Microsoft announced Sunday afternoon it has issued another proposal to Yahoo that calls for a transaction with Yahoo, but would not involve the acquisition of all of Yahoo's assets.

The announcement comes just days after billionaire investor Carl Icahn launched a proxy fight to unseat Yahoo's current board at the Internet search pioneer's upcoming July 3 annual shareholders meeting.

Icahn, a large Yahoo stakeholder, aimed to pressure the search company to restart talks with Microsoft, after the software giant withdrew its unsolicited buyout bid of $33 a share on May 3.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to sit down with Google and work out the privacy issues that caused Facebook to block Google's Friend Connect last week, he said Monday.

"We want to talk to Google about this and see if there's a way we can make it work," said Zuckerberg at a news conference in Tokyo. He was in the Japanese capital to launch the a local-language version of the social networking site.

Google Friend Connect allows Web site operators to add social networking functions to their Web sites. Users visiting the sites will be able to interact with new people or existing friends from social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and Plaxo. It's the possibility of data redistribution to third-party sites by Google that caused Facebook to block access, it said last week.

"Part of the issue with Google's Friend Connect is that when users grant access to Google's product, Google might share their information with another application, or some part of it, maybe not all of it, without that user knowing. And part of what makes our system work is that people know exactly who they are sharing all their information with," he said.

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Activision Inc. held its investor conference call on Friday, during which it announced its intentions to launch Call of Duty 5 before the end of this fiscal year, which ends in March of 2009. On top of that, COD 5 will be on almost every platform except the PSP, namely the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2, Nintendo's Wii and DS, and of course the PC. 

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Well in short YES Skype now feels that by default they can manipulate web pages by adding a little Skype icon to every number you see online.  

Its called Skype Browser Add-ons and ActiveX controls which you must have agreed them to enable when you downloaded and installed the application. I find it very sneaky how Skype has added this feature in without warning or asking the user if they would like this feature to be enabled.  In a way they are going against terms and conditions of actual website owners by changing the page to support Skype. Its a great marketing move but seems sleazy to me.  

 Read on to find out how to disable Skype add-ons in your web browser. 

Bill Gates may be about to retire from the day to day activities of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) , the company he co-founded 33 years ago, but he's still a card carrying tech visionary and since he's still the chairman of the board and the largest stockholder, he can spout off about new products and technologies as much as he wants.

After all, what are they going to do? Fire him?

That has been the case a couple of times recently when Gates pulled the curtain aside slightly to let his audiences see what's coming next – and that is Windows 7. The only problem was that he didn't show much leg above the knees.

"We're hard at work … on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I'm very excited about the work being done there ... to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone," Gates told an audience in Tokyo attending the Windows Digital Lifestyle Conference, according to a transcript of the speech.

That is, Windows 7, will use less electricity more effectively, not be as much of a resource hog as Vista, and will be more closely integrated with mobile phones, including Microsoft's own Windows Mobile system, of course.

 internetNews

A Guide to sending out bulk emails:

There are many services out there on the web that offer builk email services for your customers newsletters or for anyone who wishes to send out thousands of emails to market a product.  Email marketing is still one of the strongest and most effective way to contact customers.  Below are a few services which you may find very useful for your business. 

For people who feel confident and wish to send it themselves via a whitelist server and a trusted solution for most Graphic Designers email Monitor is the best solution.  They offer just about every feature you would like when it come to sending out emails. From previews in all browsers to uploading templates and spam filters.  Their prices are quite normal and the feature list is huge.  If your a designer and need to send out an email for any size client this would be the best solution.

For larger organizations such as agencies that need large send-out to happen in a matter of hours their are services such as Boxlight Media's email campaigns .  Boxlight have a list of impressive customers from Adobe to BP Castrol and can manage entire campaigns for customers on all levels. Design, technical, spam detection and most of all they provide piece of mind for large send-outs. 

View the links below for more info. 

Boxlight Media

Campaign Monitor 

The easiest and best way to Jailbreak your ipod Touch will be to download ZiPhone available for both PC and MAC from the following link.

Download Jailbreak Software

Once downloaded and installed make sure iTunes is turned off then fire up the application.  Once loaded simply click Jailbreak button under the iPod Touch section.  Your ipod will restart go into terminal and then should start with a new icon which you will then connect to your wireless and refresh all sources to view a list of applications to install.  Lots of fun stuff to play with once you have your ipod Jailbroken.

 Note: I recommend doing a clean firmware restore before as the first time I ran ZiPhone my ipod ran through most of the Jailbreak process and eventually failed due to a directory not existing.  This may be due to the auto firmware updates in the past that cleared some folders.  

Have fun. 

Click to Start Blooming on Bloombla.com ...

I've turned my iPhone into a brick

Credit companies are using the Facebook social networking site to target young people, a debt charity has warned.

Credit Action says adverts promising cheap loans for people with poor credit ratings are appearing on the site and many break advertising regulations.

In particular, they are promoting two new products - payday loans secured against a salary or logbook loans secured against a car, it says.

The charity has made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading.

Credit Action says many of the adverts contravene UK credit advertising regulations, usually by failing to give details of interest rates.

BBC 

ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for quite a while, but only since the Comcast debacle has this been picked up by mainstream media.

A few months ago Azureus petitioned the FCC, which led to a FCC hearing in February. One of the complaints from the commission was that there is little data available on the scope of BitTorrent throttling, a gap Azureus now tries to fill by collecting data on the prevalence of TCP-resets among ISPs worldwide.

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