Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Amazon.com: A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Whittle): Books: John Kenneth Galbraith

Click here and buy the book from Amazon.com if you think GOOG > $700 is perfectly reasonable.  It's a quick, informative, and delightful read.

From Library Journal
No matter what your political leanings or economic beliefs might be, there is no denying that Galbraith is a brilliant writer. In this humorous and thoughtful book, he traces the investor "herd" mentality from Tulipomania, which gripped Holland in the 1630s, through a variety of events and up through the 1987 stock market debacle--which he accurately predicted. Galbraith analyzes the crashes that resulted from these speculative episodes, and he points out that the "mass escape from sanity by people in pursuit of profit," which, in his opinion, is always the cause, is never blamed. A truly excellent book, this is highly recommended.
- C. Christopher Pavek, Putnam, Hayes & Bartlett, Inc. Information Ctr., Washington, D.C.

While you're there, also order a copy of Galbraith's similarly short but classic "The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth for Our Time".  Review excerpt from the Amazon.com book page:

In this thin volume, Galbraith, the noted economist and presidential adviser, serves up a pessimistic view of today's U.S. economy. Drawing on the omnipresent headlines of corporate scandal and greed, Galbraith explains that as the economy suffers, the overall state of American society declines as well. He points to a number of cases of "innocent fraud," or the gap between reality and conventional wisdom. The author bemoans the emphasis on gross domestic production, or GDP, rather than cultural or artistic advances. Companies, not the public, decide what products to make. Galbraith believes that decisions in various corporate arenas are made based on profits, rather than sound business strategies. Furthermore, he says that shareholder meetings, with a few rare exceptions, are pointless because "Shareholders-owners-and their alleged directors in any sizeable enterprise are fully subordinate to the management.... An accepted fraud." He also calls the rapid Internet growth and subsequent bubble another example of fraud as millions of analysts predicted rapid growth for so many companies, but ultimately many employees were laid off. Even more dismaying to Galbraith is the power of the Federal Reserve, which is credited with prompting economic resurgence when, in his view, the institution has limited real power. This brief treatise is a well-written, logical argument about the state of the economy. However, readers may be disappointed because the short concluding chapter offers few realistic solutions.

Amazon.com: A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Whittle): Books: John Kenneth Galbraith

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Getting Things Done and Microsoft Outlook

See the full post for instructions on how to send-and-save in Outlook 2007...

So... I finally got around to finishing Getting Things Done, after having it on my expansive unread-book shelf for ~6 months (what's the emoticon for self-deprecating irony?...).  I wish I'd thought to explore the Wikipedia entry on GTD before reading the book, as that would have saved me some time; I still think the book is a worthwhile read, however. Wikipedia also has an entry on GTD software -- an impressive list; clearly the GTD approach has resonated with lots of readers (and software developers).

I'll have more perspectives to share on the GTD themes in future posts, but for now I wanted to share a quick note about Microsoft Outlook in this context.  GTD author David Allen notes, on p. 153 (of the paperback version of the book), that:

"Some applications (such as Lotus Notes) allow you to file a copy of an e-mail into one of your folders as you send it (with a 'Send and File' button).  Others (e.g., Outlook) will simultaneously save only into your universal 'Sent Mail' folder.  In the latter case, what seems to work best for many is to copy ('cc' or 'bcc') themselves when they delegate via e-mail, and then to pull that copy into their '@WAITING FOR' folder.  (It's relatively easy to program Outlook to automatically send any e-mail that you 'cc' to yourself in a designated folder, which would replicate the process just described.)"

Here's my information worker time & attention entropy reduction tip for the day: Allen is wrong -- Outlook does support send-and-share, but it's a multi-step action in Outlook, rather than the single-step action in Notes.

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Getting Things Done and Microsoft Outlook

blog.pmarca.com: Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web

Marc Andreessen's take on Open Social

This is the exact same concept as the Facebook platform, with two huge differences:

  • With the Facebook platform, only Facebook itself can be a "container" -- "apps" can only run within Facebook itself. In contrast, with Open Social, any social network can be an Open Social container and allow Open Social apps to run within it.
  • With the Facebook platform, app developers build to Facebook-proprietary languages and APIs such as FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and FQL (Facebook Query Language) -- those languages and APIs don't work anywhere other than Facebook -- and then the apps can only run within Facebook. In contrast, with Open Social, app developers can build to standard HTML and Javascript, and their apps can then run in any Open Social container.

If you recall how I previously described the Facebook platform as "a dramatic leap forward for the Internet industry", you'll understand why I think Open Social is the next big leap forward!

Read the full post for more details, but do so skeptically, understanding that Andreessen has some deeply vested interests in this context

blog.pmarca.com: Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web

Hello, India? I Need Help With My Math - New York Times

Interesting times... 

The first wave of slicing up services work and sending it abroad has been all about business operations. Computer programming, call centers, product design and back-office jobs like accounting and billing have to some degree migrated abroad, mainly to India. The Internet, of course, makes it possible, while lower wages in developing nations make outsourcing attractive to corporate America.

The second wave, according to some entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and offshoring veterans, will be the globalization of consumer services. People like Ms. Yamaki and Mr. Tham, they predict, are the early customers in a market that will one day include millions of households in the United States and other nations.

Hello, India? I Need Help With My Math - New York Times

Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook - New York Times

 Check out Vic Gundotra's bio -- he has some highly relevant domain experience...

For Google, the effort could breathe new life into Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and other countries, but not in the United States. While the move could also help some rival social networks, Google could benefit from their success, in part, by helping to sell advertising on those sites.

Indeed, that strategy would fit into a model that Google has begun talking about recently. Vic Gundotra, who heads Google’s developer programs, said last week that Google would soon begin an aggressive project to create software tools and give them away free in an open-source format.

The goal, he said, is to improve not just Google’s applications, but any software that runs on the Web. That, in turn, would drive more Internet use, and Google would benefit indirectly by selling advertising, he said.

Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook - New York Times

Online Marketers Joining Internet Privacy Efforts - New York Times

This could have interesting implications for Google... 

Most consumers are familiar with do-not-call lists, which are meant to keep telemarketers from phoning them. Soon people will be able to sign up for do-not-track lists, which will help shield their Web surfing habits from the prying eyes of marketers.

Such lists will not reduce the number of ads that people see online, but they will prevent advertisers from using their online meanderings to deliver specific ad pitches to them.

Online Marketers Joining Internet Privacy Efforts - New York Times

Google Seeks Bigger Role In Social Networking - WSJ.com

Given recent experience, this  should be worth another $30 - $40 per Google share...

The Mountain View, Calif., company plans to release later this week a set of technical specifications software developers can use to write Web-based applications that run within a number of different social-network services and also tap into user information. Google says its 12 initial partners for the OpenSocial specification include social networks Hi5 Networks Inc., LinkedIn Corp., Ning Inc., Friendster Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc., and also Oracle Corp., which sell software and Web-based services to businesses. Google says a number of application developers for social networks -- which allow individuals to set up personal Web pages and communicate with friends -- have signed on as well.

The partners don't include the biggest U.S. social-networking services, MySpace and closely-held Facebook, setting the stage for a possible standards battle between them and Google.

Google Seeks Bigger Role In Social Networking - WSJ.com

Google Phone Plan Draws Interest - WSJ.com

Fascinating that the market -- at least stock market -- conventional wisdom is that Google can do no wrong, despite ample evidence suggesting otherwise (and some very strong and well-entrenched competitors in the mobile platform domain...) 

Google Inc. is in advanced talks with two top U.S. cellphone operators, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp., about selling handsets tailored to its new mobile-phone operating system, people familiar with the matter said.

Deals with the carriers would represent a major breakthrough for the Internet search giant, which until now has encountered wariness from some quarters of the wireless industry about its mobile-phone plans.

Google Phone Plan Draws Interest - WSJ.com

Cover Pages: XForms 1.0 Third Edition Published as a W3C Recommendation.

XForms could have transformational potential, if it's broadly adopted; see the full article for more details 

W3C has announced the publication of XForms 1.0 (Third Edition) as a W3C Recommendation, signifying that there is significant support for the specification from the Advisory Committee, the W3C Team, W3C Working groups, and the public.

Forms are an important part of the Web, and they continue to be the primary means for enabling interactive Web applications. Web applications and electronic commerce solutions have sparked the demand for better Web forms with richer interactions. XForms 1.0 is the response to this demand, and provides a new platform-independent markup language for online interaction between a person (through an XForms Processor) and another agent, usually remote.

Cover Pages: XForms 1.0 Third Edition Published as a W3C Recommendation.

Technology Review: Terabyte Storage for Cell Phones

Yow 

A new type of memory technology could lead to thumb drives or digital-camera memory cards that store a terabyte of information--more than most hard drives hold today. The first examples of the new technology, which could also slash energy consumption by more than 99 percent, could be on the market within 18 months.

Technology Review: Terabyte Storage for Cell Phones

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

NetSuite says Ellison to transfer stock | CNET News.com

Hmm -- near-term state change for NetSuite?...

Ellison, co-founder and chief executive of giant software company Oracle, currently holds about 74 percent of NetSuite through an affiliate company and family trusts in his son's and daughter's names, and would have had majority control after its IPO, including the right to make key decisions, raising conflict of interest concerns.

Under revised terms laid out in Tuesday's filing, Ellison will transfer the 61 percent stake held by affiliate Tako Ventures into the lockbox company, and will lose the ability to appoint directors to the company's board after NetSuite's IPO.

NetSuite says Ellison to transfer stock | CNET News.com

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Java developers finally realize the party's over

FSJ on Java...

But I think they don't quite know which party they're talking about. See this screed where some Javatard says Apple has been spitting in his face because we didn't include Java 6 in Leopard. Or something. So he says he's selling his Mac. His headline is, "So long, Apple. The party's over." Well he's right about one thing. The party is over -- the Java party, that is. Glad to see the Javatards have finally figured that out. Word is they're co-sponsoring a support group with Lotus Notes developers. Fun bunch.

Meanwhile, my Burton Group colleague Richard Monson-Haefel just published a report titled The Java Platforms:

The Java platform is divided into four main platforms: Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE), Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME), and Java Card. In this Application Platform Strategies overview, Senior Analyst Richard Monson-Haefel finds that Java Card and Java SE are strong leaders in their respective markets with longevity; Java ME is also a leader in its market, but it suffers from platform fragmentation; Java EE has grown far too complex and does not have a viable future as it is currently defined.

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Java developers finally realize the party's over

BEA Defends Its Rebuff of the Takeover Attempt by Oracle - New York Times

Depending on BEA's next moves, it may be lucky to see $17/share. 

Peter Goldmacher, an analyst with Cowen & Company, said he thought that Oracle would end up paying $17 a share for BEA, because no other software companies are in a position to outbid it as they do not have the infrastructure to absorb BEA quite as easily.

Furthermore, he said, BEA’s share of the market is declining. “This company has a shelf life more like fish than wine,” Mr. Goldmacher said. “Oracle and I.B.M. are really hurting BEA in the middleware market.”

BEA Defends Its Rebuff of the Takeover Attempt by Oracle - New York Times

Can a Google Phone Connect With Carriers? - WSJ.com

Interesting times... 

Within the next two weeks, Google is expected to announce advanced software and services that would allow handset makers to bring Google-powered phones to market by the middle of next year, people familiar with the situation say. In recent months Google has approached several U.S. and foreign handset manufacturers about the idea of building phones tailored to Google software, with Taiwan's HTC Corp. and South Korea's LG Electronics Inc. mentioned in the industry as potential contenders. Google is also seeking partnerships with wireless operators. In the U.S., it has the most traction with Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile USA, while in Europe it is pursuing relationships with France Télécom's Orange SA and Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.'s 3 U.K., people familiar with the matter say. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

The Google-powered phones are expected to wrap together several Google applications -- among them, its search engine, Google Maps, YouTube and Gmail email -- that have already made their way onto some mobile devices. The most radical element of the plan, though, is Google's push to make the phones' software "open" right down to the operating system, the layer that controls applications and interacts with the hardware. That means independent software developers would get access to the tools they need to build additional phone features.

Can a Google Phone Connect With Carriers? - WSJ.com

Monday, October 29, 2007

Former OpenDocument advocates bolt for W3C standard | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Timely reality check; check the full article for more details

Adding a twist to a high-stakes conflict over document formats, some advocates for OpenDocument, or ODF, are abandoning the standard in favor of the World Wide Web Consortium's Compound Document Formats standard.

The reason? Technical limitations in sharing ODF files with Microsoft Office applications.

"We can't meet our market requirements with OpenDocument," said Gary Edwards who started the OpenDocument Foundation last year. "The truth is OpenDocument was never designed to meet market requirements."

Former OpenDocument advocates bolt for W3C standard | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Improving the iPod experience - The Boston Globe

I want this type of equipment for my laptop.  I also want it to draw power from the laptop; the battery in the current Myvu "universal" edition only lasts for 4 hours.

You wear the Solo Plus Edition (about $200 at myvu.com) as you would a pair of glasses, and plug its stereo headphones into each ear. The device's two tiny lenses are positioned to create the illusion of a single image in your field of view.

Improving the iPod experience - The Boston Globe

Reimagining the Automobile Industry by Selling the Electricity - New York Times

This should be straightforward in places such as North Dakota, where people already routinely plug in their cars during winter (for engine block heaters)...

Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley technologist who was in competition to become chief executive of SAP, one of the world’s largest software companies, has re-emerged with a grand plan to reinvent the world’s automobile industry around battery-powered all-electric cars.

Others are developing green cars, like the Tesla and Chevrolet Volt. However, Mr. Agassi is not planning to make cars, but instead wants to deploy an infrastructure of battery-charging stations in the United States, Europe and the developing world.

Reimagining the Automobile Industry by Selling the Electricity - New York Times

Oracle Lets BEA Bid Die; Icahn Pushes for Auction - WSJ.com

BEA closed at $16.50 Friday... 

In a statement yesterday, Oracle said BEA shareholders "should not assume that Oracle will renew its $17 per share offer in the future. Over time many things can change: BEA's business might materially weaken, the stock market can fall further from its recent record highs, or Oracle may have committed its capital elsewhere."

Oracle also invited shareholders to take action against BEA's board. "If the BEA shareholders are unhappy with the behavior of the BEA board it is up to those shareholders, not Oracle, to take the appropriate action," it said.

Oracle Lets BEA Bid Die; Icahn Pushes for Auction - WSJ.com

Technology Review: The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream

Hmm... 

Twine is a website where people can dump information that's important to them, from strings of e-mails to YouTube videos. Or, if a user prefers, Twine can automatically collect all the Web pages she visited, e-mails she sent and received, and so on. Once Twine has some information, it starts to analyze it and automatically sort it into categories that include the people involved, concepts discussed, and places, organizations, and companies. This way, when a user is searching for something, she can have quick access to related information about it. Twine also uses elements of social networking so that a user has access to information collected by others in her network. All this creates a sort of "collective intelligence," says Nova Spivack, CEO and founder of Radar Networks.

Technology Review: The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Icahn Sues Software Maker Seeking Vote on Offer - New York Times

BEA needs to embrace its fate... 

The billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn has sued BEA Systems, the software maker that spurned a $6.7 billion offer from Oracle, demanding that the company hold an annual meeting and permit shareholders to vote on a sale.

Mr. Icahn, BEA’s largest shareholder, said Friday that the company should put itself up for auction. The lawsuit asks for BEA, which is seeking an offer of more than $8 billion, to hold an annual meeting by Nov. 30.

Icahn Sues Software Maker Seeking Vote on Offer - New York Times

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Internet firms | Friend accepted | Economist.com

The Economist on Microsoft's Facebook investment

Mr Zuckerberg and Facebook's other early investors, of course, have carried off the biggest victory. Mr Zuckerberg is now worth some $3 billion on paper. Google will not suffer much. Its seemingly endless rise continues. Its own social network, Orkut, does well in emerging markets and is about to get a revamp that may make it a stronger rival to Facebook. It is Google's and Microsoft's other rival, Yahoo!, which now looks really forlorn. It has been outmanoeuvred by everybody in the acquisition game. It keeps losing to Google in search and advertising, and unlike Microsoft it has no software-licence revenues to fall back on. Last week it shut down its own social network, Yahoo 360°, and hardly anybody noticed.

Internet firms | Friend accepted | Economist.com

Icahn Tells BEA To Bring Oracle Bid To Shareholders- WSJ.com

 So maybe not the end of this chapter yet...

Icahn, who holds a significant stake in BEA, said in a letter to BEA's board Friday that, "I view your public declaration of a $21 per share 'take it or leave it' price as a management entrenchment tactic, not a negotiating technique." Icahn suggested the board hold an open auction process for potential buyers, including Oracle, and allow BEA shareholders to "to accept or reject the proposal made by the highest bidder."

Icahn also said he is commencing a lawsuit aimed at preventing BEA's board from taking "any action that would dilute voting by issuing stock, entrench management or derail a potential sale."

Article - WSJ.com

Apple Limits Sale of iPhones: Two Per Person and No Cash - New York Times

Unusual demands for iPhone supplies 

“Customer response to the iPhone has been off the charts, and limiting iPhone sales to two per customer helps us ensure that there are enough iPhones for people who are shopping for themselves or buying a gift,” Ms. Kerris said. “We’re requiring a credit or debit card for payment to discourage unauthorized resellers.”

Apple Limits Sale of iPhones: Two Per Person and No Cash - New York Times

Friday, October 26, 2007

HP Mediasmart Server Online Demo | We Got Served

Check it out at this page.

The HP Mediasmart Server will be available to buy in the coming weeks - HP have kicked off their marketing with an online demo of the server which outlines its features and benefits in detail.

Alongside the recent Windows Home Server minisite at microsoft.com, it’s certainly the most detailed (and glossiest!) overview we’ve seen on WHS and if you’re in the market for the HP Mediasmart, it makes a pretty compelling case.

I think Windows Home Server is going to be a very high-volume product.

HP Mediasmart Server Online Demo | We Got Served

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The "$15 billion" nonsense

A very timely reality check

Extrapolating Facebook's true worth from Microsoft's investment is a ridiculous exercise, for two main reasons. First, the investment is part of a broader deal, the details of which are unknown. Clearly, Facebook needs cash to support its growth, and the cash payment was a price Microsoft had to pay to nail down the partnership. It has to be seen in that light, not as a market-cap marker. Second, and more important, Microsoft's investment is not financial but strategic. The company is currently engaged in a multi-front competitive battle under conditions of great uncertainty. Facebook forms one of the fronts, and partnering with the company is far more about gaining future strategic options and blocking the advance of a competitor (Google) than about making a financial gain through the appreciation of Facebook stock. Microsoft, in other words, is about as far from being a dispassionate investor as you can get. Its investment, in isolation, tells us very little about the true worth of Facebook.

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The "$15 billion" nonsense

When Did A Fake Blogger Become a Reliable Source?

Trouble ahead, one way or another, I suspect

There are not one, but two stories on Techmeme this morning broken by Fake Steve Jobs, a.k.a. Forbes' Daniel Lyons. Both were repeated on a number of blogs. Yes, we know who Fake Steve is now, and yes he's a credible reporter working for a respected publication, but bear in mind that these stories were reported with no sources and on the blog of a fictional character. Yet, they were taken at face value by a number of prominent bloggers.

When Did A Fake Blogger Become a Reliable Source?

SCO has a buyer, pending bankruptcy approval - Network World

Useful case study in falling as far as possible...

Embattled SCO Group is offering the bankruptcy court a deal it could be hard to refuse. The company has received an offer of $36 million from JGD Management for its business and intellectual property. JGD Management, a current debtor of SCO, is an investing arm of York Capital Management, which owned more than 91,000 shares of SCO stock from March 2005 to September 2006.

SCO has a buyer, pending bankruptcy approval - Network World

Microsoft’s Billion Vista Bump - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Useful snapshot

In after-hours trading today, investors bid up Microsoft’s shares by 12 percent, to nearly $36. That added about $30 billion to its market value. Microsoft hasn’t seen that high a stock price since 2001.

[...]

Nonetheless, a day after we marveled at the $15 billion value placed on the tiny business that is Facebook, this is a reminder that Microsoft, even if it is not so fashionable, has a business that makes real dollars and a lot of them.

Microsoft’s Billion Vista Bump - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Windows working to get Windows on XO laptops | CNET News.com

Interesting times...

The world's largest software company is now working to adapt a basic version of Windows XP so it is compatible with the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child Foundation's small green- and-white XO laptop.

"We're spending a non-trivial amount of money on it," Microsoft Corporate Vice President Will Poole said in an interview on Thursday.

Windows working to get Windows on XO laptops | CNET News.com

Microsoft Reports Strong Gain on Sales of PC and Server Software - New York Times

Clearly not having an existential crisis...

Yesterday’s earnings report illustrates how far Microsoft has to go. Its online services unit grew 25 percent, to $671 million, but its revenue amounted to less than 6 percent of Microsoft’s quarterly sales. And the quarterly loss from online services more than doubled, to $264 million, from the loss of $102 million in the quarter a year earlier.

But yesterday’s financial results also underline the growth and profitability of Microsoft’s mainstay personal computer software businesses. That gives Microsoft the financial firepower — it had $21.5 billion cash at the end of the quarter — needed to pour money into new fields for the long term, making moves like its $240 million investment on Wednesday in the social networking start-up Facebook.

Microsoft Reports Strong Gain on Sales of PC and Server Software - New York Times

Oracle Rejects BEA Price - WSJ.com

I'm guessing either they agree on ~$19/share at some point over the next couple days or it's game over (for now)...

Oracle Corp. has delivered a letter to the board of directors of BEA Systems Inc. rejecting BEA's proposed acquisition price of $21 per share as "an impossibly high price for Oracle or any other potential acquirer," pointing out that no other potential buyers have come forward.

[...]

"Apparently no other companies think that BEA is worth $17 per share, let alone $21 per share," Oracle President Charles Phillips wrote in the letter. "Accordingly, we repeat our proposal to purchase BEA at $17 per share, a price that we are unwilling to increase."

Oracle Rejects BEA Price - WSJ.com

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Update: More fun with market cap math

At market close today:

VMware: $43.66B, up 10.12% today

EMC: $51.43B, up 8.83% today

Implicit valuation of EMC - its 86% VMW stake: $13.88B

For comparison, incidentally, Adobe is currently worth $27B.

MSFT also announced its latest quarterly results this afternoon; it had a blow-out quarter and its stock is up, after market close, ~9% to a new 52-week high of $34.77. So, in terms of market cap, MSFT just grew by an ADBE or so over the last hour...

Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check: More fun with market cap math

BEA Board Says Company Is Worth $21 a Share - WSJ.com

The dance continues...

BEA Systems Inc. said it is willing to negotiate with potential acquirers, including Oracle Corp., if they are willing to pony up $21 a share, or $8.2 billion.

That compares with the $17 a share, or $6.7 billion takeover offer, Oracle made two weeks ago. Oracle said Tuesday that the offer will expire at 8 p.m. EDT Sunday if BEA doesn't agree to a deal or put the bid to a shareholder vote.

BEA Board Says Company Is Worth $21 a Share - WSJ.com

More fun with market cap math

Okay, according to the Bloomberg article I referenced yesterday:

EMC Corp., the top maker of data-storage computers, owns 86 percent of VMware, which it acquired in 2004. EMC used the IPO to provide stock options to pay for Silicon Valley talent, construction of VMware's headquarters and product development.

Let's see -- shortly after the market opened this morning, in terms of market cap:

VMware: 41.97B

EMC: 50.06B

A quick calculation suggests the market thus values the non-VMW part of EMC at ~$14B at the moment.

Go figure.

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

Google Analyst Day (2): The Money - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Hmmm

Google has been expanding in a myriad new ways, but its core search and contextual advertising business continues to account for the overwhelming majority of the company’s business. If the analysts were wondering what’s Google’s second act is likely to be, they got the answer early: more of Google’s first act. “The next multi-billion dollar opportunity is really our core business of search,” Mr. Kordestani said.

The panelists emphasized that point, talking about the “head room” that is left in every one of Google’s existing businesses, including search ads, the company’s nascent display ads business and even enterprise sales.

Google Analyst Day (2): The Money - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Buzzword Brings Beauty, Flash to Word Processing for Adobe | Xconomy

Timely Buzzword snapshot; see the full article for more details

Adobe gets two things with Virtual Ubiquity. One is a proof point of the virtue of developing Web applications with its tools. The other is a document creation tool that could be integrated with other Adobe products like the Connect Web conferencing system, or could automatically export documents to Adobe’s PDF format.

Buzzword isn’t the first Web-based word processor—at least half-a-dozen others are out there, including Writely (now part of Google Docs). But it just might be the slickest.

[...]

Treitman says being subsumed by Adobe is a good thing for Virtual Ubiquity, which was “a stand-alone company with a funny name that people couldn’t remember how to spell.”

“We were asking users to trust their documents to a small startup, and we now have a trusted and well-respected brand name,” says Treitman. That may create a lot more buzz around Buzzword.

Buzzword Brings Beauty, Flash to Word Processing for Adobe Xconomy

VMware's strong 3Q impresses Wall Street - Boston.com

Strange days indeed

Though VMware shares have been listed on the New York Stock Exchange for only about two months, the company's market capitalization is already $38.8 billion.

That makes it the fifth-most-valuable business software company after Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., Germany's SAP AG and Adobe Systems Inc.

Google Inc. and IBM Corp. are not included because the technology industry considers Google a consumer search company and IBM a diversified consulting company, although they create software for corporate clients.

VMware's strong 3Q impresses Wall Street - Boston.com

Microsoft steals show at Google Analyst Day | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Insights from the Google parallel universe 

Google co-founder Sergey Brin told reporters at the end of the day: "Occasionally we've lost one here, one there...Some of our competitors might be willing to spend very large amounts of money...and we're really interested in doing sustainable economic deals, so we would rather not participate in those sorts of transactions. But we definitely wish those companies well."

[...]

"I'm on the board of Apple. I'm using the iPhone," said Schmidt, holding up his phone to show reporters. "We have a policy of not talking about future products."

What Schmidt wanted to talk about was Google's hosted Apps business, which puts it in competition with Microsoft's desktop applications. "People always compare us to the market leader. We're not trying to solve that problem; we're trying to solve a different problem," to offer the ability for people to collaborate on documents, Schmidt told analysts.

[...]

Earlier in the day, Google Internet evangelist Vint Cerf talked about plans for an Interplanetary Backbone and the company gave some demonstrations of iGoogle, Google Maps and Gmail.

Microsoft steals show at Google Analyst Day | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Technology Review: Review: Apple's New Operating System

Very positive reviews for Leopard -- also see reviews in today's NYT and WSJ (no subscription required for access to the latter review) 

Apple's new Macintosh operating system ships today. Visually stunning, OS 10.5--a.k.a. Leopard--is fast and stable, and it features a consistent set of powerful file-management tools familiar to anyone who has ever used iTunes. And unlike Microsoft Windows, which seems to grind slower with each successive release, OS 10.5 feels faster than 10.4 on the same hardware--provided that you have sufficient memory.

Technology Review: Review: Apple's New Operating System

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Facebook and Microsoft Expand Strategic Alliance

I guess sometimes even Google doesn't have the right bid...

Facebook and Microsoft Corp. today announced that the two companies would expand their advertising partnership and that Microsoft will take a $240 million equity stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation. Under the expanded strategic alliance, Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the United States.

Facebook and Microsoft Expand Strategic Alliance: Two companies expand advertising deal to cover international markets, Microsoft to take equity stake in Facebook.

Bloomberg.com: VMware Outpaces Google Since IPO on Program Prospects

 At the moment, in terms of market cap:

EMC: $46.94B

VMW: $39.64B

Given VMware's rise, EMC's lower stock price puzzles some analysts. EMC's shares fell 25 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $23.11. The company also reports earnings this week.

Even if VMware's shares are only worth half their current price, EMC is an attractive stock, said L.R. Burtschy's Meeks. While his fund owns neither stock, he's trying to persuade the family to buy EMC.

``Fifteen dollars of EMC value is VMware, yet EMC is trading at $22.88'' as of last week, Meeks said. ``That is saying that the rest of EMC is worth all of $7.''

It's going to be pretty amusing if VMW's mkt cap surpasses EMC's, since the latter is majority owner of the former. 

We are deeply into the irrational exuberance zone again; the inevitable "market reset" is going to be ugly...

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

BEA to Oracle: We're not opposed to a reasonable offer [Computerworld]

Not a surprise...

BEA Systems Inc. has told Oracle Corp. that the two companies can still make a deal -- just not the one on the table.

Oracle released a statement today saying that BEA's board of directors had officially turned down its offer to buy the company. It set a deadline of Sunday at 5 p.m. Pacific time for BEA to accept the $17-per-share bid.

But several hours later, BEA fired back its own missive in the form of a letter from William Klein, vice president of planning and development, to Oracle President Charles Phillips. In the letter, Klein characterized Oracle's offer as too low but made it clear BEA is not against being acquired for the right price.

"BEA is worth significantly more than $17 to Oracle, to others, and most importantly to BEA shareholders," the letter said. "BEA's Board has not indicated that it would be opposed to a transaction that appropriately reflects BEA's value, reached through a reasonable process."

BEA to Oracle: We're not opposed to a reasonable offer

Official Google Blog: Southern California fire maps

See the post for several overlay sites

The devastating wildfires in Southern California have burned more than 373,000 acres of land; 350,000 homes have been evacuated. Lots of people have pulled together to make maps with information about the fires, including the burn zones, evacuation alerts, evacuation centers, safe areas, and closed roads. Here's a list of some of the most widely-used fire maps that our Google Maps team is aware of. We hope everyone is safe and that relief comes soon.

Official Google Blog: Southern California fire maps

How Apple Can Keep Its Value - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Timely reality check; read the full post 

Indeed, Apple is now the fourth most valuable technology company, after Cisco ($189 billion), Google ($208 billion), and Microsoft ($290 billion).

Apple, interestingly, has something in common with these other companies. They all draw their power from software. Microsoft sells software in a box. Google delivers software online. Cisco, like Apple, delivers software embedded in devices, which it largely contracts to others to make.

But there is a key difference, too. The other three have established dominant positions in their markets, which fends off rivals and keeps margins high.

Apple is a distant No. 3 in PCs. It dominates personal music players, but it has a much more modest share if you define the consumer electronics market more broadly.

How Apple Can Keep Its Value - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Rockies Rebound After Virtual Pummeling - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Sign of the times...

The other lesson is how the forces of supply and demand are made far stronger and spread around the world by the Internet. The resale value of World Series tickets is near $1,000 for the least expensive tickets, and more than $5,000 for choice seats. That creates real incentives for people to get into the system, whatever the means – and wherever they are located.

Major League Baseball teams, which once frowned on scalping, now are active participants in a secondary market through sites like Stubhub. It’s a market that is driving at least some of the millions of hits that cost the Rockies the first loss of the World Series [i.e., overwhelmed their web site].

Rockies Rebound After Virtual Pummeling - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Gmail Supports IMAP

Glad to see this

One of the most requested Gmail features was the addition of IMAP support. POP is nice, but IMAP is a much better option. Among the advantages, you're always connected to the server, more clients can connect to the same account, you can obtain the text from a message without the attachments and the state information is synchronized (you can add labels from the client, read or delete a message and Gmail will synchronize).

Gmail Supports IMAP

‘Welcome, Again, IBM. Seriously.’ | Digital Daily | John Paczkowski | AllThingsD

See the full post for a classic photo

After the record-breaking quarter it posted yesterday, Apple is today the most valuable computer-maker in the world. Its market capitalization now stands at nearly $162 billion, $6 billion more than that of industry heavyweight IBM. In fact, its market cap is the fourth largest among technology companies, lagging behind only Cisco ($189 billion), Google ($208 billion) and Microsoft ($290 billion). Which is obviously great news for Apple shareholders, as John Murrell notes over at my old stomping grounds, Good Morning Silicon Valley: “… while Google-watchers go gaga over its soaring share price, note that an investor who bought Apple on the same day Google stock debuted in 2004 would have, as of the close of market yesterday, made 40 percent more than if the same money had been put into the search sovereign’s shares.

‘Welcome, Again, IBM. Seriously.’ | Digital Daily | John Paczkowski | AllThingsD

Business & Technology | Q&A | Fake Steve Jobs — how alter ego took over a portion of journalist's life | Seattle Times Newspaper

Timely reality check

Q: Beastmaster and Monkey Boy [FSJ's names for Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer]: What happens if you meet them?

A: I don't think they'll be there.

Q: Are you going to refer to them by their sobriquets?

A: Not to their face. Maybe. I doubt they'll come. I hope they'll have more important things to do.

I interviewed Ballmer a couple of years ago; he's a great guy. He's totally down to earth. There's a Fake Ballmer Blog right now; it's not very funny. ... For one of these parody blogs to work you have to have someone who presents one face to the world and is another way. Hillary Clinton would be a great parody blog. Steve Jobs with his Zen thing, but he's really a monster behind it.

Business & Technology | Q&A | Fake Steve Jobs — how alter ego took over a portion of journalist's life | Seattle Times Newspaper

In Foray Into TV, Google Is to Track Ad Audiences - New York Times

Hmmm

“We see a future in which, when you sit down in front of your television set, you will see ads that are more relevant for you,” said Mr. Steib of Google. “When we make advertisements more relevant to viewers, inventory becomes more valuable and the return on investment is much higher for advertisers.”

Dave Thomas, president of media client services for Nielsen, said that discussions were under way between his company and Google to expand the partnership to the Internet and other media.

“People are trying to get a better idea of exposure to the commercials, not to rely on program audiences, which was the coin of the realm as it related to TV time,” Mr. Thomas said.

In Foray Into TV, Google Is to Track Ad Audiences - New York Times

BEA Traders Seem to Think Oracle Bid Warning Is Bluster - WSJ.com

Maybe this will become a TV miniseries... 

The battle for BEA Systems seems far from over despite Oracle's warning that it will walk away from its $6.7 billion takeover offer if BEA doesn't agree to a deal in less than a week.

BEA insisted the company is "worth significantly more" than Oracle's bid of $17 a share.

Shares in BEA have been trading above $17 since the offer was made public earlier this month, suggesting shareholders believe a higher offer is in the wings. The stock closed at $17.87, down 3.9% but above the bid price.

BEA Traders Seem to Think Oracle Bid Warning Is Bluster - WSJ.com

IBM seeks to patent its idea for patents - The Boston Globe

Strange days indeed 

Specifically, IBM - which collects more than $1 billion in patent royalties every year - describes a new process for licensing patents. Instead of smaller companies licensing technologies from patent holders like IBM in a plodding, one-by-one manner, IBM envisions a more dynamic system with "floating privileges," in which patents could be licensed quickly, as needed.

The application says this floating privilege, once purchased, could be activated by a patent-infringement lawsuit. In other words, companies would buy the right to use a patent portfolio like IBM's as a legal shield for themselves - "just like purchasing a fire insurance policy," IBM's application contends.

IBM seeks to patent its idea for patents - The Boston Globe

Technology Review: Trivial Pursuits

Aptly titled snapshot 

These notes--terse, obscure, and endlessly self-referential--are all examples of a new phenomenon in social media called "microblogs": short electronic posts, sent to friends or to a more general community, that deliver some information about the sender. Sending microblogs broadcasts, "I am here!" Reading microblogs satisfies the craving of many people to know the smallest details of the lives of people in whom they are interested. Already, new-media intellectuals have coined a term to describe the new social behavior they say microblogging encourages: they talk of "presence," a shorthand for the idea that by using such tools, we can enjoy an "always on" virtual omnipresence.

Technology Review: Trivial Pursuits

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Oracle Threatens to Pull BEA Bid - WSJ.com

The game continues...

Oracle Corp. told BEA Systems Inc. its $6.7 billion takeover offer will expire Sunday if the software company doesn't agree to a deal or put the bid to a shareholder vote.

The offer, made public 10 days ago, values BEA at $17 a share, a 25% premium to the company's share price the day before Oracle disclosed the bid. At the time, BEA rebuffed the offer, saying it significantly undervalued the business software provider.

Oracle Threatens to Pull BEA Bid - WSJ.com

AAPL: 186.05 +11.69 (6.70%) - Apple Inc.

At the moment, in terms of market cap:

AAPL: $161.8B

IBM:  $155.2B

HPQ: $133.6B

DELL: $64.5B

Incredible...

p.s. Google is at $208.1B, Microsoft at $290.9B

AAPL: 186.05 +11.69 (6.70%) - Apple Inc.

» Silverlight as the driver for Microsoft’s services | The Universal Desktop | ZDNet.com

Interesting perspectives to be sharing, for an Adobe employee; see the full post 

Think about the brand power and development savvy that Microsoft controls. Imagine a world where an RIA version of Office runs on top of Silverlight for Windows, Mac and PC users with your data being stored on Microsoft’s servers. The reputation that Microsoft has in the business and enterprise world gives them a huge head start in rolling out RIAs that can infiltrate those verticals. I don’t think anyone has done a good job of selling the RIA mantra to the business application world. We’re [Adobe] making inroads, but there aren’t a lot of great examples of business-class rich internet applications that have gotten traction. Microsoft can close that loop better than most while giving flexibility in an increasingly OS-agnostic world.

BTW as far as I know there is zero Silverlight in the Office Live Workspace user experience -- at least for now...

» Silverlight as the driver for Microsoft’s services | The Universal Desktop | ZDNet.com

Adobe - Adobe Flash Player

I was mistaken in a weekend post -- Adobe Flash Player download does indeed include Google Toolbar by default. FlashDownload

Adobe also includes, by default, both Adobe and Google stuff you didn't ask for, when you download the latest Acrobat Reader:

Acro1

Acro2

Adobe - Adobe Flash Player

» Add TurboLinux to the Microsoft patent-protection roster | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

See the full post for details

It’s been a while since Microsoft signed up any more Linux distro vendors to participate as patent-protection partners. But on October 22, the Redmondians announced they’ve added TurboLinux to the fold.

Microsoft’s deal with TurboLinux — like the interoperability/technology partnership arrangements it has cemented with Novell, Linspire and Xandros — has several components.

» Add TurboLinux to the Microsoft patent-protection roster | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Business & Technology | Repackaged Xbox points controller at casual gamer | Seattle Times Newspaper

Sense and respond... eventually

In a bid to woo more of the casual gamers flocking to the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft is repackaging its lowest-priced version of the Xbox 360 with games, a wireless controller and a high-definition cable.

The Xbox 360 Arcade, the company announced Monday, comes with five casual games, including "Pac-Man Championship Edition" and "Uno," as well as 256 megabytes of storage.

It sells for $280, the same price as the stripped-down Xbox 360 Core system, which includes only a wired controller and is being phased out.

Business & Technology | Repackaged Xbox points controller at casual gamer | Seattle Times Newspaper

Record Mac Sales Help Apple Earnings Climb 67% in Quarter - New York Times

Again impressive... 

Apple reported earnings on Monday that leapt ahead of analysts’ already optimistic expectations on record sales of its Macintosh computers.

The numbers showed that the company was slowly climbing back into the league of the dominant personal computer makers, Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

[...]

The market research firm Dataquest estimated last week that Apple sold 1.3 million computers in the United States, and IDC put the figure at 1.1 million. In the same period, Dell sold 5 million computers and H.P. sold 4.3 million in the United States, according to the IDC report.

Record Mac Sales Help Apple Earnings Climb 67% in Quarter - New York Times

Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You - New York Times

File under "mixed blessing"... 

Two new questions arise, courtesy of the latest advancement in cellphone technology: Do you want your friends, family, or colleagues to know where you are at any given time? And do you want to know where they are?

Obvious benefits come to mind. Parents can take advantage of the Global Positioning System chips embedded in many cellphones to track the whereabouts of their phone-toting children.

And for teenagers and 20-somethings, who are fond of sharing their comings and goings on the Internet, youth-oriented services like Loopt and Buddy Beacon are a natural next step.

Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You - New York Times

Technology Review: SanDisk debuts USB drive, video service for viewing downloaded shows on a television

Another "last mile" (between PC and TV) permutation 

Flash memory maker SanDisk Corp. on Monday will debut an online video service and a USB flash drive that can carry television programs and videos from a computer for playback on TVs.

The Sansa TakeTV video player -- an ensemble of an oversized USB drive, remote control and a small dock that connects to a TV -- and its accompanying video service, Fanfare, marks the latest attempt by a company looking to bridge content between the PC and the television.

Technology Review: SanDisk debuts USB drive, video service for viewing downloaded shows on a television

Monday, October 22, 2007

Microsoft Bows to EU Regulators On 2004 Antitrust Measures - WSJ.com

Interesting times -- Europe seems like a logical place for this episode, which appears to be at the intersection of capitalism, socialism, and democracy...

Legal experts said the judgment came down so firmly against Microsoft that the company had little room to mount an appeal. Instead, Microsoft sought a deal.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes brokered one over dinner in a small restaurant in Mrs. Kroes's home country of the Netherlands, according to Ms. Kroes. (Read the full text of Ms. Kroes's statement.)

Under the agreement, Microsoft will license all of its intellectual property, except patents, necessary for competitors to work with a version of Windows used on business servers. Competitors will now pay only a one-time fee for the license of 10,000 euros, rather than royalties. If they believe they need to license patents from Microsoft, Microsoft is required to do so at the rate of 0.4% of the competitors' revenue from the product, well below the 5.95% rate originally suggested by Microsoft.

Mrs. Kroes, for her part, stopped the clock on daily fines of up to €3 million per day against Microsoft and declared the U.S. software giant was – at least for now -- in Europe's good graces. "As of today, the major issues concerning compliance have been resolved," she said.

Microsoft Bows to EU Regulators On 2004 Antitrust Measures - WSJ.com

Google’s Purchase of Jaiku Raises New Privacy Issues - New York Times

Uh, no thanks...

Petteri Koponen, one of the two founders of Jaiku, described the service as a “holistic view of a person’s life,” rather than just short posts. “We extract a lot of information automatically, especially from mobile phones,” Mr. Koponen said from Mountain View, Calif., where the company is being integrated into Google. “This kind of information paints a picture of what a person is thinking or doing.”

In practical terms, Jaiku’s mobile application allows users to broadcast not only their whereabouts, but how the phone is being used, even what kind of music it is playing.

The information opens up a world of new mobile services for regular users, beyond the world of early adapters familiar with Jaiku.

Google’s Purchase of Jaiku Raises New Privacy Issues - New York Times

Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web - New York Times

See the full article for more context-setting

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

The research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available.

[...]

The Open Content Alliance is the brainchild of Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive, which was created in 1996 with the aim of preserving copies of Web sites and other material. The group includes more than 80 libraries and research institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution.

Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web - New York Times

Internet video weddings save couples and kin thousands of dollars - The Boston Globe

Sign of the times...

In the YouTube era, live webcasts are spreading to some unlikely events, from a middle-school graduation in suburban Chicago to the International Barbershop Competition in Calgary, Alberta. But weddings held in exotic locales seem ready-made for the small screen, as wedcasts provide a way for couples to tie the knot at a Florida resort or on a mountaintop in Hawaii while including friends and loved ones who cannot make the trip.

Internet video weddings save couples and kin thousands of dollars - The Boston Globe

Sunday, October 21, 2007

More fun with Google shovel-ware

I use (Google) Blogger for my blogging service provider and Microsoft Windows Live Writer for creating/editing blog posts. I'm happy with both, in part because both work well for my needs and are free.

When I attempted to post my previous post, I saw

WLW

In case the image format gets munged on your client, the text above: "In order to upload images to Blogger blogs, you must go to the Picasa Web Albums homepage, sign in as [my Google/Gmail id clipped; I receive enough spam these days -- for fun, I'm waiting to see if all the undeleted spam I've accumulated will someday exceed my Gmail space allocation...], and agree to the Terms and Conditions. Would you like to go to the Picasa Web Albums homepage now?"

Right -- I'd forgotten that, in the past, I've had to jump through some hoops (FTP to yet another personal site, copy/paste URLs in Windows Live Writer...) to include images in Blogger posts, when I'm not simply referring to images posted elsewhere on the web. Hey, why not check it out?...

Next up:

Picassa

Well, that's a bit more than I bargained for, but it'd be pretty handy to be able to upload images in Blogger posts, so I'll uncheck a bunch of the options (I suppose they might have auto-detected that Google is already my default search engine in IE, BTW...) to avoid desktop clutter, and be on my way. I'll carefully read the 4,221-word (~13-page, copied/pasted into Word) "Google Terms of Service" agreement, which for some unknown reason I had to click through twice, and presto! Now I can easily upload images, using Microsoft Windows Live Writer, to my Google/Blogger blog.

Except, oops... when I was creating this post, and went back to IE to grab the URL for my previous post, being in a hypertext kind of mood this morning, I saw

iecrash

So... now I have a handy new capability that apparently also crashes IE from time to time. Or maybe it was Skype -- how'd that "Send to Skype" button get into the IE crash dialog? Or maybe it was simply an IE bug. (Yeah, it's pretty clearly a Skype issue; when I installed Skype, it added a phone number entity-extraction plug-in to IE that changes the appearance of web pages in IE, and offers the option to call the numbers [for those who remember Microsoft "HailStorm," that Skype trick is one of the things Walt Mossberg and Dave Winer blew fuses over, when IE6 was introduced, with the ensuing debate ultimately leading Microsoft to remove smart tag support from IE; interesting that I haven't seen similar objections to the Skype approach, which was enabled by default when I installed Skype] ... So why did I see this crash for the first time after installing the Picasa stuff?...)

The more things change... Except, in the post-9os, it appears the players have changed: in the last half-hour or so, it was Google, rather than Microsoft, that attempted to:

1. Install Google Toolbar, thus Google-izing my IE user experience

2. Install Google Desktop, thus Google-izing my Windows XP user experience

3. Install Google Picasa -- client and web services -- which will now, by default, capture every image on my PC, and apparently post some on the web as well (maybe in my Google Blogger account space; I guess I should have read that 4,221-word EULA a bit more carefully). Do you suppose just maybe Microsoft would get into a bit of trouble if it exclusively offered one of its own web services in conjunction with its client software? Didn't I read something about Google taking action against Microsoft for exactly that sort of trick, with IE7?...

4. Switch my default IE search provider to Google, as part of the Picasa install (by default)

5. Destabilize IE -- either directly or indirectly (I'm not saying this part was deliberate, and the culprit could have been Google, Microsoft, or Skype...)

And yes, it was Microsoft (the Windows Live Writer team, in this case) that tried to make it more convenient for me to use images with Google's blogging service, thus providing Google with an opportunity to perform steps 3 - 5 above.

Strange days indeed.

Java updates and shovel-ware

I saw the routine "update available" notification this morning, and clicked for more info.  I next saw:

JavaUpdate 

So, if I have a few hundred megabytes of free disk space and need yet another productivity application suite, I can conveniently download OpenOffice.org 2.3 (which, coincidentally, requires a Java runtime environment). Or I could download Google Pack, which includes Sun's enhanced version of OpenOffice.org, StarOffice (list price $70, but available at no cost with Google Pack).

No thanks; I'll just accept the Java update, in order to avoid seeing the "update available" notifications every morning (despite the fact that, with the exception of a couple outlier web conferencing/app sharing services, I very rarely use a Java client app).  But wait, there's more:

JavaGoogle

So... by default, when I accept the free Java runtime environment update, I also install Google Toolbar and Google Desktop (i.e., the checkboxes are clicked by default).

I'd like to know how much Google pays Sun for this; I'd also like to know how much Google pays Adobe for similar "offers" now included with Adobe player and product installation routines (although, IIRC, at least Adobe has an opt-in model).

It's all very effective for Google, in any case -- anyone who has used a Java runtime environment for any reason, and who doesn't read the fine print when installing the update, will contribute to Google's installed base numbers (whether or not they actually ever use Google Toolbar or Google Desktop, in this scenario).

Will Google Crush The iPhone? - Forbes.com

Hmm -- read the full article for more details and speculation

First, a recap: Google has been building a mobile-phone team ever since the acquisition of mobile-gadget developer Android in 2005. Andy Rubin, Android's founder, is leading the project's engineering team. He co-founded Danger, Inc., the company behind T-Mobile's popular Sidekick line of Internet-friendly smart phones. Rich Miner, in Google's Boston office, is leading the business side of the effort, sources say. Meanwhile, Google co-founder Larry Page is providing high-level support for the project.

The phone promises to fuse open-source software with Google's applications on a high-end handset. Rubin's team is building custom mobile-phone software atop the free Linux operating system that will bind the phone tightly to Google's online applications and advertising services, sources say. Software from another Google acquisition, Skia, will put a slick user interface on the package. Finally, Google will build all that software into a smart phone built by Taiwanese handset specialist HTC, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Will Google Crush The iPhone? - Forbes.com

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Social Networking wars: Facebook v. Google - Oct. 16, 2007

Fortune article -- the print version is titled "Look Who's Worried Now"; the web version is titled "Facebook's got Google running scared."  The closing paragraphs: 

Google's effort, I'm told, is being led by Joe Kraus, the founder of Excite. Though he is as Web 2.0 savvy as they come, I think Google's plan may be too little too late. Everyone these days is opening up his network - even MySpace.

Besides, there's no compelling reason for users to leave Facebook now. The developers will stay as long as they can reach a mass audience there. Google's trying to fix something that isn't broken - just as Microsoft has been doing for years with search and IBM tried to do with operating systems for PCs. Maybe Google should stick to organizing the world's information, and let this little mouse roar.

The Joe Kraus reference is the closest to a JotSpot tangent I've seen in many months.  It has now been almost a year since Google acquired JotSpot (of which Kraus was co-founder and CEO), and it seems to have disappeared without a trace.

Social Networking wars: Facebook v. Google - Oct. 16, 2007

Dell Learns to Listen

Timely BusinessWeek snapshot; start with page 1 of the article, which also includes a video interview with Michael Dell.

I contend that this marks a fundamental shift in the relationship of customers with companies. Dell and its customers are collaborating on new forms of content and marketing, but note that they are doing this without the help of media and marketing companies.

Michael Dell predicts that customer relationships will "continue to be more intimate." He even speaks of "co-creation of products and services," a radical notion from a giant manufacturer. "I'm sure there's a lot of things that I can't even imagine, but our customers can imagine," Dell says, still sounding very bloggish. "A company this size is not going to be about a couple of people coming up with ideas. It's going to be about millions of people and harnessing the power of those ideas." Once you can hear them.

Dell Learns to Listen

Palm's Fading Lifeline

Not a good sign when a company's anticipatory eulogy appears in BusinessWeek... 

The sad tale of how Palm got into such a pickle is too complicated for this column. But the company made its own problems much worse by devoting scarce resources to the development of a laptop-like Treo "companion" called Foleo. The project was killed in September, just a couple of weeks before the expected launch. Partly as a consequence, Palm now says a new version of its software, based on the solid and modern Linux operating system, will not be available until the end of next year.
Why does this matter? Because for all its faults, Palm still offers the simplest and most intuitive user interface and the best integration between PDA and phone functions of any smartphone. That includes Apple's (AAPL ) iPhone, which has a great Web browser but lacks a simple way to look up contacts. The disappearance of Palm OS phones would be a real loss. In the end, however, a great user interface does consumers no good if its underlying platform is unsound.

Palm's Fading Lifeline

Internet companies | Social graph-iti | Economist.com

The usual excellent journalism from The Economist; see the full article 

Facebook might nonetheless be suited for other sorts of marketing. Reuben Steiger, the founder of Millions of Us, a marketing agency for social networks and virtual worlds, says that brands need to design “experiences” that use the social graph to engage groups of friends. If a wrestling association, say, wants to drum up ticket sales for an upcoming bout, it could build a widget that turns users into wrestlers and lets them fight bad guys and win gifts, while making them aware of the brand and the match.

But that possibility hardly justifies the sorts of valuations bandied around for Facebook and other social networks. Such valuations, indeed, may reflect a misunderstanding of the social graph. For bigger companies such as Google, the graph is simply the web of links among its many users. It can be used to make existing services more useful. But Google increasingly views such utilities as “features, not products,” says Sergey Brin, its co-founder. Facebook, like many hot start-ups in Silicon Valley, has some fantastic features, but maybe not much more.

Internet companies | Social graph-iti | Economist.com

The Halo Over Xbox - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

It'll be interesting to see if it was a one-time bump for Xbox sales. 

The success of Halo 3, which is exclusive to Microsoft’s Xbox 360, appears to have driven sales of that console. According to NPD, Microsoft sold 528,000 360s, compared to 500,001 Nintendo Wiis and 119,000 PlayStation 3s.

[...]

And the PlayStation 3, well, it has settled into a comfortable third place among the next-generation platforms. A price cut announced this week may spur sales over the holiday season, but you could imagine that the curriculum makers at Harvard Business School may eventually make a case study of Sony’s inability to maintain its leadership in the console wars.

Of course, Nintendo would probably be selling a lot more Wiis if they weren't still supply-constrained...

The Halo Over Xbox - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Business & Technology | Comcast blocks some file sharing | Seattle Times Newspaper

Hmmm... 

The interference, which The Associated Press (AP) confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider (ISP). It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

If widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks. While these are mainly known as sources of copyrighted music, software and movies, BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content.

Business & Technology | Comcast blocks some file sharing | Seattle Times Newspaper

Friday, October 19, 2007

Computer software | Programmed for a fight | Economist.com

Interesting snapshot from The Economist

APPLE versus Microsoft, Informix versus Oracle, Netscape versus Microsoft. The history of commercial software can be written as a succession of epic battles for dominance of key markets. Now the industry is in the midst of another: America's Oracle is battling against Germany's SAP in the market for enterprise applications, the software that big companies use to run their businesses.

I'm usually in sync with Economist analysis, but in this case (the article continues with Oracle/SAP details) I think they overlooked an important dimension: Oracle + BEA is more about Oracle versus Microsoft and Oracle versus IBM than it is about Oracle versus SAP, imho.

Computer software | Programmed for a fight | Economist.com

Business & Technology | Google keeps getting hotter | Seattle Times Newspaper

Another interesting Google perspective

Already the Internet search leader, Google picked up more bragging rights Thursday when it surpassed Cisco Systems as Silicon Valley's most valuable company.

Microsoft, which started when Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still toddlers, is now the only high-tech company worth more than the Internet search leader.

Before the market opens today -- market cap stats:

CSCO: $199.32B

GOOG: $199.65B

MSFT: $292.96B

YHOO: $39.32

And yes, I used finance.google.com for the info :)...

Business & Technology | Google keeps getting hotter | Seattle Times Newspaper

What do 16,000 people do at Google? | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

More on the Google hiring trend

That's an average of about 35 people showing up for their first day of work each business day during the past three months. Granted, that is in offices around the world, but still, that's impressive. By comparison, Yahoo has 13,600 employees, after hiring 1,200 during the past quarter. (Actually, when you think about it, that's even more crazy given the need for Yahoo to retrench right now.)

[...]

The fast pace of hiring at the search giant is the one concern Jordan Rohan, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, mentioned in an interview with CNET News.com after the Google earnings call.

"Half the company has been hired in the last 12 months. That's chaotic," he says. "The new employees find it difficult to figure out how to get things done. It's not a normal company."

What do 16,000 people do at Google? | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Google’s Strong Quarter Widens Gap With Rivals - New York Times

Impressive numbers 

The results show that Google is growing roughly twice as fast as the overall online advertising market, which itself is booming, and that it is expanding far more quickly than any large Internet company.

[...]

Surprisingly, Google, which this year had promised to slow its rate of hiring, in part to allay investor worries about rising expenses, added 2,130 employees this quarter, more than in previous quarters, to end the period with 15,916 employees.

Google executives said that about 1,000 of the new hires were recent college graduates, many of whom had accepted offers earlier in the year and began working in the quarter. About 300 more workers were added when Google completed the acquisition of the e-mail manager Postini.

Google’s Strong Quarter Widens Gap With Rivals - New York Times

I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Strange Bedfellows | PBS

Some timely Google/Apple observations and projections; read the full post 

Look at Schmidt's background. He went pretty much straight from academia to becoming an early employee of Sun Microsystems, where he grew up with the company and became a star. Then Schmidt went to Novell, an established and dysfunctional company in crisis, and failed miserably. Now he's at Google and again a star. What can we learn from these earlier experiences that will help us predict what comes next? Plenty.

Eric Schmidt succeeded at Sun because everyone else there came from a similar background. Schmidt established himself as the company was establishing itself, so he helped to form the culture. He left Sun ostensibly because the Novell opportunity came up, but his willingness to leave probably says something about Sun, which was at a point where it, too, was starting to struggle a bit. Sun seemed on top of the world in 1997 when Schmidt left, but everyone at the top knew the company had been saved by the dot-com boom and that it was luck more than ability. Schmidt wanted to go someplace where he'd finally be the one in control and logic could prevail once more. Silly him, he chose Provo.

I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Strange Bedfellows | PBS

News Corp. may halt WSJ.com fees - The Boston Globe

Dropping the wsj.com fee would save me $99/year and make more articles fully accessible to readers of this blog... 

News Corp. will probably end subscription fees at WSJ.com and will open the MySpace social-networking website to developers in a push to add readers and advertisers, chairman Rupert Murdoch said.

A decision on WSJ.com will be made by year-end, Murdoch said yesterday in an interview at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. MySpace plans to open itself to outside developers in the next two months, the site's chief, Chris DeWolfe, said.

News Corp. may halt WSJ.com fees - The Boston Globe

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Gates still has a long to-do list | CNET News.com

In case anyone was incorrectly assuming Bill Gates is actually retiring from Microsoft...

"Big screens, touch, ink, speech, that's something that I think, along with cloud computing, is the next big change in how we think about software," Gates told CNET News.com on Tuesday. (Cloud computing is the notion that many of the computing tasks handled by individual computers today will instead be tackled by servers in huge data centers connected over the Internet.) "Ray Ozzie is driving our cloud computing stuff...Some of the natural interface stuff, I think he and Steve (Ballmer) will ask me to sort of keep the energy and vision alive there."

See the full article for more details and an interview video

Gates still has a long to-do list | CNET News.com

Checking Out Tomorrow's Library - washingtonpost.com

Very cool -- see the full article for details

As ideas go, they don't come much bigger: Digitize the accumulated wisdom of humankind, catalogue it, and offer it for free on the Internet in seven languages.

The first phase of that simple yet outlandishly ambitious dream is about a year away from being realized, according to a group of international librarians, computer technicians and U.N. officials who unveiled a prototype for the project, called the World Digital Library, in Paris on Wednesday.

Its creators see it as the ultimate multilingual, multicultural tool for researching and retrieving information about knowledge and creativity from any era or place. The WDL Web site ( http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org) will provide access to original documents, films, maps, photographs, manuscripts, musical scores and recordings, architectural drawings and other primary resources through a variety of search methods.

Checking Out Tomorrow's Library - washingtonpost.com

Best Buy Ends Sales of Analog TVs - washingtonpost.com

Sign of the times...

The nation's largest consumer electronics chain says it has pulled all analog televisions off store shelves. Flat panel and high-definition screens have taken their place.

Beginning in February 2009, broadcasters plan to stop transmitting analog signals, although people with older sets can still get programming via special converter boxes, set-top box or direct satellite.

Best Buy Ends Sales of Analog TVs - washingtonpost.com

First Look: The AT&T Tilt Smart Phone - Yahoo! News

More from the iPhone competition zone

Slider phones have become increasingly popular; but until now, they've been limited to handheld devices that are best used in two hands. That changes with AT&T's newest Windows Mobile device, which you can either hold in your hands or rest comfortably on a surface.

The aptly named AT&T Tilt (also known as the HTC 8925) has a hinged display designed to accommodate various viewing scenarios. When open, the roomy adjustable screen gives the phone the look of a a tiny laptop, complementing the phone's use for computing or entertainment. (The phone costs $400 when purchased along with a two-year contract from AT&T; unlimited data plans are priced at $45 a month.)

Weirdly, the "First Look" article doesn't include pictures, but I found a picture at this site and you can find several purported screen shots here.

First Look: The AT&T Tilt Smart Phone - Yahoo! News

PCs shipping at fastest rate in 2 years - Boston.com

I suspect there is a strong correlation between the price/performance curve referenced in a WSJ post below and the sales trends...

Computer shipments rose this summer at the fastest rate in nearly two years, and Hewlett-Packard Co. pulled still farther ahead of Dell Inc. as the world's largest maker of PCs, two technology research firms reported Wednesday.

Sales of portable computers drove much of the 15.5 percent increase in global PC shipments from July through September, especially in Europe, according to research firm IDC, based in Framingham, Mass.

PCs shipping at fastest rate in 2 years - Boston.com

p.s. note that Apple Mac growth is roughly the same, according to this related IDC summary

Web 2.0 Summit: Google’s Marissa Mayer | Digital Daily | John Paczkowski | AllThingsD

Having Google manage my personal health info?  Not a laughing matter, imho.

Noting the incredible rate at which the health industry generates data (two billion X-rays per year, 200 petabytes of data), Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, said Google is developing a prototype online platform that will organize it. “If you look at health care, there’s already a huge user need, people are already using Google more than any other tool on the Web to find health information,” Mayer said. “And the health-care industry generates a huge amount of information every year. It’s a natural core competency for us, to understand how to organize all that data.”

Beyond that, Mayer had little else to offer but a schtick-in-need-of-a-laugh-track “Top 10 List of Things You Might See From Google Health.” Among them, Google paternity search, Viagra spam for Gmail users who truly need it, and an “I’m feeling yucky” button.

Web 2.0 Summit: Google’s Marissa Mayer | Digital Daily | John Paczkowski | AllThingsD

Some Basic Features You Should Demand When Buying a PC | Personal Technology | Walt Mossberg | AllThingsD

See the full article for details, including critical Vista commentary (the link is to the no-subscription-required version of the article)

Price: You can get a bargain-basement computer for under $400. But, for a versatile Vista PC with Home Premium, two gigabytes of memory, discrete video, a large hard disk and a dual-core processor, you should expect to spend $800 or more.

The capability and price/performance variables in this market continue to astound me...

Some Basic Features You Should Demand When Buying a PC | Personal Technology | Walt Mossberg | AllThingsD