Micro-Hoo is Back On the Table, But In a Different Form
by Alex Woodie

Spurred by an activist billionaire investor's participation in Yahoo's affairs and his attempt to revive the $47 billion deal, Microsoft is taking a second look at acquiring Yahoo, or at least a part of it. On Sunday, the software giant announced that it's back in talks with Yahoo to do some kind of deal. While Microsoft isn't talking specifics, the deal reportedly involves Yahoo selling its search and online advertising business to Microsoft for about $20 billion, while other Yahoo's assets would be sold off. READ MORE >

Developers Cool to Vista, Evans Study Finds
by Alex Woodie

Fewer than one in 10 software developers are writing applications to run on Windows Vista this year, compared to almost 50 percent who are targeting Windows XP, according to the latest survey of North American developers from Evans Data. While Evans predicts 23 percent of programmers will target the new OS in 2009, the slower-than-expected adoption of Vista by users and developers alike weighs heavily on Microsoft and its decisions for XP end-of-life and Windows 7, which is penciled in for 2010. READ MORE >

Global Sales Save HP's Financial Cookies in the Second Quarter
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Hot on the heels of its proposed $13.9 billion acquisition of services pioneer and giant Electronic Data Systems last week, Hewlett-Packard duly reported its financials to Wall Street for the second quarter of fiscal 2008 ended April 30. And as it hinted a week ago, the numbers were a bit better than expected, with overall sales up 9.7 percent to $25.7 billion and net earnings rising by 15.9 percent to $2.06 billion. Thanks to share buybacks, HP was able to boost earnings per share by 23.1 percent to 80 cents a pop. READ MORE >

Symantec Combats Phishing with New Services Offering
by Alex Woodie

IT security giant Symantec Monday launched a new initiative to fight phishing, pharming, and other rapidly spreading types of online fraud targeting banks, e-commerce sites, brokerage houses, and other B2B or B2C institutions where lots of money changes hands. Under the new offering, called Online Fraud Protection Services, Symantec will bring to bear a battery of methods and techniques to block attacks launched against individual companies and their brands and, if possible, work with law enforcement to put the perps behind bars. READ MORE >