Renamed “Windows Live Hotmail”, Microsoft’s email service has been revamped. Of course, the changes have been in the works for a long time. I remember when the beta came out: Not long after GMail launched. Using AJAX and DHTML, Hotmail is once again a viable email option. I still won’t use it, though. My main email accounts are GMail, NTugo Email, and GMail Domain Email.

So what’s new with Hotmail? Nothing, if you were beta-ing it for the last few years. It acts a little like Outlook Express, and I’ll leave it at that. Oh, and a quarter of your screen space is taken up by ads.

If you create a new Hotmail account, you’ll get the new version. Old users can click a button to switch to the new version.

Apple, it seems, may be the first computer company to readily offer laptops with LED-backlit displays. While they haven’t confirmed it yet (do they ever confirm anything?), there is a good chance.

What’s so great about that? LEDs last a heck of a lot longer than the fluorescent bulbs currently behind the screens. If implemented right, they offer much better colors than conventional LCDs. Today’s LCD monitors tend to have washed out colors due to the backlight. LED-lit LCDs can put an end to that irritating problem.

There’s speculation that Apple will announce the updated laptops (if they are planning them…) when Mac OS X Leopard is released. Makes sense to me.

YES! The Microsoft Empire isn’t about to double in size! Yahoo has turned down Microsoft’s offer for a $50 billion merger. Yahoo claims that competing is “more productive” than merging. It looks like The Tyrant’s outreach from the offline world to the web has been postponed. Take that, Microsoft.

Yahoo has been trying to conquer the web lately (again). After lying dormant for awhile, the great beast that is Yahoo has resumed it’s evil rampage. They’ve acquired Flickr, Del.icio.us, and seem to be planning to get into the OpenID business. With the launch of Yahoo Brand Universe, they began trying to take on the many fan sites on the web. They’re claims? They claim that there are too many small sites out there run by individuals. I prefer those sites to Yahoo by far. Take The Leaky Cauldron for example. It’s one of the two foremost Harry Potter websites. They have successfully become an authoritative source for Harry Potter news, and everything Harry Potter. I don’t want a Yahoo minisite for everything. It’s to late for them to do anything about Harry Potter though. Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet have large user bases.

Google too has been acquiring other sites, though mainly to make sure they stay around. YouTube is a prime example. Google bought them mainly because the YouTube guys had huge bandwidth bills piling up. YouTube is still going, and it’s run by the same people as it was before, though Google pays the bills. What Google did was they paid $3 billion for a say in what goes on at YouTube. Recently Google bought Doubleclick, a major ad network, for different reasons. Doubleclick was acquired so Microsoft wouldn’t get their hands on it. Plus, I think Google is trying to kill off the pop-up ad.

Microsoft is now wanting to acquire Yahoo for $50 billion. If it happens, it will have been the biggest website event (financially) in a long time. Possibly since Google went public. Why would they want to do that? FYI, Microsoft is just as bad at Yahoo about trying to take over the world. Here’s a quick formula for you: 95% of the world’s computers run Windows + Millions of combined Yahoo and MSN users + More acquisitions = Total cyber domination. This has probably been running through Bill Gates’ head for awhile now…

Well, I don’t want the Microsoft Empire to own the internet. If Microsoft does buy Yahoo, they will continue to buy up innovative new sites, adding them to the ever-growing Microsoft Empire. Hopefully they won’t merge.