought it was time — now that the board investigation was underway — to answer questions directly, said a source.

Among other things, Thompson gave a somewhat convoluted explanation that it appeared in his bio due to a misunderstanding during an interview with a headhunting firm. And that he never noticed it once it proliferated And that when an NPR interviewer asked him directly about his CS degree, he did not want to correct her in mid-discussion — although others report he said he did not hear the question fully.

Sources said Thompson — who is on the midst of initiating changes across a large and troubled organization, after laying off 2,000 employees — thought the sessions went well, that he clearly communicated that he was taking blame for the problem and its repercussions. Those sources also noted that he received support for doing so after the talks.

But, more than a dozen others I interviewed who were listening remotely — some of whom I sought out and some who contacted me directly — thought Thompson’s complex explanation was deeply problematic and that he tried to foist the blame on others rather than on himself.

Every one of these people expressed the need for him to step down to allow Yahoo to move forward.

What the board thought about the performance is still not clear, said sources, but things are coming down to two distinct scenarios.

The first is a quick parting of the ways with Thompson, within days, either for cause or via a negotiated settlement. Others at Yahoo involved with perpetuating the mistake in the bio are also at risk.

This option is perhaps the more likely at this moment, unless the scandal dissipates and employees continued rancor over the situation can be assuaged soon.

In this case, sources said, Thompson will be replaced by a current board member or a member of the top staff. When directors fired Carol Bartz last fall, CFO Tim Morse became interim CEO and he is one of the likely candidates for the job again.

The second scenario centers on needing Thompson to complete a number of complex transactions related to the sale of Yahoo’s Chinese assets and its re-negotiations with Microsoft over its troubled search partnership, among other things.

In that case, Thompson will be censured in some manner by the board and will also probably have to endure some punishment for allowing false regulatory documents to be filed by Yahoo. Others at Yahoo will also be subject to the same treatment in such an outcome.

How will it turn out?

Only board member Patti Hart has so far paid for her faulty vetting of Thompson, stepping down from the board earlier this week.

But whether she will be the only shoe to drop in what has turned out to be a bizarre wildfire that as raged across Yahoo’s troubled landscape remains to be seen.

Thus, most definitely watch this space this weekend.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120511/is-he-in-or-is-he-out-crunchtime-for-scott-thompson-at-yahoo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120511/is-youtubes-ad-pitch-working/ http://allthingsd.com/20120511/is-youtubes-ad-pitch-working/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 14:19:25 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=206926 Last week, YouTube threw a glitzy party designed to get advertisers to move their money from TV to the giant video site. Is it working?

Capstone analyst Rory Maher thinks so. He’s been polling ad buyers and thinks they may collectively be spending 40 percent more on YouTube than they did a year ago.

He also thinks YouTube’s strategy of grouping its new channels into “genres” — like “women,” “pop culture,” etc. — and selling those as megapackages is attractive to advertisers, and that they’ve at least placed tentative commitments on all 18 packages YouTube is selling.

But those dollars aren’t going to come from TV, Maher thinks. Instead, advertisers will take money they would have spent on other Web ads and move them over to YouTube. That’s still a win for Google, but it’s not the win it really wants.

Last week’s event didn’t win everyone over. Several folks I’ve talked to — including people who are making stuff for YouTube’s channels — say they’re underwhelmed with the actual content they saw onstage at the Beacon Theater.

“It looked like Web video,” one Web video maker told me. That is, it didn’t look like the stuff the TV guys show off at their advertiser events.

Some of the stuff may get close to TV.

YouTube is brimming with pride over WIGS, a series of soapy dramas featuring actresses you’ve heard of, like Jennifer Beals and Julia Stiles (News Corp., which owns this site, had a hand in putting the series together). The teaser trailer they’ve put out looks like a reasonable facsimile of Lifetime, at least to my eyes. And Machinima is planning a series based on Halo, the hit Xbox game, and the few seconds of that they showed looked pretty slick.

It’s more likely that most of the Web video YouTube produces with its channels this year really will end up looking like Web video. But if that doesn’t bother the people who watch it — and there are some 800 million people watching this stuff every month — then it shouldn’t be a problem for the ad guys, either.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120511/is-youtubes-ad-pitch-working/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120511/bing-and-youre-modeling-every-object-on-the-planet/ http://allthingsd.com/20120511/bing-and-youre-modeling-every-object-on-the-planet/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 07:17:43 +0000 Voices http://allthingsd.com/?p=206863

We’re literally no longer indexing text. We’re trying to associate data that exists on the web in all forms with the physical object that spawned it in the first place.

– Bing director Stefan Weitz, in an interview with Fast Company’s E.B. Boyd

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120511/bing-and-youre-modeling-every-object-on-the-planet/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120510/microsofts-sneaky-success-the-xbox-is-the-most-popular-video-player-in-the-u-s/ http://allthingsd.com/20120510/microsofts-sneaky-success-the-xbox-is-the-most-popular-video-player-in-the-u-s/#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 18:41:24 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=206562 More evidence that Microsoft is increasing its lead in the digital living room race: Data that shows its Xbox gaming console is the most popular non-PC device to watch Web video.

That is, more people are watching Web stuff on Microsoft’s machine than on the iPad, iPhone or any Android machine, anywhere. And when it comes to home viewing, competitors like Apple TV, Google TV and Roku are so far behind they’re not even competitors.

This data comes from Freewheel, an online video ad company, and it comes with caveats. We’ll get to those below. But first, take a look:

Now the asterisks: Freewheel is only measuring “professional content” that runs with ads, because that’s how it makes its living. So that means it’s counting stuff from companies like NBC, CBS, ESPN and Vevo, but not YouTube cat videos. It’s also not measuring Netflix usage. On the other hand, this isn’t a poll or sample, but data compiled by the company’s own ad servers.

So it’s possible there’s some variance here with the larger Web video world, but it seems reasonable to assume that this is at least directionally correct. At the very least, it gives credence to Microsoft’s claim that Xbox users are spending more time watching videos on the machines than playing games, and that its deals with conventional TV programmers may be bearing fruit.

And it shows you how much ground Google will need to make up as it gets ready to relaunch its Google TV. Ditto for Apple, if and when it ever gets serious about transforming Apple TV into something other than a “hobby.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120510/microsofts-sneaky-success-the-xbox-is-the-most-popular-video-player-in-the-u-s/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120510/bing-redesigns-to-split-out-details-and-social-into-their-own-panes/ http://allthingsd.com/20120510/bing-redesigns-to-split-out-details-and-social-into-their-own-panes/#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 17:00:04 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=206634 Microsoft today is changing up its Bing search interface to separate out a lot of the information it had previously packed directly into the core list of search results.

The new Bing features a three-panel layout, with the left-most a pared-down list of straight search results. The second column appears when users hover over a certain result, and shows dedicated visual results for 150 different categories like restaurants, transit, movies and hotels that include maps, ratings and other information.

This “Snapshot” screen tries to help users take action on those results — for instance, to make a restaurant reservation or check availability at a certain hotel — without leaving the Bing page.

The third column is the most radical change from the traditional search layout — it’s a social friend list and feed that stays on the page at all times over to the right. For each query, Bing will automatically suggest Facebook friends who know about a topic as well as relevant experts from Twitter, Foursquare, Quora, LinkedIn, Google+ and Blogger.

When a user asks one of those people to help with a query, the conversation shows up in an activity feed on the sidebar and also back on Facebook.

Microsoft had considered giving users the option to broadcast — with their permission — all their Bing search queries to Facebook through its Open Graph API. That would have been super controversial, and it was dropped from the release over the last couple of weeks.

Bing search director Stefan Weitz told me that there are a couple of goals for this launch. The first is to show users that “Bing is for doing stuff.” And the second is to acknowledge that search has become too crowded, with additions like social seeming to randomly sprinkle Facebook profile photos throughout the results page.

The new interface’s three panels are, in order, “what the Web knows,” “what Bing knows,” and “what friends know,” Weitz said.

One thing that’s not clear to me is how a three-panel design that’s dependent on hovering will work within the constraints of small mobile touchscreens. Microsoft is demoing that and more at a San Francisco launch event that’s being live-streamed here.

Update: Qi Lu, Microsoft’s president of online services, replied at the event that the three-panel approach should actually ease translations to various form factors, including phones and Xboxes.

“Separating aspects allows us to customize for different form factors, so the experience can be consistent,” he said. Lu added that hovering would be replaced by swiping between panes on mobile devices.

The new Bing won’t be available to all users immediately, but people can sign up to be notified about it here.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120510/bing-redesigns-to-split-out-details-and-social-into-their-own-panes/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120510/ms-icloud-net-live/ http://allthingsd.com/20120510/ms-icloud-net-live/#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 07:02:36 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=206489

iCloud is among the best products Microsoft has ever designed.

– Mike Monteiro, via Twitter

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120510/ms-icloud-net-live/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20120508/when-the-devices-are-done/ http://allthingsd.com/20120508/when-the-devices-are-done/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 22:32:23 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=205589 It is time for spring cleaning, or as I think of it, my yearly chance to shove old technology products to the back of my storage closet. Instead, this should be a chance to take advantage of companies’ stepped-up recycling efforts.

Last year, 460 million pounds of electronics were collected and recycled in the U.S., a 53 percent increase from 2010, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

People know they should recycle their old or unwanted technology products, but they don’t know where to begin. So this week, I did the dirty work, rounding up details from eight major companies about their recycling programs, including fees, dropoff locations, acceptable products, shipping options, haul-away services and personal-data-wiping solutions. Readers: Your days of pack-rat procrastinating are numbered.

Best Buy’s recycling program is made up of four categories: in-store kiosks for ink and toner cartridges, rechargeable batteries, wires, cords and cables; free removal and recycling of an appliance or TV when a new appliance or TV is delivered; home pickup of two appliances or two TVs for $100 with a $20 charge for additional units; and BestBuy.com/tradein for trading gently used electronics for Best Buy gift cards. The store’s Geek Squad offers services like removing a PC’s hard drive before handing it over to be recycled.

Apple invites its customers to bring all batteries and iPods into its 247 U.S. stores for recycling, and any iPod (except the iPod shuffle) can be turned in for a 10 percent discount on a new iPod. People also can opt to ship their old products off to be recycled free by filling out a form found at Apple.com/recycling; Apple contracts with a company called PowerON to do this recycling. Acceptable products include desktop or notebook Windows PCs and Macs, iPads, iPhones as well as any make or type of mobile phone. If the product is worth something, you’ll get an Apple gift card.

Amazon doesn’t charge people to recycle its Kindle e-readers or Kindle batteries, and this includes non-working and working units. People can print free UPS labels for shipping their old Kindles to be recycled on ecotakeback.com/kindle; they then simply drop the Kindles off at a UPS store. Amazon wipes all identifying marks or personal documents from these Kindles. Further details can be found at amzn.to/JkilQX. If Kindles are in good condition, customers can opt to trade them in for Amazon gift cards via the company’s Electronic Trade-In program.

HP’s new partnership with Staples offers a physical location where people can drop off HP and non-HP consumer products for recycling. The Staples stores will accept a variety of products, including laptops, monitors, mice, fax machines and GPS devices, though not televisions. People who recycle printer cartridges can earn Staples rewards points toward store merchandise. FedEx Office stores also serve as dropoff locations for products that will be shipped off for recycling: HP and Compaq products can be shipped using a free pre-printed voucher found at HP.com/recycling, but shipping vouchers for other brands of consumer products will cost $10 to $25.

Dell’s recycling program includes free home pickup and FedEx shipping options, but these are only for Dell products; details can be found at Dell.com/recycle. If a customer buys a new Dell product, the company will take the old one, even if it isn’t Dell-branded, though the buyer must remember to select “free recycling” when buying. Dell’s partnership with Goodwill helped the company create its Dell Reconnect program, which lets people drop off old computer electronics at Goodwill stores such as PCs, laptops, tablets and keyboards, but not mobile phones. At Goodwill, someone will inspect the products to decide whether they can be reused, refurbished or recycled. If the products are reused or refurbished, they’ll be sold at Goodwill.

People with Samsung products can use free mail-back shipping options via one of three links: Samsung.com/starus for toner cartridges, mobile.samsungusa.com/recycling for mobile products, or www.oemtakeback.com/samsung for all other Samsung products. Samsung and non-Samsung products also can be dropped off at more than 1,000 locations listed on this website: Samsung.com/recyclingdirect.

Sony accepts its brand of products for free recycling at about 850 dropoff centers; some of the centers also offer free recycling for other manufacturers’ products. Sony also offers free shipping and recycling only for Sony products as long as they weigh less than 25 pounds and the person shipping lives more than 25 miles away from a dropoff center. Sony and other brands of products can, if eligible, be traded in for purchasing new Sony products. Eligibility and details on Sony dropoff locations can be found at Sony.com/ecotrade.

Microsoft Stores, of which there are 16 nationwide, offer free in-store recycling of cellphones, rechargeable phone batteries and computers. If the item has value, which is determined by its age, condition and current market value, customers will receive Microsoft store gift cards; items eligible for this include all smartphones, computers and gaming consoles, including Xbox. Xbox owners can ship and recycle their Microsoft hardware using prepaid shipping forms at http://bit.ly/Kjk6xk. Microsoft stores offer services to wipe personal data from products before recycling, although there may be a cost for this depending on whether the customer is doing a trade-in, upgrade or just recycling.

So do as I say, not as I do, and get to one of these online or physical recycling locations.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com

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The Point of Return

Here are recycling options from some major companies:

COMPANY (website)	SHIPPING/RECYCLING FEES	IN-STORE DROPOFF
Apple (Apple.com/recycling)	Free with shipping form.	Batteries and iPods accepted at Apple stores.
HP (HP.com/recycling)	Free shipping via FedEx for HP and Compaq products with pre-printed voucher. Fee for other products is $10-$25.	Staples stores accept many HP and non-HP consumer products, except TVs.
Dell (www.dell.com/recycle)	Free shipping or pickup of Dell product. Free pickup of non-Dell item with purchase of Dell product.	Partnership with Goodwill for Dell Reconnect accepts any brand of electronics except mobile phones.
Amazon (http://amzn.to/JkilQX)	Free shipping for Kindles via UPS with pre-printed voucher.	Not available.
Samsung (Samsung.com/recyclingdirect)	Free mailback shipping for various Samsung products.	Drop Samsung and non-Samsung products at over 1,000 third-party locations.
Sony (Sony.com/ecotrade)	Free shipping for Sony products weighing less than 25 pounds.	Drop Sony products at about 850 third-party locations.
Best Buy (BestBuy.com/recycling)	Free appliance removal when purchasing new one. Or, $100 for home pickup of two items.	Recycling kiosks for ink cartridges, rechargeable batteries, cord, cables, etc.
Microsoft (http://bit.ly/roNymi)	Free shipping of Microsoft hardware, including Xbox.	Cellphones, rechargeable phone batteries and computers accepted at Microsoft stores.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120508/when-the-devices-are-done/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120508/ea-says-digital-will-offset-new-console-investments-for-the-first-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20120508/ea-says-digital-will-offset-new-console-investments-for-the-first-time/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 21:45:24 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=205367 Despite having to sink $80 million into new console game development this year, EA’s CEO John Riccitiello is upbeat, saying that “we are absolutely a different company in a different spot.”

Typically at this point in the hardware cycle, he said, the cost of developing new videogames would lead to a loss. But in a conference call with investors yesterday, Riccitiello said revenue from digital content will keep EA profitable.

“In the face of, unfortunately, somewhat of a headwind relative to console, we’re getting top line growth, robust digital growth, robust margin expansion, robust EPS growth, while affording the investment in the next-gen console. I don’t think, going back to our foundation in ’82, that’s ever happened before. So what we are guiding for is entirely unprecedented, and it’s a function of everything we’ve been saying on the call so far. … It’s our hope to be able to accelerate top line through a transition and accelerate bottom line growth through a transition because we won’t be facing sort of negative console compares.”

Nintendo expects to release the Wii U later this year, which will require new games that tap into both the TV and a touchscreen device. Neither Microsoft or Sony have unveiled plans for their respective next-generation hardware systems, the Xbox and PlayStation. Riccitiello did not mention the new consoles by name, and instead referred any direct questions about hardware to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

“We intend to invest $80 million in Gen4 console development in fiscal ’13. We are strong believers that console will return to strong growth, and represent a great opportunity — one that is in lockstep with our digital plans.”

In fiscal 2012, EA generated $1.2 billion in digital revenues, representing a 47 percent increase year over year. In the past six months alone, FIFA 12 — one of the company’s traditional packaged good titles — was able to break $100 million in digital revenues for the first time. This year, it’s predicting digital revenues of $1.7 billion, representing 40 percent of the company’s overall business.

Even though Riccitiello painted a positive outlook, he failed to turn to the tide.

Along with a broader market meltdown, the company’s stock fell 65 cents, or 4.3 percent, at $14.48 a share. At that price, the company’s stock is off more than 40 percent from its 52-week high of $26.13 a share.

During the call, Riccitiello also tried to stress that while Star Wars: The Old Republic is an important title for the company, it is getting an unfair amount of attention by analysts. In the quarter, he said the number of subscribers fell to 1.3 million from 1.7 million when the game launched.

“So while I understand there’s an enormous amount of interest, I don’t know that it warrants as much as what we’re seeing right now,” he said, according to a SeekingAlpha transcript.

The final highlight from the call was when Riccitiello questioned how much Zynga paid for OMGPOP and its hit title Draw Something, which was No. 1 for a short period of time. He didn’t actually name the two companies, but it was implied.

“Right now, what I’m starting to see is valuation expectations that assume that these things are all hockey stick moving up and to the right with no end in sight, and I think those are bad assumptions,” he said. “Some of them will work, some of them won’t, but they can’t all be worth the multiple that I’m seeing in the market right now.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120508/ea-says-digital-will-offset-new-console-investments-for-the-first-time/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120507/ctia-gets-down-to-business-in-the-big-easy/ http://allthingsd.com/20120507/ctia-gets-down-to-business-in-the-big-easy/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 21:42:27 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=204640 With the New Orleans Jazz Fest now over, it’s time for the cellphone industry to get to work.

In town for the annual CTIA trade show, the mood shifted back to business on Monday, at least until the evening parties kick off. The U.S. cellular trade association moved the convention from March to May (and to a party town) in hopes that the event can avoid being lost in the shadows of Mobile World Congress and the Consumer Electronics Show.

Although the main part of the show doesn’t begin until Tuesday, the first bits of product news were announced this morning. Verizon debuted the HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE, while AT&T announced a $49 Samsung LTE Windows Phone as well as its plans to enter the home security business. This afternoon, MasterCard announced its new PayPass digital wallet.

AT&T is planning a press event later on Monday, with further news expected.

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