Colorful heist game Monaco out now for Xbox Live Arcade

After two weeks on PC, Pocketwatch Games finally releases its chaotic thieving title on Xbox 360.

Graduates of Microsoft’s Israel accelerator pitch to U.S. investors

Three best-in-class startups from Microsoft's Israel accelerator program are traveling around the U.S. seeking investment and business connections.

Nokia latest device is cheap, colorful, and not running Windows Phone

Nokia's latest phone shows that it's not eager to give up on the developing market for low-end smartphones.

Funding daily: show me the money, say news, health, real estate, and yes, funeral companies

It's been a slowish day for funding news, but with big dollar signs on many of the deals that did happen. Here's a rundown on the days' deals.

Microsoft offering $1B for Nook’s digital media and tablet business: report

Microsoft already owns a piece of Nook, having invested $300 million into the business in April 2012. According to the report, Microsoft would buy the digital operation, which includes e-books, movies, TV, comics, apps, and more.

Microsoft promotes Amy Hood as its new chief financial officer

With Microsoft's chief financial officer Peter Klein announcing that he would step down from the position during the Q3 2012 earnings, the company announced today that corporate vice president Amy Hood will take over the role effective immediately.

Activision blows away first quarter earnings targets, raises estimates for year

Activision Blizzard beats estimates, but World of Warcraft loses 1.3M subscribers.

EA has 11 big titles, 15 mobile games coming in the next year (but no Star Wars)

Here's the complete download from EA's earnings call. The game giant continues to invest in next-generation games for Sony and Microsoft platforms.

Blue Jeans: We’re 20-25% of the videoconferencing market (and we just got much cheaper)

Blue Jeans unveiled a massive update to its standard pricing today, adding a new licensing model that offers companies unlimited "all you can meet" videoconferencing plans for as low as $10 per user, per month.

Microsoft: Windows 8 passes 100M license sales, Windows Blue update on the way

Microsoft still faces criticism for its Windows 8 operating system, but despite that, the software giant has sold more than 100 million licenses in its first six months of availability and important updates are on the way.

41 of the Fortune 500 companies are tech companies (and here they are)

Apple’s in the top 10 for the first time ever, Facebook hits the list, and Dell sells more than Google as Fortune Magazine released its Fortune 500 companies today, ranking the top 500 companies by global income.

Notable this year …

Microsoft says over 250M people are now using SkyDrive

Google Drive and Dropbox competitor SkyDrive now has more than 250 million users, Microsoft said today in a blog post.

Apple saves $9.2 billion in taxes … by borrowing $17 billion

There's a reason the rich get richer, and wealthy corporations get wealthier. They're smarter than the rest of us, and they have more financial tools at their disposal.

GamesBeat weekly roundup: Minecraft sells 10M on mobile, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Apple hits 50B apps, and more

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

Microsoft: Outlook.com now has over 400M accounts, 125M on mobile

Microsoft's decision to get rid of Hotmail and replace it with Outlook.com appears to have paid off.

Game console chips will lead the way for AMD’s semi-custom business

Semi-custom chips could be as much as 20 percent of AMD's revenue by the fourth quarter.

Microsoft Surface shipments reached 900k in Q1, says IDC

Microsoft still isn't divulging official Surface numbers, but it looks like it's at least making a dent in the tablet market.