It’s still not too late to host your own Windows 7 Torrenting Party.

See Previously: Helpful Tips on Hosting a Windows 7 Launch Party

via Gizmodo

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guest post by Laszlo Thoth

A good friend living in Japan recently asked the twitterverse whether American Burger Kings would be selling the Windows 7 Whopper in America. In 140 characters it can be hard to tell whether someone is joking, but this announcement is as serious as a heart attack.

In an unusual cross-marketing campaign, Microsoft and Burger King Japan are offering the Windows 7 Whopper during the week of October 22-28 to celebrate the release of Windows 7. Measuring 13cm (5.1 inches) in diameter, the “Amerikanbanzu” (”supergiant”) Windows 7 Whopper features up to seven 113 gram (¼ pound) beef patties totaling 1.75 pounds. The first 30 customers can purchase a Windows 7 Whopper for the special price of ¥777 ($8.49), regular price ¥1450 ($15.84).

Japanese fast food restaurants are no strangers to bizarre marketing campaigns. A few years ago McDonalds introduced their similarly outrageous Mega Mac in a hip, elaborately choreographed, and wildly successful guerrilla marketing campaign.

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These lovely people are here to provide some helpful tips on how to host your own Windows 7 launch party.

Cabel Sasser decided to spice things up a bit. Can’t wait!

via Daring Fireball

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The trailer for Office 2010: The Movie, coming to a desktop near you.

via CNET Beyond Binary

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Microsoft hired ad agency Bradley and Montgomery to create a bizarre series of online ads starting Dean Cain to promote Internet Explorer 8.

via idsgn

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John Martz created a really cute Internet Explorer 6 denial page for Momentile.

via Ernie

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At E3 this week in Los Angeles Microsoft announced Project Natal, their new human interaction system being developed for the Xbox 360 where the player is the game controller. The BBC has more on the launch of Project Natal.

Introducing Project Natal, a revolutionary new way to play: no controller required. See a ball? Kick it, hit it, trap it or catch it. If you know how to move your hands, shake your hips or speak you and your friends can jump into the fun — the only experience needed is life experience.

via BBC

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guest post by RICK!

Joe Lifrieri, at Hugs For Monsters, created confrontational and extremely funny splash pages for visitors viewing his site in Internet Explorer 6. This is what half-ass PNG support and CSS compliance does to fragile developers.

images via Hugs For Monsters

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<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&#038;showPlaylist=true&#038;from=shared" target="_new" title="Future Vision Montage">Video: Future Vision Montage</a>

Microsoft Office Labs has created a cool video montage showing what they think technology might look like in 2019. Here’s their full series of “Envisioning” videos.

How will emerging technology improve our productivity in the years ahead? What opportunities will arise from evolving trends and global change? Microsoft has collaborated with customers, partners, and thought leaders across multiple disciplines to develop scenarios that explore how long-term trends, customer challenges, and emerging technologies might converge to improve our lives, both at work and home.

via ReadWriteWeb

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Linus Torvalds directs our attention to an absurd bluegrass cover of Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” created by Jack Tripper on the new Songsmith musical accompaniment program recently released by Microsoft Research that adds music to singing.

There’s also the Microsoft Songsmith Latin version of “Roxanne” by The Police.

Here’s the promo video for Songsmith, which helps you release your inner song.

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Breaking News: Army Frees Windows XP Background

via Rocketboom

image via Pundit Kitchen

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The first new Microsoft ad in the recently launched $300 million advertising campaign by Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP&B) debuted tonight featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. It’s not clear what they are trying to sell, but my guess it has something to do with shoes and churros.

The highlight of the ad is when Bill Gates’ infamous 1977 mug shot makes an appearance.

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guest post by Johannes Grenzfurthner

urbantakeover is a virtual reality game mashup that was started by a couple of smart guys from Vienna. You play it both in the streets or in places of your ‘real’ city — and online.

The task is to put special stickers with your name/tag/signature or even a picture onto buildings or other static stuff around. You can send a text message to urbantakeover with your mobile phone in order to ‘claim’ the spot you marked. On urbantakeover’s website you can see your and your team’s owned territories. But you have to watch out. Others can snatch your spots away by re-claiming the locations. If you are being attacked you get a text message so you can ‘fight back’ immediately.

More games are coming soon (ever wanted to play Go on a ‘board’ the size of your city?)

Get your team ready, go out and reclaim your city…

Here are some photos of claimed spots:

Microsoft, crossed

Google, crossed

Ferret, crossed

photos by Florian Hufsky & MyraSuicide

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Introducing our newest guest blogger, the wonderful Simone Davalos of Suicide Bots and RoboGames. – Scott

Noodling around this evening I StumbledUpon this nifty video of a piece of music made entirely out of alert sounds from windows XP and 98, made and posted on YouTube by SomethingUnreal. Not only is it a good thing with which to waste five minutes, it has a good beat and you can dance to it:

There are also a healthy handful of remixes and remixes of remixes since this thing came out in December 2007, and they cover just about every genre you can handle, and some you can’t.

The sound editing software is freeware called ModPlug Tracker. Here’s a brief guide on how to play around with it. I can’t vouch for the program myself, being a mac type of girl, but have a look and let us know what you think.

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In response to Microsoft’s unsolicited acquisition bid for Yahoo, many Flickr users are expressing concern for what might happen if Microsoft is successful. They have even created a Flickr Group to address this issue, Microsoft: Keep Your Evil Grubby Hands Off Of Our Flickr, complete with photo pool of MS/Flickr takeover images, including some that envision what a Flickr website re-design might look like with Microsoft at the controls.

image by Michael Seneschal

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Well this is going to be an interesting one. Microsoft has just made an unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo! for 44.6 billion in a mixture of cash and stock at $31/share. Yahoo! has issued a press release stating that their board of directors is currently evaluating Microsoft’s proposal.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Microsoft’s proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.

Ongoing coverage of this breaking story can be found on the rapidly expanding Techmeme thread.

See Previously: Microsoft Looking to Purchase Yahoo!

UPDATE 1: “Five subtle changes in the event that Microsoft acquires Yahoo!”

UPDATE 2: Here’s Yahoo!’s Media Response regarding the acquisition bid.

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