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Microsoft closed fiscal 2009 with a whimper -- feeble performance not seen since the last recession in 2000-2001. Microsoft's fiscal year ended on June 30.

For fiscal fourth quarter, revenue fell -- often double digits -- for every Microsoft division: Client, Server and Tools, Business, Online Services and Entertainment & Devices. I can't recall the last time, if ever, there was such an occurrence.

In case there was any doubt of the momentum Netflix has been able to build as video stores continue to cede market dominance to on-demand streaming and by-mail and kiosk-based rentals, the company today announced that it has 40% more subscribers, 21% higher revenue, and 22% higher profits than last year.

"We believe that the inclusion of streaming in our service has broadened the appeal of Netflix and is driving growth...essentially, both Netflix and Redbox are growing at the expense of video stores." said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in the company's earnings call this afternoon.

Analysts had been settling on 13% as the average earnings hit that a company in the IT sector should take in this down economy, which some believe may be finally on the mend. But the early report from Microsoft, minutes in advance of its quarterly conference call Thursday, was not good by comparison: Net income was down 29% year-over-year to $3.05 billion, on revenue that was down 17% from the year-ago quarter to $13.1 billion.

It could be Microsoft's first genuinely bad quarter since the year terrorism struck the US, and it has managed to drive its full-year net income down 18% over fiscal 2008.

Earlier this year, Craigslist came under fire from several different parties for its "erotic services" section. First it was singled out by Cook County Illinois Sheriff Thomas Dart in March, and then in May, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster did the same.

McMaster sent Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster a letter demanding that he remove sections of the South Carolina Craigslist site "which contain categories for and functions allowing for the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material" within ten days of receiving his letter or face criminal investigation and prosecution.

For most of the world, WiMAX resides in the 3.5 GHz block of spectrum, but in the U.S., it encompasses the 2.3 and 2.5 GHz frequencies. The most famous WiMAX deployments -- those by Clearwire and Sprint -- are all licensed in the 2.5 GHz block of spectrum. But there have been very few deployments in the 2.3 GHz frequency. Even though it has been allocated to Wireless Communication Services (WCS) since 1997, buildouts in that range have been very limited because of a major conflict with Sirius and XM satellite radio.

Satellite radio employs thousands of terrestrial repeaters which were FCC compliant, but due to uncertainty in technical requirements in FCC regulation, were found in 2006 to have serious potential interference problems in 2.3 GHz WiMAX transmissions. Companies such as AT&T, BellSouth, Comcast, Sprint, and NextWave had 2007 construction deadlines on their 2.3 GHz licenses, which the FCC then pushed back to July 2010 after hearings with the WCS Coalition and Sirius and XM.

If you've got your cell phone or smart phone handy, I'd like to ask you to pull it out of your pocket or off your desk and give it a long, hard look.

By any definition, it's a pretty impressive piece of technology. You can call anywhere in the world, surf the Web, IM your parents, and even orchestrate meetings with far-flung team members you'd rather not meet in person. When you're done working, toss a stereo Bluetooth headset on and take in a movie without the hassle of overpriced theatre popcorn or whining kids kicking the back of your seat.

In the wake of reports that malicious users have found a way to trick Adobe Reader 9 into triggering an exploitable crash in Adobe Flash 9 and 10, the US Dept. of Homeland Security's CERT cybersecurity team is asking users and administrators everywhere to turn off Flash video in their Web browsers.

This prompted Adobe, which has recently been seeing perhaps the onset of a deluge of security issues, to update its security advisory, now rating the exploitable issue as "critical." Adobe is not advising users to take such drastic measures as disengaging Flash in their browsers (which would make it very hard to watch YouTube). What it's suggesting instead is that users manually delete the file %ProgramFiles%\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\authplay.dll, which is a library that Adobe Reader and Acrobat use to trigger embedded Flash and Shockwave videos.

Today, Apple's professional video and audio production suites entered their next generation, with Final Cut Pro 7 and Logic Pro 9.

In keeping with Apple's latest price-cutting trend, the newest version of Final Cut Studio is $300 cheaper than its predecessors, and includes more than 100 new feature upgrades and support for more high quality output formats, including AVC-Intra, XDCAM 422, and ProRes 4444.

Apple flambé? Exploding iPod reports hushed up

July 23, 2009 • They got that boom boom OW! -- After years of trouble and seven months of investigation, a report by KIRO-TV reporter Amy Clancy unearthed an 800-page Consumer Product Safety Commission report detailing a disturbing number of iPods that overheated and either burst into flames or started smoking.

Move over Microsoft. Apple can claim big, big market share numbers, too. According to NPD, in June, nine out of 10 dollars spent on computers costing $1,000 or more went to Apple. Mac revenue market share in the "premium" price segment was 91 percent, up from 88 percent in May.

By the way, Apple's command of the premium market is way up from first quarter 2008, when, according to NPD, Mac revenue share was 66 percent. Gee, and it seemed so high when I broke that story.

A friend and I were talking the other day about how people are by and large not just oblivious to, but downright hostile about, the simplest security practices -- in fact, the simpler the request, the greater the level of grumbling. What to do, besides don a bandolier of tasers and a t-shirt that says "GO AHEAD, ASK ME AGAIN WHY YOU CAN'T MAKE YOUR PASSWORD THE SAME AS YOUR USERNAME?"

To cheer me up (yes, I have been troubleshooting a family member's computer; how did you guess?), my friend told me about a corporate-cultural tradition at a firm at which he recently consulted. The rules around that office require that anyone leaving their desk log out of the system. And if they don't? Their machine is fair game for co-workers, who by tradition go into the culprit's e-mail and send out a "cc:all" message announcing that they're going out for tacos, and would anybody else like some?

Today, Amazon announced that it will be acquiring popular Internet clothing and footwear store Zappos.com for approximately $807 million. The closing price of Zappo's stock will actually drive the deal up to around $880 million when it closes this fall. Additionally, Zappos employees will receive $40 million in cash and restricted stock. The company was voted #23 in Fortune's Hundred best companies to work for in 2009 poll.

Zappos will retain the same management team that's helped the brand get as popular as it has. The company's CEO, Tony Hsieh issued a statement today saying, "Over the next few days, you will probably read headlines that say 'Amazon acquires Zappos' or 'Zappos sells to Amazon'. While those headlines are technically correct, they don't really properly convey the spirit of the transaction. (I personally would prefer the headline 'Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree...') We plan to continue to run Zappos the way we have always run Zappos -- continuing to do what we believe is best for our brand, our culture, and our business. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are switching out our current shareholders and board of directors for a new one, even though the technical legal structure may be different."

In a statement to Betanews this afternoon, a spokesperson for Intel confirmed that the company has filed an appeal of last May's European Commission ruling, in which the company was fined the equivalent of $1.4 billion for what it found to be antitrust violations. According to spokesperson Chuck Mulloy, Intel's theory for its appeal is that the EC was prevented from seeing critical and possibly exculpatory documents, on account of an order of the court trying AMD's civil case against Intel in Delaware.

"As we said in the fall of 2008, we had asked the Court to require the Commission to get evidence from AMD that would be exculpatory," Mulloy told Betanews. "The Court said it was premature to rule on that and said we could bring it up on appeal. The documents [in question] are AMD documents that exist in the Delaware litigation, but we are not allowed to give them to the Commission because of the protective order in Delaware."

The final validation checks for build 7600 of Microsoft Windows 7 were met today, reports Microsoft blogger/evangelist Brandon LeBlanc. Yesterday may have been the day that the marketing team was planning for release to manufacturing (RTM), since the text of Microsoft's code rollout announcement went live anyway about 24 hours ago.

This officially means that the development of the latest installment in the sixth generation of Microsoft's Windows operating system (the first installment having been Vista) has now concluded.

In the PC industry, it's the OEMs that are the first to feel the effects of a recovering global economy, as demand for PCs from four of the world's top five producers has picked back up. It could actually be a good holiday quarter for HP and Acer. So if Dell or anyone else is still feeling negative impact, analysts are coming to the conclusion that the economy isn't to blame this time.

For CPU manufacturers, the economy works a little differently. With parts inventory having built up already, PC manufacturers have to sell through their existing product lines before they start ordering new replacement parts. Those "new" parts may actually be a little old, which is why AMD has a few more 65 nm parts on hand than it had planned. Getting rid of those parts means cutting prices, which is one reason why gross margins -- today's key indicator of a producer's relative health -- came in at lower than expected for AMD's second quarter of 2009.