24 posts from February 2008

February 29, 2008

Forrester: How To Staff For Social Computing

Interesting point of view by Forrester: Social Computing requires specialist resources. I don't necessarily agree. Look at how far millions of users have come on their own with Web 2.0 solutions out there like Linked-In, MySPace, Facebook, Hyves, etc. etc.

These types of solutions is exactly what users want and need within their organisation as well. Anyone or anything making the introduction / adoption of these tools more complicated, let alone someone who defines policies and rules will limit the adoption. I think we've 'been there done that' with Knowledge Management ...

Don't try to build and run social applications without the right staff. We've identified two key new roles needed for success: 1) the Social Computing strategist, who'll lead the internal charge, and 2) the community manager, an external customer advocate. Working in tandem, these roles will align Social Computing programs with the business and ensure that community members are happy. Management should agree upon goals and then give the team latitude to get the job done —including embracing mistakes as new programs are tested out.

Source: How To Staff For Social Computing
"Jeremiah K. Owyang"
Date Published: Thu, 28 Feb 2008

I needed some AIR ...

This speaks for itself ... if not stay tuned ...

thinbook

February 21, 2008

Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability

Microsoft today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice.

Brad Smith, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie


Audio Recording & Transcript: Conference Call with Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, Bob Muglia and Brad Smith


Video Highlights from the Press Conference (1 min 50 sec)

 

...Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.

Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products: (1) ensuring open connections; (2) promoting data portability; (3) enhancing support for industry standards; and (4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

“These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies,” said Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer. “For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies.”

According to Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect, the company’s announcement reflects the significance that individuals and businesses place upon the ease of information-sharing. As heterogeneity is the norm within enterprise architectures, interoperability across applications and services has become a key requirement.

“Customers need all their vendors, including and especially Microsoft, to deliver software and services that are flexible enough such that any developer can use their open interfaces and data to effectively integrate applications or to compose entirely new solutions,” said Ozzie. “By increasing the openness of our products, we will provide developers additional opportunity to innovate and deliver value for customers.”

“The principles and actions announced today by Microsoft are a very significant expansion of its efforts to promote interoperability,” said Manfred Wangler, vice president, Corporate Research and Technology, Software and Engineering, Siemens. “While Microsoft has made considerable progress on interoperability over the past several years, including working with us on the Interoperability Executive Customer Council, today’s news take Microsoft’s interoperability commitment to a whole new level.”

“The interoperability principles and actions announced today by Microsoft will benefit the broader IT community,” said Thomas Vogel, head, Information Management, Novartis Pharma. “Ensuring open connections to Microsoft’s high-volume products presents significant opportunities for the vast majority of software developers, which will help foster greater interoperability, opportunity and choice in the marketplace. We look forward to a constructive, structured, and multilateral dialogue to ensure stakeholder-driven evolution of these principles and actions.” ...

Read the press release

February 19, 2008

Forrester: Home Servers In The Digital Home

Looking at the advantages that Microsoft HomeServer has brought me in the last couple of months since I own one, I think Forrester is underestimating its uptake. Nevertheless it is good to see that there's recognition for this category ...

Consumers' growing digital assets in the form of music, photos, and video will require backup, management, and streaming. In multiple-PC households, complexity has grown, while backup behavior has stalled. Home servers can address these concerns and can also act as hubs for the digital home, streaming content across PCs and into the living room itself. While the need for home servers is clear, articulating their value proposition to most consumers will be very difficult. Technology marketers must overcome consumers' ignorance and significant retail challenges to overcome some very high marketing hurdles. Expect Microsoft's launch of Windows Home Server in 2008 to raise awareness and give a jolt to adoption of this product. But it will take a long time for the home server market to take off. Forrester's forecast suggests that home servers will become an important product category for the digital home by 2012.

Source: Home Servers In The Digital Home
"J.P. Gownder"
Date Published: Fri, 01 Feb 2008

Vowe: If you think nobody wants SharePoint, think again

Volker highlights the Launch of Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 combined iwth the SharePoint Conference in Germany

7500 attendees that's more than the number of people that attended Lotusphere .. not bad ..

Launch event for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 combined with the SharePoint Konferenz 2008 in Frankfurt draws a crowd of 7500 customers and partners. Sold out for months, this event has been the largest I have seen in Germany. The photo shows an overfilled ...

Source: If you think nobody wants SharePoint, think again
Volker Weber
Date Published: Tue, 19 Feb 2008

Microsoft Open Source Project To Enable OOXML Conversion

New developements around OOXML ...

... Microsoft today launched an open source software project on the SourceForge site, aimed at developing conversion tools that will translate Microsoft Office binary files to Office Open XML (OOXML) file formats. According to Vijay Rajagopalan, principal architect in the Interoperability & Platform Strategy group at Microsoft, initial work will focus on a Word conversion solution, with Excel and PowerPoint file formats to be addressed starting in the spring.

"We are hoping that our first beta version of this is going to come out around June 30th. That will give us a good benchmark of what are the capabilities of the Word translator," Rajagopalan said. "Around April we are hoping to publicly make our first technology preview." ...

Source: Microsoft Open Source Project To Enable OOXML Conversion
Date Published: Fri, 15 Feb 2008

February 18, 2008

Channel 10: Life At Microsoft - The Truth Revealed

For everyone who wants to know what life is really like @ Microsoft :-)

People often stop me in the streets to ask "Hey Tina, what's life "really" like at Microsoft?  Sometimes I can't even walk outside my house without somebody standing there with a giant neon sign that blinks "What is life "really" like at Microsoft"?  Instead of answering every individual separately and so you can save your money on those neon signs.  I decided to create a video that would answer that simple yet complex question.  I want to throw out a special high-five to the following because without them and a lot of beer this video never would have happened.  ...

Check out the video at source

Source: Life At Microsoft - The Truth Revealed
Tina Wood
Date Published: Thu, 14 Feb 2008

February 17, 2008

Porsche 911 commercial

Porsche ... there is no substitute ...

February 16, 2008

Microsoft RoundTable stars in CSI:NY

Crimes will be solved faster now CSI New York has started using Microsoft RoundTable :-)

clip_image001

Kudos to Dennis ...

February 15, 2008

Microsoft mobility announcements

Microsoft Corp. and Cbeyond announced a new e-mail service, including support for mobile devices, that is now available as part of a communications package specifically targeting small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). www.microsoft.com / www.cbeyond.com

Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of a technology preview for accessing MSN Direct content on Windows Mobile-based devices. www.microsoft.com

Microsoft Corp. announced that it is releasing a new version of its Windows Live Mobile Developer Program, enabling developers to create mobile versions of its popular Windows Live services that can be built for virtually any mobile phone independent of phone operating system. www.microsoft.com

Microsoft Corp. announced that Sony Ericsson will deliver a new Windows Mobile phone, the XPERIA X1, which blends mobile Web communication and multimedia entertainment, to meet consumer demand for a premium mobile experience for work and play. www.microsoft.com / www.sonyericsson.com

Source: Radicati.com

February 14, 2008

InfoWorld: 'Office 14' to be more Web-friendly, Gates says

 

InfoWorld ran an article about the speech of Bill Gates at the Office Developer Conference. A lot of interest ofcourse on what the next version of Office System will bring and ofcourse the strategy also there is Software + Services ...

... Microsoft envisions the next version of Office to have partial online functionality similar to how Outlook Web Access works

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates talked publicly for the first time on Monday about the next big Office release, code-named Office 14, which he said will give users new ways to access their applications online.

Microsoft won't provide the full functionality of Office online, but it will offer limited capabilities to view and edit the data in Office applications. It already does this for its Outlook e-mail client with a product called Outlook Web Access, and it will offer similar capabilities for other applications in Office 14, Gates said in a speech at the Microsoft Office System Developer Conference in San Jose, Calif.

"Outlook Web Access is not the full version of Office, but if you want to go into a kiosk or an Internet cafe and browse and connect, it gives you plenty of functionality," he said. "As we look at all the modules [in Office 14], we have in mind the equivalent of Outlook Web Access," Gates said.

It was the first time Microsoft had confirmed the "Office 14" moniker for the next release, although the Windows enthusiast Web site AeroXperience reported that fact recently, citing an internal Microsoft document. It also reported that a beta of Office 14 would appear this year with commercial release planned for 2009. ...

Source: InfoWorld.com

February 12, 2008

Theo blogt: Verwarring rond 'Goud'

Theo blogde gisteren over de verwarring rond 'Goud' de werkplek aanbesteding van de overheid, welke op dit moment in de aandacht staat in verband met het recente debat dat hierover is gevoerd.

 

... Na een periode van rust in de afgelopen weken, althans rust qua het schrijven van blogs, was er deze week voldoende aanleiding om weer eens een blog te schrijven.

In december werd het actieplan ‘Nederland open in verbinding’ door de Tweede Kamer aangenomen. We hebben daar als Microsoft over aangegeven dat we de doelstellingen en ambities rond interoperabiliteit en open standaarden volledig steunen. En dat we wel een aantal kritische kanttekeningen hebben op het actieplan, zoals:

- Onnodige positieve discriminatie van één bedrijfsmodel in een dynamische industrie met meerdere bedrijfsmodellen, die steeds meer door elkaar gebruikt worden (hoezo open versus gesloten?)

- Onnodig beperkende definitie voor ‘open standaarden’

- Onrealistische invoeringstermijn van 1 april voor ODF ondersteuning, naast reeds gebruikte formaten DOC en PDF

We gaven daarbij aan dat het actieplan op een aantal punten tot praktische problemen kon leiden, met name daar waar het onduidelijk was en zeer waarschijnlijk in de praktijk tot onbedoelde uitleg en implicaties zou leiden.

Zo’n situatie doet zich nu in de praktijk voor. Het zal begrijpelijk zijn dat ik het debat rond de werkplek aanbesteding ‘GOUD’ met belangstelling volg. Zoals ik overigens ieder debat rond ICT in de politiek probeer te volgen.

Ook in dit debat van vorige week bleek duidelijk dat Kamerleden en politici worstelen met de complexiteit van ICT. Dat kunnen we als industrie voor een deel onszelf aanrekenen, we informeren niet iedereen altijd even goed over actuele ontwikkelingen, successen en mogelijkheden. Het meest in het oog springend was voor mij de eerlijke uitspraak van Wouter Bos in relatie tot de ICT technische elementen in de aanbesteding: “...ook ik snap er geen hout van”.

Ik zal geen reactie geven op de project inhoudelijke zaken, zoals de “big bang” of “back office” discussie. Dat zijn projectmatige keuzes aan de kant van de aanbestedende partij. Wel viel me een aantal zaken op in de discussie die correctie behoeven: ...

Lees verder : Theo blogt

En verwarrend dat is het zeker. Zoals Theo in zijn blog aangeeft zijn er 11 producten die in de aanbesteding als “kritiek” worden geclassificeerd. Slechts 4 ervan zijn Microsoft gerelateerd.  Je vraagt je dan ook af wat het onderliggende doel is ...

"In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it."

Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988)

 

Tijdens de kamerdiscussie kwam ook naar voren dat Active Directory min of meer een “lock in” is naar Microsoft Windows. Het is waar dat Microsoft produkten AD vereisen voor authenticatie. Het is echter ook waar dat interoperabiliteit van deze omgeving met ondermeer andere platformen en directorysystemen essentieel is:

“The Active Directory is an implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) version 3 standard as specified in RFC-2251. LDAP version 3 supports authenticated connections using simple authentication through NTLM, SSL, and SASL/GSSAPI (RFC-2222) mechanisms. The Kerberos authentication service is an implementation of the Kerberos version 5 as specified in RFC-1510. The authentication service implements the Key Distribution Center (KDC) service and forms the core security mechanism for Windows 2000.”

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms808911.aspx

en dat Active Directory al veel (open) standaarden ondersteunt:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms808927.aspx

Because the Active Directory is built from the ground up using Internet-standard technologies, customers get the best of proven technologies such as DNS, TCP/IP, LDAP, X.509 and Kerberos that have already been implemented worldwide within organizations and on the Internet. By supporting these industry-standard directory service protocols and interfaces, Microsoft enables user benefits, such as single sign-on, centralized management, and network interoperability.

Enkele artikelen over AD en interoperabiliteit

Persoonlijk vind ik de koppeling tussen Active Directory en het open source produkt A-Select van SURFnet een heel goed voorbeeld van interopability op basis van open standaarden. A-Select wordt door een groot gedeelte van de hoger onderwijs instellingen en universiteiten gebruikt. Deze zelfde organisaties maken ook zeer veel gebruik van Microsoft produkten en Active Directory:

A-Select (middleware voor authenticatie)

De afgelopen jaren hebben SURFnet en Alfa & Ariss in nauwe samenwerking A-Select ontwikkeld. A-Select is middleware voor authenticatie. Het koppelt uiteenlopende applicaties met een scala aan authenticatiemogelijkheden. A-Select is de technologie onder de motorkap van de nationale authenticatievoorziening DigiD. Het hoger onderwijs gebruikt A-Select inmiddels volop. SURFnet en Kennisnet werken aan de uitrol van authenticatiedienst in het gehele onderwijs.

SURFfoundation participeert in de raad van advies van A-Select en in het Nationaal Authenticatie Platform van ECP.NL.
Tevens is SURFfoundation actief betrokken bij relevante ontwikkelingen op het gebied van authenticatie.

Belangrijke functies en voordelen van A-select:

  • Beschikbaarheid als open-sourcesoftware
  • Flexibele toepassing van diverse authenticatietechnieken (instelbaar per gebruiker en per toepassing) voor het inloggen van webtoepassingen, waaronder diverse wachtwoordsystemen (RADIUS, LDAP, Active Directory), IP-adres en bancaire authenticatie, passwords verzonden via SMS-berichten, PKI-certificaten
  • Single sign-on
  • Eenvoudige samenvoeging van toepassingen op bestaande webservers
  • Ondersteuning van zowel lokale als instellingsoverstijgende toepassingen
  • Breed draagvlak binnen onderwijs, overheid en daarbuiten.

  • Bron: http://www.surffoundation.nl/a-select 

February 10, 2008

CIO Magazine: SharePoint 2007 Demystified: How to Cash in on Collaboration Tools

Very comprehensive and well balanced overview of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 :

... As the technology partner (head of IT) at global law firm Bryan Cave, John Alber saw increasing resources being devoted to keeping multiple information systems integrated and the data flowing among them. Over time, the law firm brought in what it considered the best tools to handle tasks such as document repositories, e-mail management, conflict-of-interest databases and calendar management, to help attorneys and support staff research, collaborate and stay abreast of case developments. And keeping those tools working together was a necessary price to be paid. But now, Alber is implementing a different approach: He's using the new Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform as the common system for many of these tasks.

Until the new version's October 2007 release, Alber wouldn't have considered SharePoint, since its previous incarnation didn't have the management chops he needed. Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 was widely considered a departmental tool good just for non-critical intranet sites and project-based file sharing, says Rob Koplowitz, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. But the new version brings in much of what an enterprise needs to manage documents, create project workspaces, manage information repositories and tie into content management, analytics and search tools—all with IT-based control over security, access management and data structures. ...

Continue at source: CIO.com

February 08, 2008

Gray Knowlton: On “motivation” and commitment to open file formats

 

There's al lot of talk about OpenXML and PDF. Microsoft colleague Gray Knowlton has created an excellent blogpost about OpenXML. Gray is a Group Product Manager for the Microsoft Office system, so he's close to the fire as we say.

He is highlighting the work, the solutions and most of all the progress that has been made in this field.

... Microsoft has been and continues to be fully committed to opening its document formats for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Interoperability is not new to Office, and Open XML is part of a much broader strategy around interoperability for Office. When we look at the past three years of document format related investments, you'll see this shining through; we've done quite a lot. Different circumstances led to each of these activities, but as a collection of work, the intent is unmistakable, and despite claims to the contrary, we're highly motivated to ensure that we can participate in an open environment. These are all steps toward openness, which is good for us, good for our customers and good for the industry.

Brian Jones has covered the history of the formats and XML support for Office in a prior post, there is a significant amount of ground covered in his post. 

Let's take a look at what has happened: ...

Read on at source : Gray Knowlton's blog : Gray Matter

OpenID board members

This is an impressive (and challenging ?) group to start of your iniative that's for sure :

The OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft Corp., Verisign, and Yahoo! have joined as its first corporate board members. With these companies’ deep expertise in Internet and security technology, the OpenID Foundation strengthens the industrywide effort to empower users with portable Web identities, or OpenIDs. This effort helps ensure the evolution of an open and interoperable Internet that helps people take control of how their personal information is used online and helps online businesses attract and retain more users by simplifying and securing the management of digital identities. www.ibm.com / www.microsoft.com / www.google.com / www.verisign.com / www.yahoo.com

Source Radicati News By Mail

February 07, 2008

10 funniest Microsoft YouTube videos

Nice compilation of 10 videós about Microsoft.

10 funniest Microsoft YouTube videos

Be sure to also check out the comments as there are a few more links in there ...

February 06, 2008

OneNote 2007 Demo: What is OneNote?

In case you've never heard of Microsoft Office OneNote ...

Watch this introductory demo to learn about Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 and how to use it to gather, organize, and share your notes and other information.

Source: OneNote 2007 Demo: What is OneNote?
Date Published: Wed, 30 Jan 2008

Office Communications Server 2007 Visio stencil

 

The Office Communications Server 2007 Visio stencil contains icons for Office Communications Server 2007 server roles and components. 

Source: Office Communications Server 2007 Visio stencil
Date Published: Tue, 05 Feb 2008

Mrs Dewey is back....

From Michael blog ... Mrs Dewey  was  Microsoft site which showed serach result with 'commentary' ... Now in the spirit of the US elections, there's Left vs Right :-)

http://www.leftvsright.com/

Nice viral from our Windows Live Search friends....

Source: Mrs Dewey is back....
mkogeler
Date Published: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:36:15 GMT

February 05, 2008

Matthijs Hoekstra blogt (eindelijk :-) )

Ik checkte de Microsoft NL blogs vanavond en ja hoor, een "nieuweling". Welkom Matthijs ..

... Hallo, mijn naam is Matthijs Hoekstra. Ik werk nu zo’n 6 jaar als consultant bij Microsoft Services. Microsoft Services is in Nederland ongeveer 120 man/vrouw groot.

Ikzelf zit in de IW Groep. We houden ons bezig met zaken als SharePoint, Office, OCS etc. Dat varieert van grote SharePoint infrastructuur- en development projecten tot het geven van training op al deze onderwerpen, klanten helpen bij de uitrol van Office etc. Naast technische projecten zijn we ook steeds drukker klanten te helpen bij het doorvoeren van onze New World of Work visie. Ons team is nu 13 personen. 9 mannen en 4 vrouwen.

Naast de consultants in het IW team hebben we ook consultants op andere gebieden zoals: Infrastructuur, development, operations, strategy en project- en programma managers.

Op dit blog zal ik proberen wat informatie over ons werk als consultant te posten en mocht ik interessante dingen tegen komen tijdens mijn werk zal ik dat ook proberen te vermelden. Ik heb gemerkt in gesprekken die ik bij mijn klanten heb gehad dat men het vaak leuk vind om te horen hoe dingen bij Microsoft werken en intern gebeuren. Ik zal proberen een beetje inzicht te geven in 'ons' wereldje. ...

 

Matthijs Hoekstra's blog

Case Study : Q-go : Intuitive Language Software Automatically Answers 90 Per Cent of Customer Questions

Q-go is a Dutch company with an impressive lost of customers ...

... Q-go is a fast-growing independent software vendor (ISV) specialising in natural language search (NLS) technology. It wanted to offer its customers an alternative solution to search engines such as Google. By integrating the company’s NLS solution with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 for Search, users pose questions to organisations in their own language and get an immediate answer...

Source and full case study : Microsoft.com

February 03, 2008

CMSWire: SharePoint's No Slouch - Earns Microsoft $1 billion

Microsoft doesn't break down revenue to the product level. Nevertheless the math could be right. SharePoint is a big hit ...

... It's been a record year for Microsoft according to their financials...record revenues of $16.4 billion and earnings of $4.7 billion for their second quarter.

What do they attribute these numbers to? Microsoft indicated that sales of Office and Vista were strong during this period. This must mean that people are ignoring all the bad reviews about Vista and upgrading to it regardless of the problems it has - sales of the operating system are now over 100 million units. Revenue growth for the search division was 38 percent in the quarter and consulting revenues rose by 28%.

But probably the biggest deal is SharePoint. It is a billion dollar baby for Microsoft. They don't go into specifics of the dollar breakdown but we're sure a lot of that money must belong to the support teams and the consulting teams that spend lots time with companies figuring out the best way to implement the CMS.

Who says people don't like SharePoint? Microsoft's revenues say - lots of people do like it! ...

Source: SharePoint's No Slouch - Earns Microsoft $1 billion
Barb Mosher
Date Published: Fri, 01 Feb 2008

February 01, 2008

Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 per Share

The Online space suddenly became even more exciting ! This acquisition was anticipated for a long time and now it's a fact.

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 1, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Microsoft’s proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.

“We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners.”

“Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively transformed by the Web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling, high-scale services and infrastructure,” said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft. “The combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would have achieved on our own.”

The online advertising market is growing at a very fast pace, from over $40 billion in 2007 to nearly $80 billion by 2010. The resulting benefits of scale along with the associated capital costs for advertising platform providers make this a time of industry consolidation and convergence. Today this market is increasingly dominated by one player. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a competitive choice while better fulfilling the needs of customers and partners.

“The combined assets and strong services focus of these two companies will enable us to achieve scale economics while reaching R&D critical mass to deliver innovation breakthroughs,” said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division of Microsoft. “The industry will be well served by having more than one strong player, offering more value and real choice to advertisers, publishers and consumers.”

The combination will create a more efficient company with synergies in four areas: scale economics driven by audience critical mass and increased value for advertisers; combined engineering talent to accelerate innovation; operational efficiencies through elimination of redundant cost; and the ability to innovate in emerging user experiences such as video and mobile. Microsoft believes these four areas will generate at least $1 billion in annual synergy for the combined entity.

Microsoft has developed a plan and process that will include the employees of both companies to focus on the integration of the combined business. Microsoft intends to offer significant retention packages to Yahoo! engineers, key leaders and employees across all disciplines.

Microsoft believes this proposed combination would receive all necessary regulatory approvals and expects that the proposed transaction would be completed in the second half of calendar year 2008.

Microsoft is also committed to working closely with Yahoo! management and its Board of Directors as they, along with Yahoo! shareholders, evaluate this compelling proposal. ...

Source: Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 per Share
Date Published: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:30:00 GMT

Laura's Keuken

Laura is mijn dochter van 15, die helemaal gek is van koken.

Ik heb haar een beetje kunnen 'beïnvloeden" dat een blog wel een hele handige manier is om haar recepten op te slaan, te voorzien van foto's (die ze toch altijd al maakt) en ook gelijk te delen met anderen (als je deelt heb je meer :-) )

image

Dus ... zoek je een leuk recept check haar blog : Laura's Keuken

O ja, en laat even een comment achter als je wilt, dat stimuleert :-)

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