Are you content with simple multi-touch and built-in accelerometers? Microsoft Research thinks not. In fact they’re already working hard in the labs, toward integrating force-sensing technology. The kind of thing that will enable gestures and let you twist on-screen imagery without making UMPCs out of flexible material.

Those behind the idea feel that such tech would “turn an otherwise passive component that just holds the device together into an active input surface.” Auditory cues might even enable users to be alerted when they’ve applied enough pressure to cause a change. I just figure it’s a great way to play Rubik’s Cube in the future.

A rather strange landmark of the Albany, New York skyline is The Egg, a local performing arts venue. This oddly designed building could well be an omen for Microsoft’s freshly announced “Albany” subscription service - a big, fat laid egg.

Albany, as discussed by Microsoft product manager Bryson Gordon, will be an all you can eat service for consumers which gives them all the Microsoft goodness they can handle under one desktop. You can, for x amount of dollars, gain access to Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live OneCare and Windows Live Mail, Messenger and Photo Gallery. This is on top of security updates and the like.

Microsoft is getting set to add some new colors to compliment its popular Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 3000, which is said to currently be the best selling notebook mouse in the United States. These special edition mice will be priced at around $30 each.

Microsoft is coloring its expanded mouse line up red, dark pink, green, brown and khaki. The mice have their own unique color names by the way, just for the record, but they are too cheesy to put in this post (creme brulee?). The mice act much the same as other optical mice do, offering smooth tracking (Microsoft reports 1,000 dpi and 6,000 frames per second) and wireless connectivity to the host computer.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang on Monday shot back a letter in response to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s 3-week ultimatum for Yahoo to come to negotiations with a firm message that Yahoo has not changed their tune in regards to Microsoft taking over the search engine. Ballmer’s letter had spelled out plans for a proxy contest to unseat the exist Yahoo board of directors and that continued delays could reduce the $44.6 billion offer which would mean less for shareholders.

“Our board’s view of your proposal has not changed,” said Yang along with Chairman Roy Bostock. “We continue to believe that your proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo and our shareholders.”

Instead of going through the negotiations Yahoo has chosen to beat their exclamation points into swords and fight back against Microsoft. Yang continued in the letter stating that the offer and proxy contest would not be in the best interest of Yahoo and certainly not part of a friendly transaction as Microsoft first proposed.

Microsoft issued another letter to the Yahoo board of directors on Saturday with a deadline of 3 weeks for the company to accept the previous $44.6 billion takeover offer that Microsoft proposed in the beginning of February. Despite some recent talks between the two companies, an agreement has not been made and Microsoft is starting to lean heavy on the search engine firm’s board by threatening to go straight to the shareholders if necessary.

“If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board,” the letter read. “The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.”, stated Steve Ballmer’s letter to Yahoo.

Microsoft has announced that the plan for the general end of shipping Windows XP has been extended a couple of years, at least for the Windows XP Home edition. The latest plan for the end of most sales of XP was dated on June 30, 2008 but the advent of a new market of ultra low cost PCs (ULCPCs) has made Microsoft change there tune on forcing everyone onto the new Vista system.

Microsoft has just released Windows Vista SP1 which is usually a good milestone for those looking at upgrading to the next version of Windows, and is a point at which Microsoft helps push them along, but in the case of these UPCPCs, the Vista OS is just to big and expensive. The OLPC (supposed $100) XO laptop is one such machine that could still take advantage of the XP OS but would be forced to stick with Linux or look elsewhere if XP were phased out.

Check out this awesome concept. We all know the Zune has not been able to compete with the iPod. But the Xune on the other hand, would do very well I think. It combines music and gaming. It’s a combination of the Zune, iPod, Xbox and Sony Mylo.

The device features shoulder buttons, a touch-wheel with a center button, a sliding keyboard and 4:3 ratio aspect ratio screen. The keyboard can be used for web surfing, email and chat. It’s compatible with the Xbox 360 and Windows Media Center. It’s not bad looking. I’d hit that.

Here’s a concept device for snooty french artists who wear berets and hold a palette in one hand, while grimacing and scoping out the landscape between forefinger and thumb. This nice looking Palette-Digital Artist is an entry in the Microsoft NextGen PC Design Competition for 2008. It’s a handheld touchscreen PC, and like a traditional palette, it has a thumbhole for easy handling.

The design will make you feel like a futuristic Picasso and it will let you digitally paint your next masterpiece with a stylus. It’s wireless of course, so you could paint anything and not be tethered to the PC. The shape is amazing and could be used for many things, not just painting. Pretty nice.

Shortly after the fall of the HD DVD format Microsoft officially announced that they were ending production of the HD DVD player for the Xbox 360 and we, along with a number of others, figured they would be jumping on board with Blu-ray in short order.

According to Microsoft exec Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for the Xbox 360, the company appears to have no plans to move in the direction of a Blu-ray player, or any high-def player for that matter, for their game console. “Xbox is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience,” Greenberg said. He followed up that comment with “We’re the only console offering digital distribution of entertainment content,” which leads us to believe that Microsoft may have taken this opportunity to rid the console of physical disc media all together.

Microsoft is showing off today a new wireless laser desktop combo which is somewhat designer focused. It is called the Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 7000 and it prices around $130.

The Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 7000 is what Microsoft called “Windows Aero inspired.” It offers up a thin design in the keyboard, complete with “smoked” translucent border and “floating” keys which can be personalized. The keyboard also is designed to be ergonomically friendly.

We knew it would happen sometime soon and yesterday Microsoft officially discontinued the production of the HD DVD player add-on for the Xbox 360 game console. If you’re one of the estimated 300,000 folks that already own the player Microsoft said they will still continue to support it and uphold the warranty that came with it, but they won’t be selling any new ones. Now that all of the big studios have gone Blu-ray it’s unlikely you’ll be wearing it out anyway without any new movies to play on it.

Microsoft says it doesn’t feel that dumping the HD DVD format will affect its game console sales, but we’re thinking that adding a Blu-ray player like the PS3 has just might help. Microsoft was previously one of the major backers of Toshiba and the HD DVD format before Warner announced they were Blu-ray exclusive and the whole HD DVD camp came tumbling down shortly after.

This is a finalist in Microsoft’s Next-Gen PC Design Competition, called The Momenta PC, that you strap to your neck. It begins it’s symbiotic relationship with you by recording snippets of your whole life in an active buffer. When your heart rate goes up, it records whatever it is that’s making you excited until you tell it to stop, so you can view it later.

The idea is that it would capture the most exciting moments of your life. You know, the ones you always wish you had your camera ready for. But yes, it is creepy. Sure it would remember all of the fun times, but what about the horrible? Thanks for the memories, now please stop your parasitic relationship with my neck.

In case you might have missed it, Microsoft has been in the action figure business for about two years. It was easy to miss. MSDN, the Microsoft Developer Network, recently announced the latest members of the Source Fource, limited edition, collectible mini-action figures based on Microsoft development and software products. They’re tiny and plastic, resembling LEGO figures. The characters include “Windows Vista Sensei,” “Office Master,” “ISV Server Gal,” “Virtual Labs Guy,” “SQL Server Gal,” “Visual Labs Guy,” and “MSDN Webcast Guy.”

You won’t be able to get these figures in stores however. The two latest figures, “Windows Vista Sensei” and “Office Master,” will only be available to the first 5,000 users attending at least two MSDN webcasts or those who complete at least two MSDN Virtual Lab courses between March 15 and April 15. The other figures were released in 2006 and can’t easily be found either. Pretty strange stuff. You figure they would want to market these things and put them on store shelves, since geeks have money and all.

Microsoft announced Monday that it is going to acquire Danger, software maker for the popular consumer-targeted Sidekick mobile device. Reportedly the purchase came after months of negotiations, with Danger receiving a number of different offers and Microsoft doubling their original offer to keep Danger out of others hands. That offer has been rumored to be as much as $500 million, but no official terms of the deal have been revealed.

While Microsoft has done well making software for smartphones the company mostly targets business users and fewer general consumers. The Sidekick from Danger is almost the opposite and is aimed at the younger consumer-based market in which Microsoft seems to be keen on getting into. Microsoft also recently made a $44.6 billion offer to Yahoo to help build a larger online, consumer-facing presence and could have Danger in mind to be part of that overall strategy, working against dominate competitive figures like Google and RIM.

And now we bring you live, breaking coverage of Super Tuesday. Oh wait, sorry…wrong Tuesday. It is the second Tuesday of the month, which means it is Microsoft Patch Tuesday. Or, as we like to call this little feature here at SlipperyBrick, Microsoft Security Bulletin Watch.

This month Microsoft graces us with six Critical, five Important and nine Non-Security, High Priority updates. You can get most of these through the Microsoft Update site. Others you’ll probably need to download manually. Which updates you need vary, of course, on your machine’s specific Windows OS flavor and what you already have installed on your PC. Check after the jump for a summary list.