Yesterday evening while at Target I picked up Guitar Hero III. This is the first video game I’ve purchased since well before Christmas. Ever since our New Year’s Eve robbery, I’ve just really not had the urge to play video games… that, and as I said earlier, I’ve been making an effort to get back into shape, which doesn’t exactly mix well with video games. :p

I loved Guitar Hero II, and have missed playing the game (it was stolen). Well, the game and the music actually. So, I finally after months of delay picked up the sequel.

This morning, I connected up the wireless Les Paul controller and popped the game in. The system said there was an update, so I downloaded it. After that, the game restarted and froze. I rebooted my Xbox 360 only to get the dreaded ‘Red Ring of Death’. With all the reports and complaints I had seen over the years, I was hoping mine would be one of those very few that would never have a problem. Sadly, that turned out not to be the case.

Good news is, the system is still under warranty, and I’ve already contacted Microsoft. With any luck, I’ll have a replacement in… about 2 months. Does anyone know what the turn around time is for 360 repairs?

This sucks… but it gives me more time to exercise.

Microsoft has officially released Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista (aka Windows ME²). You can check out the release notes to find out most of what has changed. Undocumented changes are sure to be talked about soon on blogs everywhere… who knows, you might even get surprised by the new undocumented “features”.

In the past few weeks there has been a lot more news about the whole attempt from Microsoft to buy Yahoo. People have left, everyone and their brother has voiced their opinion on the deal, and others are even suing Yahoo for turning down the deal.

There has been so much going on, that I’m tired of hearing about it. So, this is the last I’ll be posting about it until something final happens. They’ll be plenty of other blogs and news sites covering every aspect of Microhoo.

It’s been a busy week for me, and there’s been a lot of Yahoo news going on. Rather than post about everything separately, I’ll throw it all into once nice post that way I can get on to bed (I told you The Invasion bored me!).

For whatever reason, Microsoft thought it’d be a good idea to make a bid to take over Yahoo. No one that I knew expected any government to accept the deal, and thankfully yesterday Yahoo officially rejected Microsoft. This announcement came after the rumor surfaced that Yahoo may be looking to merge into Time Warner’s fledgling AOL division. AOL-Time Warner-Yahoo? Suddenly, I liked the whole Microsoft idea better.

Not long after Yahoo dissed the company Gate’s built, Microsoft issued a press release stating that it was unfortunate that Yahoo decided to turn down an offer that would create a more effective company. I guess Microsoft’s idea of being effective is releasing crap software well past the original release date (Vista anyone?). Now it looks like Microsoft has hired a proxy firm in an attempt for a hostile takeover.

Meanwhile, Yahoo has begun to layoff some 1,000 employees. Among those out the door is Salim Ismail, who has lead Yahoo Brickhouse since early 2007. According to TechCrunch, Salim left voluntary. He’ll most likely create a small startup and get bought up by Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. Any bets?

With all the take over talks, merger proposals, and the layoffs, you’d think that’d be enough for Yahoo. Nope, today they acquired Maven Networks for $160 million.

And that’s pretty much the gist of the Microsoft-Yahoo saga that’s gone on for the past few days. Oh yeah, Yahoo also had a couple software releases, but who cares about those right now.

Why not throw out another rumor tonight. Valleywag is reporting that Microsoft may be buying Ustream.tv for $50 million.  Microsoft may not be the only one bidding on the company.

While there is no mention of it, I think Ustream or a similar service would be a great fit for Google’s YouTube. Streaming live video could really put the you into YouTube.

The biggest news to come out yesterday is that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo. Microsoft wants Yahoo so bad, they’ve offered $44.6 Billion which is about #31 per share. No doubt, this could be good news for Yahoo which is already set to lay off about 1000 employees.

I find it amazing that Microsoft actually made this bid. Even if the shareholders for the companies agree to this, I cannot see anyway that the US and EU anti-trust lawyers would allow this. Huge company acquiring another huge company. Yeah, that has anti-trust written all over it. I’d expect Google to voice concerns.

Here are some additional articles that cover the news: Continue reading »

Here’s a hot rumor. According to Reuters, shares for Logitech rose by 12% today on the rumor that Microsoft is looking to buy the company. The rumored $6 billion takeover deal would be Microsoft’s largest acquisition.

Though to the relief of gamers everywhere, Logitech board member (and largest shareholder) Daniel Borel said he had no reason to sell his 6% stake in the company. If the deal did go through, it would make the worlds largest software company the largest mouse maker.

I really cannot see Microsoft doing this. Sure, it’d be a great deal for them, but I think antitrust lawyers everywhere would have a fit with the idea. Besides, Microsoft has been partnering with Razer for several PC peripheral. It’d probably be far cheaper to by Razer. Granted, Razer doesn’t have the number of gizmos that Logitech has.

I posted yesterday about a new ad for Firefox that just sucked. It’s not that I found it offensive (many people did!), but I simply thought it was boring, not funny, and well… just stupid. While the ad is still available via YouTube (I’m not linking to it again) it has been removed from Mozilla’s “viral” website, and Mozilla’s VP of marketing Paul Kim has pubicaly apologized stating that,

“There is no way we would have gone live with a site that mocks cancer victims if there had been a review of these stats beforehand. Something went seriously wrong with our content development process, and I’m working to clean this up now. The site is up now for testing purposes, but should have been kept behind password authentication until we were ready to open it up. Regardless of these issues on our end, the main thing is to say that I take responsibility for the situation, and again, apologize to anyone who was upset by this.”

Continue reading »

According to Microsoft’s IE Team Blog, the next version of Internet Explorer successfully passes the Acid2 Test. Provided Microsoft doesn’t completely frak this up before release, this is great news for web developers and internet surfers everywhere.

Of course there is an old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”.

I was just talking about vaporware yesterday, and today the 2007 Award “winners” were announced. The list includes Diablo III, EA’s Spore, and of course Duke Nukem Forever (at the #1 spot). Also listed is the 802.11N standard, Windows XP Service Pack 3, and Guns N’ Roses’ next album Chinese Democracy.

View the 2007 Vaporware Awards @ Wired.