We're excited to announce that we've reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company.

Powerset will join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technology that nicely complements other natural language processing technologies we have in Microsoft Research.

Yahoo published on Monday its version of the details of the failed merger talks with Microsoft, as the Internet pioneer heads toward the frontlines of its proxy battle with investor activist Carl Icahn.

Yahoo, which wants its current nine-member board to be re-elected at its annual shareholders meeting on August 1 and is up against Icahn's dissident directors slate, is hoping to woo investors in its direction with a presentation filed with Securities and Exchange Commission.

As Chief Experience Officer (CXO) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO), J Allard is responsible for the technical architecture and user experiences related to products and services of the Entertainment and Devices (E&D) division. Allard works closely with technical leaders across the company to align E&D product teams with Microsoft's overall services strategy and product architecture, and drives the technical and design agenda to deliver Connected Entertainment experiences for consumers. With a unified approach and his personal passion for the possibilities of digital entertainment, Allard manages the E&D design group and also oversees an incubation team that scouts new opportunities for the division.

Microsoft Corp today announced it intends to acquire MobiComp, a company that helped pioneer technologies allowing the backup and restoration of mobile data and mobile posting of social content to websites such as Facebook. The acquisition would combine MobiComp's expertise building innovative mobile data protection and sharing services with Microsoft's vision to provide compelling experiences that span work and play across mobile phones, the web and PCs. Terms of the planned acquisition are not being disclosed. ...

The Portugal-based company is known for a variety of breakthrough mobile services including MobileKeeper Backup & Restore, MobileKeeper Sharing & Communities, and Active mTicker. These services help mobile operators and people round the world back up personal content stored on a phone, publish updates to online communities, and get entertainment and news content delivered to phones. ...

MobiComp will contribute to a rapidly expanding list of offerings from Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business while continuing to serve its existing partners and customers, which include 11 mobile operators worldwide. Fifty handset makers build on the Windows Mobile platform, and 160 mobile operators in 55 countries carry Windows Mobile phones. The services of Windows Live, including one of the largest free instant messaging services and weblogging services, run on every major mobile operating system worldwide.