Bill Gates, the current chairman of Microsoft and the wealthiest American in the world, launched a philanthropy organization called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Thus far the Foundation has given $28 billion to charity since 2007, which is about 48% of his net worth. The Gates Foundation focused on eradicating malaria and polio. The charity has helped save the lives of over 5.8 million people so far. [GeekWire]

LG Electronics has just signed a patent licensing deal with Microsoft. Microsoft has made patent licensing deals with companies that manufacture devices using Android tablets and smartphones. According to a press release from Microsoft, LG signed a patent agreement that covers LG’s use of Android and the Chrome operating system on tablets, mobile phones, and other devices.

Microsoft Corporation is investigating a mass suicide threat at Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturing company that is known for putting together Xbox 360 consoles. The employees are reportedly demanding a higher pay. The mass suicide threat could be a complete fabrication or it could be a very real, making this is a very dangerous and sensitive issue. Several employees at Foxconn committed suicide recently due to what is believed to be unsanitary conditions at the factories. Apple also had investigated the suicide issues in recent years at Foxconn, who also manufactures iPhones, iPods, and iPads.

Last year Yahoo! paid about $79 million to outside financial advisors when they needed help with the Microsoft deal.  The advisors were also paid for “other strategic alternatives, including the Google agreement.”  As all of you know the Microsoft and Google deal both did not work in Yahoo!’s favor whatsoever.

Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers were the advisers at the time.  Lehman’s investment arm is now a part of Barclays capital Plc.  This was revealed in a report with the SEC.  About 5 separate lawsuits were made against Yahoo! last year that were related to Microsoft’s bid offer.

[via Reuters]

Authorities in Tampa has been using the Microsoft Surface to visualize safety information for Raymond James Stadium, the spot for Super Bowl Sunday. The Surface will be displaying Microsoft Virtual Earth map for region tracking events, incidents, resources, and real-time tasks. All of the tracking using Virtual Earth will be done in real-time.

Check out the video below:
<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:286ccd43-a8c8-4fd8-be1f-f942d4da016f&#038;showPlaylist=true&#038;from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Super Bowl: Microsoft Surface helps police monitor security">Video: Super Bowl: Microsoft Surface helps police monitor security</a>

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) hit the skids today when many people were trying to download the free test version of the Windows 7 beta operating system today.  The software went live at 12PM Pacific Time.  The software will be available until the last day of January.  Microsoft doesn’t plan on changing or adding features, but still would like to hear feedback about the operating system.

“We got ourselves in a little trouble with Windows Vista; it became a bag of mixed things and didn’t really figure out what it was about,” stated Mike Ybarra, general manager of Windows Products.  “There was a lot of feature creep. You had people saying ‘Let’s change this and that.’ Windows 7 has been very disciplined.”

Windows 7 has a heavy focus on boot-up time cutting, extended battery life, streamlined tasks, and the enhancement of smart device interaction.  The fact that Microsoft couldn’t handle all that traffic indicates that people are looking forward to the new operating system.  Vista already has a bad rep so it is important for Windows 7 to exceed expectations.  Otherwise Apple will continue the trend of growing twice as fast as the PC market.

[via AFP]

Windows 7, Microsoft’s new and upcoming operating system is currently in the development phase.  However many people have been able to test it out already and now there it has even become available on torrent sites according to CNET.  Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet stated that overall he likes the new operating system despite some of the flaws.

One of the flaws is that the taskbar ties to do too much at once which can come off as counter-intuitive.  One of the problems with the taskbar is that it is difficult to distinguish which apps are actually running versus those that are taskbar shortcuts.

On The Pirate Bay, a torrent website, there are about 1,800 people seeding the operating system as of right now.  The download size is about 2.44 gigabytes. Earlier versions of Windows 7 hit torrent sites in October too.

Microsoft is expected to boast the new operating system at the CES tradeshow next month.

via CNET and ComputerWorld

[Dr. Qi Lu]                               [Andrei Zmievski via Flickr]

Dr. Qi Lu has been hired by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) to run their Online Services Group.  Dr. Lu will be working especially in Microsoft’s search and online advertising unit.  He will be reporting to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Prior to Microsoft, Lu was the EVP of Engineering of Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO).  He worked on Yahoo!’s search and monetization platforms.  Lu was with Yahoo! for about 10 years.

“I am tremendously excited to welcome Qi to Microsoft,” stated Ballmer. “Dr. Lu’s deep technical expertise, leadership capabilities and hard-working mentality are well-known in the technology industry, and Microsoft will benefit from his addition to our executive management team.”

——–

Andrei Zmievski, Chief Architect at Outspark, PHP Core Developer at PHP Group, and former Senior Software Engineer at Yahoo!/Overture has joined Digg.  He will be working at Digg as an Open Source Fellow starting tomorrow.

As you recently may remember, major Digg competitor Reddit went completely open source a couple of months ago.  Perhaps Digg’s hiring of Andrei indicates that Digg also plans to make major contributions to the open source community.

Congratulations to Dr. Lu and Andrei!