ballmer – TechVirtuoso

Ballmer plans to cash out 75 million Microsoft shares by year end

November 6th, 2010 at 12:45 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

While he will remain Microsoft’s second biggest shareholder, Steve Ballmer has begun selling off a good chunk of his shares and intends to do more before the end of the year. This week alone he’s shed over 49 million shares of common stock, netting him around $1.3 billion dollars. The remaining 26 million could go soon and net him just another half billion.

It’s the first time since 2003 Ballmer has cashed out his shares. That sell off brought Ballmer around $1.6 billion.

Bill Gates remains the biggest shareholder at Microsoft, owning around 7% of the company. Ballmer still owns around 4% of the giant. Gates himself cashed out around 3 million shares recently, probably to finance the purchase of more mosquitoes.

via CNET

Microsoft giving all employees free Windows Phone 7

October 31st, 2010 at 12:26 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Microsoft employees, who do you love? Is it this guy? Well you should, because your Christmas bonus this year is coming in the form of a brand new shiny Windows Phone 7.

Last week at PDC, Microsoft gave all 1,000 or so in attendance an LG Optimus 7 to start testing and building applications on. This was exciting for those in attendance because it makes them one of the first in the United States to get their hands on a Windows Phone 7 device in any mass quantity.

This week, however, all 89,000 employees of Microsoft will be getting a complementary, yet unannounced, Windows Phone 7 of their own. Given the diverse geography of Microsoft’s employees hopefully they’ll have their choice of handsets based on network providers. This should go a long way towards promoting their new platform internally. Up until now almost every Microsoft employee I’ve ever met in the last three years has sported an iPhone.

Google made a similar move when they released the very first Android handset, the G1.

via Network World

Microsoft PDC 2010 kicks off today at 9AM PST

October 28th, 2010 at 9:00 AM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Today must be Steve Ballmer’s favorite day. Today is all about developers, developers, developers. Today kicks off the Professional Developers Conference 2010 at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington.

Ballmer will kick off the event with Bob Muglia during the keynote at 9AM PST today. Those of you not lucky enough to be up there can watch it online from Microsoft’s website.

Most of PDC 2010 will center around Windows Phone 7 development and the Windows Azure cloud, but expect to see some discussion of Internet Explorer 9, if not the release of an updated beta. So the question is, developers, are you as excited as Steve? Ready to chant and watch a slightly overweight man sweat uncomfortably?

Jobs ‘raged’ at Ballmer over Y2K Bungie purchase

October 26th, 2010 at 2:31 PM 3 Comments Michael Stanclift

It’s hard to imagine that one of Microsoft’s most successful franchises of the last decade almost became one of Apple’s. Back in 2000, when Bungie was working on development of the first Halo game, it was slated to be a big title on the new Apple platform. It was so big that Apple had the Bungie team demo a beta of the game on their shiny new G3 Macs.

However, Microsoft announced they’d acquired the company a few months later and it took Apple by surprise. It also enraged Apple CEO Steve Jobs. So much so that Jobs called Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to give him a piece of his mind.

(more…)

Microsoft CES keynote fails to excite

January 7th, 2010 at 8:28 AM No Comments Michael Stanclift

If you couldn’t get a chance to watch the Microsoft CES pre-show keynote last night, you didn’t miss much. If you were actually at the event, I feel sorry for you, it must have been hard to stay awake.

After starting late due to power issues (which fried one of the Microsoft demo units on stage) the keynote got off to a rather boring start with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, giving various statistics about how well recently released products like Windows 7 and Bing are doing. For the first half hour, the audio stream for the webcast was so bad, it kept cutting out and then required constant volume adjustment. Note to Microsoft, hire a decent sound engineer next time.

If you’d like to watch the keynote for yourself, you can see the saved version on the Microsoft website.

It was all pretty much downhill from there. The much discussed “Courier” tablet that many in the tech press was excited they would announce never came, and there were no details about Windows Mobile 7… at all. Only “we’ll have more about mobile at Mobile World Congress.” So overall, the keynote failed to deliver much of anything that we didn’t know or have not seen already. But, here is a breakdown of what was covered, after the break.

(more…)

Microsoft CES keynote, tonight at 6:30 PST

January 6th, 2010 at 10:54 AM 2 Comments Michael Stanclift

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment & Devices Division, will deliver the pre-show keynote address in Las Vegas to kick off the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). You’ll be able to watch the keynote live starting tonight, at approximately 6:30 p.m. PST. If you can’t make it, check back here tomorrow for a break down of what was covered. Expected topics include Windows Mobile 7, as well as a possible announcement about a new tablet developed with HP. Even if they don’t cover that, you can at least watch Ballmer jump around the stage for a while.

Take a trip over to the Microsoft CES website tonight to be able to watch their live stream.