Mike

Most people probably dream of being the world's richest person -- except, perhaps, the man himself.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told an online advertising conference Wednesday that he'd prefer not to be the richest person in the world.

"I wish I wasn't," he said in a session in which he was being interviewed by Donny Deutsch, the host of an interview show on CNBC television.

Gates is ranked by Forbes magazine as the world's richest individual, with an estimated wealth of about $50 billion (euro39.61 billion).

Mike

Microsoft and Qualcomm announced Thursday that they will team up to port Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system to Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem chipsets in a move to aggressively go after the next generation of smartphones.

Qualcomm's technology already occupies a major position in smartphone technology while Microsoft's operating systems lag way behind Symbian and Linux. According to recent numbers from market research firm IDC, Symbian has a market share of about 54 percent. Linux' share is about 23.5 percent, and Microsoft's is about 13 percent (counting Microsoft's Windows Mobile for Smartphone OS and Windows Mobile Phone Edition.) PalmOS was listed at a 3.5 percent market share.

Mike

To boost its local search and online mapping services, Microsoft has acquired a company that makes products for creating maps from aerial and satellite photographs.

Microsoft on Thursday announced its acquisition of Vexcel without disclosing the deal's financial details. Microsoft expects that Vexcel's products and technologies will strengthen its Windows Live Local service for finding local business listings and displaying online maps.

Windows Live Local is Microsoft's offering in the highly competitive market for local search and online mapping.

Mike

A report published in "The Wall Street Journal" yesterday notes that Microsoft held talks with Yahoo about a possible acquisition over the past year. The goal, the report says, was to quickly improve Microsoft's position in the online services market against Google, its most bitter rival.

While any acquisition that large would surely come under antitrust scrutiny, the seemingly abandoned scheme is also notable for other reasons. Microsoft's products have often languished in the market for several years before taking off; many had assumed that the company would simply back its money losing online services until they started turning a profit. Buying Yahoo would accelerate those efforts by combining Microsoft's best services with Yahoo's best services.

Mike

Like a TV producer trying to recover from an earlier flop, Microsoft's MSN unit plans get back into the business of original online video programs -- but this time, the company believes it's taking a better approach.

Microsoft says the new initiative, dubbed MSN Originals, will consist of video shows and related content on the MSN.com Internet portal. The company has formed an initial partnership with Reveille -- the creator of TV programs such as NBC's "The Office" and "The Biggest Loser" -- to produce shows for the site.

Mike

Just what does Microsoft plan to spend all those billions of dollars on?

That's the question that Wall Street has been asking since last week, when the company announced that it would pay out far more than expected in the next 15 months--roughly $2.4 billion according to estimates--as it bulks up several of its new business efforts, particularly its online services.

Investors may get some answers this week, as the Redmond, Wash., software maker hosts an annual gathering for hundreds of MSN advertisers and other ad industry notables. Microsoft is expected to give further details of its strategy and to show off some of the earliest fruits of its labors.

Mike

Forget megapixels, where the resolution of digital images is counted in millions of pixels. Michael Cohen, a scientist at Microsoft Research, is trying to create a photo this summer that will contain 10 billion pixels.

He's already done 4-gigapixel shots of downtown Seattle.

Cohen's work, dubbed Big Panoramas, is an attempt to marry Internet mapping and high-resolution photography. With 4 billion or 10 billion pixels, a single photograph will contain several square miles of real estate in accurate detail. In the Seattle photo, users can zoom in on windows on different buildings, or zoom out to get a view of the entire skyline.

Mike

How can you find information about Condoleezza Rice on the Internet? Type in "2*#7423".

That is if you have a copy of a prototype program from Microsoft Research currently named The Wild Thing. The application, for cell phones and handhelds, essentially lets consumers conduct queries with abbreviations and truncated spellings of words, said its developer Bo Thiesson.

The query TR SF turns up Thai restaurants in San Francisco, complete with search results grouped under a header for local Thai restaurants. It also turns up Tower Records and The Stinking Rose, a local restaurant, but punching in those four letters took less time on a handheld keyboard that the full formal query on a cell phone keypad.

Mike

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a new initiative in which the company will partner with Hollywood production companies in creating original video content for MSN, a move meant to attract more advertising dollars to the entertainment portal that trails rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.

Microsoft unveiled the initiative, called MSN Originals, during the company's Strategic Account Summit at its Redmond, Wash., headquarters. The meeting is an opportunity for Microsoft to describe new projects to online advertisers.

Mike

Microsoft is inviting gamers to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles next week, by taking them there virtually, for free, through the Xbox Live service.

Microsoft's Xbox Live Silver members will have accounts upgraded to Gold status from Monday, May 8 at 8 a.m. through Sunday, May 14 at 11:59 p.m. Verizon will sponsor a giveaway of one million Microsoft points redeemable for Xbox Live Arcade games, themes, gamer pictures, and more in the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Throughout the week, Microsoft will make more than 60 pieces of new content available for download from the Xbox 360 Marketplace, including demos and trailers from games like Crackdown, Viva Pinata, Moto GP 06, Test Drive Unlimited, and Lost Planet: Extreme Condition.