November 19, 2010
Google offered $4 billion for Twitter
The Loop
Jim Dalrymple writes according to reports, Google has offered to buy Twitter.
“Search giant Google reportedly offered to buy Twitter for between $2.5B and $4B. Citing a source close to executives involved in the talks, Business Insider said Google isn’t the only suitor looking at Twitter. Sources said that Microsoft may have made an offer for the company as well. A Twitter shareholder said the company turned down a $4B offer three months ago, but didn’t know if that came from Microsoft, Google, or another unknown company.”
Microsoft: Office 2011 significantly faster
The Loop
Jim Dalrymple writes about Microsoft Office 2011.
“Microsoft Office 2011 has been available for a few weeks and reviews have been positive so far. Many of the early users, including me, noticed the significant speed increase in the new version. Microsoft on Tuesday gave some insight into how they achieved this. Posting to the company blog, Erik Schwiebert, Senior Development Lead at the Microsoft MacBU, said that speed is the perception of how fast software reacts to user input. He said Microsoft measures performance relative to human expectations.”
IE9 Platform Preview 7: performance is the priority
Ars Technica
Peter Bright writes about IE9.
“Just three weeks after the release of Platform Preview 6, Microsoft has released a seventh preview of Internet Explorer 9. The highlight of this new release is not new standards compliance but rather performance.Improved performance has been a key goal of Internet Explorer 9’s development. The new browser version relies heavily on GPU acceleration to provide high-speed graphics rendering and animation, and it includes a new JavaScript engine, codenamed Chakra, that compiles JavaScript in the background to achieve JavaScript performance that’s tens or hundreds of times faster than Internet Explorer 8.”