MICROSOFT

US stocks finished mixed on Tuesday on a worse-than-expected ISM Services PMI report.

Google’s Gmail Motion prank on April Fool had left many in the tech world wondering why Google, or just anybody else, wouldn’t make it real. Now it has emerged that researchers at the University of Southern California have made it real by using Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Kinect peripheral. They hacked into the Microsoft Kinect's motion-sensing technology and also used what they have called the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST) to create what Gmail brushed off as a prank.

US stocks are up despite the poor ISM Services PMI data. The market is led by tech shares that benefited from the Nasdaq 100 index’s announced rebalancing.

The companies whose shares are moving in pre-market trade on Tuesday are: National Semiconductor, Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Microsoft, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, H & R Block and Pultegroup.

Taking queue from Android and Apple iOS strategy New York City opened its set of data to developers to create apps which could unlock the potential trapped in public data.

The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market gainers are: Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Questcor Pharmaceuticals, Diamond Foods, Expedia, and ON Semiconductor. The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market losers are: SemiLEDs, Prospect Capital, Cree, A-Power Energy Generation Systems, Aixtron, and Apple.

New data from ComScore puts Google Android on the top of the list for the smartphone market category, followed by RIM and Apple in the second and the third positions respectively.

Microsoft is crafting the new OS version, Windows 8, from a position of strength. There haven’t been many clues as to when the release will take place but the tech world is frenzied over the possible arrival of Windows 8 early next year. Here's a look at what could be the features of Windows 8.

Google has put in a $900 million bid for Nortel Networks' patent portfolio, which could make it a real player in mobile technology and forestall lawsuits over its smartphone line.

Talks between Nokia, the world's largest cellphone maker by volume, and Microsoft on a software deal are on schedule and a large number of Nokia Windows phones should be sold in 2012.

Mobile devices are radically changing our lives. As mobile ownership grows, so does the role these devices play in improving and enhancing the travel experience. Two of the fastest-growing areas in mobile technology are m-payments (mobile payments) and the use of Near Field Communications (NFC).

The question is whether the prank, in time, will turn the heat on its inventors, demanding reincarnation in true form. Like, as they say, a character setting out in search of his creator. Think about Google wizards being tormented in sleep by ghoulish Gmail Motion stillborns!

Witticisms, super pranks, ultimate gags, hoaxes and plain lies are searching for fools this day. People turn the most cynical this day so that they don’t look naive, and turn on their gullibility meter at the highest level of alert. But a lot of us are caught off guard by some comic concoctions that mix contemporary humor with ingenious lies which are sometimes delectable.

Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, has filed its first ever complaint to antitrust regulators, claiming Google thwarts Internet search competition.

Microsoft says the 11,500 apps on Windows Phone 7 are all quality and the company isn't padding statistics.

Microsoft Corp stepped up its rivalry with Google Inc, claiming in its first-ever complaint to antitrust regulators that Google systematically thwarts Internet search competition.

Reports of keylogging software installed on Samsung-built laptops are wrong, the company says, but a case where anti-virus software picked up a harmless foreign language folder.

The technology would make the company the third major player, behind Google and Apple, said to be entering the mobile payment sphere.

Microsoft chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie isn't convinced that tablets will stick around.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is about to release a memoir titled the Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-founder of Microsoft. His account of account Bill Gates in it can only be described as scathing and bitter.

Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen has accused his former business partner Bill Gates of plotting to dilute Allen's stake in the world's largest software company before he left in 1983, and tried to buy his share of the company on the cheap.