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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who is worth about $14 billion, has gone paperless, and truly believes that the only difference between Microsoft and Apple in the mobile market is that the  iPhone  maker made one right decision--choosing ARM chips for its smartphone, rather than Intel's battery-hogging alternatives. That's about all you're going to learn about the man in  a sprawling seven-page profile from Businessweek . True to his desire to control how Microsoft is perceived by consumers, Ballmer let little go in the profile, and instead tried to keep positive about his company's prospects in 2012, saying the tech giant will have "a reset moment" this year. Related stories Ballmer highlights Windows Phone, Windows 8, Xbox Kinect (video) Ballmer reveals first LTE Windows Phone on AT&T (live blog) Microsoft: Kinect coming to Windows February 1 For Ballmer, 2012 could prove to be an important turning point in his career. This year will be the one whe...

The Kinect for Windows retail box, as seen on Amazon.com When Microsoft's mega-hit Kinect motion controller for the  Xbox  was released in 2010, its closed nature inspired  a hefty bounty  to hack it and come up with open-source drivers. But now that Microsoft has released an  official version of Kinect for Windows , the team that offered that payout is wondering whether they might have to do it again. Microsoft eventually realized that there was an insatiable thirst for developing open-source Kinect projects and released a software development kit of its own. But now the folks at open-source hardware purveyors Adafruit are wondering if the new Kinect for Windows platform will reject any projects made using open tools. "There was a time when Microsoft would not even consider a Kinect for Windows, but the open-source community created so many amazing projects (and products) a new effort was started to Window-ize and SDK-ize the Kinect to be part of all of this...

LAS VEGAS--Microsoft has sung its  CES  swan song. The company announced plans last month  to walk away from the Consumer Electronics Show  after a nearly two-decade involvement with the confab and the organization behind it. That made tonight's keynote address from Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer the beginning of the end. Microsoft  didn't make any major announcements  (other than the fact that Kinect is  coming to Windows on February 1 ). But then, the company has said the timing of the annual confab doesn't generally align with its product news milestones, and that's the key reason it's bailing on the show. Microsoft talked up Windows Phone (its mobile phone operating system that's been getting some praise from the tech press), gave a look at some of the upcoming trim ultrabook computers running  Windows 7 , demoed some previously disclosed features of Windows 8 (which should debut toward the end of 2012), and touted its tile-based Me...