NTP Corporation today announced it has launched new lawsuits against numerous technology firms for alleged patent infringement related to eight patents held by the company in wireless email delivery.

NTP has filed suit against LG Electronics, Microsoft, Motorola, Apple, Google, High Tech Computer (HTC) Corporation in a U.S. District Court in Virginia.

NTP has already successfully sued firms for infringements on the same patents it is filing suit for today.

Read the full story

Microsoft Corporation today made available (iTunes) Windows Live Messenger on the iPhone.

The application is the first official release of the instant messaging and social networking client on the iPhone, years after the iPhone first launched.

The application includes support for push notifications, meaning users can sign in and leave the application on in the background to receive notifications and alerts without straining the battery; similar to how the BlackBerry works.

Users were previously able to use popular third party multi-client instant messaging applications on the platform that also include push notifications, however, this release from Microsoft is more comprehensive and includes more than just messaging capabilities.

Read the full story

Apple is now the most valuable technology company in the United States, with a total market capitalization of 222.07-billion, edging out Microsoft that has a current market cap of 219.18-billion.

Apple more recently overtook Wal-Mart’s second position with the higher market capitalization. Wais about 187-billion.

Apple shares today closed nearly at par at $244.05 per share.

Microsoft remains in the third position, just marginally behind Apple, with a 219.18-billion market cap as at 4:30pm New York City time. Microsoft shares (NASDAQ:MSFT) closed down today just over 4-percent to $25.01 per share.

Read the full story

Microsoft Corporation today confirmed the company would settle pending patent litigation relating to virtual private network (VPN) technology owned by VirnetX Inc. to the tune of $200-million.

The suit alleged Microsoft was using the patented technology in various products, including Microsoft’s flagship operating system Windows XP, among other products like Microsoft servers.

The suit was initially brought against the company in 2007 in a Texas court.

Under the agreement, Microsoft will gain non-exclusive license to use the technology, along with a payment of $200-million.

Microsoft vice president Tom Burt said today in a statement, “We are pleased to work with VirnetX to bring these cases to a successful resolution through this settlement,”

The Microsoft stock (NASDAQ:MSFT) is trading at par from its opening price of $28.93 as at 3:49pm, moments before the closing bell for today’s trading session.

The VirnetX (AMEX:VHC) stock opened up at $7 per share, but trended down to $6.29 per share (up 2.61-percent) ten minutes before the closing bell.

Microsoft Corporation today launched a redesign of its popular Internet portal MSN.com.

The company has updated the site with a far more simple and clean design, along with new social networking features that display information from various social networks you set up such as Facebook and Twitter. A new featured called TrendWatch was also implemented, which essentially scans Twitter for local news content.

The company has also now implemented full Facebook support.

Read the full story

Update: Sources have told the popular technology blog Gizmodo that Microsoft has cancelled the Courier project.

Meet Courier, Microsoft’s answer to the Apple iPad.

Microsoft has yet to confirm it is working on such a device, dubbed a digital journal, but recent leaks, including the latest leaked images published by AOL’s popular tech blog Engadget, confirms the device.

Unconfirmed reports suggest Courier will be powered by the new Windows Phone 7 Series operating system, and not the traditional Windows 7 OS found on PCs.

Read the full story

Microsoft Corporation today unveiled Windows Phone 7 Series, the operating system that will power the next generation Windows Mobile handsets.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona officially unveiled Windows Phone 7 Series. Mr. Ballmer told the crowd, “Windows Phone 7 Series marks a turning point toward phones that truly reflect the speed of people’s lives and their need to connect to other people and [accomplish other] seamless experiences.”

Read the full story

Microsoft Corp. today revealed new information about it’s upcoming version of Office for Mac.

One of the most important additions to Office 2010 Mac is the addition of the first Outlook application for Mac. We firstly reported on August 13, 2009, that Microsoft had confirmed Outlook would be released for Mac. Microsoft had released Entourage as the substitute to Outlook, but it lacked many wanted business centric features such as Exchange support that were found only in the PC version of Outlook.

Read the full story

The world’s largest online social network, with over 400 million registered members, has announced it would end its advertising partnership with Microsoft.

Microsoft has been serving cost-per-click advertising on Facebook to users located in the United States for the past three-years. During the partnership, Facebook would sell its own advertising from it’s in house advertising division to users outside of the U.S.

The Microsoft deal was scheduled for renegotiation this past week, prompting Facebook to drop the software giant in order to sell advertising directly to advertisers.

Read the full story

Microsoft today announced the company would alter its privacy settings for its Bing search engine. Specifically, Microsoft will purge all (including Internet Protocol (IP) addresses) identifiable information to users search queries after 6-months.

Microsoft’s existing privacy policy already automatically unlinks search queries from Microsoft accounts (such as Hotmail), therefore removing any link between a users search query and an associated Microsoft account.

Yahoo currently most quickly purges identifiable information related to its users and their search queries to only 90-days. Google removes its data in about 10 months.