Two spacewalking astronauts floated out of a hatch on the international space station on Friday to help install a new live-in compartment on the orbiting lab. Astronauts Scott Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock got started about 30 minutes ahead of schedule, as the space station passed over South America. “Like kids on Christmas morning getting up early,” one of the spacewalkers said just before he ventured outside. “Look at the full moon, Wheels, off to your right,” Parazynski said, using Wheelock’s nickname. “What a view.” Parazynski and Wheelock will help astronauts inside the station use a robotic arm to transfer the compartment — called Harmony — from Discovery’s payload bay to its position on the space station. Their first task, however, involved removing a broken antenna from the station and packing it aboard Discovery so it can be refurbished back on Earth. Wheelock rode on the end of the space station’s robotic arm to remove the antenna and carry it to Discovery’s payload bay. “Thanks for the ride,” he said to astronauts Daniel Tani and Stephanie Wilson, who were operating the arm inside the station. “No problem, man, you look great out there,” Tani responded. “Yeah, you guys look great,” Wilson added. Harmony will serve as the docking port for European and Japanese laboratories that will be delivered on the next three shuttle flights. The Italian-made module is about the size of a school bus, weighing nearly 16 tons. Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli joined Discovery’s crew to personally deliver the pressurized chamber. He was coordinating the 6.5-hour spacewalk from inside the station. A veteran spacewalker, Parazynski is set to participate in four of the record-tying five spacewalks scheduled for this jam-packed mission. This is Wheelock’s first trip to space. The 10 astronauts aboard Discovery and the space station face the most challenging construction tasks ever attempted in a single mission. They may get a little…

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Microsoft Quarterly Profit Hits $4.29 Billion
After Microsoft Corp. executives laid out plans in July to win at Web search, online advertising, Web-based software and video games, analysts wondered if the world’s largest software maker had too many balls in the air. Microsoft’s answer, in the form of its fiscal first-quarter results announced Thursday, was a resounding “no.” Microsoft said its profit soared 23 percent to $4.29 billion, or 45 cents per share, from $3.48 billion, or 35 cents per share, during the same period last year, as brisk sales of the new “Halo 3″ video game, Windows and Office helped it breeze past Wall Street’s expectations. Investors sent Microsoft shares up more than 12, or $3.94, to $35.93 at the open of trading Friday, a new 52-week high. Analysts, on average, had forecast a profit of 39 cents per share, according to a Thomson Financial poll. Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 grew 27 percent to $13.76 billion from $10.81 billion last year, beating analysts’ forecast by more than $1 billion. “It’s a very good report,” said McAdams Wright Ragen analyst Sid Parakh. “I think people are going to revisit how they look at Microsoft. So far they’ve been viewing it as value stock. Going forward, they’ll think about it as a growth stock.” Microsoft sold 88 million copies of Windows Vista since the operating system went on sale in January — 28 million since the end of July — according to Colleen Healy, general manager of investor relations for Microsoft. The division responsible for Vista contributed $4.14 billion in revenue in the quarter, 25 percent more than a year ago. Microsoft booked 27 percent more annual license agreements for Windows than in the year-ago quarter, a sign businesses are committed to following Microsoft into the Vista era. Sales from the unit that makes the Office 2007 software suite rose 20 percent to…

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BlackBerry Goes Web 2.0 with Facebook App
FaceBerry or BlackBook. Whatever combo-name is used, Research In Motion’s new application for Facebook on the BlackBerry moves the company’s popular mobile device further into the Web 2.0 world. The free, downloadable application from RIM allows streamlined, mobile access to Facebook, which has been recreating itself in recent months as a platform for social-networking applications. Demonstrated by RIM founder Mike Lazaridis and Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz at the CTIA Wireless show in San Francisco earlier this week, the Facebook app will first appear as a native addition to BlackBerry handsets offered through T-Mobile. Sharing a Vision Both Facebook and RIM share a vision of mobile communications and social networking, Lazaridis said in a statement, based on standards-based platforms that leverage “the push-based architecture, multimedia features, and industry-leading usability of the BlackBerry solution.” Rather than having to rely on browser-based access to Facebook, BlackBerry owners will be able to use the new application to send and receive notifications, “wall posts,” or “pokes.” A unique ringtone or vibration can be set for communications from Facebook members, and users can scroll through messages much as they do with e-mail. Additionally, the new app lets mobile users can take a photo and upload it to Facebook with captions, manage a photo album, or invite Facebook friends to events and manage those occasions. RIM said Facebook’s photo features will be integrated with BlackBerry’s camera and photo-management applications. If travelers want to spend their airplane time on Facebook, they can read, write, and reply to Facebook messages while offline. Those messages are stored until the user has connectivity once again. Expanding ‘Enterprise’ In the announcement, RIM cited data that indicates this application might help extend the reach of the BlackBerry line. According to Yankee Group, 19 percent of adult consumers who use social networks such as Facebook on their PCs also keep…

Ailing Motorola Phone Unit Shows Signs of Progress
Motorola’s mobile-phone business recorded a $138 million loss in the third quarter, with handset revenues declining by 36 percent to $4.5 billion in comparison with the year-earlier period. Nevertheless, Motorola executives remain upbeat about the ailing unit’s prospects for returning to profitability, noting that substantial progress has been made during the quarter. “The third quarter was about execution, doing what we said we were going to do,” said Motorola CEO Ed Zander. “In mobile devices we began to move in the right direction: We increased unit sales and gross market percentage while lowering operating expenses.” Zander also said he was pleased with sales of Motorola’s new Razr2 handset right out of the gate. “We sold 900,000 units in about 80 days,” he noted. Chasing Profitability, Not Share Motorola, which said it shipped 37.2 million handsets in the quarter, failed to live up to the channel sell-in expectations of Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi, who had been “expecting Motorola to come in at around 39 million.” However, Motorola’s estimated 13 percent share of the global handset market precisely matched Milanesi’s forecast. Motorola’s global market share has slipped by 5.5 percent so far this year, according to Gartner’s own research. With respect to sales into the channel, the U.S. handset-maker remains far behind Samsung, which maintained its No. 2 position globally by moving 42.6 million handsets in the third quarter. Zander told analysts that Motorola has no interest in chasing market share at the expense of profits. “Our strategy is profitable growth and product portfolio enhancement in parallel,” Zander said. “As we do that — and get the flow-through and leverage of the model as well as continue to expand the product portfolio into segments in which traditionally we have been limited in playing — those two things in combination should allow us…

Fight Over Child health Care Persists
The Senate is the next stop for legislation to expand children’s health coverage, revised by Democrats but rejected by President Bush as little changed from their earlier offering. “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig,” said Texas Rep. Joe Barton, one of the more pungent descriptions of a bill that cleared the House Thursday with less than the two-thirds majority needed to overturn Bush’s threatened veto. The vote was 265-142. Democrats said they had a prize-winner, not a porker. “They won’t take yes for an answer,” Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., said of Republicans. He said that in the week since they failed to override Bush’s first veto, Democrats had systematically addressed earlier complaints that the bill failed to place a priority on low-income children, did not effectively bar illegal immigrants from qualifying for benefits and was overly generous to adults. Even so, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland raised the possibility that additional changes were possible before the bill would be sent to the White House. At the same time, he added, “I don’t want to be strung along” by Republicans merely feigning an interest in bipartisan compromise. Senate passage is highly likely, particularly with senior Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah among the bill’s most persistent supporters. The legislation is designed chiefly to provide coverage for children whose families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to purchase private insurance. In general, supporters said it would extend coverage to children of families making up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $62,000 for a family of four. At that level, congressional officials said, it would cover about 4 million children who now go without, raising the total for the program overall to 10 million kids. The $35 billion cost…

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