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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put days of speculation to rest Thursday by announcing the software giant’s new search engine, named Bing as expected. The engine will replace Windows Live Search as it begins rolling out in the next few days, with full deployment by June 3.

Ballmer made the announcement at the D: All Things Digital conference. When it fully launches, users will be able to go to www.bing.com, type in a search word and use tools to narrow the focus in four areas — purchase decisions, trip planning, researching a health condition, or finding a local business.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” Ballmer said. “When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web.”

He added that Bing is the first step in a long-term effort to help people find information more quickly and use that information.

How It Works

To emphasize problems with current search engines, Microsoft pointed to a report by Ipsos Mendelsohn that found 66 percent of Internet visitors use searches to make complex choices. Another report by comScore showed 30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. These problems led Microsoft to focus on a “decision engine.”

Bing uses features such as Best Match to find the best answer for a search, Deep Links to give searchers information on what a Web site offers, and Quick Preview, an additional window that expands over a search caption to give users more information about the site’s relevancy.

The search engine also incorporates Instant Answers, a feature designed to provide information within the body of the search-results page.

Internet search…

Santa Clara, Calif., May 27, 2009 -– Mimosa Systems, the leader in next-generation email, file and SharePoint archiving solutions, today announced that the Company has been named by Gartner, Inc. as a Visionary vendor in its “Magic Quadrant for E-Mail Active Archiving.”

Over the past year, Mimosa has added powerful additional features to its Mimosa NearPoint(TM) platform for email archiving, particularly in support of the growing need to support eDiscovery, search and compliance. Key NearPoint software options include:

• NearPoint SharePoint Archive – which provides comprehensive recovery, retention policy management and single instance storage across all types of SharePoint content including sites, wikis, blogs, lists, and document libraries

• NearPoint File System Archive – which provides for the collection of active files located on file shares, desktops and laptops to meet increasing preservation requirements as part of a legal matter

• NearPoint eDiscovery – which provides powerful search and legal hold capabilities in support of litigation and internal investigations

• NearPoint Retention and Classification – which provides for automatic classification, retention and tagging of messages and attachments as business records for eDiscovery and records management

• NearPoint Content Monitoring – which provides policy and alerting framework to scan inbound, outbound, or internal messages and attachments for sensitive content

Beyond the ongoing expansion of its NearPoint technology platform, Mimosa continues to experience strong growth in customer deployments, with over 800 customers worldwide. The company has also increased its reach into key vertical industries including government, healthcare and energy –- delivering huge efficiencies, significant cost savings, a rapid return on investment and accelerated time to value. With a heightened focus on global expansion, Mimosa today has active sales channels throughout Canada, Germany, France, UK, Japan, China and Australia in addition to Mimosa’s strong channel partner ecosystem in the United States.

“The email active archiving market has continued to evolve at an increasingly…

AT&T is investing $17 billion to $18 billion to speed up its wireless 3G network. The Texas-based carrier also said Wednesday that it will upgrade its 3G network starting this year and finishing in 2011.

HSPA 7.2 technology will be added to the network for a better user experience. Since offering 3G service in 350 U.S. metropolitan areas, AT&T has added more than twice the number of smartphone users as its competitors. The increased demand has resulted in complaints for the exclusive provider of Apple iPhone service in the U.S.

Later this year, AT&T plans to boost the speed of its broadband network and offer additional devices, including HSPA 7.2-compatible laptop cards and smartphones. AT&T said it began certifying 7.2-Mbps devices on its two test networks last month.

Necessary Changes

AT&T and its competitors also plan to begin Long-Term Evolution (LTE) next year. LTE is the expected successor to UMTS 3G technology and is expected to provide faster data rates for both downloading and uploading. AT&T said it will use its 700-MHz and advanced wireless spectrum to launch LTE.

AT&T’s upgrades are necessary as both the carrier and Apple have been under fire for misleading consumers about the iPhone network. Both have been sued for delivering data to the iPhone at slower speeds than promised in their marketing.

Lawsuits against the companies have been brought in Florida; San Jose and San Diego in California; and Alabama.

Along with the increase in speed, AT&T said it also plans to double the wireless spectrum focused on 3G in most metropolitan areas for more network capacity. The carrier is also adding thousands of new cellular connections to support the higher broadband speeds of HSPA 7.2 and LTE.

“AT&T’s network infrastructure gives us a tremendous advantage in that we’re able to deliver upgrades in mobile broadband speed and…

The battle will begin this fall for Star Wars game fans when Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron, a multiplayer game for Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable handhelds, will be released, according to LucasArts, a division of Lucasfilm Entertainment.

The San Francisco-based publisher is boasting that the Star Wars Battlefront game, based on the Star Wars film series, is the first time players will be able to fight on multi-level battlefronts, in space and on the ground. The game allows players to begin the fight on foot, drive a vehicle through the battleground, or have dogfights in space. Each player’s move — including shots fired and enemies defeated — determines future outcomes on the battlefield.

The game supports 16-player multiplayer on the PSP and includes tracking and four-player skirmishes on the DS. On the DS, the game is rated Everyone 10+, and includes fantasy violence; on the PSP, the game is rated Teen with fantasy violence.

The Force Is with Video Games

Despite a 23 percent decrease in sales of video games from $660.1 million in April 2008 to $510.7 million in April 2009, and despite the challenging economic environment, NPD Group consumer-spending indicators still show video games as the category in which consumers say they are least likely to cut their spending in the coming months, according to NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

“I can say that Star Wars is one of the top 10 video-game properties of all time, so anytime there is a Star Wars release we can look for it to chalk up some substantial sales,” Frazier said.

Jedi, Clones and More

In Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron, gamers take on the identity of X2, a clone trooper created from the DNA of a Jedi Master. The X2 trooper joins the Rebellion, crossing paths with his evil clone brother X1, leading to a battle that…

Cisco is making its move in the mobile-workspace world. Last week, at the Interop show in Las Vegas, the networking giant announced a new initiative called Collaboration in Motion, that draws from a number of its product lines to facilitate collaboration in the mobile workspace. Products and services tied to the initiative include Cisco WebEx, Cisco Unified Communications, Cisco Unified Wireless Network, and Cisco Advanced Services.

“Together, the transformational power of collaboration combined with the power of the network as the platform can enable businesses to thrive,” said Ray Smets, VP and general manager for the Cisco Wireless Networking business unit. “Evolving modern businesses are comprised of workspaces that are rarely physically connected, and critical business information is collected and shared with mobile devices such as laptops and smartphones.”

Bridging Network Gaps

As part of Collaboration in Motion, Cisco has invested in new products and services in five areas: the workspace experience, the wireless network platform, third-party applications, technology partners, and professional services. Cisco’s goal is to bridge the gaps between an on-premises wired network, off-premises cellular network, and a high-performance Wi-Fi network so workers can work from anywhere.

On the workspace-experience front, Cisco has expanded its network-delivery services to include the WebEx Meeting Center version 1.2 application on the iPhone. This allows the host to schedule meetings and invite attendees before and during the meeting using their iPhone.

Turning to the wireless network platform, Cisco is delivering an 802.11n solution that incorporates access points, controllers and management, and the ability to expose network information and services through an open API. For example, the new Cisco 5500 Series Wireless Controller is optimized for 802.11n networks. The new Cisco OfficeExtend solution complements the Cisco Virtual Office portfolio of teleworking solutions. And the new Cisco 3310 Mobility Services Engine supports existing mobility services.

Partnering for Mobile Workspaces

Cisco…

Microsoft has canceled an upcoming June hearing with the European Commission, where the company was expected to defend itself against antitrust allegations.

The Redmond-based software behemoth was going to discuss its Internet Explorer Web browser after the European Commission charged that Microsoft’s inclusion of IE in Windows was breaking competition laws in Europe.

The EC brought the case against Microsoft after Opera Software ASA, the Norway-based company behind the Internet browser Opera, filed a complaint with the commission in December 2007, saying Microsoft was being anticompetitive.

Opera’s complaint alleged ongoing competitive harm from Microsoft’s practices. In addition to tying in Internet Explorer, other software inclusions, such as desktop search and Windows Live, have also been brought to the attention of the EC.

Microsoft, however, states that its integration of the IE browser into Windows is regulated by European law, and computer users can choose Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, or Opera as browsers that run on Windows.

Timing Not Perfect

The hearing, scheduled to begin June 3, 2009, was canceled after Microsoft realized that the commission’s senior regulators — who would weigh in heavily on the case — would not be present because the hearing coincided with an intergovernmental competition law meeting, the International Competition Network.

“As a result, it appears that many of the most influential commission and national competition officials with the greatest interest in our case will be in Zurich and so unable to attend our hearing in Brussels,” blogged Dave Heiner, Microsoft’s vice president and deputy general counsel.

Heiner said the company spoke out about the scheduling conflict with the commission and asked the commission to consider other dates.

“We pointed out that there’s no legal or other reason that the hearing needs to be held the first week of June,” he said. “We believe that holding the hearing at…