Microsoft Xbox to Join the Battle for Video Downloading - New York Times

Happy news for the ~4M Xbox Live customers. 

Microsoft said last night that it would offer movies and episodes of television shows for downloading through its Xbox Live online service in the United States, starting Nov. 22.

With the new offerings, Microsoft is joining cable giants and Internet start-ups on the long list of companies hoping to profit from video downloading. But Internet-based services have had trouble getting traction because it can be complex to send a downloaded film to a television screen and frustrating to watch it on the small screen of a computer. Owners of the Xbox have already connected it to a TV and, in most cases, the Internet.

Source: Microsoft Xbox to Join the Battle for Video Downloading - New York Times

2007 Microsoft Office System Is Golden: 2007 Office system released to manufacturers

 On to "Office 14..."

Microsoft Corp. today announced the completion of the 2007 Microsoft^® Office system code and confirmed its release to manufacturing (RTM). This gold code milestone concludes the largest Microsoft Office beta program to date, with more than 3.5 million people downloading Beta 2.

Source: 2007 Microsoft Office System Is Golden: 2007 Office system released to manufacturers

Woz highlights celebration of Apple's history | CNET News.com

Belated 30th anniversary party 

But of course, Apple is now one of the most important technology companies in the world, and its hallmark, despite Wozniak's long-ago departure, is elegant design. And he hopes to lay claim to that legacy.

"I don't want credit for designing the first (personal) computer," Wozniak said. "I just want credit for designing the first good one. (And for) publicizing the fact that a computer could be attractive."

Except... Woziak did claim, in iWoz, that he created the first PC (inaccurately, although I'd agree with "the first good one"), and he's still an Apple employee -- he never resigned.

Source: Woz highlights celebration of Apple's history | CNET News.com

Exclusive: Windows Vista RTM is Imminent

I'm hopeful a simple Windows Update will suffice, for the test machine I'm currently working with. 

In its quest to finalize Windows Vista, Microsoft has faced two hurdles in recent days, one technical and one a bit more unusual. The proposed final build was marred by a few late breaking bugs, which the company expects to squash over the weekend. Meanwhile, a power outage in the Windows build lab Friday night prevented Microsoft from creating a new Vista build that night.

Source: Exclusive: Windows Vista RTM is Imminent

Newspapers to Test Plan to Sell Ads on Google - New York Times

More on Google's print plans (this one, unlike the WSJ link below, doesn't require a paid subscription) 

For Google, the test is an important step to the company’s audacious long-term goal: to build a single computer system through which advertisers can promote their products in any medium. For the newspaper industry, reeling from the loss of both readers and advertisers, this new system offers a curious bargain: the publishers can get much-needed revenue but in doing so they may well make Google — which is already the biggest seller of online advertising — even stronger.

Source: Newspapers to Test Plan to Sell Ads on Google - New York Times

Google Targets Print Realm in Ad Push - WSJ.com

A timely reminder: Google is an advertising company. 

The print ad test comes as Google ramps up efforts to broker ads beyond the Web, an important initiative for increasing its revenue. The Mountain View, Calif., company has said it plans to target print, radio and television advertising. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt last month told reporters that Google would eventually have 1,000 people working on its radio ad brokering effort alone, which compares with about 9,400 total workers as of Sept. 30. "Anything that we can do to improve the economic efficiency of the old model [of advertising] transfers money from the old model to the new model," he said in an interview.

Source: Google Targets Print Realm in Ad Push - WSJ.com

WSJ.com: Microsoft CEO: To Enter Voiceover IP Market Early '07

More co-optition shifts... 

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said Monday that the company's new software will enable voiceover IP and video conferencing functionality.

"We will enter the voiceover IP market at the beginning of next year," Ballmer said at a Microsoft conference in Tokyo, adding that the software giant will also enter the video conferencing market early next year.

Source: WSJ.com: Microsoft CEO: To Enter Voiceover IP Market Early '07 

Oracle chief opens door to buying Novell - The Boston Globe

Interesting times... 

Oracle's chief executive, Larry Ellison, speculated about acquiring Novell, the world's second-leading supplier of Linux operating system software, or the top Linux firm, Red Hat Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., in an interview published yesterday in the Financial Times.

Such a deal would put Oracle into the operating system business for the first time, and let the company sell a complete line of high-end business software, including database and application server products.

Source: Oracle chief opens door to buying Novell - The Boston Globe

The New Yorker: Game Master

Fascinating and lengthy John Seabrook The New Yorker article about Will Wright, the evolution of video games, Spore, and pretty much everything else... 

Will Wright changed the concept of video games with the Sims. Can he do it again with Spore?

[...]

At a certain point in the performance, the crazy ambition of Spore became clear: Wright was proposing to simulate the limitless possibility of life itself. The simulation falls between Darwinism and intelligent design, into new conceptual territory. Wright had worked out the algorithm for life, as described by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, in “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.” Dennett writes, “Here, then, is Darwin’s dangerous idea: the algorithmic level is the level that best accounts for the speed of the antelope, the wing of the eagle, the shape of the orchid, the diversity of species, and all the other occasions for wonder in the world of nature. . . . Can it really be the outcome of nothing but a cascade of algorithmic processes feeding on chance?” The old dream of the M.I.T. hackers who came up with Spacewar—to re-create life on a computer—was coming true forty years later, right here in the Spore Hut, in the form of a spindly, striped creature that looked a little like Will Wright himself.

Source: The New Yorker: Game Master

Apple's Other Steve Speaks

Review of Steve Wozniak's book in BusinessWeek: 

At its best, iWoz is what its author says he hoped the book would be: an inspiration for nerdy kids who may feel "outside the norm." On the other hand, Apple fans will find slim pickings. Wozniak even downplays the significance of his co-founding the company. Among the sparse insights: the assertion that Mike Scott, the CEO who oversaw the landmark IPO in 1980, deserves more credit. And if there are any bad guys in the book, it's we in the business press. He credits us with compounding Apple's woes in the mid-1990s with our dour headlines and slams us for incorrectly reporting that he left Apple in 1985 in a huff.

There's also a brief review of iWoz and Steven Levy's The Perfect Thing (ode to iPod) in today's Boston Globe.  The closing paragraph:

If Wozniak is guilty of soft-pedaling his technological gifts, Levy is surely guilty of the hard sell: Yes, yes, the iPod is a beguiling little machine. Or is he? While it remains to be seen whether the device outlasts its moment -- and it has had quite a moment -- it does represent a truth about contemporary culture that reaches well beyond technology or the age-old pleasures of music. More than ever before, we're creating our own personal narratives. The marketing geniuses at Apple know precisely how to sell us the means to arrive at them.

I thought both books were worthwhile.

Source: Apple's Other Steve Speaks

U.S. Analysts Had Flagged Atomic Data on Web Site - New York Times

It will be difficult to find a way to blame Clinton for this... 

The Bush administration set up the Web site last March at the urging of Congressional Republicans, who said giving public access to materials from the 48,000 boxes of documents found in Iraq could increase the understanding of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein.

But among the documents posted were roughly a dozen that nuclear weapons experts said constituted a basic guide to building an atom bomb. They were accounts of Mr. Hussein’s nuclear program, which United Nations inspectors dismantled after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Source: U.S. Analysts Had Flagged Atomic Data on Web Site - New York Times

American, others look to add WiFi at airport - The Boston Globe

Cool... 

JetBlue Airways said it will look into offering free WiFi to passengers in Terminal C. JetBlue currently offers free WiFi at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and the Long Beach, Calif., airport.

"We are always looking to improve the JetBlue experience in the air and on the ground," said a spokeswoman, Jenny Dervin. "We are excited about the recent ruling, and we look forward to working with our airports to enhance the JetBlue experience even further."

Source: American, others look to add WiFi at airport - The Boston Globe

Google Operating System: Gmail Mobile, Java Application

What -- AJAX was insufficient?... 

Google launched a new version of Gmail Mobile, this time as a Java application. If you go to gmail.com/app, on your Java-enable mobile phone and download the small application, you'll be able to use Gmail, almost as easy as using on your desktop.

Source: Google Operating System: Gmail Mobile, Java Application

Jeff Bezos' Risky Bet

Very timely reality check -- BusinessWeek cover story. 

Amazon founder and Chief Executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, the onetime Internet poster boy who quickly became a post-dot-com piñata, is back with yet another new idea. Many people continue to wonder if the world's largest online store will ever fulfill its original promise to revolutionize retailing. But now Bezos is plotting another new direction for his 12-year-old company, which he will lay out on Nov. 8 at San Francisco's Web 2.0 Conference, the annual gathering of the digerati crème. Judging from an advance look he gave BusinessWeek on one recent gray day at Amazon's Seattle headquarters, it's so far from Amazon's retail core that you may well wonder if he has finally slipped off the deep end.

Source: Jeff Bezos' Risky Bet

Barry Talks! : SOA: It's the Semantics, Baby!

Timely reality check from Barry Briggs: 

What's the point of service-enabling something if the service consumers can't understand what the syntax of the service? E.g., if you've got the coolest GetCustomer() service, but no one else understands the semantics of the customer object returned, what good is it?

In many ways (as I'm learning first hand lately) the data modeling part of SOA -- which nobody ever seems to talk about -- is by far the hardest part.

imho data modeling can be complex for two primary reasons:

1.  The facets of the real world you seek to model are complex; you have to respect and accommodate the inherent complexity in the parts of the real world you seek to model.

2.  A lot of existing systems are awful, in terms of data models, and developers often spend an inordinate amount of time reconciling inadequate models.

The data modeling part itself, however, doesn't need to be complex, if you stick with a robust modeling technique such as Carlis/Maguire's Logical Data Structures.

Source: Barry Talks! : Common Sense for Uncommon Times

» The embrace that strangles — Microsoft and Novell and the future of Linux | Enterprise Anti-matter | ZDNet.com

This just in from the nefarious plot department: 

I think we're seeing the beginning of the end of Linux, much the way IE was the beginning of the end of Netscape, SQL Server was the beginning of the end of everyone else's desktop database system, and Excel and Word and a good deal more also succeeded in co-opting technology and product options in the marketplace: The ever-tightening embrace of Microsoft eventually assimilates everything that it touches. Unless history is to be rewritten with this one deal, Linux never looked worse off than it did today.

p.s. it was Access, not SQL Server, that accelerated consolidation (between Access and Apple FileMaker Pro) in the desktop database business.

Source: » The embrace that strangles — Microsoft and Novell and the future of Linux | Enterprise Anti-matter | ZDNet.com

2 Giants in a Deal Over Linux - New York Times

All of the news in this context needs an additional level of precision: at this point it's Novell SuSE Linux, not Linux as a generic concept. 

Stuart Cohen, chief executive of the Open Source Development Labs, said that aspect of the deal could further increase acceptance of Linux among corporations. The risk of lawsuits by Microsoft had been a lingering fear among Linux developers because Microsoft executives have been highly critical of what they said was the Linux world’s careless disregard for intellectual property rights.

Source: 2 Giants in a Deal Over Linux - New York Times

Customers and Partners Respond to Microsoft and Novell Collaboration: November 2006

Skim the quotes on the page referenced below to get a sense of what the deal is likely to mean to real-world customers. 

“The City of Seattle’s IT staff supports a number of different operating environments, including Microsoft Windows^®, Novell NetWare and several varieties of UNIX/Linux. All these environments require separate physical servers, and our data center is running out of space. This new Microsoft and Novell collaboration agreement could allow significant virtualization of servers, reducing the number of physical platforms we’d have to maintain. That, in turn, reduces costs for maintenance, electricity, cooling and space, saving taxpayer dollars, and helping improve stewardship of the environment.

Source: Customers and Partners Respond to Microsoft and Novell Collaboration: November 2006

YouTube Finds Signing Rights Deals Complex, Frustrating - WSJ.com

Laughing all the way to the bank... 

"It's such a mess because the [entertainment companies] have all of these valuable assets that are just locked up with so many people who need to sign off on them," says YouTube Chief Executive Chad Hurley. "I don't know what it requires, if the government needs to be involved," Mr. Hurley laughs. "I don't know."

Source: YouTube Finds Signing Rights Deals Complex, Frustrating - WSJ.com

Oracle Agrees to Buy Stellent - WSJ.com

More details on Oracle/Stellent.  I wonder if this will impact the timing of Stellent's announced plans for SharePoint integration... 

Oracle's bid is a 27% premium on Stellent's closing price of $10.62. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year or early 2007.

Source: Oracle Agrees to Buy Stellent - WSJ.com