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Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Pictures of the year: Technology

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    Microsoft to buy corporate group-chat provider

    SEATTLE
    Wed Aug 29, 2007 9:28pm EDT

    Stocks

       
    A technician adjusts a spotlight at the exhibition stand of Microsoft in preparation for the CeBIT computer fair in the northern German town of Hanover March 12, 2007. Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O> agreed to acquire Parlano, which provides technology to allow companies to create group chat sessions for employees, and add the application to its portfolio of communication offerings. REUTERS/Christian Charisius

    SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) agreed to acquire Parlano, which provides technology to allow companies to create group chat sessions for employees, and add the application to its portfolio of communication offerings.

    The world's largest software maker announced the deal on Wednesday and expects the acquisition to close in the fourth quarter of 2007. Microsoft did not disclose financial terms.

    Parlano, a Chicago-based company spun off from Swiss bank UBS (UBSN.VX)(UBS.N), has about 50 employees and is backed by Longworth Venture Partners and Oak Investment Partners.

    Parlano's MindAlign group chat application started as a dealing room tool to let traders in various locations share market-moving information.

    Microsoft said it decided to buy Parlano instead of trying to build a competing application because MindAlign already has a long list of customers running the program, including Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) and Putnam Investments.

    Microsoft plans to offer the group chat application as part of its "unified communication" offering, which delivers telephone, e-mail, messaging and Web conferencing over Internet networks.

    It will add the group chat feature to Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Communicator.


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