The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has awarded the 2009 A.M. Turing Award to Charles P. Thacker, for his work in pioneering the networked personal computer. In 1974, while at the Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), Thacker built a prototype of a desktop computer, called the Alto. It featured a number of innovations that have since become commonplace on PCs, including a television-like screen, a graphical user interface and a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) text editor.

"The Alto was an amazing accomplishment," said Charles Simonyi, who worked with Thacker at PARC and contributed software to the Alto. Simonyi later went on to head up Microsoft's application software group. "The idea was to design something for the future, when the component prices came down. And that worked perfectly: The prices did come down and the design was correct."

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Yahoo seemed to have made a bizarre pullback from the mobile market last year when its head of mobility left, even though the search firm had received plaudits for its cellphone software platform, and has won a strong range of carrier homescreen deals. Now new CEO Carol Bartz has pledged continuing devotion to the handset cause, though she has disbanded the specific mobile group in favor of "emphasizing mobility throughout the entire organization".

Bartz has broken up the mobile group and redeployed those employees across individual product groups. Cory Pforzheimer, Yahoo's senior manager of corporate communications, told MocoNews: "We are infusing mobile throughout the organization, rather than having a specific team for mobile. The importance of mobile in Yahoo has increased and we are realigning the organization to do just that."

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A ruling by the European commission has hit Microsoft in their domination of internet browser usage. Previously when you had a new PC the default browser was set to Internet Explorer automatically and this was a great tool in Microsoft’s armor. This has now all changed with the court ruling this to be anti-competitive.

Instead now Microsoft will offer a ‘ballot box’ type selection process when you first access the internet and ask you to choose which browser you wish to use. The ballot box will be rolled out to Windows users using XP, Vista and Windows 7, through an automatic software update. However, only those without a default browser will get this update.

In recent years many new browsers have come into the market offering users a choice. Many of these had greater functionality then Internet Explorer and more importantly much better security. Internet Explorer’s market share has slightly diminished in this time and others have grown, most notable Google’s own version ‘Chrome’. Interestingly, Google have been pushing advertising on this offline aiming to become more dominant. It will be interesting to see, given this latest development, how it impacts the number of user moving away from Internet Explorer.

Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer, when asked whether he would consider acquiring Twitter Inc., said the value of owning the company wasn't clear. "We have a great relationship, partnership with Twitter," Ballmer said Tuesday at the Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara, Calif. "I would hate to not have that partnership. Whether we need to own them or not is far less clear."

Twitter, the third-largest social-networking site in the U.S., has a lot of appeal to users as an independent company, Ballmer said. Microsoft, the world's largest software company, announced last year that it would offer Twitter's short messages on its Bing search-engine site.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in November that his company isn't for sale and may eventually be taken public. San Franciscobased Twitter ranks behind Facebook Inc. and News Corp.' s MySpace in U.S. social-networking users.

At the Mobile World Congress 2010, Microsoft had introduced its Windows Phone 7 operating system and also talked about the devices based on the software. At present, the company is dominating the PC operating system’s market, but only building momentum in the world of mobile operating systems with the new WinMo 7 software.

Earlier also the company had tried many times to rule the mobile segment with its innovative products, but could not built products like Apple’s iPhone. Here, the feature discusses its various mobile products that failed to rule mobile world.

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Three Google executives have been found guilty of breaking privacy laws by allowing disturbing footage of a disabled Italian boy being bullied to be posted on the Internet. The ruling yesterday was the first of its kind and was condemned by a British MP as "the biggest threat to Internet freedom we have seen."

Google said the Milan verdict "poses a crucial question for the freedom on which the Internet is built" as none of its employees had anything to do with the video. "They didn't upload it, they didn't film it, they didn't review it and yet they have been found guilty," said Google's senior communications manager, Bill Echikson.

The trial centred on footage posted on Google Videos of a teen suffering from Down syndrome who was being bullied by four boys at a Turin school. The footage was posted in September 2006 and became the most viewed clip on Google Italy, where it remained for two months before it was removed.

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One of the most exciting deals after Apple / Microsoft and Yahoo! / Microsoft deal last year. Now world biggest micro-blogging (or status update as we say) site Twitter and Yahoo! have entered into a content sharing deal which would actually give a tougher time to Google’s ambition to take on the Web. Details of the deal are: Access your Twitter feed from Yahoo! Well, this is good integration as opening up multiple windows to access the Yahoo! account and my Twitter feed was always a pain. Good thought!

Share your Twitter status from Yahoo! account. It is more like what facebook has already done and Google came up with Buzz. Now what I feel is that there were enough status updates and Yahoo! has made a smart move by not coming up with one of its own and joined Twitter. Yahoo Search and Media integration. Twitter will be able to use Yahoo services like Finance, Autos, Entertainment along with Search which will also give Yahoo live search capabilities.

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Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc., owners of the two biggest U.S. search engines, were sued by Xerox Corp. over patent-infringement claims related to search queries and data integration. The suit, filed Feb. 19 in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, seeks cash compensation and an order that would prevent Yahoo, Google and Google’s YouTube from further using the patented Xerox technology without permission.

The inventions come from Xerox research into managing documents on the Web, said Bill McKee, a spokesman for the Stamford, Connecticut-based company. “We’ve been in dialogue with Google and Yahoo for some time without coming to a resolution,” McKee said in a telephone interview.

“We believe we have no option but to file suit to properly protect our intellectual property.” One patent, issued in 2004, is for a way to automatically generate a query based on keyword searches. Xerox claims that Google’s AdSense and AdWords software, and Yahoo’s Search Marketing, Publishing Network and Y!Q Contextual Search software are infringing that patent.

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Facebook is now the second most-popular site on the web. In January, Facebook pulled in 133.6 million users to Yahoo’s 132 million, according to Compete. That puts Facebook in second, behind only Google. If you want to see something really interesting, check out the chart below that shows engagement. In this category, Facebook blows them all away:What does this mean? nearly 12% of all time spent online in January was spent on Facebook. Yahoo and Google sit at about 4%. Make sure you’re making things easy to post on Facebook. It’s a serious traffic driver now.

The new Windows phone software is a big improvement on its predecessor but may not be enough to reverse market share losses, and Microsoft Corp may have to eventually buy a Nokia or BlackBerry maker RIM to get back into the game. Apple Inc has raised the smartphone bar with its distinctive iPhone, and Google Inc is catching up fast with its Nexus One phone and Android mobile software.

Microsoft, used to a near monopoly in the PC market even though it doesn't make any hardware, has found the same rules do not apply in phones. Its Windows software has not been able to deliver the same consistency of performance across a range of different phones."It's something I know they've talked about -- buying Research in Motion or even Nokia," Toan Tran, an analyst at Morningstar, said of Microsoft. "To really compete in this business, Microsoft needs to get into the hardware business, where they are able to control the entire user experience."

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