Apple Is the New Microsoft, Part 2 (Updated)

Apple surpassed Microsoft two months ago as the world’s most highly valued tech company, and is now challenging the Redmond giant on another key metric: In a blowout third quarter, AAPL posted record revenue of $15.7 billion, which should be close to or exceed what Microsoft reports on Thursday.
Apple’s quarter easily surpassed consensus expectations, per Thomson Reuters, posting net income of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 per diluted share. Gross margins were down slightly year over year — 39.1 percent compared to 40.9 percent — and international sales accounted for more than half of all business, 52 percent.
The Thomson Reuters consensus for Microsoft’s revenue is $15.27 billion. Among the 29 analysts polled, the highest estimate was only a tad above what Apple has actually reported, at $15.74 billion. As of today Apple still has a higher market capitalization than Microsoft, but not by much.
Apple’s hardware story in the 3rd quarter is equally impressive:

Apple Passes Microsoft as World’s Largest Tech Company

What a long, strange trip it’s been.
Apple’s market capitalization officially passed Microsoft’s Wednesday afternoon, making the Cupertino, California, company — for the first time — the largest technology company in the world.
With a market cap of $241.5 billion versus Microsoft’s $239.5 billion, Apple also became the second-largest company on the S&P 500, according to Standard & Poor’s analyst Howard Silverblatt. At the moment, only Exxon Mobil is bigger.

Microsoft Pays $3 to Set Bing as The Default Search Engine!

Microsoft is going all out and doing everything humanly possible to eat into Google’s search market share. Google dropped by 1% in the month of June as Yahoo and Bing gained .6% each. Though the drop cannot be directly tied to Bings aggressive marketing tactics just based on 1 months results, it would be interesting to see if the trend continues.
Microsoft is currently paying $3 to anyone who decide to set Bing as their default search engine. The company has tied up with DonorsChoose.org where users can donate the $3 they earn by switching to Bing.
So here is how it works..

Thai Team Wins Imagine Cup

Microsoft Sponsors Eighth Annual Student Technology Festival

Team Skeek from Thailand won top honors at last week's Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Warsaw. More than 325,000 students from around the world participated in the eighth annual Imagine Cup, a competition sponsored by Microsoft Corp. that challenges high-school and college students to create technology solutions for the world's toughest problems.

The awards ceremony capped the weeklong Imagine Cup World Festival, where students demonstrated their projects and competed for cash prizes totaling $240,000 through five competition categories and six achievement awards.

"These student projects are sophisticated technology accomplishments that highlight the incredible things that can happen when inspired ideas and the will to make them happen come together," said Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, in announcing the awards. "These students should make us all proud, as they are taking concrete steps to help others and make our world a better place. With their passion and the assistance of technology, these young adults can and will affect the future."

Team Skeek won the $25,000 grand prize in the software design category for its project, eyeFeel, which lets the hearing impaired communicate with other people through an augmented-reality environment.
According to Microsoft, this year's projects concentrated mainly on education, healthcare and the environment. Competition categories were Digital Media, Embedded Development, Game Design, IT Challenge and Software Design. In addition, there were six achievement awards categories: Envisioning 2020 Award, Interoperability Award, Next Generation Web Award, Touch & Tablet Accessibility Award, Windows Phone 7 "Rockstar" Award and Windows Internet Explorer 8 Award.
The Imagine Cup began in 2003 with 1,000 student participants and has grown to become the premier student technology competition worldwide.

Microsoft Pays Mobile App Developers to Help It Catch Apple

July 14 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. is paying developers to build mobile applications for its Windows Phone 7 system to help it narrow a lead by rival products from Apple Inc. and Google Inc.

The company is providing financial incentives ranging from free tools and test handsets to funds for software development and marketing, said Todd Brix, a senior director at Microsoft who works with app developers. In some cases, Microsoft is providing revenue guarantees, and will make up the difference if apps don’t sell as well as expected, he said.

Microsoft revamped its flagship mobile operating system to recoup market share lost to Google and Apple. To win consumers, the world’s largest software maker needs an ample supply of games, music and navigation apps when handsets with Windows Phone 7 reach stores later this year. Some developers may be reluctant to sign up before they know Windows Phone will lure enough customers, said Kevin Burden, an analyst at ABI Research.

“In no way do they want to say, ‘Trust us, there will be apps at some point,’” said Burden, who is based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. “If that means paying developers, so be it. It’s a good strategy for them.”

While Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, has used similar compensation programs for previous versions of its mobile operating system, it’s devoting a larger sum this time, Brix said. He declined to say how much Microsoft will spend.

The Russian Spy Scandal Reaches Microsoft

Federal agents have detained yet another alleged Russian spy in the government’s investigation of a spy ring that has reached entrepreneurial and tech circles from coast to coast.
The alleged 12th spy, Alexey Karetnikov, was an employee of Microsoft at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. According to the Washington Post, he was deported to Russia on Tuesday after a judge ordered his removal on Monday. Law enforcement officials say that he was “in the early stages” of his spy work, but had yet to obtain any useful information.
According to Karetnikov’s Facebook Page, he was on Microsoft’s SDET (Software Design Engineer in Test ()) team, which helps test the code that runs Microsoft’s products.

Poof! After Wireless, the Computer Mouse Turns Invisible

In a magic trick that only geeks can pull off, researchers at MIT have found a method to let users click and scroll exactly the same way they would with a computer mouse, without the device actually being there.
Cup your palm, move it around on a table and a cursor on the screen hovers. Tap on the table like you would click a real mouse, and the computer responds. It’s one step beyond cordless. It’s an invisible mouse.
The project, called “Mouseless,” uses an infrared laser beam and camera to track the movements of the palm and fingers and translate them into computer commands.
“Like many other projects in the past, including the Nintendo Power Glove and the Fingerworks iGesture Pad, this attempts to see how we can use new technology to control old technology,” says Daniel Wigdor, a user experience architect for Microsoft who hasn’t worked directly on the project. “It’s just an intermediate step to where we want to be.”

Touting Redesign, MSNBC Declares Pageviews ‘Dead’

The big idea behind just about every website redesign these days generally revolves around “less is more” minimalism. But it looks like MSNBC.com’s redo actually means it: the new site, which just went fully live, promises to do an end with clicking on stories and on ads. By introducing a single-page-only format, the company hopes to sell large, customizable ads to marketers as it tries to build a larger audience.
It is also promising to swear off reduce the use “standalone” slideshows, something that has become a staple of many news sites to drive pageview counts as a way of measuring audience usage and engagement to advertisers—instead relying mostly on slideshows that are “integrated,” though the difference was a bit unclear (update: Commenter Jason Lotito correctly points out that integrated slideshows “are part of the page, and don’t require you clicking to the next page.”). As a rep for the cable net told us,“Msnbc.com is in the business of selling advertiser experiences, not ad units.”