WSJ.com - IBM, Lenovo Plan Joint PC Venture

WSJ.com - IBM, Lenovo Plan Joint PC Venture: "International Business Machines Corp. and Lenovo Group Ltd. plan to create a new U.S. personal-computer company that would own IBM's PC business, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
The new company would be majority owned by Lenovo, with IBM holding on to a minority stake small enough that its revenues and profit or loss would be excluded from operating results.
While the deal hasn't been finalized, Lenovo is expected to pay as much as $2 billion for the majority share of IBM's PC business, say people involved in the talks. The purchase price is only a fraction of the IBM unit's estimated $10 billion in annual sales, but by dealing with Lenovo, which has little presence outside China, IBM holds on to the ancillary service and financing business, which can be lucrative."

A technologist [Ray Ozzie] looks back, looks ahead | Perspectives | CNET News.com

A technologist [Ray Ozzie] looks back, looks ahead | Perspectives | CNET News.com: "In the 20 years since the beginning of this journey, I've been fortunate enough to have seen and to have played a small role in some incredible transformations. The nature of the corporation, of business, government, work, society and our own interpersonal relationships has changed--fueled by technology that's still so very clearly in its infancy.
Orwell's '1984' overshot in some ways and undershot in others. But when we began Notes on Dec. 7 of that year, I could only faintly imagine how technology would shape the world of today. And so I wonder about 2024."

The New York Times > Business > Business Special > Trying to Reach Customers in an Era of E-Mail Suspicion

The New York Times > Business > Business Special > Trying to Reach Customers in an Era of E-Mail Suspicion: "Will 2005 be the year of the unanswered e-mail message?
It could shape up that way as consumers become more wary about opening unexpected messages, fearing they might be duped or even robbed. In particular, Internet executives and analysts are closely tracking the rise of a type of e-mail fraud that began in earnest in 2003 but has reached huge proportions this year, and that constitutes a form of identity theft.
...
A survey conducted in April by Gartner, a technology consulting firm, found that about 57 million Americans had been exposed to phishing attacks in the previous 12 months, with 19 percent of those people clicking on the link in the phishing e-mail messages. Victims lost $1.2 billion, Gartner estimated."

The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > Essay: An Idea Whose Time Has Come Back

The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > Essay: An Idea Whose Time Has Come Back: "But it turns out the e-book market has been changing course and, though still tiny, has been growing at double-digit rates. It is, in fact, the fastest-growing segment of the comparatively static publishing world. Between 2002 and 2003, the number of e-books sold rose 71 percent, according to the industry's trade association, the Open eBook Forum. The industry posted record sales in the first quarter of 2004, a 46 percent increase compared with the same period last year. Still, last year's sales of 1.4 million downloadable books are minuscule compared with the more than 2.2 billion books sold in the United States in 2003.
What made this growth possible is a phenomenon the pioneers in the electronic publishing industry didn't foresee: the explosion of cellphones and other hand-held devices with small screens capable of displaying text. About 80 percent of the downloadable books sold to individuals today are read on such devices, according to the two top online electronic retailers, eReader and Fictionwise."

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > A Long March From Maoism to Microsoft

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > A Long March From Maoism to Microsoft: "From 1945 until 1980, Mr. Rittenberg lived in China. He was a member of the Communist Party there and served as a midlevel party functionary - except for 16 years when he was locked away in solitary confinement, wrongly accused of being a spy. Though Mr. Rittenberg was born into a prominent family in Charleston, S.C., his compelling tale can perhaps best be understood as a story, writ small, of modern-day China itself. His metamorphosis from isolated expatriate to high-priced global go-between mirrors the country's own shift - from a closed-door Communist state to a freewheeling money-making society, with a new class of entrepreneurs who dream the same dreams that dance in the heads of people in places like Silicon Valley.
...
Mr. Rittenberg's writings are avidly followed now by the likes of Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, and Michael S. Dell, who holds the same title at Dell Inc. Executives at Prudential, eager to sell insurance to the Chinese, recently sought him out for advice, as did InFocus, a maker of digital projectors. Last month, Mr. Rittenberg chaperoned Craig O. McCaw, a cellphone industry pioneer, on Mr. McCaw's first trip to China."

Windows NT 4 support to come at price in '05 | CNET News.com

Windows NT 4 support to come at price in '05 | CNET News.com: "Microsoft is offering up to two years of custom support to companies still using the OS when Microsoft ceases its extended support for the program at the end of 2004.
The company has decided to expand the for-free program to cover more security issues. Microsoft is now pledging to offer fixes for vulnerabilities rated either as 'critical' or 'important.' Previously, the software maker had only committed to fixing critical flaws.
...
Microsoft also said Friday that it will offer a similar plan for its Exchange 5.5 e-mail server software when that program ends extended support at the end of 2005. Custom support for that program will run through the end of 2007."

The New York Times > Technology > Contemplating a PC Market Without I.B.M.

The New York Times > Technology > Contemplating a PC Market Without I.B.M.: "Inside Hewlett-Packard, the world's second-largest personal computer maker, executives greeted the news on Friday that I.B.M., the world's No. 3 PC maker, might be retreating from the market, with good cheer.
Executives at Dell Computer, the largest personal computer maker, would not comment, but some industry analysts speculated that they too were smiling about I.B.M.'s decision.
Still, many in the industry were concerned that an I.B.M. withdrawal could accelerate competition in an industry where prices were already falling."

Lots of speculation about this possibility, but in reality I believe all of IBM's consumer-centric PCs (including many Thinkpad models) were already outsourced; I'm not it'd be a huge difference, in the grand scheme of things, but it would certainly be a PC industry milestone.

PBS | I, Cringely . Wishing for Audrey: Now That the World Is Finally Ready for Internet Appliances, Where Are They?

PBS | I, Cringely . Wishing for Audrey: Now That the World Is Finally Ready for Internet Appliances, Where Are They?: "An Audrey, nee Ergo Audrey, nee 3Com Audrey, is, or was, an Internet appliance -- a small computer intended solely for web browsing. Several such boxes appeared in the 2000-2001 era, though none to my knowledge are still manufactured. And that's a shame because the world is finally ready for Internet Appliances just at a time when the computer industry is darned sure it isn't going to make any more."

It's all about pricing -- a Tablet PC with a few consumer-oriented apps and zero admin would be a good Audrey++, if the price were right.

Q&A: Light the birthday candles for Lotus Notes

Q&A: Light the birthday candles for Lotus Notes: "When did you know you had something big with Notes?

[Ray Ozzie:] I'll say something that let's you see a little bit about my personality: I knew we had something before we started the company. The two guys who started Iris with me -- Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell -- the three of us had been at the University of Illinois in the mid-'70s and had been exposed to a system called Plato, where we first lived the online community experience. We knew what it was like to work with other people at a distance online because we lived it for years.
We lost that when we went into industry. When we graduated from school, they went to DEC and I went to Data General and suddenly we were thrown into this way-back machine of working the old-fashioned way. We had an innate desire to bring back that method of virtual online work that we had experienced before.
In 1989, because of (Lotus founder) Mitch Kapur [sic] and a number of other people who believed in us, we finally had the opportunity to start a company and build that vision.
When we came out with the product in '89, we knew what you could do with it and we couldn't understand why we couldn't communicate to others the difference that they could make."

Read the entire interview...

The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > Music Industry Turns to Napster Creator for Help

The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > Music Industry Turns to Napster Creator for Help: "As a teenager, Shawn Fanning brought free music to the masses, creating the Napster file-swapping program and unleashing a technological genie that granted the wishes of fans seeking virtually any song at any time - gratis. Now, the recording industry is turning to the college dropout turned cult hero, with dreams of putting the genie back in its bottle.
The major record corporations, who accused Mr. Fanning's Napster of ravaging CD sales and weakening the underpinnings of the industry, now say that a licensed file-sharing system could bolster their position in their legal fight against piracy as well as increase digital music sales."

This is turning into a seriously weird day...

The New York Times > Technology > I.B.M. Said to Put Its PC Business on the Market

The New York Times > Technology > I.B.M. Said to Put Its PC Business on the Market: "For nearly a decade, though, some industry analysts have urged I.B.M. to get out of that business as it made only a modest profit or lost money. For this year, analysts have expected a pretax profit of less than $100 million.
I.B.M. executives long resisted that course, arguing that personal computers were technology products its corporate customers wanted. It held on to the business on the theory that it helped hold on to customers.
But in the most recent quarter, I.B.M. ranked a distant third in worldwide PC sales, with 5.6 percent of the market, according to Gartner, the market research firm. Dell was the leader with 16.8 percent of the world market, and Hewlett-Packard, which has absorbed Compaq Computer, had 15 percent."

Scripting News: Weblogs.com needs a rewrite

Scripting News: Weblogs.com needs a rewrite "With Typepad, MSN Spaces and Blogger and a gazillion other blogs pinging weblogs.com, the server, which is written in scripts, has met its match. It's needed a rewrite in C for some time, now it really needs a rewrite.
...
I'd be happiest if this could be done as an open source project, the lots-of-eyeballs thing is particularly suited to this kind of project. It has to scale well, obviously, from Day One. No time to ramp up."

Jim Moore's Journal: Reporting on systems evolving :

Jim Moore's Journal: Reporting on systems evolving :: "An instant review of spaces.msn.com, Microsoft's new blogging service, with special attention to how it compares with Typepad.
...
Overall, I found the Microsoft service to be an attractive beta entry into the field. It has a good, simple interface, and it provides core blogging functions effectively. It is not a visionary product--it is, perhaps not surprisingly, a fast-follower product that looks and feels very much like its leading competitors. Because the service looks and feels most like Typepad, and because I view Typepad as the current market and feature leader, I've focused on comparing and contrasting spaces.msn.com and Typepad in this review."

Via Dave Winer

WSJ.com - IBM Putting PC Business On The Block - NYT

WSJ.com - IBM Putting PC Business On The Block - NYT: "International Business Machines, whose first IBM PC in 1981 moved personal computing out of the hobby shop and into the corporate and consumer mainstream, has put the business up for sale, people close to the negotiations said, The New York Times reports in its Friday edition.
The sale, likely to be in the $1 billion to $2 billion range, is expected to include the entire range of desktop, laptop and notebook computers made by IBM, the Times reported.
According to the people close to the negotiations, IBM is in serious discussions with Lenovo, China's largest maker of personal computers, and at least one other potential buyer for the unit, the Times said."

This would be a rather stark sign of the times, if true.

Sun & Microsoft Relationship -- Progress Report

Sun & Microsoft Relationship -- Progress Report "Sun sees Microsoft as a key partner in serving customer needs in the field of 64-bit computing. Sun’s AMD Opteron-based servers and workstations have been certified by Windows® Hardware Quality Labs as “Designed for Windows,” and the workstations take advantage of AMD Opteron's Enhanced Virus Protection for Microsoft Windows XP SP2.Our joint customer base now has the option of executing their graphics intensive workloads on Sun-branded workstations running the Windows operating system. This combination has produced industry-leading results in the SPECviewperf industry-standard benchmark. Microsoft has provided Sun with marketing support in promoting these workstations to Microsoft® Certified Professionals."

I still can't get used to this part...

MSN Spaces Beta* Fact Sheet -- first impressions

MSN Spaces Beta* Fact Sheet -- first impressions: "MSN Spaces, a free service currently available in beta version, is an entirely new offering from MSN that allows consumers to create personal Internet Spaces sites where they can express themselves in a variety of ways and interact with the people they care about most. MSN Spaces is more than an ordinary personal Web site; it's an easy-to-use service that is more like a dynamic online scrapbook, giving people a place to create and update a Web log, or blog, and share their photos, music playlists and more, all while better connecting them with friends, family or the online world.
The MSN Spaces beta, available in 26 markets and 14 languages, comes with a rich notification system that informs people's contacts about changes to their Spaces to help bring people closer together."

I created a test MSN Spaces blog. First impressions:
1. The client doesn't work with Firefox (seems fitting, since Blogger's BlogThis! tool doesn't work with IE after XP SP2...). More specifically: it apparently doesn't recognize my Passport login in Firefox, so the post option doesn't appear; I can view the blog in Firefox, however.
2. Nothing like the one-click UI in BlogThis!
3. Looks like something that could be useful for occasionally sharing photos and blog posts with friends and family, but not a substitute for Blogger at this point, at least not for news filter-oriented blogs like mine.
4. Slow... but I suppose that's reasonable in beta.
5. RSS support included ("Syndicate this site")
6. Interesting MSN Messenger integration -- see details here (via Scobleizer, naturally); this is probably a leading indicator of future Longhorn features...
7. The MSN Messenger 7.0 beta doesn't appear to be ready for prime-time; I'm glad I don't rely on MSN Messenger, as the beta (which annoyingly required a Windows reboot) isn't working at the moment (relatively dull but reliable Windows Messenger continues to work, however)...

The New York Times > Technology > Another Indignity for 2 Failed Ghosts of Dot-Com Era

The New York Times > Technology > Another Indignity for 2 Failed Ghosts of Dot-Com Era: "They were once among the Internet highflyers, but investors have not heard much lately from DrKoop.com and the Webvan Group. Neither has the Securities and Exchange Commission, which suspended trading in the two stocks Wednesday, because the companies are late with their quarterly filings. Nearly three years late, as it turns out.
The agency has had no communication from DrKoop since December 2001, or from Webvan since February 2002. That might be because both companies ceased operations in 2001, and there is evidently no one left to fill out the requisite paperwork."

WSJ.com - Personal Technology: Portable Media Center Is the Wrong Choice For Nontechie Users

WSJ.com - Personal Technology: Portable Media Center Is the Wrong Choice For Nontechie Users: "There's a tendency in the technology industry to think that, just because a product can be built, it should be built, even if all the necessary pieces to make it a success aren't in place. Sometimes these premature products eventually become hits. Sometimes they just fail.
It's too early to know which of those fates awaits the latest premature tech device: the handheld, hard-disk-based video player. But one thing is certain. It's not ready for prime time yet.
...
Based on my tests, I can't recommend either player for mainstream, nontechie users. This is not so much because of the design of the players themselves. It's because there's so little video content available to play on them, and Microsoft's software does a poor job of transferring commercial content to the players."

"The Kingmaker" explains why, with an unsurprising tip of the hat to Apple, he dislikes yet another Microsoft-based product category.

WSJ.com - Sun, Microsoft Cite Headway In Their Joint Technical Effort

WSJ.com - Sun, Microsoft Cite Headway In Their Joint Technical Effort: "One of the first big tests of the alliance, executives said, will be making it possible for a user to enter one password and log on to corporate applications based on either Sun or Microsoft technology. Mr. Papadopoulos said engineering teams were grappling with how to solve that thorny problem, but weren't ready to pronounce a solution yet.
The collaboration highlights the growing need for the companies to cooperate more to counter the threat from International Business Machines Corp. IBM is now one of the largest providers of computers running the Linux operating system, which has been eating away at Sun's share of the market for large server computers and poses one of the long-term threats to Microsoft's Windows. Linux is also a mainstay of Hewlett-Packard Co., another big Sun competitor.
IBM expects to get much of its future revenue from selling services to help customers combine hardware and software from different vendors. Sun and Microsoft, by contrast, believe they can gain an edge by developing software that can help connect products together with less manual labor.
The joint work is designed to create a connection between Sun and Microsoft products that would be 'very much an advantage against IBM and HP,' Mr. Papadopoulos said."

CRN | ShadowRAM: Next week is the 20th birthday of Iris Associates.

CRN | ShadowRAM: Next week is the 20th birthday of Iris Associates
'What is that?' you may ask. Iris was Ray Ozzie's brainchild, founded officially on Dec. 7, 1984, with the blessing of (and funding from) Lotus Development founder Mitchell Kapor.
Five years later to the day, Notes 1.0 launched to much fanfare at the National Academy of Arts & Sciences in Somerville, Mass. (Did Ozzie have some sort of Pearl Harbor fixation?)"

Happy anniversary, Ray