CrankyRants.com

And Here comes the ugliness we expected. Fresh off their failure to pick up Yahoo in a soft and fluffy low-ball buyout, Microsoft is putting down the wiffle bat and hauling out the iron pipe.

Microsoft has now hired Innisfree M&A Inc., a proxy solicitation firm, to help oust Yahoo’s 10-member board. The entire board is up for re-election this year and apparently Microsoft could spend $20 million to $30 million in an effort to wrench control away from the board and go all hostile.

Would not be surprising if both sides are simply sabre-rattling before settling on a new price, but Yahoo has made a fairly pathetic show at feigning interest in Microsoft’s initial offer. “We don’t need you, Microstupid… we’ve got our good friend AOL who might buy us out. They’ve been doing this stuff for a long, LONG time and are a powerhouse in the industry. Remember a little something called dial-up modems! Huh? Yeah… you remember dial-up modems all right. I know you do.”

Tremendous post by the masterminds behind the OMG iPhone unlock hack over at http://iphonejtag.blogspot.com/2008/02/11246unlock-good-enough-for-prize.html. It’s impressive enough that the unlock for 1.1.3 was accomished in nearly 24 hours, but the guys go into some brain-churning detail of how it was accomplished.

So if you’re into the explicit details of explict addresses 0xA03D0000-0xA03F0000, take a look. And if you’re Apple or AT&T, please refrain from taking out your frustrations on any small, living creatures. Steve Jobs? Yeah, don’t kick your dog, okay? This is the cycle now, please get used to it. You lock. The rest of the world unlocks. Just go back to designing the worlds thinnest laser printer or something.

Long ago on a misty island nestled far away in the rough and merciless sea roamed a vast network of enormous and viscous dinosaurs known as Microsaurus Rex. Nothing got in their way. They ate what they wanted. They trampled what they didn’t. Life was good.

You know where this is going, of course. Like the faint and unconvincing acting of Jack Black had us believing that the entire crew was shocked and horrified to find something more frightening than the band of T-Rex, so have the executives in Redmond come to a single and inevitable conclusion. Google Kong can kick our ass.

With the news this morning that Microsoft has tendered a $44.6 billion dollar offer to buy Yahoo, the network is ablaze with questions. What will it mean for the consumer? What will happen to MSN? Seems low, will someone else step in? What happens to AT&T now that it’s got the Mac guy offering to split a dime bag with him while the Windows guy wants to do his taxes?

Microsoft is clearly concerned and has been for some time. This deal has been in the works for well over a year, and it goes a long way to keeping them in step with Google’s Android announcement. Many have been predicting for months that the battle would eventually move off of the computer screens and onto our phones.

Yahoo’s very friendly relationship with SBC/AT&T only strengthens the belief that this deal is an attempt to dig even deeper into the mobile user base as Google readies a brigade of sharpened shovels. Extend the thought process even further and it would not be surprising to see a Microsoft buyout of another Yahoo / AT&T bedfellow, Tivo.

Honestly, though, it’s hard to imagine that combining Yahoo with Microsoft with AT&T can be considered a truly formidable foe to the massive and muscular ape that is Google. Hell, AT&T is still struggling with the SBC merger long after it was completed.

Long-term, however, it will without a doubt lead the way to more affordable or free services for the fleeing victims caught in the middle. For anyone who enjoys the free benefits of the Google Maps vs. Microsoft Maps battle, there will almost certainly be more of that to come as the battling beasts claw at each other for the right to consume we who are the tiny scrambling snacks with bank accounts.

Okay, I get it. I understand. Google only wants content that helps their users find something of value. And Google doesn’t want you to make any money off of it. That money belongs to them dammit. I get that now.

After getting slapped like an alter-boy with last quarter’s Google PR dance, I took a different approach than most. I quit. What’s the point of maintaining a site if it will be systematically judged as valuable or not based soley on an unknown formula.

Google judged that I advertised on my blog in a way they didn’t like or that the articles were not up to their standards or something, and struck it from their white list. So I threw my hands up in the air and went on to other projects. Instead of listening to everyone who maintained that pagerank only means something to people trying to sell things, I caved.

Well, they’re right. If Google views a site like Engadget, one of the most prominent tech aggregators and opinionators as “unimportant” and dings their “PR” accordingly… that’s a clear sign that the system is broken. So time to do what I tell my kids all of the time. Just ignore them.

I even met some of the guys from Google at SES Chicago recently and had a lot of my questions answered in a very friendly way. No evilosity at all. Which makes the whole situation even stranger. Clearly one person or one line of code somewhere saw something unlikeable in the archives of this site and placed a frowny-face next to the domain. Fair enough. Would be nice to know what it was, but never mind. Just ignore them.

Back to writing then, Google be damned. I don’t need sponsors. I don’t need ads. I might need medication. I’ll likely need counseling. But I certainly don’t need some algorithm to determine for me what is and is not worthy content. If anyone enjoys the posts, let me know and pass them around. I’ll get along fine without Google. Bastards.

P.S. Apple… you’re next on the list. Don’t think I’ve been asleep during your whole “We Sold 4 million iPhones and cured Herpes” speech.
 

CrankyRants.com - Apple may be going all Sony on some of it’s third-party vendors. It’s long been known that Sony drops a special digital hand-shake in it’s OEM batteries to ensure that anyone wanting a little extra video recording umph from their Sony camcorder or a fresh new battery for their Sony camera will in fact be required to purchase a Sony replacement or run the risk of it not playing nice and receiving a digital time-out in the corner.

Apple like’s that idea. On top of their “exclusive” demeanor with carriers, word comes to us from a source inside a respected battery manufacturer that something similar may be done for the iPhone and possibly the iPod touch. But instead of fouling up the interior battery… the plan is to rig the Apple connector port to only accept power from a computer connection or Apple-certified wall-wart.

According to the source, it’s not being done to gain an edge in the market, but rather to better regulate the juice that flows into the Imperial Body and Soul of the Apple devices. Nothing but the finest for our Great and Holy Devices… and so forth.

While this certainly seems evil enough for Apple to attempt, and may make sense from an engineering standpoint, one has to question the logistics of a move like this. If put into action, would this immediately out-mode all existing Apple USB wall plugs? Many US households are littered with these, and it would be a shame if they have to hit the trash once your 3rd gen iPod takes a dive.

But then… these are the same guys who required everyone to buy the special “iPod Video Cable” that was nothing more than a standard video cable with the yellow and white cables reversed. So… yeah. Anything goes in Cupertino.

CrankyRants.com - No, that’s not a new super round fun robot toy for the kids this holiday season… it’s a car. A vehicle with which you can weave about the highway and swap paint with massive trucks and SUV’s and mini-vans that would gladly eat this little morsel for brunch. 

The Pivo 2, recently unveiled by Japanese manufacturer Nissan, is a battery-powered concept car with a fully rotating cabin that makes going backwards obsolete, since the driver can turn to face the direction they need to go.

Its wheels also turn 90 degrees, making parking easier. In fact it’s practically small enough to bypass parking altogether and simply drive it into your office, onto the elevator… rotating the cabin to discuss the days agenda with co-workers, before pulling out into the hallway and down towards your cube. 

Granted most concept cars rarely make it into production resembling their predecessors, you need only look at the Smart Car on any European street to see that micro-cars like this would do well. Just keep in mind that most truck drivers will register only minor annoyance at the spilled coffee resulting from the slight kerkunk of your mobile speed-bump passing cleanly beneath their 18 wheels of steel.

Passenger-side airbag though. So that’s a plus.

CrankyRants.com - The title could stand on it’s own, but if you’re interested in the details, apparently scientists at the University of Washington are genetically altering trees to pull toxins out of contaminated ground water. Not necessarily the quicker-picker-upper, these trees and plants spend years absorbing the bad stuff through their root system and turn them into I’m guessing some form of grotesque glowing mutant tree leaves or something. Remember the “Kite Eating Tree” from the old Charlie Brown cartoons? Big tree? Giant creepy smile? Lot’s of childhood tree nightmares that resulted? That’s what it’s like.

The relatively new field of phytoremediation is the cause for the new discoveries. Through a plant’s natural ability to extract chemicals from water, soil, and air, specific trees and plants are being bio-engineered to extract specific forms of chemical by-products and waste. Great idea. Horrible dilemma for your typical environmentalist.

“Love that we’re cleaning up the toxins here… but icky water make tree cry!”

Okay, summer break’s over. Back to Work.

First up, a Microsoft punishment might stick? We’ve all read the article. Apparently a European Union court dismissed Microsoft’s appeal against an EU antitrust order that ordered it to share communications code with rivals and sell a copy of Windows without Media Player and upheld the $689 million fine.

“The court observes that it is beyond dispute that in consequence of the tying consumers are unable to acquire the Windows operating system without simultaneously acquiring Windows Media Player,” it said.

Microsoft has a final appeals route to the EU high court, but what does this mean for the Wild Bill and the Monopoly Bunch? Possibly alot. The money is obviously meaningless as the Microsoft compound fuels the cavernous coding sweatshops in the winter with furnaces burning 20’s and 50’s. But the media player split could mean future overseas releases of Vista might need to exclude media player as an application. However, since it is “integrated” into the operating system, according to Microsoft, that may simply mean that the front-end will be absent, and download from an update only after the OS is activated. That would leave the courts to then determine if it’s legal to grab it afterwards.

This is speculation, of course. Truth is, Microsoft may simply find an easier loophole or continue to shell out the fines. Either way, you can bet on two things:

1. It will likely not affect any U.S. releases.
2. Microsoft is well on their way to worming those features even deeper into the fleshy code for future legal excuses.

The next time you need to write an email… expect it to happen inside of “Microsoft Media Text Content Player Composer Manager 11.0″.

Inc.com has posted their latest list of Top 30 Coolest Young Entrepreneurs in America. Their criteria? Gotta be rich and cool and under 30.

Bummer.

It’s bad enough trying to start your day in the tech industry as it is. But to settle into your morning newspaper site with a warm cup of Diet Mt. Dew, only to find out that you have failed on possibly 2 of the 3 items required to check off your “Coolest Young Entrepreneurs in America” checklist before the sun has even risen? Depressing .

Hell, the mere proximity to any form of diet product and usage at anytime, day or night, of an exclamation referring to the process or state of being “bummed” are reasons enough to make it a clean-failure-sweep on that particular list.

Makes the morning task list just that much more unbearable. Still have my fingers crossed for their next installment, “Top 30-Something Losers With Projects That May Someday Earn Back Their Domain Reg Fee” list.