Despite rumors to the contrary, Microsoft has absolutely no interest in purchasing Yahoo. “We made an offer, we made another offer … We moved on,” said Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer at a business event in Sydney. “We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly.” The rumors of a combined Microsoft-Yahoo entity began swirling around again after Google pulled out of a proposed advertising deal last week. These comments contradict those of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who said that Microsoft was “still their best option.” Microsoft originally offered shareholders $47.5 billion dollars for the beleaguered search service last May.

In other Microsoft news, there’s BizSpark. BizSpark is an amalgamation of web services designed to get your website up and running. While it isn’t exactly “open source” like MySQL, Microsoft is doing something fairly out-of-character to entice startups into using their service — giving three-year subscriptions away for free. Aside from the subscriptions, users also have access to Redmond’s small army of tech support. Designed with the “promising young startup” market in mind, BizSpark is perfect for anyone who wishes to get their online business a major league boost.

According to pollster site SquareTrade, the iPhone is the most reliable of the three major smart phones available today. Out of 15,000 mobile devices tested, the iPhone has a 5.6% failure rate. By comparison, 11.6% of all Blackberry and 16.6% of all Treo devices have failure issues. By far, most “first year” problems are linked to input problems, usually a touchscreen or a keyboard. SquareTrade expects the iPhone failure rate to jump to around 9% within two years.

In other news of the “cell phone” variety, Nokia is joining the microblogging game. The”Beta Labs” wing of the cell phone giant has released Friend View, a new service that will allow you to leave short, Twitter-style messages from both your phone and your personal computer. Unlike Twitter, Friend View has an surprising GPS element built directly into it. When a user posts a message, the location of the poster will appear on a map. Despite the innovation, early reviews of the service have been mixed. Friend View is available now from Nokia Beta Labs.

And finally, Brian Wallace of Mashable.com has an excellent article up explaining how to get the most out of business social networking site LinkedIn. “Using LinkedIn, I’ve trained small businesses to spread their wings and get connected with companies that they might otherwise have thought were beyond reach,” he writes. Throughout the relatively short piece, Wallace explains the basics of LinkedIn, including sending messages and performing background checks, simply and easily. While it barely scratches the surface on what LinkedIn can do, the article is great for all of those who wants to start “networking” the web 2.0 way.