MICROSOFT GM OF WINDOWS PHONE QUITS TO START NEW COMPANY

Microsoft’s General Manager of the Windows Phone Developer Experience, Charlie Kindel, on Monday announced that he is leaving Microsoft to launch a start up. Kindel did not share the details of his new endeavor, and his public profile on networking site LinkedIn lists him as Founder and CTO of at A super secret stealth startup. “[The start up] has to do with sports, advertising, mobile, social-networking, and, of course, the cloud,” Kindel wrote in a post on his personal blog. “I’m insanely excited to get started.” The soon-to-be former executive was with Microsoft for 21 years, having joined the Redmond-based company’s developer support group in 1990.

LULZSEC CALLS IT QUITS

After 50 days of wreaking cyber-caper havoc, Lulz Security says it's done and will sail into the horizon. The group has stolen mountains of personal data in a dozen different hacks, embarrassing law enforcement on both sides of the Atlantic while boasting about the stunts online.

The group's disbandment comes unexpectedly, and could be a sign of nerves in the face of law enforcement investigations. Rival hackers have also joined in the hunt, releasing information they say could point to the identities of the six-member group. One of the group's six members was interviewed by The Associated Press on Friday, and gave no indication that its work was ending.

LulzSec made its name by defacing the site of the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, with an article claiming that rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive. It has since claimed hacks on major entertainment companies, FBI partner organizations, a pornography website and the Arizona Department of Public Safety, whose documents were leaked to the Web late Thursday.

The hacking group stated "For the past 50 days we've been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could," the LulzSec statement said. "All to selflessly entertain others — vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy. While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently. The breeze is fresh and the sun is setting, so now we head for the horizon."

As a parting shot, LulzSec released a grab-bag of documents and login information apparently gleaned from gaming websites and corporate servers. The largest group of documents — 338 files — appears to be internal documents from AT&T Inc., detailing its buildout of a new wireless broadband network in the U.S. The network is set to go live this summer. An AT&T spokesman could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the documents.