O’GARA UFO FIELD, Armonk, Monday (NTN) — With the final humiliation of the SCO Group and the retirement of Pamela Jones from Groklaw, Microsoft has stepped in with sponsorship to fill “a much-needed gap.”

CrockLaw will be “a place where lawyers and geeks could explain things to each other and work together, so they’d understand each other’s work better,” said Sandy Gupta of Microsoft’s Open Solutions Group, formerly of SCO. “We need to crowdsource the work of patent suit production. The attack from Linux is in full swing, and Microsoft’s clear ownership of the number 17 must be vigorously defended.”

“It is crucial to foster openness and create an environment where a choice of standards is available,” said Steve Mutkoski, Senior Standards Strategist. “Specifically, a choice of our standards.”

“Also,” added Gupta, “we can gather leads on tracking down Mini-Microsoft.”

Volunteers have gathered to the site from across Microsoft, as employees desperately try not to be in this year’s bottom 20% ranking with 50% of their co-workers.

The site runs on SharePoint, with site members’ licence fees being generously discounted by the company. The site has “cracked six figures” on Alexa.

The “PJ” department at IBM issued a sigh and requested an oil change before manufacturing a new birth certificate for President Obama and seeding the skies with alien chemtrails in preparation for Project Blue Beam.

HOT HOT HOT, Forever Alone, Thursday (NTN) — 35% of US smartphone users admit to using apps before even getting out of bed. Doctors advise the other 65% that it is “entirely natural” and “nothing to be ashamed of.”

The most popular in-bed activity admitted to is accessing “social networks,” as respondents called it, doing air-quotes. The most common complaint is that the screen is too small to display photos properly, and that it does not wipe clean sufficiently well. Many were tempted to buy a tablet next.

Smartphone vendors and app writers have tried to capitalise on the bedroom market. Vibrate mode is particularly popular and is thought to be driving the accessories market for protective silicone cases.

“Social networking” (air-quoted) remains important when people first wake up, since most are alone and will forever stay that way. 20 percent do a last “check-in” (also air-quoted) before going to sleep at night.

Sociologists suggest the bedroom “apping” phenomenon will be self-limiting, given the effects on fertility of carrying a microwave transmitter in your pocket all day right next to your gonads.

BOLGIAS 8 AND 9, Seattle, Tuesday (NTN) — Microsoft remains on the bleeding edge of innovation with its completely new-from-the-ground-up Windows Bing Voice™ Internet phone platform, formerly known as Skype.

Windows Bing Voice™ was developed entirely in-house at an acquisition cost of only $8.5 billion. “Our developer teams know the meaning of confidentiality,” said Steve Ballmer. “Heck, even they didn’t know it was Skype until today. That’s how, uh, stealth we are.”

The new Windows Bing Voice™ client will be included with Windows Phone 7, Office 365, Kin and Zune. “Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms! On a case by case time and availability basis, of course. We’ll give our Mac Business Unit developer details for Windows Bing Voice™ 2011 Ultimate Edition™ by 2013, for sure.”

Service is expected to remain “at 100%” as the server infrastructure is moved from Linux to Windows, though Microsoft has not specified what that will be 100% of. The peer-to-peer functionality of Skype will also be harnessed to distribute Windows updates and Windows Genuine Advantage serial number blacklists.

Google said that the Google Voice servers were “holding up well” under the influx of new users.

CASHIER’S DESK, California Senate, Saturday (NTN) — The associations listed on this letter are writing to strongly oppose California Senate Bill 761. It would create an unnecessary, unenforceable and unconstitutional regulatory burden, as our products could get uppity and want “privacy.”

The measure would negatively affect products who have come to expect fun browser games and free services through the Internet, at the mere price of their DNA and that of their first-born. Additionally, it would make them more vulnerable to security threats. (We thought we’d throw that one in even though we have no idea how that would work.)

California law already provides a number of significant privacy protections for products to protect their sensitive personal information, at least on the books even if they can’t use them against us.

Products can easily opt out of the collection of data. The four leading Internet browsers all provide user-friendly filtering options that block the ability of companies to collect data or track products’ Internet use, even though that’s a complete red herring since we keep all the good stuff on our servers and sell it to each other.

The bill would harm California’s Internet economy and innovation, which absolutely relies on the business model of “1. Brutally sodomise products’ personal privacy; 2. Sell ads.” We also vaguely threaten to fire everyone we employ, just as if we don’t have ridiculously profitable businesses already and can easily afford to employ everyone we have work for.

The bill gratuitously singles out advertising companies for special regulation, just because we deal in egregious violations daily. We think you should look to the video game companies too. Opt-in consent is not a viable compliance route for most tracking models, as we know damn well the products wouldn’t give us the serial codes to their souls if we actually asked them.

The bill has recently become even more extreme, imposing a free-standing flat ban on any covered entity sharing or transferring any covered information, for any purpose at all. This provision is clearly bin Laden-inspired communism and must be removed. Our selling each other the data is, of course, free enterprise as the Founders intended. We might as well just shut down Google tomorrow! Really! We’ll find ONE MILLION PEOPLE WHO HATE THIS BILL ON FACEBOOK. See if we don’t.

SCHESTOWITZ, Newham, Tuesday (NTN) — Office 365, Microsoft’s pay-as-you-go answer to Google Docs, delivers the same delight you’re used to from Office on your PC, only slower and clunkier and only working on Internet Explorer. Remember Internet Explorer? Of course you do!

Microsoft Online Services have marketed Office 365 directly to your bosses, who have little people like you to do all the bits that involve actually touching a computer. It promises a fully integrated solution to your daily working needs, with the reliability of Hotmail and Sidekick. That is, it promises it to your IT department, who can now inflict ribbon toolbars on your system without you even having to reboot.

The application monitors your daily activity for increased efficiency, automatically timesheeting your use of Facebook or Twitter at work, for your comfort and convenience when demonstrating their business necessity and utility to your company’s social media strategy to your boss. Firefox no longer works, but that’s a small price to pay for this sort of well-maintained elegance.

The final Office 365 release will include a marketplace where Microsoft partners will be able to sell applications for your Windows Phone or BlackBerry. (Android and iPhone are not supported, and will in fact explode on contact.)

The ribbon toolbar will not be present in the next version of Office 365, whose interface will be based on the recently-released hit game Portal 2. “Windows 7 was my idea,” says user interaction consultant GlaDOS.