Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software maker, made an unsolicited $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo! Inc. to challenge Google Inc.'s dominance in Internet search services and advertising.

The $31-a-share bid of cash or Microsoft stock is 62 percent more than Yahoo's closing price yesterday. Yahoo, which posted a 23 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit this week, had fallen 18 percent in Nasdaq Stock Market trading this year before today. Microsoft fell the most since 2006 as investors expressed disapproval of the deal.

SAN FRANCISCO — Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, took several big gambles Tuesday, betting that he could repeat his success in selling digital music by persuading Hollywood to allow Apple to rent digital movies, while at the same time returning to his original Macintosh roots with an elegant — but limited — ultralight computer called the MacBook Air.

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) plans to launch OLPC America in 2008 to distribute the low-cost laptop computers originally aimed at developing nations to needy students in the United States.

The group, which was formed in the U.S. by teachers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), came under criticism shortly after forming because its original mission did not include the U.S.

You’ve probably heard of it or seen the colorful logos, but do you know what Microsoft’s Games for Windows initiative is all about? Let me tell you.

Basically, it's supposed to be a push to make PC gaming as accessible and user-friendly as your average Xbox 360. Pop your tray, drop in a Crysis or BioShock DVD, and presto game-o. In theory, anyway. In practice, since that's clearly not what happens when you plop pretty much anything into your PC, it’s little more than a redundant brand awareness campaign for Microsoft's ubiquitous OS.

The Google Tool Box has just gotten a little fuller with the anticipation of the inclusion of JotSpot, wiki tool that Google acquired last year. It looks like the new JotSpot will replace or enhance the current 'Google Page Creator' and allow individual users or companies to build out their own sites with custom domain features. This is starting to sound a little more like an online version of 'Joomla' than a wiki tool, but it does look like it is going to be the container that the rest of the Google Apps can 'live in.' In the two different articles, there was a fair amount of supposition as to how and when Google rolls out all of these tools, but both expected there to be a big move towards integrating 'Google Gears' (offline use of web applications) in the new and improved Google/JotSpot wiki too.