Antisocial networking...
A video of Britney Spears' soon-to-be ex-husband apparently getting a text message informing him that the pop princess had filed for divorce became the most viewed item on YouTube on Thursday, with more than 1 million hits.
Source: Spears text messages divorce plan to hubby | CNET News.com
The Redmond product floodgates are wide open...
Exchange Server 2007 will be released to manufacturing in December and be available to customers within a number of days after that, Microsoft officials have confirmed.
The formal announcement of Exchange 2007's RTM date was made in David Lemson's keynote on November 7 at the Exchange Connections conference.
Source: Microsoft Watch - Messaging & Collaboration - Exchange 2007 to RTM in December
All we need now is Google's version of HailStorm and the deja vu cycle will be complete.
CNet quotes Eric Schmidt who says Google's goal is not to beat Microsoft. Google wants to store all your data on their servers, by making it accessible everywhere and more useful.
Google's applications rely on the storage of data on servers in the "cloud," which was the premise of network computing, he said. (...) "Finally, now the architecture works."
"Fundamentally, it's better to keep your money in the bank than in your pocket," Schmidt said, adding that the metaphor could be applied to keeping your software on the server.
Source: Google Operating System: Google Wants to Store All Your Data
Timely reality check
The web's love affair with blogging shows no signs of abating according to the latest report from blog tracking firm Technorati.
Every day 100,000 new blogs are created and 1.3 million posts are made, it found during its quarterly survey.
Source: BBC NEWS | Technology | Blogosphere sees healthy growth
Amazing...
A $90 million supercomputer made for nuclear weapons simulation cannot yet be rivaled by a single PC chip for a serious video gamer. But the gap is closing quickly.
Indeed, a new breed of consumer-oriented graphics chips have roughly the brute computing processing power of the world’s fastest computing system of just seven years ago. And the latest advance came Wednesday when the Nvidia Corporation introduced its next-generation processor, capable of more than three trillion mathematical operations per second.
Source: New Nvidia Chip Steps Closer to Supercomputing in the PC - New York Times
Another net-negative Zune review
Competition is good and all. But what, exactly, is the point of the Zune? It seems like an awful lot of duplication — in a bigger, heavier form with fewer features — just to indulge Microsoft’s “we want some o’ that” envy. Wireless sharing is the one big new idea — and if the public seems to respond, Apple could always add that to the iPod.
Then again, this is all standard Microsoft procedure. Version 1.0 of Microsoft Anything is stripped-down and derivative, but it’s followed by several years of slow but relentless refinement and marketing. Already, Microsoft says that new Zune features, models and accessories are in the pipeline.
(Note: the link is to the version of the review that doesn't require a subscription)
For a moment there, after reading the headline, I thought Walt Mossberg was actually going to say something net-positive about a Microsoft product. Read the full review for his Zune analysis.
Overall, the iPod and iTunes are still the champs. Still, I expect the Zune to attract some converts and to get better with time. And this kind of competition from a big company with deep pockets and lots of talent is good for consumers in the long run.
Source: Personal Technology -- Personal Technology from The Wall Street Journal.
Major Microsoft milestone week
Microsoft Corp. finished work yesterday on its long-delayed Windows Vista operating system, and said the software would be broadly available Jan. 30.
That means Microsoft will meet -- just barely -- its revised goal of putting Vista in consumers' hands in the first month of 2007.
Source: Microsoft finishes new version of Windows - The Boston Globe
Hmmm
U.S. researchers have released a new online program for automatically tagging images according to their content. In its first real-world test, the program processed thousands of publicly accessible images available on the photo-sharing site Flickr. At least one accurate tag was generated for 98 percent of all the pictures analysed.
I imagine Apple will be facing new realities when it next renews its contracts with Universal and other publishers.
Steve Gordon, an entertainment lawyer, said that Universal was saying, in effect: “Look, we know new technologies are here to stay. We know CDs are like typewriters, and are being replaced. ”
When the companies initially licensed Apple’s fledgling iTunes service, “they didn’t figure he’d make tens of billions of dollars from the iPod,” said Mr. Gordon, author of the book “The Future of the Music Business.”
“This time they’re saying, ‘Well, we want a piece.’ ”
Agreed...
But getting lost a bit in the noise and hype is one Microsoft product release that, in the long run, may end up being the most important, especially on the enterprise side. And that product is Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007.
Listed ostensibly as a component of Office, SharePoint is actually much more. You can make a very good argument that SharePoint is now the core platform on which almost all Microsoft-based web, SOA, BPM, ecommerce, content management, collaboration and of course portal initiatives will be built.
Source: Microsoft Watch - Web Services & Browser - The Most Important Microsoft Release of the Year
Intel offering a collaboration software suite -- interesting times. Kim Polese, as CEO of SpikeSource, which Intel is contracting to assemble the suite, gains at least fifteen minutes of Bubble 2.0 fame...
Called SuiteTwo, the package will include software from Six Apart, Socialtext, NewsGator and SimpleFeed. These are small software companies that provide applications for blogs, RSS feeds, wikis and social networking.
[...]
The cost for the software, which can be installed with a single click, will cost between $175-$200 per user per year and will include regular updates.
The article also notes that Intel Capital has invested in both SpikeSource and Six Apart, and has an option to invest in the other companies participating in SuiteTwo.
Source: Intel unveils 'Web 2.0' software suite | CNET News.com
Another detail in the Microsoft/Novell relationship
The alliance runs to January 2012. Microsoft also agreed not to enter any similar pact to promote Windows and Linux virtualization technologies with any other Linux vendor for three years.
That will, among other things, make Novell a more attractive acquisition candidate. See this Novell press release for more details.
Microsoft will pay Novell $240 million upfront in subscription fees to use the Linux software and an additional $108 million in upfront payments for use of patents, Novell said in a filing yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Sign of the times...
Blogs of all political stripes spent most of yesterday detailing reports of voting machine malfunctions and ballot shortages, effectively becoming an online national clearinghouse of the polling problems that still face the election system.
And in a new twist this year, many bloggers buttressed their accounts of electoral shenanigans with links to videos posted on the video Web site YouTube.
Source: Blogs Take Lead in Reporting Polling Problems, With Supporting Evidence on YouTube - New York Times
Relatively speaking, organizations involved in traditional advertising should be a lot more worried about Google than, for example, Microsoft should be.
Google Inc. is preparing to sharply increase the scope of its radio-ad sales business, beefing up sales staff and angling to sell a lot more advertising on stations owned by big radio companies.
In coming weeks, the Mountain View, Calif., Internet company will announce a test that will eventually lead to a service allowing anybody to use the Google Audio Ads service to purchase radio advertising, much as anybody can use the company's AdWords service to place text ads that pop up alongside Google searches.
Source: Google to Boost Scope Of Radio-Ad Sales Business - WSJ.com
More details on Adobe's Mozilla plans
The latest version of Adobe's script "engine," released in June this year with Flash Player 9, uses a just-in-time compiler to run programs ten times faster than previous versions, he said.
Lynch said the deal with Mozilla is the biggest Adobe has done with open source. The move furthers the company's plan to allow developers to mix and match programming technologies, including AJAX-style Web development and Flash for media and animation, he said.
Source: Adobe to donate script code to Mozilla | CNET News.com
Hmmm
Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE) is contributing some of the computer code behind its widely used Flash player to the Mozilla Foundation so that it can be improved upon and blended into an upcoming version of Mozilla's Firefox Web browser.
The donation, to be announced Tuesday at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, represents the largest contribution of code to Mozilla since the Mountain View-based foundation's 2003 inception. The code covers the scripting language in Adobe's Flash software, which millions of people use to view online media and other dynamic applications delivered over the Internet.
Source: Article - Adobe Gives Mozilla Some Computer Code From Flash Player
Sign of the times
Vodafone, one of the world's largest cellphone operators, said that over the next five years, it plans to cut the number of mobile operating platforms from 20 to three, as it looks to reduce development costs and improve the way software works on phones. The two platforms Vodafone plans to use alongside Microsoft Windows Mobile are Symbian/Series 60 and open source Linux software.
The real winner in this: Adobe, as I assume Verizon would use Flash Lite
An agreement would allow Verizon's customers to view some of the most avidly watched entertainment on the Internet. That could advance the long-expected convergence of video and cellphones. It could also, at least temporarily, give Verizon a marketing edge over its rivals in the wireless and cable industries, furthering the company's efforts to expand into Internet and entertainment services.
Source: Verizon, YouTube Aim To Bring Web Videos To Cellphones, TV - WSJ.com
