Microsoft readying screen sharing tool for consumers | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

 More from the embarrassment-of-riches dept; see this page for more Tahiti details.

This is a step in the right direction for Microsoft, although a little confusing as the company already has three separate group collaboration apps with Net Meeting, Windows Meeting Space, and Groove Virtual Office (okay--we'll admit Groove isn't exactly a casual consumer-friendly app at $200). There's also some competition brewing in this space on the Web side of things, as we saw at the Under the Radar conference last week. Competitors like Yugma (previous coverage), offer nearly all these features (in some cases more), and have Mac support too.

Microsoft's high-level description:

Use Microsoft Codename "Tahiti" to put your heads together and collaborate--create, convey, and communicate…across physical boundaries, through firewalls, and down to the smallest details.

Source: Microsoft readying screen sharing tool for consumers | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

FT.com / Companies / IT - SAP shares fall after research chief quits

I guess he won't be getting an office at Google or Microsoft anytime soon... 

People who know SAP said the US-based ex-software entrepreneur was not willing to spend years in tandem with Mr Apotheker, an SAP veteran fifteen years his senior, before someday – maybe – taking sole control.

Mr Agassi said he would concentrate on public policy issues such as the environment. But SAP will retain him as “special consultant” to Mr Plattner – a move clearly designed to stop Mr Agassi working for competitors.

Source: FT.com / Companies / IT - SAP shares fall after research chief quits

Red Hat Sees Green - Forbes.com

 Sometimes things take more than a quarter to sink in...

Thank you sir, may I have another? Red Hat shareholders couldn’t be blamed for asking Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison for another hit after Ellison tried to wipe out the scrappy open-source software vendor in October by undercutting what Red Hat charges to support its software. Since then, Red Hat’s shares have soared more than 50%, to $23.10 late Thursday from $15.63.

Source: Red Hat Sees Green - Forbes.com

Video Games Conquer Another World: Retirees - New York Times

Interesting reality check 

It turns out that older users not only play video games more often than their younger counterparts but also spend more time playing per session. Pogo.com is a Web site that offers “casual” games, easy to play and generally less complicated than the war, sports and strategy games favored by hard-core gamers. According to Electronic Arts, the game publisher that runs the site, people 50 and older were 28 percent of the visitors in February but accounted for more than 40 percent of total time spent on the site. On average women spent 35 percent longer on the site each day than men.

Source: Video Games Conquer Another World: Retirees - New York Times

BBC NEWS | Business | Web ad spend overtakes newspapers

 Interesting milestone

Spending on UK internet advertising surged in 2006, overtaking newspaper ads for the first time, a report says.

Online advertising expenditure jumped 41.2% to £2.01bn during the year, the report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers said.

In contrast, spending on national newspaper ads grew just 0.2% to £1.9bn, taking a 10.7% share of the market.

Source: BBC NEWS | Business | Web ad spend overtakes newspapers

BBC NEWS | Business | US 'no longer technology king'

Another trend for which we can thank team W (which is perhaps proud about the growing income gap in the US today -- suggesting that, in the US, it's apparently still possible to get what you pay for...) 

The US is now ranked seventh in the body's league table measuring the impact of technology on the development of nations.

A deterioration of the political and regulatory environment in the US prompted the fall, the report said.

Source: BBC NEWS | Business | US 'no longer technology king'

AP: TJX: At Least 45.7M Card Numbers Stolen

 I suspect it won't be long before we see companies killed by this sort of security breach.

More than two months after first disclosing that hackers accessed customers' financial data from its computers, discount retailer TJX Cos. has revealed that information from at least 45.7 million credit and debit cards was stolen over an 18-month period.

In a regulatory filing that gives the first detailed account of the breach initially disclosed in January, the owner of T.J. Maxx, Marshall's and other stores in North America and the United Kingdom also said another 455,000 customers who returned merchandise without receipts had their personal data stolen, including driver's license numbers.

Source: The Observer at LaGrandeObserver.com - AP: TJX: At Least 45.7M Card Numbers Stolen

Microsoft readies new ‘Tahiti’ collaboration service | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

A new potential addition to Microsoft's long list of collaboration-related offerings... 

Microsoft is expected to position Tahiti as both a consumer and a business service that will allow for collaboration on the fly.

From early reports, Tahiti sounds a lot like the Windows Meeting Space collaboration service that is integrated into Windows Vista. The difference: Tahiti doesn't require Vista; it is Web-based and will require only a browser on the client side, testing sources said.

Source: » Microsoft readies new ‘Tahiti’ collaboration service | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Microsoft May Shift Strategy to Keep Up - WSJ.com

More potential Google-initiated stimulus/response... 

Microsoft's negotiations to buy DoubleClick for as much as $2 billion underscore the software giant's growing impatience with its effort to grab more of the booming online advertising market.

The talks, reported by The Wall Street Journal this week, come as Microsoft continues a struggle to keep pace with the growth of Web-search leader Google, which has thrived on online advertising.

Microsoft, in creating big franchises in areas such as PC software and videogames, has long built most of its businesses from the ground up, rather than buying its way into markets. An acquisition of DoubleClick would signal that strategy isn't working in online advertising, arguably the largest business opportunity Microsoft has entered since it helped spark the PC software market.

Source: Microsoft May Shift Strategy to Keep Up - WSJ.com

Novell may face ban for Microsoft deal - The Boston Globe

This is one way to ensure more people realize it should have been called "GNU/Linux" the entire time... 

The move by the Free Software Foundation would apply to a group of programs known as the GNU operating system, which comprise the bulk of the code at the heart of the popular Linux software system.

Financial analysts say Novell would have a tough time keeping its version of Linux competitive if it lost access to future upgrades of GNU software.

Source: Novell may face ban for Microsoft deal - The Boston Globe

Yahoo users get unlimited e-mail storage - Yahoo! News

This just in from the front line of the battle of the super data center networks... 

Yahoo Mail is the most popular web-based e-mail service and had more than 250 million users as of January, according to industry-tracking comScore Media Metrix.

The elimination of the storage cap comes at a time when costs of computer storage are declining and in the face of a relentless trend for people to exchange video, music and other data-laden digital files online.

Source: Yahoo users get unlimited e-mail storage - Yahoo! News

One Picture, 1,000 Tags - New York Times

Tags R Us 

Now, after spending millions of dollars and years of effort on their virtual homes — which draw many more visitors than their physical ones — museums are rethinking their online collections. They are experimenting with one of the hottest Web 2.0 trends: tagging, the basis for popular sites like Flickr.com. In social tagging, users of a service provide the tags, or labels, that describe the content (of photos, Web links, art), thus creating a user-generated taxonomy, or folksonomy, as it’s called.

Source: One Picture, 1,000 Tags - New York Times

Upgraded Version of Xbox 360 to Be Introduced by Microsoft - New York Times

More Xbox perspectives 

John Rodman, group product manager for the Xbox platform and Xbox Live, pointed to a recent Microsoft survey that revealed that nearly 40 percent of the time that Xbox 360 users spent with their consoles was for activities other than gaming.

Yet when it comes to gaming, Xbox 360 users are serious, Mr. Rodman says. Six out of 10 Xbox 360 users use Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming service.

“We don’t feel like the Wii customer and the Xbox customer are the same thing,” he said. “We think that as soon as the Wii customer turns 14 they want something else.”

It'll be interesting to see if Sony comes out with its own Windows Home Server offering (WHS will have strong synergy with Xbox 360) -- or if it instead tries to compete on that platform form factor as well with its own software.

Source: Upgraded Version of Xbox 360 to Be Introduced by Microsoft - New York Times

Microsoft's Upscale Xbox May Escalate Sony Battle - WSJ.com

Reality just keeps getting uglier for Sony... 

Microsoft got a jump on Sony by rolling out its Xbox 360 in late 2005, allowing it to sell a large volume of the consoles early. Then Sony late last year launched the PlayStation 3, promising newer, more advanced technology than the aging Microsoft machine.

With the Xbox 360 Elite, Microsoft has "narrowed the gap on features and functionality" with the PS3, says Colin Sebastian, a senior research analyst at Lazard Capital Markets.

[...]

The lowest-priced version of Sony's PS3 is $499, so Microsoft's $479.99 price undercuts that with similar technology.

Source: Microsoft's Upscale Xbox May Escalate Sony Battle - WSJ.com

Xbox will get more storage, HD video link - The Boston Globe

 See the article for pricing and other details. 

Microsoft Corp. will sell a version of its Xbox 360 with a 120-gigabyte hard drive and a souped-up high-definition video connection, in a bid to broaden the appeal of its popular console beyond video games.

Earlier versions of Xbox 360 came with 20 gigabytes of storage. But that filled up too quickly with movies, TV shows, and games from the Xbox Live Marketplace online store, said Peter Moore, a corporate vice president in Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment group.

Source: Xbox will get more storage, HD video link - The Boston Globe

Cambridge firm developing 'electronic paper' - The Boston Globe

See the post for more details and a photo gallery -- pretty cool... 

Electronic paper, long hyped as the technology that would make newspapers and books obsolete, is finally making its way into consumer products, powered by E Ink Corp.

The decade-old Cambridge company has grown 200 to 300 percent each year, and over the past few months, its retro-looking black-and-white displays have appeared in high-profile products such as the Sony Reader tablet, a Motorola cellphone highlighted at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, and a foldable, pocket-sized screen that won the Most Innovative Technology Award at the GSM Association's 2007 Global Mobile Awards last month.

Source: Cambridge firm developing 'electronic paper' - The Boston Globe

Novell-Microsoft deal targeted by software group - Yahoo! News

Somehow I suspect this won't be a big help to free/open source software, in the bigger picture. 

The Free Software Foundation will seek to undermine the Microsoft-Novell patent deal by incorporating language that will accomplish that goal into the new license agreement that will cover rights to much of the code in Linux, Brown said.

Brown declined to discuss details of the changes in advance of publication of a draft of the agreement on Wednesday, though he said the foundation was committed to preventing Microsoft from claiming rights to Linux.

"They found a way to effectively proprietize free software by offering patent promises to Novell," Brown said. "Whenever a new method comes along to effectively turn free software into proprietary software, we will adjust the license."

Source: Novell-Microsoft deal targeted by software group - Yahoo! News

On Paper, Time Puts an End to Life - washingtonpost.com

Two data points (Life and InfoWorld ceasing print publication) do not a trend make, but I think we could be seeing one here.   

Life is dead. Again.

Time Inc. pulled the plug on its venerable nameplate yesterday for the third time in 35 years, saying it no longer makes sense to print the publication as a magazine. Instead, the company said it will launch a "major portal" online to host its millions of award-winning photographs.

Source: On Paper, Time Puts an End to Life - washingtonpost.com

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Showdown in the trailer park

Check the post for more details and a very cool picture 

Sun, which has its Blackbox containerized data center out on tour, is suddenly facing some tough competition in the burgeoning trailer park computing market.

Source: Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Showdown in the trailer park

Platformonomics - Uninspired by Wired

Charles Fitzgerald on Wired's recent software-or-service article; see the full post for more details 

The April issue has an article entitled "Desktop R.I.P." that enthuses breathlessly about "computing moving off your machine and into the cloud".  I talked to the reporter, Jason Tanz, for this article a couple months ago (real-time Wired isn't).  Tanz, whose byline suggests his most eminent qualification to do the story was writing a book about Hip-Hop in White America, ignored what I had to say (hardly the first such occasion).  After all, why let pesky details get in the way of an absolutist premise.  But it helps if the examples you muster for your case actually support your argument.

[...]

The reality is the desktop is moving into the cloud and the cloud is moving onto the desktop.  The winners will bring together the unique capabilities of both.  The losers will cling dogmatically to one or the other.

Source: Platformonomics - Uninspired by Wired

Companies Tolerate Ads to Get Free Software - WSJ.com

Timely snapshot 

The market for ad-supported software is still small, but it has drawn some big guns. Google and Microsoft Corp. each offer free and paid versions of their online-software services, respectively called Google Apps and Office Live, which businesses can use for tasks like making Web pages, using email and managing calendars. Google and Microsoft offer free versions of their services that show ads to users; Google's ads appear only in the email service, while Microsoft's ads appear alongside other online services. Users of both companies' paid versions don't see ads at all and get extra features like more storage and ramped-up support. Google says its Apps service has more than 100,000 organizations on its free and paid versions; Microsoft says more than 350,000 organizations are using Office Live.

Source: Companies Tolerate Ads to Get Free Software - WSJ.com

Microsoft Board of Directors Adds New Member and Declares Quarterly Dividend

 Even Microsoft's board is going service-centric...

Microsoft Corp. today announced that its board of directors has increased the size of the board from nine to 10 members and elected Reed Hastings, 46, chairman and CEO of Netflix Inc., to the board. Hastings has also been appointed to the finance committee.

[...]

Prior to founding Netflix, Hastings founded Pure Software, which he built into one of the world’s 50 largest public software companies. After a successful public offering and a number of acquisitions, Pure was acquired by Rational Software in 1997. An active community leader, Hastings has also been deeply involved in promoting education initiatives, and has served as president of the California State Board of Education.

Source: Microsoft Board of Directors Adds New Member and Declares Quarterly Dividend: Reed Hastings of Netflix to Join Board; Dividend of $0.10 per share payable in June.

InfoWorld IT: InfoWorld Brand Moves Online

 I'm sorry to see this, as an avid InfoWorld reader for a couple decades, but I suspect it was inevitable. 

The news hit the internet this morning: as of next month, InfoWorld will no longer be distributed in a print edition. To take maximum advantage of the opportunities for our business going forward, and remove the distraction of maintaining and fretting over a costly, nearly obsolete distribution channel, we will discontinue printing and mailing a magazine. As of April, the InfoWorld brand exists online and in events.

Source: InfoWorld IT Exec-Connect

Google Operating System: Is JotSpot Google's Glue?

See the post for more details.  My bet: either JotSpot becomes the "glue" or it becomes Google's Collabra -- i.e., never seen again, post-acquisition... 

Many people wondered why Google bought JotSpot, a wiki company. After all, JotSpot let you create and share documents, spreadsheets, calendars, photos, videos and more. Google already has different services for most of these types of files, but they aren't integrated (or the integration is very limited).
Guillaume Belfiore suggests that JotSpot could integrate all the communication services created by Google into a single interface - let's call it GDrive. "In the end, many existing Google services would be accessible in one place. To me it is pretty obvious that, should GDrive become true one day, it will make an extensive use of the JotSpot technology," says Guillaume.

Source: Google Operating System: Is JotSpot Google's Glue?

Business & Technology | Can Google find the pot of gold? | Seattle Times Newspaper

Somehow I suspect Google won't have the last laugh in this context 

"We bought YouTube because of the traffic and because of the community," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told investors at a San Francisco conference earlier this month.

The site was losing gobs of money, but that didn't bother Google. Traffic was climbing, and still is. Since the deal, YouTube's audience has grown 40 percent. According to comScore Media Metrics, YouTube's 136 million monthly visitors made up 18 percent of the global Internet audience in January.

One definition of an Internet URL is "Ubiquity first Revenue Later," Schmidt joked at the Bear, Stearns conference.

But the joke could end up being on Google, which paid $1.7 billion for YouTube's URL on the bet that it could turn reruns into revenue.

Source: Business & Technology | Can Google find the pot of gold? | Seattle Times Newspaper

Start-up Zimbra takes Web e-mail offline | CNET News.com

Interesting use of Apache Derby (which originated with IBM Cloudscape) 

The download includes the Apache Derby database, which acts as a local e-mail store, said Satish Dharmaraj, the company's CEO. Future versions will not require users to do the manual download, he said.

The first release of Zimbra Desktop is an alpha version. The beta version, due this summer, will work with POP and IMAP e-mail servers and will include access to the company's calendaring server. When the company releases its 5.0 product, it will include the offline capabilities.

Source: Start-up Zimbra takes Web e-mail offline | CNET News.com

How to Improve It? Ask Those Who Use It - New York Times

Interesting checkpoint

It is a difficult idea for research and development departments to accept, but one of his studies found that 82 percent of new capabilities for scientific instruments like electron microscopes were developed by users.

Citizen product design is still unsung, but it has already become a force in software, especially gaming software. “Counter-Strike,” a player-created “mod” (for modification to the original game) of “Half-Life,” became as popular as the original game. Apache, the popular open-source Web server software, or the Firefox Internet browser, with its thousands of add-ons and plug-ins, also depend on users to develop innovations. Large companies like I.B.M. are increasingly turning to open-source techniques in their own software development.

Source: How to Improve It? Ask Those Who Use It - New York Times

Rethinking the Inbox - WSJ.com

Interesting to see WSJ analysis on alternatives for more effective email, but the article includes at least one error -- Notes 8 will suggest users put attachments into Quickr workspaces, not activities.

Notes also can be set up to include "activities," a way to organize emails, documents and appointments around a project. Notes shows a list of all activities in a separate pane, and users can drag an email straight from the inbox into the relevant project; everyone on the team will get an email notification of the change. If the user tries to send an email with a large attachment to several people, Notes will suggest putting the document into an activity instead, to reduce the strain on email resources.

Source: Rethinking the Inbox - WSJ.com

Wikipedia competitor seeks to cut out errors - The Boston Globe

Stimulus/response... 

This week, Sanger takes the wraps off a Wikipedia alternative, Citizendium. His goal is to capture Wikipedia's bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism and inconsistency that are its pitfalls.

Like Wikipedia, Citizendium will be nonprofit, devoid of ads and free to read and edit. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium's volunteer contributors will be expected to provide their real names. Experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy.

Source: Wikipedia competitor seeks to cut out errors - The Boston Globe

The future of books | Not bound by anything | Economist.com

The Economist on the future of books 

Google will not divulge exact numbers, but Daniel Clancy, the project's lead engineer, gives enough guidance for an educated guess: Google's contract with one university library, Berkeley's, stipulates that it must digitise 3,000 books a day. The minimum for the other 12 universities involved may be lower, but the rate for participating publishers is higher. So a conservative estimate has Google digitising at least 10m books a year. The total number of titles in existence is estimated to be about 65m.

Source: The future of books | Not bound by anything | Economist.com

Artificial Intelligence, With Help From the Humans - New York Times

Mechanical Turk checkpoint 

The problem has prompted a spooky, but elegant, business idea: why not use the Web to create marketplaces of willing human beings who will perform the tasks that computers cannot? Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com, has created Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online service involving human workers, and he has also personally invested in a human-assisted search company called ChaCha. Mr. Bezos describes the phenomenon very prettily, calling it “artificial artificial intelligence.”

[...]

We probably have at least another 25 years before computers are more powerful than human brains, according to the most optimistic artificial intelligence experts. Until then, people will be able to sell their idle brains to the companies and people who need the special processing power that they alone possess through marketplaces like Mechanical Turk and ChaCha.

Source: Artificial Intelligence, With Help From the Humans - New York Times

Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic - New York Times

Timely reality check 

Several research reports, both recently published and not yet published, provide evidence of the limits of multitasking. The findings, according to neuroscientists, psychologists and management professors, suggest that many people would be wise to curb their multitasking behavior when working in an office, studying or driving a car.

These experts have some basic advice. Check e-mail messages once an hour, at most. Listening to soothing background music while studying may improve concentration. But other distractions — most songs with lyrics, instant messaging, television shows — hamper performance. Driving while talking on a cellphone, even with a hands-free headset, is a bad idea.

Read the full article for more details from recent research in this context.

Source: Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic - New York Times

Good Morning Silicon Valley: New Vonage on-hold music: "Nearer, My God, to Thee"

Hmm -- so maybe you should try my mobile# in a couple weeks, if you can't catch me at my primary (Vonage...) number.  But under no circumstances will you reach me at a wired (VoIP or other) Verizon number in the foreseeable future --  if Vonage is shut down, my primary office number will move to Skype.

My phones rarely ring these days anyway -- most people know IM or email is a more effective way to reach me.  Somehow I'm guessing Verizon doesn't fully grasp that trend yet.

I doubt Vonage will be destroyed, in any case; more likely it will acquired at a much-reduced price -- perhaps by Verizon... 

That loud thump you heard over your VoIP connection this morning was the sound of the other shoe dropping. Two weeks after a jury ordered Internet phone company Vonage to pay Verizon $58 million plus future royalties for infringing on some patents (see "How do you call 911 on this thing again?"), a federal judge issued a permanent injunction barring Vonage from using the infringing technology. And while the judge delayed imposing the order for two weeks to give Vonage time to seek a stay, the company's stock went into a slide steep enough to warrant suspension of trading for a while in midday.

Source: Good Morning Silicon Valley: New Vonage on-hold music: "Nearer, My God, to Thee"

Semantic web as social enjoyment « Jon Udell

Timely reality check from Jon Udell -- see the post for related perspectives on WinFS. 

Freebase is like Wikipedia in the sense that it’s an open data project. But where Wikipedia is a database of unstructured articles, Freebase is a database of categorized and related items. You can use it to add or edit items and, more ambitiously, to create or extend the categories themselves.

There’s been a lot of discussion about how this approach does or doesn’t match up with the W3C’s vision for the semantic web, and the suite of standards and technologies associated with it. I’ll leave that to the experts and simply reiterate one crucial point. The authors of the semantic web are going to be people, not machines. And people will only want to play the game if it’s easy, natural, and fun.

Source: Semantic web as social enjoyment « Jon Udell

Apple Cult Becoming a Religion - New York Times

I'm not so sure -- reading the more objective Apple TV reviews this week, understanding the competitive context iPhone will launch into,  and seeing Apple history repeat with many of the strategic errors Steve Jobs made ~25 years ago, I think it's likely Apple will falter in several ways over the next couple years.

APPLE will not release the iPhone until June, but Leander Kahney, the writer of “The Cult of Mac” blog, posited this week on Wired News that the new phone is already partly responsible for a major change in how the company is perceived (wired.com). After nearly three decades, Apple is finally being taken seriously not just by the true believers, but by just about everybody.

Source: Apple Cult Becoming a Religion - New York Times

Gates Gets Honorary Harvard Degree - WSJ.com

 Better late than never...

Bill Gates is finally getting his Harvard degree -- 32 years after he walked away from the university on the path to becoming the world's wealthiest person.

Mr. Gates, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft Corp., philanthropist and college dropout, will receive an honorary degree June 7 when he delivers Harvard University's 356th commencement address.

Source: Gates Gets Honorary Harvard Degree - WSJ.com

Google building software, not cell phone: analyst | Tech&Sci | Technology | Reuters.com

So maybe Google doesn't aspire to compete in every imaginable product/service category after all... 

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a research note to clients that Google appears to be building software for Web search on cell phones and location-finding services to work with Apple Inc.'s (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile , Research) iPhone and other cell phones.

"We believe Google is working with, not against, Apple in the mobile world," Munster said.

In recent months, various reports have described how Web search leader Google could be developing a "Gphone" -- a low-cost, Internet-connected phone with a color, wide-screen design. Newspaper and blog reports in recent months have Google shopping its phone design to potential cell phone manufacturing partners in Asia.

On a related note, check out chapter 5 of Infotopia sometime for some interesting analysis suggesting the signal-to-noise ratio in most blogs is likely to get worse over time, and how "information cocoons" can easily form that, e.g., lead reasonable people worldwide to assume a breakthrough Google phone is about to ship when the reality might be a bit duller but also sensible...

Source: Google building software, not cell phone: analyst | Tech&Sci | Technology | Reuters.com

News Corp. and NBC in Web Deal - New York Times

More from the stimulus/response category; also see the SiliconValley.com take, "It'll be just like YouTube, only with less You"  

In a long-anticipated challenge to YouTube and other online video sites, two big media companies yesterday announced a new venture to showcase their own programming across the Internet’s biggest Web sites, as well as a new jointly owned Web destination.

The News Corporation and NBC Universal will distribute their latest video fare, like episodes of “24” and “The Office” on AOL, Yahoo, MSN and MySpace, which together reach about 96 percent of the Internet’s audience in the United States.

Source: News Corp. and NBC in Web Deal - New York Times

Palm: Revenue up, earnings down | CNET News.com

Check the Hawkins link below -- apparently he's still enaged in a Palm role, so he's multitasking Palm, Numenta, and the research institute he bootstrapped (see this inactive site for more on the original mission of the latter). 

Colligan also declined to shed any light on the mysterious Jeff Hawkins project currently still in the research and development phase, or when an updated version of the Palm OS will be available.

Source: Palm: Revenue up, earnings down | CNET News.com

Oracle Says Rival Stole Its Software - New York Times

This doesn't look good for SAP -- read the full articles for more details

In its Safe Passage program, SAP offered continuing support for PeopleSoft products at 50 percent less than Oracle’s price for annual software maintenance, even though SAP did not have access to PeopleSoft intellectual property or engineers, the Oracle suit noted. Later, after Oracle purchased Siebel, a leader in sales automation software, SAP made the same offer to Siebel users.

SAP, the suit stated, “purported to add full support for an entirely different product line — Siebel — with a wave of its hand.”

“The economics, and the logic, simply did not add up.”

“Oracle has now solved this puzzle,” the suit added. “To stave off the mounting competitive threat from Oracle, SAP unlawfully accessed and copied Oracle’s Software and Support Materials.”

Source: Oracle Says Rival Stole Its Software - New York Times

Microsoft Statement on Online Video Distribution Agreement with Newscorp, NBC Universal

Small world... 

Microsoft will join forces with a newly formed Fox/Newscorp and NBC/Universal joint venture to distribute a vast library of online video content to MSN consumers.

Microsoft Corp. issued the following statement, attributable to Kevin Johnson, President, Platform and Services Division, after the announcement today that Microsoft would join forces with a newly formed Fox/Newscorp and NBC/Universal joint venture to distribute a vast library of online video content to MSN consumers:

“Today’s announcement is a great win for MSN’s more than 460 million consumers and for online video more broadly. When launched, this new venture will provide free access to an unprecedented library of high-quality video content.

Source: Microsoft Statement on Online Video Distribution Agreement with Newscorp, NBC Universal