Gmail notice touts Chrome and Firefox, dismisses IE as too slow

It’s interesting to imagine the outrage that would ensue, if Microsoft did something similar

Google Inc. is pushing users of its Gmail e-mail service to dump Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer for its own Chrome browser or Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox.

When users of IE6 reach Gmail.com, a "Get faster Gmail" message appears in the Web-based service's menu bar. The message, in turn, links to a page on Google's Web site that touts Chrome and Firefox 3 as being "twice as fast" at running Gmail.

Gmail notice touts Chrome and Firefox, dismisses IE as too slow

H.P. Pushes Forward in Data Warehousing Project - NYTimes.com

The Tandem legacy quietly continues…

H.P.’s approach to data warehousing is based on database technology originally developed by Tandem Computers, which H.P. had acquired in the 2002 Compaq merger. The Tandem technology, called NonStop, occupies a lofty position in computing lore, running some of the most reliable computer systems ever made, including many at the world’s financial exchanges.

But NonStop was untried for data warehousing applications when H.P. first decided to enter the business. To prove it would work, the company’s own data centers became the guinea pigs. After working on the project for months, H.P. assembled a unified database that 30,000 employees could turn to for instant information about every aspect of the company’s business.

H.P. Pushes Forward in Data Warehousing Project - NYTimes.com

With a Digital Stereo, Cisco Systems Is Starting a Push Into Home Electronics - NYTimes.com

More on Cisco’s living room aspirations

The company has been talking about reaching out to consumers for years. At the same show two years ago, John T. Chambers, the company’s chief executive, laid out a strategy for building networks for entertainment in the home. At the show last year, it promised new technology that would help media companies publish more video that could be watched on these home networks. But after delays, changes in plans and the assignment of a new executive to oversee all this, Cisco now says the first of its products will hit the shelves, and the video sites will be on the Web, in January.

With a Digital Stereo, Cisco Systems Is Starting a Push Into Home Electronics - NYTimes.com

Hope Fades for PS3 as a Comeback Player - WSJ.com

A stark Sony reality check

If Sony doesn't close the gap with its rivals, it could risk making the PS3 an afterthought to game publishers, who focus most of their resources on the machines with the most users. At the end of September, the Wii had a wide lead with nearly 35 million units sold since its launch in 2006 compared with about 22 million Xbox 360 consoles and 17 million PS3 machines. Nintendo last month sold 2 million Wii machines in the U.S., while Microsoft sold 836,000 Xbox 360s and Sony sold 378,000 PS3s, according to NPD.

Hope Fades for PS3 as a Comeback Player - WSJ.com

Cisco aims to be a household name - The Boston Globe

A strategic bet for Cisco; see the full article for more details

Cisco Systems, the dominant provider of the digital pipes that run the Internet, is making a big play in digital entertainment. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January in Las Vegas, it plans to introduce a line of products, including a digital stereo system, meant to move music wirelessly around a house.

That is the first small move in a long-term strategy to take on Apple, Sony, and the other consumer electronics giants. Cisco is working on other gadgets that will let people watch Internet video on TV sets more easily. Its biggest bet is that people will want to use a version of its corporate videoconferencing system, Telepresence, to chat with friends via high-definition TV.

Cisco aims to be a household name - The Boston Globe

Music - As EMI and Apple Delay Beatles Reissues, Bootleg Sales Boom - NYTimes.com

A stark reality check

And how many record labels, just now, are facing an army of consumers who are saying, in effect: “We’ve bought this music several times already — on mono and stereo LPs, on picture discs and audiophile vinyl, perhaps on cassette and most recently on CD — but please, we beg you, sell it to us again.”

So what’s the holdup? No one is willing to say, but Mr. McCartney recently asserted that EMI was demanding an unspecified concession that the Beatles were unwilling to make.

Frankly, the reasons hardly matter at this point: to collectors awaiting these releases, either on physical CDs (improved sound being the main point of remastering) or as digital downloads (where convenience trumps audiophile considerations), the inability of Apple and EMI to get this music onto the market is a symbol of how pathetic the record business has become, and how dysfunctional Apple continues to be.

Music - As EMI and Apple Delay Beatles Reissues, Bootleg Sales Boom - NYTimes.com

Amazon Claims ‘Best Ever’ Christmas (Whatever That Means) - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

See the full article for more details

For retailers, the holiday shopping season was the worst in decades. Even so, Amazon.com said Friday that it had its “best ever” holiday.

On Amazon’s peak day, Dec. 15, customers ordered a record 6.3 million items, or almost 73 items each second, the company said. Last year, the peak day was Dec. 10, when customers ordered 5.4 million items.

Amazon Claims ‘Best Ever’ Christmas (Whatever That Means) - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

The Evidence Gap - Health Care That Puts a Computer on the Team - Series - NYTimes.com

See the full article for a timely snapshot

The Bush administration has left it mainly to advocacy and the private sector to introduce digital medicine. But President-elect Barack Obama apparently plans to make a sizable government commitment. During the campaign, Mr. Obama vowed to spend $50 billion over five years to spur the adoption of electronic health records and said recently that a program to accelerate their use would be part of his stimulus package.

The Evidence Gap - Health Care That Puts a Computer on the Team - Series - NYTimes.com

Sixty Percent of All Humanity Owns a Cell Phone (PC Magazine) by PC Magazine: Yahoo! Tech

A timely reality check

3G Americas, the wireless industry trade association representing GSM devices, has announced that as of December 2008, four billion cell phones are currently in use, covering 60 percent of the world population.

The organization said in a statement that in some countries, millions of people are now experiencing connectivity to the world for the first time through wireless, "changing their economic, social and political fortunes forever."

Sixty Percent of All Humanity Owns a Cell Phone (PC Magazine) by PC Magazine: Yahoo! Tech

Pew study: Internet takes over papers as news source | Digital Media - CNET News

See the full article for more details

Some 40 percent of those surveyed by Pew Research for the People & the Press say they get most of their international and national news from the Internet, up from just 24 percent in September 2007. Internet coverage of the presidential campaign--much of it buoyed by social networks--was likely to credit for that recent growth.

The scary part: 70% still get most of their news from TV?… 

(Hmm – also weird that 145% of preferences are accounted for…)

Pew study: Internet takes over papers as news source | Digital Media - CNET News

Future Bits: Google’s Machiavellianism - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Interesting speculation in the closing paragraphs of this article:

Frankly, the most powerful opponent Google might face would be a combination of a portal and search engine with one of the big social networks. A year from now, if the players were MySpace-Yahoo and MSN-Facebook, Google might be sweating a little more.

How will Google respond? It certainly has shown an interest in influencing the arrangement of its rivals. But this year, no matter how much it studies Machiavelli, it may need to actually buy a company to keep it out of the hand of a competitor.

Future Bits: Google’s Machiavellianism - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Laptop Shipments Outpace Desktop PCs for First Time

Hmm…  See the full article for more on notebook/netbook dynamics

The big loser in the quarter, curiously, was Apple, which had previously seen strong market share gains and growth. Apple conspicuously markets only high-end, expensive notebook computers, however, and does not offer a netbook-class machine. The company dropped to seventh place worldwide and lost 14 percent market share year-over-year, dropping from 3.7 percent of the market in 2007 to 3.2 percent.

Laptop Shipments Outpace Desktop PCs for First Time

25 Years of Mac: From Boxy Beige to Silver Sleek

See the full article for more on the Mac’s first quarter-century, along with photos

It's the 25th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh, but Steve Jobs' eyes are dry. At the company headquarters in Silicon Valley, where he was presenting a set of new laptops to the press last October, I mentioned the birthday to him. Jobs recoiled at any suggestion of nostalgia. "I don't think about that," he said. "When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, 'Get it away!' and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed. You have to look forward."

25 Years of Mac: From Boxy Beige to Silver Sleek

Notebook shipments overtake desktops in new study - Boston.com

Sign of the times

Shipments of notebook computers edged passed desktop sales in the third quarter for the first time, according to data from the research firm iSupply.

Preliminary figures for the quarter show notebook PC shipments shot up about 40 percent from the same period a year ago to 38.6 million, according to iSupply. Meanwhile desktop shipments fell about 1.3 percent to 38.5 million.

Notebook shipments overtake desktops in new study - Boston.com

Dell’s MacBook Air Rival Confirmed by . . . Dell - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

An interesting case study in multi-channel content correlation, apparently – i.e., advertising and blog content combined for market insights.  Somehow I suspect this buzz generation was not an accident on Dell’s part.

On Tuesday, Dell spokesman Bob Kaufman confirmed that the Adamo blurb art was in fact a Dell ad. So, it’s Dell that has been talking about a product that will “rival the MacBook Air” all along. The UptownLife Web site just made things tricky by lumping blog posts and ads together without making any distinction between the two. (As the clarification notes, Dell is now only confirming the Adamo by Dell image and not the text discussing the rival to the MacBook Air.)

“We did this to wake up the personal computing category and create some buzz,” Mr. Kaufman said.

It’s expected that Dell will reveal its super-thin laptop at the Consumer Electronics trade show next month in Las Vegas. Then it will be up to Dell to live up to the buzz it has created.

Dell’s MacBook Air Rival Confirmed by . . . Dell - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

More Readers Are Picking Up Electronic Books - NYTimes.com

See the full article for more e-book market dynamics

For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to read. But this year, in part because of the popularity of Amazon.com’s wireless Kindle device, the e-book has started to take hold.

The $359 Kindle, which is slim, white and about the size of a trade paperback, was introduced a year ago. Although Amazon will not disclose sales figures, the Kindle has at least lived up to its name by creating broad interest in electronic books. Now it is out of stock and unavailable until February. Analysts credit Oprah Winfrey, who praised the Kindle on her show in October, and blame Amazon for poor holiday planning.

I expect we’ll see a highly evolved Kindle 2.0 and a super-sized Apple iPod touch addressing the same market segment in early 2009

More Readers Are Picking Up Electronic Books - NYTimes.com

This year, Google workers get phones - The Boston Globe

Perhaps they had surplus inventory, with the rumored G2 supposedly coming soon

Google Inc., owner of the world's most-used search engine, is giving employees mobile phones instead of cash gifts this year as it reins in costs during the recession, according to a person familiar with the matter.

About 85 percent of workers will get a handset powered by Google's Android operating system as a holiday gift, said the person, who asked not to be identified. Google handed out $1,000 cash gifts to most employees last year.

This year, Google workers get phones - The Boston Globe

Drilling Down - Blogs Find Favor as Buying Guides - NYTimes.com

A timely reality check, but I suspect many of the blogs are actually not so blog-like, other than having a time-based update channel

While the rise of blog readership in recent years is no secret, the power of blogs to influence what people buy is less established. But as a recent study reveals, that power is significant — so much that a majority of blog readers say blogs are useful when they make purchases.

The study, which polled 2,210 people and was released this fall, found that the increase in blog readership from 2004 to 2008 was 300 percent; 47 percent of online consumers now read blogs.

Drilling Down - Blogs Find Favor as Buying Guides - NYTimes.com

Read This and Cost Your Company Dough - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

An imprecise science, but interesting…

The question is not whether the nation is overwhelmed with checking e-mail and RSS feeds, answering calls, exchanging instant messages, surfing the Web, watching YouTube and playing that one game where you try to organize the falling blocks.

The question is how much money all of this costs.

Basex, a research firm, estimates in data published on Monday that information overload costs the economy $900 billion a year in lost productivity. And a new online calculator created by Basex professes to provide a rough estimate of the cost to individual companies.

Read This and Cost Your Company Dough - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Cloud computing looms larger on corporate horizon - Boston.com

This appears to be a very interesting case study…

Todd Pierce recently put his job on the line.

To meet the computing needs of 16,300 employees and contractors at Genentech Inc., Pierce took a chance and decided not to rely entirely on business software from Microsoft, IBM or another long-established supplier that would have let Genentech own the technology. Instead, Pierce decided to rent these indispensable products from Google Inc.

The Internet search and advertising leader will run Genentech's e-mail, as well as some word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications, and it will do it over an online connection -- an unconventional approach called "cloud computing."

… until you get to this brief mention, later in the article:

Genentech's chief executive, Arthur Levinson, sits on Google's board of directors, but Pierce insists those ties didn't propel his leap of faith.

Cloud computing looms larger on corporate horizon - Boston.com

Brier Dudley | Is the honeymoon really over for Google? | Seattle Times Newspaper

See the full article for more details

This was going to be a year-end column, summing up 2008 and looking forward to 2009.

The forecast in a nutshell: There will be more uncertainty, a flood of mobile applications and more aggressive ad tactics used by "free" online services. Microsoft will regain stride with Windows 7 and consumers will wish they could afford the new and thinner TVs from Asia that will connect directly to the Web.

But, most of all, it will finally sink in that Google's honeymoon is over.

Brier Dudley | Is the honeymoon really over for Google? | Seattle Times Newspaper

A Wrench in Silicon Valley's Wealth Machine - BusinessWeek

See the full article for more on the VC recalc

It's no surprise that the value of tech startups is falling. With the deepening recession, even the stocks of highfliers such as Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) have tumbled more than 50%. Still, this is a sharp reversal for a generation of companies that seemed poised to inherit the mantle of leadership in the tech industry. Top Web 2.0 companies such as Digg and Facebook, which built their business on persuading users to participate in their Web sites, were showered with attention and millions of dollars in investment based on the expectation they would be able to cash in by creating the next blockbusters of the Internet. Now those high hopes are coming back to earth.

A Wrench in Silicon Valley's Wealth Machine - BusinessWeek

Is the PlayStation 3 Dying? - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

Challenging times for Sony

Fallout from the November sales data continues to mount for Sony and its PlayStation family. CNNMoney's Silicon Alley Insider column pulled no punches in its assessment of the numbers calling the PS3 "A sinking ship" in light of its sales declining 19 percent compared to what it did last year. While that's a bit melodramatic, it's hard to argue with their conclusion that the PS3 needs a price cut soon, and a substantive one at that. Ten year lifespan or not, it stands on the brink of falling behind the Xbox 360 by an insurmountable margin.

Is the PlayStation 3 Dying? - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

Novelties - The Ride Board, Reborn on the iPhone - NYTimes.com

An ecouraging sign of the times; see the full story for details including a free alternative

“You put the iPhone on the dashboard, and it records the entire trip and sends the route to our network,” he said. The system stores the route, adding it to its menu of paths and pick-up points and offering them automatically to interested riders.

Drivers must have an iPhone in order to use the service, but if passengers don’t, they will be able to look for a ride on the Avego Web site or call or send a text message, Mr. O’Sullivan said. Drivers and riders can identify one another by photographs displayed on their iPhones, as well as by PINs that verify identities and authorize the transaction.

Avego will charge 30 cents a mile, he said, with 85 percent going to the driver to recover some of the commuting costs and 15 percent to the company. All payments will be handled by automated online accounting.

Novelties - The Ride Board, Reborn on the iPhone - NYTimes.com

What Xbox Wants to Be When It Grows Up - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

An interesting snapshot; see the full article for more details

This focus has certainly established the Xbox as a major gaming platform. The Xbox 360 is outselling the rival Sony PlayStation 3 by quite a bit since Microsoft dropped the entry level Xbox price to $199, half that of the PS3. The far more popular Nintendo Wii, which costs $249 — when you can find it — is outselling both of them. Still, the company is adding more family-friendly games to compete with Nintendo along with more casual games online.

The biggest expansion, however, is in video, taking advantage of the hardware that already provides a link between the Internet and the television. Xbox has already been offering pay-per-view movies and it recently announced a partnership to stream more films with Netflix.

What Xbox Wants to Be When It Grows Up - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Google No Longer Among Top 20 Most Trusted Companies For Privacy -- Privacy -- InformationWeek

A timely reality check; see the full article for more details

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is no longer ranked among the top 20 most trusted companies for privacy, but Apple, Facebook, and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) for the first time are.

On Monday, the Ponemon Institute, a privacy and information security research company, and Trust-e, a privacy certification service, released their annual "Most Trusted Companies For Privacy" survey.

Google No Longer Among Top 20 Most Trusted Companies For Privacy -- Privacy -- InformationWeek

Windows Live Writer 2009: Release Candidate - Windows Live

A major update to Microsoft’s (free) Windows Live Writer:

Here are the new features available in this version:

• “Instant photo” border treatment
• Insert multiple photos
• Insert and upload Windows Live photo albums
• Insert and publish video to YouTube
• Spell checking in: Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, English (Australia), Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish, and Ukrainian
• Server-side tagging (support coming soon to WordPress.com and BlogEngine.NET)
• Type-down filtering in the Open dialog
• Improved blog account setup
• Windows Live Spaces inline preview support
• Support for bidirectional languages
• Updated look and feel

Windows Live Writer 2009: Release Candidate - Windows Live

Oracle still looks strong despite 2Q earnings dip (AP) by AP: Yahoo! Tech

Another impressive set of results, given the global economic melt-down – and a case study on the robustness of a diversified business model

Oracle Corp.'s earnings are weakening for the first time in years, but the business software maker still may be in reasonably good shape despite the economy's terrible condition.

After buying dozens of smaller rivals since 2004, Oracle has assembled a lucrative line of recurring revenue from product updates to help tide it over even if its sales of new software licenses deteriorate in the deepening recession.

Oracle's maintenance contracts account for about half of its business, generating more than $11 billion in annual revenue — a cushion that so for has enabled Oracle to avoid the mass layoffs and other austerity measures being imposed at many other technology companies.

Oracle still looks strong despite 2Q earnings dip (AP) by AP: Yahoo! Tech

RIM Q3 as expected, but confidence is soaring | Wireless - CNET News

Very impressive, given the economic meltdown and endless press/blogosphere iPhone fawning

However, in a press release RIM said that "we have enjoyed our best ever start to the holiday buying season over the past few weeks," owing to the recent launches of the Storm and Bold. As such, it provided guidance well above what analysts were expected for the upcoming quarter.

RIM now expects revenue of $3.3 billion to $3.5 billion and earnings per share of 83 cents to 91 cents during the current quarter, far outdistancing analyst estimates of $3 billion in revenue and earnings per share of 83 cents.

RIM Q3 as expected, but confidence is soaring | Wireless - CNET News

Wal-Mart said to begin selling iPhone - The Boston Globe

Er… whatever (I would have expected at most $196.99/$296.99)

Apple offers two models of the Web-surfing phone, for $199 and $299. Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., is expected to sell them for $197 and $297, with a two-year service contract, technology site Engadget.com said Wednesday, citing what was described as a memo from Wal-Mart to employees.

Wal-Mart said to begin selling iPhone - The Boston Globe

Google productivity tools still looking to impress corporate users - Network World

A thorough and insightful reality check by Network World’s John Fontana; excerpt:

Even critics, however, believe Google has the right model to succeed — delivering the software as a service to corporate users.

Microsoft, whose Office suite boasts more than a 90% share of the market, is among those critics.

It endorsed the online model in October when it introduced the first online versions of fully functional Office applications available via a browser. Office Web Applications are in private testing and are slated for inclusion with Office 14. Microsoft already has its toe in the water with Office Live Workspaces and with Exchange and SharePoint Online Services.
While the future may hold promise, the current position for GAPE is the role of worthy alternative and not as serious contender to replace Office or other collaboration platforms.

Google, however, may make its mark not by rising to the top of the heap, but by redefining collaboration and carving the most innovative turns around Web 2.0.

Growing up

"The Google model is not wrong, it is just immature," says Guy Creese, a Burton Group analyst who for years has been tracking Google's efforts to produce online productivity tools

Google productivity tools still looking to impress corporate users - Network World

Can a Deflated Adobe Remain Independent? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

A timely snapshot; see the full post for more details.   I think the NYT author left out an important possible permutation, however: Oracle + Adobe

Plenty of companies have had their share price shredded over the past few months, and I am not claiming any special knowledge about Adobe or playing off rumors flowing through Silicon Valley. It’s just that Adobe’s rather remarkable stock market success had priced it out of the clutches of all but a handful of companies. That’s not the case anymore, and Adobe stands as one of the most attractive technology companies out there, given its market dominance, continued growth and key position in Internet media and graphics overall.

Can a Deflated Adobe Remain Independent? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

IBM Lotus Notes versus Microsoft SharePoint: The rest of the story

FYI an excerpt from a SearchDomino article I wrote recently:

With continued growth in the IBM Lotus Notes install base and expanding deployments of Microsoft SharePoint, there has been renewed discussion about the competitive environment of IBM Lotus Notes/Domino versus Microsoft SharePoint -- especially in light of a recent Forrester report entitled: "Notes Versus SharePoint: Which Collaboration Platform Is Right For You?" While this comparison is a timely topic for many organizations, it's useful to expand the scope of the analysis (Figure 1).

See the full article for more details.

The quadrant model builds on a framework I’ve been refining since the  early 1990s, when I joined the Notes team at Lotus.  I expanded it further when I worked for Groove Networks, and a later version of it appeared in some of the work I did as Research Director for Burton Group’s Collaboration and Content Strategies service, a few years ago.

The version above, from the SearchDomino article, highlights some important recent market dynamics, including features/capabilities such as tagging, syndication, and subscriptions evolving from specialized product categories into foundation-level platform services.

These are exciting times, at the intersection of communication, collaboration, and information architecture software product/service domains; it’s great to see the continuing evolution and innovation.

IBM Lotus Notes versus Microsoft SharePoint: The rest of the story

Live Sync Goes Live | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

A pragmatic perspective

Windows Live Sync is the new name of the service formerly known as FolderShare which lets you keep a pair of folders synced across multiple devices. Some have found the similarities between Live Sync and Live Mesh confusing since they both do similar things, so the best way to understand the difference is that Live Sync only keeps folders in sync, whereas Live Mesh does that and more – it offers an online desktop with free storage and lets you easily remote into your various devices. Still, Live Mesh is beta software and that’s not for everyone. Plus, FolderShare had many fans before Live Mesh was even available, so why not keep them happy?

Live Sync Goes Live | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

Facebook Adding 600,000 Users A Day « Data Center Knowledge

Yow…  See the full post for more stats

Facebook said this week that it has reached 140 million users, and its growth is accelerating. The social network released updated data this week that reveals why the Facebook engineering team has been working so hard to scale the site’s infrastructure.

[…]

Facebook’s statistics page offers some interesting data on user engagement. More than 13 million users update their status every day, and the average user has 100 friends. Facebook hosts more than 10 billion photos, and more than 700 million new photos are being uploaded each month. More than 4 million videos are uploaded each month, and Facebook now has more than 19 million active user groups.

Facebook Adding 600,000 Users A Day « Data Center Knowledge

Michael Sampson: Currents: Novell axes BrainShare - Network World

Sign of the times

Novell announced that its annual BrainShare conference won't run in 2009.

"Novell has alerted customers and partners that it is cancelling its annual BrainShare conference, which was to have been held in Salt Lake City in March, due to would-be attendees’ restricted travel budgets.

Michael Sampson: Currents: Novell axes BrainShare - Network World

Technology Review: Can't We All Just Get Along?

In a word, unlikely – from the second page of the article:

Saad notes that in spite of Twitter's efforts to work with all the available services, there's "very strong competition" between them. "Facebook's strategy is to own the social graph," he says, explaining that, if many sites use Facebook Connect, then Facebook stays in possession of user data, and knows what its users are doing across the Internet. "Google is trying to dilute Facebook's power," he adds. Google's service would keep more social information out in the open, where it can be indexed by Google's search engines. As social networks battle for control across the wider Web, the likely short-term result is "a whole bunch of noise," Saad says. "Ultimately, though, with all these log-ins, we're still going to have the same pain. There are too many systems, too many icons, too much complexity. I think it's going to bring us back to square one."

Technology Review: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Losing the Paper Trail With Earth Class Mail - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Let’s hope a radical decline in junk mail isn’t far behind

Earth Class Mail, a Seattle-based start-up, offers services that take old-fashioned mail and make it digital. Customers route their mail to one of the company’s offices, where employees scan the outside of envelopes. Then, customers log in to their Earth Class Mail accounts and select which pieces of mail are opened, scanned and e-mailed to them, and which ones are left unopened, shredded and recycled.

Losing the Paper Trail With Earth Class Mail - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

How Apple and Facebook Influence Salesforce.com - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

A timely reality check (although I’m not sure Salesforce.com-as-sustainable-platform is reality at this point)

Both Salesforce and Facebook started out as rather handy Web-based services for keeping track of contacts. And both have realized that these lists of people, and the underlying technology to manage them, can be central to a lot of different problems that their customers may want to solve. So both are now turning into “platforms” on which other companies can create and run a wide range of applications.

“We came into this by accident,” Mr. Benioff said. “We did not start the company as a platform company.” But he said that the process of creating one program that serves customers turns out to be a great way to build a more flexible environment. Other programs, like Lotus Notes and Microsoft Excel, evolved in a similar way. Even Microsoft Windows was first an add-on application for Microsoft DOS.

“All platforms started as killer apps,” Mr. Benioff said.

How Apple and Facebook Influence Salesforce.com - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Send Money Through Twitter With Twitpay - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

When the going gets weird,…  See the full article for more details.

Twitpay is a start-up that aims to allow people to send small payments through Twitter. To do this they include the recipients’ username in their message. For example, posting the update “@johnsmith twitpay $10 for lunch” would deliver the cash to that Twitterer’s Twitpay account. The company monitors the public stream of messages for the keyword “twitpay” and facilitates the exchange. You replenish your Twitpay account using a site like PayPal. Once recipients have accumulated more than $10 in their accounts, the balance can be cashed out in the form of an Amazon gift card. For all transfers exceeding $1, Twitpay will take a flat cut of five cents.

Send Money Through Twitter With Twitpay - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Reel Life: The Day the Earth Stood Still: Scientific American

Sign of the times – and a thoughtful review

The remake of this 1951 sci-fi classic delivers a modern warning wrapped in an ancient myth

Klaatu is back and badder than before, with Gort the robot four times the size of the original and a new message for humans to shape up and save the environment…or else.

Reel Life: The Day the Earth Stood Still: Scientific American

Apple’s Chief to Skip Macworld, Fueling Speculation - NYTimes.com

It was inevitable that the press and blogosphere would speculate about Steve Jobs’ health, following Apple’s Macworld announcement, but the only thing clear about the news is that Macworld’s health isn’t looking good – consider: Macworld without Apple and Adobe as primary participants?…

Tuesday’s announcement was a clear blow to IDG, a technology media company based in Framingham, Mass., that has been staging Macworld since 1984. This year’s conference has already been hit by the news that several large companies, including Belkin, a computer accessories maker, and Adobe, the software publisher, would be scaling back their presence at the show for economic reasons.

Apple’s Chief to Skip Macworld, Fueling Speculation - NYTimes.com

Organizing Your Web Life in One Place | Katherine Boehret | The Mossberg Solution | AllThingsD

WSJ review of the new Windows Live services and apps (no wsj.com subscription required); see the full review 

If you’re using a Windows PC, the Windows Live Essentials are definitely worth installing. Photo Gallery enables simple photo publishing directly from your computer’s collection of My Pictures, and specific faces can be labeled and tagged in each shot. Windows Live Mail, which replaced Outlook Express last year, is a smoothly designed program that I rely on every day for use with three different email accounts. Windows Live Messenger links into the Live Web services specifically by retrieving the status updates for each person in your network and displaying those in a ticker-like panel at the bottom of Messenger. The Windows Live Toolbar works only in Internet Explorer but shows an at-a-glance view of your network’s updates, along with photos, email and calendar — all in the top panel of the browser.

Organizing Your Web Life in One Place | Katherine Boehret | The Mossberg Solution | AllThingsD

Microsoft Takes Concrete Steps to Foster Interoperability Among File Formats: Company encourages greater transparency in the pursuit of interoperability by publishing ODF and Open XML implementation notes.

See the full press release for more details.  It will be interesting to see if other vendors follow Microsoft’s lead in this context.

To help foster interoperability among office productivity applications, Microsoft Corp. today published documentation detailing its implementation of OASIS Open Document Format (ODF) version 1.1 support in Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2, currently in beta and scheduled for release next year. Similarly detailed notes about the company’s implementation of Open XML (Ecma 376 Edition 1) in Office will follow in the coming weeks.

These implementation notes offer a comprehensive guide on how Microsoft is implementing ODF and Open XML within its flagship Microsoft Office suite. The notes, available at no charge on the Document Interoperability Initiative (DII) site, http://www.documentinteropinitiative.org, will be useful to developers seeking to enhance the interoperability of their solutions with Microsoft products.

Microsoft Takes Concrete Steps to Foster Interoperability Among File Formats: Company encourages greater transparency in the pursuit of interoperability by publishing ODF and Open XML implementation notes.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Legal papers served via Facebook

Sign of the times…

An Australian couple have been served with legal documents via the popular social networking site Facebook.

Mark McCormack, a lawyer in Canberra, persuaded a court to allow him to use the unusual method after other attempts to reach them failed.

The couple's home is being repossessed after they reportedly missed payments on a loan of over A$100,000 ($67,000; £44,000).

It is believed to be the first time Facebook has been used in this way.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Legal papers served via Facebook

Google’s ‘Treat All Rich Companies the Same’ Vision of Net Neutrality - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Check the full article for more insights on the complex co-opetition between Google and network service providers

The reality today is that rich companies already get first class service, and most network neutrality proposals aren’t going to change that. Big sites buy faster Internet connections and get better service from their providers. Moreover, those with money can buy services content delivery networks like Akamai, or in the case of the superrich, they can set up their own networks, as Google is trying to do.

That has been, more or less, the way the Internet has operated until now. A lot of traffic has been exchanged between various networks without payment. And the rest of the market has been very competitive, with pricing based on standard measures—like the number of bits transported or the maximum capacity.

Google’s ‘Treat All Rich Companies the Same’ Vision of Net Neutrality - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Rumor has Apple updating Mac Mini | Apple - CNET News

Maybe it will prove Steve Jobs’ "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk" comment…

Apple will announce a long-overdue upgrade to its Mac Mini during the Macworld Expo next month, according to a Wired.com report.

The report was attributed to an alleged corporate employee at Apple who wished to remain anonymous--"to keep his job," Wired noted. While he was apparently comfortable disclosing that a new desktop would be announced in January, he balked at disclosing any other details.

What I’d like to see from Apple: a super-sized iPod touch with an optional keyboard

Rumor has Apple updating Mac Mini | Apple - CNET News

Yahoo puts meat on Open Strategy bones | Webware - CNET

See the full article for details and screen shots

Yahoo Mail, which according to ComScore has about 275 million active users each month, gets some significant changes, with more to come. First is a new welcome page that now spotlights messages from people in a person's Yahoo social network and invitations from others to join their networks. And the in-box page now includes a new "from connections" button that shows e-mail only from those social connections.

Second is the arrival of online applications tied to Yahoo Mail. One inaugural program from Xoopit lets you view all the photos in your e-mail archive, even expanding links to online galleries. Another lets you convert an e-mail message into a WordPress blog post in two clicks.

I’m starting to suffer from social software fatigue – and for Yahoo! mail, the feature I’d most like to see is free POP3 support; I’d then use it exclusively through Window Live Mail, as I now do with Hotmail and Gmail as well (Yahoo! offers POP support today, but it’s a fee-based service).

Yahoo puts meat on Open Strategy bones Webware - CNET

Dell Trails Its Rivals in the Worst of Times - NYTimes.com

Hmm… I suspect this article will fuel speculation about about a possible Dell + EMC deal (a Cisco + Dell + EMC deal might make more sense)

Dell has $9 billion in cash, but a deflated share price, its unique culture and inexperience with absorbing a major acquisition raise serious questions about just how much change and breadth Dell can buy.

“It’s not a question of size,” said Brian T. Gladden, chief financial officer at Dell. “I think the question is more around diversifying our revenue base and becoming bigger in some things that are attractive for the long term.”

Dell executives point to any number of acquisition possibilities: servers and storage systems, software and services. “That is where we have to do an acquisition to become relevant,” Mr. Gladden said. “There is no question.”

Wall Street analysts speculate that Dell was gearing up to make the largest acquisition in company history. Dell spent close to $7 billion on share repurchases over the last year, while Mr. Dell has also spent his own money buying close to $200 million in Dell stock. With these gestures of confidence, Dell’s share price rose to more than $25 in late August from an eight-year low of $18.24 in April.

Dell Trails Its Rivals in the Worst of Times - NYTimes.com

Apple Loses Some Shine as Mac Sales Slow - WSJ.com

Interesting times for Apple

The November data indicate that falling prices for Windows-based PCs, and the rise of low-priced computers like netbooks -- mini notebooks that cost as little as $300 -- have finally tripped Apple, said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, who still expects Apple to continue outpacing the market over the next year. "What you're seeing in the numbers is price sensitivity with the consumer," he said.

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs told analysts in October the company wasn't cutting prices on Macs, which make up 46% of the company's revenue, because "we're not tremendously worried" the downturn will drive customers to cheaper PCs.

Apple has steered away from the low-margin netbook market in favor of higher-end computers. "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk," Mr. Jobs said in October when the company reported earnings.

Apple Loses Some Shine as Mac Sales Slow - WSJ.com

Technology Review: Semantic Sense for the Desktop

An open source semantic solution; see the full article for more details 

Nepomuk is distinguished by a more practical vision, says Ansgar Bernardi, deputy head of knowledge management research at DFKI. The software adds a lot of semantic information automatically and encourages users to add more by making annotated data more useful. It also provides an easy way to share tagged information with others.

The software generates semantic information by using "crawlers" to go through a computer and annotate as many files as possible. These crawlers look through a user's address book, for example, and search for files related to the people found in there. Nepomuk can then connect a file sent by a particular person with one related to the company that person works for, making Nepomuk a particularly useful way to search a computer, Bernardi says.

While most operating systems let users search on their computer by keyword alone, Nepomuk can uncover more useful information by focusing on the connections between data; it can locate relevant files if they don't mention the keyword used to search. And peer-to-peer file-sharing architecture built into the system also makes it easy to share files and the associated semantic data between users.

Technology Review: Semantic Sense for the Desktop

My final look at a near-ish feature-complete-ish Windows 7 | iGeneration | ZDNet.com

See the full article for some highlights and screen shots of a post-PDC Windows 7 build

[…]

Windows 7 is taking shape, and for those who can’t stand Vista for all the reasons they have, will find it difficult to hate Windows 7.

For those who hate anything Microsoft related because its Microsoft related, well you can’t please everybody.

My final look at a near-ish feature-complete-ish Windows 7 | iGeneration | ZDNet.com

Life in Information, According to Esther Dyson - Leadership and Innovation - EMC

Interview excerpt:

How do you manage information?
I have my PC and my cellphone, which now gets e-mail. I don't have a phone at home. I threw out my landline 20 years ago, not because I was replacing it with a cellphone but because I didn't want to be called at home. The message here is: Don't let these things run you. You can always unplug your phone.

But we hate to feel we're missing something. And now there's so much more to miss.

People are trying to make you feel you're missing something. That's called marketing.

What are your top information sources?
E-mail and talking to people. Most of what I want to know isn't posted yet.

Do you have any information heroes?
Larry Lessig is one, although I don't agree with everything he says. George Orwell. I'm concerned about this belief that information will set you free. Information will set you free only if you have the courage to use it and act on it.

Life in Information, According to Esther Dyson - Leadership and Innovation - EMC

Google Public Policy Blog: Net neutrality and the benefits of caching

The Google take on the WSJ’s take on Google’s take on net neutrality…

All of Google's colocation agreements with ISPs -- which we've done through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache -- are non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic. In contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral control over consumers' connections and offer colocation or caching services in an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open Internet and the innovation it enables.
Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday's Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.

Google Public Policy Blog: Net neutrality and the benefits of caching

BBC NEWS | Business | Can Microsoft make its future mobile?

A Windows Mobile reality check – see the full article for more on mobile market dynamics

Microsoft's strategy, however, aims far beyond the middle ground between INQ and iPhone.

Offering "Windows Mobile" as a reliable and highly customisable platform allows handset makers and network operators to flood the market with a large number of new and startlingly diverse smartphones.

"People want to live their lives through the device," says Mr Lees, "use it for text, music, social networking, sharing photographs, ever richer experiences."

"The Windows Mobile is the computer that is with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Combine this with the fact that Windows software also powers more and more "embedded" devices such as clever fridges, car electronics and vending machines and we might soon find ourselves in an integrated world held together by Microsoft software.

BBC NEWS | Business | Can Microsoft make its future mobile?

Google accused of turning its back on Net neutrality | Politics and Law - CNET News

No wsj.com subscription required for this article 

Perhaps the Journal was hasty; the story dwelt little on the technology being used (which is the heart of the matter), included little comment from Google itself, didn't mention caching, and mostly explored what this could mean for Washington politicking next year.

But if there's a bit of confusion here, that's to be expected. Much like pornography is in the eye of the beholder, so is Net neutrality.

In a February 2008 post on its public policy blog, Google said: "Some major broadband service providers have threatened to act as gatekeepers, playing favorites with particular applications or content providers, demonstrating that this threat is all too real."

Google accused of turning its back on Net neutrality | Politics and Law - CNET News

Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web - WSJ.com

Hmm…  Check the full article (wsj.com subscription required)

The celebrated openness of the Internet -- network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic -- is quietly losing powerful defenders.

Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

At risk is a principle known as network neutrality: Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic the same -- nobody is supposed to jump the line.

Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web - WSJ.com

Microsoft's first iPhone app: Live Labs releases Seadragon Mobile viewer - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

Interesting times

Seadragon is best known as a core technology behind Microsoft's Photosynth photo-browsing program. It's designed for zooming smoothly in, out and around photos over the Internet, regardless of bandwidth constraints or image size. Seadragon's technological trick is to store images in multiple resolutions and deliver only the bits needed to present the view a user wants at any given moment.
So why release an iPhone version? Alex Daley, group product manager for Microsoft Live Labs, said the Seadragon team wants to make sure the technology works well on everything from a wall-sized display to a mobile device.

Microsoft's first iPhone app: Live Labs releases Seadragon Mobile viewer - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

Digital Domain - Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites - NYTimes.com

Read the full article for some anti-social advertising dynamics

All Web sites that rely on ads struggle to a greater or lesser extent to convert traffic, even high traffic, into meaningful revenue. Ads that run on Google and other search engines are a profitable exception because their visitors are often in a buying mood. Other kinds of sites, however, can’t deliver similar visitors to advertisers. Google’s own YouTube, which relies heavily, like Facebook, on user-generated content, remains a costly experiment in the high-traffic, low-revenue ad business.

Financial data would show the current state of Facebook’s advertising, but none are available. Facebook is privately held and a spokesman told me that it does not disclose revenue or any information about its ad sales.

Digital Domain - Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites - NYTimes.com

Slipstream - A Software Secretary That Takes Charge - NYTimes.com

A timely reality check; an excerpt from the full article:

With the arrival of personal computing in the 1980s, the idea took the form of highly choreographed “vision” statements from many Silicon Valley companies. The most memorable was the Knowledge Navigator video, by John Sculley, then chief executive of Apple, in which an interactive assistant on a video display, clad in a bow tie, does research for a college professor and nags him to return his mother’s phone call.

But efforts to build useful computerized assistants have consistently ended in failure, including some of the Valley’s largest “craters” — ambitious undertakings ending as spectacular flameouts. The failures include General Magic, originally backed by Mr. Sculley, E-speak by Hewlett-Packard and Hailstorm by Microsoft.

A Pentagon research project and two Silicon Valley start-up companies are about to try again.

Slipstream - A Software Secretary That Takes Charge - NYTimes.com

How Apple's iPhone Reshaped the Industry - BusinessWeek

A timely snapshot; read the full article – and ponder the implications, as Apple has inadvertently created new “disintermediation” opportunities for RIM,  Nokia, Microsoft, Google, and other vendors.

"It's remarkable the impact [Apple] has had," says Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM). "They exposed a lot of disintermediation risk in the industry." Balsillie says when RIM proposed application stores a couple of years ago, the carriers were hostile. But Apple's success is forcing the carriers to play. "Now everyone wants [an app store]," Balsillie says, and RIM will oblige next year, offering terms that will give carriers some of the action. Google (GOOG) has the Android Market, and Microsoft (MSFT) is considering an app store for Windows Mobile.

How Apple's iPhone Reshaped the Industry - BusinessWeek

Palm Needs One Good Phone - BusinessWeek

Palm’s last chance?  See the full article for more details.

The moment of truth will come at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Sources say Palm will finally unveil an oft-delayed new operating system, as well as the first in a new family of smartphones. The company won't discuss details, but McNamee says the products will be different from anything on the market. While RIM's BlackBerrys excel at e-mail and iPhones are tops for entertainment, he says Palm will create devices that help consumers easily meld work and play.

Palm doesn't have to vanquish RIM or Apple to succeed. With smartphones expected to balloon from 10% to 50% of the overall 1 billion-unit cell-phone market, Palm could triple its revenues by winning just a single point of the aggregate market. Indeed, McNamee and Rubinstein say they're modeling their plan on the resurrection of Apple, in which marquee products led to financial success. "We hold Apple up as the example of how to do this," says McNamee.

Palm Needs One Good Phone - BusinessWeek

A paradox of abundance in contextual resources?…

Hmm – nytimes.com has apparently partnered with answers.com to offer contextual reference resources – e.g., in the screenshot fragment below

… you see two icons; clicking the (nytimes.com-inserted) question mark icon opens a second, smaller browser instance, with the answers.com definition; clicking the other icon, which is the IE7/IE8 accelerator icon, presents

See this page for more on IE accelerators.

Both the nytimes.com and accelerator contextual services are subtly useful examples of interactive hypertext.

Forget Whims — Use Statistical Analysis to Buy Presents - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

An intriguing application of data analytics; see the full post for more details

People often shop for holiday presents based on flimsy notions about what a friend or loved one might want. That type of thinking inevitably leads to the regifting of fruit cakes and that novelty Britney Spears shoehorn. So why not abandon the guessing game and turn instead to the powers of statistical analysis this year?

Spotfire, a division of the software maker Tibco, has used its statistics expertise to come up with a tool for sorting potential presents. With the Spotfire Holiday Gift Finder, you can churn through thousands of products, including apparel, electronics, jewelry and tools.

Forget Whims — Use Statistical Analysis to Buy Presents - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Survey Asks: Internet Access or Sex? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

A snapshot of the post-90s hierarchy of needs; see the full article for more details

Intel came up with a novel way to show how important the Internet and computing have become in the lives of Americans. In conjunction with Harris Interactive, the company conducted a survey of adults in the United States under the prosaic-enough banner “Internet Reliance in Today’s Economy.”

But the first “key finding” from the study is a little more attention-grabbing. According to the study, 46 percent of women and 30 percent of men would opt to forgo sex for two weeks instead of giving up access to their precious Internet for the same period.

Survey Asks: Internet Access or Sex? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Business Technology : Cisco Pushing Further Into the Data Center

Manifest destiny – and it’s not either/or; Cisco can play the “co-opetition” game effectively while seeking to expand its own data center footprint

Cisco Systems Inc. has long occupied its own niche, supplying routers and other devices that complement the server systems sold by companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and International Business Machines Corp. That picture may soon change.

Some industry executives in Silicon Valley say that Cisco next year will introduce its first product that competes with those of big computer makers–a blade server system, code-named California, that is expected to combine networking hardware with virtualization software and storage systems.

Business Technology : Cisco Pushing Further Into the Data Center

Google’s Browser Sheds Its ‘Beta’ Label - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

See the full article for more details

On Thursday, just 100 days after its initial rollout, Chrome shed the “beta” label. Google, which is claiming 10 million active users of Chrome, is saying that the new browser is ready for prime time, as it has fewer bugs, is more secure and runs faster than it did three months ago.

Chrome’s transition from beta to release version is surprisingly fast. Google is known for keeping products in test mode for years. For example, Gmail, which was first released in April 2004 and has millions of users, still sports the “beta” label.

I for one don’t think dropping the “beta” suffix is going to make a big difference in market uptake

Google’s Browser Sheds Its ‘Beta’ Label - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

A provocative plea from laptop nonprofit - The Boston Globe

Going to extremes…

The Cambridge nonprofit that supplies basic laptops to poor children has produced a video advertisement with images so disturbing the organization will show it over the Internet, but not on television.

The ad from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation shows images of childhood in developing countries. One scene depicts a little girl as a prostitute; another shows small boys as gun-toting soldiers. Then come gentler images of children using the group's no-frills laptop.

A provocative plea from laptop nonprofit - The Boston Globe

Microsoft’s Dan’l Lewin talks BizSpark at LeWeb

Timely TechCrunch post by Steve Gillmor; see the full post for more details and a Dan’l Lewin video

Anything Microsoft does is looked at through a prism cut from the glass of the company that Gates built. The days of the anti-trust trial, Hailstorm, and the browser wars may seem far away, but not for the Netscapes and Novells who foundered in the face of the Windows and Office steamroller. Yet refugees of those wars have reinvented themselves in the new world of the social network, most poignantly represented by Eric Schmidt and his third-times-the-charm Google.

In the context of Google, a reinvigorated Apple, and the rise of cloud computing, Microsoft has figured out they have just as much of right to be reborn. Ray Ozzie’s tenure at the company has been a kind of stealth startup transformation applied to the entrenched duchies of the old company, and it’s bearing fruit in new language not often heard from Redmond: open, cross-platform, Mesh, Silverlight, Azure.

Via Richard Eckel, who should start blogging, along with his Twittering :)

Microsoft’s Dan’l Lewin talks BizSpark at LeWeb

Analyst: Search ads to decline, affect Google | NetworkWorld.com Community

Hmm…  See the full article for more perspectives

In a note to clients, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney says he expects Internet search to see its first ever sequential decline in the first quarter of 2009, adding that the result will be a "drag" on Google's revenues. While Google is still expected to pull out a 2% sequential gain in revenue that quarter, Mahaney says "that assumption may now be at risk." The news isn't unexpected, considering the current economic climate, but what's interesting is the commentary accompanying MarketWatch's report of the story.

For the most part, commenters say they think Google is overpriced, especially since it's still a one-trick pony in terms of making the bulk of its revenues from search advertising.

Analyst: Search ads to decline, affect Google | NetworkWorld.com Community

BlackBerry Storm: Top 5 YouTube User Reviews (PC World) by PC World: Yahoo! Tech

Sign of the times… (see the full post for the reviews)

[…] But those are the pro's opinions, and they are both enhanced and constrained by the need to maintain a certain level of professional decorum. An army of bloggers and amateur tech reviewers took on the Storm vs. iPhone debate with no such rules of engagement, and many of them used YouTube videos to get their message out.

Here are the five most popular, insightful, or otherwise interesting BlackBerry Storm appraisals of the lot--starting with number 5...

BlackBerry Storm: Top 5 YouTube User Reviews (PC World) by PC World: Yahoo! Tech

Introducing Thumbtack : Microsoft Live Labs

Another interesting Live Labs project:

People have always had a need to make sense of the world around them. We want to identify, classify and clarify things. Lately that need has become even greater, since we’re being bombarded with information wherever we look. Now there’s a new tool to help you organize all that information: Thumbtack.

Thumbtack is an easy way to save links, photos, and anything else you find on the Web in a single place.  Compare prices, colors, styles or locations at a glance. Grab the stuff you want from lots of different sites, put it into a Thumbtack collection, then get to it from anywhere you can get online. 

Thumbtack uses machine learning and natural language techniques to understand the information you give it—it automatically extracts addresses, for instance, and the Address Gadget will then automatically plot that address on a map. Other gadgets help you compare items in your collection, or arrange them the way that’s easiest for you to see them.

It’s easy to use. Just start a new collection, add stuff to it, then send it to your friend via e-mail, publish it to the Web or an RSS feed, or embed it in your blog.   Give it a try.

Reminded me of Onfolio (which is apparently dead) and, in some respects, OneNote

Introducing Thumbtack : Microsoft Live Labs

Seen on Craigslist: The Online Market for Senate Seats - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com

Sign of the times – see the full article for more

Ah, bribery in the age of the Internet. This sort of feels like a Shouts & Murmurs piece.

Found on the Washington classified ads site:

Slightly used Senate Seat - $500000 (WDC)
Reply to: sale-951993431@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2008-12-09, 9:58PM EST

For Sale/Barter,

Slightly used United States Senate seat. Only one owner this term, though rarely present — like new. Illinois ties preferred.

Must be willing to barter 1/2 million in monetary compensation, and employment (either government or nonprofit, preferably the latter) for myself and my wife.

Seen on Craigslist: The Online Market for Senate Seats - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com

YouTube Videos Are Pulling in Serious Money - NYTimes.com

Sign of the times

One year after YouTube, the online video powerhouse, invited members to become “partners” and added advertising to their videos, the most successful users are earning six-figure incomes from the Web site. For some, like Michael Buckley, the self-taught host of a celebrity chatter show, filming funny videos is now a full-time job.

See the full article for details, e.g., on how Google needs to find a way to profit from YouTube…

YouTube Videos Are Pulling in Serious Money - NYTimes.com

BBC NEWS | Technology | Muted celebration for computing

See the full article for more on the 40th anniversary of “the mother of all demos”

"But the vision dad (Doug Engelbart) started out with was how can you make people more dramatically effective at how they work collectively to solve important problems in order to make the world a better place?"

"That vision of how do you harness the collective intellect in very powerful ways is missing from the paradigms in how things are being developed today," said Ms Englebart who is the executive director of the Engelbart Institute.

She said the kind of problems this approach would help today include things like world poverty, infectious diseases, clean technology and world hunger.

"It really is a race because if these problems are increasing in complexity exponentially and if we don't find exponential solutions as to how we work together to solve these problems, then we are sunk," stated Ms Engelbart.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Muted celebration for computing

A subtle shift in social software services

I have to confess that I have been mostly a passive user of services such as Facebook and LinkedIn in the past, but I’m finding them more useful lately, and I’m also intrigued with the any-to-any connection scenarios supported by Microsoft Windows Live and many other services.

An example I noticed today when I logged into LinkedIn:

This is a bit subtle, but it basically means some of the leading services have made it possible to track your assorted contacts in a service-independent manner. You could, for instance, track the activities of and updates from your LinkedIn or Facebook contacts in the new Windows Live home page, or (at some point in the near future, I assume) vice versa, if you want to track activities across multiple services from a single place.

If this sort of service aggregation view becomes popular – and I expect it will, as it’s a means of gaining more control over the multiple update/etc. communication channels -- it will put increasing pressure on social networking service providers that can’t readily differentiate themselves.

The Twine that Binds: Q&A with Nova Spivack | Fast Talk | Fast Company

An interesting “semantic web” snapshot

Half a century ago, management guru Peter Drucker introduced the concept of the knowledge worker. Today his grandson, Nova Spivack, is trying to turn their knowledge into something more than the sum of the parts and boost their collective intelligence. Spivack is founder and CEO of Radar Networks, which recently launched Twine, which bills itself as the first consumer Semantic Web application. Twine has raised more than $20 million from some big names in the venture capital world, including Velocity Interactive Group, Vulcan and DFJ. The site recently opened to the public and claims 700,000 unique visitors and around 50,000 register users. Here Spivack talks about the shortcomings of Google-era search, the promise of the Semantic Web and his vision for how knowledge workers can become collectively smarter.

The Twine that Binds: Q&A with Nova Spivack Fast Talk Fast Company

About New York - What the Search Engines Have Found Out About All of Us - NYTimes.com

Hmm…

On the surface, these kinds of lists are supposed to reveal what Google calls the zeitgeist of 2008, though it’s not much of a surprise that people were interested in Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. But they also provide hints of the level of personal details that people are now turning over to search engines and related businesses without much awareness.

The lists, said Lt. Col. Greg Conti, a professor of computer science at West Point, “are just major tsunami-type activities, big waves in the online searches.”

Professor Conti, the author of “Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You?” (Addison-Wesley, 2008), contends that Google’s internal tools make it possible to develop detailed pictures of individual interests, not just of masses of teenagers looking for the very latest about Miley Cyrus.

“A complete picture of us as individuals and as companies emerges — political leanings, medical conditions, business acquisitions signaled by job searches,” he said. “It would be very scary if we could play back every search we made. Those can be tied back very precisely to an individual. You can go all the way from individual molecules of water up to the tsunami.”

About New York - What the Search Engines Have Found Out About All of Us - NYTimes.com

Technology Review: Are Social Networks Sinking?

See the full article for a detailed reality check

The air seems to be coming out of the Web 2.0 bubble, squeezed by the economic downturn and the absence of many solid short-term business plans.

Dire market conditions have forced virtually all social-networking firms to scale back. In October, the third most popular social-networking site, Hi5, announced that it would cut between 10 and 15 percent of its staff. And in November, the business-focused networking sites LinkedIn and Jive said that they would slash their workforces by 10 and 40 percent, respectively.

Technology Review: Are Social Networks Sinking?

AOL Readies High-Stakes Social-Media Debut - WSJ.com

Hmm…

In the world of social networking, it's time for AOL's big debut, and there's a lot of money riding on the outcome.

In March, the Time Warner unit said it would plunk down $850 million for Bebo, the No. 3 social-media Web site by unique visitors, which has yet to gain a foothold in the U.S. and has lost share in Britain, its strongest market, to rival Facebook.

[…]

Bebo Chief Executive Joanna Shields has been working with her team on the relaunch of the site since the acquisition closed in May. On Wednesday, Bebo (pronounced BEE-bo) plans to unveil the first of a series of changes.

[…]

Ms. Shields says the market will figure out an advertising model eventually and that Bebo is well-positioned to succeed. "You would have to be stupid," she says. "You would have to trip to not succeed at this at some point."

I guess we’ll soon find out.  In the meantime, also see Social-Networking Ad Dollars Shrink in today’s WSJ.

AOL Readies High-Stakes Social-Media Debut - WSJ.com

Dell Sees Double With Data Center in a Container - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

See the full article for more details

To date, however, the containers have been slow sellers. Sun has mentioned a couple of customers, while Rackable has struggled to move the systems, shipping none last quarter.

So why would a company like Dell, which prides itself on using volume to lower costs, get into the container game?

That’s easy: Microsoft.

Microsoft has been the main advocate of containers, saying they will form the basis of its future data center designs. Some of Dell’s first containers will go to a new Microsoft data center near Chicago, according to Forrest Norrod, the vice president in charge of Dell’s Data Center Solutions business.

And Microsoft’s interest in the container idea should inspire others to take a look at the technology.

Dell Sees Double With Data Center in a Container - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Google tests ActiveX alternative | InfoWorld | News | 2008-12-08 | By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

I wonder if people at Google even take redundant Adobe alternatives into consideration

Native Client looks similar to Microsoft's ActiveX technology but will run on Linux and the Mac OS as well as Windows, Web experts said Monday. It also bears a resemblance to an Adobe technology called Alchemy.

Developers create their code using a version of the GNU C Compiler, so that desktop applications can be compiled to run on the user's PC using a special browser plugin.

"Google is clearly reaching for ways to take more control over the desktop, the Web browser and user content," said Robert Hansen, CEO of security consultancy SecTheory. "Native Client appears to be another way to reach into people's computers and use as many resources as possible. It's not a matter of whether it can be done. It's a question of if it should be done. We haven't even solved yesterday's problems yet, let alone another ActiveX clone."

Google tests ActiveX alternative | InfoWorld | News | 2008-12-08 | By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

Panel Offers Ways to Strengthen Cyberspace Security - NYTimes.com

Hmm – read the full article for more context-setting

A government and technology industry panel on cyber-security is recommending that the federal government end its reliance on passwords and enforce what the industry describes as “strong authentication.”

Such an approach would probably mean that all government computer users would have to hold a device to gain access to a network computer or online service. The commission is also encouraging all nongovernmental commercial services use such a device.

Panel Offers Ways to Strengthen Cyberspace Security - NYTimes.com

UBS doubts $99 iPhone rumor - The Boston Globe

I could see it happening – e.g., Apple unveils a new high-end iPhone as well as a new low-end model at the same time, attempting to grab more market share before the next wave of competitors can get established.

Wal-Mart would probably serve as an additional source for the $199 iPhone, rather than ushering in a new discount strategy, UBS analyst Maynard Um said yesterday. Still, a $149 stripped-down model may make sense, he said.

"A $99 iPhone would be atypical of Apple's premium brand strategy," the analyst reported. "More likely is a scenario in which select Wal-Mart, and possibly Sam's Clubs, are simply added as further iPhone distribution points."

UBS doubts $99 iPhone rumor - The Boston Globe

Netflix, TiVo Team Up To Stream Video Content (NewsFactor) by NewsFactor: Yahoo! Tech

Relentless…

Netflix and TiVo on Monday took their partnership to the next level. The companies announced that consumers who subscribe to both Netflix and TiVo Series 3, TiVo HD, or TiVo HD XL can access movies and TV episodes instantly streamed from Netflix directly to their TVs -- at no additional charge.

"With so much talk focusing on the economy these days, this partnership makes more sense than ever because it brings people more movies at home, offering substantially more entertainment options than cable or satellite," said Tara Maitra, general manager and vice president of content services at TiVo.

Netflix, TiVo Team Up To Stream Video Content (NewsFactor) by NewsFactor: Yahoo! Tech

Microsoft to soon sell full range of Web software - Yahoo! News

Hmm…

"What we think is in five years, 50 percent of the use of Exchange and Sharepoint could be serviced from the cloud," Elop told Reuters in an interview.

"Between now and then, a year or two or whatever, if it's going to be tough economic times, that means we expect quite a lot of movement in that direction, a lot of people taking advantage of that," he added. "I think the economy will help it."

[…]

He also said that even the basic, free versions will trump Google Apps in capabilities, and that Microsoft will ensure that users can move Office documents in and out of the Web browser environment without any garbling to the text.

Microsoft to soon sell full range of Web software - Yahoo! News

Wal-Mart to sell $99 iPhone: report (Reuters) by Reuters: Yahoo! Tech

A multifaceted sign of the times…

A cheaper version of Apple Inc's iPhone will be sold at Wal-Mart Stores Inc for $99 later this month, the New York Post said.

Two models of the popular device will hit shelves at the retail giant, the paper said, citing employees at several stores.

Employees also told San Jose-based Mercury News that the $99 iPhones would be 4-gigabyte models, and that Wal-Mart was attempting a pre-Christmas launch.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Steve Jobs kill the deal, due to the press leak

Wal-Mart to sell $99 iPhone: report (Reuters) by Reuters: Yahoo! Tech

New Ridership Record Shows U.S. Still Lured to Mass Transit - washingtonpost.com

An example of getting collectively smarter – I hope the trend persists despite the temporary decline in gas prices.

Americans rode subways, buses and commuter railroads in record numbers in the third quarter of this year, even as gas prices dropped and unemployment rose. The 6.5 percent jump in transit ridership over the same period last year marks the largest quarterly increase in public transportation ridership in 25 years, according to a survey to be released today by the American Public Transportation Association.

New Ridership Record Shows U.S. Still Lured to Mass Transit - washingtonpost.com