Google announced a new search capability for iPhones, the ability to search by speaking your search term into the iPhone. Google shoots the recording of your voice up into the cloud, translates it to text, and returns the search results. But wait, there's more. The new Google iPhone search app utilizes the iPhone's accelerometer to detect when the iPhone has been moved up to the user's ear and then begins listening for the search term. The search results are then returned to the iPhone in the standard Google search results format.

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Microsoft's $33 per share offer for Yahoo! is looking pretty darn good after their close today at $10.63 today. And while Microsoft's stock price has taken a beating right along with everyone else, they've tracked pretty close to the Dow's fall, where the same can't be said for Yahoo. Yahoo's stockholders have taken an even steeper ride down.

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Software's quickly moving to WPF, Windows Presentation Foundation. WPF was ushered in as part of Vista and has been growing ever since. Ry Crozier highlights this important trend in Windows development in his ITnews write-up. More components in Windows 7 are moving to WPF, and WPF is the basis for Silverlight. For a technology that's been available for only a relatively short time, WPF has made some pretty big inroads.

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Delivered promptly in my email inbox this morning was a Micro Center ad heralding the availability of Intel's new generation of desktop CPUs, the Core i7. Get them starting today, Sunday, and Monday at retail locations (in-store pickup only). It's like Christmas morning, but a month and a half early.

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Blogger Rafael Rivera (withinwindows.com) has a crack tool that unlocks some of the Windows 7 features disabled and hidden in the pre-beta software. A pre-beta version was handed out to developers at Microsoft's PDC conference a few weeks ago. I came across the unlock tool while reading Scott Gilbertson's post on webmonkey.

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We're seeing more and more programs aimed at supporting start-up businesses, entrepreneurs and innovators who jump into new technologies; and Microsoft's now jumping into the fray with BizSpark. Venture capitalists put together funds to foster iPhone app development. Google has its $10 million Google Android Developer Challenge. HP's jumped in with a contest for apps developed to promote its TouchSmart touchscreen computer.

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Looks like plans to get the new Blackberry Storm next week have been dashed until the end of the month. GIZMODO is reporting there's a software glitch and Verizon's holding off until it's fixed. Fine by me.

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Ever wonder what all those svchost.exe programs are that show up under Task Manager? They are actually host processes for Windows Services, encapsulating one or many different Windows Services. But seeing a list of five, six or more svchost.exe's in the Task Manager process list doesn't help you much to determine why some svchost.exe has gone rogue, taking up tons of CPU or memory.

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The Windows Mobile 6 operating system is getting to be a bit long in the tooth. I suspect the Windows Vista OS upgrade was named Windows 7 so it can match up with a new phone OS, Windows Mobile 7, some time in '09 (just a guess.) New phone user interfaces offered by the Apple iPhone and BlackBerry Storm have changed the game for Smartphone users, but Windows Mobile 6 phone users don't have to fret quite yet.

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We're hearing about layoffs in IT and technology companies on what seems like an almost daily basis. And many say we could be in for a long recession. It's hard to say what's really going to happen, but the reality right now is that companies are doing layoffs because of poor quarterly financial results or to prepare for what look like difficult times ahead. Every time a friend or former co-worker of mine gets one of those "You have a great future ahead of you -- just not at this company." notices, my heart goes out to them.

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Things have definitely changed at Microsoft, and it's clear Ray Ozzie is a big part of the reason for it. Microsoft seems to have a bit of a swagger again. Case in point, the comprehensive PDC announcements with Windows Azure, Windows 7, Live synchronization and Office apps in the cloud last week. Everyone expected Microsoft to drip and drop little pieces of the cloud strategy out to us at PDC, but Ozzie said forget that, here's how the whole thing works and how it works together.

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During last week's Windows 7 announcement at the Microsoft PDC, it was pretty clear that Ray Ozzie expects Windows 7 to behave like a much different operating system than Windows Vista or any other Windows release. Bill Joy (of Sun) once called Unix the "New Jersey of operating systems" because it had some of everything thrown in it. (I don't think Bill was being kind when he said this.) Vista epitomizes that junk heap theme, with all kinds of junk in it from UAC to hiding helpful XP features under new Vista window dressing (pun intended).

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Needham Research analyst Charlie Wolf says Apple has room to cut the iPhone price in half and still make a tidy 42.3 percent profit margin. That means iPhones could be the same price as the $100 Blackberry Curve and Pearl SmartPhones. If Apple did that, it would make the introduction of the much desired (by me) BlackBerry Storm a moot point. It would be a way for Apple to sell ungodly amounts of iPhones, not that last quarter's iPhone numbers weren't insane already.

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At the Microsoft PDC 2008 show you hear a lot of rumors about tomorrows Windows pre-beta bits we're supposed to receive. One thing's not a rumor - PDC 2008 attendees get all the software Microsoft's handing out on a free 160MB portable drive. Nice.

Here are the rumors I'm hearing about Windows 7. We'll see tomorrow if any of these are accurate, but some rumors are more than just Windows 7 features.

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Microsoft PDC 2008: Sitting here in row 4 of the press section (John Fontana/NWW is just a few seats down). I'm impressed at the breadth of what Microsoft is announcing here at PDC. Windows 7 has taken a back seat until tomorrow. The focus here is on Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform, or "cloud OS" as it was previously leaked. Windows Azure is the project code named Red Dog. Now, back to breadth.

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You have to respect someone who takes ownership for their mistakes, and Vint Cerf (Google) has never be one to dodge the question of why we didn't plan for more IPv4 address space. Cerf said, "My only defense is that decision was made in 1977, at a time when it was uncertain if the Internet would work," at the Internetdagarna conference this week in Stockholm. Vint has been providing a steady drum beat for the upgrade to Ipv6. But he seems to have added another effort to the cause, migration to DNSSEC.

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Not to be undone by others in the industry, Savvis announced its SaaS Platform initiative at the end of September. Because Savvis is one of the first top-tier companies to put such a comprehensive program together, I asked Bryan Doerr to join me on the Converging On Microsoft podcast. Savvis has taken a "best of" approach, borrowing ideas from Jamcracker and OpSource for the software-as-a-service marketplace component of the offering.

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Microsoft is starting to release beta code for Windows Vista SP2 to testers as we speak. No news yet about new user features as Bluetooth 2.1 and VIA chipset support are expected. If you recall, Vista SP1 upgrades didn't go so smoothly. Seems like Apple iPhones and Windows Vista have something in common after all. Funny... I didn't see that highlighted in any recent "I'm a Mac" TV commercials.

So, are we in for another bumpy ride or has Microsoft cracked the code on successful service pack upgrades.

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VMware vs. Microsoft. Not everyone agreed with me in the Network World pole that VMware would lose to Hyper-V. I believe about 55% said VMware would win out against Microsoft, which was the opposite of how I felt the battle would come out. Well the early returns from the front lines as reported by Jon Brodkin show VMware isn't down and out but they have stumbled. The story below the fold is that Parallels, not just Hyper-V, has been doing very well too.

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Tuesday, Microsoft launched R2 of Office Communications Server 2007. But rather than a minor upgrade, there's some heavyweight features that moves OCS into the ranks of a viable PBX replacement. In OCS 2007 R2, Microsoft is filling out the product with the capabilities most needed to realistically replace IP PBXs with the software-based VoIP offering from Microsoft.

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