Vibrant competition is often the customer’s friend…
Microsoft Corp., capitalizing on Google Inc.'s regulatory snarl, is working to steal a deal with Verizon Wireless away from its rival.
Microsoft has gotten the mobile carrier's attention by offering a sweeter deal to put its search service and related advertising on Verizon phones. Microsoft is also offering more generous revenue sharing and a guarantee of substantially higher payments to Verizon, say people familiar with the matter.
The sun also sets… See the full article for more details.
“HAVE lunch, or be lunch.” The Silicon Valley mantra coined by Scott McNealy, the outspoken former boss of Sun Microsystems, a troubled computer-maker, still rings true as the technology industry heads into recession. At particular risk of being lunch are Sun and another once-mighty technology firm: Motorola, America’s ailing telecoms-equipment giant. Both posted dismal results on October 30th. Sun’s sales to Wall Street firms, which are among its biggest customers, fell by 20% in the most recent quarter compared with a year earlier, and it reported a loss of $1.68 billion. Sales at Motorola, meanwhile, fell by 15%, with unit sales of mobile phones down by a third, and a loss of $397m. Yet even before the downturn, both firms were in serious trouble.
Motorola and Sun on the ropes | Icons no more | The Economist
A timely snapshot of Cisco as a potential enterprise communication/collaboration competitor; check out the full article.
Throughout its history, Microsoft has been able to push other vendors around and dictate to them how the industry was going to evolve. Consequently, the company sits in an enviable market position. But Cisco represents a legitimate threat to Microsoft's top-dog status. The networking vendor has plenty of muscle and won't be easily intimidated. This figures to be one after-school brawl that will attract a lot of very interested spectators.
See the full post for more Windows 7 analysis
Looking ahead to the finish line, Sinofksy declined to provide a schedule for Windows 7, though my sources tell me it could arrive as soon as mid-2009, or about a year before Microsoft's vague public pronouncements. He said that the build released at PDC was an M3, or "milestone 3" build of the product and that that would be followed by a beta release. Sometime in that timeframe, there will be a fairly public beta--"everyone will be able to sign up and get it," Sinofsky noted--and then the release candidate (RC) phase. "These will be very visible milestones," he said, "and each step informs the next. There's no point in a guessing game for the schedule. It's a promise and deliver schedule."
An example of making the tacit explicit?…
Now, happily, I lack personal experience in such matters, but I think that "normally" when software companies sell their IP assets to Oracle, it's a -- uh -- bad sign. I take it to mean that (1) the company's winding down operations, (2) that no one wishes to buy the business as a going-concern, thus purchasing both all assets and all liabilities, and ergo (3) that -- in the absence of other interest -- someone can come along and simply buy all or some of the assets.
[…]
It looks as if it's "goodbye Tacit" and presumably "poof" to most of the $29M in venture capital invested.
A timely reality check from Nicholas Carr – see the full post for an example of the economic game-changing nature of cloud computing
Are we missing the point about cloud computing?
That question has been rattling around in my mind for the last few days, as the chatter about the role of the cloud in business IT has intensified. The discussion to date has largely had a retrospective cast, focusing on the costs and benefits of shifting existing IT functions and operations from in-house data centers into the cloud. How can the cloud absorb what we're already doing? is the question that's being asked, and answering it means grappling with such fraught issues as security, reliability, interoperability, and so forth. To be sure, this is an important discussion, but I fear it obscures a bigger and ultimately more interesting question: What does the cloud allow us to do that we couldn't do before?
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The new economics of computing
A very attractive scenario, imho
At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco Wednesday, billionaire venture capitalist John Doerr was interviewed by John Heilemann, a contributing editor at New York magazine who came in from Chicago, fresh off the Obama campaign trail. He had a few questions for Mr. Doerr that, he said, came directly from the president-elect.
First, Barack Obama wanted to know whom Mr. Doerr would recommend for chief technology officer of the United States, a position that Mr. Obama has promised to create. Mr. Doerr’s first choice was Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, in which Mr. Doerr invested early on. Mr. Joy is now a partner at Mr. Doerr’s firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Mr. Doerr said it would be a sacrifice to lose him to the Obama administration, but that “there is no greater cause.”
On a related note, see an op-ed piece by Al Gore and David Blood in wsj.com: We Need Sustainable Capitalism
John Doerr’s Advice for Barack Obama: Hire Bill Joy - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
A very effective and compelling application of multi-touch
Election Day freneticism is the norm for the likes of candidates, journalists, poll workers, campaign staffers, and commentators. But this time around, an unlikely tech entrepreneur and his employees entered the fray.
Jeff Han is the man behind CNN's "Magic Wall" multitouch electronic wall map, the one reporter John King has been using all campaign season to illustrate election information and that was the target of a recent Saturday Night Live spoof (embedded at the end of this post). Han's company, New York-based Perceptive Pixel, has also provided its technology to Fox News Channel (Bill Hemmer's "Bill-board") and to ABC News, which unveiled its version of the map Tuesday night.
p.s. in case anyone assumes Apple had something to do with inventing the technology, the article later notes that Hahn has been working on multi-touch for ~six years.
Election a win for multitouch inventor | Emerging Technology News - CNET News
See the full article for more details
Intel is reducing its stake in virtualization software maker VMware by half, putting millions of shares on the open market and selling 1 million shares to Cisco and EMC.
The company disclosed in a regulatory filing that, beginning Tuesday, it would place 3.75 million of its VMware shares on the market, although it said the exact timing was subject to change.
Tangent: I suspect we’ll see more speculation about a possible Cisco/EMC merger soon
Intel cuts VMware stake in half | Latest Business Tech News - CNET News
Still some very impressive numbers
The computer networking giant, the first major technology company to report financial results that include October, when the credit crisis spread beyond financial companies, said Wednesday that its sales fell by 9 percent in the month, compared to a year earlier. Cisco expects sales for its current quarter to drop 5 to 10 percent from the $9.8 billion reported in the same period last year.
“The environment has changed dramatically in the last two months,” John T. Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive, said in a conference with Wall Street analysts.
[…]
During its first quarter ended Oct. 25, the company, based in San Jose, Calif., reported net income of $2.2 billion, or 37 cents a share, flat against year-ago net income of $2.21 billion, or 35 cents a share. Excluding charges, Cisco earned 42 cents a share, beating the 39 cents a share Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had predicted.
Sign of the times…
Cyber criminals sent out millions of emails Wednesday touting Barack Obama’s electoral victory in an attempt to take over people’s computers.
The emails invite recipients to watch an “amazing” speech that Obama supposedly gave Wednesday. Clicking on the link provided takes people to a Web site that looks like one operated by the State Department, but is really operated by cyber criminals. In order to watch the speech, visitors are instructed to download the latest version of Adobe’s Flash video player – the most common video technology on the Internet, and a prompt most people have received in the past. In reality, the file is a piece of software that allows the cyber criminal to take over someone’s computer, and do things like steal personal information stored there or make the computer send out unsolicited spam emails.
Walt Mossberg reviews four netbook-class devices – no wsj.com subscription required to access the full review
Somewhere between the laptop and the smart phone, the computer industry has long believed there could be a small, low-cost device that would please consumers and sell well.
The device would be more versatile than, say, an iPhone, but much cheaper and more portable than, say, a ThinkPad. The trouble is, every attempt to create such a category of computer has met with failure — until now.
Netbooks Come Into Their Own | Walt Mossberg | Personal Technology | AllThingsD
The dance continues…
Now that a pivotal advertising partnership with Google is off the table, Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang is ready return to the bargaining table with Microsoft if the world's largest software maker remains interested in buying his embattled Internet company.
"To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," Yang said yesterday evening at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.
[…]
Yahoo also looks more vulnerable than ever, having lost the Google partnership. The Sunnyvale-based company's shares closed yesterday at $13.92 - nearly 60 percent below Microsoft's last offer.
Yahoo CEO indicates interest in Microsoft - The Boston Globe
Interesting times, especially given Google’s tone when the deal was originally announced.
[…] after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.
Looks like Yahoo! needs to press the strategy recalc button again. I suspect we’ll see renewed speculation about MSFT + YHOO next.
An MSDN subscription for 3 years, for qualifying companies; see this page for program details
Microsoft is giving selected startup companies thousands of dollars worth of development tools and server software at an enormous discount for up to three years.
The company is announcing its BizSpark program today at a San Francisco Internet industry conference as a way to get more early-stage companies onto its platform.
[…]
To participate, startup companies must have less than $1 million in annual revenue, be less than 3 years old and gain the recommendation of a venture-capital firm, business network or a "Microsoft champ" — more than 1,000 company employees around the world focused on software developers.
Microsoft | Microsoft to slash software costs for selected startups | Seattle Times Newspaper
A lot of the predictions of the Bubble 1.0 era seem to be coming to fruition lately, with, e.g., the morphing of mainstream media
Newsmagazines have struggled in recent years, and U.S. News has been especially troubled, making deep staff cuts and trailing far behind Time and Newsweek in circulation and advertising. Unlike those magazines, U.S. News, owned by the real estate magnate Mortimer B. Zuckerman, is not part of a larger media company with which it can share resources.
A scary sign of the times…
About 35,000 students, faculty and staff at George Mason University received an email at 1:16 am Tuesday alerting them that the election had been moved to Wednesday. Normally it would be easy to dismiss such a claim as junk – except in this case the email came from George Mason’s provost.
To dispense with the obvious: The election hasn’t been moved and it wasn’t really the provost who sent the email. Instead, someone managed to break into the provost’s account and send the message to a privately maintained address list, Dan Walsch, a university spokesman, tells the Business Technology Blog. News of the hack was earlier reported by the Washington Post.
Business Technology : Data Breach of the Day: Election-Eve Skullduggery
Read the full (Thomas Friedman) column, watch the Obama and McCain speeches, and get ready to constructively engage in what promises to be an inspirational next 4 years…
None of this will be easy. But my gut tells me that of all the changes that will be ushered in by an Obama presidency, breaking with our racial past may turn out to be the least of them. There is just so much work to be done. The Civil War is over. Let reconstruction begin.
Sign of the times
Long lines, broken voting machines, and citizens who can't vote because their names don't show up on the registration rolls. A group of software developers and designers have teamed up with the blog techPresident to make it easier for voters to broadcast such issues far and wide--fast.
The Twitter Vote Report, as its name suggests, lets voters share experiences and resources via the popular microblogging service. The messages will then be aggregated and mapped so followers can "see" voting problems in real time via state-specific Google Maps, like the Colorado map at the top of this blog.
Problems at the polls? Send a tweet | Latest Digital Media News - CNET News
Check the full post for more context-setting
The bottom line is that more than ever, the weakest link in the security chain is probably you. At eWeek, Larry Seltzer puts the implications of the Microsoft report concisely: “Of course, this doesn’t mean that Windows users are all safe now and you can stop worrying about vulnerabilities. What it does mean is that if you use current versions of their products, are diligent about applying updates soon after they come out, have reasonably good and updated security software, and maybe do some reasonable education of users over what they can and can’t do with computers, your chances of getting exploited by a vulnerability in a Microsoft product are pretty small.”
Microsoft: Windows security excellent as long as you don’t run apps | Good Morning Silicon Valley
Congrats to Tacit CEO David Gilmour (for whom I worked ~20 years ago, at Lotus…). This is another indication that Oracle is very serious about communication, collaboration, and content management.
Seeking to beef up the capabilities of its recently launched Beehive collaboration platform, Oracle Corp. said today that it has bought the intellectual property of Tacit Software Inc. and hired all of its software engineers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Tacit is the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company behind Illumio, a SaaS (software-as-a-service) collaboration and "expertise location" platform, and ActiveNet, an on-premises product with a similar purpose.
Hmm – see the full article for more details
As Russinovich noted, MinWin includes some kernel interfaces, but it is not simply the Windows kernel. Some part of the kernel32 implementation didn’t belong in MinWin, he said. After tinkering with what did/didn’t belong, the team ended up layering kernel32 on top of the Windows kernel base, he said.
Russinovich described MinWin as the bottom-most part of Windows. He also called it “Cutler’s NT,” meaning the core Windows operating system as developed by Microsoft Technical Fellow Dave Cutler. MinWin is about 25 MB on disk, he said. It includes the executive subsystem, networking components and possibly file-system drivers (which sound like they are optional).
Microsoft confirms MinWin is in Windows 7, after all | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com
A timely security reality check; see the full article for context/details
Malware infects computers using the 2001 release of Windows XP at a rate of 35 machines per 1,000.
For fully updated machines with Windows XP Service Pack 3, the rate drops to 9 per 1,000. It drops further still with Windows Vista SP1, to 4 infected machines per 1,000.
"It looks to me as if they can make the point that the [Security Development Lifecycle, a practice stemming from Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing effort] is working because the vulnerabilities in their software on computers running Vista is a lot lower than on computers running XP," said Don Retallack of Kirkland-based independent analyst firm Directions on Microsoft.
Sign of the times
“SNL” videos proved to be particularly popular online; Ms. Fey’s impressions were viewed more than 50 million times. “The idea that something can be seen more online than on TV, and arguably have more influence that way, is a tipping point,” Mr. Heyward said.
Politically oriented video, much of it topical and much of the juicier bits lifted from network programming, is everywhere on the Web. YouTube videos mentioning either Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain have been viewed 2.3 billion times, according to the measurement firm TubeMogul. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in October found that 39 percent of registered voters had watched campaign videos online.
Meanwhile, on the other platform battle front (Adobe Flash versus Microsoft Silverlight)…
The company announced on Monday that it would be using Microsoft's Silverlight software to deliver streaming movies not only to PCs, but to Intel-based Macs as well. The new Netflix player takes advantage of Play Ready DRM, which is built into Silverlight, for the playback of protected content on both Windows-based PCs and on Macs. According to Netflix, this had not been possible with previous technologies.
Netflix members should expect a "faster, easier connection and a more robust viewing experience with Silverlight," the company said. One of the enhancements is in timeline navigation, which will purportedly improve the use of fast-forwarding and rewinding.
Netflix welcomes Mac users to 'Watch Instantly' | Latest Digital Media News - CNET News
See the full post for more Azure perspectives
Ray Ozzie has a track record of slowly but surely getting things done and Microsoft is famously persistent and cash rich. But building a platform, or Internet operating system, at planetary scale supporting billions of users and trillions of transactions per day, and having fleet Google as a primary competitor will be a major test of Microsoft's brain trust and resolve. Don't be surprised to find a recharged Bill Gates parachuting into the fray as Azure evolves and the cloud war for developers escalates.
Microsoft's Manhattan Project | Outside the Lines - CNET News
Hmm…
“We want to get a better footprint within an enterprise,” Bruce Francis, Salesforce.com’s vice president of corporate strategy, tells the Business Technology Blog.
The Web site hosting, which the company plans to announce Monday, is a continuation of that strategy.
This isn’t your run of the mill Web-site support, however. The goal is to bridge the divide that exists in many businesses between Web operations and internal information technology, says Francis. Not only are the two often run by different groups, but more importantly data doesn’t always move freely between the Web site and a business’s systems.
But the pricing model, from later in the article, seems like an outlier:
The hosting service will be available in 2009 and costs around $1,000 a month for up to 1,000,000 page views.
Business Technology : Salesforce.com Wants to Host Your Web Site
More details on the technology unveiled at the Weds PDC 2008 keynote last week; see the full article for a video
Microsoft announced the upgrade to Surface, called SecondLight, at the company's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday. . As the video above demonstrates, in this new version of Surface, a secondary image is projected above the main display. A person views the second image by holding a semi-opaque object, such as a piece of paper above the display. The idea is to provide a second layer of information: labeled constellations on top of photographs of stars or street names on top of maps, for instance
Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: Microsoft Adds SecondLight to its 'Surface'
Interesting times for vendors such as RadioFrame
Wireless companies will begin marketing femtocells (pronounced FEM-toe-sell), which are essentially mini-cell-phone towers for your home. The carriers will ask consumers to pay about $100 for a device slightly smaller than a toaster. The tiny tower will connect with up to five cell phones in the home and carry calls through a broadband Net connection to the telephone network. Subscribers will likely pay ongoing monthly fees for the "enhanced service" as well. All this to improve the cell-phone service they're already paying for.
Femtocells Offer Improved Reception—and Revenues - BusinessWeek
Sign of the times
Virgin Atlantic said Friday it has sacked 13 of its cabin staff after they criticised the airline and some of its passengers on social networking website Facebook.
The airline, controlled by Richard Branson's Virgin group, said the staff's behaviour was "totally inappropriate" and "brought the company into disrepute".
Virgin Atlantic sacks 13 staff after Facebook criticism (AFP) by AFP: Yahoo! Tech
A timely reality check in multiple respects – an insightful PDC snapshot from a Mozilla.org employee and some commentary from Nicholas Carr
In the crowd at Microsoft's cloud-computing coming out party earlier this week sat at least one Googler, and, as the Guardian's Jack Schofield notes today, his observations about the event and its implications are worth reading. The guy in question, Dion Almaer, who works on Google Gears, among other things, writes on his personal blog: "I have had the pleasure to be at PDC this week and Microsoft put on a great show. As they showed their vision of unification around Windows (cloud, Web, PC, mobile) through great developer tools, there was excitement. Windows Azure looks great." (The sound you just heard was Sergey Brin spitting his masala chai all over his MacBook Air.)
Note: the original post author is not a “Googler” – from a comment on Carr’s post:
hi,
Thanks for the thoughts. One clarification: I actually now work for Mozilla not Google, and don't speak for either of course.
Sure was an interesting PDC!
Cheers,
Dion Almaer
Ajaxian and Mozilla
Excerpt from a Forrester snapshot on Office Web applications:
Microsoft is trying to evolve to keep its dominance in desktop productivity and maintain relevance. Today Microsoft continues to reign supreme in the desktop productivity tools space. The question is whether or not knowledge workers will be satisfied by lighter weight versions of their desktop tools, as Microsoft will be offering only scaled back web versions of its Office programs. Forrester’s data shows the uptake of web productivity apps in the enterprise to be miniscule even if interest is expressed. That’s because no one’s really satisfied with lighter weight versions. If they were a viable alternative to Office, we’d have seen much greater adoption of Google and others.
The Forrester Blog For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals
Some interesting stats via Barry Briggs; see the full article for more
According to research from IDC, a provider of market intelligence for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets, by 2011, the digital universe will be 10 times the size it was in 2006. "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011" highlights several findings that will affect individuals and business around the world in the years to come, such as:
* At 281 billion gigabytes (281 exabytes), the digital universe in 2007 was 10 percent bigger than originally estimated.
* With a compound annual growth rate of almost 60 percent, the digital universe is growing faster and is projected to be nearly 1.8 zettabytes (1,800 exabytes) in 2011, a 10-fold increase over the next five years.
Plausible…
Google may have thwarted an acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft simply by tying up the company in a lengthy Justice Department review, said Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst for Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Washington.
"This kept Yahoo out of the arms of Microsoft for a good long time," Arbogast said. "That is a very good, practical outcome from [Google's] point of view. Given further shrinking and problems at Yahoo, it could be that they kept Yahoo out of Microsoft's arms forever."
See the full post for more PDC perspectives
PDC 2008: For Windows, the Swagger is Back
The past several years haven't been great for Windows. Part of the problem, of course, is Windows Vista. Despite having sold well north of 250 million copies of the OS, Microsoft is coping with irrational feelings that Vista is a failure, and the company has completely revamped its Windows Division in an attempt to turn things around. Well, if PDC 2008 proved anything, the makeover is working. Not only do the Windows guys exhibit not a little bit of well deserved swagger, but the product they're now touting--Windows 7--is so universally recognized as being excellent that it's quite clear they've already got a hit on their hands, a year before the thing ships to customers. That's quite a feat, and if they're smart, Microsoft will rush Windows 7 to market. No one is going to actively seek out Vista now knowing that such a superior follow-up is waiting in the wings.
Read the full interview for additional Microsoft strategy insights
Q: You’re not nearly as blunt as Bill Gates can be, so ...
Ozzie: That’s a stupid comment.
[Stunned silence, then laughter.]
Q: Oh, you totally got me. ... Do you see the company’s culture changing under your technological leadership?
Ozzie: The culture of every company is really rooted in its founders. It really is. I don’t know if any company really shakes it, but certainly for a generation or so, this is Bill and Steve’s company (Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO). I am trying to bring a certain style and certain sensibilities that I have because I’m a different person. I’ve been closer to the code than Bill was for a longer period of time. I have certain strengths. I am not Bill Gates, but I have other things. I think I have already had some kind of an impact in that realm, particularly in the realm of getting groups to work together and align around shared objectives. All I can say is I enjoy the opportunity to keep trying to do more.
This didn’t get a lot of press coverage, but it’s a powerful combination; see the full post for screen shots etc.
Today [Tuesday 2008/10/28] at PDC we are announcing Codename “Huron”, a set of synchronization experiences built on top of the sync functionality in SQL Data Services’ cloud database and the Microsoft Sync Framework to provide business database sharing. Business database sharing offers a simple way to scale data to large numbers of users while not parting from the investment made in current technologies. It also enables users to subscribe and then edit the data locally in the format of their choice whether that is Office Access, SQL Server Express or SQL Server Compact and then push changes into SQL Data Services. The first end-to-end experience we will provide is for Office Access and will allow users to:
- Publish databases to the cloud along with reports, forms and objects
- Subscribe to published data and automatically configure the local database for sync
- Make online changes through SQL Data Services and propagate those changes to subscribed users once they connect
- Enable scheduled and background synchronization of data changes through SQL Data Services and then on to other subscribed users
- Backup and restore of database applications to the cloud
Access Team Blog : Announcement: Storing Access apps and data in the cloud
Hmm…
The figure comes from monitoring what Web server software is in use to deliver Web pages to people's browsers. The top two packages are Apache and Microsoft's Internet Information Services, but Google has been catching up since.
Netcraft found 182 million Web sites total, of which 10.5 million used Google's software. Apache ran 91.5 million of htem, and Microsoft's IIS ran 62.8 million.
Study: Google runs more than 10 million Web sites | Latest Business Tech News - CNET News
Another catch-up example; Windows Live Messenger has done this for a while
Google on Thursday will begin expanding the instant-messaging feature built into Gmail so people can use it to send text messages to their contacts' phones.
To use the feature, people can click on a chat window's settings to send a text message with SMS or type a contact's phone number in the chat contact search box, Gmail Product Manager Keith Coleman said in an interview. The feature is experimental, available only to those who opt to use it through the Gmail Labs settings, and Google will begin offering it Thursday.
Google brings text-messaging to online chat | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET
Apparently Sun’s CEO was off a bit in his assertion a couple weeks ago that Sun had $3.5B cash on hand
Sun’s results were announced after the market close. Shares closed at $5.29 in regular trading Thursday, up nearly 10 percent, giving the company a market value of about $4 billion despite annual sales of about $14 billion. The low market capitalization, combined with Sun’s vast intellectual property portfolio and $2 billion in cash, suggest to some observers that Sun needs to do something drastic to bring out its shareholder value. Options include going private with the help of supportive investors or selling its old-line server business to its partner, Fujitsu.
Sun Microsystems Reports $1.7 Billion Loss and Falling Sales - NYTimes.com
Another unhappy turn of events for Yahoo! shareholders and employees
The prospects for a Web-advertising partnership between Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have dimmed, with both sides considering walking away from the deal as early as next week, say people familiar with the matter.
The two companies met Thursday with the Justice Department, part of a series of meetings to address the concerns of regulators. While the parties may agree to continue the talks -- or they could reach a resolution -- there are signs they are unwilling to make compromises to address the Justice Department's objections.
Check this Wikipedia article for more details, but, IIRC, Microsoft hired Dave Cutler and his team on 1988/10/31, so the NT project could in some respects be considered 20 years old tomorrow.
It took Microsoft ~13 years to deliver a mainstream user-relevant client version of NT (Windows XP was officially released on 2001/10/25), no doubt a lot longer than Bill Gates probably expected, twenty years ago, but what started as Windows NT is now the world’s most widely-used client and server operating system family.
An excerpt from the Wikipedia entry:
The main architect of the system was Dave Cutler, one of the chief architects of VMS at Digital Equipment Corporation (later purchased by Compaq, now part of Hewlett-Packard). Microsoft hired him in 1988 to create a portable version of OS/2, but Cutler created a completely new system instead. Cutler had been developing a follow-on to VMS at DEC called Mica, and when DEC dropped the project he brought the expertise and some engineers with him to Microsoft. DEC also believed he brought Mica's code to Microsoft and sued. Microsoft eventually paid $150 million U.S. and agreed to support DEC's Alpha CPU chip in NT.
(So, maybe the NT project is actually a bit more than 20 years old…)
Circa 2008, as explained at PDC 2008 this week, Cutler is working on the Windows Azure team.
History of Microsoft Windows - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
FYI you can view and/or download PDC 2008 sessions from this page. The user interface is not entirely intuitive, so here’s an example:
I’ve selected an IE session from the session calendar/list:
Next, click on the tiny > icon next to the session name under the “Your selected session”; that will launch another browser instance, with the session streaming via Silverlight. Underneath the player window, you’ll see:
Click on the “Powerpoint Deck” link to launch the pptx file. Note that the sessions are generally posted within 24 hours of the related live presentation.
This was a very compelling demo during the Wednesday keynote
The next version of Windows, unveiled here this week, will have new capabilities to work without a mouse and a keyboard, letting people manipulate some computers more naturally by simply touching the screen.
Microsoft researchers Wednesday showed a prototype technology called SecondLight that some day could push man-machine interaction a step further, off the screen and into three dimensions.
Microsoft | Microsoft researchers work toward three-dimension computing | Seattle Times Newspaper
Check the full press release for more details/stats
The research also highlighted that some emerging markets are outpacing western countries in terms of new technology adoption. About 87 percent of Russian small businesses surveyed have branded company e-mail, while 63 percent have a customer database and an above-average 24 percent use mobile e-mail. Similarly, Russian small businesses are the most likely to have IT (97 percent), while fewer (91 percent) U.S. small businesses used IT.
Meanwhile, 67 percent of Chinese small businesses use social networking applications to talk to existing customers and 57 percent use them to promote their business. That compares with just 26 percent and 24 percent, respectively, of small businesses in the U.K. — typically seen as a mature market — that use social networking to talk to existing customers or promote their business. The research also found that 65 percent of the small businesses surveyed would consider buying IT services on a subscription basis, such as hosted e-mail, shared calendaring and other applications.
Netflix has also launched a Silverlight-based player client
Two of the scrappiest bantamweights in Silicon Valley, Netflix and TiVo, are expected to announce a long-awaited partnership on Thursday.
Netflix will place its Watch Instantly streaming-movie service on TiVo’s HD-compatible set-top boxes, furthering the technology industry’s goal of sending television shows and movies over the Internet — instead of over traditional cable and satellite networks — to ordinary TVs.
See the full article for screen shots of the Office Web application versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote
Among other things, the Office 14 wave of products will include the oft-rumored Web versions of certain Office applications, giving customers a way to both view and edit rich Office documents in the Web. For this first version of Office Web Applications--which may or may not be the final name--Microsoft is providing Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
"These are lightweight versions of the applications from the desktop product," Microsoft Office general manager Takeshi Numoto told me in a recent briefing. "They allow you to view, edit, and collaborate on Office docs in the browser."
Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: Microsoft Office 14 Web Applications Preview
This is a scary snapshot
Falling oil prices helped kill the alternative-energy business in the late 1970s. So plummeting prices combined with nearly frozen credit markets and a grim economic outlook paint a bleak picture for today's alternative-energy market. Still, concerns over global warming and energy security could mean that alternative energy remains a good prospect for future investment.
Read the full article for more context-setting, and seriously consider reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded for detailed analysis
A timely reality check; see the full article
Microsoft's Hailstorm prompted an avalanche of criticism when it was proposed seven years ago, but developers seem to have few qualms with Windows Azure, which embraces many of the same notions.
With Windows Azure, Microsoft not only controls the operating system but also the data centers where the applications run and the servers where the information is stored. If anything, Microsoft's control has grown, not shrunk from the vision that the company outlined in 2001.
So why the lack of uproar this time?
p.s. a clarification on the first quote attributed to me in the article: I said Microsoft was perceived by many to be an evil empire, circa PDC 2000
Azure manages to avoid a Hailstorm of criticism | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News
Makes sense, in part because HP is now a very close-orbit partner with Oracle
One of the companies that cares about cloud computing, of course, is Dell, which is thrilled to have been picked to be the sole provider of the hardware infrastructure and related data center design services for Microsoft's Azure Services Platform, an alternative to the EC2 cloud computing effort created by Amazon that Microsoft announced this week at its Professional Developer Conference. Azure is a compute and storage cloud for running Windows applications created using Visual Basic and C# and using a modified version of SQL Server for data storage.
Some Office Web applications impressions from Joe Wilcox (see the full article for more details)
I'm simply shocked by today's announcement. Microsoft has long resisted making available Web-based versions of Office. And I'm on record saying that Microsoft would likely never offer anything such as Web Office. That said, Microsoft isn't giving up much here. The productivity suite market has changed much since I first made this pronouncement about four years ago.
What's different now:
- Google has gained some prominent, new converts from Office
- Microsoft has chosen subscription and volume-licensing payment models
- With Azure, Microsoft is blurring the differences between software and services
- Office's role has dramatically changed as Microsoft increases emphasis on functional roles such as business intelligence
- Mail isn't included in Office Web, so among enterprises Microsoft can still pull Office sales through Exchange Server and also SharePoint Server.
- Productivity application functions are rapidly commoditizing, so Microsoft gives up little yet offers more—for people willing to pay the subscription fees
The question now: How will Google competitively respond, particularly since Microsoft has disclosed its plans? For Google, which runs so much in perpetual beta, the response should be both slow and swift.
I’ll post my take on Office Web applications over the next day or two, but in the meantime, some comments on Joe’s perspectives:
Microsoft Watch - Web Services & Browser - Office Goes to the Web
More on the Google settlement
“This huge body of books that were effectively lost to the marketplace are being rescued,” said James Gleick, the author of five books and a member of the board of the Authors Guild, one of the plaintiffs in the suit.
Google plans to take 37 percent of the revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors. If Google sells ads on pages where previews of scanned books appear, it will split the revenue on the same basis.
The settlement being paid by Google will go in part to establish a digital book registry that will administer the new system. At least $45 million is being designated to compensate authors and publishers whose books were scanned by Google before the settlement.
A timely reality check
It’s been an especially rotten few days for people who type on deadline. On Tuesday, The Christian Science Monitor announced that, after a century, it would cease publishing a weekday paper. Time Inc., the Olympian home of Time magazine, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated, announced that it was cutting 600 jobs and reorganizing its staff. And Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, compounded the grimness by announcing it was laying off 10 percent of its work force — up to 3,000 people.
Clearly, the sky is falling. The question now is how many people will be left to cover it.
The Media Equation - Mourning Old Media’s Decline - NYTimes.com
See the full article for more details
Internet search giant Google Inc. has reached a $125 million deal with major book publishing companies and authors, clearing the way for the company to provide easier online access to millions of copyrighted books.
[…]
Google will now permit users to search the full texts of the copyrighted books, and for the first time, allow us ers to buy complete digital copies of the books. The books won't be downloaded to a home or office computer, but will be stored in the user's personal library at the Google site, and accessible through any Internet-connected device.
Looks like Amazon.com and Google are on a collision course…
Google search starts new chapter with $125m deal - The Boston Globe
This has always been my favorite Notes error message, and it has become an apt metaphor, for me, for brain-cramp days such as the one I had today at PDC 2008.
It’s going to take me a while to synthesize and articulate the totality and significance of the stuff I saw today at various PDC sessions, but I’ll give it a shot, over the next couple days; please stay tuned…
I appreciate the link to my blog in this article, but my comment from yesterday afternoon still stands – it will be interesting to see how the press articles tomorrow describe the PDC keynotes earlier today.
When Microsoft unveiled Azure, its long-awaited cloud computing strategy, at its Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles Oct. 27, the news largely unfazed show attendees.
This is a good snapshot of the M3 pre-beta build, but M3 is not the build by which to assess Windows 7 – the full beta build, with the new user experience/conceptual model changes -- will be available early next year.
The unveiling of Windows 7 at the Professional Developers Conference here Oct. 28 calls to mind the early debut of "Longhorn," the OS that would become Vista, at the 2003 iteration of Microsoft’s developer gathering. However, the similarities between the two product introductions don’t extend much beyond venue.
Where Longhorn was arguably overambitious (a contention borne out by Vista’s scheduling setbacks, feature scalebacks and eventual market push-back), the feature additions and enhancements in Windows 7 are modest and achievable.
This only got a few minutes during the morning keynote at PDC today, but it’s a big part of the software + services story; see the full interview for more details; I’ll post some impressions later…
PressPass: What are you announcing today?
Capossela: As part of the next release of Office, we’re announcing that Microsoft will deliver Office Web applications - lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote - through a browser. With these new applications, people can use a browser to create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents. What’s great is that this provides a consistent Office experience when and where our customers want it, regardless of whether they are accessing their Office documents through the PC, phone, or browser.
Or, Microsoft could do both…
Apple’s cheerfully nasty commercials get it right: Microsoft can either buy ads to tell us Vista is not so bad or it can actually make an operating system people like. Tuesday will be a key milestone on Plan B, when Microsoft discusses some features of its next operating system, Windows 7, at its professional developer conference.
Quick Bits: A Windows Comeback and Merging Telcos - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
Interesting times
OpenID - the "free and easy way to use a single digital identity across the Internet" - has rapidly gained traction as a login credential for Web 2.0 apps and sites. Its adoption by more mainstream technology properties, however, has occurred at a slower rate.
But all of that could be changing with today's announcement from Microsoft. Anointing OpenID "the de facto standard Web protocol for user authentication," Microsoft has moved to give millions of Windows Live users access to any OpenID-enabled site on the Web by ensuring every Windows Live ID will become an OpenID.
Interesting perspectives from Mark Benioff, who should be quite familiar with Microsoft’s endeavors in this context since, e.g., Microsoft Dynamics CRM is reportedly ahead of Salesforce.com in many market segments
“Today’s announcement of Azure is the same Microsoft, keeping developers locked into their proprietary solutions, and failing to grasp the true power of cloud computing,“ said Mark Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.com, a San Francisco company that helped pioneer the commercial Web services market. “Microsoft continues to struggle with what to do about cloud computing because the cloud’s new technology and business models cuts into the heart of their software monopoly.”
Interesting times…
Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. will announce Tuesday that they have agreed to a common set of principles for how to do business in nations that restrict free speech and expression, as the companies seek to combat criticism that they have helped enable censorship in those countries.
Under the new principles, which were crafted over two years, the technology titans promise to protect the personal information of their users wherever they do business and to "narrowly interpret and implement government demands that compromise privacy," according to the code. They also commit to scrutinizing a country's track record of jeopardizing personal information and freedom of expression before launching new businesses in a country and to discussing the risks widely with their executives and board members.
See the full article for more context-setting
"We welcome Microsoft's movement to the cloud," said Google spokesman Mike Nelson. "Choice is good for users, and their direction further validates that the future of computing is in the cloud."
An Amazon Web services spokeswoman, Kay Kinton, said her company doesn't discuss competitors. "We always thought that there would be multiple companies pursuing this space," she said.
Rebecca Wettemann, vice president at Nucleus Research in Boston, warned that Microsoft may be late to the game.
"Microsoft, welcome to the 21st century," Wettemann said. "Microsoft is playing catch-up again.
It’ll be interesting to see how these perspectives evolve over the next couple years.
Microsoft's online platform could transform company - The Boston Globe
A quick update from the press/analyst room at PDC 2008, after Ray Ozzie’s keynote this morning – my $.02 follows below
Dubbed Windows Azure, it's less a replacement for the operating system that runs on one's own PC than it is an alternative for developers, intended to let them write programs that live inside Microsoft's data centers as opposed to on the servers of a given business.
"It's a transformation of our software and a transformation of our strategy," said Ray Ozzie, a computing industry pioneer who now serves as Microsoft's chief software architect. (For a play-by-play account of Ozzie's speech, see "PDC 2008: Windows Azure live blog.")
My $.02:
1. This morning’s keynote was focused on explaining how Windows Azure constitutes a new platform – many parts are familiar, some going back many years, but ultimately it should indeed be considered a new and complementary (and also in many ways complimentary, for the immediate future – i.e., free for developers to explore) platform.
2. A lot of people in the audience, and many in the press/analyst room here, seemed to be looking for something more dramatic/disruptive/etc.
3. The keynote sessions tomorrow morning and later in the week (I’ve been pre-briefed on some of the topics, but am under a nondisclosure agreement until tomorrow…) will be useful, in terms of helping people understand what can be done on the Azure platform – and with the broader “software + services” strategy.
More impressions to follow over the next couple days…
Microsoft launches Windows Azure | Latest Microsoft News - CNET News - CNET News
One PDC observation so far: there’s an unusual shortage of mainstream press coverage, for day 1 – e.g., I didn’t see any PDC overview articles this morning on the WSJ or NYT sites.
Microsoft is expected to sort out its strategy for cloud computing, a broad change in how computer users retrieve and process information and applications, at the company's Professional Developers Conference this week.
I’m at PDC this week, and will have some impressions to share here throughout the week…
As Microsoft gears up for its Professional Developers Conference later this month, CNET News gives a preview of what developers should expect at the confab.
Makes sense for increasingly multi-channel Oprah…
Today it was the tech world getting a little bit of that Oprah lovin’ as she declared Amazon’s Kindle as “absolutely my new favorite thing in the world.” Seems somebody gave her one of the wireless electronic readers this summer and it has been nothing short of “life-changing.” So, just in time for holiday shopping, she brought Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos onto Friday’s show to savor her testimonial. And, as if Oprah Seal of Approval weren’t enough, her loyal followers can use the code OPRAHWINFREY at the Amazon site to get $50 off the $359 selling price.
Oprah gives Kindle sales a holiday goose | Good Morning Silicon Valley
A timely report series from The Economist
This special report will chronicle the rise of the cloud and try to predict where it is heading. It will start by looking at the technology. Computing clouds are immensely complex, but can be roughly divided into three layers: infrastructure, applications and the periphery where they meet the real world. These will be discussed in turn. The report will go on to consider the impact the cloud will have on the IT industry and the economy as a whole. The conclusion will look at what might stop the cloud from growing ever thicker: regulation and worries about the safety of both personal and corporate data.
A survey of corporate IT: IT's global “cloud” Let it rise The Economist
A timely snapshot, heading into PDC week; see the full article for more details
Today, Microsoft's operating-system software is thriving. It runs at least nine out of every 10 computers. Vista, for all the criticism, has sold more than 180 million copies since hitting the market Jan. 30, 2007. In the past quarter alone, Windows generated sales of $4.2 billion, 28 percent of Microsoft's revenue. As it has for years, Windows is fueling the company's expansion into newer businesses, including entertainment and Internet search.
Past the numbers, however, the Windows franchise, particularly Vista, has taken more than its share of hits. Vista was repeatedly delayed and stripped of features during a five-year development process that Microsoft has vowed not to repeat. When it finally arrived, the "ecosystem" of companies that make hardware and software for Windows wasn't ready, leading to months of compatibility problems that angered users.
Even though Microsoft and its partners have addressed these issues, and new computers handle Vista smoothly, the bad reputation has been tough to shake.
Microsoft | With Windows 7, Microsoft faces a future full of challenges | Seattle Times Newspaper
A timely reality check
Later in the question-and-answer session, Jobs said that although Apple would continue to add features to its notebooks as it dropped prices, he was unwilling to play in the netbook category as it's currently defined. "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that," Jobs said. "But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve, and there's a lot of them. And we've seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market and not trying to be everything to everybody."
At the same time, it was clear that Jobs considers Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch as courting netbook dollars. "One of our entrants into that category, if you will, is the iPhone for browsing the Internet and doing e-mail and all the other things that a netbook lets you do," he said. "Being connected via the cellular net wherever you are, an iPhone is a pretty good solution for that, and it fits in your pocket."
Interesting times…
PEOPLE who want to improve their communication skills may one day have an unusual helper: software programs that analyze the tone, turn-taking behavior and other qualities of a conversation. The programs would then tell the speakers whether they tend to interrupt others, for example, or whether they dominate meetings with monologues, or appear inattentive when others are talking.
Novelties - You May Soon Know if You’re Hogging the Discussion - NYTimes.com
Hopefully Windows 7 will have a more elegant way to achieve reduced start-up time, compared with the approaches outlined later in the article; I suspect we’ll find out at PDC 2008 tomorrow
Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo are rolling out machines that give people access to basic functions like e-mail and a Web browser in 30 seconds or less. Asus, a Taiwanese company that is the world’s largest maker of the circuit boards at the center of every PC, has begun building faster-booting software into its entire product line.
Even Microsoft, whose bloated Windows software is often blamed for sluggish start times, has pledged to do its part in the next version of the operating system, saying on a company blog that “a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds.” Today only 35 percent of machines running the latest version of Windows, called Vista, boot in 30 seconds or less, the blog notes. (Apple Macintoshes tend to boot more quickly than comparable Windows machines but still feel glacially slow to most users.)
In a New Age of Impatience, Cutting PC Start Time - NYTimes.com
Interesting times
Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) advertising-supported online unit showed encouraging signs of life in the third quarter, a performance that suggests the business is starting to attract advertisers concerned about the strength of giant Google Inc. (GOOG)
Thursday, Microsoft said growing interest among users and advertisers enabled it to post a quick 15% rise in third-quarter online ad revenues to $557 million. The surprising development, largely overshadowed by the company's lowered guidance and weakness in its core software unit, came despite challenges for the online advertising market, which is being squeezed by a weakening economy.
See the full article for more Vista analysis
The netbook challenge to Microsoft is two-fold. First, if they run Windows, the machines run a slimmed-down version of Windows XP. Charles Di Bona of Sanford Bernstein estimates that Microsoft pockets $30 to $35 on a netbook. By contrast, he figures that the operating system license fee on a standard consumer PC, running Vista, is about $70. The second netbook issue for Microsoft is that many of those machines run the Linux operating system. (Mr. Di Bona’s Bernstein colleague, A.M. Sacconaghi, estimates netbooks accounted for that 4.5 to 5 percent of the 10 to 12 percent unit growth of PC sales in the September quarter.)
Microsoft’s Vista Problem, by the Numbers - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
A timely reality check on time and attention management
“We need to recreate boundaries,” he said. That means training yourself not to look at your BlackBerry every 20 seconds, or turning off your cellphone. It means trying to change your work culture so such devices are banned at meetings. Sleeping less to do more is a bad strategy, he says. We are efficient only when we sleep enough, eat right and exercise.
So the next time the phone rings and a good friend is on the line, try this trick: Sit on the couch. Focus on the conversation. Don’t jump up, no matter how much you feel the need to clean the kitchen. It seems weird, but stick with it. You, too, can learn the art of single-tasking.
Shortcuts - Multitasking Can Make You Lose ... Um ... Focus - NYTimes.com
Sign of the times; see the full article for more details…
A woman has been arrested in Japan after she allegedly killed her virtual husband in a popular video game.
The 43-year-old was reportedly furious at finding herself suddenly divorced in the online game Maplestory.
Police say she illegally accessed log-in details of the man playing her husband, and killed off his character.
The woman, a piano teacher, is in jail in Sapporo waiting to learn if she faces charges of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating data.
Another MSFT snapshot
Microsoft reduced its forecast for sales, operating income and earnings per share, even as it reported strong sales and profit in its fiscal first quarter, ended Sept. 30.
"We continue to forecast outgrowing the market regardless of the economic conditions," Liddell said.
The Seattle Times article included the following:
Which looks kind of stark, from a year-to-year stock price perspective, but could be worse, e.g.,
Microsoft | Microsoft profit up, but forecast is cut | Seattle Times Newspaper
More evidence that microblogging has jumped the shark…
How else would an airline inaugurate a new terminal these days, except by Twittering it?
JetBlue Airways, which began flying to and from its new home at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York this morning, has been sending out updates about its first day via Twitter.com, and on its own blog.
Yesterday, JetBlue used Twitter to count down its departure from Terminal 6, a facility built in the first years of the jet age. “In less than nine hours our last flight out of Terminal 6 at J.F.K. will push back from the gate. T5 is open tomorrow!” the airline wrote yesterday afternoon to its followers on Twitter.
JetBlue Twitters its New Terminal - The Lede - Breaking News - New York Times Blog
Strange days indeed – Google is apparently leasing a fighter jet and loaning it to NASA, its Moffett Field landlord…
After The New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request with NASA, the agency released documents related to the lease agreement between NASA and H211 LLC. In an e-mail Thursday, Dolores Beasley, a NASA spokeswoman said: “The agreement was amended to support a recent science mission–observation of the re-entry of the European Space Agency’s “Jules Verne” Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). Additional amendments are in progress in regards to the Alpha jet.”
It is not clear who exactly owns or flies the fighter jet. Mr. Schmidt is an avid pilot.
[…]
Presumably no attacks on Microsoft are planned at this time.
A New (Fighter) Jet for Google’s Founders? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
See the full article for more details
Microsoft’s overall performance held up well, a bit better than expected, said Charles Di Bona, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein. Microsoft’s revenue in its first quarter, ended Sept. 30, rose 9 percent to nearly $15.1 billion from $13.8 billion a year ago. Net income increased 2 percent to $4.37 billion, or 48 cents a share, from $4.29 billion, or 45 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. The consensus among Wall Street analysts was revenue of $14.8 billion and net income per share of 47 cents.
Microsoft delivered healthy growth of 20 percent in sales of business software, which includes its Office desktop productivity, collaboration and online meeting programs. Indeed, the business software group surpassed the Windows desktop operating systems unit in both sales and operating profits.
Microsoft’s Profit Rises, but Outlook Is Cautious - NYTimes.com
An interesting snapshot
If I had to bet right this moment on the mobile 85-10-5 of 2011 I'd say iPhone, Android, then RIM, Symbian, or something completely new from behind Door Number Three.
[…]
And where will Windows Mobile be in 2011? There way things are headed now, given that Microsoft can't really afford to be anything but first or second on the platform that supplants Windows, I'd say Windows Mobile will be dead.
More fun iFacts
Apple said it sold 6.9 million iPhones in the first quarter in which it sold the new iPhone 3G model, more than it sold of the first model in a year. That represents average revenue of $652 per handset. Since the price of the phone in the United States is $199 to $299, it appears that carriers are kicking in well over $300 in subsidy per phone, a bit more than is typical with other handsets.
[…]
Here’s another stunner: Apple’s $4.6 billion in revenue from phones is more than its sales of computers. Analysts expected Apple to sell about $4 billion in Macintosh computers and $1.6 billion in iPods in the quarter. (By unit, Apple was a little light of estimates for computers and right on target for iPods. The analysts are still crunching their numbers to turn the unit count, which Apple discloses, into revenue estimates.)
Read the full article for some other timely insights
Steve Jobs’s Home Run With the iPhone - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
Apparently Comcast’s 250 gig limit is rather generous, compared to UK ISPs
One million UK consumers have exceeded or come close to exceeding their broadband usage limit, research from consumer group uSwitch has found.
So-called usage caps, where internet service providers limit the amount of bandwidth users can have in any given month, are standard practice.
[…]
WHAT THE ISPS OFFER
Interesting times – in part because it’s the first mainstream tech press article I recall seeing with an embedded Google Docs spreadsheet
The story I kicked off a few days ago, Tech layoffs: The scorecard, is a real bummer. On it, we're tracking the current layoffs in the tech economy. I hate the story, since each line on the sheet stands for real people who have lost jobs.
So earlier today I sent a query out to my Twitter followers: Send me good news. That led to this anti-layoff spreadsheet, the one tracking companies that are hiring. I present it here. Most recent entries are at the top. Happy hunting, everyone.
The spreadsheet of sunshine: Who's hiring | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET
Apparently the social networking bubble hasn’t burst yet
LinkedIn announced Wednesday that it has raised an additional $22.7 million in funding, giving the business-networking site a little cushion in difficult economic times.
The strategic investment, from Goldman Sachs, SAP, and McGraw-Hill, as well as longtime investor Bessemer Venture Partners, comes on the heels of a $53 million Series D funding round in June that gave LinkedIn a valuation of $1 billion. The latest funding round brings the total funds raised to just more than $100 million.
LinkedIn raises another $22.7 million | News - Digital Media - CNET News
Information literacy is your friend…
Unlike the laws of mathematics or science, wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience. Wikipedia has evolved a radically different set of epistemological standards--standards that aren't especially surprising given that the site is rooted in a Web-based community, but that should concern those of us who are interested in traditional notions of truth and accuracy. On Wikipedia, objective truth isn't all that important, actually. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is that it appeared in some other publication--ideally, one that is in English and is available free online. "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth," states Wikipedia's official policy on the subject.
Later in the article:
So what is Truth? According to Wikipedia's entry on the subject, "the term has no single definition about which the majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree." But in practice, Wikipedia's standard for inclusion has become its de facto standard for truth, and since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it's the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.
Never play poker with Steve Jobs…
AT&T’s successful relationship with Apple comes at a price: $900 million.
That is the amount of money AT&T paid to Apple for the 2.4 million iPhones the phone company sold in the third quarter. It is a number that surprised even AT&T, which did not anticipate such huge demand for the smartphone.
Even AT&T Is Startled by Cost of iPhone Partnership - NYTimes.com
More bad news for Sun -- and Cisco, potentially; check the full article for details
Andreas von Bechtolsheim, a brilliant billionaire who has created some of the best-selling computer systems in the industry, is resigning as chief architect of Sun Microsystems to focus on a start-up that is challenging another industry giant, Cisco Systems.
[…]
Mr. Bechtolsheim’s departure will certainly be a big blow to Sun, which is wrestling with declining sales and profits and a plunging stock price. But he said he would retain a part-time advisory role at the company.
“It’s my baby,” Mr. Bechtolsheim said. “I will always be associated with Sun.”
See the full review for details (no WSJ subscription required).
Apple’s MacBook laptop, the company’s low-end portable computer aimed at average consumers, isn’t just any old product. It’s the best-selling Macintosh in history, at a time when Mac sales are growing much faster than sales of PCs in the U.S. overall. And, according to the sales-research organization NPD Group, the midrange model of the MacBook has been the single best-selling laptop of any brand in U.S. retail stores for the past five months.
So, when Apple completely revamped the design of the MacBook last week, it was a big deal, not only for Mac die-hards, but for anyone shopping for an everyday laptop.
Apple Polishes Popular MacBook for a Higher Price | Walt Mossberg | Personal Technology | AllThingsD
See the full article for more details; e.g., you’ll still get disconnected if you go > 250 gigabytes in a single month
Most users of Comcast's broadband service get download speeds of either 6 or 8 megabits per second, compared to Verizon's basic FIOS service, which delivers 10 megabits per second. But thanks to Comcast's new technology, called Docsis 3.0, customers will see their top speeds doubled to 12 or 16 megabits, respectively, at no additional cost.
In addition, Comcast will offer two premium broadband services: 22 megabits for $62.95 a month and 50 megabits for $139.95 a month. Verizon already offers similar FIOS services at about the same prices.
