Microsoft

On Saturday, Steve Ballmer wrote an open letter to Yahoo’s board of directors asking for a response to its January bid within three weeks, stating, “by any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today.” The letter sounds a bit like two kids fighting over a comic book. One kid (Microsoft, Ballmer) thinks that Yahoo isn’t worth as much as the original offer, while the other kid (Yahoo) still thinks it’s worth more than the bid offered in the first place.

Today, Yahoo responded to Microsoft’s pressuring three-week deadline stating, “We continue to believe that your proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo and our stockholders,” and turning the tables by saying that “as a result of the decrease in your own personal stock price, the value of your proposal is significantly lower than it was when you made your initial proposal,” Yahoo said, according to Reuters.

As it stands, Yahoo remains unimpressed by Microsoft’s offer, and the deals are still waiting on the table. Microsoft’s attempt at lighting a fire under Yahoo sounds failed, and I wonder what will happen if another offer isn’t made by the three-week deadline. Will Microsoft suddenly forget that it set a timetable and place yet another, higher bid? Or will it walk away from this playground brawl altogether?

Adobe announced this morning that Microsoft has licensed Flash Lite 3.x for future versions of its Internet Explorer mobile browser as well as Reader LE for viewing Adobe PDF documents on your mobile handset without needing third-party software to do so.

In the past, Flash Lite 3 support has been limited to handsets running Windows Mobile, Symbian S60 and Qualcomm BREW. Users with Windows Mobile 5 may have had experience playing Flash Lite 2.1 on their phones, but it wasn’t an optimal experience because it didn’t support FLV files on Web sites. Flash Lite 3 was launched in October 2007, adding FLV support, as well as a 15-20 percent increase in ActionScript performance, and a 20-30 percent increase in rendering performance. It now supports most Flash 8 content available on the Web. For more changes between the versions, check out Adobe’s version comparison Web site.

The announcement means that consumers will have a richer out-of-the-box browsing experience, although Adobe wasn’t clear in naming which version of Windows Mobile Microsoft would include Adobe Flash Lite. If you’re antsy to view Flash Web sites on your mobile phone sooner, we suggest signing up for the second Skyfire beta, a browser that already supports Flash and provides much faster browsing speeds than IE mobile does.