Summary: Microsoft's Origami folds; picnic cancelled; conference cancelled; PR budget cut worldwide

Microsoft's profit sank by a third [1, 2] and just look at this thing, it's like an avalanche:

Remember Microsoft’s Origami? Well, that's gone.

Microsoft’s Origami campaign came in for both praise and criticism, and while they can’t claim to entirely control the UMPC (or subsequent MID) markets they’ve were at least initially responsible for promoting ultramobile PCs. Now Microsoft have decided to shut down their official Origami project site, three years after it was founded.

There is already one victim (OQO ) if the rumours are true.

There's more.

Microsoft's unofficial CNET spokesman says that Microsoft cancels company picnic and the company's official spokesman said:

"The big reason is to pay attention to costs," said Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman.

Translation: a picnic costs too much.

But wait, there's more.

Microsoft has just canceled its business intelligence conference.

Citing the recession and cutbacks in travel budgets, Microsoft has canceled this year's October Microsoft BI Conference, according to a posting on the company's Web site blog.

Rarely will a story be found where some company issues a press release merely to announce a failure or cancellation of something, unless of course there is a positive spin to disseminate. And that is precisely what Microsoft did (not for the first time, either).

And there's more.

According to a couple of Web sites, Microsoft is also cutting its PR budget. But being PR, Microsoft is spinning this cut as something sensible and growth in other areas.

Across Europe and the UK, it is thought as much as a quarter of Microsoft’s citizenship PR spend is being shelved. Similar cuts have been made in Asia, while a source said pullbacks in global and US budgets were ‘imminent’.

There's no more. No more happy days for Microsoft. ⬆

"It’s nice for you to admit your guys are running scared [of Free software]. They should be."

--The sum of Microsoft’s fears