'Harry Potter' Leads Kinect Games Roster - InformationWeek

Microsoft has unveiled a slew of games for Xbox Kinect that will debut when the hands-free control system launches next month.

The most high-profile title on the list is "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 1 The Videogame." From Electronic Arts, the $49.99 game gives players the chance to assume the character of the famous British wizard.

"Playing as Harry, you are on the run from the opening sequence, fighting for survival on a desperate and dangerous quest to locate and destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes," according to Microsoft. The game features 22 moves that are exclusive to the Kinect system, which allows users to control on-screen action through their physical motions.

Also launching on or around Kinect's Nov. 4 release date are Kinectimals (Frontier Studios), which lets players interact with on screen zoo animals, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved (Ubisoft), which provides exercise routines with the help of a virtual, on-screen trainer, and Kinect Sports (Rare), which lets users play simulated soccer, bowling, volleyball, and other games.

Kinect Joy Ride (Big Park) is billed as the world's first hands-free racing game, and Dance Central (MTV Games) allows players to groove to tunes by artists like Lady Gaga, No Doubt, M.I.A., and more.

Microsoft plans to introduce a $299 Kinect bundle that includes a new, slimmed down 4GB Xbox 360 console equipped with the Kinect sensor bar. The package also features Kinect Adventures, an exploration game designed to take full advantage of the Kinect technology. The company also is offering a $399 bundle that features a 250GB console with Kinect and the Kinect Adventures game.

Additionally, Microsoft will make the Kinect sensor bar available as an add-on for existing Xbox 360 consoles, at a price of $149, including Kinect Adventures.

The Kinect bar features a camera, audio sensors, and motion-sensing technology that tracks 48 points of movement on the human body. That means players can control on-screen action simply through physical gestures and verbal commands. The sensor bar is designed to plug directly into the Xbox 360 console.

All told, Microsoft list 16 games that would accompany Kinect's release.

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Microsoft Introduces Office 365 Cloud Apps - InformationWeek

(click image to view slideshow)
Slideshow: Microsoft Office 2010 In PicturesMicrosoft announced Tuesday Office 365 for Small Business, intended for organizations with 1 to 25 users, as part of its cloud-based Office 365 service offerings.

Office 365 provides Microsoft Office 2010 Online, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online,and Lync Online in a single cloud-based service. This marks the first time all these applications are being made available as a single offering, according to the company.

According to Kurt Del Bene, president, Microsoft Office Division in the webcast announcement, the small-business offering includes mobile email and calendar; a public-facing website, plus team intranet and extranet sites, based on Microsoft SharePoint. It also includes video conferencing and Microsoft Office Web Apps, which are, according to Microsoft, "online companions to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote" that let users access, view, and edit documents directly from a web browser. The enterprise version includes additional features.

Tim Harmon, a principal analyst with Forrester Research, commented, "This is late to the game, but not too late, given that this leapfrogs beyond current offerings like GoogleApps and IBM's LotusLive. A combination of GoogleApps plus Box.net could offer somewhat comparable functions... this announcement may prompt Google to respond, possibly via an acquisition."

Users will access Office 365 via a web browser, on a subscription basis. Microsoft will be providing its cloud services through data centers, with a 99.99 SLA.

"I think that Office 365 will be more successful than Microsoft's BPOS by an order of magnitude," said Forrester's Harmon. "All our research shows that SMBs are becoming more mobile and more distributed, often with multiple, even virtual offices, and with more of their people on the road. For SMBs with these attributes, this is an important direction to consider."

Mobile workers and others may still want dual-deployment that includes local provisioning, for when there is no connectivity available, Harmon suggested.

Microsoft claims that Office 365 "works with the most popular browsers, smartphones and desktop applications people use today." According to Harmon, Microsoft said that Office 365 will work with the Internet Explorer, FireFox and Safari browsers, and will be supported on smartphones including BlackBerry, Android and iPhone. The subscription cost does not include BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Microsoft plans to add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to Office 365 sometime later next year. According to the company, Office 365 will replace the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), Office Live Small Business and Live@edu.

The small-business version of Office 365 will be available for $6/user/month. Office 365 will be available next year, according to the company. A limited beta is available now, free, from www.office365.com.

SEE ALSO: Office 365: Microsoft's Next Big Cloud Platform

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Yahoo! Just Not Good Enough - Forbes

Yahoo! reported earnings Tuesday after the bell that blew past forecasts but the performance failed to boost the Web portal's stock price in after hours trading.

Yahoo! ( YHOO - news - people ) doubled earnings to 29 cents per share thanks to one-time events, far surpassing the 15 cents in EPS expected by analysts. The problem was on the top line. The company grew revenue by 2% to $1.6 billion for its third quarter, but after taking out commissions to partners, net revenue came in at $1.12 billion, below the $1.13 billion expected by analysts. Earnings were boosted more than 120% by profits made from the company's sale of HotJobs to Monster.com for $225 million.

The company also points to gains in display advertising revenue, up 18%. "We've made substantial progress this year toward executing our strategies for enhancing profitability and resuming revenue growth," says CEO Carol Bartz,. "We've disposed of non-core assets while making strategic acquisitions."

The acquisitions include Associated Content and Citizen Sports, both content websites that Yahoo! acquired early this year. The company projects fourth quarter revenue to be in the range of $1,125 million and $1,225 million. Analysts are looking for a less conservative $1,257 million in the fourth quarter.

Stocks slid Tuesday as earnings season pressed on, even though many companies were topping profit forecasts. This is particularly true in the tech sector, where IBM ( IBM - news - people ), Google ( GOOG - news - people ), Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) and now Yahoo! have reported better than expected earnings, in some cases by hefty margins, and investors have responded by selling the stocks, sending the Nasdaq index down 45 points and the Dow down 171 points in day trading.

Yahoo! stock rallied last week, gaining 12% on news of a possible buyout by AOL. Rumors began circulating about a take-over backed by private equity firms and the smaller internet company, when the Wall Street Journal reported it using unnamed sources on October 13. Of material importance in the rumors is Yahoo's 39% stake in the Chinese internet company Alibaba, which adds uncertain value to Yahoo's holdings.

Yahoo! shares have declined by 7% since the company turned down Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people )'s buyout offer in May of 2008.

Competitively Yahoo! still has the numbers. According to the latest data released by comScore, in August Yahoo! had 179 million unique visitors, compared with Google's 178.8 million.

Yahoo's stock declined after hours on the announcement, after trading in a downward slump during the day, along with most of the market. It closed at $15.49 Tuesday and lost 12 cents after the bell.

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Intel and the race for governor - Bizjournals.com

Intel Corp.’s announcement that it will invest up to $8 billion in Oregon and Arizona comes as Oregon's gubernatorial candidates spar over how best to restart the state's economic engine, a cornerstone of both campaigns.

“Intel's investment is a sign that Oregon is competitive and remains a good place to do business,” said Democrat John Kitzhaber, in a statement. “It’s also a sign that the tools we developed in the '80s and '90s to help diversify our economy for new jobs, such as business tax reforms and the strategic investment program, still make Oregon an attractive place to do business.”

Ironically, the state’s strategic investment program — which caps business property taxes and was created in 1993 under Gov. Barbara Roberts — was created after Oregon lost an Intel plant to New Mexico. Since then, Intel has received generous tax breaks and is set to receive an estimated $121 million in tax breaks between 1999 and 2014.

While Kitzhaber says no one can argue the incentives offered to Intel “have been a worthwhile investment in Oregon and our economy,” he also supports a measured approach to enticing companies to expand or relocate to Oregon using tax breaks.

“All state incentives should be revisited on a regular basis to ensure that they are continuing to serve their stated purpose and that the benefit is still in the best interest of all taxpayers ... not just the individual or the business receiving the benefit,” Kitzhaber said.

Republican candidate Chris Dudley didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but he's been critical of Oregon’s business climate.

“We need to restore confidence, competitiveness and capital to the state of Oregon. Our business reputation has been tarnished, to say the least,” Dudley said in a recent interview with the Business Journal.

Dudley said Oregon’s tax climate has hampered the state’s economy. He backs ofering more strategic investment programs like the one that has helped Intel grow in Washington County and cutting the capital gains tax from 11 percent to 3 percent for two years, then resetting it for 5 percent going forward.

“We’re talking about the highest capital gains rate in the nation,” Dudley said. “Across the river, a mile away (in Washington), we have the lowest. To think that doesn’t influence where capital will flow is naive at best and dishonest at worst.”

sstevens@bizjournals.com | 503-219-3480

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Hormone therapy raises breast cancer deaths: study - Reuters

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO | Tue Oct 19, 2010 5:08pm EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Women who took hormone replacement pills had more advanced breast cancers and were more likely to die from them than women who took a dummy pill, raising new concerns about the commonly prescribed drugs, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first to report more breast cancer deaths among women taking hormone replacement therapy.

And it contradicts prior studies that suggest women taking the drugs had less aggressive, easier-to-treat breast cancers.

"As opposed to the prevailing thought of two years ago, that cancers associated with estrogen plus progesterone would be favorable and not much of a problem, we are actually showing they are associated with an increased risk of death from breast cancer," Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

The findings include 11 years of follow-up from the Women's Health Initiative study, which in 2002 found women who took estrogen plus progesterone for five years had higher rates of ovarian cancer, breast cancer, strokes and other health problems.

Sales of U.S. market leader Wyeth's combined estrogen plus progesterone pill Prempro have fallen by about 50 percent since 2001 to around $1 billion a year. Wyeth is now owned by Pfizer.

TWICE AS MANY CANCER DEATHS

Chlebowski's team analyzed data on the more than 12,000 women in the study. They found twice as many taking HRT died from breast cancer -- 2.6 per 10,000 per year versus 1.3 per 10,000 women per year -- compared to women who took a placebo.

Nearly 24 percent of the breast cancer patients who took HRT had tumors that had spread to the lymph notes, compared with 16 percent of women taking placebos.

"All the scary cancers with unfavorable prognoses were also increased," Chlebowski said, citing increases in aggressive forms of breast cancer, and not just estrogen-fed cancers that are easier to treat.

"And then for the first time we show deaths from breast cancer are significantly increased as well," he said.

Pfizer said in a statement the company stands behind Prempro's current labeling, which advises doctors to prescribe the drug at the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible period of time.

But even that may be risky, suggests Dr. Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who wrote a commentary in the same journal.

Doctors can only be guessing that taking the pills at a lower dose and for a shorter time would be less harmful, Bach said in a telephone interview.

Doctors "should be aware that this approach has not been proven in rigorous clinical trials," Bach wrote.

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