Recruiting Via Your Employees’ Social Networks - NYTimes.com

A timely snapshot

Until recently, Facebook might have been more likely to be viewed as a barrier to getting a job. Cautionary tales circulate of job offers rescinded after an employer discovered unseemly content on an applicant’s Facebook page. Social network users have been advised to sanitize their personal pages when job hunting, lest potential employers spot an inappropriate photo or comment.

But now more personal pages, profiles and social networks are serving as fodder for companies looking to fill jobs. To mine its employees’ social networking contacts for potential hires, a business can pay for services from companies like Appirio or Jobvite, whose service Mr. Kennedy used. Both are based in the San Francisco area.

Recruiting Via Your Employees’ Social Networks - NYTimes.com

AOL Completes Netscape Acquisition After Shareholder Vote - Computer Business Review : News

p.s. in case you were wondering about the value of the AOL/NSCP acquisition being $4.2 or $10B, I found the following details (via Bing, naturally :)) – from a March, 1999 article (the AOL Time Warner deal was announced in November, 1999):

The deal, which was originally valued at $4.28bn in November, has since skyrocketed due to gains in AOL shares and is now worth roughly $10.18bn based on Wednesday's AOL closing price and an estimated 103.7 million outstanding Netscape shares. AOL ended the session Wednesday at $109.0625, up $4.125, while Netscape closed up $3.5625 at $97.625.

Those were some fun days, on the Bubble 1.0 upward slope…

AOL Completes Netscape Acquisition After Shareholder Vote - Computer Business Review : News

Palm shows Pre at D | Beyond Binary - CNET News

Will Apple “get bent out of shape” because of unauthorized iTunes integration with a potential “iPhone killer” (based in part on technology Apple claims is covered by one of its patents…) created by a former Apple hardware “guru”?…

D impresario Walt Mossberg pressed Rubinstein on whether iTunes maker Apple will be unhappy with the feature. "They've gotten much more open," he said. "They've gotten rid of the DRM."

Venture capitalist Roger McNamee, whose firm is Palm's biggest shareholder, said he sees the media sync feature as an acknowledgment of iTunes' power.

"I find it hard to believe they are going to get bent out of shape," McNamee said.

Rubinstein did acknowledge that the Pre is going after the Apple iPhone, along with the BlackBerry devices from Research In Motion.

"Clearly the primary competitors are Apple and RIM," Rubinstein said of the Pre.

Palm shows Pre at D Beyond Binary - CNET News

Xbox 360 Sees Record Growth in 2009

See the full press release for more stats

Microsoft Corp. announced today that sales of Xbox 360 consoles have passed the 30 million mark globally, with its Xbox LIVE community swelling to more than 20 million active members. After the biggest year in its history in 2008, Xbox 360 achieved the highest percentage growth in hardware sales of any console so far in 2009, up 28 percent over the previous year.¹

The success of the platform can be measured across the business, with Xbox LIVE now considered the world’s largest global entertainment network. Increasing consumer desire to connect with friends, download and enjoy blockbuster movies and TV shows, and extend the life of their favorite games has been the primary driver behind the growth of Xbox LIVE membership and the reason Xbox continues to expand offerings on the platform.

Xbox 360 Sees Record Growth in 2009: Year-over-year growth jumps as Xbox 360 console sales hit 30 million globally and Xbox LIVE community reaches 20 million users.

Time Warner Says It Will Spin Off AOL - NYTimes.com

Somehow seems appropriate to read about Steve Case using Twitter to comment

When the merger was announced in 2000, the two companies had a combined market value of more than $300 billion.

By the time the deal was consummated in 2001, with Internet stocks plunging and recession taking hold, that had fallen more than $100 billion. Today, the combined market capitalization of Time Warner and the new Time Warner Cable is less than $40 billion.

Steve Case, the AOL chief and co-founder, who was chairman of the merged company until 2003, has been publicly advocating splitting them again since 2005. On Twitter on Thursday, he insisted that the combination could have worked as planned but was poorly run.

In one tweet, he wrote, “Thomas Edison: ‘Vision without execution is hallucination’ — pretty much sums up AOL/TW — failure of leadership (myself included).”

Time Warner Says It Will Spin Off AOL - NYTimes.com

It's Now Official: AOL, Time Warner to Split - WSJ.com

More fun AOL facts

Over the years, the $100 billion merger has become a sort of antiplaybook for corporate deals. It soon became clear the value of AOL had been inflated by improper accounting practices and revenue overstatements, and the company endured multiple regulatory probes and billions of dollars in write-downs.

It's Now Official: AOL, Time Warner to Split - WSJ.com

Palm's Pre to Access iTunes - WSJ.com

Think different… or not

Palm Inc. unveiled some new features for its Pre smart phone on Thursday as the company prepares to release the supposed challenger to Apple Inc.'s iPhone in the next few days.

Among the new features is a media manager that can download music directly from Apple's iTunes, Palm executives said. Another newly-disclosed feature is an Internet-based store, like Apple's iPhone App Store, where software can be downloaded onto the phone.

Palm's Pre to Access iTunes - WSJ.com

AOL plan unravels troubled merger - The Boston Globe

See the full article for more on the AOL Time Warner disaster. Gee, maybe the newly-independent AOL will next spin-out Netscape (for which AOL paid $4.2B ~10.5 years ago; AOL is currently estimated to be worth $6.3B)…

The move gives AOL chief Tim Armstrong a public company to run after he joined from Google two months ago.

The unit will keep its AOL brand name because it is recognized internationally, Armstrong said, declining to provide specifics about his strategy.

When Google bought a 5 percent stake in AOL for $1 billion in 2005, it valued the unit at about $20 billion. Time Warner said last month it was in talks to buy back the stake. Google wrote down $726 million of the investment last year.

AOL plan unravels troubled merger - The Boston Globe

Woz: Microsoft Bing 'astounding' - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

Strange days indeed; see the post for the video…

Is this one of Woz's legendary practical jokes? If not, Microsoft may have found itself a new pitchman -- and it would be completely unbelievable if it wasn't caught on video. Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder, was effusive in his praise for Microsoft's new Bing search engine after seeing a demonstration today at the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD conference.

Woz: Microsoft Bing 'astounding' - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

Microsoft Bing: Much better than expected | Webware - CNET

See the full article for more details

Microsoft on Thursday took the wraps off Bing, the rebranded and rebuilt search engine formerly code-named Kumo, designed to replace Live Search. It's a solid improvement over the previous search product, and it beats Google in important areas. It will help Microsoft gain share in the search business. It's surprisingly competitive with Google.

[…]

Google keeps improving in the area of in-search collation and display as well, but Bing makes Google look complacent, and that's not good for Google. For the moment, Bing's on top in this game. Try this search engine. I do not think you will regret it.

Microsoft Bing: Much better than expected | Webware - CNET

Bing Virtual Presskit

See this page for lots of detailed Bing info

Microsoft today introduced Bing, a new search experience and consumer brand, outlining a new approach to helping customers use search to make better decisions. This “Decision Engine” approach focuses initially on four key user tasks and related areas: making a purchase, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

Bing Virtual Presskit

Yahoo! Tech: iPhone to replace register at Japan university

Hmm…

A Japanese university is giving away Apple Inc's trendy iPhone to students for free, but with a catch: the device will be used to check their attendance.

[…]

The school's iPhones are meant to create a mobile information network between students and professors, but they are also a convenient way for the teachers to take attendance in class.

As students enter the room, instead of writing their name on a sheet, they simply type in their ID number and a specific class number into an iPhone application.

To prevent students from logging in from home or outside class, the application uses GPS location data and checks which router the students have logged in to.

by : Yahoo! Tech

Behold the Poison Apple [SecurityCurve]

A timely Apple reality check; see the full post

So, Ira Winkler has a great post over at ComputerWorld called “It’s time for the FTC to investigate Mac security”.

It’s pure awesomeness.

The point he makes is that Apple continues to beat the drum about how they are immune to security problems, while in fact they are just as susceptible as the next OS. In fact, when you actually look at how long it takes for Apple to publish fixes to vulnerabilities in the underlying code base, they take on average 50 to 100 percent longer to publish fixes than their competition. And yes, by “competition” I also mean the evil empire itself.

Behold the Poison Apple

Microsoft Announces Social Enterprise Alliance: Collaboration with Telligent, speakTECH yields best-of-all-worlds technology for connecting manufacturers to key customer communities.

See the full press release for more details

Microsoft Corp. today announced the Social Enterprise Alliance, a strategic collaboration between Microsoft Gold Certified Partners Telligent Systems Inc. and speakTECH to deliver an integrated social networking solution for customers in the manufacturing and consumer goods sectors. The alliance will launch the Social Enterprise Solution, which includes platform and application products and services that enable companies to connect to and leverage key customer communities through social networking and analytics technologies.

Microsoft Announces Social Enterprise Alliance: Collaboration with Telligent, speakTECH yields best-of-all-worlds technology for connecting manufacturers to key customer communities.

MiFi lets you share your portable Internet connection - The Boston Globe

Hmm…

MiFi is presently available to customers of the Verizon Wireless cellphone service. A version for Sprint Nextel Inc subscribers will go on sale next month. The device combines a 3G cellular data modem with a compact Wi-Fi router. When switched on, it automatically connects to the 3G network, then relays data to laptops, netbooks, or even handheld game machines via a short-range Wi-Fi network.

MiFi lets you share your portable Internet connection - The Boston Globe

Cyberspace hosts a blitzkrieg over nominee - The Boston Globe

Sign of the times – see the full article for more details

The ads are just one part of a high-tech information war that has already incorporated YouTube, Twitter, and instant messaging. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, an influential Republican, used his Twitter account to blast Sotomayor yesterday. In less than 140 characters, he called the nominee a "Latina woman racist" and demanded she withdraw her nomination.

While advocacy spots are nothing new in a Supreme Court nomination fight, analysts say the ones on Sotomayor were produced with breathtaking speed and have unprecedented reach, due to an explosion of inexpensive technology and the popularity of social networking tools.

Cyberspace hosts a blitzkrieg over nominee - The Boston Globe

IBM - Support statement for Lotus Domino NSFDB2

The official end of the road for NSFDB2 – excerpt from the full support statement (via DominoBaloney):

Are there plans to add additional capabilities to use the NSFDB2 feature in Lotus Domino?
There are no plans to enhance the capabilities of the NSFDB2 feature - this includes new features, updated DB2 versions, and platform expansion. While the NSFDB2 capability offers some benefits for accessing relational data, we have found that the scaling aspects of NSFDB2 are not up to the standards that customers expect from Lotus Notes and Domino. There has been a significant investment in the NSF data store, and NSF remains the strategic data store for Lotus Notes and Domino applications and data. The NSF data store is optimized for storing and retrieving Notes and Domino data and provides the performance that our customers need and expect when accessing Notes and Domino applications.

IBM - Support statement for Lotus Domino NSFDB2

Altova Blog: New XBRL Training Now Available

Free XBRL training from Altova

We're very excited to have just launched the next free Altova Online Training course: MissionKit XBRL!

This comprehensive, five-module course provides an overview of XBRL and the Altova MissionKit for beginning and advanced technical users. After an introduction to XBRL and the XBRL filing process, you will learn to create an extension taxonomy in the XMLSpy XML editor.

Altova Blog: New XBRL Training Now Available

AT&T May Have Swayed ‘Idol’ Results - NYTimes.com

Strange days indeed

Representatives of AT&T helped fans of Mr. Allen at the two Arkansas events by providing instructions on how to send 10 or more text messages at the press of a single button, known as power texts. Power texts have an exponentially greater effect on voting than do single text messages or calls to the show’s toll-free phone lines. The efforts appear to run afoul of “American Idol” voting rules in two ways. The show broadcasts an on-screen statement at the end of each episode warning that blocks of votes cast using “technical enhancements” that unfairly influence the outcome of voting can be thrown out.

And the show regularly states that text voting is open only to AT&T subscribers and is subject to normal rates.

AT&T May Have Swayed ‘Idol’ Results - NYTimes.com

Business & Technology | Bellevue lab is an inventor's real dream | Seattle Times Newspaper

A profile of Intellectual Ventures

Some retirees set up a shop to tinker in the garage.

After Nathan Myhrvold left Microsoft in 2000, he created something that would make the British Royal Society drool — a vast laboratory and intellectual salon where some of the smartest and richest people in the world get together and invent stuff.

[…]

So far it's built a portfolio of about 27,000 patents, the bulk of which it has accumulated by acquiring them from other companies or individuals.

Business & Technology | Bellevue lab is an inventor's real dream | Seattle Times Newspaper

Microsoft confirms Zune HD coming this fall | Beyond Binary - CNET News

More Zune details

Microsoft on Tuesday confirmed its plans to take on the iPod Touch with a new, touch-screen Zune that will be able to surf the Web, play high-definition movies, and tune in to digital radio.

The Zune HD, which will be available in the U.S. only starting this fall, features an HD Radio tuner as well as an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) touch screen, Microsoft said. It is based on Windows CE and will use a version of Internet Explorer customized for its touch screen, Microsoft said.

Microsoft confirms Zune HD coming this fall | Beyond Binary - CNET News

Google increasingly battles Facebook in search by : Yahoo! Tech

I wonder if this was part of a coordinated PR strategy…

Google has long been the king of search, dominating rivals including Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. But it increasingly sees social networks such as Facebook as challengers to its search engine, a company official said Monday.

As people search out advice online for everyday, personal decisions, the standard list of links served up by Google is not seen as intimate or trustworthy. For decisions such as choosing a restaurant or a day care provider, social networking sites or known review sites have an advantage, said Google Group Product Manager Ken Tokusei.

by : Yahoo! Tech

Web service Twitter proposes TV competition series - Yahoo! News

Sign of the times…

Twitter, the Web site that asks what everybody's doing, says it wants to be doing a TV series.

The social-networking service said Monday it has teamed with Reveille productions and Brillstein Entertainment Partners to develop an unscripted series based on the site, which invites 140-character postings from members around the world.

The show would harness Twitter to put players on the trail of celebrities in an interactive, competitive format.

Web service Twitter proposes TV competition series - Yahoo! News

Pillar Data - Larry Ellison's other storage company • The Register

A snapshot of one of the other companies controlled by Larry Ellison…

Oracle has its own hardware ventures, notably the database machine developed in partnership with HP. And now it is buying Sun, which has its own significant storage offering.

So where does Pillar fit into Larry Ellison's scheme of things? Come the end of the recession, he can make a decent return on his investment by getting the company to IPO. Or, he could broker a deal one day to fold Pillar into Oracle.

This is the more intriguing possibility. And strategically, it makes sense. A view from inside Pillar is that the Oracle boss is personally funding Pillar to see if, among other things, if it is possible to build a storage offering that sidesteps third party storage vendors.

Pillar Data - Larry Ellison's other storage company • The Register

Microsoft Vine could save your hide | Webware - CNET

A Microsoft Vine snapshot; see the full article for details and/or go explore the beta service 

Ultimately, this is a business for Microsoft, not just a public service. There are budgets for emergency response programs at all levels of government and in many businesses. Savage says Microsoft's first business effort with Vine is "bottoms-up" --local churches, schools, police stations. "Because those are the entities that citizens really trust." She says it's harder to build the business this way (although have you tried getting federal grant dollars?) but she thinks the technology will be more useful than if it's implemented top-down. "Grassroots is where this has to happen," says the Microsoft chief of emergency response platforms.

Microsoft Vine could save your hide | Webware - CNET

Twitter Trips on Its Rapid Growth - WSJ.com

See the full article for more details

Twitter Inc. is confronting a slew of challenges -- from hiring, to keeping its service up and running, to finding meaningful revenue -- as the micro-blogging service deals with sudden stratospheric growth.

Even as Twitter's users have jumped to an estimated 32.1 million from 1.6 million a year ago, the San Francisco company has just 45 employees, up from around 21 in January, and it has brought on only a handful of people with sales or business experience.

Twitter Trips on Its Rapid Growth - WSJ.com

Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability [Wired]

Interesting Google snapshot from Steven Levy; see the full article (and also the 3-part cover “New New Economy” story lead by Chris Anderson) 

Why does Google even need a chief economist? The simplest reason is that the company is an economy unto itself. The ad auction, marinated in that special sauce, is a seething laboratory of fiduciary forensics, with customers ranging from giant multinationals to dorm-room entrepreneurs, all billed by the world's largest micropayment system.

Google depends on economic principles to hone what has become the search engine of choice for more than 60 percent of all Internet surfers, and the company uses auction theory to grease the skids of its own operations. All these calculations require an army of math geeks, algorithms of Ramanujanian complexity, and a sales force more comfortable with whiteboard markers than fairway irons.

Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability

The Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog : Leaked build and Staying Safe

Apparently bad things can come to those who can’t wait

I wanted to post quickly to acknowledge the information that you have seen today around bits of Office 2010 being leaked.  While all of us here are happy to see the incredible excitement and engagement (and are absolutely chomping at the bit to reach the July milestone) we aren’t quite ready to release the technical preview bits.  I would encourage all of you to wait until the official bits are available to ensure the best possible experience and not miss out on anything we may include. 

As a heads up, because we want to ensure our customers are safe, we have been monitoring various torrents and already detected quite a few that were infected.  As a reminder,  the Win 7 leak was used as a vector for attack and it’s not surprising to see this being used the same way.  So, please be aware that if you download this torrent there is a very good chance you are also getting some unexpected malware with it. 

In the meantime keep checking back as we will certainly have more updates.

The Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog : Leaked build and Staying Safe

Data.gov: Unlocking the Federal Filing Cabinets - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Pretty cool…

But Data.gov is different. It is primarily for machines, not people, at least as a first step. It is a catalog of various sets of data from government agencies.

And the idea is to offer the data in one of several standardized formats, ranging from a simple text file that can be read by a spreadsheet program to the XML format widely used these days for the exchange of information between Web services. Other data is presented in formats that are meant to feed into mapping programs.

The value of this, of course, is that when information is made available this way, then anyone can analyze it or write a program to do so. The Sunlight Foundation is running a contest to find the best applications that use this data.

Data.gov: Unlocking the Federal Filing Cabinets - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Cartier to Withdraw Suit Against Apple Over iPhone Applications - WSJ.com

Nevermind…

A legal battle over iPhone application software appears to have ended almost as soon as it began.

A lawyer representing Cartier International N.V. late Friday said it is withdrawing a suit the company filed earlier in the day against Apple Inc. The suit alleged that two applications for the iPhone infringed on the trademark for the luxury brand's Tank watches.

The applications have been removed from Apple's App Store. "Our concerns have been addressed," said Jonathan Lagarenne, the attorney for Fox Rothschild LLD representing Cartier.

Cartier to Withdraw Suit Against Apple Over iPhone Applications - WSJ.com

Cartier sues Apple over Fake Watch iPhone app - The Boston Globe

Sign of the times…

The iPhone program Fake Watch, which displays the time of day on hand-set screens using the appearance of "look-alike famous wristwatches," infringes Cartier's trademark by copying its 92-year-old Tank design, according to a complaint filed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan.

Cartier sues Apple over Fake Watch iPhone app - The Boston Globe

Tweeting The Mona Lisa | Bex Huff

Semi-random but kinda cool; check the full post 

As many of you know, Twitter limits you to only 140 characters in each "tweet." That doesn't sound like much... but if you try you can cram a good deal of data in those 140 characters! In fact, Quasimondo figured out how to tweet a pretty good version of the Mona Lisa!

The technique was pretty clever: Tweet in Chinese! Twitter allows you to use UTF8 characters, which means if you pick a language with a lot of possible letters -- like Chinese -- you can encode a great deal of data into one single letter. If properly encoded, you can cram 210 bytes of data into 140 Chinese letters.

Tweeting The Mona Lisa | Bex Huff

Business & Technology | Apple likely to create bigger iPod Touch instead of netbook, analyst says | Seattle Times Newspaper

Seems logical to me, especially given Apple’s netbook-bashing stance

Apple, pushing deeper into low-cost mobile computers, may release a larger version of its iPod Touch player next year, rather than creating a scaled-down MacBook netbook, said Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster.

The bigger iPod Touch would take the form of a touch-screen tablet computer, with a price tag of $500 to $700, said Munster, who has followed digital media companies including Apple since 1995. He expects Apple to release the device in the first half of 2010.

Business & Technology Apple likely to create bigger iPod Touch instead of netbook, analyst says Seattle Times Newspaper

OpenTable Has A Healthy IPO. Shares Shoot Up 40 59 Percent, Market Cap Passes $600 Million.

Bubble 3.0?  Check the full article for details

Is the IPO drought over? Not quite. But OpenTable’s successful IPO today will give tech startups and VCs a sign of hope that you can still go public eventually if you have a real business. On a day when the Nasdaq is down 2 percent, OpenTable is up 40 45 percent from its offering price of $20 (which itself kept moving up from $12 to $14 initially). The stock opened at $24, and was trading at around $28 $29 last time I checked. With 21.6 million shares outstanding, that gives OpenTable a market capitalization of $605 $626 million on its first day of trading. (The company itself cleared $60 million in the offering). Update: The stock closed at $31.89, up 59 percent from the offering price, giving the company a market cap of $689 million at the end of the trading day.

OpenTable Has A Healthy IPO. Shares Shoot Up 40 59 Percent, Market Cap Passes $600 Million.

Yahoo Is Feeling Social - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

Interesting times for Yahoo

While others continue to focus on the fate of Yahoo’s search business — chatter about some kind of search deal with Microsoft never seems to die — Mr. Balogh’s comments suggest that Yahoo is eager to build out other parts of its Internet business.

Naturally, Mr. Balogh didn’t tip his hand and name specific targets. But he gave some clues, indicating that Yahoo needed to push deeper into the next wave of social networking products. He also said the company was under-represented in the area of smartphone applications.

Yahoo Is Feeling Social - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

‘Digital Universe’ Now 487 Billion Gigabytes « Data Center Knowledge

Check the full post for more details

How much digital stuff are we creating? According to IDC, the global volume of digital content has reached 487 billion gigabytes - that’s 487 exabytes, for those who can get their heads around that large a number. It’s a lot of stuff.

• Expressed numerically, it’s 487,000,000,000 gigabytes
• If converted to paper, it could wrap the entire earth eight times over.
• If that paper were stacked, the pile would stretch to Pluto and back 10 times

‘Digital Universe’ Now 487 Billion Gigabytes « Data Center Knowledge

Enterprise 2.0 Blog » Blog Archive » Is Twitter Breaking Under the Strain?

A timely Twitter reality check; see the full post for more details

Twitter outages are nothing new. It’s to be expected that any service that has grown as fast as Twitter would run into bumps. In the last week the Twitter developers had to turn off the ability to see replies to those who a user doesn’t follow, triggering a firestorm of negative feedback. These concerns are Manna to companies such as Yammer and Present.ly who offer alternatives to Twitter for business customers (as well as to Facebook which increasingly is trying to integrate Twitter-like functionality into its own system. But they also underscore a larger problem, Twitter still hasn’t developed a solid revenue model that will allow it to raise the funds it needs to rapidly scale its infrastructure, leaving it vulnerable to negative publicity and perhaps even competitors.

Enterprise 2.0 Blog » Blog Archive » Is Twitter Breaking Under the Strain?

FT.com / Companies / Media - Google tries to avoid the regulatory noose

It’s interesting to ponder how this perspective can be reconciled with Google’s complaints to governments about the actions of other companies.  See the full article for more creative posturing.

Google is on a charm offensive to convince governments and the general public that the internet advertising company should not be subjected to new privacy or antitrust regulation.

“When markets get regulated, creative innovation is slowed. We don’t think that is a good outcome,” said Eric Schmidt, chief executive. “A much better outcome is for us to use good judgement. We take what we see as the consumer interest as our guiding principle,” he said.

FT.com / Companies / Media - Google tries to avoid the regulatory noose

Ray Ozzie on the cloud, Vista lessons, and more | Beyond Binary - CNET News

A timely cloud snapshot

Ray Ozzie is a big believer in the cloud. But he knows that large businesses don't yet share his confidence.

"Enterprises will not really trust the cloud until they get some experience with it," Ozzie said, during a speech at a J.P. Morgan investment conference in Boston on Wednesday. He said that large businesses are more likely to start by going with an online version of a familiar product like Microsoft Exchange than they are today to move a major piece of their business into the cloud. A Webcast of his speech is available on Microsoft's investor relations page.

Ray Ozzie on the cloud, Vista lessons, and more | Beyond Binary - CNET News

Home - Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview

See the source page to sign up

The Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview is a limited, invitation only program which will provide you with the opportunity to experience early, pre-release versions of Office 2010 which will include the following applications:  Word 2010, Excel 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Access 2010, InfoPath 2010 and Publisher 2010.

By registering you are signing up to be considered for the Technical Preview Program, you will be waitlisted for consideration to be invited into the Technical Preview Program. We will notify invitees in early to mid July.

Home - Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview

A Service to Prove You Are Really You - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Interesting times

It is developing a service that will let you create an online identity that can assert various “claims” that it will back up. To an online wine merchant, it might back you up when you say you are of legal age. If you are applying to open a bank account, the company might vouch for your entire profile, including name, address, birthday and Social Security number.

Ron Carpinella, Equifax’s vice president for ID management, said the service might even be of use on a blog. “Think of all the people using false identities on blogs to post 15 different comments on something,” he said. “We can prevent that.”

A Service to Prove You Are Really You - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Most-Popular Lists Breed More Popularity - WSJ.com

An intriguing reality check – see the full article 

These lists are among the byproducts of the Internet's knack for being instantly quantifiable. Purchases on Amazon.com update the online retailer's sales rankings and their people-who-bought-this-also-bought-that recommendations. Yahoo continually updates its top 10 user searches on its home page, and the iTunes Store does the same with its list of top songs.

Using popularity rankings to make decisions, however, has downsides. These online rankings are public, creating a positive-feedback loop. The more popular something becomes, even if just from a random burst of interest, the more likely it is to grow ever more popular. And that has troubling implications about the effects of all sorts of popularity rankings, from bestseller charts to election polls.

Most-Popular Lists Breed More Popularity - WSJ.com

XML Schema 1.1 is now a W3C Candidate Recommendation at Arcane Domain

An XML Schema update from Noah Mendelsohn; see the full post for more details

Many readers of this blog know that I was one of the original designers and editors of the W3C XML Schema Language Recommendation (XSD).  Since publication of version 1.0 in May 2001, a small group of us has continued to work on incremental improvements.  I am therefore delighted to announce that, a few days ago, XML Schema Version 1.1 became a W3C Candidate Recommendation.  This means that the specification is feature-complete, and the W3C is waiting for two or more interoperable implementations to demonstrate that the technology is suitable for designation as a full W3C Recommendation.

Why should you care?  XSD 1.1 adds a relatively small list of specific features to the language, but I’m convinced that it addresses some of the most important opportunities that were missed in the original XSD 1.0. 

XML Schema 1.1 is now a W3C Candidate Recommendation at Arcane Domain

New Search Service Has Techies Talking - WSJ.com

The first paragraph in this excerpt looks like anticipatory antitrust appeasement to me…

Google declined to comment on Wolfram Alpha specifically but said in a statement: "We welcome competition that helps deliver useful information to users and expands user choice."

Wolfram Alpha and Google have different functions, Mr. Wolfram said. "It's now possible to take a decent chunk of the world's knowledge and make it computable. That's a different branch from what Google's doing."

New Search Service Has Techies Talking - WSJ.com

Google Searches for Staffing Answers - WSJ.com

Interesting times at the Googleplex

Concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete, Google Inc. is tackling the problem with its typical tool: an algorithm.

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

Google Searches for Staffing Answers - WSJ.com

Passenger's videos reveal a distracted bus driver - The Boston Globe

Sign of the times…

The video is almost boring on one level: 10 minutes of a guy tearing paper bus tickets, yawning, and at one point, fiddling with his cellphone.

But the unwitting star is a Peter Pan bus driver, responsible for carrying dozens of passengers from Boston to New York on a rainy April morning. The auteur is a worried passenger, filming it all on a Blackberry camera and then broadcasting it on YouTube.

Passenger's videos reveal a distracted bus driver - The Boston Globe

The news industry's uncertain future | The rebirth of news | The Economist

A stark reality check in The Economist; see the full article 

Most industries are suffering at present, but few are doing as badly as the news business. Things are worst in America, where many papers used to enjoy comfortable local monopolies, but in Britain around 70 local papers have shut down since the beginning of 2008. Among the survivors, advertising is dwindling, editorial is thinning and journalists are being laid off. The crisis is most advanced in the Anglo-Saxon countries, but it is happening all over the rich world: the impact of the internet, exacerbated by the advertising slump, is killing the daily newspaper.

The news industry's uncertain future | The rebirth of news | The Economist

Drilling Down - Social Networks Eclipse E-Mail - NYTimes.com

Sign of the times – see the full article for details

Alongside the explosive growth of online video over the last six years, time spent on social networks surpassed that for e-mail for the first time in February, signaling a paradigm shift in consumer engagement with the Internet.

Drilling Down - Social Networks Eclipse E-Mail - NYTimes.com

Doug Mahugh : Tracked Changes

Another timely reality check for people tracking ODF and Open XML debates; see the full post for details

When I blogged about the release of SP2 with ODF support two weeks ago, I mentioned that I was planning to blog about a few of the tough decisions we faced in our SP2 implementation of ODF, such as the decision not to support tracked changes.  I’ve spent some time since then covering our approach to formulas in ODF, and now I’d like to move on to answering the question of why we aren’t supporting ODF tracked changes.

Doug Mahugh : Tracked Changes

Windows Vista Enterprise Windows 7 & DirectAccess Mobile Computing

This is very cool – see the full page for more details

Working outside the office is about to become a lot simpler. DirectAccess in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 enhances the productivity of mobile workers by connecting them seamlessly and more securely to their corporate network any time they have Internet access—without the need to VPN. When IT enables DirectAccess, the whole corporate network file shares, intranet Web sites, and line-of-business applications can remain accessible wherever you have an Internet connection.

Windows Vista Enterprise Windows 7 & DirectAccess Mobile Computing

Group aims to keep MySQL healthy | Business Tech - CNET News

Hmm…

One of original authors of MySQL, Michael 'Monty' Widenius, has founded the Open Database Alliance, a consortium that aims to become the industry hub for the open source database.

The move was announced Wednesday. The two founding parties of the vendor-neutral consortium are Widenius' engineering company, Monty Program, and the MySQL services and support company Percona.

Group aims to keep MySQL healthy | Business Tech - CNET News

Wolfram Alpha's launch delayed amid glitches | Cutting Edge - CNET News

See the full article for more details

Wolfram Alpha struggled to get up and rolling Friday evening under difficult conditions, as the company scaled back expectations for its performance this weekend.

The new search engine attempted to make its debut literally in the middle of the perfect storm: a tornado watch had engineers on edge in Champaign, Ill., where Wolfram Research attempted to bring the service online. However, networking and database problems also prevented the engine from launching as of 6 p.m. PDT, an hour after the company said it would go live to the world.

I’ve been exploring Alpha a bit this morning; had a few interesting results and then saw

Wolfram Alpha's launch delayed amid glitches | Cutting Edge - CNET News

Data Center Strategies: Epiphany on The Road to Santa Clara?

More Oracle/Sun perspectives; check the full post 

Apparently buying the entire company was preferable to walking away. Subsequently, on the road to Santa Clara to finalize the deal, Larry had a religious experience and became a born again hardware geek.

Of course, you cynics out there might be thinking that Oracle had to say nice things about the hardware business, at least for now. The last thing they want is to confirm a Sun customer’s worst nightmare and SPARC a mass exodus.

Data Center Strategies: Epiphany on The Road to Santa Clara?

Did IBM Bid Force Oracle’s Hand to Buy All of Sun? - News

See the full article for more context-setting

Instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it seems Ellison decided it was in Oracle’s best interest to take both, though analysts say it’s probable that Oracle will divest itself of Sun's declining hardware group in the future.

Of course, Ellison has said publicly that Sun's hardware business is integral to his plans, and it seems he’ll now have to make the most of what he’s bought.

"Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system -- applications to disk -- where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves," said Ellison.

I continue to expect (as does Charles Fitzgerald) that Oracle will divest at least some of Sun’s hardware business sooner rather than later

Did IBM Bid Force Oracle’s Hand to Buy All of Sun? - News

Class-Action Suit Against Google Cites Order of Ads - NYTimes.com

Hmm – see the full article for more context-setting

But Google’s acceptance of such competitive uses of trademarks has irked many other companies, including the likes of American Airlines and Geico, which have filed suits against Google and settled them. Many brand owners say the practice abuses their brands, confuses customers and increases their cost of doing business.

None of this, apparently, is giving Google much reason to reconsider. This month, it expanded to more than 190 new countries its policy of allowing anyone to buy someone else’s trademark as a trigger for an ad. And late Thursday it announced that it would allow limited use of trademarks in the text of some search ads, even if the trademark owner objects.

Class-Action Suit Against Google Cites Order of Ads - NYTimes.com

Google's Services Hit Again by Glitch - WSJ.com

I’m seeing this as a common theme in the press coverage of Google’s problems yesterday:

Thursday's service outage will only add to concerns about the reliability of computing services delivered over the Internet, a field broadly known as "cloud computing." Google is touting cloud computing as an alternative to packaged software, like that sold by Microsoft Corp.

Of course, Microsoft’s view is that it’s not either/or, but rather software + services

Google's Services Hit Again by Glitch - WSJ.com

The Trouble With Twitters - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Twitter has a Facebook moment (user uproar over recent changes); see the full post for more details

Twitter is struggling to retain its new users: More than 60 percent of Twitter newbies quit the service within a month, according to Nielsen, an audience measurement firm. The high turnover rate isn’t entirely surprising. The nuances, lingo, abbreviations and etiquette of Twitter is tricky for even seasoned users to grasp.

But striking a balance is crucial if Twitter hopes to expand beyond its roots — something the company appears to have realized.

The Trouble With Twitters - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Amazon to Pay Bloggers for Subscriptions - Digits - WSJ

Interesting times

The Kindle comes with an experimental Web browser that allows users to surf ordinary Web sites. But for the sake of convenience, Amazon also sells Kindle subscriptions to a select list of blogs that are automatically updated and made available on the device’s home screen. Those subscriptions can cost as much as $2 per month.

Amazon to Pay Bloggers for Subscriptions - Digits - WSJ

Data Center Strategies: Oracle Buys Virtual Iron

Oracle’s manifest-destiny-by-acquisition strategy continues; see the full Burton Group post for more analysis (also see a related post by Burton Group's Drue Reeves)

This morning, Oracle announced its intent to purchase Virtual Iron with the acquisition expecting to close this summer. I had blogged about this just over two months ago when some rumors had hit the street of a possible acquisition by Oracle and what that would mean. So let’s recap what this means:
1. First and foremost, if Oracle keeps the Virtual Iron product in tact plus its distribution channel, this will signal a move down market for Oracle. Virtual Iron is a channel only product targeted at the small to medium enterprise market. This is a market dominated by the likes of Microsoft and not Oracle. Virtual Iron had done very well in this market until Microsoft launched Hyper-v […]

Data Center Strategies: Oracle Buys Virtual Iron

What Is Google Squared? It Is How Google Will Crush Wolfram Alpha (Exclusive Video)

Check the full post for a video demo of Google Squared

Wolfram does a pretty good job parsing the information in its own databases, but those databases will never match what is available on the Web. Wolfram’s databases currently store only 10 terabytes of information, a tiny fraction of what is on the Web. (I will be posting my impressions of Wolfram’s search engine soon). Google Squared is an early attempt to take the messy data which exists on the Web and place it into simple tables. It is still very experimental and isn’t always on target, but you can see where this is going. Turning the Web into a giant database will crush any attempt to segregate the “best” information into a separate database so that it can be processed and searched more deeply.

I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that anything will be “crushed” – as the focus shifts to more data-centric than Web page-centric, for example, a lot of traditional data management dimensions apply, e.g., “garbage in, garbage out”. 

There is great synergy at the intersection of relations and resources, in any case, and in many respects we’re still in the early chapters of this story.

On a related note, see GigaOM on Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Linked Data – it looks like a simple vocabulary change – from “Semantic Web” themes to data-centric concepts and real-world examples – is going to make a profound difference (even if many of the underlying concepts stay the same).

What Is Google Squared? It Is How Google Will Crush Wolfram Alpha (Exclusive Video)

Technology Review: Blogs: Information Processing: WolframAlpha: W|A

An interesting twist

Curious to find out more, I emailed a former theoretical physicist who works (remotely) for Wolfram Research but sits just down the hall from me. Years ago I had lobbied for an office for him because, although he isn't primarily in physics research any more, he's a brilliant guy and was bound to end up doing something interesting. (Wanting to take advantage of the opportunity to work remotely at Wolfram he had researched the best places to live and ended up choosing Eugene.) Little did I know he's been leading the W|A project from here! He stumbled into my office yesterday to answer my questions and tell me that he's knee deep in reviewing code commits and getting ready for the launch :-)
My experience has confirmed over and over again that big brains tend to do interesting things. Whenever I meet someone who is "scary smart" (there are not so many in the world), I keep an eye out for what they do later in life.

Technology Review: Blogs: Information Processing: WolframAlpha: W|A

David Rasmussen's Blog : OneNote 2010 will be available in more places and more ways

Some OneNote 2010 details

Last year at the PDC we gave you a very small taste of what’s in store in the next version of OneNote. With OneNote 2010, you will get full web access to your OneNote notebooks and enhanced sharing capabilities that will make it the easiest way to capture all your information and have it easily available to you everywhere. It will also be awesome for teams sharing information, ideas, plans, coordinating projects and so on. We have many other exciting features coming up in this release that we’re not able to disclose yet but we think you’ll like it a lot.

We’re also making it easier for our business customers to get OneNote. OneNote 2010 will now also be available as part of the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 release.  Office Professional Plus is targeted to business users and is only available through Volume Licensing. We’re not announcing any details about other SKUs yet. Overall we’ve seen a lot of interest in OneNote and we’re trying to make sure customers will be able to get it easily whether you use Office at home or at work.

David Rasmussen's Blog : OneNote 2010 will be available in more places and more ways

Federal Agencies Using Azure To Store Data | Redmond Developer News

See the full article for more details

Microsoft has set up a repository in which government agencies may upload and store their public-facing datasets so that they can be reused by other parties.

Agency developers can upload their data to the Open Government Data Initiative (OGDI) through Microsoft Azure, the company's cloud computing offering.

Federal Agencies Using Azure To Store Data | Redmond Developer News

Wolfram Alpha gets supercomputer boost | Cutting Edge - CNET News

See the full article for more details

The machine, built out of Dell hardware by a company called R Systems, can sustain performance of 39.6 trillion mathematical operations per second, according to the November 2008 list of the top 500 supercomputers. That muscle will come in handy for Alpha, which I think of as a combination of a graphing calculator, search engine, and reference library that not only supplies some answers to factual, data-intensive questions but also does math in the process.

Wolfram Alpha gets supercomputer boost | Cutting Edge - CNET News

Unofficial Software Incurs Apple’s Wrath - NYTimes.com

The iPhone is a general-purpose device, but only for purposes of which Apple approves (and gets paid)…

In a legal filing with the United States Copyright Office last year, Apple says jailbroken iPhones rely on modified versions of Apple’s operating software that infringe on its copyrights.

In addition, the company says jailbreaking encourages the piracy of approved iPhone applications and is an expensive burden.“Apple’s iPhone support department has received literally millions of reported incidents of software that crashes on jailbroken iPhones,” the document says.

Unofficial Software Incurs Apple’s Wrath - NYTimes.com

Wi-Fi access becoming a necessity on airlines - The Boston Globe

Sign of the times – see the full article for a status update by airline

"Going online at 35,000 feet isn't a 'nice to have,' " said Henry H. Harteveldt, principal airline analyst for Forrester Research Inc. "In today's tough business climate, in-flight Wi-Fi is as es sential as the beverage cart. Business people need to stay in touch with their clients and colleagues, as well as stay on top of the volatile business environment. Leisure travelers appreciate Wi-Fi in-flight because they can stay in touch with family and friends, plan their journeys, and entertain themselves."

Wi-Fi access becoming a necessity on airlines - The Boston Globe

Collaborative Thinking: Oracle Beehive 1.5: Still A Work-In-Progress

A timely and extensive Mike Gotta reality check on Oracle Beehive; excerpt:

Oracle must have missed the "contextual collaboration" discussion that emerged in the industry during the late nineties (defined and led by Meta Group [POK: by Mike Gotta, then at Meta Group, and Matt Cain, now at Gartner, to be precise] at the time). The idea of combining process-centric and collaboration activities "in context" is not new. Both Microsoft and IBM have targeted that scenario for several years. Oracle is correct in pointing out that the current state of contextual collaboration remains fragile (sometimes done in a brute-force fashion), but Oracle is misinformed that it has discovered the concept or will lead the charge towards this end-state given its poor track record in the collaboration market so far.

Collaborative Thinking: Oracle Beehive 1.5: Still A Work-In-Progress

Gray Matter : Clearing up a few matters with respect to ODF and SP2

Required reading if you care about ODF, Open XML, and standards – the closing paragraphs:

As I have stated on my blog earlier, I WANT a good ODF implementation in Office to improve the satisfaction level of those interested in interoperability. I am very much rooting for a positive outcome to this discussion. We have a commitment to doing a high quality job just as we do with other aspects of our products.  We will certainly focus on the demands of our customers for quality and interoperability and will continue to engage with other vendors in the years to come to (a) improve the spec and (b) improve the Interop between implementations of the spec.

To date, I have not fielded a call or request from a developer seeking to build a solution in Office with ODF. By contrast I see many requests of developers who wish to build Office solutions that include PDF. (Open XML is quite healthy as well, but I’ll leave that part out for a bit so as to not compare the two formats.) I assign no positive or negative value in the level ODF adoption that I see when dealing with developers; if they use it, our product can write the format; if ODF is a means to improving their solution, then I will gladly provide my best effort toward ensuring that Office-based solution is top quality. Either way I am hopeful that our product can be successful in supporting whatever use people seek to achieve with it.

Gray Matter : Clearing up a few matters with respect to ODF and SP2

Astronauts 'tweet' from space by AFP: Yahoo! Tech

Sign of the times…

Astronauts are giving a behind the scenes look at the space shuttle Atlantis's high-risk mission to service the Hubble telescope, thanks to micro-blogging sensation Twitter.

Mike Massimino, 47, blasted off into space Monday with six other crew members. But thanks to Twitter, the space veteran is keeping his promise to stay posted, even from space.

Astronauts 'tweet' from space by AFP: Yahoo! Tech

Tracking Cyberspies Through the Web Wilderness - NYTimes.com

Read the full article for a timely reality check

Cyberforensics presents immense technical challenges that are complicated by the fact that the Internet effortlessly spans both local and national government boundaries. It is possible for a criminal, for example, to conceal his or her activities by connecting to a target computer through a string of innocent computers, each connected to the Internet on different continents, making law enforcement investigations time consuming or even impossible.

The most vexing issue facing both law enforcement and other cyberspace investigators is this question of “attribution.” The famous New Yorker magazine cartoon in which a dog sits at a computer keyboard and points out to a companion, “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” is no joke for cyberdetectives.

To deal with the challenge, the Toronto researchers are pursuing what they describe as a fusion methodology, in which they look at Internet data in the context of real world events.

Tracking Cyberspies Through the Web Wilderness - NYTimes.com

IBM Wins Pyrrhic Format Battle Over Microsoft | BNET Technology Blog | BNET

More from the never-ending ODF/Open XML saga – check the full article for more details, and read the extensive comments from Gary Edwards for interesting insights on the history of ODF

By releasing a new service pack for Office that includes support for the open document format (ODF), Microsoft appears to be complying with European demands that it play well with others, while putting to rest accusations by IBM that it is still trying to maintain a monopoly over document formats. But forgive IBM for failing to cheer an apparent victory in its long-running document format war with Microsoft; IBM is busy attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, probably because it’s now run out of excuses for failing to capture significant market share against Word and Excel.

IBM Wins Pyrrhic Format Battle Over Microsoft | BNET Technology Blog | BNET

With E-Readers Comes Wider Piracy of Books - NYTimes.com

Sign of the times…

For a while now, determined readers have been able to sniff out errant digital copies of titles as varied as the “Harry Potter” series and best sellers by Stephen King and John Grisham. But some publishers say the problem has ballooned in recent months as an expanding appetite for e-books has spawned a bumper crop of pirated editions on Web sites like Scribd and Wattpad, and on file-sharing services like RapidShare and MediaFire.

[…]

For some writers, tracking down illegal e-books is simply not worth it.

“The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys,” Stephen King wrote in an e-mail message. “And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer.”

With E-Readers Comes Wider Piracy of Books - NYTimes.com

Radio Tunes Out Google in Rare Miss for Web Titan - WSJ.com

Hmm…

The radio venture was relatively small for Google, and the company remains an overwhelming success in the ad game: It sells about one-third of all online ads in the U.S., by dollar amount. But its rare flop in radio has larger implications. Google has been on a mission to extend its wildly successful model for selling ads linked to Internet searches to traditional media such as print and TV. Now it is beating a partial retreat. This year, it also shut its newspaper ad-sales effort. Its remaining toehold in traditional media is an effort to sell TV ads.

In a statement, Google said it had "devoted substantial resources" to developing radio and print ads, but the resulting products "didn't have the impact we had hoped for." A Google spokeswoman declined to elaborate.

Radio Tunes Out Google in Rare Miss for Web Titan - WSJ.com

What Google knows about you [Computerworld]

A timely privacy reality check; see the full article (see this page for a single-page/print-centric view)

"Google knows more about you than your mother."

Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, recently made that statement to this reporter. A few years ago, it might have sounded far-fetched. But if you're one of the growing number of people who are using more and more products in Google's ever-expanding stable (at last count, I was using a dozen), you might wonder if Bankston isn't onto something.

What Google knows about you

Doug Mahugh : 1 + 2 = 1?

A timely ODF reality check; read the full post, and ponder the interoperability implications

Does 1 plus 2 equal 3?   After last week’s sometimes acrimonious discussion about formulas in ODF, you may be glad to hear that IBM and Microsoft appear to agree on that answer to this simple question.  But OpenOffice.org is not so certain – maybe the answer is just 1 sometimes – and the question itself turns out not to be so simple after all.  Let me explain.

Doug Mahugh : 1 + 2 = 1?

New Search Service Aims to Answer Tough Questions - NYTimes.com

More WolframAlpha perspectives

“In many ways, creating a system like this has been a holy grail of lots of folks for some time,” said Nathan Myhrvold, a former chief technology officer of Microsoft and co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, an investment company that owns a portfolio of patents.

“It has wound up being considered something that is virtually impossible,” Mr. Myhrvold said. WolframAlpha has shown “that it wasn’t impossible but really difficult,” he added. “It involved applying lots of different tricks.”

Doug Lenat, an artificial intelligence expert whose company Cycorp has spent the last 15 years developing a system that brings human-like reasoning to some computer systems, said WolframAlpha can handle “an astronomical number of questions,” and could eventually turn into a favorite destination on the Web.

“It may become a massive player alongside Google,” Mr. Lenat said.

New Search Service Aims to Answer Tough Questions - NYTimes.com

Google Floods My Calendar With ‘Star Trek’ Geekery - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Cute, but still somehow disconcerting; see the full post for more details

I got a momentary jolt when I flipped to the Google Calendar tab in my browser a few minutes ago. Every day in May had a new green box on it, with an indication like “Stardate: [-28] 01210.00.”

I’m pretty dependent on Google Calendar to keep track of meetings and such, so the flood of weird numbers was disconcerting. Was it a virus? A corrupted database?

Then I remembered: The latest “Star Trek” movie opened Friday.

Google Floods My Calendar With ‘Star Trek’ Geekery - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Google CEO Says Microblogging Coming to Google Search - NYTimes.com

Just another day in the Googleplex…

While taking questions yesterday about alleged violation of anti-trust laws, Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly told press that the company is, in the words of Reuters scribe Alexei Oreskovic, "looking at ... ways of integrating microblogging capabilities, such as those popularized by Twitter, into its search product.

Google CEO Says Microblogging Coming to Google Search - NYTimes.com

The antitrust thing that won't blow over | Here we go again | The Economist

Another timely reality check from The Economist; excerpt:

The computer industry makes more antitrust headlines than others, and seems unlikely to shake off these problems, for three reasons. The first is that technology heavyweights are often dominant in their respective markets. Ask any of the bosses of these firms why they are so dominant and they will probably respond that it is a result of billions spent on research and development. But they also operate in markets that allow a winner to take all (or most). Mainframes and operating systems benefit from strong network effects: the more applications run on them, for instance, the more users they attract, which encourages programmers to write more applications for them. With microprocessors, ever-increasing capital requirements mean only the biggest firms can afford to build their own factories. The markets for search and online advertising exhibit similar effects: the bigger a firm’s market share, the greater its ability to attract advertisers, thus bringing in the money to build ever bigger data centres. In each case it is difficult for an upstart to break in.

Read the full article, and also check out the increasing returns model sometime – the information technology business is unusual in several respects.

The antitrust thing that won't blow over | Here we go again | The Economist

Google's Eric Schmidt doesn't see board conflict with Apple? - Computerworld Blogs

A timely reality check; read the full article 

Sure Apple doesn't sell ads, and Google doesn't make hardware, but look at everything else. Google and Apple do compete in a number of areas. As I said before, there is a laundry list of categories in which they compete:

• Smartphone software. iPhoneOS vs. Android
• Webpage building software iWeb vs. Google Pages
• Calendar software - iCal vs. GCal
• Document writing software - iWork vs. Google apps (Docs, spreadsheets and presentations)
• Feed reading software Mail.app vs. Google reader.
• Email software Gmail vs. Mail.app
• OS Software: MacOS vs. Android Linux
• The both give away photo editing software - Picassa vs. iPhoto.
• Web Browsers (both based on the same Open Source Webkit and sold for free) Safari and Chrome
• Web Services with Apple's MobileMe and Google's Google Apps and Gmail.
• Video services - Youtube vs. iTunes

Google's Eric Schmidt doesn't see board conflict with Apple? - Computerworld Blogs

Microsoft releases free, video-enabled Facebook app for Windows Mobile devices

More details

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday released a Facebook application that it says is the first that lets users upload videos straight from their phone -- in this case, Windows Mobile 6 smartphones.

The free app, dubbed Facebook, can be downloaded from the Windows Mobile Web site, or directly from users' mobile Web browser.

In addition to video and picture uploads, users can send messages or call people on their Friends lists, manage their Facebook profile, confirm Friend requests, update their status and more.

Microsoft releases free, video-enabled Facebook app for Windows Mobile devices

Oracle’s hardware strategy | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services

More Oracle/Sun analysis; see the full post for more details

The next notable point may be found in Larry’s key quote:

… our primary reason for designing our own chips is to build computers with the very best performance, reliability and security available in the market. Some system features work much better if they are implemented in silicon rather than software. Once we own Sun, we’ll be able to plan and synchronize new features from silicon to software, just like IBM and the other big system suppliers. We want to work with Fujitsu to design advanced features into the SPARC microprocessor aimed at improving Oracle database performance. In my opinion, this will enable SPARC Solaris open-system mainframes and servers to challenge IBM’s dominance in the data center. Sun was very successful for a very long time selling computer systems based on the SPARC chip and the Solaris operating system. Now, with the added power of integrated Oracle software, we think they can be again.

Okay, I’m starting to believe Oracle actually will retain the Sun hardware business…

Oracle’s hardware strategy | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services

Download Facebook | Smartphone and PDA | Windows Mobile Total Access

Interesting times…  Via LiveSide.net

Facebook for your Windows Mobile 6 phone

New from Windows Mobile: a Facebook application for your phone! Download the new Facebook application for Windows Mobile and:

• Send messages to any of the people in your Friends list.

• Take pictures and videos on your phone, then upload them right to Facebook.

• Send messages or call people in your Friends list.

• Manage your profile and post anytime, anywhere.

Download Facebook | Smartphone and PDA | Windows Mobile Total Access

Oracle won't divest Sun's hardware business

Ahh – so high-end servers are like iPhones…

"We are definitely not going to exit the hardware business," Ellison said in an email interview with Reuters. "If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software. That's why Apple's (AAPL.O) iPhone is so much better than Microsoft (MSFT.O) phones."

His comments fly in the face of the belief of some analysts that Oracle, the world's largest database software maker, may divest Sun's server business and retain just its software assets, such as Java and Solaris.

Oracle won't divest Sun's hardware business

How to Understand the Disaster - The New York Review of Books

A timely reality check (and excellent book review) from Robert M. Solow; read the full review. Also see a Posner article in today's WSJ.

No one can possibly know how long the current recession will last or how deep it will go. That is because the dangerous combination of the "real" recession—the unemployment and idle productive capacity that come from lack of demand—and the financial breakdown, each being both cause and effect of the other, makes the situation more complex, more unstable, more vulnerable to psychological imponderables, and more distant from previous experience. Whenever the US economy returns to some sort of normality, or preferably before then, it will be necessary to improve and extend the oversight and regulation of the financial system. The main goal should be to make another such episode much less likely, and to limit the damage if one occurs.

To make progress in that direction requires some understanding of the origins of the current mess. I once saw a hospital discharge diagnosis that read "sepsis of unknown etiology"; that sort of thing will not help in this case. The need is not only for a clear picture of what happened but for an assessment of the motives and actions of the main players, the causes and consequences of what they did, and the ideas and institutions that encouraged, inhibited, and shaped the outcomes. Richard Posner's book is intended to fill that need, in clear and understandable language. I think it is at best a partial success; it gets some things right and some things wrong, and the items on both sides of the ledger are important.

How to Understand the Disaster - The New York Review of Books

Irish student's Wikipedia hoax dupes newspapers by AFP: Yahoo! Tech

Sign of the times…

An Irish student's fake quote on the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia has been used in newspaper obituaries around the world, the Irish Times reported.

The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died in March.

Shane Fitzgerald, 22, a final-year student studying sociology and economics at University College Dublin, told the newspaper he placed the quote on the website as an experiment when doing research on globalisation.

Irish student's Wikipedia hoax dupes newspapers by AFP: Yahoo! Tech

John D. Head aka "Starfish" [on the latest ODF controversy]

More perspectives

I am not going to get into the middle of either discussion. I just want to point out something Doug has done - Microsoft posted their guiding principles and their implementer notes. Microsoft invited folks to Redmond to discuss both ODF and OOXML - I know this personally because I was there. IBM decided not to show up even when invited. I do not remember if Adobe was in the room.
So yes, I think Microsoft is creating some issues with interoperability when it comes to a document standard. I also think that OpenOffice.org has bugs in it's ODF implementation - and everyone has decided to copy the bugs to make things work. Should Microsoft have done that - perpetuate known bugs just so files open? I know people who are on both sides of that discussion. I am not sure which side I am on - but I do know who is the loser.

Read the full post for more details.  If everyone agrees the ODF spec has bugs and that ODF is a standard-in-progress in important areas (e.g., a spreadsheet formula language), however, I think it’d be more accurate to say Microsoft is highlighting some issues rather than creating some issues.

John D. Head aka "Starfish"

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: ODF Spreadsheet Bickering: What It Means to an Enterprise

The saga continues – read the full post for more details

Given that Microsoft's recent release of Office 2007 SP2 includes native support for the ODF file format, it was only a matter of time before Rob Weir (IBM) would find something he didn't like about it. On Sunday, May 3, he wrote a blog post entitled, "Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability," saying that Microsoft had coded to the wrong behavior. He notes, "But I cannot fail to notice that the same application -- Microsoft Excel 2007 -- will process ODF spreadsheet documents without problems when loaded via the Sun or CleverAge plugins, but will miserably fail when using the "improved" integrated code in Office 2007 SP2. This ain't right."

Doug Mahugh (Microsoft) issued a returning salvo on Tuesday, May 5, in the form of a blog post entitled, "ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability." When Doug walked through Rob's documented steps, he found that Office 2007 did a better job of rendering the OpenOffice.org-created spreadsheet than Lotus Symphony (e.g., Days to Go equals "102" [Excel] rather than "of:B4-B3" [Symphony])."

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: ODF Spreadsheet Bickering: What It Means to an Enterprise

Open Text to Buy Vignette - WSJ.com

Busy day in M&A land…

Open Text Corp. agreed to buy fellow software maker Vignette Corp. in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $310 million.

A onetime highflier, Vignette makes software used to build and manage Web sites. The company, which is based in Austin and employs 700 people, said the sale to Open Text follows a review of strategic and financial alternatives.

For details, see this press release

Open Text to Buy Vignette - WSJ.com

Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : Icon Gone: Borland Takes $1/Shr Bid From Micro Focus

Borland is history

Borland Software (BORL) this morning agreed to be acquired by U.K.-based Micro Focus International for $1 a share in cash, or about $75 million. It’s a quiet end for an iconic company that once ranked among the largest desktop software companies. With co-founder Philippe Khan at the helm in the early 90s, its Quattro Pro spreadsheet software took on mighty Lotus 1-2-3; the stock in early 1992 peaked a little north of $80 a share, not long after the company bought another ealry ’90s software icon, dBase developer Ashton-Tate.

Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : Icon Gone: Borland Takes $1/Shr Bid From Micro Focus

How to Block Facebook Photos of Yourself - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com

See the full post for more details

Facebook can’t stop people from posting your picture. But there’s a Facebook setting that prevents other users from tagging photos with your name. Choose that setting, and other users won’t be able to tag you or search for photos of you. Plus you get plausible deniability: Nope, that’s not me doing a keg stand at the company picnic.

As with many Facebook features, the no-tag setting is easy to use, hard to find.

How to Block Facebook Photos of Yourself - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com

Firefox Could Be the Real Facebook Challenger - NYTimes.com

An interesting perspective; see the full post for more details

Though we may not be sure about his prediction that Google will act before Firefox, we think Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang offers a very compelling vision of the future of browsers and social networks in his excellent report The Future of the Social Web.

"... in a bid to extend the reach of its new browser, Chrome, we expect Google to build OpenID and its associated friend connections into the browser; look for Firefox and eventually Internet Explorer to copy this feature. Facebook and MySpace will also likely build a way for users to surf the Web within the Facebook experience, retaining the social functionality. These connections won't be perfect, but they'll allow social networks to colonize communities and other parts of the Web, extending their experience out to other sites through the shared ID. As a result, in two years, portable identities will become a ubiquitous part of the online experience as they reach maturity."

It's only logical to extrapolate from that analysis that the line between browsers and social networks will become much less clear and the two types of software will very likely compete with each other.

Firefox Could Be the Real Facebook Challenger - NYTimes.com

Technology Review: Unmasking Social-Network Users

Hmm…

In tests involving the photo-sharing site Flickr and the microblogging service Twitter, the Texas researchers were able to identify a third of the users with accounts on both sites simply by searching for recognizable patterns in anonymized network data. Both Twitter and Flickr display user information publicly, so the researchers anonymized much of the data in order to test their algorithms.

The researchers wanted to see if they could extract sensitive information about individuals using just the connections between users, even if almost all of the names, addresses, and other forms of personally identifying information had been removed. They found that they could, provided they could compare these patterns with those from another social-network graph where some user information was accessible.

Technology Review: Unmasking Social-Network Users