It has been one heck of a crazy week for Apple’s share price. We are less than two months into the year and the share price has already seen a 22% increase this year. In fact, while AAPL continues to rise, GOOG’s share price continues to fall. This week alone, Apple’s share price has seen an averaged of $10 in gains per day. Also, since the time Steve Jobs passed away, the company’s market cap has grown $90 billion. Clearly doomed indeed.

Today, AppleInsider points out that Apple is now worth more than Google and Microsoft! That’s pretty amazing for a company that doesn’t dominate in marketshare. Microsoft’s market cap was around $256.7 billion, while Google was valued at around $198.9 billion. Today, Apple’s share price closed at $493.17 and was trading at $494.69 in the after hours. The company’s market cap reached $459.82 billion.

While Apple’s share price is going to pass $490, analysts have begun raising there expectations. Charlie Wolf with Needham & Company upped his estimate from $540 to $620, while Mike Walkley with Canaccord Genuity raised his target on AAPL shares even higher, to $665. In fact, even to this day, Apple is trading lower than what it should be at.

It seems to me that Apple will soar past $500 tomorrow without a doubt!

Skype 5.8 was released last week. There was a buzz of activity as Microsoft released an update to the Windows version of Skype. This bodes well for the direction that their partnership is taking.  If you had enabled  the option to check for the latest version enabled (under Help > Check for Updates), then you will  receive notifications about the latest version.

You can download the latest version here.

HD video calling

A wonderful new world of clear video chat is open for all those who have atleast 2 Mbps download speeds. They have also specified that you would need to own an HD camera like the Logitech C920 webcam.

 Group screen sharing

You can share your screen or a single application window with other members in a conference call. Check this option under “+” > Share my screen. Unfortunately, group video conference is still not free. I prefer google+ hangout over this. However, there is no question that Skype rules if quality matters.

Audio and video calling for Facebook friends

My favorite new feature that allows you to call your friends on Facebook even if they are not on Skype.

Push to Talk

It has hot keys that enable the microphone. Check out this option under Tools > Options > Advanced > Hotkeys. This feature is supposed to be useful for gamers who can use it to mute or unmute the microphone.

Bing Bar Integration

This is the fruit of the set up between Microsoft and Skype. This feature has not been elaborated in their release notes.

End Note

As usual, Skype has the “automatically sign into skype option” enabled. This can be removed under under Tools > Options > General Settings.

Do not forget the upcoming Windows Phone 8 (aka Apollo) that will include great new features like NFC (Near Field Communication), Data Smart (to prioritize Wifi connections), will no doubt have Skype strongly wrapped up in the package too. The new Windows Phone OS is quite amazing already. Having arrived late into the mobile industry, it is very important that Microsoft differentiates its products very definately.

Windows 8 is a bold new step forward for Microsoft. We already know that the Redmond giant will be ditching the traditional Start Menu in favor of its Metrofied full-screen cousin. Now, it appears that Microsoft has also made up its mind to get rid of the Start button, which has been a hallmark of Windows operating systems for almost two decades.

In Windows 8 developer preview, the Start button’s role was reduced to toggling between Metro and classic interface, and displaying “Charms”, which provide quick access to some basic functionality. However, newer builds of Windows 8, such as build 8220 that is pictured above, does away with the Start button completely. According to Neowin, Microsoft has instead decided to implement a hot corner in the bottom left of the screen, which will both provide access to Charms, and facilitate toggling between the Metro and classic user interface. Touchscreen users will be able to access the same functionality through a swipe gesture.

The death of the iconic Start button will undoubtedly trigger mourning across the web; however, one has to agree that this had to happen sooner or later. The new full-screen, touch optimized Start page pretty much stole the Start button’s thunder.

The beta of Windows 8 is slated to be released in a few weeks. Meanwhile, here are a few more screenshots of Windows 8 post developer preview (build 8220) to ponder over.

Last September, Microsoft and the Kaspersky Labs claimed a big win on the Kelihos botnet, when they took control of the infected computers. Kelihos was sending 4 billion spam messages a day, and it covers all kinds of spam including pharmaceuticals and stocks. Researchers devised an interesting mechanism to direct all the infected computers to communicate with a “sinkhole” or a computer they controlled. In spite of these stringent measures, Kelihos has started showing its face again, and very soon, its owners might regain control.

Not only has Kelihos started showing back on the radar, it is using new encryption techniques to hide its communications. A researcher at Kaspersky has also noted that two different RSA keys are being used; indicating that there might be two different groups controlling Kelihos.

Although researchers can install updates or clean up the infected computers, it is against the law in many geographical regions. A few days ago, Microsoft named Andrey N. Sabelnikov, a Russian citizen, guilty of running Kelihos. However, Russia does not allow extradition of its citizen, and he cannot be brought to a trial. Kaspersky Securelist investigated into the matter, revealing some interesting facts, like

Our investigation revealed that the new version appeared as early as September 28, right after Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab announced the neutralization of the original Hlux/Kelihos botnet.

Clearly, shutting down the Kelihos botnet will be a big challenge, and it will be interesting to see how far Microsoft and Kaspersky go in this case.

Microsoft reported its quarterly results for Q4 2011 (Q2 FY2012), with revenue of around $20.9 billion and a net profit of more than $6.6 billion. It has been Microsoft’s best quarter in recent times, with revenue growth of around 5% year-over-year.

Following the earnings release, Microsoft’s stock price has jumped to a 52-week high of more than $29.7. It is still relatively undervalued compared to other tech giants, in terms of its P/E ratio.

2012 is going to be the year of Microsoft, with Windows 8 coming out in mid-2012. Windows Phone is also expected to gain more traction this year.

“We delivered solid financial results, even as we prepare for a launch year that will accelerate many of our key products and services,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “Coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show, we’re seeing very positive reviews for our new phones and PCs, and a strong response to our new Metro style design that will unify consumer experiences across our phones, PCs, tablets, and television in 2012.”

Microsoft generated $4.74 billion in revenue from Windows, down 6% primarily because Windows license sales have slowed down, as customers wait for the launch of Windows 8. Windows 7 sold almost 525 million licenses since launch, and Windows 8 will presumably sell even more, fueled by the growing popularity of tablets as well as ultrabooks.

It continued to generate loads of cash from the Business division, comprised mainly of Office, Dynamics, SharePoint etc. Revenue grew 3% to $6.28 billion. Revenue from Servers grew 11% this quarter, to $4.77 billion.

The Entertainment and Devices division showed the most revenue growth, with revenue growing around 15% to $4.24 billion, primarily because of stellar sales of the Xbox and Kinect. Microsoft has sold more than 66 million Xbox 360 consoles and around 18 million Kinect units to date. With Kinect for Windows launching in February, revenue from this division should jump higher in the next quarter.

We all knew that Microsoft charges OEMs a considerable amount for licensing Windows Phone. However, what we didn’t know was exactly how much that “considerable amount” is. Now, ZTE has come forth and revealed what it is paying Microsoft, and it’s a fair bit more than most people had anticipated.

At the UK launch of the ZTE Tania, Santiago Sierra, the Portfolio Manager for ZTE UK, revealed that Microsoft gets as much as $23 to $30 per handset sold. ZTE cited the licensing fee as one of the biggest challenges towards introducing affordable Windows Phone devices. It also explains why so many OEMs are queuing up to release Android handsets, in spite of the tough competition. On paper, Android costs nothing, as the core product is offered by Google for free. However, there are several “hidden charges” associated with releasing Android handsets.

Pretty much every Android handset available in the market ships with Google Apps (Android Market, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube etc.), which are proprietary and require a licensing fee. Moreover, Microsoft indemnifies OEMs who license Windows Phone 7 against intellectual property infringement issues with the product. By comparison, Android manufacturers have to fend for themselves, which often involves expensive litigation and patent licensing costs. Several Android manufacturers including Samsung and LG pay Microsoft in the range of $3-$6 per device as patent licensing fee. Hardware driver development and testing for Android is also reportedly more expensive for Android than Windows Phone which has a standardized chassis.

These numerous hidden charges definitely add up. However, even after considering all extraneous costs, I would be surprised if Android costs anywhere near what Microsoft is charging the OEMs. Nevertheless, it is possible that ZTE is getting a particularly rough deal as it is a rather small manufacturer. Favored partners and bigger brands like Nokia and HTC probably have a more lucrative arrangement with the Redmond giant.

If you use Twitter and were following the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) tweets, it would be very hard for you to miss the #smokedbywindowsphone campaign, run by Ben Rudolph from Microsoft. I wrote about this campaign which pitted Windows Phone against a variety of today’s smartphones in conducting common tasks, in an earlier post. This campaign has been a super hit, and now that Ben has had some time to recover from CES, I asked him a few questions about the campaign. Here’s what he had to say:

Techie Buzz (TB): What was the motivation behind the campaign?

Ben Rudolph (BR): Everyone here on the Windows Phone team knew anecdotally, from talking with friends and family, and even strangers at airports, that Windows Phone is faster and easier than any other smartphone at doing the stuff that we do every day on our smartphones. We never went out to prove it in a head-to-head test. So, we decided to put our money where our mouth is at the biggest tech show in the world! What better place to put Windows Phone head to head against a huge variety of smartphone users, both in terms of their technical depth, but also in terms of the phones they have in their pocket. All in all, this was a fun way for us to stand up and say “We think we built something really awesome, and when you see it, we think you’ll agree”.

TB: What were the challenges like?

BR: All of the challenges involved tasks that smartphone users do every day – posting a photo to Facebook or Twitter, checking the weather, sending an SMS to your best friend, updating your status on your social networks, finding someplace nearby to eat – that kind of stuff.

Need bragging rights as a developer? Don’t have enough points and badges from Xbox Live? Well, Microsoft has the answer for you, Visual Studio Achievements!

In what seems to be an effort to rile developers up through ‘gamification’, Microsoft has announced a beta campaign called “Visual Studio Achievements”. By installing the Visual Studio Achievements Extension, you can unlock badges and earn points by simply writing code that you were already going to write! Analysis is done in the background each time you compile your project to test it. When you hit a certain objective, you unlock an achievement.

Next comes the leaderboard. All the points and badges you earn are tallied into a score and you’re stuck up onto an online leaderboard with all other registered developers who are taking part in the campaign. You can view challenging developer points, avatars and maybe eventually see what they are working on. It would be a great way to get developers to collaborate on ideas and projects.

If sharing your achievements with alike developers wasn’t enough, you can share badges through Twitter and Facebook. This can help you raise awareness for your application, and get recognition from your peers.

There are over 32 different badges you can unlock, from as easy as loading more extensions into Visual Studio, to as hard as having 50 different projects tied to a single solution.

There are fun badges, like the “Potty Mouth” achievements which rewards you for using 5 different curse words in a project, or the “Time for an Upgrade” badge that is unlocked if your project takes over 10 minutes to compile. It’s a simple way to add a level of fun to programming and give developers a way to show off their skills.

Microsoft just keeps on racking up small victories against the Android brigade. Just days after signing a patent licensing deal with Android device and manufacturer LG, covering all of its Android and Chrome OS devices sold in the U.S., Microsoft is apparently going to sign a patent licensing agreement with South Korea’s third largest handset maker – Pantech – according to a report by Yonhap.

“We are in talks with Microsoft over the patent use, but specific details have not yet been decided,” said a Pantech spokesman.

With Samsung, LG and Pantech, Microsoft now generates licensing revenue from the top 3 South Korean smartphone manufacturers. Other patent licensees include HTC, Quanta and almost every major Android device manufacturer except Motorola, which is now owned by Google.

Microsoft now generates licensing revenue from more than 70% of all Android devices sold in the U.S. Android is turning out to be the proverbial “goose that lays golden eggs” for Microsoft. Ironically, it seems that Microsoft will continue to make more money from Android than it will from Windows Phone, at least for the near future. Even Google hasn’t been able to monetize Android that well yet.

Check out this post for the complete back-story: Android: Microsoft’s New Cash Cow

Even as the anti-SOPA protests continue to gain momentum in the US, time may have come for a similar campaign in India. A Delhi High Court judge, while hearing a criminal complaint against Google, Facebook and other online services, threatened to block all such websites “like China”. This comes just weeks after Kapil Sibal, India’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, courted controversy by asking Facebook and Google to pre-screen content.

Backstory

The latest controversy began when, Vinay Rai, the editor of an Urdu-language newspaper, moved the lower court to prosecute 21 websites on which he discovered objectionable content. Speaking to the WSJ, Rai stated that the content he found “offends several religions including Hinduism, Islam and Christianity” and “involves pages and groups where users have mocked Hindu gods and goddesses, Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ”. In response, the trial court issued summons to the concerned organizations, which were approved by the Ministry of External Affairs.

“The sanctioning authority has personally gone through the entire records and materials produced before him and after considering and examining the same, he is satisfied that there is sufficient material to proceed against the accused persons under section 153-A, 153-B and 295-A of the IPC,” the Government said in its report.

Google, Facebook, and several others named in the complaint moved the High Court to seek exemption from the trial court as a similar case was already pending with the High Court. However, the HC judge – Justice Suresh Kait, not only refused to stay the trial court proceedings, but also threatened to go the China way if web-services didn’t clean up their act. He asked websites to develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove offensive and objectionable material from their web pages.

As you might expect, the court’s remark sent alarm bells ringing and have elicited sharp criticism both within and outside the country. Google’s advocate N K Kaul, remarked, “The issue relates to a constitutional issue of freedom of speech and expression and suppressing it was not possible as the right to freedom of speech in democratic India separates us from a totalitarian regime like China”. Manoj Nigam, VP-IT, Vodafone India, termed the demand to monitor and remove content “slightly absurd”, while Tamal Chakravarthy, CIO of Ericsson India believes that “Its (sic) highly improbable that such an act would come into existence”.