Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 07, 2008 by CyberNet.

When Steve Ballmer walked away from the table on Saturday and withdrew Microsoft’s bid to acquire Yahoo, was this all part of his tactic to ensure that he ends up with Yahoo in the end? Without knowing who said what, this whole situation has turned into a silly game of “well Ballmer said this,” and “well Yang said that.” Ballmer said Yang was the one that wasn’t willing to negotiate while Yang says he was in fact willing to negotiate and $37 per share wasn’t the lowest he’d go. This whole thing is getting crazy, and it’s about to get even crazier if the negotiating re-starts between the two companies.

TechCrunch reported yesterday that Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock was authorized to call back Ballmer to re-start the negotiation process (why not Yang?). Tech Crunch’s Erick Schonfeld speculates that this could be why there was that small rally in Yahoo stock yesterday, which makes sense. Now that Microsoft has walked away, if Yahoo approached them to start negotiating again, we believe Microsoft would have an easier time of getting the price that they want at $33 per share, the ball would be in their court.

This fiasco has left Yang is in the hot seat and he needs to find a way to please some of the major shareholders who are currently upset that he didn’t reach an agreement. According to The New York Times, two of Yahoo’s largest shareholders were willing to sell for around $34 per share and they’re not happy with Yang. Gordon Crawford who is the portfolio manager for the largest Yahoo shareholder said, “I am extremely angry at Jerry Yang and the so-called independent board.” As you can imagine, he’s not the only one angry and there’s been speculation that litigation from some of the shareholders is coming. Yikes!

But now we turn to Bill Gates who in a press conference in Tokyo this morning, said “a lot of effort” was put into the talks with Yahoo and Microsoft has decided that the two companies would be better off if they pursued “independent paths.” Will Microsoft be able to take on Google independently or will they end up with Yahoo in the end anyways?

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Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Mobile operating systems, it seems, make strange bedfellows, so perhaps it’s not a major surprise that Yahoo, a top traffic presence in Japan, is getting its own Android handset in that country. The search engine is lending its name to a version of Sharp’s AQUOS 009SH. The Gingerbread handset is preloaded with Yahoo Home, Auctions, and various other Y-branded goodies. The phone’s SoftBank contract also comes with a free two-year premium membership to Yahoo Japan and some bonus points for Yahoo Shopping purchases. The Yahoo Phone will be hitting Japan next month.

Yahoo gets Android handset in Japan, renews hope for long-awaited AltaVista phone originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gather round everyone, while you may have gotten used to accessing Engadget via the browser or any one of our mobile apps, starting today we’re ready to come home in one more way: on your TV. Launching on Boxee, Roku, Yahoo! Widgets and DivX is a new AOL HD package which includes a channel full of our videos ready for viewing on big screens. This way, when you want to kick back and enjoy a new hands-on video, The Engadget Show or any of our other content it’s only as far away as your remote control, which is probably also your phone, PC or tablet. There’s plenty more to come in the future — we’ll figure out an in-app Screen Grabs submission tool somehow — but for now we’re happy to have an official outlet on some of the most widely available connected TV platforms out there. The AOL HD app will begin showing up today, check out the gallery for a few screenshots of us on each of the platforms.

Continue reading Engadget comes to your TV on Boxee, Roku, Yahoo and DivX starting today

Engadget comes to your TV on Boxee, Roku, Yahoo and DivX starting today originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on December 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Early this year in January, Yahoo announced that they had designed a new messenger from the ground up just for use with Windows Vista. They wanted to take advantage of all the new features specific to Vista like the display and user interface, as well as Vista’s Windows Presentation Foundation. The previews looked awesome and the list of features was sure impressive, but it’s been almost a year now and we hadn’t heard anything about it’s progress or whether or not they were even working on it… until today! That’s right, it’s not vaporware like some of you thought. It’s finally here and for those of you just itching to try it, a preview release is available for download.

So what makes this version of Yahoo Messenger specific to Windows Vista? There are two main things:

• New interface that takes advantage of WPF
• Makes use of Windows Vista Sidebar

There’s a whole list of features that are pretty impressive:

• Huge selection of new and improved animated emoticons
• Color code chat windows (pick a different color for each contact you’re talking to so it’s easier to keep track of)
• Combine chat windows into one and then they will be tabbed with all conversations in one window
• Drag contacts from the contact list onto the sidebar gadget so that keeping track of their status is easier, and then starting a conversation takes one click
• Drag and drop files up to 2GB in size into the message Window
• Spell check as you type (knows LOL isn’t something that needs to be corrected)
• Works with Windows Live Messenger contacts
• Resize contact list (multiple columns if you’d like) and resize the size of your buddies avatars

The Yahoo Messenger for Vista team put together a video that shows all of the new features in action.  There’s a high quality version available which you can view, or you can just view the video below in a lower quality.

Overall I’m really impressed by what Yahoo was able to accomplish, and I must say that I’m amazed that Microsoft hasn’t gone the extra mile to create a version of Live Messenger just for Vista users like what Yahoo has done.  You’d think that since Vista is Microsoft’s product, that they would release applications that catered to the features that Vista offers.

The Yahoo Messenger Blog notes that not all features that you might be used to like voice and text messaging to mobile phones are available with this release.  The good news though is that if you’re already running Yahoo Messenger 8.1 or 9.0, you can install Messenger for Vista as well and use both. The Vista version is installed in a different directory so you’ll have no problems opening both versions.

Congratulations to Yahoo on the preview launch of an awesome product. Realize that this product is still in beta so you may come across a few hiccups here and there. All around though, I think you’ll be as impressed as I was.

Sources: the How-To Geek Blog, Yahoo! Messenger Blog

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Following yesterday’s rumor that Hulu had received an a buyout offer from Yahoo, the usual “people familiar with the matter” have informed the LA Times and a reporter for CNBC that the sale process could begin within two weeks. As its owners seek to separate themselves from what is looking more and more like a competitor than a savior, reportedly Guggenheim Partners and Morgan Stanley have been retained and potential bidders have been contacted. One way to make sure anyone is actually interested in buying the site is to strengthen its content licensing deals, and oh-so-coincidentally Variety is reporting Hulu has already reached a new deal to keep the TV shows from Fox flowing. Yesterday we asked for your ideas on who an eventual buyer might be and so far the list includes Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix and Pets.com, which should just about cover it.

Hulu reportedly retains investment bankers and renews Fox deal, will go on sale soon originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Jun 2011 18:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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