Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Oracle Completes Acquisition of BEA Systems

Officially a done deal

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) announced today that it had received approval of the European Commission and subsequently completed its acquisition of BEA Systems, Inc.

"The addition of BEA will accelerate innovation by bringing together two companies with a common vision of a modern service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure," said Oracle President Charles Phillips. "Together, Oracle and BEA will provide a series of complementary and well-engineered middleware products, allowing customers to more easily build, deploy, and manage applications in a secure environment."

Oracle Completes Acquisition of BEA Systems

XML Aficionado: New BIG "minor" release of Altova tools

More OOXML support in Altova's product line; see the full post for more updates on its 2008r2 releases

  • Extended Open XML (OOXML) Support: XMLSpy was the first XML Editor to directly support Open XML in April 2007 and today we are introducing more Open XML support in these products:
    • MapForce 2008r2 now directly supports SpreadsheetML and allows the user to place any Excel 2007 document inside a mapping project to directly transform data from EDI, XML, databases, web services, and legacy text files to Excel 2007 and vice-versa. This new support for Open XML and Excel 2007 is, of course, also available in the automatic code-generation capabilities of MapForce, allowing developers to generate application code for recurring data transformation scenarios in Java, C# and C++.
    • StyleVision 2008r2 now directly supports Open XML output in Word 2007 (WordprocessingML) to allow the user to generate multiple rich output formats from one single stylesheet design. StyleVision supports the generation of stylesheets via an easy-to-use drag&drop interface from XML documents as well as from databases and is the ultimate report designer that can produce output in HTML, PDF, RTF, and Open XML from one visual design. In addition, it allows developers the creation of Authentic forms from the same design to facilitate XML-based data entry across an organization with no deployment cost.
    • DiffDog 2008r2 now supports detailed XML differencing between Open XML documents, including the ability to directly edit and merge changes across those files. In addition, the directory comparison feature now also supports ZIP file types so that directories and ZIP archives can be compared as well.
  • XML Aficionado: New BIG "minor" release of Altova tools

    Why Steve Ballmer Will Keep Chasing Yahoo - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    See the full post for more analysis

    So in the next few days, I expect he’ll announce a full-on proxy fight. If he does say he’s walking away, I suspect it will simply be a ploy to bargain over price on the bet that Yahoo or its shareholders will come running into his embrace later.

    Then three years from now, after Microsoft has spent all its cash, diverted its resources and perhaps gotten distracted from its other businesses, there may be a moment where Mr. Ballmer has to really confront the limits of the company. Or, just maybe, we will see Microsoft prove that it still has the technical chops and marketing acumen to come from behind and wine something fair and square.

    How could Steve Ballmer not want to choose the chance of victory over the certain admission of defeat?

    Why Steve Ballmer Will Keep Chasing Yahoo - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    FT.com / Companies / IT - SAP delays software rollout

    Oops...

    Business software maker SAP delayed by 12-18 months the rollout of new software on which its growth plans depend and reported a weak first quarter as American software sales fell, hitting its shares.

    SAP said on Wednesday it would now take longer to generate $1bn in revenue from 10,000 Business ByDesign customers, which it had aimed to achieve by 2010, as it was still fine-tuning the product and would reduce investments this year.

    FT.com / Companies / IT - SAP delays software rollout

    Report: AT&T to sell 3G iPhone at $200 discount | One More Thing - CNET News.com

    Hmm -- I'll consider this speculation, for now, but I'd be tempted at $199...

    AT&T plans to sell the 3G iPhone for $199 when it arrives in AT&T's stores in June, according to a report, in a sign that Apple may have given up on locked iPhones.

    Fortune is reporting that you'll be able to buy a $199 iPhone in AT&T's stores, and only in AT&T's stores, when the new model arrives around the one-year anniversary of the iPhone launch. The report says Apple will sell 8GB and 16GB versions of the new iPhone for $399 and $499 in its own retail stores.

    This report, based on the word of a single anonymous source, raises no less than 28 zillion questions. My first thought is that if this is true, the only way Apple would go along with its partner's intention to dramatically undercut its pricing would be if Apple plans to sell unlocked iPhones in Apple stores.

    Report: AT&T to sell 3G iPhone at $200 discount | One More Thing - CNET News.com

    Tuesday, April 29, 2008

    Norm Walsh Leaves Sun? And Just Like That, *POOF*, - O'Reilly XML Blog

    Hmm...

    … I’m wondering how in the hell some obscure “XQuery Content” company stole Norm Walsh away from Sun. Y’all know who Norm Walsh is, right?

    Anyone care to provide some insight? Is Mark Logic really *that* good?

    From what I've seen over the last couple years, BTW, yeah, Mark Logic really is *that* good.

    Also on the job change front, from CNet: Photoshop guru leaves Adobe for Microsoft

    Norm Walsh Leaves Sun? And Just Like That, *POOF*, - O'Reilly XML Blog

    Microsoft | Microsoft device helps police pluck evidence from cyberscene of crime | Seattle Times Newspaper

    See the full article for more context-setting

    Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that may have been used in crimes.

    The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB "thumb drive" that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference Monday.

    The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer's Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

    Microsoft | Microsoft device helps police pluck evidence from cyberscene of crime | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Silicon Alley Insider creates start-up valuation index | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

    Sign of the times...

    How much is Facebook, Wikipedia, or Twitter worth? Silicon Alley Insider is attempting to crack the mysterious code on the valuations of the major Web start-ups with its SAI 25 Live! It tracks the valuation of the private companies and shows changes in those valuations in real-time (updated every 20 minutes on the site).

    Silicon Alley Insider creates start-up valuation index | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

    For Gamers, the Craving Won’t Quit - New York Times

    A weird reality check

    During the next two weeks, some five million couch jockeys are expected to plunk down $60 to buy Grand Theft Auto IV, a violent and episodic game that hits stores Tuesday.

    The release is expected to be one of the biggest video game debuts ever, extending a franchise that has already sold 70 million copies since its arrival in 1997.

    [...]

    Avid fans of the Grand Theft Auto games acknowledge that buying the new Grand Theft Auto — and spending hours descending into a free-for-all of crime and punishment set in an animated facsimile of New York City — can require some financial sacrifice. But for many, the purchase of the game is justified by its entertainment value. Finishing the game can take more than 40 hours, turning a $60 investment (tax not included) into entertainment that costs less than 70 cents an hour (food and bathroom breaks not included).

    For Gamers, the Craving Won’t Quit - New York Times

    EU Clears Oracle's Purchase of Software Co BEA Systems - WSJ.com

    Game over...

    The European Commission on Tuesday cleared Oracle Corp.'s (ORCL) $8.5-billion purchase of software company BEA Systems Inc. (BEAS).

    The commission said the deal wouldn't create antitrust problems, since Oracle and BEA don't compete head-to-head. The combined companies will continue to face strong competition in the market for so-called middleware software products.

    Article - WSJ.com

    Monday, April 28, 2008

    Golden Years of Television Find New Life on the Web - New York Times

    Sign of the times...

    The online shows also create new payment opportunities for the writers, producers and actors of TV’s golden years. Royalties for Internet streaming were a pivotal issue in the writers’ strike that halted television production last winter. The Hollywood studios agreed to pay writers a 2 percent cut of the receipts for ad-supported streaming of all shows produced after 1977.

    But online streaming isn’t making anyone rich, at least not yet. As Mitchell Hurwitz, the co-creator of “Arrested Development,” put it, the online popularity of his former program is “enormously rewarding in every way except for financially.”

    Golden Years of Television Find New Life on the Web - New York Times

    Interview with Vint Cerf - Quotes on the Internet, Google, and Spam - Esquire

    In case anyone still doubted this...

    Al Gore had seen what happened with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which his father introduced as a military bill. It was very powerful. Housing went up, suburban boom happened, everybody became mobile. Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet. So he really does deserve credit.

    See the full article for more Cerf insights

    (Via Dave Farber)

    Interview with Vint Cerf - Quotes on the Internet, Google, and Spam - Esquire

    Ex-CEO Fiorina Seems Comfortable Following McCain's Lead - WSJ.com

    When the going gets weird...

    Ms. Fiorina's name appears on the ever-growing short list for vice president. While the campaign has kept mum, Sen. McCain frequently tells voters he will incorporate private-sector leaders in his inner circle.

    "These people have done so much for America," he said this month in a speech in Washington, referring to Ms. Fiorina, as well as Mr. Chambers and Ms. Whitman. "I'm going to ask them to serve."

    Ex-CEO Fiorina Seems Comfortable Following McCain's Lead - WSJ.com

    Sunday, April 27, 2008

    BlackBerry’s Quest: Fend Off the iPhone - New York Times

    A timely reality check

    STEVE JOBS, Apple’s chief executive and field general, has Napoleonic dreams of global conquest for his 10-month-old wonder gadget, the iPhone. So it may be fitting that he’s encountering his most serious resistance in a city called Waterloo.

    That is where, 70 miles west of Toronto in Ontario, 19 nondescript, low-rise office buildings comprise the headquarters of Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry.

    BlackBerry’s Quest: Fend Off the iPhone - New York Times

    Saturday, April 26, 2008

    Société Générale’s Rogue Trader Finds a New Job - New York Times

    Yeah, that figures...

    Jérôme Kerviel, the Société Générale trader who used his knowledge of the French bank’s electronic risk controls to conceal billions in unauthorized bets, has a new job — at a computer consulting firm.

    Mr. Kerviel, who was given a provisional release from prison on March 18, started work last week as a trainee at Lemaire Consultants & Associates, which specializes in computer security and system development, a spokesman for the former trader, Christophe Reille, confirmed on Friday.

    Société Générale’s Rogue Trader Finds a New Job - New York Times

    Friday, April 25, 2008

    Computer security | Pain in the aaS | Economist.com

    See the full article for more details

    IT WAS bound to happen. One after another, pieces of software have been moving online in a trend towards “software as a service” (SaaS). You can now manage your e-mail, write documents and edit spreadsheets using online services that run inside a web browser. This month Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, an accounting program, said more Americans filled out their tax returns this year using the online version of its product than the traditional one in a box. But now the trend has reached the darker corners of the software universe. Computer-security firms say criminals have adopted the new model too, and are offering “crimeware as a service” (CaaS).

    Computer security | Pain in the aaS | Economist.com

    Informal Style of Electronic Messages Is Showing Up in Schoolwork, Study Finds - New York Times

    oh gr8...

    As e-mail messages, text messages and social network postings become nearly ubiquitous in the lives of teenagers, the informality of electronic communications is seeping into their schoolwork, a new study says.

    Nearly two-thirds of 700 students surveyed said their e-communication style sometimes bled into school assignments, according to the study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, in partnership with the College Board’s National Commission on Writing. About half said they sometimes omitted proper punctuation and capitalization in schoolwork. A quarter said they had used emoticons like smiley faces. About a third said they had used text shortcuts like “LOL” for “laugh out loud.”

    [...]

    More than half of the teenagers surveyed had a profile on a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace, 27 percent had an online journal or blog and 11 percent had a personal Web site. Generally, girls dominated the teenage blogosphere and social networks.

    See the full article for more details/stats

    Informal Style of Electronic Messages Is Showing Up in Schoolwork, Study Finds - New York Times

    Amazon.com: Inside Steve's Brain: Leander Kahney: Books

    I read this book while on vacation this week.  It's a quick read and a timely reality check on how Apple does its thing.

    It’s hard to believe that one man revolutionized computers in the 1970s and ’80s (with the Apple II and the Mac), animated movies in the 1990s (with Pixar), and digital music in the 2000s (with the iPod and iTunes). No wonder some people worship him like a god. On the other hand, stories of his epic tantrums and general bad behavior are legendary.
    Inside Steve’s Brain cuts through the cult of personality that surrounds Jobs to unearth the secrets to his unbelievable results. It reveals the real Steve Jobs—not his heart or his famous temper, but his mind. So what’s really inside Steve’s brain? According to Leander Kahney, who has covered Jobs since the early 1990s, it’s a fascinating bundle of contradictions.

    Amazon.com: Inside Steve's Brain: Leander Kahney: Books

    Apple Earnings: Mac Soars, iPod and iPhone Stall

    Wow -- Apple's sales for the quarter were more than half of Microsoft's

    Apple on Wednesday announced financial results for its fiscal second quarter, the first calendar quarter of 2008. The company posted earnings of $1.05 billion on revenues of $7.51 billion, both up sharply from the same quarter a year ago. Apple credits continued strong sales of Macintosh computers and high retail store traffic for the surge. Meanwhile, iPod sales were flat, while iPhone sales were far lower than most expectations.

    Apple Earnings: Mac Soars, iPod and iPhone Stall

    Microsoft Shows Gains, but Also Weaknesses - New York Times

    See the full article for more details

    The quarterly results underline once again how much the main engines of the company’s performance are its desktop PC products, Windows and Office. Those two big, lucrative businesses are healthy and growing.

    The two product groups reported total sales of $8.77 billion, accounting for 61 percent of revenue, and operating profits of $6.24 billion, or 86 percent of profits from the business units.

    The division making server software that runs data centers has become another large and profitable business for Microsoft. It generated revenue of $3.26 billion and operating profits of $1.09 billion.

    Microsoft Shows Gains, but Also Weaknesses - New York Times

    Wednesday, April 23, 2008

    Full Text of Ray Ozzie Mesh Memo - ReadWriteWeb

    FYI full text can be found on this page 

    As we wrote last night, the new Live Mesh service that just launched as an invite only "technology preview" is Microsoft's attempt to tie all of our data together. Live Mesh synchronizes data across multiple devices (currently just Windows computers, but theoretically it will extend to mobile and other devices in the future) as well as to a web desktop that exists in the cloud. It can sync data across devices used by a single users, as well as create shared spaces for multiple users. Accompanying the launch of Live Mesh is a new memo from Microsoft Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie. The full text of the memo appears to be out on the Web now, so we can reveal it for you...

    Full Text of Ray Ozzie Mesh Memo - ReadWriteWeb

    Microsoft Reveals a Web-Based Software System - New York Times

    Hmm...

    The introduction of Live Mesh is a significant strategic shift for Microsoft, whose operating system helped popularize personal computers. Bill Gates, the company’s co-founder, chairman and chief architect, said in an interview on CNN a year ago, “We’re making the PC the place where it all comes together.”

    However, a strategy document circulated to company employees on Tuesday that was written by Ray Ozzie, one of the Microsoft’s two chief technology officers, countered that view.

    See the full article for more details.

    p.s. I've been on vacation this week but will be back to my usual routine by the weekend.

    Microsoft Reveals a Web-Based Software System - New York Times

    Saturday, April 19, 2008

    Oracle to expand SAP lawsuit, may target execs

    Hardball...

    Oracle Corp. plans to expand its lawsuit against SAP AG to include charges that its TomorrowNow subsidiary stole software applications from Oracle, and that it did so with the knowledge of SAP executives, according to court papers filed Thursday.

    Oracle said it plans to file a second amended complaint against SAP and TomorrowNow that will reveal "a pattern of unlawful conduct that is different from, and even more serious than," the conduct described in its initial complaint.

    Oracle to expand SAP lawsuit, may target execs

    Amazon.com CEO promotes Kindle reader in shareholder letter - Boston.com

    Interesting times

    In the letter, filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bezos trumpeted the Kindle's advantage as a "purpose-built reading device," as opposed to smart phones and laptops, which he said encourage "information snacking" and short attention spans.

    "We hope Kindle and its successors may gradually and incrementally move us over years into a world with longer spans of attention," he wrote.

    Bezos also wrote that Amazon's vision for the Kindle is that it will make "every book ever printed in any language all available in less than 60 seconds."

    Amazon.com CEO promotes Kindle reader in shareholder letter - Boston.com

    Business & Technology | Google shares surge after stellar quarterly results | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Impressive numbers...

    Google's stock soared 20 percent Friday, restoring $28 billion in shareholder wealth as Wall Street renewed its love affair with the Internet search leader after weeks of worry about an online advertising slowdown.

    Driven by stellar first-quarter results that surprised industry analysts, Google shares surged $89.87 to finish at $539.41. It marked the biggest one-day gain since Google's initial public stock offering in August 2004, leaving the shares at their highest closing price since January.

    Business & Technology | Google shares surge after stellar quarterly results | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Researcher: Wii and iPhone browsers could allow phishing | Defense in Depth - computer security, hacking, crime, viruses - CNET News.com

    Hmm...

    In a paper (PDF) presented at the Usability, Psyschology, and Security Conference 2008 in San Francisco, researchers from the University of California at Davis warned that browsers within popular electronic gadgets often eliminate important security features available on desktop browsers.

    Researcher: Wii and iPhone browsers could allow phishing | Defense in Depth - computer security, hacking, crime, viruses - CNET News.com

    PayPal Plans to Block Safari and Old Browsers - New York Times

    Think different...

    PayPal, eBay Inc.'s payment service and the frequent target of fraudsters, plans to block browsers that don't include anti-phishing features from accessing its site.

    Under PayPal's plan, Apple Inc.'s Safari would be banned completely, while only older versions of its rivals Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox would be barred.

    [...]

    PayPal's mentioned that before: in February, Barrett said users should steer clear of Apple's browser because it wasn't up to snuff. "Apple, unfortunately, is lagging behind what they need to do to protect their customers," Barrett said then. "Safari has got nothing in terms of security support, only SSL, that's it."

    PayPal Plans to Block Safari and Old Browsers - New York Times

    Friday, April 18, 2008

    U.S. video game sales rise 57 percent in May | Technology | Reuters

    For the quarter: 720K Wii, 262K Xbox 360, 257K PS3

    U.S. sales of video game hardware and software rose 57 percent from a year earlier, industry data showed on Thursday, evidence that the industry has so far been immune to wider economic woes.

    Sales of gaming hardware, software and accessories hit $1.7 billion in March, led by Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii console, which posted its biggest non-holiday month ever, according to market research firm NPD.

    U.S. video game sales rise 57 percent in May | Technology | Reuters

    Amazon Gains Share of Shrinking Paid Music Market - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    See the full article for some scary statistics for the music industry

    If you pan back and look at how people are getting their music these days you see that the companies fighting for the people who pay for music are battling over an ever-smaller piece of the pie.

    NPD’s annual survey of Internet users, which is some 80 percent of the population these days, found that 10 percent of the music they acquired last year came from paid downloads. That is a big increase from 7 percent in 2006. But since the number of physical CDs they bought plummeted, the overall share of music they paid for fell to 42 percent from 48 percent.

    Amazon Gains Share of Shrinking Paid Music Market - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    Microsoft | Microsoft confirms purchase of Farecast travel site | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Hmm...

    Microsoft bought Seattle-based airfare prediction and travel site Farecast earlier this month for around $115 million, according to a person familiar with the transaction.

    A Microsoft spokeswoman would not comment on the terms of the deal, but did confirm the purchase, which closed April 9.

    "Farecast has been a partner of ours on MSN Travel and we look forward to working closely with the Farecast team to incorporate and apply its technology in new and interesting ways," Whitney Burk, a spokeswoman with Microsoft's Online Services business, said in a statement.

    [...]

    The broad, data-mining technology underpinning Farecast has several potential applications that benefit consumers, Etzioni said. He declined to discuss Farecast's specific plans, but pointed to other examples, such as Clearflow, a new feature of Microsoft's Live Maps to help drivers dodge traffic jams, and the real-estate forecasting site Zillow.

    Microsoft | Microsoft confirms purchase of Farecast travel site | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Microsoft | Ballmer points out Microsoft soft spots | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Interesting times

    "We have some customers, a lot of customers using Vista. A lot of customers," Ballmer said. "And we have a lot customers that are choosing to stay with Windows XP and as long as those are both important options, we will be sensitive and we will listen and we will hear that.

    He added, "I know we're going to continue to get feedback from people about how long XP should be available. We've got some opinions on that. We've expressed our views, but certainly to this crowd ... I'm always interested in hearing from you on these and other issues."

    Microsoft | Ballmer points out Microsoft soft spots | Seattle Times Newspaper

    FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Ebay considers sale of Skype subsidiary

    Perhaps long overdue

    “What we’re testing this year are the synergies,” Mr Donahoe told the Financial Times this week after Ebay reported its latest earnings. “If the synergies are strong, we’ll keep it in our portfolio. If not, we’ll reassess it.” That could lead to the disposal of the business, he indicated.

    While the acquisition of Skype has widely come to be seen as a blunder for Ebay, the phone service itself has continued to grow fast, adding another 33m registered users in the first three months of this year to reach 309m. Although most use it for free internet phone calls, the addition of extra paid services helped Skype to increase its revenues to $126m in the first three months of this year, up 61 per cent from the year before.

    FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Ebay considers sale of Skype subsidiary

    Google Defies the Economy and Reports a Profit Surge - New York Times

    Impressive numbers, in any case

    Some analysts noted that Google’s growth did slow from the previous quarter and said the results did not completely dispel concerns about the health of Google’s business in the United States.

    “The international piece was solid,” said Ross Sandler, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. “That is where most of the upside came from. Despite the comments that they are seeing no impact from the economy whatsoever, I think the growth rate in the U.S. deserves more attention.”

    Google Defies the Economy and Reports a Profit Surge - New York Times

    Thursday, April 17, 2008

    IBM considering giving Microsoft the boot? | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET Blogs

    Maybe they should also move their server apps to Sun Solaris boxes.

    IBM Research is running a pilot program to gauge the interest in and feasibility of moving its employees from PCs to Macs. So far, the response appears to be an enthusiastic, "Yes, please! Is this PC recyclable, or should I just dump it out back?"

    IBM considering giving Microsoft the boot? | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET Blogs

    MySQL reserves features for paying customers; open-source community up in arms [ComputerWorld]

    A timely reality check for open source DBMSs

    Open-source darling MySQL is facing a new uprising within its customer base over plans disclosed this week to reserve some key upcoming features, and their source code, for paying users of its namesake database.

    Officials at Sun Microsystems Inc., which acquired MySQL in February, confirmed that new online backup capabilities now under development will be offered only to MySQL Enterprise customers — not to the much larger number of users of the free MySQL Community edition.

    MySQL reserves features for paying customers; open-source community up in arms

    Pattern Finder: Stark Reminder: Gmail Is Still in Beta

    A timely Guy Creese reality check

    Oops. A little more than a week after I mused that enterprises should start investigating the Gmail portion of Google Apps as a Microsoft Exchange replacement, Google proved me wrong. David Berlind noted in a Tech Radar blog post that the Gmail IMAP interface took a vacation yesterday, meaning that he couldn't access his e-mail via Microsoft Outlook. Even the Ajax features within the standard interface for Gmail weren't home.

    See the full post for more details

    Pattern Finder: Stark Reminder: Gmail Is Still in Beta

    WikiXMLDB: Querying Wikipedia with XQuery

    Interesting times...

    With all the benefits that Wikipedia promises, it is not easy to use it off-the-shelf in applications. While Wikipedia is available for download in an XML format, individual articles are formatted in a proprietary wiki format. So the most interesting uses of Wikipedia in applications are still locked behind the access troubles.

    Here is where WikiXMLDB comes to the rescue. We have parsed the entire English Wikipedia content into XML representation (its total size is about 21GB), loaded it into Sedna and provided a query interface to it. Now you can dissect individual articles, rip out abstracts, sections, links, infoboxes and other components. Or you can combine pieces of existing documents into new XML documents and convert them to web pages with XSLT for example. And you can do it all using the standard W3C XQuery Language. So finally you can start enriching your content with data from Wikipedia and unlock its power for your applications.

    WikiXMLDB demo is deployed on Amazon EC2 and runs on the virtual computer with restricted resources. To achieve better performance and do unlimited customization, you can run WikiXMLDB on your computer.

    WikiXMLDB: Querying Wikipedia with XQuery

    Yahoo closer to Google ad outsourcing deal: report | Technology | Reuters

    Looks like the ultimate poison pill...

    The possible partnership with Google would be part of an a bid by Yahoo to forge a three-way deal where Yahoo would merge with Time Warner Inc AOL in return for Time Warner taking a stake in Yahoo, sources had told Reuters last week.

    ... but probably not (from later in the article):

    The Journal also reported a tie-up with Google would not necessarily derail an eventual deal to merge with Microsoft. Yahoo could simply pull out of the Google deal if Microsoft bought it, sources told the paper.

    Yahoo closer to Google ad outsourcing deal: report | Technology | Reuters

    Extra Cost to Buy Yahoo: Retention Pay - New York Times

    An interesting tidbit

    When the chief executive of Microsoft, Steven A. Ballmer, offered to buy Tellme, Mr. McCue asked if his company would be forced to switch the operating system used in its data center, Sun’s Solaris, to Microsoft’s Windows.

    “No, no, we’ve learned our lesson,” Mr. Ballmer replied, according to Mr. McCue.

    Extra Cost to Buy Yahoo: Retention Pay - New York Times

    Red Hat Abandons PC Plan - WSJ.com

    Demand and supply...

    Red Hat Inc., the world's largest maker of Linux software, said it had abandoned plans to develop software that would compete directly with Microsoft Corp. for the consumer-desktop-computer market.

    [...]

    The statement said the desktop market "suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today's Linux desktops simply don't provide a practical alternative ... building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough." Red Hat said it would continue to develop a version of the software for personal computers whose users are supported by computer resellers.

    Red Hat Abandons PC Plan - WSJ.com

    Wednesday, April 16, 2008

    Awareness integrates with Facebook

    More Facebook integration -- check the full post for details and a customer example

    Today (actually, it was yesterday but it feels like today) we announced a cool new integration with Facebook  that delvers additional value for our customers.
    The integration is delivered via the Awareness Facebook Application Framework.  That allows us to create white-labeled Facebook applications for our customers that let the users of their Web 2.0 communities interact with their communities from right inside Facebook.

    Awareness integrates with Facebook

    Blogger Is Surprised by Uproar Over Obama Story, but Not Bitter

    A bigger question, from my perspective: how did this "story" otherwise go four days with no mainstream press coverage?

    Ms. Fowler told me in an interview Sunday night that she was initially reluctant to write about what Mr. Obama had said because she actually supports him -- which partly explains why she was at the fund-raiser in the first place and why there was a four-day delay between the event and the publication of her post. Ultimately, she said, she decided that if she didn’t write about it, she wouldn’t be worth her salt as a journalist.

    [...]

    The whole episode gives a revealing glimpse into yet even more ways in which the Internet is changing the coverage of politics. And Ms. Fowler says she is surprised that she is playing a role in this revolution.

    "I'm 61," she said. "I can't believe I would be one of the people who's changing the world of media." But her experience raises questions about whether the roles, rules and expectations for journalists and bloggers are different. Can a person be both? Even Ms. Fowler acknowledged that "clearly everyone is going to be re-thinking how they handle this kind of thing."

    Remember: information literacy is your friend...

    Katharine Q. Seelye - On Line - The New York Times - Politics - Election 2008 - New York Times

    The Sims Series Explores a Player’s Fantasy Life - New York Times

    See the full article for a timely snapshot

    On Wednesday Electronic Arts, the Sims’s publisher, plans to announce that the series has sold more than 100 million copies (including expansion packs) in 22 languages and 60 countries since its introduction in 2000.

    All told, the franchise has generated about $4 billion in sales or an average of $500 million every year for the last eight years, placing the Sims in the rarefied financial company of other giants of popular culture like “American Idol,” “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter.”

    [...]

    So how did a game in which the action is as mundane as scrubbing a toilet, having a kid or flirting with a neighbor come to captivate so broadly?

    The Sims Series Explores a Player’s Fantasy Life - New York Times

    Six Apart wrestles the social-media dragon | The Social - CNET News.com

    Interesting times

    Six Apart, the software company behind blogging platforms TypePad, Movable Type, and Vox, has launched a new Facebook application called "Blog It." Facebook members who install the application can post to multiple blogging services at one time, update their Facebook status in sync with micro-blogging services like Twitter, and have updates from the app appear in their Facebook Mini-Feeds.

    Six Apart wrestles the social-media dragon | The Social - CNET News.com

    Will Salesforce Deal Jump-Start Google Apps Adoption?

    Well, times have changed since the days of Where Have All the Emails Gone?  Or maybe not...

    However, Narinder Singh, founder of Appirio, which provides applications and services to support the adoption of both Google Apps and Salesforce.com, claimed that significant number of large corporations have at least launched pilot programs to deploy Google Apps to workgroups of 200 to 1,000 users.

    "We have got a bunch of manufacturing and biotech companies" and one large bank that have started major Google Apps deployments, Singh said, but they generally work under strong nondisclosure agreements and "prefer to fly under the radar."

    One of these organizations that has gone public is the Republican National Convention, which is running the organization on Google Apps and is also using Salesforce.com, Singh said.

    Will Salesforce Deal Jump-Start Google Apps Adoption?

    Larger Prey Are Targets of Phishing - New York Times

    Yikes

    Thousands of high-ranking executives across the country have been receiving e-mail messages this week that appear to be official subpoenas from the United States District Court in San Diego. Each message includes the executive’s name, company and phone number, and commands the recipient to appear before a grand jury in a civil case.

    A link embedded in the message purports to offer a copy of the entire subpoena. But a recipient who tries to view the document unwittingly downloads and installs software that secretly records keystrokes and sends the data to a remote computer over the Internet. This lets the criminals capture passwords and other personal or corporate information.

    Larger Prey Are Targets of Phishing - New York Times

    Business Technology : IBM Cripples Denmark for a Day

    Oops...

    Danish companies are out millions because of “a highly unusual event” at an IBM data center–a reminder that in the world of technology, small things have large implications.

    This blog has noticed that businesses always blame a contractor when something tech related goes wrong. Businesses in the world’s most networked nation are no exception, although in this case it’s deserved. Around noon last Wednesday, IBM’s entire network in Denmark crashed, disrupting operations at many businesses there, according to the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

    Business Technology : IBM Cripples Denmark for a Day

    Tuesday, April 15, 2008

    Motley Crue to release single on Rock Band game | Technology | Reuters

    Sign of the times...

    In a nod to the ascendancy of video games, rock 'n' roll bad boys Motley Crue will become the first group to release a new single through Rock Band, said the developer of the wildly popular game.

    [...]

    "Rock Band" went on sale last November, and now has more than 80 tracks available for download in addition to the 58 tracks in the original game. MTV Games said players have bought more than 6 million downloadable songs for Rock Band. Tunes range from classics by the likes of the Who and the Rolling Stones to more-contemporary fare from the Killers and Fall Out Boy.

    Motley Crue to release single on Rock Band game | Technology | Reuters

    BBC NEWS | Technology | Wikipedia takes business approach

    A timely snapshot; see the full article for more details

    Today Wikipedia is one of the world's largest reference websites attracting nearly 700 million visitors a year. It is written in more than 250 languages with over 2.3 million articles in its English edition.

    With a degree of modesty Jimmy concedes "I thought if we are really successful we might make the top one hundred websites and now we are like number eight on the internet and much bigger than I would have ever thought."

    On another note, via All Things Digital, a timely reality check from the Australian version of ComputerWorld:

    If you are faced with the prospect of having brain surgery who would you rather it be performed by - a surgeon trained at medical school or someone who has read Wikipedia?

    [...]

    Professor Lichtenstein says the reliance by students on Wikipedia for finding information, and acceptance of the practice by teachers and academics, was "crowding out" valuable knowledge and creating a generation unable to source "credible expert" views even if desired.

    "People are unwittingly trusting the information they find on Wikipedia, yet experience has shown it can be wrong, incomplete, biased, or misleading," she said. "Parents and teachers think it is [okay], but it is a light-weight model of knowledge and people don't know about the underlying model of how it operates."

    BBC NEWS | Technology | Wikipedia takes business approach

    Pattern Finder: Book: "A Short History of Financial Euphoria"

    A timely Guy Creese book review of John Kenneth Galbraith's A Short History of Financial Euphoria

    Although written in 1990, his words could be used describe recent events: the dot.com boom and bust, the rise and fall of Enron, and the mortgage market collapse:

    Some artifact or some development, seemingly new and desirable--tulips in Holland, gold in Louisiana, real estate in Florida, the superb economic designs of Ronald Reagan--captures the financial mind or perhaps, more accurately, what so passes. The price of the object of speculation goes up. Securities, land, objets d'art, and other property, when bought today, are worth more tomorrow. This increase and the prospect attract new buyers; the new buyers assure a further increase. Yet more are attracted; yet more buy; the increase continues. The speculation building on itself provides its own momentum.

    This process, once it is recognized, is clearly evident, and especially so after the fact. So also, if more subjectively, are the basic attitudes of the participants. These take two forms. There are those who are persuaded that some new price-enhancing circumstance is in control, and they expect the market to stay up and go up, perhaps indefinitely. It is adjusting to a new situation, a new world of greatly, even infinitely increasing returns and resulting values. Then there are those, superficially more astute and generally fewer in number, who perceive or believe themselves to perceive the speculative mood of the moment. They are to ride the upward wave; their particular genius, they are convinced, will allow them to get out before the speculation runs its course.

    And then, of course, the crash comes.

    You might also want to check out Galbraith's The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth for Our Time

    Pattern Finder: Book: "A Short History of Financial Euphoria"

    Study: Google Lost Share of Search Ad Dollars to Yahoo - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    Hmm...

    If the results of a study by SearchIgnite, a search advertising technology firm, prove representative of the broader search market, something unusual happened in search ads in the first quarter: Google lost share to Yahoo in the United States.

    The report shows that spending by search advertisers on Yahoo grew a robust 57 percent while spending on Google grew only at about half that rate. That meant Google’s total share of search ad dollars declined slightly to 70.4 percent, while Yahoo’s rose to 24.2 percent. Microsoft’s declined slightly to 5.4 percent.

    Study: Google Lost Share of Search Ad Dollars to Yahoo - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    Business & Technology | Anoop Gupta named Microsoft's UPG head | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Another member of the Microsoft old guard heading for the exit

    The Microsoft group tasked with selling its products in the developing world is getting a new leader, as a company veteran heads for the exit.

    Microsoft said Will Poole, who previously ran the Windows Client business, is leaving as co-leader of the Unlimited Potential Group [UPG] and retiring this fall "to pursue philanthropic and entrepreneurial interests."

    Anoop Gupta, a corporate vice president heading technology policy and education products, will take over at UPG, an effort launched almost a year ago.

    Business & Technology | Anoop Gupta named Microsoft's UPG head | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Enterprise 2.0: A Computer Security Nightmare? - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    A timely reality check

    Unauthorized proxies, or software agents that disguise applications, were found on 80 percent of the corporate networks. These can be used for corporate espionage or pilfering trade secrets.

    Google applications like Google Docs and Google Desktop were used in 60 percent of the corporations studied. And, no surprise, Internet video services like YouTube were consuming large portions of network bandwidth at all the companies.

    One conclusion, the report notes, is that users are routinely, and fairly easily, circumventing corporate security controls. And that is because traditional firewall technology was not meant to grapple with the diversity of Internet applications of recent years.

    Enterprise 2.0: A Computer Security Nightmare? - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    New York State Girds for War With Amazon - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    Hmm...

    The state is proposing defining Amazon’s affiliates—Web sites that earn commissions by referring customers to it—as a physical presence. Amazon argues that affiliates are not representatives but simply companies that accept advertising from it. It also says that it can’t be expected to figure out all the various permutations of local taxes.

    I noted in a post last year that the complexity argument may be outmoded by new technologies. That post spawned quite a debate on the merits of the issue, as did one Friday by Stephen J. Dubner over at the Freakonomics blog.

    New York State Girds for War With Amazon - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    Monday, April 14, 2008

    Google AppEngine - A Second Look | High Scalability

    Check the full post for more AE updates

    The result: a cautious thumbs up. The biggest issue so far seems to be the change in mindset needed by developers to use GAE. BigTable is not MySQL. The runtime environment is not a VM. A service based approach is not the same as using libraries. A scalable architecture is not the same as one based on optimizing speed. A different approach is needed, but as of yet Google doesn't give you all the tools you need to fully embrace the red pill vision.

    Google AppEngine - A Second Look | High Scalability

    Discovering XQuery: XQuery: The Real X in AJAX

    Check the full post for an example

    Like the real Napster in the movie The Italian Job (the remake), XQuery might have a bit of a chip on its shoulder about the X in AJAX.

    Sure, it stands for XML since the idea is that return an XML fragment to the browser to update content in a div, fill in form fields or even create drop down menu options on the fly.

    But how do you create that XML?  Using static XML files works, but the whole idea is to dynamically respond to user actions and give them information without reloading the whole page.

    And what's the best way to dynamically create XML?  XQuery of course!

    Discovering XQuery: XQuery: The Real X in AJAX

    Salesforce Announces Integration With Google Apps - Yahoo! News

    So... free, but not free ($10/user/month for "... support, unified billing and provisioning, and enhanced platform APIs") and integrated, but not integrated...

    However, the debut product is not entirely seamless. For example, it does not include single sign-on to both Google Apps and Salesforce out of the box, Swensrud said. That task has been completed by a partner, Sxip, which is announcing an application Monday. Another partner, Appirio, created the calendaring integration, according to Salesforce.

    Salesforce Announces Integration With Google Apps - Yahoo! News

    Google, Salesforce link up for business apps | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    More details

    This isn't a new function of Salesforce.com. The company has offered integration with Microsoft's Office and Outlook desktop applications for some time. But this is the company's first foray into offering a more wide-ranging Web-based application package, cutting the ties to desktop applications.

    Salesforce.com says this isn't some marketing-driven move; its customers, through a Salesforce.com online forum called Idea Exchange, requested integration with Google Apps.

    [...]

    Salesforce.com won't charge for the integration with Google Apps. Existing customers will get it for no additional charge. So far, 10 Salesforce.com customers have tested the integration in a beta test mode, said Swensrud.

    There is a profit motive here, however. The company will offer a service called Salesforce for Google Apps Supported that will include telephone support for end users, unified billing and provisioning, and additional application programming interfaces for a fee of $10 per user, per month.

    Google, Salesforce link up for business apps | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    Google and Salesforce Join to Fight Microsoft - New York Times

    More on the Google/Salesforce.com partnership

    “Salesforce has belatedly recognized that it is important to link C.R.M. apps to productivity tools,” said Brad Wilson, general manager for Microsoft’s C.R.M. unit. “It has been core to our product since we launched five years ago. It validates our strategy.”

    Google and Salesforce, two of the most important proponents of the idea of delivering software as a service over the Web, have grown increasingly close over the last several months. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so that makes Google my best friend,” said Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com.

    [...]

    Salesforce for Google Apps, as the integrated product is called, will be available to Salesforce customers at no additional cost starting Monday.

    Google and Salesforce Join to Fight Microsoft - New York Times

    He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work) - New York Times

    Interesting times...

    But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

    He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work) - New York Times

    Salesforce.com to Help Google Sell Software - WSJ.com

    This could be a major milestone for Google Apps

    Internet giant Google Inc. is tapping Salesforce.com Inc. for help selling Google's online software.

    Google has in recent months ramped up an effort to get more companies to use Google Apps, an online alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Office software for handling tasks such as email and word-processing.

    The Internet search company and Salesforce.com, a provider of online services for salespeople and marketers, plan Monday to announce that they have built technology into their products to make it easier for customers to share information between Salesforce.com and Google Apps.

    Salesforce.com to Help Google Sell Software - WSJ.com

    Saturday, April 12, 2008

    Amazon Takes On IBM, Oracle, and HP [BusinessWeek]

    See the full article for context-setting

    Still, large customers are beginning to uncover the potential of Amazon's venture. At Nasdaq, researcher Charles Courbois wanted to offer the exchange's customers the ability to look back at historical trading data and dissect the information millisecond by millisecond. He figured it would have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars to build the capability in-house. Instead he used Amazon—and has spent less than $500. He has few customers so far, but he likes that Nasdaq doesn't have to worry about surging demand in the future. "Even if we have 100,000 users tomorrow, I'm confident Amazon can handle it," he says.

    Amazon Takes On IBM, Oracle, and HP

    One Place for Your Many Online Lives (BusinessWeek)

    Some Google alumni doing potentially disruptive (e.g., to social networking site business models) stuff

    People are socializing on networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace (NWS) and sharing pictures and videos on Web sites including Flickr (YHOO) and YouTube (GOOG). But all these activities have been walled off from one another, like separate digital worlds. To keep track of friends and colleagues, you have to log in and out of different services constantly.

    IT'S WHO YOU KNOW

    FriendFeed is one of the first major efforts to break down these walls. With the startup's service, subscribers can pull together on one Web page everything their friends and colleagues are doing on more than 30 Web sites. The goal is to organize the Web's information in valuable ways, a bit like Google does. But instead of using search, FriendFeed uses people you know to uncover valuable information. To find movie recommendations or news items or provocative ideas, you can tap into the wisdom of friends. "Our thesis was that the best filter for information is people you know," says Buchheit.

    One Place for Your Many Online Lives

    The semantic web | Start making sense | Economist.com

    A timely reality check; see the full article for details

    The idea is that any website can send a jumble of text and code through Calais and receive back a list of “entities” that the system has extracted—mostly people, places and companies—and, even more importantly, their relationships. It will, for instance, be able recognise a pharmaceutical company's name and, on its own initiative, cross-reference that against data on clinical trials for new drugs that are held in government databases. Alternatively, it can chew up a thousand blogs and expose trends that not even the bloggers themselves were aware of.

    The system is free to use, for Reuters' objective is to create a “clearinghouse of meaning” that financial-service companies will be able to exploit as a new type of search engine. How the firm will make money has yet to emerge, though selling insights gained from applying the system's own methods for Reuters' benefit is one possibility.

    The semantic web | Start making sense | Economist.com

    The Coming of the Holodeck - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    Hmm

    Virtuality reality at a desktop computer has always seemed so — how should I say it? — unreal.

    Now a new generation of inexpensive video cameras that sense 3D information is taking a tiny step toward the Star Trek Holodeck.

    Take a peek at the video that Mitchell Kapor and Philippe Bossut posted Friday demonstrating software that allows navigation in virtual world environment without a mouse or a keyboard.

    The Coming of the Holodeck - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    Friday, April 11, 2008

    Live Maps gets a major upgrade | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    Competition is your friend...

    Microsoft is rolling out its new "version 2" 3D imagery in four cities (Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix) for now, with more to come later. The rest of us will have to wait and look on in envy. 3D improvements include higher-resolution textures, rendered trees, and buildings reaching farther out of the city cores and into the suburbs.

    [...]

    The Live Maps team is really together right now. It is offering a product that, in my opinion, is clearly superior to Google Maps. Live Maps is the best browser-based map experience out there today.

    Live Maps gets a major upgrade | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    The New E-spionage Threat

    Stark BusinessWeek cover story 

    But many security experts worry the Internet has become too unwieldy to be tamed. New exploits appear every day, each seemingly more sophisticated than the previous one. The Defense Dept., whose Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) developed the Internet in the 1960s, is beginning to think it created a monster. "You don't need an Army, a Navy, an Air Force to beat the U.S.," says General William T. Lord, commander of the Air Force Cyber Command, a unit formed in November, 2006, to upgrade Air Force computer defenses. "You can be a peer force for the price of the PC on my desk." Military officials have long believed that "it's cheaper, and we kill stuff faster, when we use the Internet to enable high-tech warfare," says a top adviser to the U.S. military on the overhaul of its computer security strategy. "Now they're saying, Oh, shit.'"

    The New E-spionage Threat

    Predictably / Irrational » Blog Archive » Clinton, Obama, and the decoy effect!

    Read the rest of the post and check out the book -- it's a quick and interesting read

    Clinton recently suggested that if she wins the Democratic primaries, she would select Obama as her vice president. Was this a good move on her part? How should Obama have reacted to this?

    The field of behavioral economics has shown a phenomenon called the asymmetric dominance effect (or the decoy effect). The basic idea is that when we are presented with two options that are rather different, we have a hard time making a choice between them.  In such cases, if a third alternative that is similar to one option but clearly inferior to it is added to the mix it can change the choices we make.  It sounds odd that adding an inferior option that no one would select would influence our choices, but it does.

    Predictably / Irrational » Blog Archive » Clinton, Obama, and the decoy effect!

    Google C.E.O. Taps Quattrone as Adviser in Yahoo Battle - Mergers, Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds -- DealBook - New York Times

    Somehow this seems unsurprising...

    Frank P. Quattrone is advising Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, as the Internet giant figures out its next step in the takeover struggle between Yahoo and Microsoft, people briefed on the matter told DealBook.

    Mr. Quattrone’s role — his first high-profile transaction since being cleared of obstruction of justice charges last year — arrives as the drama surrounding Yahoo reaches a new level of complexity. Google and Yahoo announced Wednesday afternoon that they are testing out an advertising partnership, one that if successful may be used by Yahoo to demand a higher bid from Microsoft.

    Google C.E.O. Taps Quattrone as Adviser in Yahoo Battle - Mergers, Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds -- DealBook - New York Times

    Technology Review: Yahoo's last-ditch efforts to escape Microsoft appear headed for grand finale

    This permutation just doesn't make sense to me

    A Yahoo-AOL combination probably would have to overcome shareholder skepticism because both companies have been fading in recent years. Before Microsoft announced its bid Jan. 31, Yahoo's market value had plunged by nearly $30 billion during a two-year period. AOL is now believed to be worth about $10 billion, about half of its value when Google paid for a $1 billion stake in 2005.

    Technology Review: Yahoo's last-ditch efforts to escape Microsoft appear headed for grand finale

    AOL interest in Yahoo may push Microsoft - The Boston Globe

    A stark reality check

    "The AOL-Yahoo thing reminds me of two men drowning, both grabbing on to each other," said Mike Holland, who oversees more than $4 billion at Holland & Co. in New York. "It usually doesn't end in a pretty way or a smart way or an effective way."

    AOL interest in Yahoo may push Microsoft - The Boston Globe

    Thursday, April 10, 2008

    News Corp., AOL Pursue Yahoo Deals - WSJ.com

    Yeah, that'd help... Google, that is, by almost certainly sinking Yahoo! faster.

    Under the terms being discussed between Yahoo and Time Warner, the latter would fold its AOL unit into Yahoo and make a cash investment in return for about 20% of the combined entity, people familiar with the situation said. The deal, which wouldn't include AOL's dial-up access business, would value AOL at about $10 billion. As part of the deal, Yahoo would use the Time Warner cash and additional funds to buy back several billion dollars worth of its own stock at a price somewhere in the middle of the range between $30 and $40 a share, the people said.

    News Corp., AOL Pursue Yahoo Deals - WSJ.com

    Google Metaphors of the Day: DeathStar and Skynet : Beyond Search

    Sign of the times...

    John Murrell, SiliconValley.com, used two interesting metaphors in his “Google Opens Cloud to Crowd” story about Google’s new hosted services. Most Google watchers tip toe around comparisons of Google (the happy company) to any thing dark and sinister. Mr. Murrell writes:

    Now that it has built up its computing infrastructure to a size somewhere between the Death Star and Skynet, Google really hates to see any of that power going untapped. To spread the wealth, Google announced late Monday the beta launch of App Engine, a set of tools and services that will let Web developers run their own applications on Google’s platform, avoiding all that troublesome back end maintenance.

    Google Metaphors of the Day: DeathStar and Skynet : Beyond Search

    BBC NEWS | Technology | BBC announces Nintendo Wii deal

    More on the BBC/Wii news

    "The BBC's catch-up TV service can now be accessed on an increasing number of different platforms - from the web and portable devices to gaming consoles," said Erik Huggers, BBC's group controller for Future Media and Technology, announcing the deal in a speech at the MipTV-Milia conference in Cannes.

    He added that the iPlayer will also soon be available on television.

    The iPlayer on the Wii is currently being tested and the BBC expects to release more test versions in late 2008. An early version of the service is available from 9 April. It is only available in the UK to licence-fee payers.

    The iPlayer will be accessible via the internet channel on the Wii console. The BBC said a message would be sent to Wii owners to alert them to its availability.

    BBC NEWS | Technology | BBC announces Nintendo Wii deal

    Business & Technology | Yahoo in online test with Google ads | Seattle Times Newspaper

    If you want to get a fuller sense of just how deeply ironic this is, check out the Science Channel mini-series titled "The True Story of the Internet" (and/or read John Battelle's excellent book "The Search")

    Yahoo to Microsoft: We've got options.

    Trying to fend off the software giant's unsolicited takeover bid, Yahoo said Wednesday it plans to experiment with putting ads from Google in its Web search results.

    Business & Technology Yahoo in online test with Google ads Seattle Times Newspaper

    Explaining Lieberman’s Web Crash - New York Times

    "The rest of the story..."

    It seemed to be the ultimate political dirty trick of the digital age: crashing an opponent’s Web site on the eve of a primary election in order to disrupt an opponent’s last-minute efforts. Or so the campaign of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut charged in 2006 when its site crashed the day before the upset victory of the challenger, Ned Lamont, in the Democratic primary.

    [...]

    Now an F.B.I. e-mail message from October 2006 has been disclosed, saying that its investigation — also in response to a request by the Lieberman camp — showed that it was not angry bloggers or Mr. Lamont’s insurgent campaign workers who rendered the site inaccessible, but sheer technological ineptitude.

    Explaining Lieberman’s Web Crash - New York Times

    FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - BBC launches iPlayer on the Wii

    Hmm...

    The BBC’s catch-up TV service, the iPlayer, is coming to regular sets for the first time thanks to a deal with Nintendo that demonstrates the industry’s determination to bring online viewing to television’s natural home – the living room.

    The UK’s 2.4m owners of Nintendo Wii games consoles are now able to view popular BBC programmes such as The Apprentice and Eastenders “on demand” over the internet. The Wii is broadband enabled and plugs into a standard TV set.

    FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - BBC launches iPlayer on the Wii

    Symantec to buy AppStream | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    The app streaming dance floor is emptying...

    Symantec is acquiring AppStream, a maker of application streaming technology.

    Symantec already uses AppStream's technology in its Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) Pro. Using application streaming enables end users to perform functions by accessing parts of a software program over the network as needed, without having the program fully installed on the client computer.

    Symantec to buy AppStream | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    Google App Engine: Cashing in on the user data | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

    Not likely to be an entirely objective observer, but a timely reality check anyway

    "It's funny that we waged the war to free ourselves of (the) shackles of Microsoft and Hailstorm (a failed attempt to manage personal data)," said David Young, CEO of cloud infrastructure provider and App Engine competitor Joyent. "Now, for some reason, the digerati are anxious to run into exact same thing with Google. It's not evil, but they are tracking users and clickstreams, which (are) the real currency of the Web, and most people don't care. If you can get all data, you can target ads and the user experience, such as showing a site in a different color, depending on user profile."

    Google App Engine: Cashing in on the user data | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

    Microsoft Introduces Tool for Avoiding Traffic Jams - New York Times

    Cool...

    The new service’s software technology, called Clearflow, was developed over the last five years by a group of artificial-intelligence researchers at the company’s Microsoft Research laboratories. It is an ambitious attempt to apply machine-learning techniques to the problem of traffic congestion. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets.

    Microsoft Introduces Tool for Avoiding Traffic Jams - New York Times

    Wednesday, April 09, 2008

    Microsoft, News Corp. In Serious Talks on Yahoo - WSJ.com

    This is getting ridiculous...

    News Corp. is in serious talks with Microsoft Corp. over a joint bid for Yahoo Inc., people familiar with the situation said Wednesday.

    Meanwhile, Yahoo and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL are closing in on a deal to combine their Internet operations, a move that could thwart Microsoft's effort to acquire Yahoo, people familiar with the matter said.

    The possible Yahoo-AOL tie-up is part of a threefold plan by Yahoo to present shareholders with an alternative to Microsoft's unsolicited offer. Yahoo would also propose repurchasing billions of dollars of its own shares and is negotiating with Google Inc. about an advertising tie-up. On Wednesday, Yahoo announced a short-term test under which it will carry search advertising from Google.

    Microsoft, News Corp. In Serious Talks on Yahoo - WSJ.com

    Google yanks App Engine demo after blogosphere brouhaha

    Oops...

    Just a day after launching a preview version of its new Google App Engine, Google Inc. yesterday yanked one of the development product's demo applications after a blogosphere brouhaha erupted over its origin.

    The move came after bloggers contended that the real-time chat demo application for Google App Engine, called HuddleChat, was a copy of the Campfire real-time chat application from 37Signals LLC.

    Google yanks App Engine demo after blogosphere brouhaha

    Adobe - Adobe Press Room: New Adobe TV Programming Comes Online

    Using Adobe products/services to help customers learn how to more effectively apply Adobe products/services...

    Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe® TV, a free online video resource for expert instruction and inspiration about Adobe products, including the company’s Creative Suite 3 family of world-class creative tools. With multiple channels, original series programming, and content from Adobe, leading training organizations and the world's leading subject matter experts, Adobe TV delivers a virtual library of entertaining and instructional videos. Designers, photographers, video professionals, and developers will find product deep-dives, innovative tips, techniques from luminaries, and behind-the-scenes tours of the hottest creative shops and Adobe product teams.

    See this page for details (I would have started there, but I can't use Windows Live Writer to blog the Flash-based content on the page...)

    Adobe - Adobe Press Room: New Adobe TV Programming Comes Online

    Mark Logic CEO Blog: Google Launches Google App Engine

    More on Google App Engine

    Yesterday Google launched Google App Engine, a platform that lets people create web applications and run them on Google's infrastructure. It's a direct competitor to Amazon Web Services (AWS) such as EC2, S3, and SimpleDB but, unlike AWS, it's free for small web apps (where small means about 5M pageviews per month) and it seems more integrated as an end-to-end service.
    This is all part of a broader trend towards platform as a service (PaaS) which includes AWS, Google App Engine, Salesforce's Force.com, and the Facebook platform. (Though I don't think Facebook offers hosting as do the others; KickIt, for example, runs on a server in Mark Logic's data center.)

    Check out the Google video linked by Dave Kellogg -- it does a good job of explaining how the LAMP stack can be unwieldy -- the problem Google App Engine is designed to address...  I'm not convinced Google App Engine is the answer, however, in part because it will entail completely trusting Google and betting on their app dev model/framework/tools/services.

    Mark Logic CEO Blog: Google Launches Google App Engine

    Mark Logic CEO Blog: EMC/Documentum: MarkLogic is the Enemy?

    A timely Mark Logic reality check (see the full post for more context-setting)

    Basically, I see the products and strategies as complementary. Certainly there's some overlap. But I know today and believe tomorrow that many customers will want to use both systems together. And I also believe that customers will increasing use Microsoft SharePoint for basic content services (hence our continuing investment in SharePoint integration) and that the high-end of the ECM market will then split between Documentum and Alfresco.

    Mark Logic CEO Blog: EMC/Documentum: MarkLogic is the Enemy?

    Google and U.N. Put Refugees on the Map - New York Times

    More interesting times

    Internet search giant Google Inc. unveiled a new feature Tuesday for its popular mapping programs that shines a spotlight on the movement of refugees around the world.

    The maps will aid humanitarian operations as well as help inform the public about the millions who have fled their homes because of violence or hardship, according to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working with Google on the project.

    Google and U.N. Put Refugees on the Map - New York Times

    Dave Winer looks into Google's App Engine and sees the future | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

    Interesting times...

    It's still early in the platform-as-a-service sweepstakes. But the signs are clear. As Nick Carr pointed out in his book The Big Switch, the large clouds will cover the planet with computing infrastructure. Amazon has to be more motivated to improve its Elastic Compute Cloud, and big players like Sun, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others will also be inspired to open their clouds to developers. But as Dave pointed out, we are in the BASIC, embryonic days of platforms-as-a-service.

    Dave Winer looks into Google's App Engine and sees the future | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

    Now playing: Adobe Media Player 1.0 | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    It'll be interesting to see if Adobe can be an effective competitor to other companies already using Flash Player as a media player engine

    Adobe Systems on Wednesday plans to release Adobe Media Player (AMP), a free download for playing Flash-based Web videos on Macs or PCs.

    Written with Adobe's AIR, AMP is a hybrid online/offline application that lets people subscribe to different video Webcasts. Adobe has signed on some initial partners including CBS, PBS, MTV Networks, Universal Music Group, CondeNet, and Scripps Networks. (See my colleague Rafe Needleman's review of AMP on Webware.)

    Now playing: Adobe Media Player 1.0 | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    Technology Review: Consolidating Your Web Banter

    Sign of the times

    Using Twhirl, a person can post to three services at once--Twitter, plus the similar services Pownce and Jaiku--and likewise get updates from friends using any one of these services, regardless of whether or not the friend uses Twhirl. Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic, says Twhirl will soon provide access to Seesmic and other services.

    "When blogging and social software started," Le Meur says, "everyone kept their centralized information somewhere, like on their blog. Now we're coming into a situation that is totally opposite." He says when he goes online, he checks 10 different services, such as e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and his blog. "It's a nightmare," he says. Because of the incompatibility of services, communicating with friends requires him to hop from one service to the next. "What matters isn't the services," he says, it's your friends.

    Technology Review: Consolidating Your Web Banter

    Tuesday, April 08, 2008

    A conversation with Phil Libin about EverNote’s new memex « Jon Udell

    Life beyond files...

    In his 1945 Atlantic Monthly essay As We May Think, Vannevar Bush famously imagined the memex, a mechanism that would augment human memory. This idea of mental augmentation inspired Doug Engelbart, and we’ve been chasing the dream ever since. On this week’s Interviews with Innovators, Phil Libin discusses EverNote, a new software-plus-services offering that aims to become your memex.

    A conversation with Phil Libin about EverNote’s new memex « Jon Udell

    HP strikes chord with Mini-Note PC | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    Sign of the times

    he biggest name in computing is joining the growing mini-notebook fray.

    On Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard is expected to officially announce the availability of the Mini-Note PC. The device will begin shipping next week. You might recognize it as the HP Compaq 2133, which was the internal HP name back when early images were leaked online.

    HP Mini-Note

    Also seen this morning: Dell desktop PC with 1 gig RAM, 160 gig hard drive, 20" monitor -- for under $500

    HP strikes chord with Mini-Note PC | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    Microsoft | Microsoft, Yahoo elbow each other over buyout offer | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Business as usual, in the hostile take-0ver zone...

    The letters also contain subtle language each company is using to sway investor opinion and establish a position of strength for eventual negotiations or legal action, merger-and-acquisition experts said.

    "We're so used to this," said one Wall Street analyst, who asked not to be named while belittling the rhetoric. "This is like the peacocks have unfurled their feathers and are out dancing around."

    Microsoft | Microsoft, Yahoo elbow each other over buyout offer | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Google Hosts Web Applications By Outside Software Developers - WSJ.com

    Hmm...

    Google Inc. is letting software developers run their Web applications on its technology infrastructure in a move that highlights the increasing competition between tech companies to provide the computing and network backbones that power Web services.

    Developers who sign up for the test of the Google App Engine will be able to have their Web-based applications run on computer servers in Google's data centers. Such applications are services that consumers access through their Web browsers, sometimes as part of other sites such as Facebook Inc.'s social-networking site. Web applications range from word processors to simple games people can play against their friends.

    Google Hosts Web Applications By Outside Software Developers - WSJ.com

    Study: Stolen data's cheaper - The Boston Globe

    A scary supply-and-demand scenario...

    Fierce competition among identity thieves has driven the prices for stolen data down to bargain-basement levels, which has forced crooks to adopt mainstream business tactics to lure customers, according to a new report on Internet security threats.

      Credit card numbers were selling for as little as 40 cents each and access to a bank account was going for $10 in the second half of 2007, according to the latest twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec Corp. released today.

      Study: Stolen data's cheaper - The Boston Globe

      Monday, April 07, 2008

      Sun refashions Java support options - Yahoo! News

      Looks like JAVA is looking for some new "monetization" options

      Sun Microsystems is refashioning customer support options for Java Platform, Standard Edition (SE), extending support to 15 years under one paid plan and reducing it from six years to three years under an alternative free plan.

      Featured is a new paid subscription program called Java SE for Business, which provides fixes for the 1.4, 5, and 6 versions of Java SE.

      [...]

      Java SE for Business costs $10 per employee per year for a standard subscription and scales to $12.50 per employee per year for Premium Plus service featuring faster and customized fixes.

      Sun refashions Java support options - Yahoo! News

      Aiming for a Virtual End to PC Headaches - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

      Check the full article/post for more details

      So-called virtual machine software, which allows a computer to simultaneously run different operating systems and applications, is already having a big impact in corporate data centers. And the leader in virtual software for server computers, VMware, has been a big winner, a hot I.P.O. last summer (current market capitalization: $19 billion), and important enough to attract the wrath of — and competitive salvos from — Microsoft.

      [...]

      The MokaFive team is trying to bring the benefits of virtualization to desktops and laptops — security, energy efficiency, flexibility and less need for technical support. Several corporations have been sampling MokaFive’s technology for months in pilot projects. But the Silicon Valley company is announcing on Monday that its software will be commercially available in June.

      Aiming for a Virtual End to PC Headaches - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

      Stephen Barr - The Idea Factory That Spawned the Internet Turns 50 - washingtonpost.com

      Check out "The Dream Machine" sometime for a great book on the early days of the Internet-focused part of the story

      The best program managers are "freewheeling zealots" with big ideas. The staff has been called "100 geniuses connected by a travel agent." And the boss describes his agency as a home for "radical innovation."

      It's DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a dinner for 1,700 alumni, friends and partners Thursday night in Washington.

      Stephen Barr - The Idea Factory That Spawned the Internet Turns 50 - washingtonpost.com