After 16 years, Microsoft is kissing Hotmail goodbye and putting its Internet-mail energy behind the brand-new Outlook.com.

The 300 million folks who use Hotmail—which Microsoft acquired back in 1997 when it was just a year old—will be able to keep their current email addresses, but the brand is disappearing and all of those users will be switched over to the new site by summer’s end. 

CNN reports that Microsoft plans to put some big advertising dollars into the new site. That push began Tuesday with the release of two commercials that both highlight how sweet a consumer’s life can be if he or she is using Outlook. This is a shift from Microsoft’s Scroogled campaign, which has aimed to get the 425 million Gmail users around the globe to feel irritated at Google and make the switch to Outlook. Scroogled worked effectively for Microsoft when it initially used it to help expose consumers to the plusses of its Bing search engine compared to Google’s. Continue reading...

Things are rough all over, but the world’s fourth-largest brewer, Carlsberg, is hoping they will at least get a little better in northern and western Europe as well as Russia to help boost its sales. That's the guidance Carlsberg is giving to Wall Street, as it adjusts its financial outlook and warns investors that “operating profits would stall this year,” Reuters reports.

"We have taken a cautious view for northern and western Europe, and assume a slightly declining market in 2012," Carlsberg CFO Jorn Jensen stated at an investor presentation. "Consumers in Europe are assumed to remain under pressure from the macro economic situation." The beer market in Russia, where Carlsberg earns almost of its sales, should see “modest growth” in 2012 after a serious falloff last year.

Carlsberg CEO Jorgen Buhl said that the brand is working hard to build up its market share in Russia again. That plan includes taking “full control of Russian unit Baltika through an offer to buy the 15 percent it does not already own.”

While that would help its position in Russia immediately, the company admitted that the “challenging environment" in northern and western Europe would make things difficult there. The company is also looking for acquisitions in Asia, according to Bloomberg, where China is seen as the company's "growth engine."

IBM’s “5 in 5” predictions are out and making waves, forecasting five innovations “which will alter the tech landscape in the coming five years,” according to Bernie Meyerson, VP of innovation at IBM. A recap:

1. People power will come to life: Created energy, generated by anything that moves or produces heat, will be captured, stored in batteries, and used to power things from phones and cars to homes and offices and cities. “You’ll see new ecosystems of generation and capture,” Meyerson said. “You generate 60 to 65 watts while walking. You could easily use that to power a phone forever.”

2. You will never need a password again: Machines will automatically know you are who you say you are…or not. Each person’s unique biological identity is biometric data, a.k.a., multi-factor biometrics, such as retina scans, voice files and facial definition, which will be harnessed and used to create an online password.Continue reading...

After a relatively rosy first couple of months of the year, US economic reports are more mixed in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the resulting disruption in manufacturing and supply networks, as well as with rising oil prices amid war in the Middle East.

While domestic auto sales appear to have continued their recovery in March, for instance, American consumer confidence has dipped again lately. New Conference Board data shows that consumer confidence dipped 8.6% in March, "pulled down by gloomy expectations about the economy and labor markets." 

Even so, with calamity and strife causing global jitters from Japan to Libya and everywhere in between, IHS Global Insight has been telling its clients worried about the US economy: "Relax."Continue reading...