Bill Gates

The theme throughout all the answers to TED 2010’s title “What the World Needs Now”was the need for innovation in everything from nuclear energy to education to foreign aid to disease prevention to music to graphic design.   So where does the world need to innovate?

The theme throughout all the answers to TED 2010’s title “What the World Needs Now”was the need for innovation in everything from nuclear energy to education to foreign aid to disease prevention to music to graphic design.   So where does the world need to innovate?

by Quinn O'Neill

by Quinn O'Neill

Citing advance planning, Microsoft says it will have modified versions of Office 2007 available for sale before the court-ordered deadline next month to remove a disputed feature. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Tuesday upheld a lower court's ruling that the software giant violated the patent of Toronto-based i4i when it included custom XML technology in the 2003 and 2007 versions of Microsoft Word.

by Sam Kean

La presidenta de Microsoft Ibérica, María Garaña, ha presentado hoy en Barcelona la versión de Windows 7, el nuevo sistema operativo de la empresa fundada por Bill Gates, en catalán. El nuevo sistema de adaptación de Windows 7 al catalán lo pueden hacer los propios usuarios bajándoselo gratuitamente en la dirección web http://www.microsoft.com/spain/cat/.

When it comes to the Web, Microsoft's Job One is to get its Bing search engine a chunk of the market share long controlled by Google. In the short term, at least, Microsoft's strategy is to load up Bing with new features and integrated results, as evidenced by a flurry of new announcements.

Just this week, Microsoft has announced enhancements to Bing's maps, improving functionality so users can now easily click and drag the maps around; the integration of MSN videos with the search engine; and Wednesday, the inclusion of Wolfram Alpha search results for health and food-related queries.

Amid declining revenues, Microsoft is slashing the salaries and incentives for its top executives, including CEO Steve Ballmer, for fiscal year 2009. The decision came after Microsoft reported its first-ever drop in annual revenue.

The was part of Microsoft's proxy statement filed late Monday. In it, Microsoft revealed that the fiscal year ending in June posted a three percent sales decline, with revenues totaling $58.4 billion. The company also said it reduced expenses by $3 billion compared to its original fiscal 2009 plan.

Microsoft's No. 1 rival is a household name, Google. But a strong candidate for No. 2 is a company scarcely known outside the technology industry: VMware.

"VMware is definitely a threat," said Gary Chen, an analyst at IDC, a research firm. "After Google, it is the company Microsoft fears most."

Google and VMware, which is based in Palo Alto, California, pose a broadly similar challenge to Microsoft, by potentially undermining the dominance of its most lucrative desktop software and operating systems. Google represents the attack from above, while VMware is the assault from beneath.