Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: The Lost Decade 1997 2007 or Life outside the Tech bubble

A stark reality check from Don Dodge – read the full post

Michael Mandel, Chief Economist at BusinessWeek gave a sobering and thought provoking presentation on the economy at the MTLC Annual Meeting. He explained the huge expansion of debt and plummeting savings rates in the US over the past 30 years that contributed to the current situation. Mandel also included 10 year snapshots of wage growth and stock market performance which illustrated ZERO real growth. A lost decade. We read the headlines but they don’t sink in until you see the data visually. It is stunning…a story best told by charts and graphs.

Another useful chart, from later in the post:

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: The Lost Decade 1997 2007 or Life outside the Tech bubble

Mapping a New, Mobile Internet - BusinessWeek

See the full article for a video with demos

Imagine that your business had a complete log of your customers' wanderings—every trip to the grocery store, every work commute, every walk with the dog. What could you learn about them? Armed with that knowledge, what sorts of goods and services might you try to sell them? Just as important, if you made your best pitch—relevant and timely, of course—would customers concerned about privacy tell you to get lost? This isn't science fiction. A nascent industry extending from the laboratories of Google (GOOG) and Nokia (NOK) to a host of data-fueled startups is wrestling with these very questions.

Mapping a New, Mobile Internet - BusinessWeek

The size of social networks | Primates on Facebook | The Economist

A timely reality check

Put differently, people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,” says Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a polling organisation. Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.

The size of social networks | Primates on Facebook | The Economist

Microsoft Business Division Virtual Presskit: Vision

Some excellent video content on this page, if you want to explore Microsoft’s vision for the future of information technology.  If you want to invest just a few minutes, launch the 36 minute video and jump into the time index ~15 minutes in.

Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop unveils Microsoft Corp.’s vision for the future of business technology. This vision, grounded in research, will provide customers with the technology they need and want to address tomorrow’s changing world.

Microsoft Business Division Virtual Presskit: Vision

Yahoo! News - Google Tweets on Twitter Amid Acquisition Rumors by NewsFactor: Yahoo! Tech

Sign of the times…

John Battelle, author of The Search, called real-time, conversational search the most important and quickly growing form of Web search today. Then he called Twitter the YouTube of real-time search. If Google bought Twitter, it wouldn't be the first company it acquired from Twitter cofounders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Google bought Blogger from the duo.

"YouTube was the single fastest-growing new form of search on the Web, and Google pretty much outflanked (and outspent) everyone to buy it. Not to get into video monetization, per se, but to harvest and control the most important emerging form of search," Battelle wrote in his blog. "In short, Google could not afford to NOT own YouTube." He's also betting Google really, really wants Twitter.

Yahoo! News - Google Tweets on Twitter Amid Acquisition Rumors by NewsFactor: Yahoo! Tech

The TV Watch - Media’s Big Names Can’t Resist Twitter - NYTimes.com

See the full article for more discouraging details…

Some argue that Twitter has value as a news source, and note that the first snapshots of the Turkish Airlines jet after it crashed near Amsterdam on Wednesday were transmitted via Twitter. But those crash photos could have gotten out just as quickly if sent by cellphone to another Web site. It’s tempting to dismiss Twitter fever as a passing fad, the Pokémon of the blogosphere. But it’s beginning to look more like yet another gateway drug to full-blown media narcissism.

The TV Watch - Media’s Big Names Can’t Resist Twitter - NYTimes.com

Software in the recession | Out on its own | The Economist

A timely search market snapshot

Mr Lynch, who developed Autonomy’s technological underpinnings while writing a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, wants his firm to become the “Oracle of unstructured data”, a reference to the database giant that is the world’s second-largest software firm. Autonomy seems well on its way to achieving that ambitious goal. A serious rival has yet to emerge, and some 400 other software companies have licensed the firm’s core technology, called IDOL, for their own products, so that it is fast becoming a de facto standard.

To be sure, Autonomy will have to compete against Microsoft, which has bought FAST, a Norwegian rival, says Madan Sheina of Ovum, a market-research firm. Autonomy could also end up being acquired, not least by Oracle, the industry’s big consolidator, which would certainly like to dominate the field of unstructured data as well. But for the time being, Autonomy is a rare bright spot in an otherwise depressing high-tech landscape.

Software in the recession | Out on its own | The Economist

Nokia’s Brave New Strategy: Laptops

A stark Nokia reality check; see the full post for more details

It has yet to launch a credible touch screen phone to compete with LG, Samsung, HTC and every other handset maker. Simply put, Nokia facing innovator’s dilemma has become calcified with caution and is unable to invent markets. Instead of fighting off iPhone and other touchscreen phones, Nokia is thinking about selling laptops. Yes, you heard that right. Nokia will consider making PCs. Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told Finnish national broadcaster YLE (via Reuters) that the company was looking at getting into the PC business.

Nokia’s Brave New Strategy: Laptops

CBS Beams ‘Star Trek’ Episodes to iPhones - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

To boldly go … where maybe there’s no business model?

CBS is taking the iPhone where no iPhone has gone before.

Today, it released an iPhone application for its TV.com site that can play full episodes of TV series, ranging from “C.S.I.” to the original “Star Trek.” While Hulu, a rival video site owned by NBC and Fox, has kept its content only for computers connected to the Web, CBS has been far more open with its own content.

All sorts of video have been on the iPhone from the beginning by way of its YouTube application and its ability to play podcasts (which now can be downloaded over a wireless connection). The application for the Joost service can play some episodes from CBS and other producers’ series. NBC tried a special Web site set up to stream episodes of a few of its series for the iPhone.

CBS Beams ‘Star Trek’ Episodes to iPhones - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

AdSense Outage Is Another Google Misstep - Digits - WSJ.com

A very rough week for Google

It hardly got the attention that Tuesday’s Gmail outage or ViddyHo/Google Talk phishing incident saw, but Google’s advertising system, AdSense, had a hiccup of its own Wednesday.

The service was down for about 90 minutes, a spokeswoman confirmed, and did not affect many Web publishers.

AdSense Outage Is Another Google Misstep - Digits - WSJ.com

Why Hulu Is Winning the Online Video Race | Newsweek Daniel Lyons | Techtonic Shifts | Newsweek.com

A timely FFSJ (former fake Steve Jobs) reality check

Hulu, founded by NBC and Fox, has become a better moneymaker than Web darling YouTube. The moral: better content wins.

[…]

The lesson in all this? Fun as it may be to watch someone's kitten playing with a piece of string, last night's episode of "The Office" makes for a more compelling experience. Turns out those old-media guys still know something about how to capture an audience—and make money from it.

Why Hulu Is Winning the Online Video Race | Newsweek Daniel Lyons | Techtonic Shifts | Newsweek.com

Microsoft sees 'fantastic' opportunities - The Boston Globe

Taking the long view – see the full article for more details and a brief interview video

"Our whole industry will come down," Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, said in an interview at the company's New England Research and Development Center near Kendall Square. "But that's OK. The innovation opportunities are fantastic for us. So are the opportunities to improve market share, and all those good things. We may have to do a little reset economically, but we'll still be profitable."

Microsoft sees 'fantastic' opportunities - The Boston Globe

SQL Data Services to get an overhaul | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

This is not a “rethinking” instance, as suggested in first paragraph of the full post; it is consistent with the strategy discussed during PDC 2008 sessions on SQL Services.

SQL Data Services, formerly known as SQL Server Data Services, is part of Microsoft’s Azure Services platform. (It sits on top of the Azure operating system, a k a “Red Dog.”) When Microsoft first discussed the concept for SQL Server Data Services, it sounded a lot like Amazon’s SimpleDB. Some criticized it for providing a limited subset of database features.

But this week, at the MSDN Developers Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft committed to providing a full hosted version of its database, as first reporting by my podcasting-partner-in-crime Gavin Clarke of the Register UK.

SQL Data Services to get an overhaul | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

You asked for them - New features! - Workspace Team Blog - Office Live Workspace Community

Some Office Live Workspace updates (via LiveSide)

Folders –To simplify organization, now you can use folders to manage files within workspaces. We know many of you were creating new workspaces whenever you needed to group related documents, so we’re really happy about this feature.

· Cut/Copy/Paste–Want to copy a document or file to another workspace? We’ve replaced the File/Move feature with Cut/Copy/Paste to make it even easier to manage your files.

· More storage–We are increasing your storage capacity to 5GB. You keep telling us you need more so… ask no more!

You asked for them - New features! - Workspace Team Blog - Office Live Workspace Community

At Long Last, Sun Lands H.P. as a Partner - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

See the full article for more details

The two companies announced a deal Wednesday that will see H.P. offer its customers Sun’s Solaris operating system on H.P.’s best-selling servers. The arrangement follows similar deals Sun has inked with companies like I.B.M. and Dell over the years. Sun looks to broaden the appeal of Solaris, which competes against the open-source Linux and Microsoft’s Windows products.

To get at why this tie-up may or may not be significant, it’s worth exploring some of the history behind Sun’s machinations with Solaris.

[…]

Now that Sun has lined up all of the major server makers behind Solaris x86, it has run out of excuses and will be put to the test to make such a bold strategy increase revenue.

At Long Last, Sun Lands H.P. as a Partner - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

But could I sneak an iPhone into the Apple shareholder meeting? | Good Morning Silicon Valley

Go figure…

It is, of course, absolutely within Apple’s right as a company to prohibit the media from bringing communication devices to its shareholder meeting. But, just asking: Should a company that claims to be innovative and “with it” stifle the use of innovative and with-it technologies such as live blogging and BlackBerrys? And forbidding the media from bringing laptops? Perhaps the tapping on the keyboards was getting too loud and distracting, and the furious sound of scribbling with good old-fashioned pens in those little reporter notebooks is preferable.

But could I sneak an iPhone into the Apple shareholder meeting? | Good Morning Silicon Valley

FT.com / Companies / Technology - Microsoft faces up to Google over netbooks

See the full article for more details

Microsoft is preparing for a head-to-head battle with Google in a fast-growing part of the laptop software market, in a confrontation that marks the most direct encroachment yet by the internet company into Microsoft’s core operating system business.

Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, on Tuesday pointed to the coming conflict when he said Microsoft was preparing a slimmed-down version of the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system to work on so-called netbooks, or mini laptop computers.

He also said Microsoft was expecting Google’s rival Android operating system, which was developed to run on smartphones, to be shipped on some netbooks.

FT.com / Companies / Technology - Microsoft faces up to Google over netbooks

Fast-Spreading Phishing Scam Hits Gmail Users - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Tough week for Google so far

First, Google’s e-mail service froze for several hours, locking out millions of users. Now its chat service appears to be the conduit for a rapidly spreading phishing scam.

Gmail users who are logged into the accompanying chat service Google Chat, as most are, have been getting messages that appear to be from friends, urging them to click on a Web address starting with tinyurl.com that takes them to a site called ViddyHo. The site asks for the person’s Gmail log-in information and then hijacks the account, sending out chat messages to all of the user’s contacts and spreading itself further.

Fast-Spreading Phishing Scam Hits Gmail Users - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Is Social Networking Killing You? - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com

Check the full post for a timely snapshot

No less an authority on the brain’s workings than Susan Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University and the director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, told a British newspaper on Tuesday that social networking sites remind her of the way that “small babies need constant reassurance that they exist” and make her worry about the effects that this sort of stimulation is having on the brains of users.

Is Social Networking Killing You? - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com

Yahoo! News - Americans watch yet more TV, Nielsen reports by AP: Yahoo! Tech

Yikes – see the full post for more details

Americans watched more television than ever in the fourth quarter, The Nielsen Co. reported Monday, even though the Internet is providing another way to watch.

The average American older than 2 years watched television for 151 hours per month, Nielsen said.

That was up from 146 hours in the same period the previous year.

Yahoo! News - Americans watch yet more TV, Nielsen reports by AP: Yahoo! Tech

On the Road - More Business Travelers Putting Away the Suitcase - NYTimes.com

Sign of the times

Mr. Allen is not retiring from his consulting job. He is merely retiring from the business travel grind. And I hope the travel industry is paying attention because a new era is dawning. Cheap technology is part of the reason, along with a profound weariness with the chronic indignities, inconveniences and expenses of air travel.

Last year, Mr. Allen and a small group of other road-weary consultants he knows from all over the country formed an informal network linked mostly by videoconferencing technology. They were enabled by the proliferation of cheap (and sometimes even free) social networking tools — wikis, podcasts, and computer video and teleconferencing systems like Skype and ooV00.

On the Road - More Business Travelers Putting Away the Suitcase - NYTimes.com

Google Chief for Charity Steps Down on Revamp - NYTimes.com

Hmm…

Larry Brilliant, the executive director of Google.org, said late Monday that he would step down from managing Google’s philanthropic unit and signaled that Google.org might curtail its financing of nonprofit groups unless they are closely aligned with Google projects.

Dr. Brilliant said he would become chief philanthropy evangelist for Google.

Megan Smith, a longtime Google executive with experience in engineering and business development, will manage Google.org, while retaining her job as vice president for new business development at Google.

Google Chief for Charity Steps Down on Revamp - NYTimes.com

A load of Twitter - Times Online

More Twitter perspectives, via TechMeme 

“We are the most narcissistic age ever,” agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.”

For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents “a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It’s like when a parent goes into a child’s room to check the child is still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor.”

A load of Twitter - Times Online

Business & Technology | Web fails to access a screen in our lives: TVs | Seattle Times Newspaper

A snapshot from the convergence zone

Analysts and industry executives say TV manufacturers have other reasons for asserting that consumers do not want to use the Internet from their couch. For one thing, profit margins in the TV industry are as tight as can be. So adding the cost of surfing technology — which could be $100 — is one potential roadblock.

Then there is the reality of opening a television up to the Internet and, potentially, the viruses and hiccups that can creep in from outside. Consumers have become accustomed to the occasional "blue screen of death" on a PC, but imagine that happening during prime time or the Super Bowl.

"People have very little tolerance for viruses and crashes on TVs," said Eric Kim, senior vice president for the Digital Home Group at Intel. "If someone's TV ever crashes, they will pack it up and bring it back to the store."

See the full article for more details; on a related note, in today’s NYT: Don’t Count Out Cable Online

Business & Technology | Web fails to access a screen in our lives: TVs | Seattle Times Newspaper

New Search Technologies Mine the Web More Deeply - NYTimes.com

A timely reminder: relations and resources have great synergy

Beyond the realm of consumer searches, Deep Web technologies may eventually let businesses use data in new ways. For example, a health site could cross-reference data from pharmaceutical companies with the latest findings from medical researchers, or a local news site could extend its coverage by letting users tap into public records stored in government databases.

This level of data integration could eventually point the way toward something like the Semantic Web, the much-promoted — but so far unrealized — vision of a Web of interconnected data. Deep Web technologies hold the promise of achieving similar benefits at a much lower cost, by automating the process of analyzing database structures and cross-referencing the results.

New Search Technologies Mine the Web More Deeply - NYTimes.com

Digital Domain - Everyone Loves Google, Until It’s Too Big - NYTimes.com

A timely Google reality check

Google maintains that its lead in the Web search market is tenuous, saying that with a simple click of a mouse, a user’s loyalty could evaporate at any moment.

But consider this: As recently as July 2005, Google was ahead of Yahoo in market share by just six percentage points, at 36.5 percent to 30.5 percent, according to comScore, the market research company. Today, however, that advantage is much wider, at 63 percent to 21 percent.

“You almost feel sorry for Google,” said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land. “They’re doing a good job and people are turning to them. But when they pass 70 percent share, people are going to be uncomfortable about Google becoming a monopoly.”

Digital Domain - Everyone Loves Google, Until It’s Too Big - NYTimes.com

6,473 Texts a Month, But at What Cost? - washingtonpost.com

Scary…

Parents, educators and researchers are grappling with similar concerns as text messaging has exploded across the formative years of the nation's youngest generation. Teens now do more texting on their cellphones than calling. And although it's too early for conclusive data on the effects of prolific texting -- on attention span, social life, writing ability, family connections -- questions abound, even as many experts point to clear benefits.

[…]

Nationally, more than 75 billion text messages are sent a month, and the most avid texters are 13 to 17, say researchers. Teens with cellphones average 2,272 text messages a month, compared with 203 calls, according to the Nielsen Co.

6,473 Texts a Month, But at What Cost? - washingtonpost.com

Fabled City of Atlantis Spotted on Google Earth? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

It’s probably just site preparation for a new underwater Google data center…

“It’s true that many amazing discoveries have been made in Google Earth, including a pristine forest in Mozambique that is home to previously unknown species and the remains of an ancient Roman villa,” a statement from Google read. “In this case, however, what users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process. Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data.”

Not everyone is buying Google’s explanation: Debates are raging on sites such as Digg and Facebook over the true identity of the watery discovery.

Fabled City of Atlantis Spotted on Google Earth? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Most iPhone applications gathering dust | Apple - CNET News

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

iPhone users have very short attention spans.

Just 30 percent of people who buy an iPhone application actually use it the day after it was purchased, according to Pinch Media, which analyzed over 30 million downloads from Apple's App Store. And the numbers plunge from there: after 20 days, less than 5 percent of those who downloaded an application are actively using it. The drop-off is worse for free applications.

Most iPhone applications gathering dust | Apple - CNET News

Cloud Bursts as Coghead Calls It Quits | Collaboration 2.0 | ZDNet.com

Another highly visible SaaS player gone, taking customer apps along with it

Coghead, a web-based service for building and hosting custom online database applications and a software as a platform ‘utility computing’ company, announced it was going out of business today, leaving customers scrambling for alternatives within a tight timeframe.

Customers have until April 30 to extract and export their data from the various applications. This is a sharp reminder that entrusting your business processes to hosted applications you can rely on like an electric light always being there is by no means the case in this economy.

Cloud Bursts as Coghead Calls It Quits | Collaboration 2.0 | ZDNet.com

Ma.gnolia Data is Gone For Good « Data Center Knowledge

Oops…

The social bookmarking service Ma.gnolia reports that all of its user data was irretrievably lost in the Jan. 30 database crash that knocked the service offline. That means that users who were unable to recover their bookmarks through publicly available tools (including other social media sites and the Google cache) have lost all their data.

[…]

It turns out that Ma.gnolia was pretty much a one-man operation, running on two Mac OS X servers and four Mac minis. A clear lesson for users is not to assume that online services have lots of staff, lots of servers and professional backups, and to keep your own copies of your data, especially on free services.

Ma.gnolia Data is Gone For Good « Data Center Knowledge

Status: Dad Wonders If He Can Last All of Lent Without Facebook - WSJ.com

Strange days indeed…

Lenten sacrifices are meant to honor and in a small way reenact the 40 days Jesus is said to have wandered the wilderness, fasting and resisting temptation. Abstaining from Facebook for the 40 days of Lent was the rage among college students last year. This Lenten season -- which starts next week on Ash Wednesday -- the cause has been taken up by a surprising number of adults. The digital sacrifice won't be easy, they say, but it may help them reclaim their analog lives.

Status: Dad Wonders If He Can Last All of Lent Without Facebook - WSJ.com

Incredibly Dull: The Downside of Twitter

I suspect this is not an unusual pattern on planet Twitter; see the full post for more details

I've written about my experiences with Twitter before. But I am considering whether I need to stop using it. The problem is too much Twitter -- I'm becoming depressed.
I only follow a small number of people (17 at this point) and most of them are interested in knowledge management. So there is a high signal-to-noise ratio -- most of the tweets are interesting and/or intriguing. But I am finding my mind is turning off. There are so many opinions about communities of practice, so many top ten lists, articles about what you need to know, etc. Either all the world's knowledge problems have been solved and I just need to read about it (if I had the time) or there are so many "answers" I am loathe to add to the pile.

Incredibly Dull: The Downside of Twitter

Chuck's Blog: The Coming Architectural Wars

On the Cisco speculation and related market dynamics; see the full post for more perspectives from Chuck Hollis (EMC VP -- Global Marketing CTO)

Where Is EMC In All Of This?

Well, if you're an outsider looking at EMC, you've probably realized that this sort of architectural thinking could align nicely with our own.

Besides, it's not like we're exactly in love with IBM, HP and Sun, are we?

At a very basic level, people are going to need storage, back it up, tier it, etc. regardless of who wins the server architecture wars. EMC has always been agnostic to server architectures, operating systems, etc. -- that's not going to change.

But, going further, you've probably seen how we've accelerated key data center technologies like FCoE, and done everything we can to make VMware work at scale.

And, it's not to hard to see how EMC's network-centric investments in resource management (Smarts) and information-centric security (RSA) can add even more to the discussion.

Chuck's Blog: The Coming Architectural Wars

When Servers Explode « Data Center Knowledge

An intriguing hobby and form of stress management…

We’re not sure who was the first person to intentionally blow up a server. But plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, including the folks at GoGrid, who recently blew up a pile of servers to draw attention to the merits of cloud computing. Here at Data Center Knowledge, we always seek to place these type of developments in context, examining  the associated history and broader trends. In that spirit, we bring you the Gallery of Exploding Servers, a visual guide to the sometimes incendiary relationship between man and machine. For those of you with weaker constitutions, there’s always the guide to Flying and Crashing Servers as a fallback.

When Servers Explode « Data Center Knowledge

FT.com / Companies / Technology - HP cuts forecasts as sales miss target

Another stark economic reality check

Hewlett-Packard, once thought to be largely resistant to the recession because of its broad range of businesses, on Wednesday lowered its profit and sales forecasts for the year after reporting that it had missed its first-quarter sales estimates.

The world’s largest technology company registered a 1 per cent increase in sales, to $28.8bn, well off the $32bn to $32.5bn that the company had forecast. Profits fell 13 per cent to $1.85bn, or 93 cents a share, which was in line with expectations. HP’s shares were down 6 per cent in after-market trading.

FT.com / Companies / Technology - HP cuts forecasts as sales miss target

When your files are online and you aren't - The Boston Globe

See the full article for more details and a comparison with Apple MobileMe and Google Gears

The company's Live Mesh service, available at www.livemesh.com, is just the thing for creating a universal library of important files. It's officially in "beta," or test, mode but I've been using it daily for months with no major problems. You can install the Live Mesh software on Windows XP or Vista computers, or on Macs that run newer versions of Apple's Mac OS operating system. Once installed, a shared folder appears on your desktop. You can put all kinds of files into the folder, up to five gigabytes, and all are uploaded into the cloud

When your files are online and you aren't - The Boston Globe

Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption) [The New Republic]

An extensive and stark snapshot, subtitled “Why American politics and society are about to be changed for the worse,” from Paul Starr – see this page for the full article (in print view). His concluding paragraphs:

For those with the skills and interest to take advantage of this new world of news, there should be much to be pleased with. Instead of being limited to a local paper, such readers already enjoy access to a broader range of publications and discussions than ever before. But without a local newspaper or even with a shrunken one, many other people will learn less about what is going on in the world. As of now, moreover, no source in any medium seems willing and able to pay for the general-interest reporting that newspapers are abandoning. Philanthropy can help to offset some of these cutbacks, but it is unlikely to make up fully for what we are losing.

News coverage is not all that newspapers have given us. They have lent the public a powerful means of leverage over the state, and this leverage is now at risk. If we take seriously the notion of newspapers as a fourth estate or a fourth branch of government, the end of the age of newspapers implies a change in our political system itself. Newspapers have helped to control corrupt tendencies in both government and business. If we are to avoid a new era of corruption, we are going to have to summon that power in other ways. Our new technologies do not retire our old responsibilities.

Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption)

How Facebook is taking over our lives - Feb. 17, 2009 [Fortune]

An extensive Facebook snapshot, via Techmeme

His [CEO Mark Zuckerberg's] ultimate goal is less poetic - and perhaps more ambitious: to turn Facebook into the planet's standardized communication (and marketing) platform, as ubiquitous and intuitive as the telephone but far more interactive, multidimensional - and indispensable. Your Facebook ID quite simply will be your gateway to the digital world, Zuckerberg predicts. "We think that if you can build one worldwide platform where you can just type in anyone's name, find the person you're looking for, and communicate with them," he told a German audience in January, "that's a really valuable system to be building."

How Facebook is taking over our lives - Feb. 17, 2009

And So Begins the Next Mainframe Saga - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

More on Cisco’s attempt to expand its role in the 3-box (network, storage, and apps) data center

Cisco has yet to specify exactly what it will ship. But my conversations with numerous people familiar with Cisco’s plans peg its new product, likely due in March, as a large cabinet filled with servers, switches and storage systems, along with bundled virtualization and management software. Cisco looks to ship the fastest virtualization system on the planet by teaming standard hardware components with some specialized hardware developed by the team it acquired when the company bought the hardware start-up Nuova Systems.

And So Begins the Next Mainframe Saga - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Software Is the Attraction at Cellphone Show - NYTimes.com

A very dynamic market…

The shifting focus to mobile operating systems has shaken up a market that had been dominated by Nokia, the Finnish cellphone maker, whose sales had helped make Symbian the de facto leader. Since Apple introduced the iPhone, and Google released its free, open-source Android system, Symbian’s lead has started to shrink.

At the end of 2008, Symbian’s share of the global market for mobile operating systems had fallen by almost a third from the end of 2005, to 52.4 percent from 74.3 percent, according to Canalys, a research firm in Reading, England.

Over the same period, RIM rose to 16.5 percent from 8.6 percent; Microsoft rose to 13.9 percent from 7.9 percent; and the iPhone grabbed 9.6 percent of the market.

Software Is the Attraction at Cellphone Show - NYTimes.com

Can Obama’s Online Hotline Deliver? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

See the full article for more context-setting

Making pretty Web sites appears to be a core competency of the Obama Administration. Just as the president signed the economic stimulus bill, Recovery.gov went online to chronicle the spending of the $787 billion appropriated by the law.

On Day 1, the site doesn’t have that much information on it. There is a time line of what will happen with the law’s programs and an interactive map showing how many jobs the government estimates it will create or save in each state. But soon, the site promises, there will be information on where and how the funds are spent including evaluations of each program’s performance.

Can Obama’s Online Hotline Deliver? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Facebook Backs Away From Policy Change - WSJ.com

More interesting times for Facebook

"Over the past couple of days, we have received a lot of questions and comments about these updated terms and what they mean for people and their information," read the statement, which Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg expanded upon in a blog post. "Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised."

He added that the company would work on a "substantial revision" of the terms and give Facebook users a role in crafting it by voicing their opinions through a group on its Web site, "Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities."

Facebook Backs Away From Policy Change - WSJ.com

Official Google Blog: From the height of this place

Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s SVP, Product Management, shares his vision – see the full post 

We are standing at a unique moment in history which will help define not just the Internet for the next few years, but the Internet that individuals and societies around the world will traverse for decades. As Googlers our responsibility is nothing less than to help support the future of information, the global transition in how it is created, shared, consumed, and used to solve big problems. Our challenge is to steer incessantly toward greatness, to never think small when we can think big, to strive on with the work Larry and Sergey began over ten years ago, and from this task we will not be moved. In a world that feels like it is lit by lightning, speed wins, and we have a responsibility to our users to not retreat, to not be content to stand still, to not be complacent or near-sighted. The Internet has had a profound and remarkable impact in the past decade. Now, from the height of this place, let's appreciate its implications and pursue its promise.

Official Google Blog: From the height of this place

Business & Technology | Microsoft unveils LG phone deal, updates software | Seattle Times Newspaper

It’s fascinating to explore the co-opetition dynamics in this market 

LG, the third-biggest phone maker, will produce about 50 models that run Windows over the next five years, said Scott Rockfeld, a director in Redmond-based Microsoft's mobile business.

LG, based in Seoul, South Korea, will use the software as its primary program for smartphones, devices that can send e-mail and browse the Web.

Business & Technology | Microsoft unveils LG phone deal, updates software | Seattle Times Newspaper

The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives - NYTimes.com

Another timely John Markoff reality check – which in part explains why Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Nokia, among others, are competing in phone-centric apps and information services

It has been 25 years since the desktop, with its files and folders, was introduced as a way to think about what went on inside a personal computer. The World Wide Web brought other ways of imagining the flow of data. With the dominance of the cellphone, a new metaphor is emerging for how we organize, find and use information. New in one sense, that is. It is also as ancient as humanity itself. That metaphor is the map.

“The map underlies man’s ability to perceive,” said Richard Saul Wurman, a graphic designer who was a pioneer in the use of maps as a generalized way to search for information of all kinds before the emergence of the online world.

The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives - NYTimes.com

FT.com / In depth - Android’s progress elevates Google’s mobile aspirations

On a related note, also see CNet’s Freescale aims to sell Google Android Netbooks

As Mobile World Congress begins, it is easy to forget how quickly Google has become part of the mobile story. At last year’s event, Google had only just unveiled Android, its open-source mobile operating system. The G1 phone was still just a rumour. The company had applications for mobile phones, but they were usually a cut-down version of the desktop PC program.

This year, the company will not just be at Mobile World Congress to showcase the G1 and promote Android. It now has a fully fledged application store – Android Market – to rival that of the iPhone, and is looking to create mobile applications that will become as ingrained on mobiles as desktop search is for PC users.

FT.com / In depth - Android’s progress elevates Google’s mobile aspirations

Facebook’s Users Ask Who Owns Their Information - NYTimes.com

This is apparently turning out to be an interesting case study in information literacy – see the full article for more context-setting

Facebook moved swiftly to say it was not claiming to own the material that users upload. It said the terms had been updated to better reflect user behavior — for instance, to acknowledge that when a user deletes an account, any comments the user had posted on a page remain visible.

“We certainly did not — and did not intend — to create any new right or interest for Facebook in users’ data by issuing the new terms,” said Barry Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman.

Facebook’s Users Ask Who Owns Their Information - NYTimes.com

Cash-Rich Oracle Scoops Up Bargains in Recession Spree - WSJ.com

A timely Oracle strategy snapshot in the WSJ; see the full article for more details

The software giant completed 10 acquisitions in the past year, ranging from a maker of insurance-policy-writing tools, to a designer of "plan-o-gram" software used by stores to maximize their use of shelf space. This month it bought mValent Inc., a tiny maker of software that helps configure other software.

These deals, whose terms haven't been reported previously, put Oracle in a small club of cash-rich companies bargain-hunting amid the worst economy in a generation. It's a buyer's market: As traditional sources of investment and cash get scarcer -- including, of course, paying customers -- even some companies with high-quality products have turned into desperate sellers.

Cash-Rich Oracle Scoops Up Bargains in Recession Spree - WSJ.com

Facebook hits 175 million user mark | Digital Media - CNET News

Amazing…

A little more than a month after announcing it had 150 million active users, Facebook has reached 175 million active users--the statistic the social-networking site prefers to use, rather than registered accounts overall.

Dave Morin, who runs Facebook's application platform team, announced the milestone Friday evening on his Twitter/FriendFeed. Facebook reached 150 million just more than two months after reaching 120 million and about four months after reaching 100 million.

Facebook hits 175 million user mark | Digital Media - CNET News

Flash 10 coming to most smartphones in 2010 | 3GSM blog - CNET Reviews

More details on Adobe’s strategic bet to dump Flash Lite and move the full Flash player to smartphones

A full-fledged version of the Adobe Flash player is coming soon to a whole slew of smartphones. Unfortunately, Apple's iPhone isn't one of them.

Adobe announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress here Monday that Flash Player 10, which is the full version of Flash that runs on PCs, will be available on smartphones running Windows Mobile, Google's Android, Nokia S60/Symbian, and the new Palm operating systems. Devices with Flash Player 10 are expected to hit the market starting in early 2010.

Flash 10 coming to most smartphones in 2010 3GSM blog - CNET Reviews

Link by Link - As Data Collecting Grows, Privacy Erodes - NYTimes.com

A timely reality check – see the full article for details

The way Mr. Rodriguez’s positive steroid test result became public followed a path increasingly common in the computer age: third-party data collection. We are typically told that personal information is anonymously tracked for one reason — usually something abstract like making search results more accurate, recommending book titles or speeding traffic through the toll booths on the thruways. But it is then quickly converted into something traceable to an individual, and potentially life-changing.

Link by Link - As Data Collecting Grows, Privacy Erodes - NYTimes.com

Abraham Lincoln | The Economist

Also at the intersection of newspapers and technology this week, and another classy example of The Economist at work, you can read a collection of articles about Lincoln – i.e., articles originally published in The Economist between 1860 and 1865.

The new president-elect

“THE success of the Republican candidate for the Presidency in the United States will prove one of the greatest events of modern times, if it indicates, as we trust, no mere accidental fluctuation of public opinion in the direction of the Anti- Slavery cause, but the commencement of a permanent and sustained movement.”

See article: “The Republican President's Creed”, November 24th 1860

[…]

See article: “The Assassination of Mr Lincoln”, April 29th 1865

Abraham Lincoln The Economist

An iTunes moment for readers? | An iTunes moment? | The Economist

Two timely e-book/Kindle related articles in this week’s Economist – the final paragraph of the first:

Amazon clearly has designs on this market with the Kindle, even though it is primarily intended for reading e-books. But Apple is arguably in a much stronger position. There are already millions of iPhones and touch-screen iPods in circulation, and the company has long been rumoured to be working on a larger “tablet” device. Selling e-books and newspapers via iTunes, which already has millions of paying customers, would be simple. True, Steve Jobs, Apple’s mercurial boss, has expressed scepticism about e-readers, claiming that “people don’t read any more”. But Mr Jobs has a record of insisting that Apple is not interested in making a particular product (a video iPod, a mobile phone)—right up until the moment when he unveils one. Might e-books soon be the next example?

The second article, “Well Read”, includes:

Newspapers and magazines are on the same trajectory. Their paper editions are in decline in most of the developed world, as readers opt for the web versions on their computers and laptops, or on smart-phones such as the iPhone. The Kindle could accelerate that shift since it also lets users subscribe to news publications, which are automatically delivered.

All this has led to a new phrase in the book and newspaper industries: Is this the “iPod moment”? It is a layered and loaded analogy. On the one hand the iPod, Apple’s now legendary music-player, and its associated iTunes store opened up a new market for legal digital-music downloads. On the other hand, the iPod accelerated the decline in CD sales and shifted power from record labels to Apple. Will the Kindle similarly put Amazon in a dominant position, while weakening publishers?

An iTunes moment for readers? | An iTunes moment? | The Economist

Politicians on Twitter | Tweeting the people | The Economist

Hmm…

When politicians say they want to talk to their constituents, it is often a polite fiction. But dozens of men and women in Congress have discovered that they can use Twitter to keep in touch. Pete Hoekstra, a Republican representative from Michigan, recently caused Congress’s first “twitterversy” when he tweeted that he was in Baghdad, which struck some critics as a security risk.

Most politicians tweet to promote themselves. They (or their staffers) use the service to distribute press releases and friendly editorials. But others have embraced the informal nature of the medium.

Politicians on Twitter | Tweeting the people | The Economist

Benchmark's Rich Barton: Twitter will succeed as a business - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

More Twitter investment and strategy (or lack thereof) details

In addition to Benchmark, Twitter is backed by Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment vehicle for Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, also is an investor.
Figuring out a business model for Twitter or one that builds off the momentum of the service has become somewhat of a sport in the startup community. Silicon Alley Insider recently held a Twitter business plan competition. At the recent Seattle Startup Weekend, several of the proposals (TweetReporterts, TweetSum) were connected to the microblogging service.

Benchmark's Rich Barton: Twitter will succeed as a business - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

IBM-Cognos One Year Later | The Intelligent Enterprise Blog

It’ll be interesting, over the next few years, to see how this acquisition-and-integration strategy works out for IBM

The four segments of the Information Management business are Data Management (databases), Enterprise Content Management, InfoSphere (information integration), and Business Intelligence and Performance Management. This vast portfolio is chocked full of bits, pieces and huge chunks acquired from independents including Informix, FileNet, Ascential, DWL, Trigo and, of course, Cognos. Dissecting the performance must be hard even for IBM's bean counters, but I thought it might be easier to looking at a discreet, recently added chunk like Cognos. Unfortuntely, Tom Inman, Vice President of IOD Acceleration (how's that for a title?), just wouldn't go there.

"We're not going to break that out explicitly," Inman said, adding the gauzy assurance that "organic growth [for the Information Management division] was very solid and Cognos had a great last quarter."

See the full article for more details – but not details on Cognos financial performance, so maybe the IBM strategy should be called AIO, for acquisition, integration, and obfuscation…

IBM-Cognos One Year Later | The Intelligent Enterprise Blog

FT.com / Companies / Technology - Twitter receives fresh Silicon Valley funding

Interesting times…

Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners led a $35m funding round, with Benchmark partner Peter Fenton joining the Twitter board.

The San Francisco start-up last year rejected a takeover offer by the social networking service Facebook, valued at up to $500m. The Techcrunch blog reported last month that Twitter had been discussing fresh investments that would value it at about $250m.

Its new VC round suggests its founders – Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone – are confident they can go it alone and build a profitable service.

FT.com / Companies / Technology - Twitter receives fresh Silicon Valley funding

Do We Need a New Internet? - NYTimes.com

Another timely reality check from John Markoff – see the full article for more details on Conficker and other risks

What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a “gated community” where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there.

“Unless we’re willing to rethink today’s Internet,” says Nick McKeown, a Stanford engineer involved in building a new Internet, “we’re just waiting for a series of public catastrophes.”

Do We Need a New Internet? - NYTimes.com

Ping - How Google Decides to Pull the Plug - NYTimes.com

A timely Google reality check

“There’s no single equation that describes us, but we try to use data wherever possible,” said Jeff Huber, the company’s senior vice president of engineering. “What products have found an audience? Which ones are growing?”

All of the shuttered projects failed several of Google’s key tests for continued incubation: They were not especially popular with customers; they had difficulty attracting Google employees to develop them; they didn’t solve a big enough problem; or they failed to achieve internal performance targets known as “objectives and key results.”

Ping - How Google Decides to Pull the Plug - NYTimes.com

Yahoo! News - More Americans updating status online: Pew by AFP: Yahoo! Tech

I suppose it all depends on what the Pew researchers consider “another service,” but it’s still an impressive percentage

Eleven percent of Internet-connected US adults updated their status online using Twitter or another social network in December, nearly twice as many as in May, a survey released on Thursday said.

The survey by the Washington-based Pew Internet and American Life Project also found that the median age of a user of micro-blogging service Twitter is 31 years old as opposed to 27 for MySpace, 26 for Facebook and 40 for LinkedIn.

Pew said that 11 percent of the 2,253 Web-connected adults surveyed in December said they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, up from nine percent in November and six percent in May.

Yahoo! News - More Americans updating status online: Pew by AFP: Yahoo! Tech

Google pays $51.7m for newspaper destruction metaphor • The Register

Good candidate for headline-of-the-day :)…

If there's one moment that sums up the gradual destruction of the world's newspapers, this is it.

Google, the world's largest online ad broker, has just paid neatly $52 million for a 53-year-old paper mill in southern Finland, hoping to replace it with a data center.

This morning, global paper-maker Stora Enso told the world that the online ad giant is shelling out 40 million euros for its Summa Mill in Kymenlaakso, Finland and most of the surrounding land.

Google pays $51.7m for newspaper destruction metaphor • The Register

FT.com / Companies / Media - Google cuts staff as radio plan fails

See the full article for more details

Google’s ambitious attempt to push its advertising business beyond the confines of the internet suffered a serious dent on Thursday as the internet giant abandoned a high-profile move into radio advertising.

The failure of the three-year effort follows on the heels of a decision to scrap its plan to sell advertising for newspapers and magazines.

The radio venture, however, was a far more significant undertaking, and was accompanied by its first large-scale acquisition when it agreed to pay up to $1.24bn for radio advertising technology company dMarc in 2006.

FT.com / Companies / Media - Google cuts staff as radio plan fails

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Collaborate to Clean Up Web - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Glad to see this mode of co-opetition

In a rare instance of collaboration among otherwise fierce rivals, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft said Thursday that they would support a new Web standard that will allow millions of Web publishers to remove duplicate pages from their Web sites. As a result of the effort, search engines should be able to find and index more Web pages, making their search results more comprehensive.

“There is a lot of clutter on the Web and with this, publishers will be able to clean up a lot of junk,” said Matt Cutts, an engineer who heads Google’s spam fighting efforts. “I think it is going to gain traction pretty quickly.”

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Collaborate to Clean Up Web - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Google Ends Its Project for Selling Radio Ads - NYTimes.com

Hmm…

Google said it was ending its radio project, Google Audio Ads, because it had failed to live up to expectations. Up to 40 people are expected to lose their jobs.

It was the second time in two months that Google had killed a program meant to expand its advertising business offline, suggesting that the appeal of Google’s automated model for selling ads may be far more limited than the company once hoped.

Google Ends Its Project for Selling Radio Ads - NYTimes.com

Adoption of Microsoft Live@edu Continues to Grow With Universities Worldwide: Education institutions worldwide embrace Microsoft Live@edu to enrich student experience

Another timely example of Microsoft customers benefitting by having a consistent platform architecture for software + services

By signing up for Live@edu, students, faculty and staff members gain instant access to a comprehensive suite of tools, including Outlook Live for their e-mail needs, Office Live Workspace to access their documents online and share and collaborate with others, Windows Live Messenger to interact in near-real time, and SkyDrive for 25 GB of online data storage space. Live@edu works across the range of devices students already use, giving them ubiquitous access to their coursework and powerful communications and collaboration tools. And because it is designed to work with campuses’ existing IT infrastructure, including Microsoft Exchange Server, Live@edu is a smarter choice compared with other free educational offerings. This enables institutions to provide students, faculty and staff members, and alumni with the tools they need while continuing to minimizing their overhead costs — an imperative in today’s economic climate.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/feb09/02-1220MLiveEduPR.mspx

Microsoft Collaborates With Industry to Disrupt Conficker Worm: Microsoft offers $250,000 reward for Conficker arrest and conviction.

An interesting malware milestone – see the full press release for more details

Today, Microsoft Corp. announced a partnership with technology industry leaders and academia to implement a coordinated, global response to the Conficker (aka Downadup) worm. Together with security researchers, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and operators within the Domain Name System, Microsoft coordinated a response designed to disable domains targeted by Conficker. Microsoft also announced a $250,000 reward for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet.

Microsoft Collaborates With Industry to Disrupt Conficker Worm: Microsoft offers $250,000 reward for Conficker arrest and conviction.

Technology Review: Sniffing Out Illicit BitTorrent Files

Hmm – see the full article for more details

A new technique has been developed for detecting and tracking illegal content transferred using the BitTorrent file-trading protocol. According to its creators, the approach can monitor networks without interrupting the flow of data and provides investigators with hard evidence of illicit file transfers.

Contraband files might include pirated movies, music, or software, and even child pornography. When the tool detects such a file, it keeps a record of the network addresses involved for later analysis, says Major Karl Schrader, who led the work at the Air Force Institute of Technology, in Kettering, OH.

Technology Review: Sniffing Out Illicit BitTorrent Files

LepoLand - A Blog by Alan Lepofsky - RIP Domino Document Manager

See the full post for more details

Software withdrawal and support discontinuance: Domino Document Manager
Effective May 12, 2009, IBM will withdraw from marketing, part numbers from the following product releases licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement:
5724-E61 6.5.1 Domino® Document Manager V6.5.1
5724-J25 7.0.0 IBM® Lotus® Domino Document Manager V7.0.0

So the only semi-successful Lotus “Notes companion product,” starting as Domino.Doc many years ago, is history. An excerpt from a comment on the post:

As a former DomDoc customer and current Quickr customer (since the release date of QP 2.0) I have to say that I find there is still quite a large hole in the product portfolio that Quickr will not fill.

LepoLand - A Blog by Alan Lepofsky - RIP Domino Document Manager

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Another little IBM deal

Another timely reality check – see the full post for more context-setting on IBM’s EC2 announcement

Prickett Morgan also notes, "If compute clouds want to succeed as businesses instead of toys, they have to run the same commercial software that IT departments deploy internally on their own servers. Which is why [the] deal struck between IBM and Amazon's Web Services subsidiary is important, perhaps more so for Amazon than for Big Blue."

It doesn't seem like such a big deal, and it probably isn't. But you never know. The licensing of MS-DOS seemed like small potatoes when it happened. Could the accidental kingmaker have struck again?

I agree with the comment about running the same software on-prem and in the cloud; that’s one of the reasons I think IBM’s LotusLive strategy, which starts with acquisitions and integration rather than hosting its on-prem offerings (with the exception of the rebranded IBM Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging, now LotusLive Notes), is going to hit some enterprise roadblocks

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Another little IBM deal

State of the Art - Twitter Is What You Make It - NYTimes.com

Zen and the art of Twittering? See the full article for David Pogue’s take.

My confusion continued until, at a conference, I met Evan Williams, chief executive and co-founder of Twitter. I told him about all the rules, all the advice, all the “you’re not doing it right” gripers. I told him that the technology was exciting, but that all the naysayers and rule-makers were dampening my enthusiasm.

He shook his head apologetically — clearly, he’s heard all this before — and told me the truth about Twitter: that they’re all wrong.

Or, put another way, that they’re all right.

Twitter, in other words, is precisely what you want it to be. It can be a business tool, a teenage time-killer, a research assistant, a news source — whatever. There are no rules, or at least none that apply equally well to everyone.

State of the Art - Twitter Is What You Make It - NYTimes.com

Google: We’re Gonna Turn It On. We’re Gonna Bring You the Power. | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

A timely reality check on Google’s latest news 

Like many Google (GOOG) initiatives, PowerMeter is giddy with change-the-world altruism. And change the world it may. But like many Google initiatives, there’s a trade-off: the disclosure of increasingly more information about our predilections, our interests and habits to a company that’s amassing a vast data set about customer behavior.

I hope PowerMeter doesn’t become a category disruptor, as other companies, such Greenbox Technology (founded by the team that created Flash), have been working in this domain for a while, and are likely to stay focused on it, while Google’s attention may shift elsewhere, as it has with other endeavors (such as Google Notebook) lately.

Google: We’re Gonna Turn It On. We’re Gonna Bring You the Power. | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

Windows Mobile Team Blog : Mobile Manager for Netflix

Pretty cool, if you’re a Netflix fan – see the full post for more details

A few weeks ago at the Consumer Electronics Show(CES), Steve Ballmer talked about the Microsoft vision for connected experiences that extend across the three main screens people use every day. Specifically, PCs, mobile devices, and TVs. As part of that discussion Robbie Bach showed a demo of a Windows Mobile Netflix application that would allow users to update their movie queues from their phone. Well, as of today, the application is available for download (desktop/mobile) and in fact does more than just let you update your queue. The first official Netflix application for Windows Mobile phones, this app makes it simple to manage a Netflix experience from your mobile device. Leveraging the Netflix API, but with some exclusive extensions, I think Mobile Manager for Netflix is a great example of an on-device application that interfaces seamlessly with a web service.

Windows Mobile Team Blog : Mobile Manager for Netflix

Windows Live Photo & Video Blog : Synchronize photos on two computers!

A handy extension to Windows Live Sync

With Sync, keeping photos synchronized on two computers is simple. Download and install Windows Live Essentials on two computers, launch Windows Live Photo Gallery on both and sign in on each using the same Windows Live ID. You’re on your way to synchronizing photos!

It gets better.

Say you edit a photo on your home computer that's synchronized with your laptop. Later, while looking at that photo on your laptop, you decide you don't like the edit you made and to want to revert back to the original. With Photo Gallery, you know that's possible, but you edited the photo on your other computer. With Sync, your photo's file history is also synchronized so you can undo changes you've made from either computer!

Windows Live Photo & Video Blog : Synchronize photos on two computers!

New Media Breaks in, but Tradition Lives On - NYTimes.com

Interesting times

President Obama on Monday evening became the 10th American president to call on Helen Thomas at a White House news conference. And he was the first to call on Sam Stein, a reporter for The Huffington Post, whose Internet publication sprung to life during Mr. Obama’s candidacy.

[…]

The White House decided in advance which reporters would be selected. And on Monday night, correspondents for The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, Time and Newsweek were not on the list.

New Media Breaks in, but Tradition Lives On - NYTimes.com

Cheaper cheap laptop promised - The Boston Globe

See the full article for more updates on the enigmatic OLPC

It's an ambitious agenda for the foundation, which recently dismissed about 32 workers - half of its staff - due to falling corporate donations and the disas trous decline in holiday sales of the XO laptop. Christopher Dawson, director of technology at the Athol-Royalston Regional School District, who blogs about educational technology at the ZDNet news site, said Negroponte's team went wrong by trying to produce and distribute the computer themselves instead of leaving that to private companies. "There are some great idea people at OLPC," said Dawson, "but they don't have the marketing and manufacturing skills to put it all together."

Cheaper cheap laptop promised - The Boston Globe

vowe dot net :: Mis-match

See the full post for an interesting comment thread discussion

Lots of things have been said about IBM laying off some of their best people, offering some of them jobs in low-wage regions. This from a company with record profits, in business areas that report record growth over years.

I understand that businesses have to adjust to changing markets. If a company feels it needs to lay off people, that can only mean one of two things: bad outlook or bad ethics. We will see what it is for IBM.

vowe dot net :: Mis-match

Technology Review: Amazon Unwraps Kindle 2.0

Another interesting aspect of Kindle 2.0

The Kindle 2's biggest new feature is text to speech, powered by software from Nuance. The device can read a book aloud to a user, and is designed to make it easy to switch between reading and listening. At Monday's launch event, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, demonstrated this technology by having the Kindle read from the Gettysburg Address. The device betrayed the stilted speech that is characteristic of most text-to-speech software, but nonetheless pronounced the words clearly and accurately.

Technology Review: Amazon Unwraps Kindle 2.0

FT.com / Companies / Technology - IBM to expand into cloud computing

I doubt this is for IBM’s communication/collaboration products, however, since IBM currently has three largely distinct platforms in those domains (Domino, WebSphere, and LotusLive)

IBM is set to accelerate its push into the emerging cloud computing business on Tuesday with a new cloud computing division whose head will report directly to Sam Palmisano, the company’s chief executive officer and chairman.

In a demonstration of Big Blue’s growing capabilities in the field, Mr Palmisano is also due to demonstrate a new service that would let customers automatically switch some of their computing tasks over to IBM’s datacentres at times when their own resources are stretched, creating what IBM called an “overflow cloud” for corporate IT.

FT.com / Companies / Technology - IBM to expand into cloud computing

Business & Technology | Updated Kindle opens new chapter for Amazon.com | Seattle Times Newspaper

Timing and tenacity help as well…

Q: Did you have to build something like this to maintain Amazon's position as a bookseller?

A: To get this whole ecosystem to work, we had to build an integrated, seamless reading experience. Keep in mind we had tried the unintegrated, unseamless approach because we've been in electronic books for years and it didn't work, nobody cared. So it's the seamlessness, of putting the whole thing together and making it really easy and clean for people, that's making it work.

Business & Technology | Updated Kindle opens new chapter for Amazon.com | Seattle Times Newspaper

Cisco’s Cash Hoard Swells Along With Acquisition Rumors - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

See the full article for more details

As word of Cisco’s debt sale hit Wall Street, the standard chatter surrounding possible targets began anew. As usual, companies like EMC, NetApp, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat and BMC were discussed as desirable properties.

Any one of those companies would complement Cisco’s push into the server market, where it plans to sell a virtualization system that includes servers, switches and software from VMware. BMC is said to play a role in this new product with its management software and the start-up Scalent, which handles virtualization management, has been mentioned as well in my conversations with people who know about Cisco’s plans.

Cisco’s Cash Hoard Swells Along With Acquisition Rumors - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Amazon Introduces Upgraded Kindle Book Reader - NYTimes.com

See the full article for more analysis

Amazon faces a serious challenge from Google, which has scanned some seven million books, many of them out of print. Google said last week that it would soon sell books from its publishing partners for reading on mobile devices like the iPhone from Apple and phones running Google’s Android operating system.

Addressing Google’s initiatives, Mr. Bezos said in an interview that Amazon knows what book buyers want and stressed the company’s digital catalog of 230,000 newer books and best sellers.

“We have tens of millions of customers buying books from us every day, and we know what it is that people want to read,” Mr. Bezos said.

Amazon Introduces Upgraded Kindle Book Reader - NYTimes.com

For latest Kindle, a flow of adjectives and speculation - The Boston Globe

Hmm – sort of like Google’s vision, except Amazon.com evidently thinks content producers should be paid…

The Kindle and similar devices inevitably raise a question about the future of printed books: Will the convenience of electronic reading make the experience of curling up with a book a thing of the past? Most authorities on the place of books in society doubt it. Yet Bezos yesterday made the new Kindle sound like the dawn of a new millennium. "Our vision is every book ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds," he said at the unveiling.

For latest Kindle, a flow of adjectives and speculation - The Boston Globe

Facebook: 25 Things I Didn't Want to Know About You - TIME

Another mainstream media anti-social-networking rant

But it's [Facebook's "25 Things About Me" meme is] just so stupid. Most people aren't funny, they aren't insightful, and they share way too much. Facebook is a loose social network; a "friend" on Facebook might translate to someone you'd barely recognize in real life. I don't care that my college roommate's sister is anemic or that my stepcousin's boyfriend gets nervous around old people (apparently he's afraid they're going to die). (See the best social-networking applications.)

Later in the article, which, as I type this, is the most popular article on time.com:

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I've finally found something more stupid than Twitter.

 

Facebook: 25 Things I Didn't Want to Know About You - TIME

Play Games With Your Resume - washingtonpost.com

Sign of the times – see the full article for more context-setting

"Organized and led my 50-member guild through three successful back-to-back Nexus runs." You don't see that written on anyone's résumé, but apparently some folks do list the level and class of their World of Warcraft characters. This might seem a little far-fetched, but associate professor--and director of MIT's Education Arcade Program--Eric Klopfer says that a number of recent studies have examined what practical skills a person can pick up by playing electronic games. Can you legitimately learn something from WoW besides efficient techniques for slinging fireballs at foes?

Play Games With Your Resume - washingtonpost.com

Growing Rich by Blogging Is a High-Tech Fairy Tale | Newsweek Daniel Lyons | Techtonic Shifts | Newsweek.com

Former Fake Steve Jobs on blogging – excerpt:

My first epiphany occurred in August 2007, when The New York Times ran a story revealing my identity, which until then I'd kept secret. On that day more than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I'd ever had—and through Google's AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81. Soon after this I struck an advertising deal that paid better wages. But I never made enough to quit my day job. Eventually I shut down—not for financial reasons, but because Steve Jobs appeared to be in poor health. I walked away feeling burned out and weighing 20 pounds more than when I started. I also came away with a sneaking suspicion that while blogs can do many wonderful things, generating huge amounts of money isn't one of them.

Of course, things aren’t going so smoothly in the mainstream media either, e.g., FFSJ’s employer Newsweek – from today’s NYT: Newsweek Plans Makeover to Fit a Smaller Audience

Growing Rich by Blogging Is a High-Tech Fairy Tale | Newsweek Daniel Lyons | Techtonic Shifts | Newsweek.com

Offering Free Investment Advice by Anonymous Volunteers - NYTimes.com

Interesting times…

Would you trust a Web site created by anonymous individuals to give you better advice on stocks than professional advisers? Wikinvest hopes so.

Following the model of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikinvest is building a database of user-generated investment information on popular stocks. A senior at Yale writes about the energy industry, for example, while a former stockbroker covers technology and a mother in Arizona tracks children’s retail chains.

Offering Free Investment Advice by Anonymous Volunteers - NYTimes.com

Electronic Book Start-Up Finds Partners - NYTimes.com

E-book competition heats up

Plastic Logic, maker of an electronic book reader, plans to announce partnership deals on Monday that it says will bring a number of major publications to its planned device.

The company plans to make a device with a 10.7-inch diagonal electronic display, larger than the screens on an Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader, two of the more popular models currently on the market. Plastic Logic says the device will be available early next year. It uses the same technology to display print as its main competitors.

Electronic Book Start-Up Finds Partners - NYTimes.com

Online video's new model | Hulu who? | The Economist

Perhaps the invisible hand is about to slap YouTube hard…

Today, even though advertising is destined for a depression, Hulu appears to have clarified much of the confusion. Mr Kilar will not say what revenue or profit Hulu is making. But it seems to be successful by any measure. Although Hulu is still far behind YouTube (see chart), users have been flocking to it, watching 216m videos in December. Just as importantly, Hulu’s inventory for advertisers appears to be sold out. So Hulu is in the rare position of being able to increase inventory (through new content and more views) and make money from it. Hulu now has more than 100 advertisers, including big brands such as McDonald’s, Bank of America and Best Buy.

Online video's new model | Hulu who? | The Economist

Why the young go online | Virtual pleasures | The Economist

Another timely and stark reality check from The Economist (which is by far my favorite newspaper)

The question in many internet-watchers’ minds is this: as young surfers are exposed to facts, sights, sounds and a range of interlocutors that are far beyond their parents’ ken, how will they use that access? Will they try to change the world, or simply settle for enjoying themselves?

There is so much evidence of the latter choice that pundits have invented a new word—cyber-hedonism—to describe it. To the dismay of idealists, young people in many countries seem to be giving up the political struggles of previous generations and opting instead for a sort of digital nirvana, revelling in a vast supply of movies, music, instant communication and of course, sexual opportunity. One appealing thing about cyber-hedonism is that, compared with politics, it’s less likely to attract the authorities’ attention.

Why the young go online | Virtual pleasures | The Economist

How to Save Your Newspaper - TIME

An interesting (and perhaps not entirely objective) snapshot in Time.

Newspapers have more readers than ever. Their content, as well as that of newsmagazines and other producers of traditional journalism, is more popular than ever — even (in fact, especially) among young people.

The problem is that fewer of these consumers are paying. Instead, news organizations are merrily giving away their news. According to a Pew Research Center study, a tipping point occurred last year: more people in the U.S. got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines.

I worry about fourth estate market dynamics, but I also find my local newspaper of limited value these days (and the TV news even worse).

How to Save Your Newspaper - TIME

Will Work for Praise - BusinessWeek

An interesting checkpoint from BW – see the full article for a snapshot of ThisNext, which will be happy to have you add value to their site for no compensation, if you are so inclined

Beyond brand-hungry strivers, masses of free laborers—from coders building Linux open-source software to editors fine-tuning an entry on Wikipedia—continue to toil without ever seeing a payday, or even angling for one. Many find compensation in currencies that predate the market economy. These include praise from peers, a respected place within a community, victories in online contests, and satisfaction from helping others.

The challenge for managers all across the economy is to harness as much of this free labor and brainpower as possible to their own enterprises.

Will Work for Praise - BusinessWeek

Recovery.Gov

Another encouraging use of information technology

 

Recovery.Gov

Digital Domain - Why Television Still Shines in a World of Screens - NYTimes.com

If you are still inclined to read, check out the full article for a stark reality check

Consider that the average American household consists of 2.7 persons and contains 2.9 television sets, in front of which we sit for record-setting spells, according to Nielsen figures. In the quarter ended Sept. 30, the typical American watched 142 hours of television monthly, up about five hours from the same quarter the previous year. Internet use averaged more than 27 hours monthly, an increase of an hour and a half, according to Nielsen.

We are so smitten with screens that we often can’t bear to choose one over another: 31 percent of Internet use occurs while we’re in front of a TV set. We are also taking an interest in watching video on our phones: 100 million handsets are video-capable.

Digital Domain - Why Television Still Shines in a World of Screens - NYTimes.com

The End of Alone - The Boston Globe

Another timely snapshot – see the full article 

While we humans need social interaction, he's in agreement that we won't find it through Twittering and texting. Cacioppo points to research showing that electronic communication can increase social isolation and depression "when it replaces more tangible forms of human contact." Another team of psychologists termed this form of communication "social snacking." But, as he writes, a snack is not a meal.

So why do we feel so compelled to swap messages with people who aren't next to us and rack up hundreds of friends to keep electronic tabs on?

The End of Alone - The Boston Globe