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Microsoft Reports Third-Quarter Results — Lower operating expenses narrow revenue gap in difficult economic environment. — Income Statements — Segment Revenue and Operating Income (Loss) — Third Quarter Form 10-Q — View the PowerPoint Earnings Release
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Earnings: Microsoft Posts First Ever Drop in Revenue; Online Ad Revenue Falls 16 Percent — Hit hard by the recession, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) reported the first year-over-year revenue drop in its history Thursday—and posted revenue short of analysts' expectations.


Yahoo Quietly Pulls The Plug On Geocities — Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Yahoo! is unceremoniously closing GeoCities, one of the original web-hosting services acquired by Yahoo! in 1999 for $2.87 billion. (Fun venture fact: Fred Wilson's Flatiron Partners was an investor).
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Apple's App Store: 1 Billion Served — Well, it finally happened. Apple just delivered its 1 Billionth application download from the App Store, which currently features over 25,000 apps (35,000 by one estimate) built by thousands of developers. The significance of the milestone …
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Netflix: Kiosks Will Be No.1 Competitor, Future of Video is Social — Netflix ended the first quarter of 2009 with a bang, meeting the high end of its guidance with 10.3 million total subscribers and $394.1 million in quarterly revenue, the company announced today.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
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Apple apologizes for Baby Shaker — Apple issued a statement Thursday apologizing for allowing the “Baby Shaker” application onto the App Store. — Just hours before the App Store offers up its 1 billionth download, Apple was forced to acknowledge that perhaps the most notorious iPhone …
Discussion:
InformationWeek, AppleInsider, Post I.T., iPhone Savior, Edible Apple and The Apple Core


Hiring Of New MySpace CEO Settles Many Old Scores — MySpace parent company News Corp. continues to leak, off record, that Owen Van Natta is in the final stages of becoming the new CEO of MySpace (one of the more obvious candidates on our list yesterday). Van Natta certainly has the experience …
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Van Natta in at MySpace: Appointment to Be Announced Tomorrow
Discussion:
Fast Company


The End of Innocence at Apple: What Happened After Steve Jobs Was Fired — It seems unthinkable today — but more than two decades ago, when personal computers were still new and everybody listened to music on a Walkman, Steve Jobs was cast out of Apple. The year was 1985.


Android Catches Up To Palm In Mobile Ad Market Share. IPhone Still Blows It Away. — Android is making steady gains in mobile ad market share, accounting for 6 percent of all mobile ad requests measured by AdMob in its latest March metrics (full report embedded below).
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Google Product Search for Android and iPhone — In my spare time, I like to build computer systems at home. So I often use Google Product Search on a desktop computer to look for video cards, memory, and peripherals. Google Product Search gives me information like prices, ratings, reviews, and product details from all over the web.

Amazon: “Kindle exceeded our most optimistic expectations”; beats Q1 estimates — updated: Amazon may be taking a lesson from Apple when it comes to earnings. Forecast low, come in high and keep everyone on Wall Street smiling. The company surpassed analysts' expectations for the first quarter …
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Undoing Meg Whitman's eBay — Before voting for Meg Whitman for governor, California residents would do well to consider what has been happening at eBay since she stepped down as chief executive. John Donahoe, her successor, has pretty much disassembled all of her major strategic moves.


Palm Pre In the Wild, YouTube App — Photos of the Palm Pre in the wild have cropped up today on Twitter (via lo_toney) and have since been removed. The photos show the YouTube videos application and composing an email on the Palm Pre. The YouTube videos application looks similar to the same app that appears on Palm's Treo Pro.

Slick New Ubuntu ‘Jaunty Jackalope’ Springs Onto Netbooks — The latest version of Ubuntu Linux is hot off the press and available for download. The new release, known as “Jaunty Jackalope,” continues Ubuntu's slow but steady progression with a handful of slick new features …


Salma Hayek's Apple MobileMe account hacked, couldn't have been easier — As I write this, people are accessing the personal Apple MobileMe account of Hollywood actress Salma Hayek, after its login details were posted earlier today on Anonymous imageboard 4chan.org.

Inaptly-named Cuil has disappeared from view — Commentary: Search startup may end up fizzling — SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Remember Cuil, the Silicon Valley startup that was going to challenge Google Inc. as the world's leading search engine? — Apparently not many people do.


Facebook TOS Voting Concludes, Users Vote for New Revised Documents — Facebook's first-ever user vote on proposed changes to the site's Terms of Service has just concluded, and the results are in: the new documents have won out over the old documents by a 74% - 26% margin.

Joost shopping itself to satellite and cable providers — Joost is actively seeking a buyer and the beleaguered video service has told cable and satellite providers that it could be their online video solution, said sources with knowledge of the discussions.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider


‘Us Weekly’ Sells Facebook Fan Page Ad to State Farm — Social Network Doesn't Get Any Revenue From Deal — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Us Weekly has sold sponsorship of its new Facebook profile to State Farm in what appears to be a first for a media company on the social network website, as well as a first for a company's fan page.

Apple taps developers to test new Snow Leopard beta — Apple on Thursday notified developers by email that they could begin downloading and testing a new pre-release build of the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system, the second beta of the software released this month.
Discussion:
MacRumors

Software That Copies DVDs to Players Is on Trial — SAN FRANCISCO — RealNetworks says it wants to help increase DVD sales by allowing people to copy their movie discs. Hollywood studios say that idea will only hurt their already struggling business. The two sides square off in a federal court …
Discussion:
AppScout


Microsoft prepares Windows Anytime Upgrade, v2 — Way back in February 2006, nearly a year before the consumer launch of Windows Vista, I noted the first appearance of Microsoft's Windows Anytime Upgrade program in a Vista beta build. The theory behind Anytime Upgrade was a good one …


PixelQi puts three displays in one — SAN JOSE, Calif—You have to be able to see a screen before you can use multitouch gestures on it. — Here at the Interactive Displays 2009 conference, while the rest of the budding touch-screen industry talks about the best way to incorporate multitouch …


Pirate Bay lawyer calls for retrial — A lawyer representing one of the men convicted in the Pirate Bay trial has called for a retrial after reports that the judge was a member of the same copyright protection organisations as several of the main entertainment industry representatives.
Discussion:
MediaPost, Associated Press, ZeroPaid.com, TorrentFreak, Ars Technica, TechVi, Podcasting News, Joystiq, Obsessable, Electricpig.co.uk, Guardian and OSNews


Steve Jobs Spends Less Time on His Private Jet — Steve Jobs's private jet has almost been grounded over the last six months. — Getty Images — Steve Jobs at an Apple event in October — Apple says in a regulatory filing that it didn't reimburse the CEO for use of his Gulfstream during …


Apple's Q2: Analyzing the analysts — No analyst we know of correctly predicted Apple's (AAPL) second fiscal quarter results for 2009, in which the company proved that computer makers don't have to slash prices or build “junky” $400 netbooks to weather an economic storm. But some analysts did better than others.
Discussion:
Seeking Alpha, CNBC.com, InformationWeek, tinyComb, Financial Times, Barron's Online, Between the Lines, NEWSFACTOR and jkOnTheRun