Microsoft denies running a call-in ‘Save XP’ petition. The software giant pleads with users not to dial its technical support numbers and ask for XP to be available beyond June 30, while users say they couldn’t get through to Microsoft’s support lines. Related: Save Windows XP. Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock fires back at Carl Icahn with claims that the billionaire investor pushing for a Microsoft takeover does not have a plan in place beyond the acquisition. Verizon Wireless buys Alltel for $28.1 billion; it would create a carrier 80 million subscribers strong. With the commercial version of its Lotus Symphony suite of productivity applications, IBM releases what it hopes will be an ODF-based Office killer. Calling it “Analytics as a cloud-computing service,” Panorama Software unveils PowerApps, a hosted OLAP engine that one analyst says makes BI easier for users, and reduces the burden on IT of having to upgrade and maintain desktop analytical applications. BI steps into the cloud. And even though the OSS community is not presently acknowledging it, the time has come for a fresh look at the open source business model because, Savio Rodrigues argues, selling proprietary products is truly the best way forward. Software Development