Posted 06/11/09 at 03:05:56 PM by Paul Lilly

Microsoft today announced it would stop selling its Microsoft Money Plus software at the end of the month, and that all purchased Money Plus products must be activated prior to January 31, 2011.

"With banks, brokerage firms, and websites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed," Microsoft wrote on its Money webpage. "After suspending annual updates of Money Plus in 2008, Microsoft is announcing today that we will no longer offer Microsoft Money Plus for purchase after June 30, 2009."

The decision doesn't come as too much of a surprise. In August of last year, Microsoft pulled its Money software from retail shelves and began offering the program as a download-only, while also announcing it would no longer offer annual updates.

"It's a mix of what's going on in the market, what makes sense for long-term for us and a little bit on consumer behavior," said Adam Sohn, a director in Microsoft's Online Business Services unit.

Money joins a growing list of Microsoft products to get the axe since January. Earlier this year, Microsoft said it was discontinuing its Encarta encyclopedia and also stopped selling its Windows OneCare antivirus suite.

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Posted 04/27/09 at 11:30:17 AM by David Murphy

Green. It's all the rage in the technology world nowadays. You've got green hard drives. Green laptops. Green desktops. Green printers (with soy ink!). Green displays. Green power strips. Louis Armstrong saw skies of blue and clouds of white, but any geek worth his electric bill sees nothing but green. It's the color of the environment, and it's the color of all the cash you'll be saving by using green-themed applications to curtail your out-of-control PC habits. Or normal PC habits, because anyone can benefit from the open-source and freeware applications we're profiling in this week's software roundup. Best of all, most of these applications automatically take care of your green actions for you--set them up to run, and you won't have to lift a finger to tap into increased savings and Captain Planet-style goodwill.

The power is yours... after the jump!

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Posted 01/12/09 at 04:09:15 PM by Andy Salisbury

According to Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, the International Revenue Service should start taxing the economies of Second Life, World of Warcraft and other virtual worlds. In an annual report posted on the IRS website, Olsen has stated that there are a number of issues that the IRS should address before they get out of control.

"Economic activities associated with virtual worlds may present an emerging area of noncompliance, in part, because the IRS has not issued guidance about whether and how taxpayers should report such activities," Olson writes in her report. Alongside that, she identifies that almost all income is subject to taxation, even prizes and winnings.

This isn’t the first time this issue has been mentioned, though. Since 2003 people both on and offline have looked ad the taxation of virtual economies and Dan Miller, a senior economist for the congressional Joint Economic Committee, has started playing with the idea of taxing MMORPGs after he’d taken a step into online gaming.

With any luck, this won’t come full circle. It would be a huge burden on taxpayers, having to report their every move in World of Warcraft to Uncle Sam, but who would really want to get caught up in paperwork just to play a video game?

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Posted 11/24/08 at 07:47:15 PM by Nathan Grayson

According to recent data compiled by analyst group Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, only 4% of games are profitable.

Sounds like gaming is one quarter-donated-to-a-street-Santa away from snorkeling through your dumpster, right? Unsurprisingly, no.

As it turns out, initial reports concerning the EEDAR findings in question got their words in a jumble. See, the 96% statistic came from this little number:

"Only 4% of games that make it to market actually make a profit, he says. About 60% of a game's budget is spent reworking or redesigning a game. Armed with all this data, companies can make those tough calls early in the development process."

But!

According to a press release from EEDAR, that statistic should've read: "Only 4% of games that enter production will return a significant profit." However, 80% of games that enter production never make it to market, which kind of throws off the curve for the rest of the class.

Of the games that actually make it to market, then, a far less pukey 20% turn a profit. And while that doesn't exactly conjure up images of mansions and double-decker Ferraris, it's enough to keep the industry alive and (mostly) thriving.

So, that's that.  

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Posted 09/04/06 at 05:05:22 PM by Norman Chan

Assassination is a risky business (or so we're told), but as the saying goes, the bigger the risk, the sweeter the reward.

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