Microsoft hires outsider

Microsoft has hired another outsider to fill a key executive role - one more sign the software giant's promote-from-within culture is fading, reports Forbes.com.

The company said yesterday that Disney and General Motors veteran Tony Scott will become its new CIO starting next month.

The announcement comes just a week after Microsoft tapped Stephen Elop, COO of Juniper Networks, to replace company veteran Jeff Raikes in the high-profile job of business division president.

People with a Yahoo user name and password will be able to use that ID information to access non-Yahoo Web sites that support the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework, reducing the amount of different log-in information people need to create, remember and enter online, says PC World.

Already, almost 10 000 Web sites support OpenID, an open framework available for free to end-users and Web site operators alike, according to the OpenID Foundation.

Yahoo's move will triple the number of OpenID accounts to 368 million by adding its 248 million active registered users to the rolls, the company said yesterday.

Google yesterday laid out its plan for philanthropy and announced $25 million in grants aimed at addressing climate change, as well as poverty and health issues in developing countries, reports The Washington Post.

The initial grants begin to fulfil a pledge made four years ago by Google's founders to devote about 1% of the company's equity and annual profit to humanitarian causes.

Google.org, the philanthropic arm formed in 2006, expects to give away as much as $175 million over the next few years.

Mandriva and TurboLinux this week announced their partnership to create Manbo-Labs, months after its inception, states Tectonic.

The partnership, which began last October but was only announced publicly this week after its first internal delivery, will see the companies sharing resources and technology to produce a common base system for their Linux distributions.

The delay in the announcement is particularly interesting, especially for the fact that last October was also the month that Microsoft and TurboLinux entered into a collaboration agreement, complete with the ever-dubious patent agreement.