Cisco Sets Sights on $34 Billion Market - WSJ.com

On a related complementor ... competitor continuum note, Cisco is more aggressively seeking to compete with IBM and Microsoft for unified communication/collaboration opportunities -- and Oracle as well, given Oracle's Beehive announcement this week.

Cisco Systems Inc. made its name with devices that connect corporate computers. Now it is stepping up efforts to link people more productively.

The Silicon Valley company Wednesday is expected to unveil a slew of products aimed at business users who want to collaborate on projects. The offerings include Cisco WebEx Connect, an online service designed to integrate tools such as instant messaging and Web conferencing with conventional business software and newer Internet applications such as blogs and wikis, which are collaborative Web sites.

The article later continues with some quotes from the ubiquitous Mike Gotta

A cornerstone of Cisco's push into the collaboration market is WebEx Communications Inc., which the networking company acquired for $3.2 billion in 2007. The company has since acquired a handful of other companies aimed at adding more features to its collaboration offerings. Over the past month, Cisco acquired email-and-calendar start-up PostPath Inc. and Jabber Inc., an instant-messaging company whose founders helped develop technology used by Apple Inc.'s iChat and Google's Googletalk.

As Cisco increases its emphasis on software, the company must build a reputation among corporate customers. Mike Gotta, an analyst with the Burton Group, a Midvale, Utah, market-research firm, estimates that it will take Cisco three to five years to establish itself in the market.

"Cisco is a stranger to this space," said Mr. Gotta. "Right now, many corporate customers are saying, 'Who is Cisco and why trust them?' "

Hey Mike, I'll bet you $.07 Cisco doesn't get beyond single-digit market share in this context, over the next 3 - 5 years :)

Cisco Sets Sights on $34 Billion Market - WSJ.com

Google makes its move on smartphones - The Boston Globe

See the full article for more details, and this Google blog post for more positioning etc.

The giant Internet search service yesterday joined with cellular carrier T-Mobile USA to unveil the first cellphone based on Google software. It's an aggressive bid to pry open the market for advanced wireless smartphones.

Cole Brodman, chief technology officer for T-Mobile USA, noted only about 16 percent of Americans use their wireless phones to access the Internet. "We're going to change all that," he said.

But the new phone, the G1 from Taiwan's HTC Corp., contains few breakthrough features and seems unlikely to challenge the popularity of rival smartphones like Apple Inc.'s iPhone. "I don't think that this phone itself is a groundbreaking thing," said Jane Zweig, chief executive of telecom research firm the Shosteck Group in Columbia, Md.

While I expect the G1 may accelerate delivery of the rumored iPhone-with-keyboard, I still believe Google's strategy of directly competing with Apple, Blackberry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile may also backfire, leading mobile communications device and service provider players to reconsider Google's place on their complementor ... competitor continuum.

An excerpt from a WSJ take, titled "G1: It's no iPhone":

After weeks of hype, T-Mobile’s G1 phone, which runs on Google’s mobile phone software Android, finally debuted Tuesday. But it immediately ran into a roadblock: the iPhone comparison.

You, sir, are no iPhone

“As with the other smart phones currently on the market we do not see the G1 being an ‘iPhone Killer’,” research firm Atlantic Equities said in a note. “It will be difficult for Google to challenge this in the near term.”

Goldman Sachs added that the G1 appears to be a “step one,” noting: “We leave considerations of the beauty (or otherwise) of the G1 relative to the iPhone to the eyes of each beholder.”

Technology research firm Gartner was kinder. Carolina Milanesi, Gartner’s research director for mobile devices, said the G1 puts pressure on suppliers like Motorola and Nokia. But while the G1’s interface, usability and applications make it “the closest thing I’ve seen to the iPhone,” it falls short of the phone’s iconic status, she said. “The Apple brand is so much stronger.”

“Apple sets the bar pretty high,” chimed in Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin. IPhone users fall into two camps, he said: tech enthusiasts who were already using wireless-data services on their cellphones, and more mainstream consumers who “had an awakening” when they began using the iPhone’s applications.

An excerpt from Walt Mossberg's take, titled "Google G1: First Impressions":

Google’s new G1 phone announced today is the first real competitor to the iPhone. Like Apple’s product, it’s a serious handheld computer with a powerful new operating system (called Android) and a clever touch-based user interface. Like the iPhone, it’s likely to be a major new platform for third-party software. But it’s also very different, and may appeal to different buyers.

[...]

In sum, the G1 is a powerful, versatile device which will offer users a real alternative in the new handheld computing category the iPhone has occupied alone.

Google makes its move on smartphones - The Boston Globe

Some initial Oracle Beehive impressions and projections

This post outlines some of my initial impressions of and projections for Oracle Beehive, based on an Oracle analyst briefing last week and some Beehive sessions at Oracle OpenWorld this week. For some additional context-setting, check the following posts:

Oracle Collaboration Suite: RIP

Some initial Oracle Beehive details

Somewhat paradoxically, Oracle has not yet made the OpenWorld presentation files available for download (and I didn't bring a camera to capture OpenWorld session demo images), so I can't include screen shots in this post -- that's unfortunate, in part because many of the screen shots reporters may run with in their Beehive-related articles this week are likely to be misleading, focusing on Beehive/Outlook integration rather than the broader and deeper Beehive capabilities available through the full/purpose-built and web-centric Beehive client.

A list of Beehive features, from a Beehive introduction session yesterday (presented by VP and Chief Architect, Oracle Collaborative Technologies, Terry Olkin):

• Contacts
• Messages (email)
• Wiki
• Tasks
• Conferencing
• IM (transcripts)
• Calendar
• Documents
• Discussions

The Beehive model is workspace-oriented, and the high-level Beehive object model includes:

• Entity
• Artifact
• Document
• Calendar entry
• Task
• Conference
• Message
• Email
• Discussion
• Voicemail
• Instant message (transcript)
• Actor
• User
• Person
• Group

Terry Olkin also briefly displayed a super-detailed object model diagram (one I'm sure easily gets into the braincramp complexity range, when the various adapters and interfaces are included) -- the Beehive model appears to be very deep and intertwingled. Oracle has not published the underlying/corresponding Beehive database schema, but the developer-oriented object model is documented in the Beehive Application Developer's Guide.

Several of the Beehive scenarios described at OpenWorld over the last couple days (in presentation sessions and in discussions at the Oracle Beehive stations in the cavernous OpenWorld exhibit halls) are similar to IBM Lotus Connections in some respects, e.g., attempting to exploit relationships among information items and people, not just basic capabilities such as document libraries and discussions. I definitely got the impression, over the last couple days, that the initial Beehive user experience is just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of fully leveraging the underlying conceptual model.

I'll post more details on these topics if/when I get access to the related OpenWorld presentation files. For now, some initial projections:

1. Oracle Beehive is likely to be popular with many Oracle-focused enterprises, especially those using one or more Oracle applications, as Beehive services will be integrated into future releases of Oracle's myriad enterprise application offerings (and are already included in a new Oracle Social CRM product). I doubt Beehive will broadly displace Outlook/Exchange and Notes/Domino for enterprise messaging in the immediate future, however (although it could become a competitive issue for Oracle customer organizations currently using Novell Groupwise, for example).

2. Oracle Beehive's DBMS-based infrastructure is, imho, a leading indicator of likely future communication/collaboration products from IBM, Microsoft, and other vendors. SharePoint is already SQL Server-based, of course, but its object model is not captured in SQL Server in a high-fidelity model mapping today (SharePoint treats SQL Server as more of a property bag manager, and SharePoint doesn't currently use any of the XML management services in SQL Server). Beehive doesn't fully exploit the native XML management capabilities in Oracle Database 11g, however, since Beehive is for relatively lightweight document management (and Oracle's Universal Content Management, designed for more complex content/record/etc. management scenarios, and based on Oracle's Stellent acquisition, also doesn't fully exploit Oracle Database in this context).

3. Beehive's wiki-centric model -- pervasively supporting "the wiki way", rather than treating wikis as a distinct workspace capability, is another useful example of beyond-the-basics hypertext support.

Of course, it is not a foregone conclusion that Beehive will be broadly successful, as Oracle failed in at least three earlier attempts to compete in enterprise communication/collaboration domains, but success in these areas is in many ways a strategic imperative for Oracle at this point, and Beehive appears to have a very clean and integrated application model, so I'd be willing to bet $.07 it will be much more successful than OCS was (BTW I ran into Mike Gotta in the OpenWorld analyst room this morning and paid him $.07 for the OCS bet I lost, as explained in this post...).

More to follow in subsequent posts, as I learn more about Beehive...

Some initial Oracle Beehive details

This post summarizes some of the details I've picked up about Oracle Beehive at Oracle OpenWorld this week.

I'm frankly a bit surprised there hasn't been more of a buzz (that's the last bee-related reference for the rest of this post, I promise...) in the collaboration-focused parts of the press and blogosphere about Beehive over the last couple days, since Beehive represents what will become, if successful, the most significant enterprise communication/collaboration threat the current market leaders -- IBM and Microsoft -- have seen in many years. I'll share some speculation and projections in subsequent posts, and will keep this post focused on sharing some high-level Beehive details. Check this Oracle page if you want to explore official data sheets, product documentation, etc.

Here's the big-picture view of Oracle's new line-up for "Enterprise 2.0" communication, collaboration, and content management:

As the diagram suggests, Oracle is leading with a trio of integrated (although also available stand-alone) products, all building on a common set of infrastructure services:

• Oracle WebCenter is an attempt to consolidate all of Oracle's many portal-related products into a single portal-centric framework and user interaction environment.
• Oracle Beehive is positioned as a collaboration services offering, but it also includes a variety of communication and coordination services.
• Oracle Universal Content Management started with the many products from Oracle's Stellent acquisition -- including, for example, web content management, records management, and information rights management.

Here's a more detailed view of Beehive's capabilities:

Beehive was developed by Oracle -- i.e., it is not based on acquired companies/products -- over the last 3 - 4 years (although at least a few services, e.g., the web conferencing parts, are apparently based on recycled/revised Oracle Collaboration Suite resources). It starts with an elaborate communication/collaboration/coordination-focused object model, building on Oracle Database for information management (database, content, files, etc.).

Beehive is also designed to be a productive part of the broader enterprise landscape, as suggested in the following diagram:

Beehive supports many communication/collaboration/content-related (real and de facto) industry standards, and Oracle has also built plug-ins/adapters/etc. for popular enterprise clients such as Microsoft Outlook. The Outlook add-in is in some ways similar to the way Microsoft makes SharePoint document libraries accessible through Outlook, but all Beehive artifacts are managed in an underlying Oracle Database instance, optionally with Oracle's information rights management services.

Beehive costs $120 per user, and it includes limited editions of Oracle Database and Oracle's BPEL-based workflow engine (and can also scale-up/out by fully leveraging Oracle's RAC etc., for enterprises that already have advanced Oracle deployments). It's a user-based licensing model; there is no separate price for the server elements. Current Oracle Collaboration Suite customers can upgrade OCS licenses to Beehive licenses at no charge. Beehive is available now for on-premises deployments, and Oracle also announced plans to make Beehive available as part of its Oracle On Demand (software-as-a-service) suite, but didn't specify availability or pricing details.

IBM May Quit Technology Standards Bodies - WSJ.com [+ a related Oracle OpenWorld observation]

Somehow I don't think that would help to advance substantive standards... 

International Business Machines Corp. will review its membership in the bodies that set common standards for the technology industry and may withdraw from some, potentially undermining the system that makes electronic equipment and software interoperable world-wide.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based computer maker is expected to announce the review Tuesday, according to company officials. IBM has become frustrated by what it considers opaque processes and poor decision-making at some of the hundreds of bodies that set technical standards for everything from data-storage systems to programming languages, those officials said.

A recent battle over the selection as an international standard of the file format used in Microsoft Corp.'s Office software suite appears to have influenced IBM's decision. Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., won that contest in April when its Open XML format was approved by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization, or ISO.

Meanwhile, I'm still at Oracle OpenWorld, where there will reportedly be a total of 1,830 presentation sessions this week.  Of the ones I've seen so far -- obviously not a statistically significant sample size, but including the keynotes yesterday and today -- I haven't seen a single reference to OpenOffice.org or ODF (and sessions searches for "OpenOffice", "ODF", and "Open Document Format" return no results). 

All of the OpenWorld presentations I've seen have been in PowerPoint -- mostly PowerPoint 2007 -- and I've also seen several demos of Oracle products leveraging the Office 2007 add-in capabilities for contextual business intelligence, content management, and collaboration. 

Quite a contrast to IBM's strategy in this context.

IBM May Quit Technology Standards Bodies - WSJ.com

Americans text more than they talk | News - Wireless - CNET News

See the full article for more details

American cell phone users are sending more text messages than they are making phone calls, according to a Nielsen Mobile survey released Monday.

For the second quarter of 2008, U.S. mobile subscribers sent and received on average 357 text messages per month, compared with making and receiving 204 phone calls a month, according to Nielsen. The new statistic is a clear indication that Americans have jumped onto the SMS text bandwagon.

[...]

The surge in text messaging is being driven by teens 13 to 17 years old, who on average send and receive about 1,742 text messages a month. Teens also talk on the phone, but at a much lower rate, only making and receiving about 231 calls per month. The report even suggests that tweens or kids under the age of 12 are also heavy text users, averaging about 428 messages per month.

Americans text more than they talk | News - Wireless - CNET News

Windows Mobile 7 release delayed | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News

Hmm...

Although Microsoft has not publicly said when to expect Windows Mobile 7, partners who had expected to have a final release in their hands by early next year have been told now that it won't be ready until the second half of next year, sources told CNET News.

The delay is a significant blow for the software maker, which has been counting on the next version of Windows Mobile to enable devices that better rival Apple's iPhone. Among the features widely expected to be part of the release is advanced gesture recognition, perhaps along the lines of the iPhone, but possibly also using the camera as a means for reading gestures. Microsoft's Tellme unit, which focuses on speech input, has also been working on Windows Mobile 7 features.

Windows Mobile 7 release delayed | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News

With Google Phone, HTC Comes Out of the Shadows - NYTimes.com

I have to assume this is a hedge bet for HTC -- with ~infinite potential opportunity costs for its relationships with its current (direct -- device vendors) customers building smartphones based on other operating systems, this could backfire in a big way, especially since it's far from a foregone conclusion that Google Android is going to be broadly successful.

A lot of Americans already use HTC phones — they just do not know it.

HTC accounted for about one in six smartphones in the United States in the first half of this year, but the overwhelming majority of them do not carry the HTC brand, according to Nielsen Mobile.

For much of the past decade, the company operated in relative obscurity as a contract manufacturer for companies like Compaq, Palm and many cellphone carriers, who stamped their own brands on the products.

About two years ago, HTC decided to come out of the shadows with an ambitious goal: establish a global consumer electronics brand that its executives hope will become synonymous with quality.

With Google Phone, HTC Comes Out of the Shadows - NYTimes.com

Overuse of the Term 'Cloud Computing' Clouds Meaning of the Tech Buzz Phrase - WSJ.com

A timely reality check -- excerpts:

Cutting-edge technology is notoriously difficult to explain, but the term "cloud computing" has a whimsy about it that makes it instantly accessible. More importantly, the term makes one feel that it's OK not to fully understand the details: The computer processing takes place in this thing called the cloud, and as long as it works, no one really needs to know any more about what goes on there.

[...]

With the term's meaning broadening, no one in the tech industry wanted to be left behind. These days it's hard to find a tech company that isn't pushing its own brand of cloud computing. Online software? That's cloud computing, as are services that let people store data on the Internet. Virtualization software that lets multiple applications run on a single server? That's cloud computing, too, because it makes leasing server space possible. Oracle Corp. on Monday announced a version of its database software for cloud computing. Dell Inc. recently tried to trademark the term because, the company argued, none of this would be possible without the servers it makes.

So the term has become almost meaningless, though companies continue to use it. "We're in that nutty stage," says Billy Marshall, CEO of rPath Inc., which says it makes technology that enables, you guessed it, cloud computing. "It's absolutely too broad right now."

Overuse of the Term 'Cloud Computing' Clouds Meaning of the Tech Buzz Phrase - WSJ.com

Microsoft data 'nerve center' opens in Texas

It'll be fascinating to see if vendors relying on others' infrastructure, e.g., Oracle, offering some of its Oracle On Demand offerings on Amazon's cloud infrastructure, will be able to robustly compete with the global super-sized data center networks Google and Microsoft are building.

Microsoft Corp. fired up its data "nerve center" in Westover Hills, Texas, on Monday.

"With what's going on in the economy, it's great to be able to make a half-a-billion investment in San Antonio," said Debra Chrapaty, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Global Foundation Services.

With this 470,000-squarefoot, $550 million data center, Microsoft competes directly against Internet giants such as Google. The powers of the Internet have strategically placed these massive server farms around the country to handle the world's growing need to move data electronically.

Microsoft data 'nerve center' opens in Texas

NOW . Poll | PBS [Palin qualified as VP?]

This just in from the election information warfare and social networking front: apparently right-leaning organizers are trying to keep this PBS poll positive, so take a second (three clicks, starting here) and share your opinion.  At the moment, it's 51% "yes", FYI.

Do you think Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as Vice President of the United States?

NOW . Poll | PBS

Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g Product Center: RIP...

It appears I owe Mike Gotta $.07 -- when we were colleagues in Burton Group's Collaboration and Content Strategies (CCS) service (~2005 - 2007), I wrote a report in which I explained that I considered Oracle a strong contender in the enterprise collaboration market, poised for a strong #3 position behind IBM and Microsoft. Mike didn't agree, so we bet on it (my standard bet is $.07 -- kind of a long story...).

My primary reason for asserting Oracle Collaboration Suite (OCS) was a contender was due to my sense that the enterprise communication/collaboration market was not optional for Oracle -- e.g., since every Microsoft SharePoint customer deploys SQL Server (on which SharePoint is built), and many IBM Lotus customers deploy WebSphere and DB2 in conjunction with Lotus products such as Quickr and Connections, being a non-starter in enterprise collaboration obviously had rather dire implications for Oracle's database management business, not just potential collaboration and content management opportunities.

OCS was at least Oracle's third major attempt to compete in the enterprise collaboration market. The first major attempt I'm aware of, called Oracle Documents, if I remember correctly, was about to launch in 1994, when Oracle instead opted to enter into a short-lived strategic relationship with Lotus Development Corp. Oracle Documents got shot shortly before it was expected to launch, in favor of the Oracle/Lotus relationship -- Oracle placed a big bet on Notes instead.

After IBM's hostile take-over of Lotus in mid-1995, Oracle took another run at the collaboration market with Oracle InterOffice, a product that didn't do well and was pulled from the market after a year or two. Oracle continued to offer some related products such as Oracle Mail, and a calendaring/scheduling product (based on its Steltor acquisition), but those products weren't prominent on the competitive radar for IBM or Microsoft.

Oracle Collaboration Suite was the next broad attempt to compete in the enterprise collaboration market, and it was a very ambitious offering, representing an attempt to compete in enterprise messaging, async collaboration, and a variety of other communication/collaboration domains. It failed to put a dent in the universe, although Oracle asserted it had several successful customer case studies -- many of them in the price-sensitive government and education domains.

I wrote a Burton Group report about enterprise collaboration a few years ago, projecting that Oracle had a shot with OCS -- and certainly a competitive imperative -- to successfully compete with IBM and Microsoft in enterprise communication/collaboration. Mike Gotta disagreed, but I was the CCS research director at the time, and I went ahead with the report.

I was right about the Oracle competitive imperative part, but I was wrong about OCS; the product was quietly retired today today, replaced by Oracle Beehive, which I'll describe in another post.

Tangent: I am no longer a Burton Group employee -- it had nothing to do with my assorted debates with Mike Gotta (which I've always enjoyed, and from which I always learn a lot), nor did it have anything to do with the controversial ODF/Open XML report I published earlier in 2008 (which, in hindsight, already seems almost quaintly conservative, although it caused quite a blogosphere/etc. storm at the time). It was simply time for me to move on, after a very productive ~five-year run at Burton Group, and I'm now an independent software industry analyst/consultant, focusing on collaboration and information architecture topics. If you'd like more info on that transition, please contact me as pbokelly [at] okellyinc [dot] com.

Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g Product Center

First impressions: Oracle OpenWorld 2008

I'm at my first Oracle OpenWorld since 1994 this week.  Today was the first day, and I'll share some impressions in this and subsequent posts.

To begin with, some fun with statistics (from a keynote session this morning):

• There are 43,000 people here for the event, and a total of 1,830 sessions (I think I ran into most of the other attendees tonight at a reception event that offered -- but not for long -- free food).
• Oracle has 85,000 employees; of those, 20,000 are developers, and one-third came from acquired companies (50 companies acquired during the last five years, for ~$34B). 
• Oracle invested $3B in R&D during its most recent fiscal year.
• The company has ~3,000 products.

The only other OpenWorld event I've attended, ~14 years ago, included a last-minute surprise closing keynote, during which Oracle and Lotus Development Corp. unveiled a strategic partnership -- Oracle explained that Lotus was its strategic groupware partner, and Lotus made a strategic commitment to Oracle as its preferred DBMS partner. 

I was on-stage for the closing keynote, working as a Notes product manager at the time, co-presenting a series of demos of how Lotus Notes and Oracle products could be productively used together. 

That's all ancient history now, as the Lotus/Oracle strategic relationship ended abruptly when IBM completed its hostile acquisition of Lotus less than a year later, but it was a fun week, and in many ways, as I'll explain in a separate post, Oracle is only now finally getting its collaboration act together.

Oracle OpenWorld 2008

IW500: Microsoft IT Is 'First And Best' Customer Of Microsoft Products - Microsoft Blog - InformationWeek

Very cool to see that Microsoft IT CTO Barry Briggs values data modeling

Data modeling is integral to the success of Microsoft, making sure that the company has a good picture of customer activity and needs across business units. One challenge in keeping good data on customers -- data degrades, Briggs said. People get married and change their names, companies move and they get acquired. Briggs quoted the Greek philosopher Heraclitus: "You cannot step in the same river twice."

But one member of the audience, who described himself as "Cranky Guy," was startled by Briggs's description of data modeling being at the core of Microsoft's business. "My CIO would slap me in the head if I said that," Cranky Guy said. What about channel relationships, sales, or talking to customers?

Briggs said that those things, and more, are important -- but data modeling is at the foundation of those things, because companies need a thorough understanding of their customers to accomplish those things.

IW500: Microsoft IT Is 'First And Best' Customer Of Microsoft Products - Microsoft Blog - InformationWeek

Official Google Blog: The democratization of data

Excerpt from an info-topian snapshot by Hal Varian, Google Chief Economist

Fifteen years ago, only the big retailers could afford intelligent cash registers that tracked inventory and produced detailed daily reports. Nowadays cash registers are just PCs with a different user interface, and the smallest mom and pop retailer can track sales and inventory on a daily basis.
A decade ago, only the big multinational corporations could afford systems to allow for international calling, videoconferencing, and document sharing. Now startups with a handful of people can use voice over IP, video, wikis and Google Docs to share information. These technological advances have led to the rise of "micro multinationals" which can leverage creativity and talent across the globe. Even tiny companies can now have a worldwide reach.
These changes will have a profound effect on the global economy. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, "small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all firms, they create more than half of the private nonfarm gross domestic product, and they create 60 to 80 percent of the net new jobs." Information technology has already had a huge effect on the productivity of large businesses, but the benefits from "trickle down productivity" may be even more significant.

Official Google Blog: The democratization of data

Google's towering ambition | The quest | The Economist

Another review of the new Stross Google book 

Randall Stross, a journalist at the New York Times, does a good job of analysing this unbounded ambition by organising Google’s quest into its thematic components. One chapter is about the prodigious data centres that Google is building with a view to storing all that information, another about the algorithms at the heart of its web search and advertising technology, another about its approach to dead-tree information bound in books, its vision for geographical information and so forth. He is at his best when explaining how Google’s mission casually but lethally smashes into long-existing institutions such as, say, copyright law or privacy norms.

Google's towering ambition | The quest | The Economist

Digital Domain - Why the Google-Yahoo Ad Deal Is Nothing to Fear - NYTimes.com

An interesting perspective from Randall Stross; also check out his new book, Planet Google 

GOOGLE controls about 70 percent of the search advertising market. Doesn’t that give it a monopolist’s ability to set prices as high as it wishes?

It does not. Google does not set the prices. Its advertisers do, bidding against one another for the amount they will pay when a user clicks on one of their ads. They do the same for ads on Yahoo and Microsoft search sites, too.

Digital Domain - Why the Google-Yahoo Ad Deal Is Nothing to Fear - NYTimes.com

Next software for the masses? How about three-dimensional design - The Boston Globe

A stark reality check

Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that PTC had hired Goldman Sachs to explore selling the 23-year-old company, seeking a price of more than $2 billion. The company isn't commenting, but some see the potential sale as the end of the road for a company that helped develop the market for what is called MCAD, or mechanical computer-aided design software.

"They have no future," said Mike Payne, an engineer and executive who was PTC's third employee.

Since leaving PTC more than a decade ago, Payne has focused on starting companies that have sought to democratize MCAD software, making it less complicated and less expensive.

Next software for the masses? How about three-dimensional design - The Boston Globe

VMware Says Another Executive Is Stepping Down -- Virtualization -- InformationWeek

Hmm...

VMware said Friday a senior executive in charge of product development at the software maker, is leaving, the latest in a recent string of executive departures there.

Spokeswoman Mary Ann Gallo said that Vice President of Product Development Paul Chan resigned in August, after seven years with the company, and will leave Oct. 3.

VMware's stock price, one of last year's top tech performers, has lost about two-thirds in value this year as two of its founders and its top executive in charge of research and development have left the company.

VMware Says Another Executive Is Stepping Down -- Virtualization -- InformationWeek

As Text Messages Fly, Danger Lurks - NYTimes.com

A stark reality check

“The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points,” said Paul Saffo, a technology trend forecaster in Silicon Valley. “The truth of the matter is there are hobbies that are incompatible. You don’t want to do mushroom-hunting and bird-watching at the same time, and it is the same with texting and other activities. We have all seen people walk into parking meters or walk into traffic and seem startled by oncoming cars.”

In the latest backlash against text-messaging, the California Public Utilities Commission announced an emergency measure on Thursday temporarily banning the use of all mobile devices by anyone at the controls of a moving train.

The ban was adopted after federal investigators announced that they were looking at the role that a train engineer’s text-messaging might have played here last week in the country’s most deadly commuter rail accident in four decades.

As Text Messages Fly, Danger Lurks - NYTimes.com