Monday, March 31, 2008

ISO to announce Microsoft Open XML result Wednesday | Industries | Technology, Media & Telecommunications | Reuters

The saga continues... at least until Wednesday

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) said it would reveal on Wednesday whether Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) had won the support needed to have its document format made into a global industry standard.

"Because ISO needs first to inform its worldwide membership of national standards bodies of these results, a press release on this subject will be issued on Wednesday, 2 April, 2008," ISO spokesman Roger Frost said in an e-mail message.

ISO to announce Microsoft Open XML result Wednesday | Industries | Technology, Media & Telecommunications | Reuters

Toys To Play With While You Wait… : Oliver Bell’s weblog

Cool -- FolderShare has been on my "essential apps" list for a long time

First of all, Stephen McGibbon introduced me to FolderShare earlier this month and it has quickly become part of every PC we own… sharing information between home and work, between PCs at home, and photos between our family members in Singapore, Cyprus, England and America.

The FolderShare team have started blogging and have kicked things off by announcing a new version, Windows Live FolderShare, with “better setup, a better system tray menu, and better performance on Windows Vista.”

www.foldershare.com has also been updated to makes managing FolderShare libraries and computers easier. It’s completely free, and available for Mac OSX too!

Toys To Play With While You Wait… : Oliver Bell’s weblog

Business & Technology | iPhone has the answers, and that's the problem | Seattle Times Newspaper

Timely snapshot

Apple's iPhone, which went on sale nine months ago, isn't the only smartphone that provides itinerant access to the Web. But its wide screen and top-quality browser make it easy to use and read, which means it can in seconds change a lighthearted conversation into the pursuit of truth.

"It's turned me from a really annoying know-it-all into an incredibly annoying know-it-all, with the Internet to back me up," said Sadum, a technology writer in Denver. "It's not a social advantage."

Business & Technology | iPhone has the answers, and that's the problem | Seattle Times Newspaper

Technology Review: Mashup Security

Check the full article for a couple candidate solutions

However, Helen Wang, a senior researcher in the systems and networking group at Microsoft Research, explains that the same-origin policy fails by forcing "Web applications today to either sacrifice security or functionality." She says that a lot of great functionality, such as that of mashups, comes from using tools from multiple sources. The problem is that when the website creator embeds code written by a third party on her site, the same-origin policy no longer offers any protection, and the embedded code likely has access to information stored on the creator's site. For example, if the creator of a forum embeds a mapping application on her site, the code in the mapping application could potentially access log-in data for the forum. Mashup makers, Wang says, either give up security by accepting those risks and trusting third-party tools, or they give up functionality by denying themselves the use of untrusted tools.

Technology Review: Mashup Security

Online Chat, as Inspired by Real Chat - New York Times

Hmm...

Now a new wave of Silicon Valley companies is bringing live socializing back into a medium that has, in the parlance of the technologists, grown overly asynchronous.

Vivaty, a start-up based in Menlo Park, Calif., is creating 3-D virtual chat rooms that people can add to the Web pages and social networking profiles on the sites where they spend most of their Internet time.

Online Chat, as Inspired by Real Chat - New York Times

Xbox to feature original programming - The Boston Globe

Strange days indeed

Microsoft, seeking to expand offerings on its Xbox 360 console, has reached an agreement with a company headed by Peter Safran, the veteran Hollywood producer and talent manager, to produce original shows for distribution on the system.

Xbox to feature original programming - The Boston Globe

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Busting a Rogue Blogger [BusinessWeek]

A timely corporate blogger reality check...

Through regular, copious posts, Troll Tracker quickly drew a devoted following in patent law circles, even among those who disagreed with its point of view. What readers didn't know, however, was that the blogger was Rick Frenkel, in-house patent counsel at Cisco Systems (CSCO), the Internet infrastructure giant. Cisco didn't sanction the blog, but it, like other tech firms, has waged a long, public battle against so-called patent trolls. And in its pointed commentary, Troll Tracker advanced views squarely in line with the company's own agenda. Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler even cited the blog as a good independent source of information while in Washington lobbying for changes to patent law that would rein in trolls, unaware he was plugging the work of a Cisco employee.

Busting a Rogue Blogger

The BW 50 [Amazon.com snapshot]

#23 in the list: Amazon.com --

Industry: Internet Retail
Sales: $14.8 billion
Net Income: $476 million

Last year, Wall Street fell back in love with Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com. Sales at the Seattle e-commerce pioneer grew 38.5%, to $14.8 billion. Earnings grew 150%, to $476 million. Outside of Apple, Amazon (AMZN) may now be the strongest one-stop shop for digital media such as MP3 songs and online movies. It's certainly the leader in digital books, with the release of its Kindle e-reader and its acquisition of Audible.com. Perhaps Amazon's most promising development in 2007, though, was its Web-services platform, which allows other companies to buy the technology Amazon uses to run their own operations. Hundreds have signed on—mostly small tech startups.

The BW 50

Tech M&A: It'll Be a Good Year [BusinessWeek]

Nice to have cash in a buyers' market; start with page 1 of this article

Cash-rich tech titans can offer decidedly more enticing takeover terms. Microsoft, along with computer maker Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and networking gear giant Cisco Systems (CSCO) together have more than $125 billion in cash. "We will continue to look at new opportunities," says Mike Galgon, chief advertising strategist for Microsoft's advertiser and publisher solutions group. This year, Microsoft has made four purchases unrelated to Yahoo, including Danger, a maker of mobile-phone software, for an undisclosed amount. Microsoft is likely to make other purchases to beef up its Web search and online advertising businesses

Tech M&A: It'll Be a Good Year

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Coming Soon, to Any Flat Surface Near You - New York Times

Oh joy...

TIRED of hearing other people’s cellphone conversations? It may become worse. Soon you may have to watch their favorite television shows and YouTube videos, too, as they project them onto nearby walls or commuter-train seatbacks.

Pint-size digital projectors are in the works. These devices, when plugged into cellphones and portable media players, will let consumers beam video content from their hand-held devices to the closest smooth surface — entertaining themselves, annoying their neighbors and possibly contributing to a new warning sign: No Projectors in This Area.

Coming Soon, to Any Flat Surface Near You - New York Times

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions: Dan Ariely

This book is a timely and quick read -- an entertaining and thought-provoking reality check on human behavior and decision-making.  Skim the reviews at Amazon.com and think about reading the book before making big decisions such as voting in November...

Amazon.com: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions: Dan Ariely: Books

Malware Cited in Supermarket Data Breach - New York Times

A stark reality check

Unauthorized software that was secretly installed on servers in Hannaford Bros. Co.'s supermarkets across the Northeast and in Florida enabled the massive data breach that compromised up to 4.2 million credit and debit cards, the company said Friday.

[...]

The breach has prompted concern in the industry because it appeared to be the first large-scale theft of credit and debit card numbers while the information was in transit.

Malware Cited in Supermarket Data Breach - New York Times

Friday, March 28, 2008

The Wikipedia Dump - The New York Review of Books

From a letter to the NYRB editors:

In response to The Charms of Wikipedia (March 20, 2008)

To the Editors:

I'm a Wikipedia administrator and greatly enjoyed Nicholson Baker's recent piece, "The Charms of Wikipedia" [NYR, March 20]. In it he says, "Someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue—a bin of broken dreams where all rejects could still be read, as long as they weren't libelous or otherwise illegal." Your readers may well be pleased to hear that to some degree it already exists—take a look at the Wikipedia Knowledge Dump at WikiDumper.org.

Earle Martin
London, England

Check it out: "WikiDumper: The Official Appreciation Page for the Best of the Wikipedia Rejects. 'One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.'"

The Wikipedia Dump - The New York Review of Books

Twitterpated | Big Think | BNET.com

Another timely Michael Fitzgerald reality check; see the full post for more details

Steve Gillmor recently blogged about Twitter as earthshaker, calling it a communications platform that will blow right past everything except platforms that allow it to dominate.

I wish he would’ve limited his post to 140 words (we won’t force a blogger to use only 140 characters). That said, there’s something to his idea that Twitter represents a powerful twist on communications. It’s sort of like a digital, everyday Christmas card (such cards, after all, invented the one-to-many communique). That’s absolutely powerful.

It’s also absolutely tedious.

Twitterpated | Big Think | BNET.com

Microsoft to rebrand ‘CRM Live’ as ‘CRM Online’ | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

What's in a name?...

The move by Microsoft makes sense, given the naming scheme that is slowly but surely taking shape as part of the company’s Software+Services (S+S) push. Microsoft is attempting to categorize its services wares into one of three buckets:

  • “Live” refers to consumer and very-low-end small-business offerings. Examples: Windows Live Messenger, Office Live Workspace.
  • “Online” refers to small-/mid-size and enterprise services that are hosted by Microsoft in its own datacenter. Examples: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and now Dynamics CRM Online.
  • “Hosted services” refer to Microsoft offerings that are hosted by its integration/reseller partners at the partners’ facilities. Examples: Exchange Hosted Services, SharePoint Hosting Services.

Microsoft to rebrand ‘CRM Live’ as ‘CRM Online’ | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Xbox Live Cheaters Hit With Penalties - Yahoo! News

Interesting times

Hryb, who blogs under the pseudonym Major Nelson, said Microsoft would reset cheaters' "gamerscore" accounts to zero and eliminate all past achievements. Their gamer profiles would also publicly show they've been caught cheating, according to Hryb.

"Xbox Live remains committed to keeping the service free of cheating in order to maintain a fair and level playing field for everyone," said Hryb.

Xbox Live Cheaters Hit With Penalties - Yahoo! News

Here's a throwback idea that might offer a way out for Microsoft | Coop's Corner : A Blog from Charlie Cooper - CNET News.com

Timing is everything...  The Navio/NCI stuff was not ready for prime time, a dozen years ago.

Where is he heading with all this? Microsoft's not saying much but my colleague Dan Farber wrote after Ozzie's speech that Microsoft's likely "working on the plumbing required to create a seamless mesh that can synchronize content, services and applications across a variety of devices and user scenarios via the Web as a hub."

Sounds plausible but what an irony that a decade ago, Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy were talking about a not all too different scenario. At the time, those two were barnstorming around the country to promote the then-foreign concept of the network computer. Of course, their aim was to sink Microsoft by obviating the need for a rich proprietary operating system. But at a basic level, the network computer idea revolved around what today we would call cloud computing. Unfortunately for Sun Microsystems and Oracle, it would take another decade before the industry would create fast enough connections and enough storage to make it feasible.

Here's a throwback idea that might offer a way out for Microsoft | Coop's Corner : A Blog from Charlie Cooper - CNET News.com

Firefox 4 will push out the edges of the browser | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

Hmm -- see the article for details.  Doesn't look like good news for Adobe AIR, if Firefox 4 goes as planned.

Beard's philosophy is this: The browser needs to evolve. Beard believes the browser concept hasn't fundamentally changed in 10 years. It's still an isolated piece of software, he says. Mozilla Lab's push is to blur the edges of the browser, to make it both more tightly integrated with the computer it's running on, and also more hooked into Web services. So extended, the browser becomes an even more powerful and pervasive platform for all kinds of applications.

At the moment, these are two separate projects Mozilla is running to push out the edges of the browser: Prism and Weave.

Firefox 4 will push out the edges of the browser | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

China Law Could Impede Microsoft Deal for Yahoo - New York Times

More from the Redmond lawyer full-employment zone...

The law could give China influence in Microsoft’s courtship of Yahoo because in August 2005, Yahoo, a premier search portal, invested $1 billion in Alibaba.com, China’s largest e-commerce business. The investment gave Yahoo about a 40 percent stake in the Chinese company. Alibaba officials have said they believe that a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo would set in motion a buyback provision, making it possible for them to gain independence from Microsoft.

Nathan G. Bush, an antitrust law specialist with O’Melveny & Myers in Beijing, said the law represented the ascendance of China “as another regulatory capital contending for influence with Brussels and Washington.”

China Law Could Impede Microsoft Deal for Yahoo - New York Times

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Schneier on Security: Craigslist Scam

Information literacy is your friend -- read the full post for more details...

This is a weird story: someone posts a hoax Craigslist ad saying that the owner of a home had to leave suddenly, and this his belongings were free for the taking. People believed the ad and starting coming by and taking his stuff.

A related Seattle Times story, from the post comments: Woman charged after Craigslist posting resulted in a house stripped

Schneier on Security: Craigslist Scam

globeandmail.com: Patriot Act haunts Google service

Check the full article for details about a Canadian dilemma for Google (and all other SaaS vendors)

Google Inc. is a year into its ground-shifting strategy to change the way people communicate and work.

But the initiative to reinvent the way that people use software is running headlong into another new phenomenon of the information technology age: the unprecedented powers of security officials in the United States to conduct surveillance on communications.

[...]

The U.S. Patriot Act, passed in the weeks after the September, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, gives authorities the means to secretly view personal data held by U.S. organizations. It is at odds with Canada's privacy laws, which require organizations to protect private information and inform individuals when their data has been shared.

globeandmail.com: Patriot Act haunts Google service

FT.com / Companies / Telecoms - Nokia confident of reaching music deals

I suspect this has something to do with the rumored iPod/iPhone music license recalc

Nokia is increasingly confident of securing deals with the world’s leading record companies ahead of launching its flagship music service for mobile phones later this year.

In December, Nokia announced plans for its Comes With Music service, under which people will be able to buy mobiles giving them access to Universal Music’s entire back catalogue for up to one year.

Nokia is in talks with the other three leading record companies – Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music – plus about 10 independent music labels about giving people access to their catalogues.

FT.com / Companies / Telecoms - Nokia confident of reaching music deals

Adobe Photoshop Express - New York Times

More Adobe details

After signing up for the free site at www.photoshop.com/express, members can upload their images and then edit them with Adobe’s simplified set of point-and-click controls for red-eye removal, cropping, exposure, saturation and other functions. Users can group images into Web albums and post them to popular social networking sites, all from within Photoshop Express.

Each basic account at the site, which is still in a beta test version, gets two gigabytes of online storage, although Adobe soon plans to offer more services for a fee.

Adobe Photoshop Express - New York Times

Another Google Executive Defects to Facebook - WSJ.com

Hmm...

Another Google Inc. executive is leaving the Internet search giant for social networking start-up Facebook Inc.

Facebook on Tuesday confirmed that Ethan Beard, the former director of social media at Google, will join the privately held company as director of business development. Mr. Beard is the second high-profile executive this month to leave Google, a company that was widely considered one of the best places to work in Silicon Valley.

Another Google Executive Defects to Facebook - WSJ.com

Oracle Profit Rise Fails to Calm Investors - WSJ.com

Looks like it might be an enterprise tech wreck day on Wall Street

Oracle Corp. reported a 30% profit jump and 21% revenue increase for its fiscal third quarter -- but the results still stoked investor concerns that its many acquisitions haven't insulated it from economic woes, driving its shares down in after-hours trading.

The company also gave financial guidance in line with Wall Street expectations. It forecast numbers that show it expects earnings per share in the current quarter ending May 31 to grow 19% to 23% from the year-earlier period. The company projects revenue growth of 15% to 19%.

Oracle Profit Rise Fails to Calm Investors - WSJ.com

Adobe Puts Free Version Of Photoshop Online - WSJ.com

Necessary but risky for Adobe

The maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop on Thursday launched a basic version available for free online.

San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc. says it hopes to boost its name recognition among a new generation of consumers who edit, store and share photos online.

While Photoshop is designed for trained professionals, Adobe says Photoshop Express, which it launched in a "beta" test version, is easier to learn. User comments will be taken into account for future upgrades.

Adobe Puts Free Version Of Photoshop Online - WSJ.com

Technology Review: Wikipedia's nonprofit group gets a huge boost: $3M from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

So Wikipedia won't have to depend on funding from Google, as, e.g., Mozilla.org does...

The nonprofit group behind Wikipedia, the mammoth Internet encyclopedia built by volunteers, is getting its largest donation ever -- $3 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The award, to come in $1 million installments over each of the next three years, will help the Wikimedia Foundation become more financially secure as it hires more staff and seeks to improve the quality and reach of Wikipedia content, foundation leaders said.

Technology Review: Wikipedia's nonprofit group gets a huge boost: $3M from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

OOXML, looking forward - Miguel de Icaza

Read the full post for more perspectives

I have been reading the OOXML storm in a teacup for more than a year now. Am looking forward to the approval of OOXML as an ISO standard and to be able to move the discussion back to the things that actually matter: free and open source software.

For a year, countless bytes have been wasted on what is now a very difficult plot to follow, specially for people that have not followed it since the start (or as Bill Maher said last week "Its like trying to make sense of a LOST episode". Note: am a Lost fan).

OOXML, looking forward - Miguel de Icaza

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Google Apps: Discovering That Microsoft Owns the Desktop

A timely Guy Creese reality check -- see the full post for more context and insights

This product strategy shift means that Google Apps now has two marketing stories: (1) it's cheap on the backend and frontend or (2) it's cheap on the backend. Google started with #1 (instead of paying Microsoft Office and Exchange license fees, pay $50 per user per year) but is now recognizing that may be too big a cultural leap for large organizations. So now it's offering option #2: (instead of paying Exchange license fees, pay $50 per user per year). With #2, the Google mantra of "Use Google Apps because it has a great consumer-tested UI" goes away, but the "less in your face" strategy may be more to enterprises' liking.

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Google Apps: Discovering That Microsoft Owns the Desktop

In the War of Software Superpowers, a Space Race Dawns - washingtonpost.com

A timely snapshot

Normally my digital peregrinations take me to destinations such as Facebook, YouTube and Boingboing.net. But lately I've been spending time visiting the Crab Nebula, Cassiopeia A and the Sombrero Galaxy. These addictive celestial visits come courtesy of two remarkable interactive astronomy programs from two companies that would love to vaporize each other -- Google and Microsoft. When the Cold War superpowers the United States and the former Soviet Union, contemplated moving their conflict to outer space, there was justifiable fear and dread. But a similar escalation by software superpowers may turn out to be a boon for all.

In the War of Software Superpowers, a Space Race Dawns - washingtonpost.com

Yahoo, Google, MySpace Launch NotFaceBook Coalition - John Battelle's Searchblog

Of course, if this Economist article is on-target, perhaps it should be called the NotProfitable Foundation...

Er...I mean the OpenSocial Foundation. This marks Yahoo's formal joining up. Expect Facebook to join too. Wire coverage.

Yahoo, Google, MySpace Launch NotFaceBook Coalition - John Battelle's Searchblog

Bringing Outlook and Gmail Closer Together - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Interesting times...

Cemaphore Systems, a company that specializes in e-mail backup services, is expected to announce on Wednesday a new product that allows people to automatically synchronize their e-mail, calendar and address books between Microsoft’s Outlook and Google’s Gmail. The service, called MailShadow for Google Apps, is being pitched as a “email continuity and disaster recovery solution.” In other words, it is intended to provide users of Outlook and Exchange, Microsoft’s mail server, with a secure backup. As such, it represents an interesting use of the Google computing “cloud” to provide a service for Microsoft users.

But the technology also would allow businesses to rip out their Exchange servers and run Outlook, which millions of users are familiar with, directly from the Google servers.

Bringing Outlook and Gmail Closer Together - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Al Gore bars press from RSA talk next month | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com

Sign of the times -- a sidebar to the article about Gore not allowing press at his RSA session:

This cozy, stylish and handsome CNET fleece could be yours: be the first to send along a link to a video of Gore's you-may-not-record-this speech at RSA next month.

Al Gore bars press from RSA talk next month | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com

Yahoo Is Joining an Alliance That Has Google as Leader - New York Times

I suspect some people in Redmond aren't thrilled about this...

Google announced on Tuesday that it would give up control of the alliance and turn it over to a nonprofit foundation. Google, Yahoo and MySpace, another member of the group, will be among founding members of the group, the OpenSocial Foundation.

The addition of Yahoo broadens the potential reach of the foundation. The group is working on standards that will let developers create programs that can run on any social network or Web site that embraces them. Such programs might, for example, allow users to let friends know the music or movies they enjoy.

Yahoo Is Joining an Alliance That Has Google as Leader - New York Times

Comcast, Time Warner Cable in Wireless Talks - WSJ.com

Hmm...

The two biggest U.S. cable providers, Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc., are discussing a plan to provide funding for a new wireless company that would be operated by Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp., people familiar with the talks say.

The partnership would create a nationwide wireless network using WiMax technology, which is designed to provide high-speed Web access from laptops, cellphones and other mobile devices, as well as high-quality mobile video. Sprint and Clearwire have been working for months to cooperate on a WiMax rollout and are now trying to raise at least $3 billion for a joint venture.

Comcast, Time Warner Cable in Wireless Talks - WSJ.com

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Netflix surveys members on Microsoft Xbox | Technology | Reuters

Sign me up...

Online movie rental company Netflix Inc has surveyed its subscribers to gauge their interest in streaming movies to their televisions using Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360, a Netflix spokesman said on Monday.

Netflix surveys members on Microsoft Xbox | Technology | Reuters

EnterpriseDB: News

More EnterpriseDB update details

Today at the Open Source Business Conference, EnterpriseDB announced the introduction of Postgres Plus and Postgres Plus Advanced Server. Postgres Plus is an open source distribution of the PostgreSQL database and includes significant performance benefits and important ease-of-use capabilities for developers and DBAs. Bundled into a one-click, cross-platform installer, Postgres Plus is targeted at developers of next-generation applications and sets a new standard for commercial distributions of open source databases. Postgres Plus Advanced Server is a commercially licensed product that adds advanced capabilities to Postgres Plus, including robust Oracle compatibility, dynamic performance tuning, and sophisticated management and monitoring. The company also announced the availability of free tools, tutorials, and Web-based services for developers. More information and free downloads of Postgres Plus are available at www.enterprisedb.com.

EnterpriseDB: News

IBM invests in open-source database firm EnterpriseDB | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Hmmm...

IBM, a fan of many open-source projects, has taken a minority stake in EnterpriseDB, an open-source database that competes with Oracle and MySQL.

On Tuesday, EnterpriseDB is scheduled to announce a $10 million round of funding, with IBM taking a minority stake in the company. Existing investors Charles River Ventures, Fidelity Ventures, and Valhalla Partners led the round.

IBM invests in open-source database firm EnterpriseDB | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Technoracle (a.k.a. "Duane's World"): Adobe Flash Lite Shipments Pass Half Billion Mark

Impressive...

According to SDA Times, Adobe's Flash Lite mobile shipments have surpassed the half billion mark. This means over 500,000,000 devices worldwide from manufacturer's including LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have now been shipped carrying the mobile version on Flash. Adobe’s Flash Lite Player runtime specifically designed for mobile devices. According to Adobe, Flash Lite has seen over 150 % growth over the last year.

Let's see, currently at 1.5 million downloads per day for Silverlight, that'll take... a while for Microsoft to catch up :)

Technoracle (a.k.a. "Duane's World"): Adobe Flash Lite Shipments Pass Half Billion Mark

Durusau: "OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses." - Notes2Self.net

It will be entertaining to see the ODF extremists assail this position...

As the editor of OpenDocument, I want to promote OpenDocument, extol its features, urge the widest use of it as possible, none of which is accomplished by the anti-OpenXML position in ISO.

Passage of OpenXML in ISO is going to benefit OpenDocument as much as anyone else. Here are some specifics:

  • OpenDocument currently lacks formula definitions for spreadsheets. (To appear in OpenDocument 1.2.) Many core financial functions in spreadsheets are undefined except for actual Excel output. That output varies by version and service pack of MS Office. What happens if OpenDocument and OpenXML reach different definitions of those functions?
  • OpenDocument does not presently support legacy features of Microsoft formats. That will be easier with a formal definition of those features. Without OpenXML, OpenDocument has no authoritative definition of those legacy features. That delays OpenDocument supporting them in some future release.
  • OpenDocument does not have a robust mapping to the current Microsoft format. That requires an OpenXML that has completed the standards process. If OpenXML is unclear, it must be fixed in order to create a robust mapping between the two.

The bottom line is that OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses.

Durusau: "OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses." - Notes2Self.net

BBC NEWS | Technology | How the open net closed its doors

Looks like a timely book

A new book details the extent to which countries across the globe are increasingly censoring online information they find strategically, politically or culturally threatening.

Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering challenges the long-standing assumption that the internet is an unfettered space where citizens from around the world can freely communicate and mobilise. In fact, the book makes it clear that the scope, scale and sophistication of net censorship are growing.

BBC NEWS | Technology | How the open net closed its doors

Netflix glitch to delay deliveries | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Weirdly, I recently resumed my Netflix membership, and my first DVDs were supposed to be shipped yesterday; oh well...

The blackout was the second longest in company history. In July, Netflix suffered an outage that lasted longer than 18 hours. On that day, the company's shares fell 7 percent as the market punished Netflix for a drop in customers.

This time, the glitch came as Netflix's customer numbers are on the rise and its stock is soaring. Stock analysts upgraded Netflix on Monday, and the company closed trading at $38.18, up 5 percent. Over the past six months, the company's shares have doubled in value.

Netflix glitch to delay deliveries | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Technology Review: Weather Engineering in China

An interesting reality check; see the full article for more details about the plan

To prevent rain over the roofless 91,000-seat Olympic stadium that Beijing natives have nicknamed the Bird's Nest, the city's branch of the national Weather Modification Office--itself a department of the larger China Meteorological Administration--has prepared a three-stage program for the 2008 Olympics this August.

First, Beijing's Weather Modification Office will track the region's weather via satellites, planes, radar, and an IBM p575 supercomputer, purchased from Big Blue last year, that executes 9.8 trillion floating point operations per second. It models an area of 44,000 square kilometers (17,000 square miles) accurately enough to generate hourly forecasts for each kilometer.

Technology Review: Weather Engineering in China

Google Plan Would Open TV Band for Wireless Use - New York Times

An intriguing proposal -- read the full article for more details, e.g., on how it would have to be "spectrum-sensing" technology when the U.S. government needs the spectrum ("for military and public safety agencies").

Google proposed a plan on Monday that may let wireless Internet devices use vacant television airwaves without interfering with current equipment.

In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, Google offered suggestions on how the airwaves, known as white spaces, could provide high-speed mobile access to consumers without disrupting televisions and wireless microphones.

Google Plan Would Open TV Band for Wireless Use - New York Times

Monday, March 24, 2008

Business & Technology | Yahoo pays price for good deed to Google | Seattle Times Newspaper

An interesting historical recap

Almost eight years ago, Yahoo decided to lend a little startup a helping hand, featuring its search technology on the Yahoo home page and giving it money at a critical juncture.

In cutthroat Silicon Valley, no good deed goes unpunished.

The startup was Google, and Yahoo's generosity helped launch the most formidable competitor it had ever encountered.

Business & Technology | Yahoo pays price for good deed to Google | Seattle Times Newspaper

Replacing Wire With Laser, Sun Tries to Speed Up Data - New York Times

Hmm

The computer maker, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., plans to announce on Monday that it has received a $44 million contract from the Pentagon to explore the high-risk idea of replacing the wires between computer chips with laser beams.

The technology, part of a field of computer science known as silicon photonics, would eradicate the most daunting bottleneck facing today’s supercomputer designers: moving information rapidly to solve problems that require hundreds or thousands of processors.

Replacing Wire With Laser, Sun Tries to Speed Up Data - New York Times

A New Tool From Google Alarms Sites - New York Times

See the full article for context and concerns

Retailers and publishers have fought hard to work their way up in the ranking of Google’s search results and refine the search features of their own Web sites to help users once they arrive. Now, Google is taking a greater role in helping users search within particular sites. And some of the same retailers and publishers are not happy about it.

A New Tool From Google Alarms Sites - New York Times

Sunday, March 23, 2008

How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

Useful Steve Jobs/Apple reality check -- apparently an excerpt from a forthcoming book 

Jobs' fabled attitude toward parking reflects his approach to business: For him, the regular rules do not apply. Everybody is familiar with Google's famous catchphrase, "Don't be evil." It has become a shorthand mission statement for Silicon Valley, encompassing a variety of ideals that — proponents say — are good for business and good for the world: Embrace open platforms. Trust decisions to the wisdom of crowds. Treat your employees like gods.

It's ironic, then, that one of the Valley's most successful companies ignored all of these tenets. Google and Apple may have a friendly relationship — Google CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple's board, after all — but by Google's definition, Apple is irredeemably evil, behaving more like an old-fashioned industrial titan than a different-thinking business of the future. Apple operates with a level of secrecy that makes Thomas Pynchon look like Paris Hilton. It locks consumers into a proprietary ecosystem. And as for treating employees like gods? Yeah, Apple doesn't do that either.

Some some comic relief, read this recent NYT piece about Apple fans being thin-skinned, and then return to the Wired article and skim the comments.

How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

Online social networks | Everywhere and nowhere | Economist.com

A timely social networking reality check in The Economist

Social networking appears to be similar in this regard. The big internet and media companies have bid up the implicit valuations of MySpace, Facebook and others. But that does not mean there is a working revenue model. Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, recently admitted that Google's “social networking inventory as a whole” was proving problematic and that the “monetisation work we were doing there didn't pan out as well as we had hoped.” Google has a contractual agreement with News Corp to place advertisements on its network, MySpace, and also owns its own network, Orkut. Clearly, Google is not making money from either.

Online social networks | Everywhere and nowhere | Economist.com

Friday, March 21, 2008

A View from Elsewhere : It's About the Data

A timely mashup reality check from John Montgomery.

Popfly, a mashup tool, depends on three things: data that is simple to access programmatically, interesting, and available under terms that enable users to work with it. As with most software endeavors, you can pick two.

The government has a huge amount of interesting data that's available under really great terms. Weather? Check out http://www.noaa.gov. Financial information? Start with http://www.sec.gov. Crime statistics? Dig around in http://www.usdoj.gov/. But how much of this is programmatically accessible? Very little, as it turns out.

Read the full post for examples and currently state-of-the-art work-arounds.

A View from Elsewhere : It's About the Data

Wikipedia questions paths to more money - Boston.com

Resist the dark side...

Scroll the list of the 10 most popular Web sites in the U.S., and you'll encounter the Internet's richest corporate players -- names like Yahoo, Amazon.com, News Corp., Microsoft and Google.

    Except for No. 7: Wikipedia. And there lies a delicate situation.

    With 2 million articles in English alone, the Internet encyclopedia "anyone can edit" stormed the Web's top ranks through the work of unpaid volunteers and the assistance of donors. But that gives Wikipedia far less financial clout than its Web peers, and doing almost anything to improve that situation invites scrutiny from the same community that proudly generates the content.

    Wikipedia questions paths to more money - Boston.com

    Business & Technology | Kindly wait weeks for a Kindle | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Looks like the Kindle may have appeal beyond the gadget geek audience...

    Amazon.com apologized to buyers for having to wait up to six weeks to receive the Kindle electronic reading device after the company ran out.

    The world's largest Internet retailer sold out of Kindles in 5 1/2 hours after they went on sale in November and has been trying to increase manufacturing capacity, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos wrote Thursday in a letter on the Seattle company's Web site.

    Business & Technology | Kindly wait weeks for a Kindle | Seattle Times Newspaper

    State Dept. Punishes Aides for Obama Passport Breach - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog

    A different kind of data mining...

    Mr. Obama’s campaign said that the breaches were reprehensible.

    “This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years,” said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign. “Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes. This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach.”

    State Dept. Punishes Aides for Obama Passport Breach - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog

    A Company Promises the Deepest Data Mining Yet - New York Times

    Bug or feature?...

    Amid debate over how much data companies like Google and Yahoo should gather about people who surf the Web, one new company is drawing attention — and controversy — by boasting that it will collect the most complete information of all.

    The company, called Phorm, has created a tool that can track every single online action of a given consumer, based on data from that person’s Internet service provider. The trick for Phorm is to gain access to that data, and it is trying to negotiate deals with telephone and cable companies, like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, that provide broadband service to millions.

    A Company Promises the Deepest Data Mining Yet - New York Times

    India still thumbs-down on Open XML | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    Lose some, win some...

    The Bureau of Indian Standards has decided to vote against recommending Office Open XML as an ISO standard.

    According to local reports, India's national standards-making body will not change its position in regards to Open XML, the document formats Microsoft and other companies have sought to standardize at the ISO (International Organization for Standardization).

    India still thumbs-down on Open XML | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    Storming the Campuses - New York Times

    An interesting collaboration model -- see the full article for details

    “This kind of game is a product of how people live and interact today, with the offline aspect as part of the draw,” said Jonathan Rochelle, a New York product manager at Google who discovered the game as an adviser to the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute. He views it as similar to software like Google Calendar and Google Docs — tools that enhance real-world collaboration.

    “Rather than isolating us in an online world, it enhances our interactions in the real world,” Mr. Rochelle said.

    Storming the Campuses - New York Times

    InfoQ: Addressing Doubts about REST

    A timely reality check; see the full article for details

    Invariably, learning about REST means that you’ll end up wondering just how applicable the concept really is for your specific scenario. And given that you’re probably used to entirely different architectural approaches, it’s only natural that you start doubting whether REST, or rather RESTful HTTP, really works in practice, or simply breaks down once you go beyond introductory, “Hello, World”-level stuff. In this article, I will try to address 10 of the most common doubts people have about REST when they start exploring it, especially if they have a strong background in the architectural approach behind SOAP/WSDL-based Web services.

    InfoQ: Addressing Doubts about REST

    Thursday, March 20, 2008

    Scott Guthrie on Microsoft's Play for Rich Internet Applications - Knowledge@Wharton

    A useful Silverlight interview with Scott Guthrie; an excerpt on Silverlight's direct and indirect revenue potential:

    Knowledge@Wharton: Speaking of revenue, what's Microsoft's revenue model for Silverlight?

    Guthrie: There are three ways that Microsoft will end up monetizing Silverlight.

    The first is: We sell developer tools and servers. Silverlight does not require those and they're fairly reasonably priced, but we will see some monetization through those businesses as people who are building Silverlight [applications] decide to buy Visual Studio or higher versions of Visual Studio than the free versions.

    The second way we will monetize is by having a connection with customers who are building these types of experiences. At the platform and tools layer, it offers us an opportunity to engage with them on advertising. That doesn't mean they have to use our advertising system. At the [MIX08] keynote [presentation], we specifically had DoubleClick -- soon to be Google -- on stage showing off their SDK [software development kit] for how you can integrate Silverlight with DoubleClick's ad system.

    By having a conversation with customers and giving them great tools and power with Silverlight, we expect that some proportion will say, "Hey, we'll also enroll in the Microsoft ad system." And that kind of advertising monetization is a two-way street: The sites doing the advertising get the bulk of the money, but we get a percentage by helping with the ad network.

    And then the third way that Microsoft is going to monetize Silverlight is through our own apps and our own sites, in terms of what we sometimes call "first-party applications" that we build on top of it. Obviously, we have a lot of apps that we build, not just in the developer's space, but in the knowledge productivity space and the enterprise space. I think that a lot of them will benefit from Silverlight as well. So we are going to be using the technology to build better apps for our existing product lines.

    Scott Guthrie on Microsoft's Play for Rich Internet Applications - Knowledge@Wharton

    The Experts vs. the Amateurs: A Tug of War over the Future of Media - Knowledge@Wharton

    A timely snapshot

    "Pitting amateur and professional content against each other makes a good storyline, but it's misleading to see them as fundamentally opposed," says Werbach. "User-generated content will never match The New York Times for the overall quality of coverage of the Iraq war, for example, but reading Iraqi blogs, or political blogs about the war, provides some perspectives you won't get from any newspaper." And, he adds, "There's no way a traditional encyclopedia will ever match the coverage of Wikipedia, because there are so many more contributors. On the other hand, while the quality of most Wikipedia entries is surprisingly good, there are times you want the certainty of a reference work that is professionally edited and vetted, or a smaller set of resources that have been pre-selected by experts."

    Whitehouse agrees, and sees a hybrid approach emerging that embraces both professional and amateur content. Professional content on the web often has a user-generated component to it, whether it's a complementary blog or a user discussion forum. "The big challenge is the economic problem. What funded the traditional content model is falling apart," says Whitehouse. "Ideally, I see Internet content being a blend of professional and amateur content, but how do we develop an economic model that supports both?"

    The Experts vs. the Amateurs: A Tug of War over the Future of Media - Knowledge@Wharton

    Google February search share down globally | Technology | Reuters

    Hmm -- read the full article before jumping to conclusions, but it's an interesting reality check

    Google Inc's share of the global Web search market dipped in February from January, even as its U.S. share rose, Internet financial analysts said on Wednesday, citing market research data.

    The data from comScore showed Google's dominance of the worldwide market for Web search dipping to 62.8 percent in February from 63.1 percent the month before, according to an analyst, who declined to be named.

    Google February search share down globally | Technology | Reuters

    FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Facebook throws down online chat challenge

    Yeah, that's what I need, another IM client to go with the 4 I already use...

    Facebook plans to launch a new service that will enable the social network website’s 60m users to chat with each other online.

    The service, which is expected to roll out sometime in the next few weeks, represents Facebook’s latest challege to AOL, Microsoft and other makers of popular instant messaging programmes.

    FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Facebook throws down online chat challenge

    Apple Will Listen to Universal’s Music Subscription Pitch - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    I'm not sold on this model -- see the full article for more details and speculation

    One impetus of the change has been a campaign by Doug Morris, the chief executive of Universal Music Group, to find a way to sell music subscriptions. A key concept is that instead of charging people a monthly fee, the price of music could be bundled into a device.

    This well may be more psychologically palatable: You aren’t renting music; you own your iPod or iPhone, which has the rights to music attached to it.

    What I want: a "rental" option with seamless support for all of my devices.

    Apple Will Listen to Universal’s Music Subscription Pitch - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

    Google Docs: What's New

    More details on the new Google Docs features; check the source for more, e.g., on historical quotes through GoogleFinance

  • Gadgets in spreadsheets
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    Gadgets in spreadsheets

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  • Google Docs

    Gadgets comes to Google Docs | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    More hypertext and compound document features from Google

    Google on Wednesday unveiled Gadgets for Spreadsheets in Google Docs, allowing people to create graphical representations of data in spreadsheets and publish them on Web sites.

    [...]

    These visuals can also be pushed out to appear on an iGoogle home page or any other site and they will be dynamically updated as changes are made to the spreadsheet.

    Gadgets comes to Google Docs | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    Wednesday, March 19, 2008

    Supernova - Port 25: [Microsoft keynote news from EclipseCon]

    An excerpt from Sam Ramji's blog (he leads open source strategy for Microsoft) follows below -- the headline: Microsoft and the Eclipse Foundation are working together on two key open source initiatives, the SWT for WPF and Higgins interoperability. 

    I’m writing this from EclipseCon in Santa Clara, California, where I’m going to announce the beginning of Microsoft’s collaborative work with the Eclipse Foundation.

    This started about a year ago when I met Mike Milinkovich at an open source event (the Open Source Software Think Tank 2007) where we were seated at the same table, and assigned to discuss “key issues inhibiting the growth of open source”. We found we had pretty similar ways of looking at problems – I found Mike to be very pragmatic and straightforward in his thinking. That discussion led to a conversation about what we could do to help Eclipse developers building software for Windows.

    Yeah, the times are changing...

    Supernova - Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft

    OpenOffice.org 3.0's new features, an early look - OpenOffice.org Ninja [including native OOXML support]

    A timely reality check -- an excerpt from an early (alpha) OpenOffice.org 3.0 review; check the full review for some screen shots of OOXML format munging...

    Microsoft Office 2007 (also called Office Open XML) file formats include .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx. Despite the similarity in names, these formats are significantly different than the Microsoft Office formats used since 1997. OpenOffice.org 3 will offer native read and write support. [POK italics]

    OpenOffice.org 3.0 DEV300_m3 converted this reference .docx document with mediocre quality. The notable problems were tracked changes, a comment, columns, an image, and an embedded Excel document. For comparison, the same document is shown rendered in Word 2007 and in OpenOffice.org 3.0 DEV300_m3.

    OpenOffice.org 3.0's new features, an early look - OpenOffice.org Ninja

    FT.com / Technology - Linux tries not to be a victim of its own success

    A timely Linux snapshot  in the Financial Times

    “Hackers are shrewd businessmen, so the more that Linux is found in the corporate data centre, running mission-critical systems, the more incentive there is to invest time and money in trying to compromise Linux. There’s simply more for hackers to gain and that means more reasons for users to spend more time and money securing Linux,” she says.

    The message is clear: if enterprise Linux is to continue on its upwards trajectory, its growing band of corporate supporters must ensure that the operating system does not become a victim of its own success.

    FT.com / Technology - Linux tries not to be a victim of its own success

    Collaborative Thinking: Building A Robust Feed Syndication Platform (Part 2)

    An interesting tidbit from Mike Gotta's blog; see the full post for context-setting and for Mike's perspective on how both Microsoft and IBM are not leaders on feed syndication

    Lawrence Liu
    Senior Technical Product Manager for Community and Social Computing
    Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies

    We (the SharePoint team) understand feed syndication just fine, which is why we have RSS feeds for practically everything in SharePoint, and the feeds are easily configurable by the end user if necessary. SharePoint also has a built-in RSS Viewer web part to consume RSS feeds. As for feed aggregation, management, and sharing, we were hoping that the Exchange team would build that, but they had other priorities. NewsGator has been and will continue to be an excellent partner for us in this area.

    Collaborative Thinking: Building A Robust Feed Syndication Platform (Part 2)

    Apple reportedly mulling all-you-can-eat iTunes | Coop's Corner : A Blog from Charlie Cooper - CNET News.com

    Hmm...

    The Financial Times may have nailed one hell of a scoop Tuesday evening. According to the paper, Apple is considering an all-you-can-eat plan in which users would receive free access to iTunes "in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices."

    Apple reportedly mulling all-you-can-eat iTunes | Coop's Corner : A Blog from Charlie Cooper - CNET News.com

    Technology Review: The Technology That Toppled Eliot Spitzer

    A timely reality check

    If there is a lesson from former New York governor Eliot Spitzer's scandal-driven fall (aside from the most obvious one), it is this: banks are paying attention to even the smallest of your transactions.

    For this we can thank modern software, and post-9/11 U.S. government pressure to find evidence of money laundering and terrorist financing. Experts say that all major banks, and even most small ones, are running so-called anti-money-laundering software, which combs through as many as 50 million transactions a day looking for anything out of the ordinary.

    Technology Review: The Technology That Toppled Eliot Spitzer

    Industry Giants Try to Break Computing’s Dead End - New York Times

    Intel and Microsoft invest in the next generation

    A great deal of industry discussion has focused on centralized, or “cloud,” computing. But the new research laboratories will instead seek breakthroughs in mobile computing systems. The new systems will be designed to perform tasks that today’s computers have trouble accomplishing, like recognizing human gestures and speech. An advanced parallel computing system will also help scientists create Web browsers that can more quickly pull in complex data, process it and display it.

    Industry Giants Try to Break Computing’s Dead End - New York Times

    Tuesday, March 18, 2008

    Microsoft CRM Takes on Salesforce.com - Yahoo! News

    Gee, I wonder if this...

    Microsoft offered a sneak peek of the newest version of its CRM application, Dynamics AX 2009, at Convergence 2008, a meeting of Microsoft Dynamics users. The release, due in the first half of this year, is aimed at small and midsize businesses with what analysts say is extremely aggressive pricing.

    One major focus of the new release is managing compliance obligations, providing what Microsoft calls a "one-stop shop for compliance-related information." AX 2009 also includes enhanced global capabilities (such as multiple language support) that will give international businesses real-time visibility into operations such as overseas inventory of global locations.

    ... has anything to do with Marc Benioff's latest Microsoft-as-dinosaur rant on News.com

    Microsoft CRM Takes on Salesforce.com - Yahoo! News

    James Fallows (March 17, 2008) - Another step toward the online "cloud computing" life

    An interesting data point supporting the "software + services" model...

    Web-based computing has a small disadvantage: working with an online program like, say, Writely (now Google Docs) is slower than using one based on your own machine, since info must constantly go back and forth from a remote server.

    It also has a huge disadvantage: when you're off line, you're out of luck. You can't get at your web-based mail, you can't get at your online calendar or contact list or documents, you can't do very much. Traveling in China, I spend a lot of time off-line, so for me this is a deal-breaker.

    All of which is why, to me, the news that Google Calendar will sync with Microsoft Outlook is big news indeed.

    James Fallows (March 17, 2008) - Another step toward the online "cloud computing" life

    Paper Is Out, Cellphones Are In - New York Times

    Another reason to make sure your batteries are fully charged before you leave home...

    Now, with 80 percent of passengers using these self-service [web check-in] options, the next step is electronic boarding passes, which essentially turn the hand-held devices and mobile phones of travelers into their boarding passes.

    At least half a dozen airlines in the United States currently allow customers to check in using their mobile devices, including American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest and Alaska.

    Paper Is Out, Cellphones Are In - New York Times

    Analyst: Returns, technical problems high with flash-based notebooks | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    I'll wait for the 2.0 version, thanks...

    Notebooks with flash-based hard drives cost a lot and, according to managing partner Avi Cohen at Avian Securities, they don't work very well either.

    A large computer manufacturer is getting around 20 percent to 30 percent of the flash-based notebooks it is shipping sent back because of failure rates and performance that simply isn't meeting customer expectations, the firm stated in a report on Monday. Avian gathered this information on a recent swing through Asia.

    Analyst: Returns, technical problems high with flash-based notebooks | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

    Online Games by the Hundreds, With Tie-Ins - New York Times

    Yikes

    In addition to building brands, one of the big lures in casual games is the opportunity to attract advertising, including from food companies which have gradually agreed to limit the nature and volume of television advertisements aimed at children. But those agreements have not always extended to the Internet.

    Viacom, the parent company of Nickelodeon and MTV, may be moving the most aggressively. On Tuesday, Nickelodeon is expected to announce the first of 600 original and exclusive games for its network of Web sites, as part of a $100 million investment in game development.

    Online Games by the Hundreds, With Tie-Ins - New York Times

    Technology Review: Long-Distance Wi-Fi

    Cool...

    Intel has announced plans to sell a specialized Wi-Fi platform later this year that can send data from a city to outlying rural areas tens of miles away, connecting sparsely populated villages to the Internet. The wireless technology, called the rural connectivity platform (RCP), will be helpful to computer-equipped students in poor countries, says Jeff Galinovsky, a senior platform manager at Intel. And the data rates are high enough--up to about 6.5 megabits per second--that the connection could be used for video conferencing and telemedicine, he says.

    Technology Review: Long-Distance Wi-Fi

    Monday, March 17, 2008

    Len Kawell: [Microsoft] Distinguished Engineer

    Looks like Ray Ozzie is getting his Iris band back together :)...

    Len Kawell is a Distinguished Engineer in the Mobile Communications Business Group, working on the development of several aspects of the Windows mobile platform. Kawell is defining the application model for occasionally connected rich Internet applications in the mobile environment. He is also responsible for scaling Windows Mobile to new kinds of kinds of devices with larger screens and faster processors – also known as Mobile Internet Devices, or MIDs.

    Kawell joined Microsoft from Pepper Computer, a startup focused on mobile Internet device software for Web-connected applications to enable consumers to enjoy Web access and applications in a simplified environment. Earlier in his career, Kawell worked at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) on Virtual Memory System (VMS). He was also one of the founding team members of Iris, the company that designed and developed Lotus Notes, and he was one of the leaders of the Notes team upon its later acquisition by IBM. Kawell also co-founded an eBook software company, Glassbook, which developed a whole series of reading technologies and was later sold to Adobe.

    Kawell graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.

    Len Kawell: Distinguished Engineer

    JPMorgan Buys Bear on the Cheap

    BusinessWeek on the recent financial meltdown dynamics...

    A bigger question is how the bailout and forced sale will play on Wall Street. Overnight, the Asian markets sold off sharply and the plunge is continuing in the European markets. U.S. markets are also in for a turbulent day as investors ponder the thought of how a seemingly secure investment bank could evaporate literally overnight. Wall Street now will begin wondering which firm may be next to go the way of Bear Stearns, and many people are pointing fingers at Lehman Brothers (LEH).

    [...]

    It would have been highly risky for other Wall Street firms if Bear Stearns had been allowed to go under because they are tightly interconnected with Bear as both borrowers and lenders. Any firms that are owed a lot of money by Bear would have fallen under suspicion, on grounds that they might not be able to pay their own debts if Bear failed to pay them. That could have triggered a dangerous wave of defaults. The rescue by JPMorgan Chase gives the financial system breathing room to pay off Bear's debts gradually.

    If you don't think we're in for a bumpy ride for a while, incidentally, you might also want to check out Alan Greenspan in today's Financial Times -- his first paragraph:

    The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war. It will end eventually when home prices stabilise and with them the value of equity in homes supporting troubled mortgage securities.

    A key theme later in the Greenspan article:

    But these models do not fully capture what I believe has been, to date, only a peripheral addendum to business-cycle and financial modelling – the innate human responses that result in swings between euphoria and fear that repeat themselves generation after generation with little evidence of a learning curve. Asset-price bubbles build and burst today as they have since the early 18th century, when modern competitive markets evolved. To be sure, we tend to label such behavioural responses as non-rational. But forecasters’ concerns should be not whether human response is rational or irrational, only that it is observable and systematic.

    I encourage you to visit Amazon and purchase a copy of Galbraith's classic A Short History of Financial Euphoria if you find the previous paragraph hard to believe. You might also want to check out his 2004 book, The Economics of Innocent Fraud.

    JPMorgan Buys Bear on the Cheap

    BBC NEWS | Technology | Web creator rejects net tracking

    See the full article for more details and an interview video

    Sir Tim said his data and web history belonged to him.

    He said: "It's mine - you can't have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I'm getting in return."

    BBC NEWS Technology Web creator rejects net tracking

    Business & Technology | Microsoft's future vision | Seattle Times Newspaper

    I'd say it's no longer just about protecting the desktop franchise; "software + services" is additive...

    Looking far ahead, this is no longer about protecting the Windows-Office desktop franchises.

    The company's long-range goal is to rebuild society's infrastructure, to paraphrase Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer and Bill Gates' successor as the company's visionary.

    The platform isn't on any particular computer, phone or Web site. It's more the webbing that ties them all together and the tools you'll use to manage your personal data.

    Business & Technology | Microsoft's future vision | Seattle Times Newspaper

    Even if You’re Ill, You Can Still Stay Connected - New York Times

    I'm surprised this took so long

    Hospitals have begun installing Internet systems, complete with dedicated shopping channels, to help patients pick up goods they will need for their recuperation. The idea is that patients and visitors who are busy shopping and browsing the Web will be happier, less prone to bother nurses, and more likely to arm themselves with health care information that can help smooth the patient’s recovery.

    Even if You’re Ill, You Can Still Stay Connected - New York Times

    Microsoft licenses Adobe's Flash Lite - The Boston Globe

    Another way in which the iPhone is now unique, apparently (i.e., in not supporting Flash)...

    Microsoft Corp. has licensed Adobe's software for viewing online videos and other files on cellphones, the companies said today.

      Microsoft will distribute Flash Lite and Reader programs from Adobe Systems Inc. to cellphone makers who use its Windows Mobile software.

      Microsoft licenses Adobe's Flash Lite - The Boston Globe

      Start-ups gird for a long haul - The Boston Globe

      A stark reality check

      With financial markets slumping, the number of initial public stock offerings is on track to hit a five-year low in the first quarter. Only nine have been priced since the start of the year nationally, and none in New England, compared with 62 in the nation and five in the region at this time last year, according to the Thomson Financial research house.

      Start-ups gird for a long haul - The Boston Globe

      Sunday, March 16, 2008

      JPMorgan Acts to Buy Ailing Bear Stearns at Huge Discount - New York Times

      It's a buyer's market, and JP Morgan is doing some bargain shopping...

      Reflecting Bear Stearns’s dire straits, JPMorgan agreed to pay just $236 million for the firm, a figure that includes the price of Bear’s soaring headquarters on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. At $2 a share, JPMorgan is buying Bear Stearns for a third of the price at which the troubled firm went public in 1985. Only a year ago, Bear’s shares fetched $170. The cut-rate price reflects deep misgivings about the firm’s prospects.

      [...]

      For JPMorgan, one of the few major banks to emerge relatively unscathed from the subprime mortgage crisis, the deal provides a major entry to prime brokerage, which provides financing to hedge funds, a source of enormous growth over the past decade, but a slowing business amid the market’s turndown.

      JPMorgan Acts to Buy Ailing Bear Stearns at Huge Discount - New York Times

      Industrial relations | On strike, virtually | Economist.com

      Interesting times

      The internet allows expressions of discontent to be aggregated, giving workers the opportunity to stage protests without actually going on strike. The most dramatic example came last September in Italy, at the local arm of IBM. About 2,000 employees of the computer giant—logging on from home to dodge legal problems—staged a virtual protest against a new pay settlement at IBM's corporate campus in Second Life, an online virtual world. A month later the head of IBM Italy resigned and the RSU union agreed on a new pay deal. This innovative use of the internet was recognised with an award at the Forum Netxplorateur, a conference held in Paris in February. The award was presented by the president of Microsoft France.

      Industrial relations | On strike, virtually | Economist.com

      Yahoo!'s options | Deconstructing Jerry | Economist.com

      The saga continues...

      Mr Yang is an amiable character who hates aggression in management as much as in takeovers. So he made a gesture to Microsoft this week to avert hostility. Yahoo! had a deadline of March 14th for shareholders to nominate directors to be voted on at the annual meeting, which must be held between now and July. This would have forced Microsoft to put up its own slate of directors in opposition to the present batch, and thus to fire the first salvo in a proxy battle. But Yahoo! postponed the deadline, buying more time and keeping Microsoft officially friendly, for now.

      There are worse fates for Mr Yang than selling. He is 39, recently became a father, and he has a promising golf game. He is reluctant to cave in to Microsoft, but he probably has no choice, given his duty to his shareholders. He needs to explore all the alternatives and put up a bit of a struggle first, if only for the sake of his own pride. As any parent knows, the most painful part is always letting go.

      Yahoo!'s options | Deconstructing Jerry | Economist.com

      Brian Jones: Open XML Formats : Narrative of the ISO/IEC DIS-29500 BRM Meeting

      Required reading if you're tracking the Open XML debate

      I wanted to take the time to give a narrative of what actually happened in the BRM, since we're now moving onto the final phase and I wanted to get this all in writing before I forgot. I wanted to give an overview of the topics discussed based on the documents that were published last week as well and provide a bit of commentary. While there has been a lot of discussion over the past week or two around the BRM, I think that much of it is misguided. Remember that the BRM wasn't some sort of competition, and there we no winners or losers. The purpose of the BRM was to approve the changes to the specification necessary to help resolve issues that have been raised by the various national bodies. They kicked off their official review over a year ago (and many had been reviewing content well before that). The final decision on whether or not DIS-29500 will be approved is still a couple weeks away, but in terms of the BRM I believe it was a success and the goals were met.

      Brian Jones: Open XML Formats : Narrative of the ISO/IEC DIS-29500 BRM Meeting

      Saturday, March 15, 2008

      FT.com / Home UK / UK - Keep snoopers off your WiFi

      On a related (to the previous post) note, some guidance from the Financial Times:

      But the best protection is to use a virtual private network (VPN) to provide strong authentication and encryption for all your hot-spot communications. A VPN does just what its name suggests; it creates, within the public network that everyone can access, a virtual private network that only you can access. When you're using a VPN all of your data travels within an impenetrable encrypted tunnel.

      This is particularly important if you are connecting to your company's internal network, in which case you will probably be given VPN software and perhaps an electronic "token" to use during log-on by your IT department. Individuals can opt for free or low-cost consumer VPN services such as iOpus Private Internet Gateway (www.iopus.com) which is both easy to use and rock solid. The software encrypts all inbound and outbound information, and should also help protect against spoof public hotspots called "evil twins" set up by hackers to capture private data. AnchorFree's Hotspot Shield (http://anchorfree.com) is another free alternative.

      FT.com / Home UK / UK - Keep snoopers off your WiFi

      Public Wi-Fi: Be Very Paranoid

      A timely BusinessWeek reality check; see the full article for some recommendations

      You have an hour before your flight, so you log in to the Wi-Fi network at the airport. You look up some stock prices, check your e-mail, pay a couple of bills online, and surf a few Web sites. Has it occurred to you that curious or hostile eyes could be peering into your computer and your network? It pays to be paranoid.

      Another option: avoid public wi-fi entirely and use a wide-area wireless broadband provider

      Public Wi-Fi: Be Very Paranoid

      Friday, March 14, 2008

      Adobe executive leaves for equity firm - Yahoo! News

      Hmm

      The head of Adobe's Platform Division, which oversees Flash Player, PDF (Portable Document Format) and other technologies, has left to join a Silicon Valley private equity firm.

      John Brennan, who was senior vice president of the division, also was a driving force behind the acquisition of Macromedia in 2005. He is leaving to become a managing director of Silver Lake Sumeru, a new business of Silver Lake, a leading technology-focused private equity firm in Menlo Park, California.

      Adobe executive leaves for equity firm - Yahoo! News

      The anti-OOXML mob need to lift their game - O'Reilly XML Blog

      Read the full post for more context-setting.  I for one am glad this debate, at least in the ISO ballot domain, will soon be history.

      Here are three questions: they are not the same:

      • Does being pro-ODF require you to be anti-OOXML?
      • Does being pro-ODF require you to be against DIS29500 mark II being accepted as an ISO/IEC standard?
      • Does being anti-Microsoft require you to be anti-DIS29500?

      A lot of the FUD over the last year has based on the idea that if you are anti-Microsoft you must be pro-ODF and if you are pro-ODF you must be anti-OOXML and if you are anti-OOXML you must be against the acceptance of DIS29500 mark II. It is George Bush-like simplification Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists that tries to excluded any middle ground.

      [...]

      The logical fallacy here is called the fallacy of the excluded middle: the idea that reasonable people might reasonably disagree is not allowed. And thence to the imputation of corruption.

      The anti-OOXML mob need to lift their game - O'Reilly XML Blog

      Mark Logic CEO Blog: Documentum Post DeWalt: One Year Later

      An excerpt from a timely Dave Kellogg post:

      Marko ends his post on an hopeful note for Documentum's future. I'm slightly less optimistic than he is because of one word: SharePoint. Acutally, two words: SharePoint and Alfresco.
      I think a likely future for the ECM category is SharePoint attacking from the left with Microsoft's standard iterative-improvement approach and Alfresco attacking from the right as the alternative to SharePoint. First-generation ECM vendors end up as the IBM mainframes in that scenario (i.e., they're expensive and everybody has one, but they aren't deploying new apps on them). I've blogged before on the similarities between ECM and BI, and I believe that while BI jelled as an integrated category that ECM never did.

      Mark Logic CEO Blog: Documentum Post DeWalt: One Year Later

      How to Get Showers of Ideas | Big Think | BNET.com

      Another insightful snapshot from Michael Fitzgerald; see the full post for more details and related references

      I lunched today with a well-known quantum physicist, who mentioned that about half his ideas, and most of his best ones, happen in the shower.  I asked him whether he knew why.

      Being a physicist, he has developed a model to explain why. It goes, loosely, as follows:

      1)    There is an unconscious part of the mind that processes things without our knowing it, and in fact while our conscious mind is doing its thing.

      2)    Ideas are either algorithmic, like working through a differential equation, or non-algorithmic, which means they get worked out more or less randomly.

      How to Get Showers of Ideas | Big Think | BNET.com

      Super Smash Bros. Brawl - Video Games - Review - New York Times

      Whatever the reasons, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is already by far the biggest videogame console hit to date with my kids.  Anybody want to buy a used Xbox :)?...

      There are video games that try to make you cry. There are games that gross you out. There are games that tell a sweeping story. There are games that make you think seriously about the world around you.

      Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which was released by Nintendo this week, is none of those. Brawl is about one thing: simple fun. And that’s good enough. In fact, it’s so good that Brawl will almost surely be one of the top-selling games of 2008 and may become the best-selling game yet for Nintendo’s popular Wii console.

      Super Smash Bros. Brawl - Video Games - Review - New York Times

      The Skype add-in for Internet Explorer causes IE crashes - Skype Developer Zone Blog

      I think I've determined the  source of my XP IE8 beta 1 problem -- an excerpt from a June, 2007 Skype support blog:

      Last week Microsoft emailed us and said they are getting a large number of Windows Error Reports from a recent version of the Skype add-in for Internet Explorer. 
      Thus:

      • I deeply apologize for any trouble this might be causing you
      • We are working hard to find the solution to the problem
      • We thank Microsoft for reaching out to us to notify us of this problem.

      You now have three options for how to solve this problem:

      (See the full post for more details)

      Naturally I was running a stale version of Skype (who knew?  I had to go to the Skype menu to check for updates...), and disabling the Skype IE add-in seems to have done the trick -- IE8 beta 1 is now very stable on my XP PC (it has been stable for a week on my Vista test PC, on which I haven't installed Skype), and, when using IE8's IE7 emulation mode, the primary difference I can discern between IE7 and IE8 is that IE8 is a lot faster.

      BTW I find it perplexing that few people have complained about Skype's IE add-in, since it's essentially similar to the proposed IE6 Microsoft smart tag add-ins for which Microsoft was vilified during June, 2001 (leading to Microsoft's scrapping of its IE6 smart tag plans).

      The Skype add-in for Internet Explorer causes IE crashes - Skype Developer Zone Blog

      The Internet Traffic Challenge: The Policy Dimension - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

      Interesting pattern recently, with the NYT using Bits blog posts to elaborate on tech article context-setting.  The chart below is also a timely reality check.

      The New York Times ran a story today that looked at the rapid rise in Internet traffic, led by the increasing popularity of YouTube-style video and other bit-hungry services.

      Internet Traffic

      Global Consumer Internet Traffic (The New York Times)Graphic Go to Full Data

      The article is an “explainer,” as we say. Projections of growth trends vary, as do views of the implications. But the takeaway: “The Internet traffic surge represents more a looming challenge than an impending catastrophe.” In the Internet economy, high-speed networks are the testbeds of innovation, so investment is required — mainly at the national and local level — to keep them healthy and fast.

      The Internet Traffic Challenge: The Policy Dimension - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

      AOL Buying No. 3 Social Networking Site - New York Times

      Hmm...

      More than 40 million Internet users have accounts, Bebo said, a figure that has doubled in the last year as the company has moved aggressively to add local-language sites. The AOL relationship could help expand its user base.

      “We have a real opportunity for people to discover Bebo in the U.S. now,” the president of Bebo, Joanna Shields, said. Ms. Shields was hired from Google in January 2007 to broaden the audience and the content offerings. Bebo’s co-founders, the husband and wife team of Michael and Xochi Birch, are cashing out of the company.

      AOL Buying No. 3 Social Networking Site - New York Times