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Novell Inc. sued the software giant in 2004, claiming Microsoft duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product. Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan are building the world's biggest plane to help launch cargo and astronauts into space, in the latest of several ventures fueled by technology tycoons clamoring to write America's next chapter in spaceflight. Their plans, unveiled Tuesday, call for a twin-fuselage aircraft with wings longer than a football field to carry a rocket high into the atmosphere and drop it, avoiding the need for a launch pad and the expense of additional rocket fuel.

Microsoft is launching a new interface for the Xbox 360 game console, borrowing the tile-based “Metro” look that started on the Zune music players, moved to the Windows Phone software and will spread to PCs next year with the arrival of Windows 8. The new version of the software will be downloaded to all users starting December 6.

Some assembly required, at this point, but exciting news, especially if you’re a tinkerer. Microsoft will build a special version of the Kinect motion controller for the Windows, Craig Eisler, general manager of Kinect for Windows wrote in a blog post Tuesday. The Kinect has been a hit on Microsoft’s XBox360 gaming console, but the motion-sensor has also sparked widespread interest from tinkerers, hackers, scientists and startups.

Microsoft's Windows 95 rollout presented the most challenges in the company's history, leading to several last-minute changes to technical features that would no longer support a rival software maker's word processor, Bill Gates testified Monday in a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit filed by the creator of WordPerfect.

The Windows Phone Marketplace continues to grow at a steady rate. In little over a year, the Marketplace now has over 40,000 published apps according to an estimate from All About Windows Phone. This number is not the total available to consumers, but the total number that has been submitted to the online store. An estimated 5,500 apps are no longer available to consumers because they were removed by Microsoft or the developer.

Oops! Nokia will launch a Windows 8-based tablet in June 2012, according to Paul Amsellen, the company’s general manager in France. He disclosed the tidbit in an interview with Les Echos; The Verge picked up on the news.

Competition's all relative. Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL all compete for ad dollars, but they all agree that marketers ought to put their budgets into premium content, not search or social.

Essentially, Rizzo says that Google just throws stuff out there, sees if it sticks and then only continues to develop and support those pieces of software which customers actually want to use. In contrast, Microsoft does lots and lots of planning about what it is going to do and then sticks with it having done so.

Mozilla and MIcrosoft have teamed up to release a special version of Firefox that integrates Bing as the default search engine.