Stolen Mac helps nab burglary suspects | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Nice... (via Fake Steve Jobs)

While police in White Plains, N.Y., were coming up empty with their investigation, Duplaga learned that her computer was being used on the Internet, and she turned on the Back to My Mac feature installed on her Mac from another Mac, according to the report.

The feature allowed Duplaga to see immediately how the computer was being used at the time, as well as operate it remotely. Recalling that she had a camera installed on the computer, the fast-thinking Duplaga snapped images of one of the burglary suspects before he realized what was happening, according to the Times. Duplaga showed the image to friends, who recognized the suspect as someone who attended a party at the apartment.

Stolen Mac helps nab burglary suspects | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Microsoft adding 10,000 new datacenter servers a month | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

An interesting snapshot

Microsoft officials won’t say how many servers total Microsoft has churning in its various datacenters. But Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Global Foundation Services Debra Chrapaty is on record saying Microsoft is adding 10,000 new servers a month.

(Facebook is estimated to have 10,000 servers total, the Data Center Knowledge folks report. In other words, Microsoft is adding one Facebook-worth of new servers every 30 days.)

Microsoft adding 10,000 new datacenter servers a month | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Microsoft | Microsoft's free WorldWide Telescope brings Windows users up close to the universe | Seattle Times Newspaper

Cool...

Microsoft Research is launching a free application today that lets people navigate deep into the universe and view galaxies, nebulae, planets and other celestial objects through the lenses of the world's best observatories.

The WorldWide Telescope draws on more than 12 terabytes of imagery — bigger than the print collection of the Library of Congress — from several orbiting and land-based telescopes.The desktop application downloads the images on demand and stitches them together to form an interactive, browsable universe supplemented with information from top astronomical databases and guided tours that put it all into context.

Microsoft | Microsoft's free WorldWide Telescope brings Windows users up close to the universe | Seattle Times Newspaper

Ellison: On-demand software growing slowly | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

A timely reality check

Despite the large year-over-year revenue growth of his two investments, Ellison said that on-demand enterprise software is growing slowly, comparing it to how open-source software has evolved. It all depends on your point of view. Most people would agree that on-demand and open-source are gaining market share at the expense of the incumbents, especially among smaller businesses.

But Ellison is playing in a different league. He looks at MySQL, which Sun acquired, and doesn't see it eating his lunch. He looks at Salesforce.com and NetSuite with his parental, velociraptor eyes and doesn't see them as worth pursuing at this time. That may change down the road. Oracle has consumed most of its worthy competition from the old world, and it will get hungry again, especially if it wants to expand its market downstream from the large enterprises.

Ellison: On-demand software growing slowly | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

Mac Office sales soar on Apple's gains | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News.com

Mixed blessing for Microsoft

While Apple's market share gains are cause for consternation for many in Redmond, one unit is clearly benefiting.

Microsoft's Mac unit is set to disclose on Tuesday that copies of the new Office for Mac 2008 are flying off the shelves at three times the rate of its predecessor. The company wouldn't disclose sales numbers, but said the sales are the highest in the 19-year history of the unit. That continues a trend that has been going on for some time.

Mac Office sales soar on Apple's gains | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News.com

Hewlett-Packard Said to Be Close to Buying E.D.S. - New York Times

Interesting times

The question is whether an acquisition of E.D.S. would give Hewlett-Packard the inside track it is looking for in competing against I.B.M. and other rivals. And the answer on Monday from Wall Street analysts was a decidedly mixed one. Hewlett-Packard’s stock price seemed to reflect the uncertainty, falling after news of a potential deal began to circulate. The stock closed at $46.83, down nearly 5 percent.

Shares of E.D.S. closed at $24.13, up 28 percent from Friday’s close.

“It’s a very significant combination,” said Ben Pring, a research vice president in the IT Practices Group at Gartner. But “people who are skeptical of big integrations will have a field day around this,” he said. “It’s putting together two large businesses with two different heritages. It’s going to be a big culture clash.”

Hewlett-Packard Said to Be Close to Buying E.D.S. - New York Times

Gates Foundation Names New Chief - New York Times

Wow -- that was a brief retirement...

Jeffrey S. Raikes, 49, will replace Patty Stonesifer, another former Microsoft executive who helped Bill and Melinda Gates start the foundation in an office over a pizza parlor. He will join the foundation on Sept. 2, a day after he retires from Microsoft, at roughly the same time that Mr. Gates begins devoting most of his time to its affairs.

Gates Foundation Names New Chief - New York Times

Once shunned by academics, Wikipedia now a teaching tool - Yahoo! News

Interesting times

Wikipedia, the upstart Internet encyclopedia that most universities forbid students to use, has suddenly become a teaching tool for professors.

Recently, university teachers have swapped student term papers for assignments to write entries for the free online encyclopedia.

Once shunned by academics, Wikipedia now a teaching tool - Yahoo! News

Business & Technology | WiMax deal could lead to universal connectivity | Seattle Times Newspaper

A timely snapshot

By year's end, it's expected that the next generation of wireless networks will be launched, blanketing initial service areas with a fast Internet signal — accessible to subscribers from homes, streets and traveling vehicles — and capable of giving mundane home appliances a voice.

In this Jetsonian vision of life, which could take several years to arrive fully, a washing machine embedded with a wireless chip would detect a problem and contact the manufacturer even before the homeowner knew something was wrong with the spin cycle.

Business & Technology | WiMax deal could lead to universal connectivity | Seattle Times Newspaper

Powerset brings the Semantic Web to Wikipedia | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

Hmm...

Amid speculation that Microsoft is looking to make an acquisition, Powerset launched a public beta of its Wikipedia search engine. It brings a new, rich semantic dimension via natural language query processing to Wikipedia that greatly improves the search and reading experience.

Powerset brings the Semantic Web to Wikipedia | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

Bill Joy on Going Green, Google, Apple, and Microsoft

Excerpt from a BusinessWeek interview with Bill Joy (who, noted in the intro to the interview,  has "sold off most of his [Google] shares 'for diversification'")

If you were in Steve Ballmer's shoes, how would you challenge Google in online ads?
It seems like a pretty daunting task. When I was at Sun, we competed with Microsoft—and not always successfully. Maybe Ballmer now knows how we felt. Google has a very strong position, and it's hired an enormous number of very smart people and is really committed to innovation. I think Microsoft has depended for a very long time on certain businesses that were essentially annuities, but it's going to have to create some really new things if it wants to capture the excitement again.

Bill Joy on Going Green, Google, Apple, and Microsoft

Inside Microsoft's War Against Google

Interesting BusinessWeek cover story; start on page 1 of the 4-page article

For Ballmer, this isn't just about taking Google down. Indeed, it's hard to overstate how important it is for the company to master online advertising. While Microsoft is phenomenally profitable today, adding $1 billion each month to the cash hoard from its lucrative software business, it faces a serious long-term threat. The company's fortunes have been built on software that runs on PCs, especially its Windows operating system and its Office word-processing, spreadsheet, and e-mail programs. But that kind of software is beginning to shift online. People with pretty much any kind of computer can go to the Web and use applications for things like word processing and communication. The programs are typically available for free, funded by online advertising. Google is offering a number of these programs, and there are a flock of others doing the same, such as upstart Zoho.

Inside Microsoft's War Against Google

Microsoft Move Suggests Not Reversing Yahoo Decision - WSJ.com

Game over -- at least the hostile permutation

Microsoft Corp. released potential proxy board members from their agreements to serve in the event it made a hostile bid for Yahoo Inc., following the software giant's decision last weekend to end its effort to buy the Internet company.

[...]

The move is a clear sign that Microsoft isn't planning a sudden reversal of its decision and comes amid speculation that Microsoft and Yahoo sides will restart talks as several large shareholders have expressed their disappointment that a deal wasn't reached.

Microsoft Move Suggests Not Reversing Yahoo Decision - WSJ.com

Business & Technology | Comcast considers monthly download limits | Seattle Times Newspaper

Very controversial (as is Verizon's penalty for exceeding a reasonable "unlimited" threshold on their wide-area wireless service), but consider the limits; I saw another article this morning suggesting what Comcast is contemplating would be, e.g., 11 hours of Internet video a day...

Jennifer Khoury, a company spokeswoman, said Comcast is "currently evaluating this service and pricing model to ensure we deliver a great online experience to our customers."

Comcast describes excessive users as those who send, for instance, 40 million e-mails or download 50,000 songs a month.

One option is to cap the bandwidth usage at 250 gigabytes per month. If the 250 gigabytes is allotted for just downloads, that's enough to handle about 50 high-definition movies, 250 standard-definition movies or more than 6,000 songs every month.

If users exceed that cap, they could be charged $15 for every 10 gigabytes they go over.

Business & Technology | Comcast considers monthly download limits | Seattle Times Newspaper

The New Hacker Economics - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

A stark and timely reality check; read the full post 

To make money, you have to move up the economic food chain into higher-value, more profitable work and markets. That economic fact of life applies to nations, companies and individuals.

A study released this week shows how this natural law is being applied in the subculture of criminal computer hackers. Pilfered credit card numbers and bank account PIN numbers have become commodities on shadowy Web sites where stolen digital information is bought and sold.

Company e-mail, business documents and personal health information are the new targets of choice for illegal hackers, according to Finjan, a San Jose-based maker of Web security software and appliances.

The New Hacker Economics - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Technology Review: Joint Sprint, Clearwire network could boost consumer power

"You say you want a revolution..."   Okay, maybe you didn't, but Google and other investors in this initiative do.

Sprint has indicated the new network will be run on an ''open access'' basis, where anyone with a compatible device can connect it.

If everything works well, this could lead to a proliferation of cell phones, Web tablets, computers, TV set-top boxes, GPS devices and gadgets we haven't even dreamt of. Manufacturers will be free to make gadgets that can ride on the network, without striking a deal with the carrier first.

Rather than buying a cell phone with a monthly minute plan, you could be buying a device that gives you unlimited use of voice-over-Internet services like eBay Inc.'s Skype.

''That's the real power of having this open access -- it unleashes innovation,'' said Bob Williams, who tracks telecommunications for the Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports.

Technology Review: Joint Sprint, Clearwire network could boost consumer power

Annals of Innovation: In the Air: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Fascinating Malcolm Gladwell article from the latest issue of The New Yorker; read the whole thing

In 1999, when Nathan Myhrvold left Microsoft and struck out on his own, he set himself an unusual goal. He wanted to see whether the kind of insight that leads to invention could be engineered. He formed a company called Intellectual Ventures. He raised hundreds of millions of dollars. He hired the smartest people he knew. It was not a venture-capital firm. Venture capitalists fund insights—that is, they let the magical process that generates new ideas take its course, and then they jump in. Myhrvold wanted to make insights—to come up with ideas, patent them, and then license them to interested companies. He thought that if he brought lots of very clever people together he could reconstruct that moment by the Grand River.

Annals of Innovation: In the Air: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Embarcadero Press Release: Embarcadero Technologies® to Acquire CodeGearTM from Borland® Software

A very sensible next chapter for the products and technologies that were once the foundation of Borland

Embarcadero Technologies, a privately-held company of Thoma Cressey Bravo, today announced that they signed a definitive asset purchase agreement with Borland Software Corporation (NASDAQ: BORL) to purchase its CodeGear division. The transaction is expected to close in 30 to 60 days. By combining the market leaders in development tools and database tools, Embarcadero will be able to address the growing productivity and resource challenges companies face as a result of different applications and diverse database platforms. With more than $100 million in annual revenue and over 500 employees worldwide, the combined companies will operate under the Embarcadero Technologies name.

Embarcadero Press Release

'03 White House E-Mails Not Found - washingtonpost.com

Can anyone actually believe this was an accident?

The White House chief information officer, Theresa Payton, said in a sworn declaration that the White House has identified more than 400 computer backup tapes from March through September of 2003 but that the earliest recorded file was dated May 23 of that year.

That period was one of the most crucial of the Bush presidency. The United States launched the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, and President Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1.

'03 White House E-Mails Not Found - washingtonpost.com

Pope goes digital to better connect with youth | Technology | Reuters

Sign of the times...

Pope Benedict will text message thousands of young Catholics on their mobile phones during World Youth Day in Sydney in July, hoping going digital will help him connect better with a younger audience.

The Pope will text daily messages of inspiration and hope during the six-day Sydney event while digital prayer walls will be erected at event sites and the church will set up a Catholic social networking Web site akin to a Catholic Facebook.

Pope goes digital to better connect with youth | Technology | Reuters