We know you were put off by the whole Twitter censorship debacle last month, but Microsoft and the Zune HD have moved past that (honest) and they want you to come along as well. They're enticing everyone to forget about that bone-headed move by, well, throwing everyone a bone and adding in Xvid support, part of full compatablity with MPEG-4 part 2 Advanced Simple Profile. DivX will not be coming out to play, but Smart DJ will be, a feature that isn't so much new but is newly portable, providing a counterpoint to the iPod's Genius and, since you can use it to stream content from the Zune Marketplace (when connected via WiFi) it begins to approach the functionality of apps like Pandora or Slacker Radio. Tasty, indeed, though at this point we're not sure when Microsoft will be throwing us this juicy firmware update.

Zune HD getting Xvid, Smart DJ, ever more appealing originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After months of silence, Yahoo’s BOSS team is opening up to frustrated third party developers about the future of the powerful search platform. A few hours ago, Yahoo’s Ashim Chhabra left a post on the BOSS group forum, offering an explanation for why it has taken so long for Yahoo to relay information to developers, and giving them some idea of BOSS’s fate. The good news? BOSS will continue to live on in some form, but it’s unclear exactly how things will be changing and which services will be powered by Microsoft technology — and there may be fees involved. That uncertainly will probably leave some developers on edge, but at least they know the project isn’t being scrapped entirely.

Chhabra’s post was clearly prompted by the actions of some frustrated BOSS developers, who grew tired of being left in the dark and approached the Department of Justice to talk about how BOSS will be impacted by the Yahoo/Microsoft search deal. The DOJ heard their complaints, scheduling a conference call with them for next week. Chhabra’s post may help placate them for the time being. We’ve included his full post below:

Folks,

Thank you for your feedback. We understand your frustration. This process has been long for all of us due to the complex nature of our agreement with Microsoft, and we appreciate your patience.

Under this agreement, Yahoo! is permitted to continue offering the BOSS web service, with search results that would integrate Yahoo! services and content with algorithmic results provided by Microsoft. As always, our intention is to provide a BOSS offering as long as it makes business and economic sense to do so. We are still examining what the BOSS offering will consist of, with some services powered by Microsoft, unique content that Yahoo! currently provides, and the potential for additional Yahoo! content in the future.

Prior to the announcement of the Yahoo!-Microsoft search agreement, we’d already shared our intention to explore a fee-based structure for BOSS. We continue to explore an appropriate fee structure or other revenue model as we work through the future of BOSS.

As you know, we must receive regulatory clearance before actual implementation of the search deal with Microsoft can occur. Only then can we finalize the future shape of BOSS. Of course, we will provide additional clarity and certainty when we can.

Thanks for your attention!

Yahoo! BOSS team

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Last month, we wrote about the VoIP startup Jajah being the target of a bidding war. Today, it appears that war is over, with the winner being O2, and the price being $200 million, according to a report sent out by the financial website TheMarker, and being circulated by Reuters.

It was believed that Microsoft and Cisco were two other companies that were vying to get the company. Back in June, the company served up its 1 billionth VoIP call. While the company has some 15 million subscribers of its own, many of the calls originate from Yahoo Messenger, which has used Jajah since 2008 for its VoIP calls. They also have a deal in place with Microsoft.

The company has raised over $30 million in funding over four rounds. They are backed by the likes of Sequoia and Intel Capital. O2 is the mobile arm of Telefónica Europe, and had been considered the company with only an outside shot at theacquisition, especially considering Microsoft’s partnership with Jajah. Earlier reports indicated the price could be driven as high as $400 million in a bidding war, instead it appears to have stayed on the low side.

We’ve reached out to Jajah for comment on the matter, and will update when we hear back.

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About 24 hours ago news broke that Microsoft China appeared to rip off both the look and feel as well as much of the code of a microblogging service called Plurk. Last night they issued a statement saying they took the Juku site down, and suggested an outside contractor was to blame.

Today they issued a final statement on the matter. This boils down to “it wasn’t us, it was our vendor.” But they do take responsibility, and apologize to Plurk. The apology is nice but largely unnecessary. As we said yesterday, this is the best thing to ever happen to the startup.

Microsoft’s statement:

On Monday, December 14, questions arose over a beta application called Juku developed by a Chinese vendor for our MSN China joint venture. We immediately worked with our MSN China joint venture to investigate the situation.

The vendor has now acknowledged that a portion of the code they provided was indeed copied. This was in clear violation of the vendor’s contract with the MSN China joint venture, and equally inconsistent with Microsoft’s policies respecting intellectual property.

When we hire an outside company to do development work, our practice is to include strong language in our contract that clearly states the company must provide work that does not infringe the intellectual property rights of others. We are a company that respects intellectual property and it was never our intent to have a site that was not respectful of the work that others in the industry have done.

We will be suspending access to the Juku beta indefinitely.

We are obviously very disappointed, but we assume responsibility for this situation. We apologize to Plurk and we will be reaching out to them directly to explain what happened and the steps we have taken to resolve the situation.

In the wake of this incident, Microsoft and our MSN China joint venture will be taking a look at our practices around applications code provided by third-party vendors.

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