In the United States, MSN is ranked 3rd on the search engines market, but with its share of around 10%, I wouldn't call it "one of Microsoft's greatest achievements". In fact, MSN is in a continue fight for survival, and I don't think the fact that its top executive just left is going to help, either...

Usually, when top management people are leaving for smaller companies, something is not right. Exactly the same happened here, since MSN's media network top executive Joanne Bradford is leaving for an advertising startup company based in Los Angeles, Spot Runner.

At least from the outside, this seems to have been a leave "without broken bones", since Satya Nadella, new senior vice president in charge of Microsoft's search, portals and advertising platform, said "We thank her for her many contributions in helping us build a world-class advertising sales organization, bringing the advertiser point of view closer to Microsoft and evolving the MSN experience through partnerships and branded entertainment."

Is it possible for Microsoft to lack vision so much, that its people are leaving for more flexible companies? Bradford says "I'm thrilled about joining such a visionary and entrepreneurial team," so I guess this may be the problem, but it's only my guess. What do you think about this? Is Microsoft incapable of keeping up with the rest of the industry's ever-changing business model and vision, or not?

As far as I know from on-site experience and my close friends that work in the field, most universities have very secure networks, and breaking in from outside is almost impossible. Just think about the fact that students can be excellent hackers, but smart students capable of becoming hackers end up in a system administrator position for their university (obviously, depends on the university). Anyway, since Harvard is not just some university, finding out that Harvard was successfully attacked it came as a shock to me, as it happened with most people that are finding out about this, as we speak!


For now, all we know is what Harvard released to the public, as information about the incident, as their Monday statement says its database of applicants to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from last year was exposed, from those 10,000 applicants that could have had their personal information exposed, at least 6,600 having comprehensive profiles on file. What doesn that mean?

Basically, 6,600 sets of name, Social Security number, date of birth, mailing and email address, phone number, test scores and school records could be in the wrong hands, and some of these comprehensive sets of data even include intimate details such as personal health issues.

To make things even worse, a 125MB BitTorrent file containing a full backup of the GSAS site, including the databases, became available, and according to the hosts of the file, everything was done to prove that the server's admin at Harvard has no idea about efficiently secure a Web site.

All right, they proved this. So, what next? Breaking in some NASA servers? Hopefully not...

Despite its technical limitations, YouTube is the most popular video sharing website, and its story is extremely impressing. After being started up on the 15th of February, 2005, YouTube's popularity simply exploded in the following year, and ended up in being acquired by Google next year, for no less than $1.65 billion! After being cloned for thousands of times, YouTube finally decided to give away tools for Web developers to build their own such sites.


Less than a day ago, the Silicon Valley-based giant said it is providing wholesale access to its video library, global audience, as well as the undelying video hosting and streaming network powering YouTube.

While now you can only copy and embed YouTube videos in your own pages, from now on you will be able to upload videos straight to YouTube through your own site, as well as fetch video feeds, comments, playlists and responses from YouTube.

Doesn't sound bad at all, don't you think? For more details, feel free to check the official blog posting on YouTube!

If software outsourcing had only a few primary targets so far, now it seems the entire Middle East is doing the best possible to be the next in line, and when I say "best possible", I am talking about really big things. Just keep reading to find out...


First, it's Egypt - a country that I wasn't expecting to arrive that fast in the crowd of outsourcing destinations, especially considering what happened recently - a company called Smart Village set up a location called Smart Village Cairo, where over 100 buildings are housing large IT companies, such as Dell, IBM, Microsoft or Ericsson, each of these having its own buildings. Needless to say that Egypt has enough workforce to supply these companies with people good for their jobs, and wages are extremely small compared to what they should get in the US or Western Europe for their work...

Leaving Egypt aside, there's China. Despite the fact they are still a communist country, it seems they understood the western ways perfectly, and they are thinking BIG. Just thing about this - 1 million-apartment complex as a part of a business park, where the government pays the mortgage, as well as worker's transport to and back from work! I can't even imagine 1 million IT workers in the same area, so I won't try!

Do I have to say more? Let me hear your opinions about the future of outsourcing to Middle East, and the future of the Western economies, because this is really a hot subject these days, and it seems to get hotter with each day...

Yes, it's the same old Yahoo story, but I can't help it - some interesting news have emerged, and you have to know about it.


First, Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie said they won't rush into merging its technology with Yahoo's after a possible takeover, but the most interesting part is that he proved to be very optimistic about a fortunate outcome of the entire deal for Microsoft. These being said, if we find out that Yahoo and Microsoft somehow got together, we shouldn't be amazed, although currently, Yahoo's board rejected the $41 billion bid...

At last, it's Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corp, who said he won't get into a fight with Microsoft over Yahoo. Despite the fact News Corp was in talks with Yahoo to combine MySpace and other Internet assets of theirs with Yahoo, things seem clear - "We're not going to get into a fight with Microsoft, which has a lot more money than us," so what's in store for Yahoo, after all?

To be honest, I have no idea, but I expect Microsoft to play a bit dirty and get its hands on Yahoo, in the end, especially since News Corp has just left Yahoo alone...