Analyst calls Lotus' strategy a messaging misstep

Analyst calls Lotus' strategy a messaging misstep ... "Despite Radicati's report, IBM said it's picking up new e-mail customers. Big Blue reported 15% growth in Domino deployments in the first quarter of this year versus the same period in 2003 and said it now has 320 customers using at least one component in the Workplace suite.
"We believe we have a unique offering … competitors are scrambling to put together something similar [to Workplace]," Brill said. He added that Workplace will remain competitive as organizations look for search, content managing and instant messaging software from a single supplier."

Q&A: IBM's Steve Mills on CA, the Sun/Microsoft pact, outsourcing - Computerworld

Q&A: IBM's Steve Mills on CA, the Sun/Microsoft pact, outsourcing - Computerworld: "Given your commitment to Linux, would it make strategic sense for you to take the route Novell Inc. took with its acquisition of SUSE Linux AG and acquire a Linux distributor of your own -- say, Red Hat Inc.? We've chosen very explicitly not to be a Linux distributor.
[Mills:] We decided that the way the Linux community was evolving, that IBM being a distributor was not required for Linux to be successful, and it probably wouldn't be helpful for IBM to be a distributor. Those are very tough business models. Red Hat has a lot of market cap -- they don't have a lot of business results. It's very challenging to try to build a company around what's essentially a free product. "

(p.s. sorry about the sparse posts over the last few days; I was on a mini-vacation. Back to my normal routine tomorrow.)

Microsoft hires key rival from SuSE Linux - News - ZDNet

Microsoft hires key rival from SuSE Linux - News - ZDNet: "Microsoft has hired one of its worst enemies, the SuSE Linux salesman whose efforts led the city of Munich to adopt Linux and open-source software instead of Microsoft's products.
Karl Aigner, formerly SuSE's account representative for Munich, is overseeing sales of Microsoft's data center products to midsize companies in Germany. He began his new role April 1, Microsoft said Tuesday. "

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Refresh Button: Harvesting Different Fruit

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Refresh Button: Harvesting Different Fruit: "His latest company, Wheels of Zeus, is polishing technology that will allow the wireless tracking of anything from the family dog to products being trucked through harsh regions of the third world.
'I want to be a part of the new eras of technology that are coming,' he said.
Mr. Wozniak, 53, describes his system - called wOzNet - as inexpensive ID tags that can be located via Global Positioning System satellite data through the Internet. One person using a broadband-enabled computer can track thousands of the tags, expected to cost less than $25 each.
It is too soon to tell whether Mr. Wozniak, with his 19 employees, can repeat Apple's success. 'Apple was a total accident of history,'' he said. 'I designed it at home, for myself. It was like a science project.' "

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Techno Files: Humans vs. Computers, Again. But There's Help for Our Side.

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Techno Files: Humans vs. Computers, Again. But There's Help for Our Side.: "A current race for a solution goes by the deceptively blah name of 'knowledge management,' or K.M. It is an effort to bring Google-like clarity to the swamp of data on each person's machine or network, and it is based on the underappreciated tension between a computer's capacity and a person's. Modern computers 'scale' well, as the technologists say - that is, the amount of information they can receive, display and store goes up almost without limit. Human beings don't scale. They have finite amounts of time, attention and, even when they're younger than the doddering baby boomers, short-term memory. The more e-mail, Web links and attached files lodged in their computer systems, the harder it can be for people to find what they really want. "

Ed Brill: IBM Q1 earnings highlights

Ed Brill: IBM Q1 earnings highlights: "IBM Software business grew 11% overall
Lotus revenue was up 15% for the quarter
Notes/Domino grew 12% for the quarter, 'reflecting continued demand for our Notes-based collaborative software'
Lotus Workplace added approximately 150 new customers, for a total of 320
WebSphere Portal software grew 56%
IBM's overall small/medium business revenue grew 15%"

The New York Times > Technology > A Founder Returns to Sun; Revenue Declined in Quarter

The New York Times > Technology > A Founder Returns to Sun; Revenue Declined in Quarter "Mr. Bechtolsheim, who will again wear employee badge No. 1, was the inventor of the Stanford University Network (SUN) workstation, which eventually became the company's first product.
The company also announced yesterday the resignations of Mark Tolliver, chief strategy officer, and Neil Knox, an executive vice president. Earlier this month Sun announced that Jonathan I. Schwartz, who had previously run the company's software business, would become president and chief operating officer."

WSJ.com - Music Rivals Propose a Combo, Apple Doesn't Want to Hear It

WSJ.com - Music Rivals Propose a Combo, Apple Doesn't Want to Hear It: "As Apple Computer Inc.'s position in the digital-music market grows more dominant, Chief Executive Steve Jobs has made one point increasingly clear: He doesn't intend to share the wealth with his competitors.
For months, RealNetworks Inc., Musicmatch Inc. and Microsoft Corp., among others, have been publicly calling for Apple to make changes in its key music products, including the hot iPod portable music player, so that they work with music-download sites other than Apple's own iTunes Music Store. For now, Apple effectively has a closed system: The only portable device on which songs purchased on iTunes can be played is the iPod, and the only online music site that the iPod works with is iTunes."

You'd think Jobs might understand the consequences of closed systems, by this point...

The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > RealNetworks Seeks a Musical Alliance With Apple

The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > RealNetworks Seeks a Musical Alliance With Apple "In his e-mail message to Mr. Jobs, Mr. Glazer said that he was reaching out to Mr. Jobs before making a move to switch camps. Mr. Glaser said he was surprised that the proposal had been leaked.
"Why is Steve afraid of opening up the iPod?" he asked in a telephone interview. "Steve is showing a high level of fear that I don't understand."

Oracle VP: MySQL Cluster Not a Threat

Oracle VP: MySQL Cluster Not a Threat "That type of high-end database technology, offered at no cost under the free software/open-source GNU General Public License (GPL) for open-source projects and also under a commercial license for software vendors and other commercial MySQL customers, must be causing some consternation in the hallways of Oracle Corp., IBM and Microsoft Corp., the thinking goes.
To find out how disrupted by this tiny Swedish company's technology such behemoths as Oracle feel, eWEEK.com Database Center Editor Lisa Vaas got Ken Jacobs, Oracle's vice president of product strategy, to answer the question himself."

Interesting read -- I sense some denial, however...

Forbes.com: A First Look At Google's Gmail

Forbes.com: A First Look At Google's Gmail "Google insists quite clearly in its privacy policy that "No human reads your mail to target ads or other information without your consent." The process by which it pushes ads at its users is fully automated. Fears about privacy problems inherent with the Gmail service are, in our opinion, overblown.
As yet, many other basic features, like access to external email accounts via POP3 protocol, and the ability to change the "reply-to address" that appears in mail you send, are missing from Gmail. But it's still early in its existence. When the service gets to general release, we won't be surprised to see a mass migration from Hotmail, Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) free Web-based email service, which has in recent months gone from being average to utterly abysmal in terms of user experience.
Users of Yahoo!'s (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) much better and more powerful Web mail service may start to migrate as well, if only to get around the fees that Yahoo! charges for extra storage. As it stands right now Gmail's main advantage is its storage limit and searching ability. For many users, that may be enough."

MySQL takes cue from the master | CNET News.com

MySQL takes cue from the master | CNET News.com: "A Swedish upstart is challenging Microsoft in the database arena by making use of the same low-end assault tactics that the software giant employed to gain a foothold.
MySQL, which sells an open-source database of the same name, was nearly unheard of in corporate technology circles a few years ago. Now the company's competitively priced, easy-to-use database is becoming increasingly popular with business customers looking for smaller, less-expensive options. "

I'm at the MySQL conference this week. It's a fascinating event, at the intersection of database and open source.

CRN : Breaking News : Former Sun Tools Exec Surfaces At Startup

CRN : Breaking News : Former Sun Tools Exec Surfaces At Startup : 4:05 PM EST Tues., Apr. 13, 2004 "Rich Green, who left Sun just after the Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor unveiled its landmark deal with Microsoft a week and a half ago, now is executive vice president of product development at Cassatt, a small ISV in San Jose, Calif.
...
Coleman is not the only notable technology executive Green will be joining as part of Cassatt's management team. Sunir Kapoor, founder of E-Stamps and a former vice president at Oracle, serves as the company's chief marketing officer and executive vice president, and, Mark Forman, who as former CIO of the U.S. federal government was responsible for its $58 billion IT budget, serves as Cassatt's executive vice president of worldwide services."

Sun plots Java comeback | CNET News.com

Sun plots Java comeback | CNET News.com "Sun Microsystems is trying to climb back into the market for Java server software with rapid standards compliance and aggressive pricing.
The company on Monday said it has released the Java Application Server Platform Edition 8, the latest version of Sun's server software product for running programs written with Java. The software is available for free download and deployment. By making its application server and Java development tools available for free, Sun hopes to seed the market for its Java software and generate sales of more complex products. In the second half of the year, Sun plans to release a more advanced Enterprise Edition of the Application Server Platform, expected to cost $10,000 per processor."

InformationWeek > Alliance > Sun Says Microsoft Alliance No Paper Truce

InformationWeek > Alliance > Sun Says Microsoft Alliance No Paper Truce > April 12, 2004 "The alliance "will eventually include other important areas, such as E-mail and database" products, according to the agreement. He [Schwartz] said there has been no discussion of a Sun Solaris/Microsoft SQL Server database package, but suggested that Sun needs a database system to handle streams of management information being generated by its Java Enterprise System software stack, which includes an application server, a portal, and an identity server."

Microsoft Works Out Longhorn Schedule for First Half of 2006

Microsoft Works Out Longhorn Schedule for First Half of 2006 "Months of customer complaints have finally had an effect on Microsoft. This week, the company acknowledged that it will deliver Longhorn, the next major Windows release, on a fixed schedule, ending years of vague delivery dates and glacial development. The slow move to a concrete timetable started last month when Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates--who in June 2000 stepped down as CEO specifically to have more of a hands-on role with Longhorn--said that conjectures about a 2006 release for the product were "valid." This week, however, internal company documentation corroborated by Microsoft representatives pins the Longhorn release date to "the first half of 2006." And the oft-delayed beta 1 release (originally due in late summer 2004) will ship in mid-February 2005, according to the documentation I've seen.
...
So which Longhorn features will Microsoft cut? According to a "BusinessWeek" article, the deleted features include a WinFS tool that would have aggregated content on a local network. However, the company is retaining similar features for the local system and for the Internet--features that will be more valuable for typical users. Presumably, a more network-friendly version of WinFS could ship in Longhorn Server, due 60 to 90 days after the Longhorn client ships, or in Blackcomb, the Windows release that will follow Longhorn.
Microsoft has also scaled back plans for a Longhorn-specific Microsoft Office release, and Microsoft Office 12 will run on other volume Windows versions in addition to Longhorn. "Microsoft knows that customers have different roll-out needs," a Microsoft representative told CNET.com. "We'll be working to ensure they can use the next version of Office with other recent versions of Windows as well."

Microsoft: Not enough XPerienced PCs | CNET News.com

Microsoft: Not enough XPerienced PCs | CNET News.com: "With more than 90 percent of the world's PCs running some form on Windows, Microsoft has long considered its chief competition to be its installed base--convincing customers that they need a new OS can be a tough sell. That's been especially true with XP, which after two-and-a-half years on the market is installed at about 62 percent of businesses with revenue of $50 million or more, according to Jupiter Research.
In addition, a study in December found that 80 percent of companies still have some machines running Windows 95 or Windows 98. And at firms running the older operating systems, an average of 39 percent of desktops were running either Windows 95 or Windows 98, according to technology consultant AssetMetrix.
Even more troubling for Microsoft is the fact that many corporate buyers who already have a license to install XP are remaining on the sidelines. 'In the enterprise, it is not a situation where customers don't have license to it,' Johnson said.
Microsoft faces a similar issue on the server side, with many of its customers clinging to older versions of the OS. Some analysts estimate that up to 40 percent of servers still run Microsoft's two-generations-old Windows NT 4. "

WinInfo Short Takes: Is Longhorn Losing Features?

WinInfo Short Takes: Is Longhorn Losing Features? "Leaked email messages from Microsoft suggest that the company is planning to cut back on a few crucial Longhorn features, a "BusinessWeek" report says, but I'm not quite sure I agree. According to the messages, Microsoft will still implement the WinFS storage engine in Longhorn, but WinFS will work only on local systems, not across networks. Furthermore, Microsoft Office 12, which originally was going to run only on Longhorn, will now also be compatible with earlier Windows versions. I don't see these changes as huge retreats from Microsoft's original plans for Longhorn. In fact, I think you could make the argument that we're going to see a lot of Longhorn technology early, rather than late. Just look at Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2): Microsoft lifted SP2's Windows Firewall, memory-protection, network-protection, and other security-oriented features directly from Longhorn. And later this year, when a major new Windows Media Player (WMP) release ships, I think you can expect to see a lot of other technologies that Microsoft originally slated for Longhorn. Yes, Longhorn is taking a long time to ship (its beta 1 release was recently delayed until mid-February 2005), but that delay doesn't mean Longhorn is the next Cairo--Microsoft's ambitious and ultimately aborted mid-1990s project to add object-oriented underpinnings to Windows NT."

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Microsoft Can't be Civilized

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Microsoft Can't be Civilized: Dan Gillmor on the Cringley column referenced below:
"Microsoft is going to dominate computing for the next decade or two. The question is whether the company will sink its revenue-sucking needle into everything that contains software, including embedded devices and all information that moves. The scene has now been set for this.
Only open source has a chance of slowing Microsoft. Watch the patent lawsuits. This is where Microsoft will apply its leverage. Everyone will complain, but by then it'll be too late."

PBS | I, Cringely: The Once and Future King: Now the Only Way Microsoft Can Die is by Suicide

PBS | I, Cringely: The Once and Future King: Now the Only Way Microsoft Can Die is by Suicide "Look at the language of the Sun-Microsoft announcement. "Microsoft and Sun will work together to improve collaboration between the Java and .Net technologies, while Microsoft will be allowed to continue to provide product support for the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine in its products. Microsoft was set to end support later this year, raising compatibility and security questions for users." While some people think this means Microsoft will bundle Java again, I think that Microsoft will choose to pursue their own .NET Java (J#), instead. However, with platform independent Java less of a threat, it is easier to agree to improve collaboration. Microsoft will now make their Java work inside the .NET framework as a real option for those who insist on using Java. Meanwhile C# and VB.NET will still be the main .NET languages.
All this simply recognizes that it is too late for Java to succeed in the Windows world. .NET is now too good.
Sun no longer poses any threat to Microsoft. Part of this feeling is based on agreements between the two companies that have to exist but weren't announced. For all we know, Sun may have given up the future of Java altogether and will allow it to wither away and be replaced by .NET. Whether that's the case or not, Java Desktop (Sun's biggest strategic threat to Windows) is over. Sun now goes back to being just a maker of big Unix servers intended to support a Windows-centric IT world. And the whole Java culture, which is to say IBM and Oracle, is threatened. Microsoft hobbles three opponents in one deal.
The worst thing about this deal is that Sun brought it upon itself through a campaign of ridicule and hate promulgated personally by CEO Scott McNealy. This is McNealy's failure and nobody else's. The quotes last week from McNealy were laughable, the about face nothing short of shameful. How are Sun's big customers going to believe what the company says in the future in the face of such a change? How can they base huge technical investments on the word of Sun?"

Report Foresees Declining IBM E-Mail Penetration

Report Foresees Declining IBM E-Mail Penetration "The Radicati Group Inc. on Thursday issued a report indicating that IBM's e-mail product strategy—with its converging Notes/Domino and Workplace roadmaps—will lead to the company losing share in the corporate e-mail market over the next four years.
The report says that Lotus Domino now has an installed base of 85.9 million mailboxes, representing 24 percent of the market. The fledgling Lotus Workplace product is expected to have 3.7 million mailboxes by the end of this year, or 1 percent of the market. By 2008, Workplace's share of the e-mail server market is expected to increase to 6 percent, or 38.4 million mailboxes. However, Domino's share is expected to fall to just 11 percent, or 76.8 million mailboxes, according to the Palo Alto, Calif., consulting and market research firm."

Ed Brill rebuttle: eWeek: Report Foresees Declining IBM E-Mail Penetration

Ed Brill rebuttle: eWeek: Report Foresees Declining IBM E-Mail Penetration "Looking at messaging as a flat horizontal market has always been dangerous -- to take an analogy, I don't think that Ritz-Carlton thinks of Motel 6 as a competitor, even though they are both in the "lodging" industry. It would have been interesting for the reporter to examine Radicati's success at predicting the market over the last few years, and/or compare that to the mainline analysts who make a living at market forecasting and analysis, like IDC or Gartner Dataquest.
The article also tries to take an excellent, long Ferris Research report on Lotupshere and summarize it in five words. I think the interpretation there is a bit misleading -- I found the Ferris report to be quite comprehensive and balanced.

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Palms, other PDAs are shoved aside as must-have gadget

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Palms, other PDAs are shoved aside as must-have gadget "This year, for the first time, smart cellphones are expected to outsell PDAs. Consumers increasingly find cellphones more easily handle the address book and calendar chores the Palm Pilot had commanded when it burst on the scene in 1996. IDC predicts two smartphones will be sold for every one PDA in 2004."

WSJ.com - Microsoft Settles InterTrust Suit

WSJ.com - Microsoft Settles InterTrust Suit "In the latest in a series of moves to clear up legal issues, Microsoft Corp. has agreed to pay $440 million to InterTrust Technologies Corp. to settle a broad patent suit that had cast a cloud over Microsoft's plans in digital media.
The deal gives the software giant a license to InterTrust's large portfolio of patents in technology for protecting music, movies and other digital content against unauthorized copying.
...
Will Poole, a Microsoft senior vice president, said the InterTrust licenses augment his company's own intellectual property as well as patents that Microsoft had licensed from ContentGuard, a start-up spun off from Xerox Corp. He argued that all the patent rights give Microsoft advantages over competitors in digital media, such as Apple Computer and RealNetworks Inc."

Microsoft beefs up executive ranks of security business unit

Microsoft beefs up executive ranks of security business unit "Microsoft Corp. is shifting two veteran executives to newly created positions within the business unit that oversees its security initiatives.
The appointments of Gordon Mangione and Rich Kaplan as corporate vice presidents in the Security Business and Technology Unit underscore the effort that Microsoft is making on the security front, an executive with the business unit said yesterday.
"We've seen significant progress in the last two years," said Amy Carroll, product manager in the Security Business and Technology Unit. "But there's no question that we have a lot more work to do to continue to help our customers get more secure."
Mangione, previously corporate vice president on the company's SQL Server team, has been named corporate vice president for security products, overseeing development and support of security-related products and features.
Kaplan is currently corporate vice president for the company's Content Development and Delivery Group. In May, he becomes corporate vice president of security marketing, responsible for planning and marketing security products and features.
Both will report to Mike Nash, corporate vice president of the Security Business and Technology Unit."

CRN : Breaking News : MSDN Tries To Get 'Em Young : 8:22 AM EST Fri., Apr. 09, 2004

CRN : Breaking News : MSDN Tries To Get 'Em Young : 8:22 AM EST Fri., Apr. 09, 2004: "Microsoft wants to get to new programmers early.
A new low-cost MSDN subscription for high school students and teachers will be available starting this summer. The $299 fee covers Visual Studio.Net Academic Edition, Visual Studio 6.0 as well as access to 'e-learning,' documentation, training and support. That fee covers all students, all teachers and all school computers. Students enrolled in at least one related for-credit course can also load the software on their personal computers. "

BW Online | April 19, 2004 | Microsoft's Midlife Crisis

BW Online | April 19, 2004 | Microsoft's Midlife Crisis "Would you invest your hard-earned dollars in a company like this? Its revenues soared an average of 36% through the 1990s, but now it's heading into miserly single-digit growth. It has long been a powerful engine fueled by major updates of its products, yet the next major one, an unprecedented five years in the making, isn't expected until 2006. The company hasn't made much headway in newer, promising markets. And its share price is stuck exactly where it was in mid-1998. Not buying, huh? Well, tough luck: You probably already own a piece of this rock.
The company is Microsoft Corp. (MSFT ), one of the most widely held stocks on the planet. And sure, for all its challenges, this icon of American capitalism still has a lot going for it. With a market cap of $279 billion, its valuation is the second highest in the world after General Electric Co. (GE ). And it remains the most profitable company in the $1 trillion tech industry, pumping out $1 billion a month in cash.
But Microsoft just isn't the phenom it used to be. After 29 years, the software giant is starting to look like a star athlete who's past his prime. Growth is tepid. Expansion is stymied. Bureaucracy is a concern. And a company that used to be so intimidating it attracted antitrust suits on two continents seems, well, vulnerable.
...
But ask CEO Steven A. Ballmer if Microsoft is past its prime, and he bristles. "No -- in no sense do I feel like we're past our prime," he says during an interview in his windowless conference room. "The thing that I think is fair to say is we are past adolescence. Isn't adolescence when you grow really fast and you can sometimes be a little raucous? And then when you get into your prime, you're just hitting on every cylinder, you're having a great life, you're creating a family, you're rising to new responsibilities. We're in our prime, baby. We're post-adolescent. We are in our prime." He pulls out color-coded charts that show Microsoft outpacing a host of well-respected companies: Intel (INTC ), GE, SAP (SAP ). "Here's Dell, the great growth story of our industry," he says, pointing. "Growing more slowly than Microsoft."

Microsoft reins in Longhorn for 2006 launch | CNET News.com

Microsoft reins in Longhorn for 2006 launch | CNET News.com: "Microsoft said on Friday that it is aiming to release Longhorn in the first half of 2006--a move that will require the company to scale back some of its more ambitious plans for the next version of Windows.
The company said Longhorn will still include three major advances: a new file system known as WinFS, a new graphics engine dubbed Avalon and a Web Services architecture known as Indigo.
'There may be specific features within those subsystems that will be scaled back,' lead product manager Greg Sullivan said. Sullivan would not identify which features have been trimmed but said such efforts are typical of all new releases of the Windows operating system.
'It's a matter of scaling back by degrees,' Sullivan said. 'In some cases, the scenarios won't be as all-encompassing.'"

PCWorld.com - Meet the Movers Behind the First PC

PCWorld.com - Meet the Movers Behind the First PC "Although few outside of the world of computer research might know who they are, Bob Taylor, Alan Kay, Charles "Chuck" Thacker, and Butler Lampson probably should be household names. These four are this year's winners of the prestigious Draper Prize, which recognizes contributions in engineering. As part of the first "class" of researchers at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in California in the 1970s, these technologists were key to the invention of the PC.
...
Perhaps ironically, Lampson and Thacker both now work at Microsoft, as does laser printer inventor Starkweather. Simonyi, who crafted the Bravo graphical word processor at PARC, created Word after moving to Microsoft in 1981; he retired two years ago."

Must-read history in this context: Dealers of Lightning

Microsoft, Micro Focus form alliance to target mainframes - Computerworld

Microsoft, Micro Focus form alliance to target mainframes - Computerworld "Microsoft Corp. and Micro Focus International Ltd. today announced an alliance to promote the migration of mainframe applications onto Intel Corp. servers running Windows using Microsoft's .Net technology.
...
The alliance enables the migration and deployment of CICS/Cobol mainframe applications to the Windows platform, the companies said. CICS is a mainframe transaction system.
...
Until now, Microsoft hasn't sold against the mainframe, said Bruce Burns, director of Microsoft's platform strategies and partner group.
"What's new is today customers aren't wanting to connect to the mainframe; they want off the mainframe -- so it's at their request that we're forming this alliance," Burns said."

Millions more for Sun from Microsoft patent pact? | CNET News.com

Millions more for Sun from Microsoft patent pact? | CNET News.com "The 10-year payment schedule is part of a covenant the two companies signed that permits them to sue each other for patent infringement but discourages this by prohibiting the collection of financial damages from such a suit, said Lee Patch, Sun's vice president of legal affairs.
Microsoft agreed to pay Sun $900 million for the covenant governing patents up to the date of the Friday agreement, Patch said. According to the filing, Microsoft has the option to extend the covenant each year afterward for a further payment. If Microsoft extends the covenant for all 10 years, the payments total $450 million, Patch said.
In addition, the filing said, if Microsoft makes the payments for all 10 years, the companies will automatically strike a patent cross-licensing agreement--a perpetual license to use all of each other's patents. But the covenant would be superseded if the companies sign a patent cross-license agreement before that--and they've said they intend to begin negotiations for such an agreement."

What's In Your Gadget Bag, Dan?

What's In Your Gadget Bag, Dan? "What I've stopped carrying: My iPod
This was a revelation, because I love the iPod. But when I put a 512MB SD card into the Treo and found a third-party MP3 player, it was trivial to copy a bunch of albums over to the card and listen to them from the Treo. Doing this isn't hard on the battery, and you can hold a lot of music in half a gigabyte. Since I'm carrying all my digital music anyway in the Mac, it's not all that hard to move a few albums to the Treo before or during a trip. I lose some convenience in one way but gain a lot in another."

IBM Software news: Why IBM Lotus Notes and Domino matters -- a word from the front lines (2004-4-6)

IBM Software news: Why IBM Lotus Notes and Domino matters -- a word from the front lines (2004-4-6) "I'll start with what I hope is a very clear statement. For all the reasons companies used Domino in the first place -- threaded discussions, robust security, integrated directories and workflow, rapid development and administration, off-line support, etc. -- they can continue to use Domino today and long into the future. There is no reason to question when to move existing applications to another platform, and there is every reason to aggressively look forward to the ways to enhance investments even more with Domino 6, 6.5, and 7."

Timely overview, via Ed Brill

One nation under Internet Protocol | Perspectives | CNET News.com

One nation under Internet Protocol | Perspectives | CNET News.com "Take a trip to Korea or Japan, and you will immediately have a new appreciation for the definition of broadband.
There, it is not uncommon for a consumer's Internet connection to breathe a blazingly fast 10-plus megabits per second. In Japan, Yahoo BB goes a step further, trumpeting a full 45-megabits-per-second offering for a cool $37 per month (about 3,892 yen). Still not amazed? Korea boasts a mind-boggling 80 percent broadband penetration rate, while the United States still ambles around half that. That said, even the states' 42 percent penetration rate is deceptive, as the U.S. version of broadband is a far cry from these Asian fire hoses.
What is most striking about the notion of a 45-megabit Internet Protocol connection is the overwhelming universality of such an incredibly high-speed packet-based conduit. Into it melt all forms of media and communications: voice, data, video and any other application or service you might imagine. There is no need to consider bringing multiple connections or service providers into your home, for this network can do everything you need and more. Early signs in Japan are consistent with this notion. Yahoo BB announced a stunning 80 percent attachment rate on its IP-based phone service. It is now promoting an IP-based set-top box for the ultimate in personalized television.
...
Believe it or not, Microsoft is the company that may be most underestimated in the all-IP network future. The company has done a magnificent job developing its Windows Media 9 codec and its corresponding digital rights management (DRM) features, and it now appears to be the technology of choice for distributing video over IP. WM9 has a strong presence in both Korea and Japan."

Sun/Microsoft Agreement May Shift Server Marketplace

Sun/Microsoft Agreement May Shift Server Marketplace "Sun's and Microsoft's customers should not expect to realize significant benefits from this collaboration agreement in the short term (before 2005), because it will likely not have a major impact without changes in the two company's strategies. Gartner sees no reason to change its overall "Caution" rating for Sun."

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Microsoft stock is attracting bargain hunters

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Microsoft stock is attracting bargain hunters "Microsoft, whose earnings growth and surging share price in the 1990s made Chairman Bill Gates the richest man in the world, is attracting the attention of investors who favor bargain-priced stocks.
"We've followed Microsoft for years, and we've never been able to buy it because of valuation," said John Buckingham, whose $260 million Al Frank Fund has outperformed 99 percent of value funds tracked by Bloomberg in the last five years. Last month, Buckingham bought 30,000 shares of the world's biggest software maker.
The purchase by Buckingham and interest from other "value investors," who buy stocks that they view as cheap relative to earnings, sales or asset values, indicates a four-year slump in Microsoft's stock may come to an end.
Microsoft has been selling for about 24 times earnings for the past year, 41 percent below its average ratio of 41 during the past decade. After returning an average of 72 percent a year from 1995 through 1999, the Redmond company's shares have lost an average of 17 percent annually since the end of 1999."

The New York Times > Technology > Market Place: Yahoo Reports Surge in Quarterly Earnings and Plans a Stock Split

The New York Times > Technology > Market Place: Yahoo Reports Surge in Quarterly Earnings and Plans a Stock Split: "'Yahoo's results are just incredible,' said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with Schwab Soundview Capital Markets. 'There were no trade-offs,' he added, saying that most companies have to balance growth and profit margins. 'They were able to grow users, grow revenue per user, increase profit margins and maintain a very high free cash flow.'
Terry S. Semel, Yahoo's chief executive, attributed the financial results mainly to accelerating sales in the company's two advertising businesses - graphic display advertising and text ads linked to Internet searches. In addition, he said, subscribers increased faster than expected in Yahoo's dating service and Internet service partnerships with SBC Communications and the BT Group of Britain. "

WSJ.com - Personal Technology: Verizon Is Crossing The U.S. With Speedy, True Wireless Access

WSJ.com - Personal Technology: Verizon Is Crossing The U.S. With Speedy, True Wireless Access "True wireless broadband is coming to the U.S. this year and next. By the end of 2005, courtesy of Verizon Wireless, you should be able to wirelessly connect a laptop, PDA or cellphone to the Internet at real broadband speeds from almost any location in every major U.S. metropolitan area.
I'm not talking about the spread of more Wi-Fi "hot spots" in airports, coffee shops and similar places. I'm talking about wireless high-speed Internet service that you can use just about anywhere -- even on the street or in a car.
This isn't a pipe dream. I've been testing Verizon's new service, called BroadBand Access, on a laptop around Washington, D.C., one of the first two cities where the company has rolled it out. I am very impressed. It is simple to set up and works just like any other broadband connection, with your normal Web browser and e-mail program."

Economist.com | Face value

Economist.com | Face value "Linux, however, is hurting Sun far more than Microsoft. Solaris is similar to Linux, which makes it very easy for customers to switch from one to the other. Migrating from Windows to Linux is a much more fiddly process. As a result, the technology bosses of companies, whose budgets have been tight since the dotcom bust, are ditching Sun's computer systems, the equivalent of Ferraris, for cheaper boxes from Dell, Hewlett-Packard or IBM that run Linux, the equivalent of Fiats.
Sun, in other words, is the main loser. Its revenues have shrunk, year-on-year, for 12 quarters in a row, and it has been making losses since 2002. Buried under the headlines about the love-in with Microsoft on April 2nd was Sun's announcement that the latest quarter's losses are likely to be $750m-810m—worse than expected—and that it is laying off 9% of its employees. Whereas its new friend, Microsoft, remains, in effect, a monopoly on the desktop and continues to reap monopoly rents, Sun is fighting for its very survival, or at least its independence. (Indeed, there has been talk that the new friendship may be a prelude to Microsoft buying Sun, though this seems unlikely.)
All dressed up and nowhere to go
This is the backdrop to Mr McNealy's sporadic, and admittedly entertaining, antics. In 2002, he mounted a stage dressed from head to toe as a penguin (the Linux mascot). He was hoping to convince investors that Sun had now embraced Linux. It does now ship some cheap Linux servers, but this is surely a token gesture, for sales of low-end boxes cannibalise Sun's core high-end business. Now it is Red Wings jerseys. There will be more.
These photo-ops, however, cannot change Mr McNealy's predicament. He must transform Sun radically, but into what sort of company? He has already cut over $1 billion in costs since the tech-bubble burst in 2000. And, after a series of top-level defections, he now has a new management team. The latest promotion, also on April 2nd, was that of Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's talented software visionary, to the number-two slot.
Mr Schwartz is thought to have persuaded Mr McNealy that Sun must become a software company. Mr Schwartz's dream is to sell deep-discount desktop computers at Wal-Mart, carrying Sun's office applications on top of a Linux operating system. But this would put Sun and Mr McNealy right back where they first ran into trouble, years ago: in Microsoft's way."

e-Pro Magazine: IBM Cooks Up Mouth Watering Combo in Domino and DB2 Integration

e-Pro Magazine: IBM Cooks Up Mouth Watering Combo in Domino and DB2 Integration "The future of .NSF as the Domino data store is a concern for some. In fact, the embrace of the massive DB2 storage capabilities has led to some speculation that Domino’s native .NSF data store may be on the way out; but Marsh said this is not the case. “.NSF is a more than adequate data store, and some of its characteristics were used to improve DB2,” he said. “We actually needed to make enhancements to DB2 to make it amenable to the Domino development paradigm. For example, we had to add the ability to handle XML data. This wasn’t just a one way street.”
Schwartz agrees and said that the future of .NSF is not a concern. “IBM is a huge company, and there are certain parts of IBM that probably would want to do away with .NSF, but I’m not afraid. There’s no practical way to do it, at least not in the short term,” he said. “On the other hand, there are some people [in IBM] who would love to see .NSF extended, expanded, and built upon. .NSF is still the only data store where the data looks the same on the client and the server.”

Boston.com / Business / Technology / With open arms

Boston.com / Business / Technology / With open arms: "Open source software is flowering this spring in Greater Boston. Companies are distributing, writing programs for, investing in, and profiting from, the free computer software that is emerging as an alternative to proprietary systems like Microsoft Windows."

Timely snapshot of Boston-area open source activity

Tim Bray ongoing · Office Doofuses

Tim Bray ongoing · Office Doofuses "I guess we’re friends with Microsoft now, and even though we’re direct competitors in the office-suite space, because we’re friends I’m gonna pass on some free advice. Please show your developers and customers some respect and get those incredibly-lame Great Moments At Work ads off the air. The message, insofar as there is one, is that people who work in offices are clueless doofuses, and that being around Microsoft Office will encourage poor grooming, juvenile behavior, and generally coming across like a complete moron. Microsoft is a smart company, and smart companies shouldn’t run dumb ads. It disgraces our whole profession."

Mercury News | 04/07/2004 | A technology-industry dinosaur turns 40

Mercury News | 04/07/2004 | A technology-industry dinosaur turns 40 "From the mainframe's initial conception in the early 1960s to the launch of a formal product, the System/360, on April 7, 1964, IBM spent $5 billion on development. It was an unprecedented investment for that era, especially compared with IBM's $3.2 billion in revenues in 1964.
``The System/360 was the Big Bang or the Manhattan Project of the computer world,'' said Dag Spicer, the curator of the Computer History Museum. ``At the time, the world was full of mutually incompatible computers. IBM had about seven different product lines and they couldn't talk to each other.''

IBM speeds Java on mainframes | CNET News.com

IBM speeds Java on mainframes | CNET News.com "The zSeries Application Assist Processor (zAAP) is essentially a dedicated processor for Java applications. Java runs on IBM mainframes now, but it does not enjoy dedicated hardware. ZAAP costs $125,000 per microprocessor.
The new products comes on the eve of a celebration IBM will hold at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., on Wednesday to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the release of the S/360, the computer that put the mainframe on the map. Released in 1964, the S/360 was one of IBM’s most ambitious projects to date. The company invested $5 billion into the project and built five new plants in the process. At the time, IBM’s annual revenue was only $3.2 billion."

Hmm -- how many commodity Wintel/Lintel boxes can be had for $125K?...

Microsoft Opens Product Development Cycle and Knowledge Base To Most Valuable Professional Contributions

Microsoft Opens Product Development Cycle and Knowledge Base To Most Valuable Professional Contributions "At the annual Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Summit, Microsoft Corp. executives announced the Community Solutions Content Program for Microsoft Knowledge Base, key updates regarding the Microsoft MVP Source Licensing Program, and new feedback, assistance and community tools tailored for MVPs that will help facilitate feedback in the Microsoft® product development cycle. An audience of more than 1,500 MVP award recipients, representing more than 63 countries, heard the announcements at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center.
...
Allchin provided an update on the Microsoft MVP Source Licensing Program that was announced to MVPs in October 2003. To date, more than 200 MVPs in eligible countries are licensed through the Shared Source Initiative and are now accessing one of Microsoft's most valuable assets, Windows® source code. Each source-licensing program under the Shared Source Initiative is tailored to the needs of a particular Microsoft constituent community and can be applied as a model for increasing code transparency throughout commercial software. The MVP Source Licensing Program was designed with the MVP community's unique needs for source-code access in mind. Raising the level of self-support the community can find inspires greater community participation and provides a stronger feedback loop to Microsoft."

Scripting News: 4/6/2004: What is Windows XP Media Center?

Scripting News: 4/6/2004: What is Windows XP Media Center?: "What is Windows XP Media Center? Apparently it's a TiVO-like box, that runs Windows XP apps, that you can access over your LAN, without hacking. In other words, it's a software platform. We should be able to create some monster apps for this thing. If all this is true, it's one of the most under-promoted products in history."

Version history for RSS

Version history for RSS: "There are a lot of folk legends about the evolution of RSS. Here's the scoop, the sequence of events in the life of RSS, as told by the designer of most of the formats."

WSJ.com - Oracle Loss May Aid Its Antitrust Case

WSJ.com - Oracle Loss May Aid Its Antitrust Case "Antitrust enforcers in the Justice Department say Oracle shouldn't be allowed to acquire PeopleSoft because the takeover would leave the world's biggest corporate buyers with only two suppliers of critical software, who then would be free to slow innovation and raise prices.
Oracle counters that the software business is sufficiently fluid that a merger with PeopleSoft wouldn't diminish competition for programs that help companies manage their finances and human resources.
Exhibit 1 in Oracle's case may be the Justice Department's selection of American Management Systems Inc. for as much as $24 million of financial-management software. The Fairfax, Va., company beat Oracle and PeopleSoft for the deal -- even though the Justice Department's antitrust lawyers don't count AMS among Oracle's significant competitors."

Blogs put developers in Microsoft 'cockpit' | CNET News.com

Blogs put developers in Microsoft 'cockpit' | CNET News.com "Microsoft quietly launched a new site on Tuesday that combines blogs, discussion forums and other technology to improve communications with developers.
Channel 9 was created by a group of engineers and "technology evangelists" at Microsoft that is convinced the software giant could do more to promote free discussion with outside developers. The name refers to the audio channel most airlines use to allow passengers to listen in on conversations between flight crew members."

From the site -- the Channel 9 Doctrine:
" 1. Channel 9 is all about the conversation. Channel 9 should inspire Microsoft and our customers to talk in an honest and human voice. Channel 9 is not a marketing tool, not a PR tool, not a lead generation tool.
2. Be a human being. Channel 9 is a place for us to be ourselves, to share who we are, and for us to learn who our customers are.
3. Learn by listening. When our customers speak, learn from them. Don't get defensive, don't argue for the sake of argument. Listen and take what benefits you to heart.
4. Be smart. Think before you speak, there are some conversations which have no benefit other than to reinforce stereotypes or create negative situations.
5. Marketing has no place on Channel 9. When we spend money on Channel 9 the goal is to surprise and delight, not to promote or preach.
6. Don't shock the system. Lasting change only happens in baby steps.
7. Know when to turn the mic off. There are some topics which will only result in problems when you discuss them. This has nothing to do with censorship, but with working within the reality of the system that exists in our world today. You will not change anything by taking on legal or financial issues, you will only shock the system, spook the passengers, and create a negative situation.
8. Don't be a jerk. Nobody likes mean people.
9. Commit to the conversation. Don't stop listening just because you are busy. Don't stop participating because you don't agree with someone. Relationships are not built in a day, be in it for the long haul and we will all reap the benefits as an industry."

Adam Bosworth's Weblog: Be very afraid

Adam Bosworth's Weblog: Be very afraid "Everyone should read this article and ponder if this is the world they want. I'm sorry to have been off so long. More shortly, but in the meantime, read this and, if you understand at all why the browser has been such a tremendous force for good in terms of access, support, TCO, productivity, and even quality of design, be very afraid."

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Linux on Desktop Making Big Strides

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Linux on Desktop Making Big Strides "It looks like I'm going to have to reconsider something I'd been taking for granted -- that Linux on the desktop, and especially the laptop, was a non-starter in the operating systems race. While I wasn't paying sufficient attention, the proverbial tortoise has been playing some serious catch-up.
One reason I'm rethinking this long-held conviction is in my lap. I'm writing this column on a nearly 4-year-old IBM ThinkPad, a computer that was a marvel of technology in its time but is now fairly old stuff. Linux has rejuvenated this machine."

InfoWorld: Linux desktop test drive

InfoWorld: Linux desktop test drive My leap back into the Linux desktop with Xandros was hardly an exhaustive test, but the functionality was compelling enough for me to call my IT group into my office to check it out. Frankly, it had been a while since the last time we had been this excited about a desktop OS — at least since we all dove into OS X a few months ago.
Linux on the desktop is not to be ignored."

InfoWorld: Microsoft goes open source with WiX tool

InfoWorld: Microsoft goes open source with WiX tool "Anyone who thought Microsoft's settlement on Friday with long-time nemesis Sun Microsystems seemed surreal were in for another shocker Monday, when the Redmond, Wash., software giant made some of its source code freely available on the Internet.
Microsoft released the code on SourceForge.net, a Web site that provides free hosting for open source software development projects. The Microsoft tool set, called WiX, for Windows Installer XML, is intended for building Windows installation packages from XML source code."

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Sun deal won't spare Microsoft, EU says

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Sun deal won't spare Microsoft, EU says "Last week's stunning $1.6 billion settlement with Sun Microsystems is unlikely to affect the antitrust actions against Microsoft in Europe, officials and legal experts said yesterday.
The European Commission said it stood behind its recent ruling against Microsoft, which was initially trigged by a complaint from Sun in 1998.
"It is broader than the interests of one company. We took the decision because we thought it was in the interest of European consumers," said EU spokeswoman Amelia Torres."

WSJ.com - Oracle, Dell in Computer, Software Deal

WSJ.com - Oracle, Dell in Computer, Software Deal "Oracle Corp. is stepping up its competition with Microsoft Corp. for small-business customers with an agreement to offer Dell Inc.'s server computers preinstalled with Oracle's database software. The marketing deal extends Oracle's recent price cutting on its Standard Edition One database. The Dell-Oracle combination is available for as little as $4,108. Oracle recently cut the list price for its standard-edition database to $4,995. "We are aggressively going after market share," Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said. No money changes hands as a result of the agreement, under which Oracle technicians will train Dell's sales force. "We expect to grow our database server business from $460 million to $1 billion [in annual revenue] with the addition of Standard Edition One," Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said. Dell gains a nine-month exclusive period for bundling Oracle's database software for North American and European sales on server computers."

CRN : Breaking News : More Executive Shakeups At Sun in Wake Of Microsoft Deal : 12:57 PM EST Mon., Apr. 05, 2004

CRN : Breaking News : More Executive Shakeups At Sun in Wake Of Microsoft Deal : 12:57 PM EST Mon., Apr. 05, 2004 "The spokeswoman said Green timed his departure with the completion of Sun's negotiations to end the Java war with Microsoft, which the company unveiled Friday. She said Green was not leaving because he was passed over as Jonathan Schwartz's successor or because he is upset over the deal between Sun and Microsoft. Schwartz was named president and COO on Friday.
"[Green] had tendered his resignation long before any of the other executive changes at Sun last week," she said."

Okay, so maybe he didn't quit "in disgust"

Sun, Microsoft Alliance Signals End to Decade-Long Fear, Loathing

Sun, Microsoft Alliance Signals End to Decade-Long Fear, Loathing: "Regardless of its size, Sun will emerge a changed company. McNealy stepped out of the CEO and president rolls--he remains chairman--ceding them to Jonathan Schwartz, who has vowed to take Sun on a decidedly software-based strategy. That might mean less reliance of proprietary UNIX hardware and more emphasis on Intel- and AMD Opteron-based equipment.
As for Microsoft, the company says that it will continue to compete with Sun in the server space, even while cooperating in certain areas and sharing technologies. It's a healthier relationship, the company noted. 'We're going to compete, no question,' Ballmer said. 'I'm not going to do it today, but later I'll tell you why I think our products are better.'"

A Heretical View of File Sharing

A Heretical View of File Sharing: "But what if the industry is wrong, and file sharing is not hurting record sales?
It might seem counterintuitive, but that is the conclusion reached by two economists who released a draft last week of the first study that makes a rigorous economic comparison of directly observed activity on file-sharing networks and music buying.
'Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates,' write its authors, Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School and Koleman S. Strumpf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "

WSJ.com - Behind Secret Settlement Talks: New Power of Tech Customers

WSJ.com - Behind Secret Settlement Talks: New Power of Tech Customers

WSJ.com - Real Time: Google Gives Free E-Mail a Much-Needed Shake-Up

WSJ.com - Real Time: Google Gives Free E-Mail a Much-Needed Shake-Up "Gmail, as currently described, would shake up the free-e-mail backwater, due to two radical parts of the offering.
The first surprise: The service provides 1,000 megabytes of storage. For free. That's enough for 500,000 pages of e-mail, Google says. It's a lot more space than we have in our crammed work e-mail boxes, and loads more than free services from Hotmail, which offers a miserly 2 MB, or Yahoo Mail, which boasts of "4 MB storage -- up to twice as much as other free e-mail providers!" Or, now, as little as 1/250th of another.
Also surprising -- and scary, to some -- is Gmail's planned business model: to serve text ads on the e-mail messages, keyed to content. Write your sister about mom's interest in gardening, a Google executive told the Washington Post, and an ad for a garden bench pops up. That naturally upset privacy advocates, who argue that such ads effectively mean Google will be monitoring members' messages.
Google says that its policies and rules mean that users' messages will remain private. As opposed to the controversial Plaxo or Microsoft's much-maligned Passport, we tend to believe Google: It pledges to "do no evil," and the moment it does, it's sunk."

The Register: Sun's Java prince refuses Redmond relocation

The Register: Sun's Java prince refuses Redmond relocation "The first major fallout from Sun's capitulation to Microsoft has occurred with vice president and Java defender Rich Green quitting Sun in "disgust," The Register has confirmed.
Green, Sun's vice president of developer platforms and the major public voice for Java, left the company on the same day that Sun announced it had declined to pursue lawsuits against Microsoft, according to sources. During the US Microsoft antitrust trial, Green was one of Sun's key witnesses, arguing that Microsoft tried to undermine Java by shipping an incompatible version of the JVM (Java Virtual Machine)."

Boston.com / News / Nation / Study links TV, children's attention deficit

Boston.com / News / Nation / Study links TV, children's attention deficit "Very young children who watch television face an increased risk of attention deficit problems by school age, a study has found, suggesting that television might overstimulate and permanently "rewire" the developing brain.
For every hour of television watched daily, two groups of children -- ages 1 and 3 -- faced a 10 percent increased risk of having attention problems at age 7."

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger: WinForms is dead misconceptions are misplaced

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger: WinForms is dead misconceptions are misplaced: "First, Avalon is a Longhorn-only technology. There are no plans to convert it to Windows XP, or 98 or ME or 2000. Now, think about that for a minute. If you are writing apps for an enterprise, say Procter and Gamble, how soon will you have 100% Longhorn coverage? Here's my guess: 2012 to 2014. So, until you have 100% coverage, you won't be able to use Longhorn-only technologies in your apps, right? At least not ones that need reach."

Miguel de Icaza: Now that Sun and Microsoft are buddies

Miguel de Icaza: Now that Sun and Microsoft are buddies "I am counting the minutes for Sun to ship our Mono implementation for Solaris. Maybe we can still make it to the Solaris 10 release.
Just picture the benefits, out of the box free C# compiler on Solaris SPARC and Solaris Intel. Out of the box ASP.NET and ADO.NET on SPARC, and the Gtk# bindings for writing applications for the Java Desktop System.
Not to mention that they get the industry's most sexy JIT compiler for free.
I am walking with an extra cell phone battery in case McNealy or Schwartz decide to call me up over the weekend to discuss potential agreements (if I dont pick up, please leave a message, the wonders of ATT wireless)."

The Register: Why Sun threw in the towel in Mankind vs. Microsoft

The Register: Why Sun threw in the towel in Mankind vs. Microsoft "Principles are fine things to have, but only if you can afford them. With its stock declared a 'junk bond' and finishing a terrible quarter, Silicon Valley's leading Microsoft antagonist Sun Microsystems has now decided it can't."

Microsoft, Sun put an end to longtime rivalry

Microsoft, Sun put an end to longtime rivalry: "Business experts credited McNealy for reaching out to his teenage pal, with whom he remained friends at Stanford University's business school. But they warned that the executives don't have much time for making up. The growth of Linux and other open source technology is eroding market share of both companies."

For more on the historical dimensions, see
Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft

Microsoft and Sun's antagonistic history

Microsoft and Sun's antagonistic history Handy summary of key events since 1995

Amazon.com: Cell Phones: Sony Ericsson T226 Phone - Next Generation (AT&T)

Amazon.com: Cell Phones: Sony Ericsson T226 Phone - Next Generation (AT&T) For sale, cheap: one slightly used Sony Ericsson T226 phone. This is the one Ed Brill and I have been discussing in our respective blogs, the unit AT&T Wireless generously sent us as a replacement for our Sony Ericsson T68i phones. The T226 actually works better as a phone, but not enough to overcome deficiencies with its earbud or the fact that it doesn't support Bluetooth. I missed my Jabra Bluetooth headset and quickly got tired of the earbud that didn't work consistently. The T226 keypad is also pretty crummy.

Look at Anti-Trust Law as a Digital Design and -- Guess What -- Microsoft Wins

Look at Anti-Trust Law as a Digital Design and -- Guess What -- Microsoft Wins By Robert X. Cringely "Last week, Microsoft was slapped by the European Union with sanctions and a $600+ million fine for anti-trust violations. Readers have been asking me what this really means. But Microsoft's troubles extend beyond Europe. There are signs of strain in last year's DoJ v. Microsoft anti-trust settlement. And while Redmond has settled many private and class action anti-trust lawsuits, several more are continuing. This would seem like not a good time to be Bill Gates. On the contrary, this is a VERY good time to be Bill Gates, because Microsoft is winning every case. Not only are they winning, in fact they've already won. Sure, the verdicts aren't all in, and in some cases, the jury hasn't even been chosen, and there is even the very real prospect that some verdicts will appear to go against Microsoft, but that doesn't matter: Microsoft has already won, by which I mean that Microsoft literally can't lose. It's just that until now they are the only ones to have figured this out."

Microsoft and Sun Microsystems Enter Broad Cooperation Agreement; Settle Outstanding Litigation

Microsoft and Sun Microsystems Enter Broad Cooperation Agreement; Settle Outstanding Litigation "The agreements signed today include the following elements:
-- Technical Collaboration: The Technical Collaboration Agreement will provide both companies with access to aspects of each other's server-based technology and will enable them to use this information to develop new server software products that will work better together. The cooperation will initially center on Windows Server and Windows Client, but will eventually include other important areas, including email and database software. For example, one of the important elements of large scale computing environments is software to manage user identities, authentication and authorization. As a result of this agreement, Sun and Microsoft engineers will cooperate to allow identity information to be easily shared between Microsoft Active Directory and the Sun Java System Identity Server, resulting in less complex and more secure computing environments.
-- Microsoft Communications Protocol Program: Sun has agreed to sign a license for the Windows desktop operating system communications protocols under Microsoft's Communications Protocol Program, established pursuant to Microsoft's consent decree and final judgment with the U.S. Department of Justice and 18 state attorneys general.
-- Microsoft Support for Java: The companies have agreed that Microsoft may continue to provide product support for the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine that customers have deployed in Microsoft's products.
-- Windows Certification for Sun Server: Sun and Microsoft today are announcing Windows certification for Sun's Xeon servers. In addition, the Windows certification process for Sun's Opteron-based servers is moving forward.
-- Future Collaboration for Java and .NET: Sun and Microsoft have agreed that they will work together to improve technical collaboration between their Java and .NET technologies.
-- Patents and Intellectual Property: The parties have agreed to a broad covenant not to sue with respect to all past patent infringement claims they may have against each other. The agreement also provides for potential future extensions of this type of covenant. The two companies have also agreed to embark on negotiations for a patent cross-license agreement between them.
-- Legal Settlements: The two companies are settling and terminating their lawsuit in the United States. Sun is also satisfied that the agreements announced today satisfy the objectives it was pursuing in the EU actions pending against Microsoft."

In a word: wow...

Macworld UK - Engineers pulled off Gates' Longhorn

Macworld UK - Engineers pulled off Gates' Longhorn "A first beta-release of the next version of Windows will likely be delayed until next year because Microsoft is concentrating first on a security-focused update to Windows XP, the company said yesterday.
Microsoft had said it would deliver a beta version of Longhorn, the code name for the next Windows release, in mid-2004. However, the test version is now expected in early 2005 because many developers working on Longhorn have been reassigned to work on Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP, a Microsoft spokesman said.
"Based on what has happened over the past year in the area of security, we took a look at what was going on with Windows ... and pulled resources from Longhorn development in order to deliver Windows XP Service Pack 2. That slightly impacted the beta schedule for Longhorn," said Greg Sullivan, lead product manager for Windows at Microsoft.
Windows XP SP2, scheduled for release in the first half of this year, is more than the usual roll-up of bug fixes and updates. Microsoft is using the update to make significant changes to Windows that are designed to improve security in four main areas: network protection, memory protection, e-mail and Web browsing."

(I don't buy the conventional wisdom later in the article about Yukon/Whidbey slips meaning a direct Longhorn slip, however.)

BW Online | April 12, 2004 | Is Borland In Microsoft's Sights?

BW Online | April 12, 2004 | Is Borland In Microsoft's Sights? "Hathaway says Microsoft may go after Borland. He explains that since most companies now are looking to do business over the Internet, demand for Borland's tools will be on the rise. Borland's software lets big corporate programmers use Sun's Java and Microsoft's Web-based .Net platform, which is more flexible, with multiple connection capabilities. And if Borland is owned by Microsoft, it could induce more programmers to use .Net. Hathaway doesn't think a Microsoft-Borland deal will bother regulators. Borland, he figures, is worth 14 based on his earnings estimate of 30 cents a share in 2004 and 50 cents in 2005."

Paradoxically, if such as a deal were to transpire, I suspect it would be as much about Borland's TogetherSoft acquisition as it would be about Borland's traditional product lines. Via Watching Microsoft Line a Hawk

WSJ.com - IBM to Acquire Candle Corp., Boosting Corporate Software

WSJ.com - IBM to Acquire Candle Corp., Boosting Corporate Software "The companies declined to disclose terms of the deal. Jean-Pierre Garbani, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., said he estimates the price at $350 million to $600 million, depending on whether Candle, El Segundo, Calif., was carrying substantial cash on its books. Candle's software revenue in 2002, the latest year available, was $207 million, according to a survey by International Data Corp.
IBM, Armonk, N.Y., is best known for its computer services and hardware, but its software division reported revenue of $14.31 billion last year and accounted for 35% of pretax income. IBM isn't known for applications software, such as the word processing or spreadsheet programs ubiquitous on desktops. Instead, it specializes in software that operates computers and the expanding sector that it calls "middleware" -- programs such as its Websphere suite for managing Internet transactions."

Dan Bricklin: Programmers at Work reunion

Dan Bricklin: Programmers at Work reunion "Susan started the night off by introducing us and asking what we were up to now. Charles Simonyi is working on coming up with a better way to express programs at Intentional Software Corporation. Andy Hertzfeld has been programming for years, most recently at OSAF with Mitch Kapor, but after a year and a half is taking a break. I'm back on my own at Software Garden, starting to think about creating some new software tools and doing consulting (the event served as a way to say that publicly to a West Coast audience...). Scott Kim is a professional, independent puzzle designer. He's been designing puzzles for publications and now creating daily ones for cell phones. (That was probably the coolest current job.) Jef Raskin is consulting and still working on a better interface. Robert Carr was most recently a venture capitalist, after doing GO and helping Autodesk successfully move from DOS to Windows, but is now taking time off. Jaron Lanier is still interested in a better way of programming (like Charles), and is deep in the National Tele-immersion Initiative. Twenty years later, there are constant threads in our careers.
The panel was too intense to both participate in and take notes at the same time. You'll have to find someone else's report. The only note I made was about an anecdote that Charles told. He doesn't usually carry much in the way of ID. He was stopped at the guard desk at a company where he had an appointment. No ID, no entry. He asked if the guard had web access on the computer on his desk. He did. Charles told him to look on Google for "Charles Simonyi". Up popped his picture. Yep, that's him. He was let through."

InfoWorld: Exclusive Review: Macromedia brings Flash to the enterprise: March 29, 2004: By Jon Udell

InfoWorld: Exclusive Review: Macromedia brings Flash to the enterprise: March 29, 2004: By Jon Udell : "Bottom Line: With Flex, Macromedia continues to move the widely deployed Flash player away from its roots as a boutique animation viewer and closer to the mainstream of enterprise development. Competition looms in the form of Microsoft's forthcoming Avalon, but Flex is here today, offering a cross-platform solution that works with existing Web infrastructure and skills."

Longhorn Developer Center: The Blinking Lights Division (Avalon Unleashed)

Longhorn Developer Center: The Blinking Lights Division (Avalon Unleashed) "When we began the "Avalon" project (code name for the presentation platform for the next version of Microsoft® Windows®, code-named "Longhorn"), there was the clear desire to modernize the entire graphics stack inside of Windows. We have this amazingly powerful video card that is sitting idle the entire time you are running Windows (unless you happen to be playing Quake in windowed mode) and even with the idleness of the video card, we still manage to blue screen the machine in the much maligned video drivers."

Includes exclusive photo of the Avalon development lab (via Don Box).

BBC NEWS | Technology | Supermarket giant promotes Linux

BBC NEWS | Technology | Supermarket giant promotes Linux: "The supermarket chain has begun selling PCs running Sun's version of Linux, called Java Desktop, for about $300.
This is the first time that Sun's version of Linux has been sold on consumer machines though Walmart has sold open source PCs since 2002."

Executive E-Mail: Microsoft Progress Report: Security

Executive E-Mail: Microsoft Progress Report: Security: "Security is as big and important a challenge as any our industry has ever tackled. It is not a case of simply fixing a few vulnerabilities and moving on. Reducing the impact of viruses and worms to an acceptable level requires fundamentally new thinking about software quality, continuous improvement in tools and processes, and ongoing investments in resilient new security technologies designed to block malicious or destructive software code before it can wreak havoc. It also requires computer users to be proactive about deploying and managing products. Detailed information to help customers become more secure is at www.microsoft.com/security."

Microsoft security strategy overview from Bill Gates

WSJ.com - Novell's Linux Bet Could Be End to Its Losing Streak

WSJ.com - Novell's Linux Bet Could Be End to Its Losing Streak "Novell Inc. has been repeatedly trounced by Microsoft Corp. -- first in networking software for personal computers, which Novell pioneered, and later in word-processing software and operating systems.
But now Novell is trying to remake itself by becoming part of the open-source software community and figuring out a way to make profits out of free software. "We're not taking on Microsoft. The open-source community is taking on Microsoft," says Jack Messman, Novell's chairman and chief executive. "It's the guerrilla vs. the gorilla.
...
Matthew Szulik, chairman and chief executive of rival Red Hat, says his company expects to be more profitable than Novell. He notes that Red Hat has automated most of the services it provides, while Novell, with 6,200 employees, uses expensive technical experts. But Mr. Messman says many customers prefer to know that they can call a human engineer when things go wrong."

WSJ.com - Google to Offer Free E-Mail

WSJ.com - Google to Offer Free E-Mail: "Google's new e-mail service, which is still in its test phase, is its most aggressive effort yet to displace Yahoo and MSN as all-purpose portals for Web users. The e-mail service offers a full gigabyte -- 1,000 megabytes -- of storage, which the company said is enough to store 500,000 pages of e-mail. The service is currently available only to test users; the company did not say when its so-called Gmail service may be available more broadly.
It's also unclear whether Google will be able to offer such massive storage capacity if the service becomes popular. Microsoft's Hotmail service provides two megabytes of storage for free while Yahoo's service offers four megabytes of storage for free. Google plans to sell advertising on the e-mail site."

Google to Roll Out E-Mail Service

Google to Roll Out E-Mail Service: "Google will offer consumers better access to searching their own e-mail and could well upset the industry balance by offering free access to services that previously were available only by paying a monthly subscription fee.
The standard industry practice is to offer tiered e-mail services, providing only limited storage free and charging higher fees to users who want to preserve a larger number of e-mail messages for capabilities like online storage. Google, by contrast, is planning a service to be supported by advertising that will permit its users to store very large amounts of mail at no cost."

ADT at Gartner ITxpo: Gates sees more modeling, less coding- ADTmag.com

ADT at Gartner ITxpo: Gates sees more modeling, less coding- ADTmag.com "Microsoft head Bill Gates, speaking at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2004, emphasized the role of visual modeling as the foundation for future software engineering advances. Asked about innovations Microsoft sees coming in the next 10 years, Gates said the most significant will be visual modeling tools that will reduce software coding “by a factor of five.”"

Download details: Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative

Download details: Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative "The Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) is a Microsoft and industry effort to enhance the Microsoft® Windows® platform and deliver a coordinated set of solutions that dramatically simplify and automate how businesses design, deploy, and operate distributed systems.
The distributed nature of modern applications and systems, combined with the ever increasing requirement of IT to respond to new business requirements, has led to increased complexity in modern IT infrastructure; a level of complexity that spans the entire IT life cycle, presenting challenges associated with developing, deploying, and operating these systems. The Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) is a Microsoft and industry effort to enhance the Microsoft® Windows® platform and deliver a coordinated set of solutions that dramatically simplify and automate how businesses design, deploy, and operate distributed systems. Microsoft is investing heavily in software R&D and aligning partner investments to deliver end-to-end offerings integrated across application development tools, operating systems, applications, hardware, and management tools that will result in reduced costs, improved reliability, and increased responsiveness across the entire IT life cycle."

26-page overview of DSI

CRN : Breaking News : Red Hat CEO Backtracks On Channel Plans; SMB Channel Program Stalled : 11:38 AM EST Tues., Mar. 30, 2004

CRN : Breaking News : Red Hat CEO Backtracks On Channel Plans; SMB Channel Program Stalled : 11:38 AM EST Tues., Mar. 30, 2004: "Noting that Red Hat now has almost $1 billion in the bank after 11 years in business, Szulik said his company has been able to finally get 'a little traction' and post profits due to a subscription licensing model in which the technology and services are delivered together.
Before a handful of programmers gathered at the MIT Hotel for the Boston stop of the Red Hat-HP World Tour, Szulik slammed Novell's attempts to become an open-source company.
'We have a new competitor, absolutely, and we think that's good' Szulik said. '[Novell has] historically been a proprietary software company [now] claiming to be open source. Only time will tell [if that business model will work].' "

In contrast to, say, a historically open source company that now looks increasingly proprietary...

CRN : Breaking News : Sun Eyes Subscription Model for New Java Tool : 7:55 PM EST Tues., Mar. 30, 2004

CRN : Breaking News : Sun Eyes Subscription Model for New Java Tool : 7:55 PM EST Tues., Mar. 30, 2004: "Pricing for Java Studio Creator, an early access version of which will be released next week, will likely emulate the per-user pricing Sun introduced with its Java Enterprise System (JES) and Java Studio Enterprise products, said Rich Green, vice president of developer tools. A Java software suite, JES sells for $100 per employee per year. Its toolset, Java Studio Enterprise, costs $5 per employee per year.
'In general, this membership model is the way we're headed [with software licensing],' Green said in a presentation at Sun's Menlo Park, Calif., campus Tuesday.
Green acknowledged that Sun has had trouble gaining mindshare with developers, but said Sun hopes to change that with its new pricing scheme.
'Developers don't buy stuff, they subscribe to stuff,' Green said. 'Developers don't buy things, they join things. Our [new] business model is based on those observations.'"

Miguel de Icaza: a full list of the Mono Brainshare PPT files:

Miguel de Icaza: a full list of the Mono Brainshare PPT files: Definitely worth a read, especially "Introducing Mono for Developers"

WSJ.com - The Middle Seat

WSJ.com - The Middle Seat "You can read and send your e-mail, access Web-based news and sports, watch programming loaded onto Connexion's onboard server, and even view live video programming (on your PC) via a satellite-based link. Basically, it turns the plane into an Internet cafe with very crowded seating -- a Starbucks with weaker coffee.
Connexion will cost $9.95 for 30 minutes or $29.95 for an entire flight, which is by no means cheap. But the big hurdle is the cost to airlines. Carriers have to spend several hundred thousand dollars per plane, and maybe as much as $500,000. Boeing won't say how much, but whatever it is, if you have 770 planes like American Airlines, it adds up to a huge expenditure."

Boston.com / Business / Study: File downloads don't affect sales of CDs

Boston.com / Business / Study: File downloads don't affect sales of CDs "Will consumers buy the latest music recordings when they can download them for free from the Internet? A Harvard Business School associate professor says yes, in a new study that challenges the wisdom of the recording industry's worldwide campaign to halt illegal file downloading.
''When we first saw the results, we said, 'No, no, no, no, no. We must be doing something wrong,' " said Felix Oberholzer-Gee, who prepared the study with Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina.
But after rechecking the figures time and again, Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf found that downloading music had no impact on sales of compact disks.
The new study also suggests that the recording industry tactic of suing Americans who make files available for downloading will have only a limited effect. They found that more than half of all downloads came from outside the United States."

No doubt RIAA will object; after all, it's only a Harvard study...

IBM tightens knot with Eclipse | CNET News.com

IBM tightens knot with Eclipse | CNET News.com: "IBM is rewriting its Rational development tools to work more closely with Eclipse open-source software, the first phase in a Big Blue push to integrate its programming products.
Over the next year and a half, the company will rework the Rational tools to become fully integrated with Eclipse, IBM said on Monday. The move was announced in an update to the IBM Software Development Platform plan, which will use software developed by the Eclipse open-source group as the glue to meld IBM development products. "

That must be disconcerting to Microsoft-focused IBM Rational customers.

BusinessWeek Online: BW Magazine: The BusinessWeek 50

BusinessWeek Online: BW Magazine: The BusinessWeek 50 Check it out -- #10 is Electronic Arts, i.e., a game software company.
"If the videogame business really is slowing down because consoles like Xbox and PlayStation2 are getting old, it hasn't hit Electronic Arts yet. EA has become a software juggernaut behind blockbuster franchises such as The Lord of the Rings and Madden NFL Football. But the Redwood City (Calif.) company has depth, too: With 12 studios around the world cranking out titles, EA delivered 27 hits last year that sold more than 1 million copies each. EA grabbed 22% of total game software sales in 2003, up from 18.6% in 2002. And with margins of 17.6%, it is a profits machine.
Industry: Software & Services
Sales: $2.8 billion
Net income: $496.5 million"

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Gates dangles 2006 as date for debut of new Windows

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Gates dangles 2006 as date for debut of new Windows "Some people have speculated that the operating system, code-named Longhorn, will come out in 2006, Gates said.
"That's probably valid speculation," he said.
Predicting the release date of Longhorn has become a sport of sorts for Microsoft watchers. The company at one time expected to ship it as early as this year but pushed back the project as it became apparent more work was necessary.
Longhorn isn't like some Microsoft products that have set ship schedules, Gates said.
"We have things where we say, 'The train is leaving on this date. Whoever has their act totally together by that date, the train will leave,' " Gates said.
"Longhorn is not a date-driven release."

What Is Bill Gates Thinking?

What Is Bill Gates Thinking? "I'm really interested in modeling, and at your financial analysts meeting last summer you made the comment that modeling would be big in Microsoft's tools. I'm also pretty impressed with the Eclipse toolset and how they're going about supporting modeling. Do you think that makes Eclipse more of a viable competitor to Visual Studio?
[Gates:] IBM has their Rational group with Rose, and they have some Eclipse stuff. So as is often typical, they have multiple, semi-overlapping approaches there.
Modeling is the future, so every company that's working on this I think it's great, and I think there are some real contributions that can be made. You know UML [Unified Modeling Language] made the meta-models a little complex, so I don't think UML alone is the answer. Web services forces you to think modeling. And that's part of the good thing about it. And the promise here is that you write a lot less code, that you have a model of the business process. And you just look at that visually and say here is how I want to customize it.
So even a business could express in a formal, modeled way, not just scribbling on paper, how the business process is changing over time or how it's different from other companies. So instead of having lots of code behind that, you just have visual, essentially model, customization.
So, I think we believe that. There are certainly some people from IBM who have that same vision, and I think it'll be healthy competition between the two of us because today's modeling products fall short. That's one part of Visual Studio 2005, that we do have some neat things coming along that will be part of it that we haven't shown completely. We've shown a lot of it, but Visual Studio 2005 is very broad.
So you're talking about Whitehorse?
Yeah, exactly. That's the codename. But some of the Whitehorse stuff we haven't shown publicly, like how it lets you visually design Web services and lets you visually design the relationship between the application and the deployment, this thing we call the Dynamic Systems Initiative, where the developer says, 'OK, what sort of resources are needed to run the application.' And then the person who runs the application just binds that model to the actual execution environment. And then the developer can see if there are any performance issues or problems because they have this common model.
So, modeling is pretty magic stuff, whether it's management problems or business customization problems or work-flow problems, visual modeling. Even the Office group now really gets that for document life-cycle rights management, that this visual modeling will be key to them. Business intelligence, where you let people navigate through things, is another area where modeling could be used. It's probably the biggest thing going on. And both Visual Studio and Office need to be on top of that. There's a guy at Microsoft, Bill Baker, who's our business intelligence guy who's been promoting these ideas very successfully."

BBB Tells Apple to Halt Misleading Ads

BBB Tells Apple to Halt Misleading Ads "The Better Business Bureau (BBB) recommended that Apple Computer stop advertising its Power Mac G5 as "the world's fastest personal computer" after reviewing tests that refute that claim. Acting on a tip from Dell, the BBB told Apple that its advertising could deceive consumers, who need to base their purchases on accurate information.
"The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus recommended that Apple discontinue comparative performance claims regarding its Power Mac G5 personal computer," the organization wrote in a release. "NAD determined that the evidence provided by Apple did not provide a reasonable basis for its broad unqualified claims that its Power Mac G5 is 'the world's fastest, most powerful computer' and that it 'edged out the competition on integer' [processing performance]. NAD further determined that the advertiser's claim, 'the world's first 64-bit processor for personal computers,' could reasonably be interpreted to apply to workstations...this claim is [also] unsupported by the evidence."
Apple said it supports the BBB's self-regulatory nature and will voluntarily comply with the organization's recommendations. However, the company noted that the Power Mac G5 advertising campaign that makes the unsupported claims has already "run its course." Apple said it will be "mindful of the [BBB's] views in its future advertising."

PC Forum Focuses on the Future

PC Forum Focuses on the Future: "Every year, PC Forum showcases a number of new applications. This year, new products emphasized new ways of finding and organizing information.
My favorite was an application called Onfolio, available now at www.onfolio.com. This utility works alongside your browser (or as a standalone desktop application) and lets you easily collect information from various sites and bring them together in different collections. These 'collections' can include either links to or copies of the pages you've seen, so you can go back to them for research. You can also add in data from your desktop applications. When you're done, you can share the information via e-mail, view the data in multipage HTML files, or use a 'publisher' utility to create a research document. "

IT-Director.com: Sun shines on Vignette

IT-Director.com: Sun shines on Vignette: "Although Sun Microsystems has a successful email and personal information management applications and real time collaboration with SunForum 3.2 and Sun Java System Instant Messaging, Sun has not extended its capabilities into Team Collaboration. Last week this gap was plugged when Sun Microsystems and Vignette announced plans to bring to market a joint collaboration solution based on the Vignette Business Workspaces collaboration solution, itself acquired by Vignette in its acquisition of Intraspect last year. "

This collaboration thing is going to be big, real big...

Macromedia flexes Flash muscle | CNET News.com

Macromedia flexes Flash muscle | CNET News.com: "Macromedia is set to release on Monday a new server product intended to expand the use of its Flash format for presenting Web applications.
Flex, formerly code-named Royale, allows developers to create scripts in common languages such as Java and .Net and to run them on top of Web applications. Flex breaks them down into a Macromedia dialect of extensible markup language (XML) that can be read by the Flash Player, the widespread Flash client commonly used to spice up Web pages."

Microsoft Strengthens Presence in Business Intelligence Industry

Microsoft Strengthens Presence in Business Intelligence Industry: "Furthering its move into the reporting sector, Microsoft also announced an exciting reporting feature scheduled for the next version of Reporting Services, available in SQL Server 2005. Customers are very enthusiastic about the new embeddable Visual Studio® controls that will allow distribution of report processing capabilities within packaged or custom-built applications, without the need for a separate report server. This provides application developers, ISVs and end users with greater flexibility and convenience. Extending the whole developer experience, the new functionality also is targeted to ship with Visual Studio 2005 and works both in Windows®-based and Web applications."

Boston.com / Business / Technology / EU hurts itself in hurting Microsoft

Boston.com / Business / Technology / EU hurts itself in hurting Microsoft "There's something about Microsoft Corp. that makes smart people stupid. It's not the company's products, annoying though they can be. Instead, it's the aura of arrogant, absolute power emanating from the world's biggest software maker. It drives some people into a blind fury, a determination to hurt Microsoft, no matter the cost to consumers or the software industry.
Mindless Microsoft rage has shattered careers and companies. The once-great computer networking firm Novell Inc. nearly killed itself with an ill-considered billion-dollar crusade against Microsoft. The first judge in the company's epic US antitrust trial, Thomas Penfield Jackson, committed public self-immolation. Jackson came closer than anyone has to destroying MicrosoftIndeed, he ruled that the company should be smashed to bits. But his injudicious and insulting comments, made to a reporter during the trial, resulted in an humiliating smackdown by an appeals court.
The bureaucrats of Europe are too subtle and discreet to make Jackson's mistake. The full text of their ruling that Microsoft has violated European Union anti-monopoly law hasn't been released yet. But the published summary, complete with proposed remedies, is a calm and lucid document, composed by people who seem to have gone slightly nuts."

WSJ.com - The Grownup at Google

WSJ.com - The Grownup at Google "The company was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Stanford graduate students with a better way to search through the Internet's ever-expanding material. Three years later, Silicon Valley veteran Eric Schmidt joined as chairman and chief executive to bring some structure to the unorthodox -- some might say anarchic -- start-up.
Mr. Schmidt, 48, says he was given one instruction by Google's board: "'Don't screw this up now, Eric. This is a really, really good starting point. ... So it doesn't require some gross change.'" Google's venture backers wanted the company to grow without introducing cumbersome bureaucracy."

Microsoft sharpens tools

Microsoft sharpens tools "Microsoft Corp. yesterday showed new tools under development for searching online journals and news sites, and for getting answers from the Internet -- offering a glimpse of the strategy that the company will use in its coming battle with Google.
Executives with the Redmond company's MSN Internet service talked about the tools -- dubbed Blogbot, Newsbot, and Answerbot -- at an industry event on the Microsoft campus. All three are part of a broader effort by the company to develop its own Internet search technology.
...
Blogbot will provide search results based on the contents of hundreds of thousands of weblogs, online journals better known as blogs. Hundreds of Microsoft employees maintain their own personal blogs, but this is one of the first big blog-related initiatives to emerge from the company itself."