No Google-Twitter deal is planned, says Stone

Rough translation: the target price range is going up…  (see the full article for more context-setting)

While Google declined to comment on the rumor, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone posted a note on the company's official blog saying the company's plans are to remain independent. "It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects," he wrote. "Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we're just getting started."

No Google-Twitter deal is planned, says Stone

Google in talks to buy Twitter? | Digital Media - CNET News

It would somehow seem appropriate, given the context, if this turns out to be a (meta-micro-blogging) case study in what happens when traditional journalism modus operandi (e.g., fact-checking…) fade away; I still wouldn’t be surprised to see a Google/Twitter acquisition, in any case.

Google is in "late stage" talks to acquire microblogging service Twitter, according to a report on Thursday on TechCrunch citing two unnamed sources.

All Things Digital's Kara Swisher, however, on Friday said the report isn't true, also citing unnamed sources and saying the companies have only been in product-related discussions. And a TechCrunch update backpedaled a bit, citing another source who said acquisition talks were at a "fairly early stage."

Google in talks to buy Twitter? | Digital Media - CNET News

Somebody is spreading Teradata acquisition rumors again | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services

Consider the context – a blog post based on a rumor email message – but it’s possible; I could definitely see HP CEO Mark Hurd taking a run at Teradata (which he ran for several years during his NCR career)

An mass email from Tom Coffing was forwarded to me today that starts:

I have heard from reliable sources that both HP and SAP have purchased more than 5% of Teradata stock.  My sources tell me that both companies appear to be positioning themselves for a bid.

Somebody is spreading Teradata acquisition rumors again | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services

Showdown: Why Microsoft can't afford to lose Twitter to Google - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

Jeff Bezos is having a very good year so far… See the full post for more on Google, Microsoft, and Twitter

Even if Microsoft loses out to Google, at least one Seattle techie could benefit. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos invested in Twitter last June, participating in what was reported at the time to be a $15 million venture round.
At the time, PaidContent placed the valuation of Twitter at less than $100 million. But Twitter went on to raise more than $35 million from Benchmark Capital, IVP and others in February at a reported valuation of more than $250 million. And the Twitter user base has grown since then as it has gained momentum and become a bigger part of the cultire [sic].

Showdown: Why Microsoft can't afford to lose Twitter to Google - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : SharePoint Designer available as a free download

See the full post for more details

Today we are excited to share with you some news about SharePoint Designer 2007. Starting now (April 2, 2009), SharePoint Designer 2007 will be available as a free download! We want more of you customizing SharePoint and feel that this a good way to put the tool in the hands of more people.

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : SharePoint Designer available as a free download

I.B.M. Reportedly Will Buy Rival Sun for $7 Billion - NYTimes.com

Another scoop on the biggest non-secret of the season

Sun’s software assets would fit into I.B.M.’s long-term strategy of chasing higher-profit software and services sales. It could also give I.B.M. more strength in competing against Oracle, which has sold its database software on top of Sun systems for years.

I.B.M.’s acquisition of Sun would disrupt that long partnership with Oracle. I.B.M. could also undercut Oracle by more actively promoting the free MySQL software, which has become the most popular database software with Internet companies.

Oops – maybe somebody should have told the NYT reporters that IBM already has a few commercial DBMS products of its own…  I’d also like to know their criteria for “… the most popular database software with Internet companies”.

I.B.M. Reportedly Will Buy Rival Sun for $7 Billion - NYTimes.com

Report: Google in 'late-stage' talks to buy Twitter | Digital Media - CNET News

Maybe Google will ask Evan Williams to sign a longer-term contract this time around…

Google is in "late stage" talks to acquire microblogging service Twitter, according to a report Thursday on TechCrunch citing two unnamed sources.

[…]

Twitter isn't just about sharing with friends, though. It's increasingly about search as well. Twitter has been working to elevate the prominence of search, which can give a near-real-time window into what's on the mind of innumerable users.

And Google knows well how to treat new sources of information as signals that weigh into search results. The company has been gradually blending into its search results data sources such as blogs and news stories that reflect new information arriving on the Web.

Report: Google in 'late-stage' talks to buy Twitter | Digital Media - CNET News

IBM Lowers Takeover Bid for Sun - WSJ.com

Not looking so likely, but with the price going down, it could be attractive to other potential acquirers…

International Business Machines Corp. has cut its intended takeover price for Sun Microsystems Inc. to between $9 and $10 a share, according to people familiar with the matter.

Sun has agreed to accept a lower price in return for stronger commitments from IBM that it will complete the deal even if it faces intense regulatory scrutiny, the people added.

[…]

After a deal, the combined companies would account for 42% of total server market revenue--65% of the market for servers based on the Unix operating system. The companies will also account for nearly half of all revenue from tape-storage systems.

IBM Lowers Takeover Bid for Sun - WSJ.com

Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: The Secret Behind Twitter's Growth

Twitter is dumping Ruby on Rails for Scala (for non-UI concerns)

At the Web2.0 Expo today in San Francisco, Twitter's Alex Payne discussed the technical details of the programming language he hopes can help his company handle the upswing in traffic it's experienced over the past few years. The company is leaving behind a programming language that's caused it much pain in the past, and embracing a new and somewhat obscure language called Scala.

Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: The Secret Behind Twitter's Growth

Once-Mighty SGI Sold to Rackable for $25 Million - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

More on the RIP, SGI topic – I suppose it also serves as a timely “It could be worse…” scenario for Sun’s senior management team

A collective shudder rippled through Silicon Valley on Wednesday morning, as Rackable Systems announced its purchase of Silicon Graphics Inc. for just $25 million in cash.

If you travel all the way back to 1997, SGI was pulling in close to $4 billion in revenue a year. The company produced some of the flashiest computers on the planet for handling tough graphics jobs. SGI was the next big thing in Silicon Valley, and people adored the company.

See the full post for more

Once-Mighty SGI Sold to Rackable for $25 Million - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

State of the Art - Goodbye, Sticky Notes; Hello, Reqall - NYTimes.com

Hmm – perhaps a bit like Lotus Agenda Lite, for mobile phones

That’s it. You go through your life, dictating these little tidbits that would ordinarily be relegated to scraps of paper or the back of your mind — and therefore, probably, lost.

Reqall transcribes your utterances into text and collates them at Reqall.com. You can also have them sent to you by e-mail or as text messages to your cellphone.

If your reminder included a date or time, Reqall recognizes it as a calendar event. It can shoot a reminder to your cellphone 30 minutes in advance.

State of the Art - Goodbye, Sticky Notes; Hello, Reqall - NYTimes.com

AT&T Unveils $49.99 Netbook Offer - Digits - WSJ

Sign up for a 2-year wireless broadband plan, get a steeply discounted netbook

AT&T said today that it will start selling netbooks for $49.99 in Atlanta and $99.99 in Philadelphia.

The wireless telecom previously sold netbooks through RadioShack and other retailers, but not at its own stores. The prices are also among its lowest, though limited to those two cities during this test run. Its lineup includes the Acer Aspire One, Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and Mini 12 and LG Xenia.

AT&T Unveils $49.99 Netbook Offer - Digits - WSJ

Former Highflier's Final Landing - WSJ.com

A timely market dynamics reality check

Silicon Graphics Inc., once one of the computer industry's highest fliers, filed for bankruptcy protection for a second time and will sell its assets to Rackable Systems Inc. for $25 million.

Rackable, a younger maker of server systems that has gone through its own problems lately, said Wednesday it plans to use SGI's hardware and services to expand its business in high-performance computing and other sectors.

Its offer could be topped by a higher bidder at a bankruptcy-court supervised auction.

Former Highflier's Final Landing - WSJ.com

CADIE: Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity

More April Fool’s fun – a page linked from Google’s main page at the moment; see the full page for more details.   (This one would be more fun if it weren’t likely there are lots of Google engineers actually working on related research…)

Now we were finally ready to begin the painstaking work of building the first evolving intelligent system. We based our work on three core principles. First we designed the entity (as we decided to refer to our Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity early on) as a collection of interconnected evolving agents. Second - and this really cost us an arm and leg in hardware and core time - we let the system build its own heuristics, deploy them as agents and evolve them by running a set of evolutionary cascades within probabilistic Bayesian domains. The third - a piece missing in most AI reasoning work thus far - was to give the entity access to a rich, realistic world from which to learn and upon which it could act directly. Google's mission has always been to organize the world's knowledge and make it universally accessible and useful. CADIE, to say the least, demanded an emphasis on the latter.

CADIE: Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity

BBC NEWS | Technology | The message and the movement

Apparently ample room for improvement in the “open cloud manifesto”; see the full article for more details

Sadly the open cloud manifesto fails on all of these grounds, offering only a collection of principles that almost anyone would consider obvious and written in the sort of language that graces too many corporate websites, opening with the claim that "the buzz around cloud computing has reached a fever pitch".

I wasn't expecting something on the lines of Marx's "a spectre is haunting Europe-the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre", but any journalism student could do better.

BBC NEWS | Technology | The message and the movement

IBM makes big online collaboration move with LotusLive Engage - NYTimes.com

Definitely not Notes/Domino-based; see the full article for more details

Engage appears to be the most comprehensive service yet offered under IBM’s LotusLive umbrella of web-based businesses services. The heart of the product appears to be a web meeting service, but just as Cisco says it wants to build a collaboration suite around its WebEx meeting service, IBM says Engage is “not a new meeting service, just a smarter one,” and that it “extends your online meeting experience by bringing together the essential collaboration tools you need before, during and after your meeting” — basically, it adds things like business social networking and project management on top of the meeting service.

IBM makes big online collaboration move with LotusLive Engage - NYTimes.com

Newspapers Begin to Use Zillow - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Sign of the Times…

As advertising dollars dry up as a source of revenue for newspapers, publications are earnestly looking for new sources of income. Part of that strategy has been forging partnerships with start-ups, such as Brooklyn-based, hyper-local service Outside.in

Now, Zillow, a real estate Web site that provides estimates of homes values and other information, is rolling out a new way to drum up cash for local papers.

“Newspapers have been left for dead by a lot of people,” said Spencer Rascoff, chief operating officer of Zillow.com. “Readying their obituaries is very premature.”

Newspapers Begin to Use Zillow - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia has gone National Enquirer mode for April Fool’s; see the full page…

 

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IBM Steps Up Cloud Offering With Lotus - WSJ.com

Actually, most of LotusLive is based on two IBM technology acquisitions, not Notes/Domino, and the part that is based on Notes/Domino is email-only.  This is a very different strategy, compared to Microsoft’s Software + Services approach (which uses the same products on-premises and on-cloud), and it has obvious implications for information workers and app developers (who essentially have to start over).  See this IBM page for more details.

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) Tuesday stepped up its cloud-based software offering, launching a suite of contact management and instant messaging services for businesses, which can be accessed via the cloud.

The services build on IBM's existing Lotus Live product, an online version of its Lotus Notes collaboration tool, and are accessed on a subscription basis.

Cloud computing, an ill-defined term for a group of products and services which enable computing to move off companies' premises and onto data centers owned by technology companies, accessed via the Internet, is seen as a core growth area for the industry. IT research firm Gartner estimated last week that revenue from cloud services will grow to $150 billion by 2013.

Article - WSJ.com

A Walk Through the Productivity Future Vision Video - Office Labs

Check out the videos referenced in this post (starting with this one) for a compelling vision of the future of information technology

There has been a lot of buzz around the Microsoft Productivity Future Vision video since it was unveiled by Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division. Many people have been asking for more information about the scenarios shown in the video, the underlying technologies, and how the video relates to Microsoft’s overall vision and ongoing product development roadmap.

In response to many of these questions, and in an effort to encourage more dialogue around the emerging technology explored in the video, we have created two additional videos. Each is designed to give you a deeper view into the story behind the Productivity Future Vision video and how Microsoft is working toward delivering these kinds of productivity scenarios in the years ahead.

A Walk Through the Productivity Future Vision Video - Office Labs