Just keeping tabs on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's stock sell-off ... A Securities and Exchange Commission filing today shows he sold $369.83 million more in Microsoft shares this week, bringing his two-week divesting spree to about $1.75 billion. On Nov. 5, Ballmer confirmed that he'd sold $1.3 billion of his stake in the company, and on Monday he reported $84.29 million more to the SEC. Ballmer has about $250 million to go to his planned $2 billion mark. After this week's sales, he still owns more than 341 million shares worth about $8.77 billion with today's closing price of $25.69 per share. There is speculation Ballmer may be gearing up to buy an NBA team and bring it to Seattle.

Well, last Friday I forgot to pick a Steve Ballmer photo of the week. So, I've added two photos to the gallery this time around.

Here's a great one from Thursday's opening of the new Microsoft Store at Bellevue Square:

Josh Trujillo/seattlepi.com

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wields a giant pair of scissors after cutting the ribbon Thursday on the new Microsoft Store at Bellevue Square.
· View photo gallery: 'The Exceptionally Energetic Steve Ballmer'

This is a weekly feature on The Microsoft Blog. I'll be posting one photo every Friday of Ballmer's activities from the week. If there's nothing of note, I'll dig into the vault for a classic Ballmer snapshot.

Microsoft was among a good number of companies, schools and governments that purchased faulty Dell PCs from 2003 to 2005, during a period that saw an "unprecedented" number of defective machines being manufactured by the computer maker, The New York Times reports. According to a lawsuit unsealed Thursday, Microsoft bought 2,800 Dells during that time, 11 percent of which were faulty -- a total of more than 300. The lawsuit, filed by Advanced Internet Technologies, accused Dell of trying to hide the defects from customers.

Just before CEO Steve Ballmer cut the ribbon on Bellevue's new Microsoft Store on Thursday, he and COO Kevin Turner presented a total of $1.4 million in grants to local schools and the King County Library System.

Microsoft gave $200,000 Cleveland High School in Seattle, $200,000 to the Bellevue School District and $500,000 to the King County libraries. The Redmond-based company also gave $500,000 to First Robotics, a national program that teaches kids about technology.

"You know what? Microsoft is more than just the world's largest software company, we're also an incredible participant in the communities in which we serve," Turner said at the Bellevue Square opening ceremony.

The organizations were chosen by getting the most votes on the Microsoft Store Facebook page.

Bing's U.S. market share rose 0.3 percentage points from September to October, fielding 11.5 percent of queries during the month, according to new numbers from comScore.

Google also went up -- 0.2 points to 66.3 percent -- and Yahoo's explicit core searches dropped by the same amount to 16.5 percent. Now that Bing powers Yahoo search in the U.S., Microsoft's total search share was 28 percent of the market.

Explicit core searches include only those queries that a user deliberately typed into an engine. Total core searches, including links on MSN and Yahoo that point to Bing search results, were down across the board -- except for Google, whose total share rose 1.4 percentage points.

Below is an interactive chart, which can always be found on seattlepi.com here. After the jump are charts from comScore.

If the chart below is not interactive, you need to upgrade your Flash player.

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Dave Matthews gave a surprise acoustic performance Thursday evening at the new Microsoft Store at Bellevue Square, which opened that morning. Seattlepi.com photographer Elliot Suhr was there, so we have a photo gallery.

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Microsoft is putting on a surprise Dave Matthews concert tonight at its new Bellevue Square retail store, which opened this morning.

It's free and no tickets are required, Microsoft said on Facebook. The Seattle-based musician will put on an acoustic show starting at 7 p.m.

Microsoft has enlisted a lot of celebrities to help with its Microsoft Store and Kinect launches over the past two weeks.

The promise of free tickets to a Saturday Miley Cyrus concert brought thousands to this morning's Bellevue Square opening. Apolo Ohno will be there Friday evening to play Xbox Kinect. And now Dave Matthews tonight.

More details on the surprise concert are here.

Darren Hauck/Getty Images

The Kin phones, the ones Microsoft killed this summer after seven weeks on the market, are back on the Verizon Wireless website today as feature phones.

That confirms last week's report that the ill-fated smart phones social phones would be returning to the market.

The phones, targeted at young people, are rebranded Kin Onem and Kin Twom. Though they were $50 and $100 when they were launched in May, the devices are now listed at $20 and $50 as feature phones with regular Verizon contracts.

They have the same features and abilities -- access to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networks, Zune software, wi-fi -- but without Verizon's $30 data plan. A data plan for a phone that did not have full smart-phone capabilities, such as apps, is thought to be one reason the original Kins bombed.

Check out Verizon's info pages for the Kin Onem and Kin Twom.