Kinda scary -- read the full post.
If my Xbox 360 had a blog, it would complain that our original Xbox gets all the attention -- our kids don't care for many of the Xbox 360 games.
My Xbox 360 has a blog, and it's starting to get on my nerves.
While I was off on a vacation recently, the slick game console spent the week talking about me behind my back and posting snarky comments on the Web.
Read the full post...
Almost a year ago, I reviewed a few photo hosting sites. After that, but quite a while ago, I got an invitation to try out Picasa Web Albums, and I just now got around to clicking on the link to try it out. But I didn't get far...here is an excerpt from their Terms of Service
Source: Greg Reinacker's Weblog - Why I can't try Picasa Web Albums
Only a matter of time...
The widespread use of mobile telephones on passenger aircraft could become a reality next year, after Ryanair, the European low-cost carrier, announced plans to equip its fleet with an onboard mobile service.
“If you want a quiet flight, use another airline,” said Michael O’Leary, chief executive.
Source: FT.com / Companies / Transport - Ryanair to allow mobile phone calls
Could be handy
The XPower PowerSource Mobile 100 from Xantrex Technology, available for $129 from xantrex.com and Amazon.com, is a rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack with a twist. Along with two sockets for U.S.B. cords, it has a standard AC outlet, eliminating the need to buy special adapter plugs to connect it to a laptop, P.D.A., cellphone or any other battery-operated product that uses no more than 100 watts.
Source: A Backup Battery for All Your Stuff, and Available in Midflight - New York Times
I was wrong yesterday; we hadn't seen all the hype permutations yet...
“Clearly what Disney was for Pixar, Google could be for Apple,” said Tony Perkins, an entrepreneur and editor of AlwaysOn Network, a Web site for Silicon Valley insiders.
Source: Man From Google Joins Apple’s Board - New York Times
It'll be fascinating to see what Amazon.com does in this context.
Google won't say how many books are currently in its index. But with the ability to scan books at six of the world's biggest libraries, Google's library of public domain titles could surpass that of the Gutenberg Project, which contains about 16,000 titles. Meanwhile, Google rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are establishing the Open Content Alliance, an alternative index of public domain books. A number of major libraries have signed up to participate, including the Boston Public Library, Johns Hopkins University, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Archives of the United Kingdom.
Source: Google makes thousands of classics available for downloading - The Boston Globe
imho Google should have recruited a former high-level Microsoft exec to its board, e.g., Bob Herbold, if it's serious about competing with Microsoft (and about having adult supervision).
The announcement signals closer professional ties between Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, and Mr. Schmidt, who oversaw Google’s rise to become the most-used Internet search engine. Before Novell, Mr. Schmidt was chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems.
Other Apple directors include Mr. Jobs; former Vice President Al Gore; Arthur Levinson, chief executive of Genentech; and Mickey Drexler, chief executive of the J. Crew Group.
Source: Google Chief Joins the Board of Apple - New York Times
I think perhaps people are reading a bit too much into this. Schmidt is joining Apple's board. Apple and Google are not merging...
A few days ago when Google announced what is a precursor to Google Office, many saw it as a big move against the long term nemesis, Microsoft. We read things differently, and don’t really believe that it is going to have much of an impact. However, today’s news of Google CEO Eric Schmidt joining the board of directors of Apple Computer portends potential headaches not just for Microsoft, but for anyone with digital media ambitions.
Okay, I think we have now seen every possible silly permutation for the week. Google's someday-maybe-good-enough advertising-supported sub-minimalistic enterprise messaging service to sell more Macs?... BTW does anybody actually know a Mac user who regularly uses the Keynote presentation software Apple introduced with much fanfare a couple years ago -- you know, the one that was going to spontaneously obsolete Microsoft PowerPoint on the Mac?...
Lots of speculation about what it means that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is joining Apple's board. Marshall at TechCrunch muses that Google's just-announced online office suite on Apple computers might pose a potent threat to Microsoft.
Source: Wait, Now It's Google + Apple
Maybe "soars" isn't quite the right image...
During the quarter, the company sold its Celerant consulting subsidiary, and booked a $12 million gain on the sale. On a continuing operations basis, which excludes results from businesses that have been, or are in the process of being sold, the company posted a loss of $2.5 million.
The company said revenue from its Linux Platform Products increased 30 percent to $12 million, and that revenue from Identity and Access Management improved 46 percent to $26 million. Open Enterprise Server and Netware product revenue declined 19 percent from last year.
Remind me again: what business is Google in?...
Working with Google on the Books Library project are Oxford University, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of California, as well as the New York Public Library.
Volunteers working for a project known as Gutenberg have for some years copied out-of-copyright books as text files, which can then be used for printing, reading or piping into a programme for editing.
In contrast, Google is offering the books in a "print-ready" format, as have several other - albeit much smaller and less well-known - firms.
Source: BBC NEWS | Business | Google makes novels free to print
Timely Security Curve reality check; read the full post.
Did you ever see that South Park episode where everyone was so self-satisfied from driving hybrid cars that a gigantic cloud of Smug formed over South Park and threatened to cause the end of the world? People were going around saying things like "I prefer to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem" and holding themselves up on a pedestal because they're so great. Something about that scenario reminds me of Apple's recent marketing. Here's what I mean.
Source: Security Curve Weblog: Cloud of Smug Centered over Apple HQ
The headline at first made me wonder if YouTube had some type of security problem, until I remembered YouTube doesn't really have any security (or privacy), since YouTube has non-exclusive rights to do whatever it wants with all content posted to the site...
The 41-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer had complained to his bosses. He had told his story to government investigators. He had called congressmen.
But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made a video and posted it on YouTube.com.
Ah, so you want Windows Live Writer...
That's what I want. Not an online spreadsheet that simply replicates what Excel already does perfectly well on my laptop, but small spreadsheet elements that I can paste into a blog post in the form of a specific data set or graph. The fact that they're hosted elsewhere is what would make them simple enough to use, just as embedding YouTube video is so head-slapping easy today. That's not yet the case for the woefully under-featured Google spreadsheet (there's no graphing and you can't make it open to all), but don't be surprised if Microsoft under Ozzie does better with Office Live. The embedded functionality era has just begun. YouTube is just the start of something much bigger.
Source: The Long Tail: Google Apps and the power of embedded functionality
Another point of view on Google's GAYD (Google Apps for Your Domain):
Right now, it appears that the long-time monopoly in office applications may not be dismantled but rather replaced by a duopoly, and that the expected wave of innovation in web-based productivity applications may die long before it reaches shore.
... except, earlier in the post, Nicholas Carr also notes that GAYD is more about extending than replacing Office, so maybe the more things change, ...
Source: Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The Google-Microsoft axis
Propogating a spoof Intermedia press release...
Intermedia.NET, the US leader in Microsoft Exchange hosting for small and medium businesses (SMBs), today praised the innovative new service, Google Apps for Your Domain. By offering 24x0 support, no wireless access and scanning of company email and documents, Google has bucked the trend of what companies expect from a business email provider.
Source: Google Watch : New Google Service Offers 24x0 Support for Business Users
A pragmatic perspective, imho; read the full post for more on privacy issues.
I think Google will only be successful with their program for schools and will have a moderate success only for small organizations.
Why? Businesses don't want to lose control oveir their information. Storing mails, documents, web pages on Google servers sounds tempting, but businesses want predictability and control. They'll also fear that Google's services aren't that reliable (Gmail has problems daily) and their image will suffer. "I couldn't answer you mail, dear client. Gmail was down for about an hour."
Source: Google Operating System: Why a Corporate Google Office Won't Be Successful
Interesting mashup mix...
Yahoo today will tie together a bunch of its properties — Flickr, Yahoo Maps, Upcoming, and Yahoo Local. These are natural and powerful combinations of existing projects and acquisitions, and of course the question is what took Yahoo so long.
Volker Weber takes credit where due:
Let me translate this to vowespeak: The Workplace products are dead. Some body parts are being folded into Websphere Portal. I said this more than two months ago, and was heavily attacked.
Burton Group's Karen Hobert published a report, IBM’s Evolving Workplace Collaboration Strategy: How Do You Get There from Here?, in which she detailed the key shifts in IBM's strategy over the last few years. While I think Workplace Collaboration Services is history as a stand-alone offering, I don't agree with the "dead" perspective; much of what was created for WCS simply shifted to WebSphere Portal 6. It was awkward for IBM to have Notes/Domino, WebSphere Portal, and WCS, given the expanding overlap among the three; it's much simpler to have two.
The rest of the story -- Skype is apparently at the center of the eBay/Google co-opetition shift.
A critical aspect of the deal announced yesterday is that Google will introduce a feature that allows users to talk to advertisers by way of Skype, instead of just clicking through to the advertisers’ Web sites. Users of this feature, called click-to-call, would also have the option of using Google’s own Google Talk system or standard telephones.
Source: EBay Gambles on Google Partnership for Success of Skype, the Internet Phone Service - New York Times
I'm glad to see this kind of scrunity -- read the article for details.
Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet service has spent millions of dollars over the years to protect its users from computer viruses, spyware, and other harmful programs. But an anti spyware coalition connected to Harvard University says that AOL's own software commits some of the very sins that have made spyware programs such a nuisance.
Source: Harvard group criticizes AOL for spyware sins - The Boston Globe
Hey, it looks like I'm going win a bunch of $.07 bets (you know who you are...).
And just like that, Windows Vista rebounds. Years of delays, broken promises, and reduced expectations have dogged the Windows product team, which has been portrayed as hapless, indecisive, and unable to ship. But the recent release of a surprisingly good pre-Release Candidate 1 (RC1) build of Windows Vista, combined with internal information about Microsoft's expected completion today of the actual RC1 build it will ship widely in early September, suggests that the doomsayers will suddenly have a lot less to talk about.
Source: Suddenly, Windows Vista No Longer in Free Fall (Windows IT Pro)
Is it really still cheating if both customers and suppliers expect the behavior?
Here's the ugly, sometimes dirty, often-overlooked truth in games: Everyone cheats. In many instances, cheating is built into the game. It's a multimillion-dollar industry, legally sanctioned. Well, at least most of it.
Timely snapshot from Microsoft's Don Dodge. He neglects to mention that you can't actually purchase Office Live yet,although you can sign up for the free beta.
Office Live is one of several scenarios for which Microsoft has placed a strategic bet on Windows SharePoint Services v3/Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
See the full post for a handy list of old and new contenders.
Om Malik writes "Web Office vs. Microsoft Office", the market is very crowded with at least 17 web office up-starts, citing a Red Herring article.
Microsoft Office is the "gold standard" for office productivity applications, and has been for more than 15 years. What are these new startups bringing to the table? Lightweight, web based applications that can be updated quickly, accessed from anywhere with a web browser, and in some cases, built in collaboration tools.
Microsoft is responding to the challenge with Microsoft Office Live, a suite of productivity applications for small business. And, Groove will be a major part of the next version of Office. Groove founder, Ray Ozzie is now Microsoft's Chief Software Architect. Expect to see collaboration and software services infused into everything Microsoft does.
Source: Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing : Microsoft Office and Office Live take on the Web 2.0 competitors
Read between the lines...
The service is free, but Google will start to offer a premium service with larger storage, ad-free and with support at the end of the year.
[...]
The offer will most likely be more substantial in the future, with the addition of Writely, Google Spreadsheets and other applications. Google tried to be more attractive for corporate users by creating enterprise versions for Google Desktop and Google Toolbar, but without much success.
I expect
1. Google will price the optional services in a model that strongly incents organizations to use the ad-supported versions, since that's where Google makes the vast majority of its income.
2. Cobbling Writely, Google Spreadsheets, etc. will fail to displace traditional desktop productivity apps in approximately 99.9999% of organizations.
3. This is ultimately about Google's bet on what constitutes "good enough" enterprise messaging, and in that context it faces some focused competitors, e.g., Scalix and Zimbra, which offer attractive ROI/TCO/etc. for organizations that do their homework.
Source: Google Operating System: Google Launches Corporate Package
Linksys tries to address return rates that reportedly range up to 30%...
Linksys has rolled out its EasyLink Advisor, a tool for network and gateway management, on a single model to start with: The EasyLink Advisor could also be labled, “A tool by which purchasers of our equipment have their frustration lessened and thus are less likely to stuff our gear back into a box and fling it at the salesperson at Best Buy who sold it to them.”
Source: Wi-Fi Networking News: Linksys Tries To Make It Easier
Interesting background on EA -- which, FYI, has a market cap of ~$15B at the moment. Also see the Five That Fell companion article on five EA competitors that failed.
The game company known for ruthlessly guarding its market dominance through franchise purchase and protection -- though it began life with a noble mission to foster and reward 'art'
Timely snapshot of EMC's current strategy and competitive landscape.
The biggest obstacle we face is what we spent the whole decade of the '90s doing -- that EMC is the storage company," said CEO Joe Tucci. "We have to get customers to view us, as we're calling it now, as an information infrastructure company."
But EMC isn't just fighting perceptions. By seeking to be a more intimate (and better-paid) adviser to CIOs, EMC is picking a fight with powerful competitors.
Notably, IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. have much bigger staffs of consultants and longer histories of serving as throats for CIOs to choke. IBM and HP are also leading storage vendors, plus they offer servers and other key parts of business systems. EMC relies on partnerships, including one with Dell Inc., to help customers get servers.
Microsoft Watch reality check:
No Word, Excel or PowerPoint competitors here. Google Apps for Your Domain is more like Windows Live Essentials than it's like Microsoft Office. Nonetheless, Google Apps for Your Domain is sure to be just as hyped as the mythical "GoogleOffice" that was supposed to materialize a year ago (and still, to this day, has not).
Read the full article for more details on goals and glitches.
“My view is that the value of Strong Angel is 70 percent in the social networks that will be created,” said the organizer, Eric Rasmussen, a Navy surgeon and veteran of relief efforts on several continents. “What we do is try to bring people with disparate backgrounds together and ensure that they are forced to enter into a conversation.”
[...]
Moreover, the achievement demonstrated that industry rivals like Microsoft and Google could cooperatively generate useful technologies. Small teams of programmers from the two companies sat before laptops at adjacent tables to make sure that the Microsoft software connection system would transfer information to Google Earth, Google’s visual mapping tool.
Source: This Is Only a Drill: In California, Testing Technology in a Disaster Response - New York Times
Maybe this will appeal to some educational institutions, but small- to medium-sized businesses?
Perhaps this will lead Microsoft to accelerate schedule plans for Office Live.
Google Apps for Your Domain is designed to allow organizations to provide email and other services to their employees, students or members without the hassle of having to manage the software or hardware the services run on. It follows Google's February release of a similar offering for organizations called Gmail for Your Domain, focused solely on Web email.
Google's move puts it in further competition with Microsoft, which caters to organizations of all sizes with sales of its Outlook and Exchange email, address book and calendar software -- programs that are installed on its customers' computers. Microsoft is also testing an Internet service targeted at small businesses called Office Live, which includes email, Web page hosting and group calendar services.
Source: WSJ.com - Google Bundles Package of Tools For Business, Education Markets
Buying business and partnerships (and probably at a severe premium), including co-opetition scenarios -- looks like Google is running Microsoft's circa 1994 business plan in some respects.
In the latest sign of shifting alliances on the Internet, eBay Inc. has signed a deal allowing Google Inc. to exclusively display text advertisements on eBay's auction Web sites outside the U.S.
Under the deal, which will be announced today, eBay and Google will begin testing the advertising arrangements in early 2007. The accord also calls for the companies to cooperate in developing "click to call" initiatives, which allow consumers to call merchants and advertisers directly using connections displayed in the ads.
[...]
Despite its increasing rivalry with Google, eBay has had little choice but to consider Google for expanded advertising services. Not only is Google's advertising technology considered top-notch, but Yahoo is an online-auctions competitor in China and other parts of Asia.
Source: WSJ.com - EBay, Google Reach Overseas Text-Ad Alliance
Sign of the times...
During the last Internet boom, hardly anybody thought about how much electricity a computer uses. But in the past few years, the energy cost of running large data centers has become one of the industry's hottest topics.
It's even affecting national security: The Baltimore Sun recently reported that the National Security Agency's headquarters can't add more computers, because the local electric company has no more power to spare.
Source: Energy costs bring retooled computers - The Boston Globe
Gmail is okay for newsletters etc. but I wouldn't want to use it for work email.
Gmail is headed for the office -- officially.
Starting today, Google will offer Google Apps for Your Domain, a free package of programs for businesses, universities, and other organizations.
Source: Google releases software suite for businesses - The Boston Globe
Yeah,
1. I want one...
2. Creative's lawyers are probably in the Microsoft parking lot...
See the article for more Zune details.
Microsoft's forthcoming Zune player is shooting to be the life of the party, allowing users to create mobile social networks and stream music to nearby friends or strangers, according to a government regulatory filing.
Source: Microsoft's Zune aims to be social butterfly | CNET News.com
More on Google's financial shape-shifting
At stake for Google is the chance to move more of its money from low-yielding U.S. government bonds to investment-grade municipal and corporate debt. That would help Google match the investment returns of rivals such as Microsoft Corp., which obtained a similar exemption in 1988.
Do you sense a few patterns converging here?...
Last night I was alerted to a new Beta Video Search and UI for Live Search. It's still definitely in beta, but it shows a lot of promises with loads of additional features.
[...]
Live Search is definitely showing a web centric view of the world and trying to turn their product into a serious research app. I hope the Scratchpad feature is added across all of the verticals (I expect this will happen) and then eventually tied into Onfolio (the recently purchased client-side RSS Reader).
Source: O'Reilly Radar > Live's New Video Search and UI (Beta)
Perhaps I'm an outlier in this context, but 1) that seems like a high price range to me, and 2) I'd prefer to download movies from Amazon.com or Netflix, suppliers with which I'm already doing similar business.
AOL said yesterday that it would offer movies from four major Hollywood studios for downloading on its Internet video service.
AOL, which is owned by Time Warner, said films from 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures and the Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group would be available for download on AOL Video for $9.99 to $19.99 a movie.
Source: AOL to Sell Downloads From 4 Studios - New York Times
But not entirely "mum" -- on the 2nd page of the article:
“Office productivity is a huge space, an enormous space, and there is a lot of competition and different players solving different problems,” says Google’s Mazzon. “The problem we are trying to solve are those issues around real-time collaboration, online collaboration, that traditionally desktop solutions have not solved well.”
Source: Google mum on corporate plans for word processing application - Network World
A Windows Live Writer update from JJ Allaire's blog:
I have been pleasantly surprised by the uptake we have gotten for the Windows Live Writer SDK. We have had thousands of downloads of the SDK and in just over a week there are already a dozen plugins available, covering everything from Flickr and SmugMug photos to ink-blogging.
See the post for more plug-in resources.
Source: Writer Plugins and Windows Live Gallery « Flying Upside Down
Timely analysis:
Sony's purchase of Grouper is about market research, not market share.
Later in the post:
That's where Grouper comes in. The success of YouTube (and Grouper) scares the studios because it shows the market no longer values the slick production values of major films. This, along with global marketing, is the major strength the studios have long thought they brought to the film business. If some kid can get hundreds of thousands of views of a video showing him lighting farts, how can Sony compete with that? They can't.
So Sony is trying to join the enemy. For very little cost, Grouper will help them see what works and what doesn't in this new medium.
Read the full post... and seriously consider reading The Long Tail, which includes insightful analysis of the future of movies as well as other types of digital media.
Source: PBS | I, Cringely . August 24, 2006 - The Frank Caliendo Effect
Am I the only one who thinks this sort of deal should be illegal? I hope this backfires on both Apple and Creative.
Creative Technology CEO Sim Wong Hoo may not have won his ambitious MP3 war against Apple, but he got a lovely parting gift [...]
Under its terms, Apple will pay Creative $100 million to license its so-called "Zen patent" on methods for navigating, organizing and accessing music, with Creative agreeing to return a portion of that payment if it should be successful in licensing this patent to others.
Source: Good Morning Silicon Valley: To Wong Hoo, thanks for everything, Steve Jobs
It's a good day for book-lovers so far... This Google development is fascinating, especially for people who have read The Long Tail (which includes, among many other topics, analysis of traditional and digital book distribution models).
Today, we're launching the Library Catalog Search feature in Google Book Search, designed to help casual readers and bookworms everywhere find gems in the libraries around the world. Queries on Google Book Search will automatically include results from library catalogs when appropriate. Each result includes a "Find Libraries" link to help readers find libraries that hold the book -- ideally a library nearby, or if need be, a library far away. For example, after reading Martin Gardner's book Fads and Fallacies, I wanted to follow up on Immanuel Velikovsky's books about scientific explanations for biblical miracles. Clicking on the "Find Libraries" link for Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, I found that a copy was available in the University of Sao Paulo library.
Source: Official Google Blog: Finding the wealth in your library (and everyone else's)
Interesting development. See this companion article for an overview of three projects offering free downloads.
LibriVox is the largest of several emerging collectives that offer free or inexpensive audiobooks of works whose copyrights have expired, from Plato to “The Wind in the Willows.” (In the United States, this generally means anything published or registered for copyright before 1923.) The results range from solo readings done by amateurs in makeshift home studios to high-quality recordings read by actors or professional voice talent.
Source: Volunteers Read Audiobooks Available for Free Downloading - New York Times
BTW Sony said it doesn't anticipate any more recalls of this type of battery...
The Apple recall is the second-largest safety recall in the consumer electronics industry, after Dell’s. Though it is smaller than the Dell recall, the percentage of Apple’s customers affected is greater than the percentage of Dell customers.
Source: Apple Joins in a Recall of Batteries - New York Times
The future's so bright...
Search-engine company Google Inc. has piled up so much cash that it is in danger of being mistaken for an investment fund.
The company, which wants to diversify its investment strategy but doesn't want to be regulated as a mutual fund, has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to exempt it from regulations that can apply to a company with a lot of marketable securities on its balance sheet.
[...]
Google's most recent quarterly balance sheet listed assets totaling $14.4 billion, including $4 billion in cash and $5.8 billion in marketable securities. Under the Investment Company Act of 1940, a company with more than 40% of its assets in certain types of securities is subject to different disclosure and operating rules.
Source: WSJ.com - Google Asks SEC For Exemption From Trading Rule
Timely reality check on Wikia, a new for-profit, venture-backed endeavor by Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia.
At a time when Wikipedia is exploding in popularity, founder Jimmy Wales is trying to apply the very same purist model across the Web, and make money to boot.
Good luck. For some reason, purist and money don't seem to work well in the same sentence.
Source: Wikia world | AlwaysOn
More innovation at Amazon.com -- from a BusinessWeek post:
Dubbed the Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, the service is essentially computer power on demand over the Internet.
[...]
No, it's not for mere mortals like you or me, or even for general corporate use. And I'm not going to geek out and explain it all here, since you can read more about it here if you want the hairy details. (Or check out Nic Cubrilovic's post at TechCrunch.)
But suffice to say, Amazon has once again surprised those who think it's "just a retailer." Who would have thought that someday this online retailer might compete, even in a small way, with the likes of IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems?
Strange days indeed...
Source: Amazon's Virtual Computer
Sony is not having a great year... and I suspect this won't be the last recall.
Apple Computer Inc. will recall 1.8 million lithium-ion laptop batteries after nine devices overheated, causing minor burns in two users, U.S. safety regulators announced today.
The recall is the second-biggest in U.S. history involving electronics or computers, following Dell Inc.'s recall of 4.1 million lithium-ion batteries last week, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said.
In both cases, the batteries had power cells made by Sony Corp.
Interesting speculation. The ISV dance floor is definitely getting sparse, in any case...
IBM could be hungry for more, analysts say. Software is the most profitable of IBM’s five businesses. As a result, the more software companies Big Blue buys, the better its margins become. Analysts eyeing IBM’s software lineup say IBM could move into the $22 billion market for business intelligence software, with Cognos being the most likely target.
[...]
Regardless of who IBM buys next, however, the company has quickly become one of the most acquisitive firms in software. Since 2002, IBM has made 40 acquisitions in software worth $8.53 billion out of a total of 53 deals worth $12.66 billion, according to the 451 Group. During fiscal 2005, software formed $15.75 billion, or 17.3 percent, of IBM’s total $91.13 billion in revenues.
Excellent reality check; read the full post. You might also want to order a copy of John Kenneth Galbraith's classic "A Short History of Financial Euphoria," if you haven't read it.
It struck me today when talking to a colleague: There is an excellent chance that many of the people most excited about MySpace, social networks, etc., have no real memory of the last tech boom.
Consider: We have now passed the eleventh anniversary of the Netscape IPO that started the bubble years, and we are seven years from the peak of the bubble in the summer of 1999. People who are graduating from college today were 12 years old when Netscape went public. They were worried more about first dates and first signs of acne than about the impending upheaval in technology markets. And even when the boom ended they were still merely seventeen or so, trying to have fun while not butchering their grades so badly that they couldn't get into their first choice of universities.
Source: Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Netscape's IPO & the Trouble with Memory
Wouldn't make for as cool furniture as the early Cray models, unfortunately...
A man is currently selling a partially complete EL98, a low-cost supercomputer from Cray. (Low cost in Cray's world means low six figures when new on Craigslist.
Sour
ce: For sale: a Cray Computer, starting at $400. | News.blog | CNET News.com
Weird -- I don't hear/read a lot about Symbian these days.
Around 12.3 million Symbian phones were shipped in the second quarter of 2006, which is 58 per cent more than the previous quarter, and gives the company an estimated 70 per cent of the fast-growing smart phone market.
[...]
Handset makers Ericsson, Nokia and Sony Ericsson own 76.6 per cent of Symbian, with Panasonic, Samsung and Siemens also holding a stake in the company.
Source: Symbian Firing on All Cylinders
Congrats to the Blogger team. I've been a (mostly...) happy user since October, 1999, and am very pleased to be able to use Blogger with Windows Live Writer these days.
On this day in 1999, Pyra Labs launched Blogger which Ev announced on his own blog. As you can see, Blogger was quite the looker back then.
Timely UK reality check
Nearly 73% of online homes used broadband in June, up from 54.4% in the same month last year and 18% in 2003.
Dial-up, overtaken by broadband last year as the most popular way of accessing the internet, now accounts for about 27% of connections.
Source: BBC NEWS | Business | Big rise in broadband connections
Paul Thurrott's take on WinInfo:
As we've come to expect from Apple, the company was as charming as ever in defeat. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, in a statement, that Creative was "fortunate" to have been granted its "early" patent, implying that Creative's right to the technologies was simply a matter of applying for a patent earlier than did Apple. But as anyone who used an early Creative Nomad MP3 player can attest, these devices featured user interfaces that were startlingly familiar to what Apple later used in its iPod.
While the $100 million settlement is "chump change" for Apple, as one analyst put it, Creative's motivation to settle is clear: The company can now seek similar settlements from other MP3 player makers. Furthermore, Creative will now participate in Apple's "Made for iPod" program and will sell a slew of iPod-compatible add-ons to the millions of people using iPods worldwide. That's a smart move, since Creative's devices have failed to put a dent in the iPod's dominance.
A key battle for the future...
Qualcomm Inc., which became a technology powerhouse by creating the brains inside hundreds of millions of cellphones, and Intel Corp., the giant maker of microprocessor chips for personal computers, are clashing on a crucial new battleground: wireless access to the Internet.
Both companies are racing to develop new technologies to better permit consumers to connect wirelessly to the Web, whether by cellphone, laptop, handheld gadget -- or potentially even devices such as MP3 players and video cameras.
Source: WSJ.com - Two Technology Giants Clash In Battle for Wireless Internet
Walt Mossberg finds a lot to like about the new Nokia E62 (link is to the no-subscription-required version of his review)
After years of sitting on the sidelines as a minor player in the U.S. market for high-end smart phones, Nokia is about to enter the fray in a bigger way than it has in the past.
The Finnish cellphone giant is introducing a phone called the E62 that resembles, and is aimed at, the Palm Treo, the latest BlackBerry phones from Research In Motion and the Motorola Q.
Source: Personal Technology -- Nokia's Smart Phone Offers a Bargain Price For High-End Utility.
At your service...
ISS is a bit different because of its potential impact on the company's flagging services division. ISS helps guard against data theft and other network problems with automated monitoring products and with technical consultants.
Based in Atlanta, ISS says its 11,000 customers include 17 of the world's largest banks.
Source: IBM buys Internet Security for $1.3b - The Boston Globe
Read the full article for more on how Google is trying to make this sound less scary...
A system recently outlined by researchers at Google amounts to personalized TV without the fancy set-top equipment required by previous (and failed) attempts at interactive television. Their prototype software, detailed in a conference presentation in Europe last June, uses a computer's built-in microphone to listen to the sounds in a room. It then filters each five-second snippet of sound to pick out audio from a TV, reduces the snippet to a digital "fingerprint," searches an Internet server for a matching fingerprint from a pre-recorded show, and, if it finds a match, displays ads, chat rooms, or other information related to that snippet on the user's computer.
Source: Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact
I'm just guessing some phones are ringing in Redmond about this, e.g., in the Zune product group, as Apple won't be the last defendant in this context. The precedent-setting settlement with Apple is probably worth a lot more to Creative than the $100M payment.
In exchange for the payment, Apple will receive a license to use Creative's patent in all Apple products. In addition, the companies said Creative would begin selling accessories for iPod players later this year.
"Creative is very fortunate to have been granted this early patent," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a press release. "This settlement resolves all of our differences with Creative, including the five lawsuits currently pending between the companies, and removes the uncertainty and distraction of prolonged litigation."
Source: WSJ.com - Apple Agrees to Pay $100 Million To Creative to Settle iPod Dispute
Timely reality check catch from Read/Write Web:
I can't resist posting an excerpt from the Tim Berners-Lee podcast with IBM. This should hopefully put the matter of 'what is web 2.0' to rest, permanantly:
LANINGHAM: "You know, with Web 2.0, a common explanation out there is Web 1.0 was about connecting computers and making information available; and Web 2 is about connecting people and facilitating new kinds of collaboration. Is that how you see Web 2.0?"
BERNERS-LEE: "Totally not. Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along."
Source: Berners-Lee Disses Web 2.0
Another great essay with Office design insights from Jensen Harris; read the full post...
Speed of target acquisition is but one of the many characteristics of a graphical user interface, but it's an important one. In Office's redesign, we've tried to take advantage of Fitts' Law in several key ways: the control layout and scaling of the Ribbon, the Mini Toolbar and other "by the cursor" contextual UI, and the usage of the edges and corners of the screen for the Quick Access Toolbar and Office Button.
Source: Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog : Giving You Fitts
Dan Gillmor's perspective on Quattrone:
Frank Quattrone, the alpha investment banker who beat the rap in his criminal trials, will be welcomed back by Silicon Valley as he resumes his career, says the Mercury News.
The record is clear enough that Quattrone and his "Friends of Frank" did disgraceful things. Now he'll be back to a hero's welcome.
Sadly, that speaks speaks volumes about the valley.
Source: Backfence.com - Palo Alto, Ca. local community news, information, events and advertising
Maybe he should go to work for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; with his track record, he could probably raise significant funds for, e.g., the eradication of diseases on nonexistent planets; the funds could then be productively applied to real problems...
Now that his legal battles are over, he's free to pursue his career. What will he choose to do, and how warmly will he be received?
A BusinessWeek blogger punts on trackbacks -- I suspect that's a fairly common pattern, for public blogs.
I give up. Deleting trackback spam is consuming my life--at best, I get about 200 to 300 spams for every valid trackback--and the pure ickiness of many of them is giving me a more jaundiced view of human nature than I prefer to have.
Source: Death to Trackback Spam
Mark Cuban has a wikiality moment...
I got this email this afternoon from someone who apparently reads my blog.
”FYI: Gary Weiss, who has been pretty hard on you and Sharesleuth on his blog, is fixing to do some heavy editing on your article on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban ). His username (he doesn’t use his real name) is Mantanmoreland. Unless you or somebody gets on it, you’ll look pretty bad by the time he’s done.”
Source: My Wiki is your wiki - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _
Interesting perspectives on Apple's potential in the home entertainment space from Steven Johnson. FWIW I have one of the Logitech remotes he describes in the article, and mine works well. I also suspect Steve Jobs will propose to sell an end-to-end solution in this context; playing well with others is not something Apple is known for...
There's one big problem here: An iTV would need to play well with others. Most people aren't just going to chuck their entire system to buy Apple's home theater alternative. Look at me: I'm obviously a believer in Apple's ability to fix this problem. Still, I'd much prefer not to sell my new LCD TV on Craigslist, and Time Warner is forcing me to use their cable box for HD DVR features. So for me, the ideal Apple home AV product is one that somehow makes my existing system work but without forcing me to start over from scratch.
Source: How Apple could make an iPod for television. By Steven Johnson - Slate Magazine
Norris was thinking differently early on. (He died Monday at 95.)
Control Data was one of the first businesses to offer on-site day care for employees' children and invented the golden parachute for top managers, originally intended to ward off corporate takeovers. Another project, a computer-based education system known as Plato, anticipated the need for mainstream technology education but cost the company more than $1 billion.
Everybody's getting involved...
Sony, which has struggled to piece together a winning Web strategy, has acquired video-sharing site Grouper for $65 million, the companies are expected to announce on Wednesday.
Grouper is 8th largest among the companies that host user-generated videos on their Web sites, according to statistics provided in May by traffic-tracking firm Hitwise.
Source: Sony gets into video sharing with acquisition | CNET News.com
Another facet of Google/Microsoft competition...
Microsoft was one of the competitors for the deal with MySpace, which earlier this month registered its 100 millionth user, compared with Facebook’s 9 million registered users. “It’s basically a consolation prize,’’ Phil Leigh, president of Inside Digital Media, a market research firm specializing in digital media, said of the deal. “But Facebook is also a legitimate test bed, a place where Microsoft can test new technology in a commercial context,’’ he said.
[...]
Mr. Berkowitz [Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the online services group for Microsoft] said the deal was “not comparable to the MySpace deal because we focused on the right economics for both parties.’’
Source: Microsoft to Provide and Sell Ads on Facebook, the Web Site - New York Times
#1 for UNIX during the quarter, according to IDC
Sun Microsystems Inc. took back a sizable chunk of the market for server computer systems used by businesses in the second quarter, according to data from market researcher IDC.
The quarterly numbers also point to continued struggles for Dell Inc. in server sales, while Advanced Micro Devices Inc. continued to grab more of the market from Intel Corp. for chips used in servers.
Via Microsoft Watch:
Macintosh is fourth [behind Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows 98] with 2.32%, but immediately followed by yet another Microsoft title, Windows ME with 1.09%. Open source solutions have scored a disappointing position, Linux accounting just for 0.36%, while Windows NT came in seventh position with 0.24%. With a 0.15% Macintosh Power PC closes the rank in last place.
Source: Microsoft Owns 96.97% of Global OS Market - Softpedia
More context-setting on Cisco/Arroyo
The move is yet another part of Cisco’s bid to turn itself into a consumer centric company. As you might remember, it has spent over $6 billion and acquired companies like Linksys, KISS Technology and Scientific Atlanta. It has also made investments in consumer video offerings such as Akimbo and Cinema Now.
[...]
The Arroyo acquisition seems to be a counter move to Microsoft’s IPTV effort which promises seamless video experience across computers, set-top boxes and mobile phones. (As long as they all use Microsoft OS.) Motorola has its own version of place shifting and time shifting technologies, and is Cisco’s archrival in the cable operator markets.
Read the article for more details
The head of Microsoft's open source software lab has extended a helping hand to Mozilla Corp. if it's interested in making sure the Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client run under Windows Vista.
Source: Microsoft Offers To Help Firefox Run On Vista - Web Browser, Mozilla, Thunderbird, Windows - CRN
Timely counter-example to all of the gloomy projections about Vista's schedule these days.
Microsoft's Vista is still months from completion but it's already winning upbeat reviews from one of its first guinea pigs, a California research lab that's using a custom Vista application in its quest to unravel cancer.
Source: CRN | SharePoint | Vista's Guinea Pig: Lab Puts Microsoft's New Stack To Work On Cancer Research
Several leading vendors are hedging bets in this context...
Cisco Systems Inc. is buying a private on-demand television company for $92 million cash, part of the network-gear maker's bid to become a consumer brand that delivers television, movies and other video on the Internet.
Source: Cisco buys private on-demand TV company - Boston.com
Vertical integration can be handy...
SanDisk Corp., which holds the second-largest market share in digital music players, after Apple Computer Inc., plans to announce product enhancements and price cuts today aimed at attracting further interest in its answer to Apple's iPod.
SanDisk, of Milpitas, Calif., plans to introduce a $249.99 MP3 player, the Sansa e280, with eight gigabytes of storage capacity -- enough to hold about 2,000 songs. That is double the capacity of the comparably priced iPod Nano, Apple's best-selling digital music player. SanDisk also is reducing prices on its other music players by nearly 30%.
Handy checkpoint. #1 in the list may surprise you.
Earlier this month AOL publicly released a data trove: 500,000 search queries culled from three months of user traffic on its search engine.
[...]
This may have been one of the dumbest privacy debacles of all time, but it certainly wasn't the first. Here are ten other privacy snafus that made the world an unsafer place.
Includes a partial index of acquisitions from Microsoft's just-completed fiscal year
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer was quick to reply when recently asked why the company wasn't pursuing acquisitions more aggressively.
"We are buying more companies than we have ever bought," Ballmer said in response to the question at Microsoft Corp.'s annual meeting with financial analysts.
Exit strategy: selling what's left on eBay (no kidding; see the full post)
Kiko, one of the most highly regarded web calendars, will soon be gone -- at least in its current incarnation. Justin Kan, one of the company founders, posted a blog entry last night that said revenue was not coming in, and that his team was eager to move onto other projects.
Excellent in-depth Wikipedia coverage in the latest issue of Atlantic Monthly
In a September Atlantic feature story and an accompanying interview, Marshall Poe traces the development of Wikipedia from an offbeat idea in 2001 to an enormous knowledge base with more than 4.5 million entries today.
Source: September Issue: "The Hive"
Happy news for TiVo...
A federal district judge in Texas ruled on Thursday that EchoStar Communications, the satellite television provider, must halt the use of nearly all of its digital video recorders because the company infringed on patents held by TiVo. But another judge yesterday temporarily blocked the injunction, which may give the companies time to reach a licensing deal.
Source: EchoStar Runs Afoul of TiVo’s Video Patents - New York Times
Another Google service (Google acquired Dodgeball in May, 2005)
Dodgeball, one of the early pioneers of the service, merges text messaging, mobile phones and social networking à la Friendster and MySpace into one, allowing the extroverted and tech-addicted to hook up in real time and track one another's social hopping throughout any given day or night.
Dare to be different, continued...
Data seen by the FT show that Mr Page and Mr Brin have each sold more than $2bn worth of Google shares since February 2005, when the final restrictions on post-IPO insider selling at the company lapsed.
Jonathan Moreland, director of research at Insider Insights, which provided the data, said sales by founders and other top executives were common in the months following an IPO.
However, he said “with Google, the continued selling, even after the stock has traded off of recent highs, has put it on our avoid list”.
Source: FT.com / Home UK / UK - Concern as Google founders sell shares
What else can be said?...
A British city known for its concrete cows is set to become one of the most technologically advanced in Britain after it said it would be the first UK town to boast a high-speed WiMax wireless broadband network.
Source: UK to get first city with high-speed WiMax coverage - Boston.com
Bubble v2 wouldn't have been the same without him...
Frank P. Quattrone, the Silicon Valley banker who helped drive the 1990’s boom in technology, has reached a deal with federal prosecutors that will allow him to avoid a third criminal trial on obstruction charges and resume a career in finance, people briefed on the negotiations said yesterday.
Very convincing assessment
Get ready for the REAL WiMax, now that Sprint Nextel has finally revealed its plans for deploying the new wireless networking technology in the United States. Having pretty much debunked in earlier columns our expectations for WiMax in general and Clearwire's approach in particular in the U.S., you might be surprised that I see Sprint Nextel succeeding in this same space. What's key (and very different) is HOW they are doing it. It will change the way many of us access the Internet and help make prices lower for the rest.
Source: PBS | I, Cringely . August 18, 2006 - Sprint Nextel's Hidden Advantage
Another excellent and timely reality check from Nicholas Carr -- read the full post. Order the John Kenneth Galbraith book referenced therein, while you're at it...
Once upon a time there was an island named Blogosphere, and at the very center of that island stood a great castle built of stone, and spreading out from that castle for miles in every direction was a vast settlement of peasants who lived in shacks fashioned of tin and cardboard and straw.
Of course, Google/Neven Vision isn't the only organization exploring opportunities in this context; see Wikipedia for more context-setting.
Don't think Google will just use facial-recognition technology it acquired from its purchase of Neven Vision for Picasa, its free photo-organizing tool used by consumers to search for pictures on their desktops. That's not Google's modus operandi. If it can, Google will employ Neven Vision's technology in its online search engines to improve the way to find photographs on the Web.
Source: Google Coy Over Use of Facial-Recognition Technology - News by InformationWeek
Handy reference, going back to 2005/01.
Link to Google Operating System: A Brief History of Google Video
Congrats, Patty, on your new book; I look forward to reading it.
(See the source link below for more about the topic domain etc.)
The notion of shared effort (network as virtual brain) certainly has gathered a lot of momentum. Open source software keeps on marching up the technology stack. Wikis are blooming everywhere. And companies are using all sorts of gimmicks to get not only their employees but partners and customers involved in sizing up opportunities and solving problems. (Recent example: IBM's online "Innovation Jam.") Now Patricia Seybold, a long-time corporate technology and customer-relations consultant, has put together book about companies tapping their customers for ideas about new products and services. The book, Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-design Your Company's Future, is due out in October. A lot has been written about wikis, blogs, open source software, etc., but Seybold does a good job of showing and explaining the practical uses of this stuff for businesses.
Yikes...
While AOL has based its new strategy on increasing advertising revenue, the ghosts of the old AOL continue to reduce sales it put on its books years ago.
Time Warner yesterday restated another $584 million related to revenue booked by its AOL division shortly after the two companies’ 2000 merger, bringing to more than $1.26 billion the total sales that AOL booked improperly over several years.
Source: AOL Adds Another $584 Million to Restatements of Ad Sales - New York Times
Somebody deserves a PR gold star for this WSJ puff piece on Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz...
Marc Andreessen, once the golden boy on the cutting edge of the go-go Internet economy, has gone retro.
The young brain behind Netscape Communications Corp. -- which popularized the modern-day Internet browser and helped launch the frenzied dot-com boom of the late 1990s -- has spent the past several years engaged in an old-fashioned pursuit: rebuilding a traditional software company, Opsware Inc., and trying to make it profitable.
Intriguing analysis -- read the article for details.
I don't mind that Sony is out there creating sexy-looking new gizmos. That's what it does, and it gives me something to write about. I just wish the company would have more discipline in creating gizmos that are priced right. Or smarter yet, build upon successful and relatively fast-growing platforms such as the PSP's, which is capable of doing exactly what the Mylo does--and maybe doing it even better--for less money.
Source: Sony's Mylo killer: PSP2? - Fully Equipped - CNET reviews
Bummer -- reminds me of Metricom/Ricochet (still available, but radically scaled-down compared to its initial goals) in some respects -- right idea, apparently wrong time...
In a setback for efforts to make Internet service widely available to air travelers, Boeing Co. officially threw in the towel on its Connexion in-flight Internet venture, saying it plans to shut down the unprofitable six-year-old service by the end of the year.
Boeing acknowledged in June that it was in talks with commercial-satellite operators and other potential suitors, but it also hinted strongly that it might abandon the business altogether. After examining the business, the satellite operators concluded that there was too much risk in buying Connexion outright, said a person familiar with the situation.
Source: WSJ.com - Boeing Pulls Plug on Venture For In-Flight Internet Access
Read the full post and ponder the implications; it's only a matter of time...
Could Google's purchase of Neven Vision could lead to a vast people-tracking system? With technology that recognizes faces, imagine a search for the image of you. It could plow through yearbooks, through the photos on social networking sites, through Flickr. If it could actually distinguish your face from all the different angles, and with different lighting, one search could put together a timeline of your movements. It could also establish the people you hang around with--your social network.
Can cable see the light (in the fiber...)?
Cable-television operators may require another round of multibillion-dollar network upgrades to keep up with rivals in the fast-growing high-speed Internet hookup business, a report from the industry's research arm suggests.
Its conclusions underscore the challenges posed by the rapid growth of broadband video from popular sites such as YouTube and Google, and the looming threat of a planned $20 billion rollout of high-capacity fiber lines by U.S. phone giant Verizon Communications Inc.
![[Graphic]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/P1-AF489C_CABLE_20060816220020.gif)
Source: WSJ.com - Cable Industry May Need to Spend Heavily on Broadband Upgrades
Google Talk adds file sharing, voicemail, and music status sharing.
Millions of you use Google Talk every day to connect with friends, family, and colleagues via chat and calls. Today we're releasing a new version of Google Talk that introduces several more ways to share and connect.
Source: Official Google Blog
Bluetooth devices are finally fulfilling the vision described nearly a decade ago...
In the future, electronics may well be so small that there will be a danger of ingesting them inadvertently. The Samsung WEP200 Bluetooth headset may be the first product to fit that description.
Source: Next, They’ll Embed the Headset in Your Tooth - New York Times
Very interesting industry milestone:
Continuing to grow at a pace that will enable it to usurp I.B.M.’s title as the world’s largest technology company, Hewlett-Packard reported quarterly earnings on Wednesday that exceeded analysts’ expectations.
Source: Hewlett-Packard Nears Goal of Overtaking I.B.M. - New York Times
Walt Mossberg tests -- and likes -- new Powerline adapters; a handy option for some household areas. (The link is to the no-subscription-required version of the column.)
I've been testing one of Netgear's newest models, the XE104, which costs $100 per adapter, and I can heartily recommend it. It couldn't be simpler or more effective. In my tests, the XE104 gave me wicked-fast connections. I tried plugging Windows and Macintosh laptops directly into the adapters in rooms where my wireless signal was weakest. I also tried plugging a Wi-Fi wireless access point into an XE104 adapter and picking up the connection wirelessly on the laptops. (An access point is a wireless gadget that takes a wired Internet connection and propagates it through the air.)
Source: Personal Technology -- Powerline Adapters
Bring Internet Access To Your Entire Home
In-depth research, AOL-style:
After threatening to get tough on serial junk e-mailers three years ago, AOL intends to show its conviction has not wavered by digging up the garden belonging to the parents of a convicted spammer--in pursuit of buried gold and platinum.
Meanwhile, AOL also acquired a game company -- GameDaily.
More evidence of irrational exuberance and Bubble v2?
Domain name speculator John Gotts set off a wave of online speculation three weeks ago when he agreed to buy the Wiki.com website for $2.8 million.
Later in the article:
Wiki.com is the startup equivalent of instant cuisine. According to Gotts, a team of engineers put together most of the site's backend in a caffeine-fueled span of 48 hours. The site runs using technology from MindTouch, a Washington wiki-software and hardware startup founded by former Microsoft employees.
Read the full article for more on how Gotts is hedging his bets.
Source: Wired News: Wiki Is as Wiki Does
You and your entities will be extracted...
Google Inc. plans to strengthen its Picasa photo management software and service with the acquisition of Neven Vision, a Santa Monica, California, company specializing on mobile photo search.
Adrian Graham, Picasa product manager, announced the deal in an official Google blog posting Tuesday, saying that Neven Vision brings expertise on automatically obtaining information from a photo.
Kudos to the headline writers at SiliconValley.com -- always good for a laugh...
Here's one way to convince merchants that online promotions do sometimes lead to brick-and-mortar purchases: Offer them a free online coupon service, a contextual one. That's exactly what Google is doing.
Taking virtualization one step further, you can now contract digital diseases while you're virtually socializing...
Spyware's threat is getting nastier. Infection rates are on the rise, in part thanks to the surging popularity of social-networking sites like MySpace.com.
Later in the article:
Overall, Molls says, 89% of consumer PCs are infected with some kind of spyware, a rate not seen in a year. And, on average, home computers contain 30 individual spyware programs.
Read the article for more on how the bad guys are exploiting Internet video clips and other channels.
Source: Spyware's Growing Arsenal
Insights from wiki creator Ward Cunningham:
ADT: How did you come to create WikiWikiWeb? What was your original impetus?
Cunningham: I have always been interested in how practice spreads in engineering communities. In the early '90s I wrote a HyperCard application made especially for collecting engineer's recollections regarding engineering projects within Tektronix. I asked visitors to describe how people carried ideas between projects and I found that participants were attracted to the authoring style (top-down hypertext) supported by the application.In '95 I set out to duplicate the authoring experience of my previous application while using the forms capability of the Web.
Read the full article for more perspectives on Web 2.0, XP, agile, etc.
Source: Application Development Trends - Ward Cunningham on Wikis, Patterns, Mashups and More
This looks like a promising new biography; read the full review at the source link below:
A voyager of the imagination, French novelist Jules Verne (1828-1905) found himself vexingly tethered to one genre. Driven by his publisher's commercial interests, he produced two or three books a year of scientific fantasy and adventure aimed at young readers.
Classics such as "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1864), "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1869) and "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1872) continue to make him one of the most translated and recognized writers. Yet a decade before his death he wrote to an admirer that he was "the most unknown of men."
What was unknown, according to Verne's latest biographer, William Butcher, is how secondary futuristic science was to Verne's writing; his larger interest was in mankind's longing to understand itself. Verne was a psychological explorer, not a technophile, Butcher insists, and all the fantastical vessels -- the balloon, the submarine, the spaceship -- were simply means to an end. As Verne suggested, "human nature [is] the greatest science of all."
The experiment continues...
Just as AOL is getting out of the ISP business to focus on advertising, Google today turned on free Internet access for all of Mountain View, Calif.
Google will move its Wi-Fi experiment out of its "trusted-tester" beta phase where its been since June and open the citywide secure wireless connection to anyone with a standard 802.11B or G card.
Later in the article:
So now, stroll down the quiet and sunny streets of Mountain View and you'll find Wi-Fi access points hanging from 385 street lamps across the city, relaying the free wireless signal.
Source: Google Unwires a City
The company has, however, produced its own ice cream, at least for its employees...
The free service in Mountain View, the company’s base in the heart of Silicon Valley, will become generally available on Wednesday after nine months of testing. Google has been selected by the city of San Francisco to install and operate a similar service there in partnership with Earthlink; the two companies are negotiating with the city over the terms.
Source: Google Says It Has No Plans for National Wi-Fi Service - New York Times
Oops...
The video-sharing site YouTube.com suffered an outage Tuesday, the same day a Web measurement company said the site had broken into its list of the Internet's top 50 for the first time.
Few details on the outage were available. Although the company's Web site had greeted visitors, "We're currently putting out some new features, sweeping out the cobwebs and zapping a few gremlins," an e-mail from YouTube blamed a temporary database problem.
The outage lasted hours. The site was restored by 5 p.m. EDT.
Source: WSJ.com - YouTube Suffers Outage
The WSJ analyzes AOL's info-leak. I imagine it must be pretty scary to work at AOL, Google, MSN, and Yahoo! at times...
One thing about us Internet users: We like our music, we like our pictures, we like our sex -- and we like them all free.
Last week, AOL released a trove of what it thought were anonymous Web-search data from 650,000 of its customers. While intending to help researchers, AOL instead set off a privacy controversy because some of the users could, in fact, be tracked down. But taking up AOL on its original intentions, I got hold of the data set -- 2.27 gigabytes' worth, loaded it into my shiny new SQL Server database software, and started my own research project into how people really use the Web.
One learns, for instance, that excepting prepositions and conjunctions, the most commonly used word in the 17.15 million separate searches was "free." If something isn't free, it better at least be "new," as that was the next-most common word.
Excluding proper nouns, the next most popular words were "lyrics," "county," "school," "city," "home," "state," "pictures," "music," "sale," "beach," "high," "map," "center" and "sex."
Source: WSJ.com - What Are Web Surfers Seeking? Well, It's Just What You'd Think
A stark technology-related reality check:
The events of September 2001 disproved the assumption that only a state could make war on another state. Now Hezbollah's confrontation with Israel has provided further education about how the world is changing. Hezbollah's campaign is a clear sign of how the democratization of missile technology -- of cruise missile technology, in particular -- is reshaping global realities.
Later in the article:
Overall, Hezbollah's decentralized, flexible network of small units exhibited the essential aspects of a warfighting style that some military thinkers have predicted would predominate in 21st-century warfare, and which has been described as netwar or fourth-generation warfare. It's a style of warfare that armies of nation-states, with their massive levels of force, are ill-equipped to fight.
Glad to know that Windows Live Writer will eventually go beyond blogs, e.g., to support wikis as well.
J.J. Allaire, Onfolio founder and Windows Live Writer architect, told the newspaper [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, to be precise; the WSJ ran a Dow Jones article version] he believes Windows Live Writer will expand beyond blogs into other forms of publishing.
"There's lots and lots going on right now with end users publishing content, and Windows Live Writer is a means of trying to tie all that together for people in a very pleasing and productive way," Allaire said.
BTW in case you missed this part of the story, JJ Allaire has quite a bit of history in this context, having created the first commercially successful web application server -- Allaire Cold Fusion -- during the mid-1990s... (Cool -- the Wikipedia entry on JJ, referenced above, has already been updated to include Windows Live Writer.)
Source: WSJ.com - Microsoft Introduces New Program For Bloggers
Note that I am NOT recommending this offer; I simply thought it was an interesting reality check instance -- a Dell laptop (they assert it's an $850 value elsewhere on the site, but Dell is offering the model -- Inspiron B130 -- for $485 and up at the moment) as an incentive to sign up for a Visa Platinum credit card. Of course, maintaining a $5K balance ($5K upon opening the account, then $3,500 for the first 18 months, to avoid a $600 one-time fee) on a credit card represents a significant payment stream, but it's one example of how hardware pricing dynamics are opening up new opportunities.
I ran across an ad for this offer in PC World magazine (the dead-tree version), incidentally, not one of my many email spam/junk folders. The web page asserts they've already "given away" more than 70,000 computers...
Link to Universal Savings Bank F.A. - Free Dell laptop with a Visa card and $5K balance
Steve Gillmor shares some timely insights on challenges and opportunities in information channels and alerts/notifications:
This is the same wall I hit with the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in print and then online some 18 and 6 months ago respectively. The resolution: I rely mostly on Peter O'Kelly's triage in the tech space; the Arts content is mostly lost. Google alerts on Beatles and West Wing sustain me for now. Taking that history as instructive, I would predict more alerts to cherry pick the Blogosphere spillover. Given the relatively high volume of citation of Gillmor and Gillmor Gang these days, that alert has kept the lions at bay to some extent.
Thanks for the reference, Steve; I'm glad to know you find my blog useful, and I look forward to hearing more about your quest to optimize time & attention.
Source: Steve Gillmor’s GestureLab
Timely tally from Mary Jo Foley (who also notes that Google has registered 520 potentially related domain names...)
Microsoft officials say there are 20 Windows Live services available in beta and/or final versions. But it looks like the real count is in excess of 40. And that's not including a number of Live services which Microsoft has yet to acknowledge, but sources say are in the pipeline.
Lots of negative Dell press on this topic this morning, but to be clear: 1) Sony made the batteries (and is "supporting" Dell in the recall), and 2) Dell is not the only PC vendor using Sony batteries -- i.e., expect additional recalls...
Dell is recalling 4.1 million notebook computer batteries because they could erupt in flames, the company said yesterday. It will be the largest safety recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said.
Dell, the world’s largest PC maker, said the lithium-ion batteries were made by Sony and were installed in notebooks sold from April 2004 to July 18 of this year.
An inspirational example of mission-critical communication/collaboration -- Strong Angel III:
The situation is grim. A pandemic has swept across the globe. Simultaneously, a terrorist network begins systematic cyber attacks, disabling communications throughout the United States. Now, local governments must provide humanitarian relief without an established telecommunications infrastructure. This is the scenario facing the participants of Strong Angel III, a collaborative demonstration of civil and military cooperation and communication capabilities put together by a partnership of private companies, government agencies, humanitarian and relief agencies, and universities. Hosted by San Diego State University and taking place in San Diego August 21-26, Strong Angel III will field test effective means of delivering life-saving humanitarian relief and rapidly deployable communication systems in the wake of major disasters.
Another interesting dimension:
Major sponsors and event participants include Microsoft, Bell Canada, Save the Children, Cisco Systems, Sprint Nextel, Google, the Naval Postgraduate School, the U.S. Department of Defense and CommsFirst.
More details on ZDNet and the event web site. The list of 49 SAIII Objectives is fascinating...
Source: Global Humanitarian Relief Experts Gather in San Diego to Demonstrate Disaster Response Innovations
New beta update of Blogger with features including:
Categorize your posts with labels Control who can read your blog [private blogs] Change the appearance and content of your blog with your mouse instead of HTML
Other updates include more feed options (blog comment feed as well as per-post comment feeds). I hope they also add an image API, so I'll be able to drag & drop more content with Windows Live Writer.
Source: Blogger Buzz: Blogger in beta
Sign of the times...
The latest in wearable technology comes with built-in cellphone microphones and remote iPod controls. It is outfitted with electroluminescent piping, originally designed for military use. It might even have solar energy panels.
And it is invading a school hallway near you.
Source: Wired, Aglow and Ready For Class
Timely reality check -- read the full post for some analysis of Mac OS market share.
Microsoft's next generation operating system, Windows Vista, continues to be horribly late in coming, but that hasn't stopped the current version, Windows XP, from dominating the OS market. Web analytics company OneStat.com says that Windows XP is responsible for almost 87 percent of all Web usage, while all Windows versions combined account for 97 percent of Web usage.
I suspect this is a bit generous, but it's related... Also see Johnson on "Why the London Plot Helps the Democrats (or at least, why it should help them)"
As far as I know, this is the first mainstream OS to adopt David Gelernter's "lifestreams" metaphor for representing changes in data over time. Essentially, it deals with time the way the physicists did: it makes time a new dimension, extending out "behind" the screen. The normal 2D representation of, say, the contents of a given folder represent its "live," real-time state. When you want to go back in time -- to, say, retrieve a deleted file -- past versions of the folder appear as cards stacked behind the current version that you flip through.
Source: stevenberlinjohnson.com: Leopard First Impressions: The Time Machine
Sign of the times: I watched the pilot for this new series last night -- via Netflix.
I'm optimistic about the show -- sort of a cross between a behind-the-scenes look at "Saturday Night Live" and "The West Wing"...
Aaron Sorkin takes us behind the scenes of a fictional late-night sketch comedy series. Lately, “funny” has been in short supply at Studio 60. The executive producer just had a meltdown – on live TV. The control room is out of control. The actors are acting up. And that’s just last Friday’s show! Studio 60’s only hope lies with two wunderkind writers (Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford) with troubles of their own, and the headstrong new network president (Amanda Peet) determined to turn things around.
More details...
In a bid to allow game players, students, and other programming amateurs to create their own video games for the Xbox 360 and Windows-based PCs, Microsoft today unveiled XNA Game Studio Express, a basic game authoring tool. Set for release in late 2006, XNA Game Studio Express will be free, but will require a $99 yearly subscription fee to translate code into a format the Xbox 360 will understand.
Source: Microsoft Opens Up Xbox 360 Game Development to Everyone
The Microsoft overview:
In the 30 years of video game development, the art of making console games has been reserved for those with big projects, big budgets and the backing of big game labels. Now Microsoft Corp. is bringing this art to the masses with a revolutionary new set of tools, called XNA Game Studio Express, based on the XNA™ platform. XNA Game Studio Express will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry.
[...]
The XNA Game Studio Express beta will be available Aug. 30, 2006, as a free download on Windows XP, for development on the Windows XP platform. XNA Game Studio Express will give anyone with a Windows XP-based PC access to a unified development tool that liberates the creation of great Xbox 360 and Windows XP-compatible games, providing a new alternative to the existing multithousand-dollar development kits that many console games require. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season.
Source: Microsoft Invites the World to Create Its Own Xbox 360 Console Games for the First Time
Interesting times when this is a lead story in both WSJ and NYT.
For Microsoft, the goal is to inspire amateurs to share or sell relatively simple games on the company’s Xbox Live network. (Microsoft will not own any rights to products created with these tools.) Programs created with XNA Game Studio Express will not look as good as most packaged titles. But at a time when gamers seem tired of sequels and genre standards, the company says it believes that some kind of independent games business could provide a breath of fresh air. “We thought a lot about ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ ” said Scott Henson, a director for Microsoft’s game developer group, referring to the low-budget horror film that became a surprise hit in 1999.
Source: Microsoft Has a Starter Kit for Aspiring Game Designers - New York Times
Sign me up when I can use the service via my Xbox...
The new ``X-Men" movie and television shows like ``24" are coming to a computer near you.
Fox will tap into a platform now used to sell video games and let visitors buy movies and television shows they can download for computer playback and transfer to devices running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Player.
Source: Fox to sell downloads of movies, TV shows, competing with iTunes - The Boston Globe
The blogging tool I've been exploring for the last couple weeks has gone live (no pun intended...). Check it out -- I'm very impressed with Windows Live Writer. Congrats to JJ Allaire and his team on an outstanding app/tool.
Welcome to the Windows Live Writer team blog! We are excited to announce that the Beta version of Windows Live Writer is available for download today.
Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service.
Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium. Our goal in creating Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone.
Timely analysis from The Economist
What today's internet firms can learn from 19th-century history
Source: Internet strategy | The alliance against Google | Economist.com
Pragmatic, if true, but I'll still want a laptop designed for Vista, e.g., with hybrid flash/traditional storage.
DigiTimes reported yesterday that Microsoft and PC makers would offer a free upgrade coupon. But Microsoft isn't yet willing to officially confirm that it will be free. "It's true that we are talking with our partners about plans for a coupon offer, but those discussions are ongoing, and we don't have anything else to share right now," spokesman Michael Burk said in an e-mail yesterday.
OneCare has been working well for me, so far...
Helped by low pricing, Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare landed the No. 2 spot in sales at American stores in its debut month, according to The NPD Group.
Source: Microsoft's antivirus package makes a splash | CNET News.com
Sign of the times...
The Department of Homeland Security issued an unusual security alert yesterday, warning users of Windows-based personal computers to patch a flaw in the Microsoft operating system.
Source: U.S. Warns PC Users of Flaw in Windows - New York Times
Interesting that different publications focus on different competitive implications -- EMC, Microsoft, and Oracle.
Oracle is moving into the content management business from its mainstay database business. To date, Oracle has developed its own content management offerings. But analysts suggested that Oracle, known as an aggressive acquirer, might shop for an independent content management software company, like OpenText.
Source: I.B.M. to Buy Content Software Maker for $1.6 Billion - New York Times
The FileNet deal in context.
The $35-a-share purchase of the Costa Mesa, Calif., maker of content-management software is IBM's fourth-largest acquisition, after PricewaterhouseCoopers's consulting arm ($4 billion), Lotus Development Corp. ($3.5 billion) and Rational Software Inc. ($2.1 billion), and its biggest purchase of a software company since it bought Rational in February 2003. Since 1995, IBM has bought 56 software companies, including the recent purchase of MRO Software Inc. for $740 million.
Another very important dimension, in the chart below -- software products are still among the most profitable (legal...) businesses in the world today...
![[IBM]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/NA-AJ920_IBM_20060810180819.gif)
Source: WSJ.com - IBM to Expand Software Line With $1.6 Billion FileNet Deal
Very high-stakes poker...
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) on Thursday said it agreed to acquire FileNet Corp. (FILE) for $1.6 billion, or $35 a share. The price carries only a 1% premium to FileNet's closing price Wednesday of $34.65 a share.
[...]
At $35.60 apiece, shares of FileNet are higher than the offer price. Some investors and analysts are speculating that another suitor may step in and offer a higher price for FileNet.
Source: WSJ.com - IBM To Buy FileNet For $35 A Share
Interesting times -- watch for Oracle to make a similar move next (although with EMC/Documentum and IBM/FileNet, the pure-play ECM vendor dance floor is getting kinda sparse...).
The purchase could be seen as an expensive play by IBM to compete head-to-head with Microsoft, which plans to integrate its own content management capabilities into Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Source: ENT News | News: IBM Acquisition Aimed at Microsoft?
More on Mylo
Sony is getting into the WiFi-based personal communicator business with the brand new Mylo. Short for My Life Online, Mylo ships with Skype, Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger pre-loaded and lets you IM or make Internet calls via any 802.11b hotspot. It ships in September 2006 for a retail price of $350
Source: Sony Mylo Handheld Communicator @ Alice Hill’s Real Tech News - Independent Tech
Never underestimate Craig McCaw...
So will Sprint Nextel and Clearwire be competitors or collaborators?
To date, the relationship between the two companies largely has been limited to swapping rights in certain markets to the airwaves required to roll out WiMax. Reston, Va.-based Sprint Nextel owns the most spectrum within a certain bandwidth, and Clearwire the second-most.
Source: The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Sprint Nextel picks Wimax for new wireless network
Sign of the times -- from the "Some guys just don't know when to quit" department...
When Senator Joseph I. Lieberman’s campaign Web site crashed in the hours leading up to yesterday’s Democratic primary election, it was hard not to read some deeper meaning into the problem.
Source: Charges of Dirty Tricks on Web Feed Speculation in the Blogosphere - New York Times
Disturbing snapshot -- read the full article.
Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher’s anonymity, but it was not much of a shield.
Source: A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 - New York Times
Looks like the reality distortion field isn't limited to product planning and marketing...
Top executives of Pixar Animation Studios, the computer-animation company founded by Apple Computer Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs, received stock-option grants priced at the stock's annual lows in four years between 1997 and 2003.
The pattern of fortuitous timing raises questions about whether the options might have been backdated or otherwise manipulated to give executives the chance to increase their payouts.
Source: WSJ.com - Pixar Granted Some Stock Options At Year Lows
Interesting -- although it'd be more interesting if Apple started doing something more innovative with hypertext, and not just file back-up services.
Apple Computer Inc. said Monday that it is gearing up to offer a new historical dimension for organizing and securing one’s personal computer information that complements the decades-old desktop software metaphor.
Called Time Machine, the new feature will be a part of the next version of its OS X operating system, code-named Leopard, due to ship next spring.
Source: Leave it to Apple to make data archiving a sexy subject - Reuters Newsblogs
More details on Mac Virtual PC -- I assume the PowerPC version will continue to be supported; Microsoft won't create a Mac Intel version, however.
"The (Macintosh business unit) still recognizes that customers need access to Windows applications from their Intel-based Macs and feels confident that alternative solutions offered by Apple and other vendors, combined with a fully packaged retail copy of Windows will satisfy this need," the company said.
Source: Microsoft shelves its Virtual PC for Mac | Tech News on ZDNet
But where's the part in this story about adding real value for customers?
“In one fell swoop, we have paid for two-thirds of our Internet acquisitions,” Peter Chernin, the company’s president, said in a conference call with investors and reporters yesterday.
The News Corporation paid $649 million last year to buy the parent company of MySpace. It has now spent a total of $1.3 billion to buy Internet companies that also include IGN.com, a game site, and Scout, a series of local sports sites.
Source: Google Deal Will Give News Corp. Huge Payoff - New York Times
Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of MySpace now looks smarter, but I'm not sure what this means for Google, strategically...
The deal is also a huge financial win for News Corp., which bought MySpace last year just as the social-networking site was surging in popularity. Under the terms of the agreement, Google promises to pay the media titan a minimum of $900 million in cash between 2007 and the second quarter of 2010, contingent on certain Web traffic thresholds being met by MySpace and several other Web sites owned by News Corp.'s fledging Fox Interactive Media division. The deal doesn't cover FoxSports.com, which has a pre-existing relationship with Microsoft.
Source: WSJ.com - Google Lands MySpace Search-Advertising Pact
A Microsoft Zune leading indicator?...
The Sony mylo, slated for availability in September at a retail price of about $350, is a first-of-its-kind product that uses Wi-Fi networks, analysts say. It is not a cellular phone and thus doesn't carry monthly service fees. And though it could handle Web-based e-mail services, it doesn't support corporate e-mail programs.
Instead, the slim, oblong-shaped gizmo that has a 2.4-inch display and slides open to expose a thumb keyboard is specifically geared toward young, mainstream consumers for messaging and Internet-based calls, commonly known as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls.
Meanwhile, I read an article yesterday indicating Microsoft is terminating Virtual PC for the Mac.
A California company owned by the data storage giant EMC Corp. has unveiled software that lets Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh machines run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software, side-by-side with Mac programs.
VMware Inc., of Palo Alto, is demonstrating the software at Apple's annual developers conference in San Francisco. VMware hasn't given the product a name, or decided on a price. But it plans to offer a beta version, available for downloading from the Internet, before year's end.
Source: VMware software lets Apple Macs run Windows, side-by-side with Macintosh programs - The Boston Globe
FYI more on one of Google's partners in addressing unsafe sites.
What is StopBadware.org?
StopBadware.org is a "Neighborhood Watch" campaign committed to fighting badware by providing reliable, objective information about downloadable applications so that consumers can make informed choices when they download programs to their computers. StopBadware.org is led by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the Oxford Internet Institute, Google, Lenovo, and Sun Microsystems.
Source: StopBadware.org Report
Timely analysis from Sim Simeonov. My $.02: web-centric Office-like offerings are more complementary than competitive with Office; I also agree Microsoft has a significant opportunity to lead in web-centric offerings, e.g., through the assorted Windows Live services, Office 2007 Excel and Form services, etc.
Read Sim's full post for more analysis.
Strangely enough, the criteria above suggest that MS has a chance to solve the on-demand office app problem better than anyone else. They have Ray Ozzie of Notes & Groove fame. They have control of the OS & browser, which would allow them to solve the connectivity & security issues transparently.
I’m all for simpler, on-demand productivity apps for the home but the enterprise will go with MS for a while longer.
Source: HighContrast
Unclear when we'll see Chandler 1.0, but in the meantime many other offerings are evolving in Agenda-ish ways, as beyond-the-basics hypertext gains market momentum.
Text-based and unsupported for close to a decade, Agenda is a fossil of the DOS era, making its fan base a dedicated lot indeed. Now Kapor and open source developers have ambitious hopes for a new app called Chandler, tentatively set for release early next year, which will have the utility of Agenda without the hassles.
Interesting to think of the web being ~15 years old while the (IBM) PC is nearing its 25th anniversary (for more on the latter, see, e.g., this article from The Economist).
One key date is 6 August 1991 - the day on which links to the fledgling computer code for the www were put on the alt.hypertext discussion group so others could download it and play with it.
On that day the web went world wide.
I wonder if Google includes sites that offer perma-beta programs/services...
Google has started warning users if they are about to visit a webpage that could harm their computer.
The warning will pop up if users click on a link to a page known to host spyware or other malicious programs.
Source: BBC NEWS | Technology | Google warns on 'unsafe' websites
I suspect we'll need to read the details before getting an objective sense of whether or not the proposed Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) is well designed.
The bill has now moved on to the Senate. Critics from the worlds of educational technology and media studies say they're alarmed that the legislation has advanced this far. They warn that it would do little to stop sexual predators, but would deprive youth from poor areas of their only access to the online communities that are an increasingly critical part of teen culture. To these critics, the act is an election-year stunt designed to make any member of Congress who opposes it look "soft" on sexual predators.
Source: Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact
Something to ponder, as we approach the 25th anniversary of the (IBM) PC: at the moment, you could pay $399 for a new Dell Dimension 1100 with half a gig of RAM, a 160 gig hard disk, and a 15" flat panel display. Amazing... Entry-level Dell laptops with 14.1" screens, wireless, and more start at $449.
Definitely a huge PR opportunity for Apple this week:
What's next for Apple Computer? The answer is coming Monday, and the details could put a new twist on the Macintosh maker's rivalry with Microsoft.
Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs is due to give the first public preview of Leopard, the next version of the Mac OS X operating system, in his opening address at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Oh joy -- more video ad spam coming soon...
Google has struck a deal to allow Web site owners to put video clips from Viacom, including “SpongeBob SquarePants” and MTV’s “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County,” on their pages. The clips will be accompanied by advertising, with Viacom, Google and the site owners dividing the ad revenue.
Later in the article:
In a separate aspect of its deal with Google, Viacom will make full-length programs from many of its networks available for purchase on Google Video for $1.99 each. Viacom has been selling videos through Apple’s iTunes Music Store since last year, and it recently made the same catalog of programs available through AOL’s new video store.
Source: Google Joins Viacom in Web Test of Video Ads - New York Times
Sign of the times:
“After the holidays, the days of picture-tube TV’s are gone,” said Geoff Shavey, the TV buyer for Costco. “One year from now, we will not sell picture-tube TV’s.”
Source: Picture Tubes Are Fading Into the Past - New York Times
Web 2.0 reality check in today's Boston Globe; see the link below for an overview of five players, and this article for more context-setting.
While the Boston area has yet to emerge as a hotbed for Web 2.0 companies, a small cluster of start-ups is scrambling to gain traction with new Internet business models. Here are five of the local players
Source: Local companies hoping to make the Web 2.0 grade - The Boston Globe
Timely roundup, including screen shot slide shows etc.
Review: With Microsoft Office 2007's relatively high price and steep learning curve, free Web-based office suites look mighty appealing. They do offer some interesting features, but should be looked at more as an Office adjunct than a replacement.
How does Google get away with this sort of stuff?
The latest version of Google Toolbar for IE has a strange new feature: keep Google as the default search engine. There's an exe that runs by default at the startup and monitors if another software (like MSN Toolbar) tries to change Google's settings.
Read the full post for details -- Google acknowledges its toolbar has a bug, but here's how it's working today:
If you install the latest Google toolbar, set Google as your default search provider, and later go into the IE7 Change Search Defaults dialog, change to a default other than Google, click Set Default, and then click OK, you'll see:
Clicking the icon then leads to a dialog that explains you can disable the override etc. 
The current bug part: the "Disable default search protection..." option above doesn't stick.
No doubt Google will fix the bug sometime soon, but I'll remain baffled about why anyone would think it's reasonable for Google to do a kludgey (separate .exe monitor) override of a user choice in IE7. I can only imagine the outrage if the roles were reversed, and Microsoft were overriding Google user options...
Source: Google Operating System: Google Is Your Default Search
Digg profile in BusinessWeek -- cover story this week, no less. Excerpt:
It is now the 24th-most popular Web site in the U.S., nipping at the The New York Times' (No. 19) and easily beating Fox News (No. 62), according to industry tracker Alexa.com. More than 1 million people flock to Digg daily, reading, submitting, or "digging" some 4,000 stories. As on many Web 2.0 sites, people register and create online profiles. Then these "diggers" can upload links to stories and blogs they want to share from other news portals like Yahoo! (YHOO ) News or mainstream media sites like The Washington Post. Users can click a "digg it" button that essentially casts a vote for the content. They can also hit the "bury" button. The stories with the most "diggs" zoom to the top of the page.
Source: Valley Boys
More from the embarrassment-of-riches dept:
The still-unannounced Microsoft LiveDrive/SkyDrive and Google GDrive storage-service offerings have a new competitor. On August 3, AOL unveiled Xdrive, a service for storing, accessing, sharing and backing up files and data of all kinds. AOL is making up to 5 GB of storage available for free to any users with an AOL or AIM screen name starting in early September.
Source: AOL's Xdrive Beats Microsoft and Google to the Storage Punch
An attempt to expand browser-based innovation:
Start-up Flock plans to release this fall version 1.0 of its namesake browser, which intermingles online socializing and Web surfing.
Features in Flock, which is built on top of Firefox software, focus on sharing and communication, a common theme of so-called Web 2.0 services. The browser is being designed to integrate closely with online Web services, like Flickr and Delicious.
MRO acquisition in context:
I.B.M.’s software business, with revenue of $15.8 billion last year, trails only Microsoft in size. The MRO purchase, if approved by shareholders, would be the 37th software company I.B.M. has acquired since 2001. Nearly all the acquisitions have been to push I.B.M.’s software business beyond its traditional strength in mainframe programs.
Source: I.B.M. to Buy Maker of Software That Monitors Equipment - New York Times
Timely snapshot from the WSJ:
The idea is not to simply beam whatever is on the computer screen to the TV. There's not much demand for reading email or viewing ordinary text-heavy Web sites on a 42-inch flat screen. Instead, tech and media companies are using the Internet as a conduit for transmitting selected content, just as cable is a conduit for getting programming to the TV. And the Internet opens the possibility of sending virtually unlimited content to the TV -- from foreign-language films to archived TV shows from the 1960s.
![[Making a Connection Graphic]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/MK-AG809_LIVING_20060803214816.gif)
Busy week for IBM business development -- Webify yesterday, MRO Software today.
IBM (NYSE: IBM) and MRO Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: MROI) today announced the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire MRO Software Inc., a publicly held company based in Bedford, Mass., in an all-cash transaction at a price of approximately $740 million, or $25.80 per share. The acquisition is subject to MRO Software shareholder and regulatory reviews and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Source: IBM to Acquire MRO Software
Good responsiveness, but "wikiality" is going to stick anyway...
.... Wikipedia's volunteer administrators were among those watching Colbert, and they responded swiftly to correct the entry, block further mischievous editing, and ban user StephenColbert from the website
Source: Slashdot | Stephen Colbert Wikipedia Prank Backfires
Read the article for details
You've come a long way, baby. Mozilla has arrived in a big way, with the 200 millionth download of the Firefox browser on Monday, less than two years after Firefox made its debut.
It's also seen its first serious malware (define) exploit.
Interesting times in the BP* zone:
Oracle licensed IDS Scheer's Aris Platform, a monster BPM (business process management) suite that this fall will be licensed to customers under the name Oracle Business Process Analysis (BPA) Suite.
Typical AOL tactics...
Q. I have broadband, but I pay extra to AOL for its premium services such as e-mail and parental control. What does this mean for me?
A. You will continue to be billed unless you call AOL to cancel service. AOL promises that its employees no longer will try to push customers to keep paying, a tactic that drew criticism in the past. Those who occasionally need dial-up access, such as when they travel, can sign up for a $9.95 monthly plan with only 10 hours of access but enhanced security.
Source: The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Q&A | What it all means for customers
A stark reality check for AOL:
After peaking at 26.7 million U.S. subscribers in September 2002, AOL's subscription base dropped 30% to 18.6 million in March. Because AOL's rivals, including Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., offer free email, customers would have kept dropping paid subscriptions even if AOL.com email remained a premium offering. By making such accounts free, AOL could at least try to persuade customers to watch an ad-supported video or two as they check their mail.
Advertising, though a relatively small part of AOL's revenue, saw a 40% boost in the second quarter, while the unit's overall revenue declined 2%. During the quarter, AOl's subscriber rolls fell an additional 976,000 to 17.7 milllion.
Source: WSJ.com - Time Warner Swings to a Profit, Announces Major Shift at AOL
More details on AOL's latest recalc. See the article for reasons why "... AOL has little choice."
AOL will still offer its dial-up accounts at $26 a month for unlimited use, but the company no longer will aggressively market it. That's likely to mean the end of mailboxes stuffed with CDs of trial AOL software, as well as job cuts in marketing and customer service. There was no immediate word on how many layoffs will result.
The changes are to fully take effect in early September.
Subscribers who dropped AOL within the past two years will be able to reclaim their old AOL.com e-mail addresses.
Besides e-mail, AOL will give away its proprietary software for accessing the once-premium offerings, as well as safety and security features such as parental controls.
Sim Simeonov's perspective on DBMS trends:
The underlying story behind the increased traction MySQL and EnterpriseDB are seeing is that SQL databases are getting commoditized at an increasing pace. Oracle, IBM and MS may not like this but that’s where the world is headed. It’s about time–SQL has been around for 30+ years. On top of this, application frameworks have advanced to the point where some of the heavy lifting that went into databases for added functionality and scalability has moved up into the application runtime tier. Comparatively speaking, much less code is database-specific nowadays than ten years ago.
I agree that interesting and useful things are happening in open source and specialized DBMSs, but I also believe IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle are, collectively, gaining overall share, especially for organizations that need advanced XML data management. Commoditized != devoid of value...
Source: HighContrast » Databases move closer to commoditization
Confirmation of AOL's radical plan:
Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) AOL on Wednesday said it planned to give away its e-mail and Web services for free to people who already have high-speed Internet connections in a bid to boost online advertising sales in its fourth overhaul in five years.
![[Server Graphic]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/NA-AK080_SERVER_20060822185255.gif)
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