$1 Billion+ Acquisition of Popcap Games?

Jun 232011
 

 

Once, there was a backyard lawn that grew a multitude of plants including, sweet peas, corn, walnuts and sunflowers. However, after an arcane ritual went wrong, causing a devastating plague to sweep over humanity, causing zombification, your plants mutated somehow providing you with a cure against the undead disease as well as becoming your first line of defense against your brain hungry neighbors. In other words, Plants vs Zombies.

The company behind Plants vs Zombies, Popcap Games has been reported by TechCrunch as being under an acquisition process, with offers reportedly reaching over a billion dollars, unfortunately, the possible buyer has not been named yet. Possible suitors by TechCrunch comment that Zynga could have been a possible buyer, but with the Facebook game company’s comparatively low market capitalization, it would certainly be a colossal purchase for them. EA has been hinted at as a possible suitor too, and with its recent purchase of Playfish, EA does seem to be a contender in the acquisition of Popcap Games.

But, with comparatively small market capitalization versus the asking price of $1 billion, it also seems unlikely that EA will pick up the company. That leaves the ‘big 3′ so to say, Microsoft, Google and Apple. Microsoft seems like the most likely purchaser, after all, the massive company already does own an entire console, and the operating system that most games run on. Purchasing Popcap would allow the company to take another step in its plan of gaming domination.

Apple certainly does have the money to purchase Popcap, but it seems slightly unlikely that they would have reason to purchase Popcap Games. Some of the companies products have been released in the App Store anyway, such as Plants vs Zombies anyway. Purchasing Popcap to use as an exclusive application developer seems excessive, considering the huge numbers of willing developers to contribute to the App Store.

And then there’s Google, with their Android devices. Like the other two big companies, money really isn’t an issue here. However, they could use Popcap games to create a ‘killer app’ of sorts, to attract more users to Android phones in general, and embrace the market place. But with the market share of Android phones growing rapidly, it seems that Google won’t feel the need to purchase Popcap games to bolster their already accessible lineup.

Popcap games has refused to comment on these ‘rumors’ at this point in time. But expect a big announcement from the indie games developer soon.

Microsoft Debuts Avatar Kinect for Xbox 360

Jan 092011
 

After getting an overwhelming response on the release on Xbox Kinect, Microsoft is here with another exciting feature for Xbox users. Steve Ballmer announced ‘Avatar Kinect’ at CES 2011 during Microsoft’s press briefing.

Microsoft's Ballmer delivers keynote at CES 2011

Steve Ballmer delivers keynote at CES 2011

Avatar Kinect is basically an Xbox 360 feature that allows users to act as their digital avatars on the screen using the Kinect for Xbox. It makes use of Xbox Kinect sensors to read the gestures and even the finer moments of smile and eyebrow. These gestures and motions are then replicated on the screen.

Avatar Kinect In Action (via Engadget)

Avatar Kinect In Action (via Engadget)

The idea is a superb, innovative one, you can hang up with friends on Avatar; join the virtual chatroom with other Kinect users over internet and much more. Microsoft describes the phenomena like this:

With Avatar Kinect, a player can invite up to seven friends to join them in one of 15 imaginative virtual environments to reflect their mood and inspire their conversations or performances. Arrive or leave sessions in style with unique animations like flying in with a jet pack, or snapping fingers to vanish. Players can also add cool animated and visual effects to creatively express their thought.

The Avatar Kinect is expected to be released this Spring, and the good thing is it would be available for free to all Xbox LIVE Gold members. Now that’s great, here is Avatar Kinect’s trailer to let you watch it in action!

At CES Microsoft shares their plan for the next year

Jan 072011
 

Last year’s CES held just after the launch of Windows 7 and lots of excitement was shown by the customers with the new product for windows PC. In This year’s CES though Windows 7 is just a little old but the excitement continues to grow as Microsoft is selling over 7 copies per second. A recent statistics show that around twenty percent of the computers connected to the internet has windows 7 operating system. So Microsoft continues to serve the Windows 7 users with their new services and upgrades, providing a best way to experience the modern web.

In the early September Microsoft had released the beta version of internet explorer nine which enables users to use HTML5 with great hardware to make amazing modern web experiences. That time 20 million copies were downloaded by the users. With Internet Explorer 9 users who have Windows 7 can pin their favorite website to the taskbar. If you haven’t tried the beta version of IE9, download it now and enjoy pinning windows blog to your taskbar.

In September Microsoft also shipped latest Windows live products and services to millions of people and this include new hotmail and live essentials of 2011. Over twenty million people uses office web through new Hotmail and with new Windows live services connect and share with their personal computer to the cloud. With Windows messenger one can connect swiftly to the face book to check out their friends. Messenger is already no.2 application on face book.

In the Microsoft CES keynote Steve Ballmer has promised to continue to deliver the innovation. They are planning to release internet explorer 9 early this year. Besides they are working on the next generation operating system for personal computers and tablets. If you missed the CES keynote with Mr. Ballmer, you can watch that on Microsoft’s official face book page.

Microsoft sold over 8 Million Kinect Sensors

Jan 052011
 

Steve Ballmer at CES just announced  that Microsoft sold 8 Million Kinect Sensors in first two months. Not only that but Microsoft also sold over 50 million XBox units world wide and outsold  PS3 and Wii for past 6 months in the United States. Way to go Microsoft?

avatar kinect

Microsoft also announced at CES today that Kinect will get “Avatar Kinect” which basically lets you use your avatar in motion.  Kinect at this point is a bit buggy when it comes to facial detection but over the time they are planning on fixing all the bugs.

Picture Credit: Engadget

You Can Get Macbook Air Alternative for Under $1K Envy 13 is on Sale

Dec 292010
 

Envy 13 got on sale today it use to cost $1449 now you can get it for $999 and that’s $450 rebate straight from HP. Envy 13 is good competitor to Macbook Air or which is running currently at the same price as Envy 13 but with Envy 13 you get a lot more than with Macbook Air. Envy 13 comes with “Intel 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo Processor (SL9300), 3GB of memory, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 Graphics with 512MB of dedicated memory” and Macbook Air comes with same processor 2GB of memory but only 64GB-128GB of storage.

So if you are Apple fan and don’t depend on storage so much I would go with Macbook Air but if you are looking for light weight laptop and quite good performance than Envy 13 would be the perfect solution.

Sources: Macbook Air and HP Envy 13

Microsoft To Update Bing iPhone App

Dec 202010
 

Users of the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch got a new app for Microsoft Bing this week.  Loaded with new features, the Bing 2.0 for the iPhone was launched and right away you can see the upgrades.  Categories listed under one another, Bing’s voice search has been enhanced and is now quicker allowing users to narrow their search without repeating an entire phrase.  This is powered by Microsoft TellMe software.

There has also been a substantial upgrade to the auto-suggest feature.  Users can refine searches on the fly making it very easy to get to the desired results faster.  Searching for resturants in your city will also include narrowing the results by price, cuisine, name and description.  The same goes for searching for movies, as an example, where you can narrow your search by name or theater.  Some what like Moviefone from our favorite sitcom, Seinfeld.

Bing has been battling against Google for search market share and lately they have been getting it.  I think with a new host of features for this iPhone app, Microsoft is at least headed in the right direction.  Today, searching is about finding what you are looking for online faster.  Many people will tell you that when trying to find something specific, it might take 4-5 tries.  These users are not very keen on search “etiquette”, but they shouldn’t have to be either.  Microsoft Bing appears to be taking the work out of searching.

Bing Vision is another feature that allows you to take a picture of a product, cover or bar code, and Bing will provide search results based on that information.  Bing Vision is keen on text in the photo and will produce results based on that text.  There are also talks about Microsoft’s version of Google Streetview.  Taking users on a panoramic viewed virtual tour will be sure to heighten the overall user experience.

Microsoft Released Firefox Plug-in For H.624 codec

Dec 172010
 

Patently Mozilla fans has outspoken their dislike about the encumbered video technology H.264 but Microsoft has provided a plug-in so that windows 7 users can use this anyway. The H.624 is video technology that is able to encode and decode video, which is extensively used in video cameras, Blu-ray players and online streaming. It is associated with Adobe flash player and most of the users don’t know that it is there. All browsers do not support H.624 codec. Firefox also had their head spinning about making the codec support HTML5 and other formats. Microsoft Came up with Plug in that would make H.624 support HTML5 videos. This is pave the way for some web rough patches but will irritate the Webm fan who wishes to see it moving to unencumbered technology.

This standardization will allow the user to take videos with their camera, put that on the website and play it easily on their web browser.

in accordance with the release notes of the plug-in, it is based on the Mozilla add on which will relate the HTML5 pages and call the video tag to the Windows media player so that it can be played in the Firefox browser. This is possible only if the video format is supported by windows media player. Video tags with other format will remain untouched. So, this tactics to work, the format that user trying to play has to be supported by the user. In addition to this plug in Microsoft has already released another related plug in that will enable people to watch windows media video on their Firefox browser. Currently Microsoft is try to sneak in WebM a requirement for HTML5 because recently World Wide Web consortium, which is more popular a W3C, has included WebM into the specification. Microsoft hopes that Window 7 users can take advantage of this extension and will appreciate their effort.

Microsoft to Introduce New Slates, Putting up a fight to iPad

Dec 142010
 

During Bill Gates’s 2000 speech Microsoft’s software architect Bert Keely showed a ‘Tablet PC’ in Comdex convention. Over a decade ago Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft presented a ‘Tablet PC’ that could do all functions of computer and it was compared as a pencil and paper.

Even though every year Microsoft has announced new products, operating systems but all these years they failed to bring out this slate computer. They have always tried to promote this windows based slate device. And next month, at the beginning of New Year they will give it a try. They are about to begin a new era with slew of new slates and hopes that it will put a fight against Apples iPads.

It is expected that chief executive of Microsoft Steve Ballmer will announce some similar device at the next Consumer Electronics show. Microsoft has declined to make comment on any forth coming products. Microsoft’s business partners will also attend the program at LAS VEGAS.

Samsung is going to launch a device similar in shape to iPads which includes unique and slick keyboard for fast typing but it is not as this as iPads.

The Samsung device is described as “similar in size and shape to the Apple iPad, although it is not as thin. This new device will run on windows 7 but would have another interface when the keyboard is hidden.

Microsoft expects that devices like these would certainly be able to compete with Apple devices and Microsoft is very keen to put a strong hand on the market of such devices. These slate computers can be used to read newspapers, magazines besides user can work on Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Excel applications. Microsoft is encouraging its partners to build application similar to apple apps but it would not be sold in a particular site like iTunes. According to sources Windows 8 compatible slates are the next project.

Exciting new features of Internet Explorer 9

Dec 102010
 

Microsoft is planning to add some more interesting feature to internet explorer 9. According to that plan the software giant has revealed a Tracking protection feature yesterday. There is a strong of possibility that this build of internet explorer 9 become the final RC (Release Candidate) code. This build comes with square tabs and some minor enhancements at the address bar buttons. The Microsoft has updated its Download manager also. The specialty of this new version is that it displays the data transfer speed of all the downloading events without requiring any hover on any particular download.

The Microsoft announced this week that beta version of internet explorer 9 has made a positive impact over its user. This beta version of IE9 had made its debut on 15th September. And ever since that highly anticipated debut this next generation browser is warmly welcomed by technicians, developers, and media and most importantly by users. It has become so popular that it grabbed 0.25 percent share of browser market within 2 weeks.

It seems like that Microsoft has specially targeted the developers with IE9. They have employed the GPU for page rendering so a developer gets the opportunity to exploit this using javascript, CSS or DHTML. Chakra, a new JS engine is also included in the new version which has much standard support and interoperability.

Through the new script engine Microsoft has introduced wider range of support for HTML5. Recently Microsoft performed some W3C Web tests on Internet Explorer 9, which includes HTML5, CSS3 selectors, CSS3 media queries, SVG 1.1, DOM level-3 cores, DOM level-2 styles and DOM level-3 events. Internet explorer 9 is the first browser which delivers complete hardware acceleration for all of content HTML5.

The Microsoft is planning to release the RC of internet Explorer 9 by the next year.

2.5 Million Kinect Sensors Sold in Less Than a Month

Nov 302010
 

So Microsoft has always had the edge, so to speak, especially with new products and the way they market them. One of the newest products, which also happens to be the hottest “toy” of this holiday season, is the Microsoft Kinect. A camera sensor system that is compatible with your Xbox 360 that reads your every move and turns video games into a workout in short order.

image from kinectnow.com

Pushing almost 100,000 units per day since the system launched (according to CNN), the Kinect sensor has been a hit just about everywhere that it is for sale. The gaming system was a top performer for Target stores through the “Black Friday” shopping weekend. One of the best things about the new Kinect is that you do not have to be the top gamer in your family to use it. This gets the entire family off the couch and playing games much like the Wii did when it first came out. I feel the lack of better, more adult oriented games, has hurt the Wii, but that’s a perfect atmosphere for the Kinect.

Most reports are saying that the Kinect will be the hottest gift on this years Christmas lists and even Microsoft is confident in that saying they are on pace to sell almost 5 million units by the end of this holiday shopping season. The unit, only costing about $150, or $100 less than a Nintendo Wii, is not an expensive addition to your gaming system. As more and more game become available for the Kinect, I think you will see the popularity soar.

Since I haven’t really heard much about the Playstation Move and the Nintendo Wii is mearly just “getting by”, I think Microsoft has another winner on it’s hands. The fact that it was released just in time for Christmas I am sure was just all part of the plan.

How did Windows 7 Phone Sale Go? Not So Good

Nov 102010
 

Michael Cote from Cote Collaborative said “Mondays aren’t great launch days…” which commented as to why Windows 7 Phone sale by T-Mobile did not pass 50.000 units. Let me guess: Friday’s are better?

Latest reports by Apple and Google stated that they sold or activated over 250.000 devices per day, whether that would be Samsung Galaxy Tab, iPad or iPod Touch. Microsoft apparently sold only 40.000 units this past Monday via T-Mobile and I think that is pretty good sale if you ask me. T-Mobile spokesperson concluded that Windows 7 is “already receiving strong interest from our customers right out of the gate.” and let’s face it, Windows 7 Phone is just 1 unit compared to 4 from Apple and 20-30 from Android. So I think that selling 40K Windows 7 Phones in one day is pretty good for a start. The Street added that Microsoft will probably going to reduce the prices for Black Friday Sale and Christmas.

Windows 7 Phone might not outrank Android OS, iOS or RIM but I am confident that it will rank up close.

By the way, can you imagine that I actually said something positive for Microsoft, being Linux user at home and 100% Android owner? :)

Windows Phone 7 Handsets Launching In US Market

Nov 062010
 

T-Mobile and AT&T makes available first Windows Phone 7-based handsets in the U.S. market from Monday. HTC Surround and Samsung Focus will be available with AT&T network and HTC HD7 will make its way with the T-Mobile carrier.

Windows Phone 7 was officially announced last month.

The launch of these three handsets on two carriers marks new beginning in the smartphone market for Microsoft. The Windows Phone 7 platform is different and much advanced than the older Mobile Operating Systems of Windows.

AT&T will make available the HTC Surround and Samsung Focus on November 8th for purchase through its stores and also the official website of the network. The customers of AT&T will not be able to pre-order the handsets, as officially announced by the carrier few days before. The two carriers, however, have put up dedicated web pages on their websites for the handsets after the announcement of October 11th by Microsoft of launching WP7 handsets to the U.S. market.

The handsets are available at $199 by the carriers upon a two-year contract agreement.

The big question for the success of Windows Phone 7 handsets in the U.S. market goes unanswered as there are other popular smartphones and operating systems such as BlackBerry, Android and iPhone.

WP7 has already proved to be popular in several other markets across the world. It had also went out of stock in some of the markets. It is expected to see similar result in the U.S. market too provided the handsets attracts users.

Google Sues Department Of Interior For Favoring Microsoft

Nov 022010
 

Google sues U.S. Department of the Interior in the U.S. Court of Federal on Friday, alleging the agency has ruled out its products under the five-year contract and favored the rival Microsoft. It is learned that Google wants to offer its Apps software and now it is said, according to the search giant, that only business software of Microsoft could be used, which is called as “arbitrary”.

The DOI has 88,000 people and is looking forward for one hosted email and its collaboration solution instead of existing thirteen messaging platforms. Over the period of five years, the contract is estimated of about $59 million.

In the lawsuit of Google, a “full and open competition” had been told by the Department of the Interior for the contract, but in the bid it is specified that only the Business Productivity Online Suite designed by Microsoft for the federal government could be used.

Google has Google Apps for Government, a special version designed to address the security concerns of the government.

The Search Engine giant says that the decision of the department was “arbitrary and capricious” and also “unduly restrictive of competition”. Moreover, it is against the US law.

Google also calls for open contracting process. It says, “could save US taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and result in better services.”

DOI, however, has declined to comment on the legal action of Google, but it said that the department is concerned whether the search engine giant could comply with the security needs of the agency. It added further that they have found Microsoft meeting all the needs of DOI.

Microsoft’s Foray into 3D: Acquires Canesta

Nov 022010
 

The software giant Microsoft is planning to acquire Canesta which is famous for manufacturing 3D sensing technology. This collaboration is aimed to evolve the existing products of Microsoft to the next level by integrating their consumer products with Canesta’s 3D image sensor camera and chip modules.

The products of Microsoft that may be revamped using the new technology range from laptops to other consumer related products. This is done to create a fast and smooth user interface which is gesture driven.

The president and CEO of Canesta, Jim Spare believes that this association with Microsoft would give an added advantage to Canesta because of Microsoft’s presence in the markets globally and the breadth of their expertise in different aspects of the market like consumer products and enterprise. Spare hopes that the technology will find wide application in the current scenario.

According to Canesta’s website the agreement for the merger is slated for finalizing by the end of 2010.

Canesta explains that the patents of its company can be leveraged in industrial as well as medical applications in addition to the consumer products. The technology gives sensors a three dimensional depth perception of the user and the environment which is clear and fine-grained.

With a new Kinect hands-free controller for its Xbox 360 console coming out, Microsoft has started to take a keen interest in the 3D technology. The Kinect uses this advanced 3D camera to perform a full motion tracking of the human body at about 30 frames per second and is able to detect the player’s movements. The most advanced feature in the Kinect is that it not only detects the player’s movements but also mirrors them on an on-screen avatar.

Microsoft is likely to foray into other non-gaming areas with the 3 D technology. This could include a new facial recognition feature in the Windows 8. Many other companies such as Sony and Sharp are also making attempts to leverage 3D technology especially on their hands free user interfaces and multimedia laptops

Source:NYTimes

Changes in Microsoft’s Silverlight Strategy

Nov 012010
 

Microsoft has decided to change its Silverlight strategy. Silverlight is being refocused onto the media
and business side of the development world. Microsoft is talking a large amount about utilizing HTML
5 and the new Internet Explorer. Microsoft has came out and said that HTML is the “only true cross
platform solution for everything.” Microsoft has confirmed there will be another version of Silverlight
and it will be fully featured. However, it is not the main focus for Microsoft at the moment. Microsoft is
having to determine which products are more important to it. For example, it cannot choose to devote
the same amount of resources to Internet Explorer as Silverlight without making significant changes
to the product. Microsoft is focusing on HTML 5 so that developers can continue to grow out their
websites and make them look more like applications. HTML 5 pages are designed to feel and run like an
application or game.

Microsoft is most likely going to release details about Silverlight 5 by spring of 2011. However, the
product could be gone longer. Developers should be trying to get HTML 5 into their websites as soon as
possible. Silverlight 5 will be useful but HTML 5 will become even more useful.

Via:CNet

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