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Microsoft is investing $30 million over the next 12 months to woo advertisers to its MSN portal, the company said on Thursday. The money has been allocated for MSN's business units in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and is part of a larger $100 million initiative to attract advertisers to its portals around the world, Microsoft said. Over the past 18 months, Microsoft has invested $250 million in promoting and building up the MSN portal, the company said. The results are starting to pay off.

Physicists in Denmark have made two samples of trillions of atoms interact at a distance in an experiment which may bring Star Trek-style teleportation and rapid quantum computing closer to reality.

Eugene Polzik and his colleagues at the University of Aarhus are not about to beam anyone up to the Starship Enterprise, but their research, reported in the science journal Nature on Wednesday, makes the idea of instantly transporting an object from one place to another less far fetched.

Microsoft said Wednesday that it has added a heavy-hitting Chicago trial lawyer to its legal team to help with the remedy phase of its landmark antitrust case. The company said it hired former federal prosecutor Dan Webb as co-counsel in the 3-year-old case that has returned to a lower court to determine what sanctions should apply against Microsoft for abusing its monopoly in personal computer operating systems. In a statement, Microsoft said Webb will work with in-house lawyers and the company's outside firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, and focus "on resolving the remaining issues in this case."

Microsoft Corp. today announced that leading enterprise independent software vendors (ISVs) have completed rigorous stress-tests to ensure optimal performance and scale for the complete range of hardware and software configurations qualified by the Microsoft® Windows® Datacenter Program. Business-critical applications from BMC Software Inc., CommVault Systems Inc., IBM Corp., Microsoft, NetIQ Corp., NSI Software, Onyx Software Corp., SAP AG and VERITAS Software have met intensive testing requirements to achieve the Certified for Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server status, as granted by independent third-party test lab VeriTest.

Hoping to get computer users excited about its upcoming Windows XP operating system, software giant Microsoft said Wednesday it would offer an add-on package of programs providing digital media features and video games. The bundle of software, called Plus! for Windows XP, will sell for about $40 and will hit shelves Oct. 25, the retail launch date for the XP operating system, Microsoft product manager Geordie Wilson said. "Plus! is basically a fun way to show off what XP can do," Wilson said. "Plus! is not going to change the world but it's a fun product with a lot of things that make the computer more enjoyable."

Microsoft Corp.'s Internet service MSN said Tuesday that its total subscribers have grown to 6.9 million from 6.5 million in April, boosted by its campaign to lure away subscribers from rivals such as AOL Time Warner Inc. AOL.N Almost 80 percent of new customers have switched from other ISPs, and nearly half of these new customers have switched from AOL, said Bob Visse, director of MSN, in a phone interview. In recent months, MSN has made it one of its primary missions to take away market share from No. 1 Internet service provider AOL, which has about 31 million subscribers. MSN extended its special Internet service offer to new customers as part of its $50 million campaign it started in late May following AOL's move to raise the price of its Internet service to $23.90 from $21.95.

Microsoft officially revealed details of its Plus! add-on pack for Windows XP Wednesday, a new product that takes advantage of XP-specific features while adding a bevy of fun and exciting tools, games, desktop themes, and screensavers to the new OS. Plus! XP integrates with Media Player for Windows XP (MPXP), DirectX 8.1, and other technologies in XP to supply a set of add-ons that Microsoft hopes will garner some interest from consumers. This is the third Plus! add-on pack: Microsoft's first Plus! add-on pack shipped with Windows 95, and the company introduced a second Plus! for Windows 98 three years later.

Microsoft is an interesting case study. They are by all accounts a huge financial success and their stock has brought riches to many across the country and the globe. However, when you look beyond the dollars, you see a much more convoluted and confusing image. On one hand, Microsoft has made some of the best software and hardware many of us has ever used. Excel, for example, has always been very highly regarded, and on the hardware side, their Microsoft Mouse product line has set the standard for quality and innovation. in many areas.

Microsoft Corp. today announced the release of two new tools focused on eBooks. The Dictionary Authoring Kit (DAK) 1.0 enables publishers and enthusiasts to quickly and easily produce Microsoft® Reader-compatible dictionaries or reference guides in multiple languages. An updated creation tool for consumers, called Read in Microsoft Reader (RMR) 1.1, lets Microsoft Word 2000 and Word 2002 users easily create and publish their own Microsoft Reader eBook content. The update includes some key new features to make it easier to produce a higher-quality eBook. These new tools represent significant strides in enabling the creation of great content in Microsoft Reader format. The announcement was made at Seybold San Francisco 2001.

Microsoft is hoping to make a big splash on Broadway. The software giant announced Tuesday that it will launch Windows XP, its newest operating system, at the Marriott Marquis Theatre, in the heart of New York City's theater district. Top Microsoft executives, along with key industry figures, will be present at the launch on Oct. 25, less than two months after the gruesome terrorist attacks on the city's World Trade Center. Microsoft's commitment to launch Windows XP far from its Redmond, Wash., headquarters runs counter to a more widespread trend in which companies are canceling appearances by executives at trade shows and conferences around the country and abroad.