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The InformationWeek May 2007 Archive « April 2007 | Main | June 2007 » |
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Child Sex Crackdown Causes Problems For LiveJournal
The venerable online community LiveJournal stirred up a storm of controversy when it attempted to delete sex-themed discussion groups in the name of protecting children, and accidentally deleted legitimate literary sites and at least one psychological support journal.
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Why Catching The 'Spam King' Won't Save Your In-Box
Even if a judge and jury lock up Robert Alan Soloway for the rest of his natural born life, your in-box will still be inundated with tons of offers for HGH, porn, and penny stocks.
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Should Companies Hire People With Black Marks On Their Internet Histories?
An international retailer finds a great candidate to head up its store in Shanghai. But a bit of last-minute Googling turns up information about political activism against the Chinese government. Should she still get the job?
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Microsoft Drops A Few Data Center Strategy Hints
Ever wanted to know how Microsoft makes decisions about how to build its data centers, where they are and how big they are, and what the company intends to do with them all? A video interview the company has posted today with Michael Manos, the Microsoft's senior director of Data Center Services, gives a few hints.
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Why Novell Might Need 'Plan B' For Linux Distribution
Novell says its alliance with Microsoft is a key part of its Linux sales strategy. It may need to rethink that. On Thursday, the Free Software Foundation took aim at the partnership with a deal-busting final draft of the new open source license.
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The Razor-Blade Strategy
Have you heard about the razor-blade strategy (also called, according to Wikipedia, the "bait and hook model")? The idea is that a company sells you a razor for next to nothing -- or gives it away for free. Great deal, right? You get the razor, and the manufacturer gets to sell you high-cost razor blades for the next few years (or, at least, for as long as you use the razor), making a lot more than was invested in the initial device. Now, how many tech products can you count that follow that same marketing strategy?
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Doing the iPhone Shuffle
We're headed into the home stretch on the iPhone frenzy. Apple is still saying "end of June" but Web sites like The Boy Genius Report are saying June 15, just about two weeks away. Alpha early adopters will be flaunting them in every martini bar and boardroom in America and the rest of us will be doing the iPhone Shuffle, waiting in line at the Cingular store. Already there are leaks and speculation about follow-on products -- and a different kind of iPhone Shuffle.
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You Can See Steve Jobs' House On Google Maps
There has been a lot of fanfare this week for the new Street View feature on Google Maps, a function that gives users a 360-degree view from the streets of select cities. Now users are reporting seeing all kinds of things, including Steve Jobs' house.
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Are Carriers Delaying The S60 Mobile Version Of Skype?
Darla Mack asks a great question: Where is the Symbian version of Skype? While Symbian smartphone users wait the Gizmo Project is already available for the N800, N95, N80ie and E61i. Will Gizmo become the Skype of the S60 smartphone world?
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Americans Buy Low-Tech Phones And Keep Them Forever
According to J.D. Power and Associates, Americans are keeping their phones an average of 17.5 months, up from 16.6 months since last fall. That means more and more people are opting for 2-year contracts...and opting against the latest technology. Do people care about high tech?
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Jobs Says EDGE Is Fast: Has The Reality Distortion Field Hit The iPhone?
Steve Jobs made headlines yesterday at the D: All Things Digital conference. Of course, Jobs spoke about the iPhone, but during his remarks, I began to see the telltale signs of the reality distortion field at work.
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Businesses To Spend $9 Billion On Mobile Applications By 2011
It's time to dust off the hockey stick because we've got another mobile enterprise market study. According to the latest findings from Compass Intelligence, U.S. businesses will spend $9 billion on mobile CRM and other mobile applications by 2011.
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Apple's Jobs: Mobile Internet Is Terrible. iPhone Delivers the Real Internet
Speaking to Walt Mossberg at yesterday's D: All Things Digital conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave us some interesting tidbits of info regarding the iPhone. The OS is the full Mac OS X with a different user interface. Third-party apps? Maybe. QWERTY keyboards? A waste of valuable space. FMC? Sort of. 3G? Well, Wi-Fi is faster. Oh, and current music phones stink.
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Fax Mistaken For Bomb; Director Detained For 'Shooting A Pilot'
Yelling fire in a crowded theater ain't what it used to be. Consider the latest case of a perceived threat gone wild, which took the form of an ad faxed by a bank. One recipient in the Boston area took it to be a bomb threat, resulting in the evacuation of local stores the other day.
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Linden Lab Plans Stability Improvements, Web Hooks, And Face-Lift For Second Life
Linden Lab is working on improvements to Second Life to vastly improve Web integration, scalability, stability, and the beauty of the world, according to CTO Cory Ondrejka.
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Just Because My Avatar Wears Black Socks With Sandals, That Doesn't Make Me A Middle-Aged Second Life User
I got a call the other day from a guy who wanted to talk to me about middle-aged Second Life users. I was insulted by the implication that I'm middle-aged, and would have told him so, except I had to rush off the phone or I'd miss Matlock.
Top Five Reasons The Palm Foleo Makes No Sense
Palm today decided to show us the future of mobile computing by giving us... a $500 laptop-sized Treo smartphone add-on that isn't even a real laptop. While I am sure some of you are excited by the Foleo and its Linux OS, I for one am under whelmed. Why would I pay $500 for a glorified smartphone accessory when I could get an entire laptop for just a little bit more?
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Palm Adds The Folly, Er, The Foleo To Its Portfolio
For once, the rumor sites had it completely right. If you heard a gunshot around 11:30 AM Pacific Time this morning over in Carlsbad, Calif., that was Palm shooting itself in the foot. Rather than spend its time and money developing the next kick-butt smartphone for the enterprise, Palm thought about the future and decided to give us a laptop that isn't even a laptop. Meet Palm's Foleo, a $500 glorified accessory.
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IE Mobile Gets Standards For Windows Mobile 6
For those of you eagerly waiting the upgrades to Internet Explorer Mobile for Windows Mobile 6, here is a rundown of what you can expect from the new OS.
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Is Second Life Just A Big Chatroom?
Intel's launching a series of presentations for developers in Second Life puts the virtual world to its best business use, as a platform for conversations with customers. And yet it got me thinking: Is Second Life just a big chatroom?
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Is Google Getting Serious About Business Software?
Here’s to betting that a Salesforce.com and Google business partnership has been consummated. Salesforce informs me it will be making an announcement with a “leading Internet company based in the Bay Area” on June 5.
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Will The Exit Of InfoSpace Spell The End Of The Carrier Deck?
Mobile content, advertising, and search firm InfoSpace is rumored to be on the auction block with Spanish firm LaNetro Zed as the prospective buyer. According to the rumors, InfoSpace could fetch around $1.08 billion if the merger goes through. This deal could mark the end of the first phase of the mobile Web.
Continue reading "Will The Exit Of InfoSpace Spell The End Of The Carrier Deck?..."
CIO Gregor Bailar Leaving Capital One
Capital One said today its CIO, Gregor Bailar, is stepping down Sept. 1 to pursue philanthropic interests. Bailar was at the helm of the company's IT department when InformationWeek named Capital One the no. 1 company in the presitgious InformationWeek 500 list in 2005. For those who want to make hay about the shortening tenure of the CIO, even among the good ones, think again... (read on after viewing the video by clicking "Continue reading..." below)
To see Bailar speaking on agile programming and the CIO's role in growing the business, click below:
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Is The Next Generation iPhone Already In Production?
The iPhone rumors are non-stop today. The iPhone supposedly will have more features than Steve Jobs announced in January and Microsoft might have some new patent with which to challenge the iPhone (and possibly block its path to market). Now reports claim that the iPhone II, the European version of the iPhone, is about to begin production.
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Apple Beware: Microsoft Awarded Web Phone Patent
Could Apple's iPhone be at the mercy of a patent just granted to Microsoft? Could be, judging by U.S. Patent 7,225,409, "Graphical User Interface For A Screen Telephone," which was awarded to Microsoft on Tuesday. More potential worries for Apple: The patent isn't just for a phone, but for the underlying software, and the patent document even includes a helpful flowchart.
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What Is The Real Market For Wireless MVNOs?
The wireless industry has been trying to figure out the secret to MVNOs for the last five years. With the exception of Virgin Mobile, though, I haven't seen very many success stories. Now Voce, a new MVNO designed for the busy professional with disposable income, is trying to capture the coveted high-end market. Why do MVNOs think wealthy people want to go through a re-seller?
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Does The iPhone Have Hidden Features?
We're just a few weeks away from the launch of the iPhone and the rumor mill is in overdrive. Yesterday my colleague, Eric Zeman, questioned if the iPhone would usher in a new era of fixed-mobile convergence and seamless connectivity. Today it seems the iPhone might be hiding some features that Steve Jobs didn't reveal in January.
Continue reading "Does The iPhone Have Hidden Features?..."
Rumors On Palm Device Not So Promising
Well, as to be expected, tech and gadget rumor sites are already running pieces on what Palm will be announcing today. The one rumor that looks more substantive than the others (because it's based on an errant Palm press release) speaks of a Linux-based UMPC-type device. Hmm. Is this a market Palm really wants to enter?
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Mobile Web Turns Into An Escape From Corporate Firewalls
A few months ago I reported how mobile Web use was growing, particularly in the U.S. In the U.K., employees are flocking to toilets to use the mobile Web. Why? Because it's a fast and easy way to escape the prying eyes of IT managers and corporate firewalls.
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BT To Add Wireless VoIP To PlayStation Portable
BT said it is developing a software-based VoIP app for the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). The new app will let users to make voice and video calls over a Wi-Fi network. Will VoIP be the newest add-on for mobile game handhelds?
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Smartphone Accessories Make More Money Than Smartphones
That's right, there is more money in Bluetooth headsets and phone cover cases than in smartphones proper. According to researcher ABI, the market for smartphone accessories will hit $32 billion in 2007, much more than the $28 billion expected from the smartphone market.
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Microsoft Cancels PDC... What's A Developer To Do?
Is Microsoft suffering from developer show burnout? -- or -- does the rescheduling suggest that it will it be a long time before Microsoft's "next wave of platform technologies" is ready?
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With Toshiba Turion Laptop Deal, AMD Regains Ground On Intel
AMD has released additional information surrounding its important design win announced early Tuesday, in which Toshiba said it would ship laptops equipped with processors from the Avis of chip makers. As was the case when Dell opted for AMD, it's big industry news anytime a major PC manufacturers diverges from an Intel-only strategy. For AMD, the big challenge remains making such market advances stick, as opposed to the two-steps forward, one-step backwards dance it's been doing for the past few years.
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The Walrus Bucket Internet Meme, Seriously
The Internet has become so important to society that its role in the transmission of memes may be the crucial fact of our age. Therefore it is absolutely vital to one's position in the social order to understand and be current with Internet memes. Don't you think? Which is why you should pay a great deal of very careful attention to the Walrus Bucket Saga. Because if you don't know about it, you'll be out of it.
Continue reading "The Walrus Bucket Internet Meme, Seriously..."
Linux Supporters Arrogant? You Be The Judge
Never one to shy away from a good argument--the mark of the employed blogger is a very thick skin--I'd like to continue the debate kicked off by my recent post, on Dell's decision to offer PCs equipped with Ubuntu Linux. My tepid post, in which I gingerly chided Dell for not caveating its Ubuntu offerings up the wazoo, while at the same time complimenting the previously direct-sales-only PC powerhouse as being the best friend Linux has had in a long time, prompted a firestorm of reader responses.
Continue reading "Linux Supporters Arrogant? You Be The Judge..."
Is Sex In Second Life Harmful?
As I worked on our report on sex in Second Life, I wondered: Is all this gettin' cyber-sweaty harmful? I decided it depends on the circumstances. But I know many of our readers will say it's just plain wrong. What do you think?
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Can History Survive The Internet?
The Internet is a wondrous place indeed. Besides all the practical benefits that are too numerous (and obvious) to mention here, there are few limits to where your imagination combined with Web technology can take you.
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Data Security: You're Not Learning From Others' Mistakes
As I was catching up on some e-mail last night, I came across a message that's become all too familiar to me. It was textbook: A company was apologizing that one of its laptops had been stolen and that the laptop contained customer account and credit card information. A real yawner, until I considered that this e-mail was delivered to my personal e-mail account and that it was my customer account and credit card info that may have been compromised. Companies just aren't getting the message about data security.
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Palm To Unveil New Device Tomorrow
Palm, one-time innovator of the PDA market and maker of the Treo line of smartphones, has announced that it will be showing off a brand new category of mobile devices tomorrow. A new category? Something other than a PDA, smartphone, or glorified hard drive? My interest is piqued.
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Will The iPhone, Wing, And Other Wi-Fi-Enabled Smartphones Finally Usher In FMC?
We all know the iPhone has Wi-Fi. The new HTC Wing, launched by T-Mobile last week, also has it. RIM CEO Jim Balsillie said in a speech that we'll see Wi-Fi on a BlackBerry device by year's end. Will this new crop of devices convince U.S. carriers to offer fixed-mobile convergence services?
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Novell Tips Details Of Microsoft Linux Deal, Spotlighting FSF Opposition
The Free Software Foundation, that merry band of advocates of the GNU/Linux operating system (don't call it "Linux" -- FSF president Richard Stallman will get mad), is looking to throw a monkey wrench into the peace pact between Novell and Microsoft. Under that deal, signed last November, Novell insulated itself from Linux patent suits from Redmond and got millions of dollars in much-needed cash to boot. Now, Novell financial filings released last Friday reveal that, while the threat from Microsoft remains at bay, Stallman's posse may pose new problems.
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My Week In Second Life: A Total Klutz Tries Out Building
When I started in Second Life a few months ago, I wrote regular updates of my personal adventures. I got out of the habit of doing them, even though people seemed to enjoy them. But now they're back -- I'll do 'em every Saturday.
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A Second Look At Voice In Second Life
Linden Lab shared some rough target dates this afternoon for deploying voice on the main grid -- it's coming up soon. Also: I've had an opportunity to play with voice some more over the past week, and I continue to be extremely impressed.
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Google Calendar Now Available For Your Cell Phone
Google this week released a mobile version of its Calendar tool. Sign up is easy: Just go to calendar.google.com from your mobile phone and the application should work on your phone.
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FeedBurner Deal Puts Google Closer To Controlling Online Publishers
If Google finally pulls the trigger and closes its proposed deal to buy FeedBurner, it will be one step closer to having all the tools its needs to control online publishers. Do you feel that hand near your throat?
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Linden Lab Makes It Official, Lays Out Road Map For Deploying Voice
The company plans to start testing voice on the "main grid" -- the main Second Life service -- in "the next few weeks," according to a post on the Official Linden Blog.
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Discovery Of A New Species?
NetQoS marketing VP Steve Harriman noted at Interop that a customer of his application performance-measurement company has brought together two teams that in many companies today still barely speak to each other: application development and IT infrastructure.
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Linux On Your Mind
It's always informative to look at our most heavily trafficked stories to see what topics you're most interested in. No, it's not a scientific survey, but it certainly provides pretty powerful anecdotal evidence of what technologists are currently buzzing about. And judging from our numbers, you're rather obsessed with Linux--Ubuntu Linux, to be precise.
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Net Neutrality Debate, Part 2
I expected my blog on net neutrality to draw plenty of flames, and I was right. In this new post I'll round up the arguments that readers have expressed in favor of net neutrality, respond briefly, and hopefully point the debate in a new direction. I can summarize the objections to my stance – that the price of access to privately owned networks ought to be determined by economics, not idealism – in four main categories: a) I'm a moron who doesn't understand the term "net neutrality" in the first place; b) we already pay for bandwidth, and adding premium pricing for heavy usage would be double-dipping, or even worse a form of Net taxation (shudder); c) there is no free market for network access because the telcos are greedy, evil, and mendacious; and d) I'm just a moron.
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The Penguin And The Howitzer
In a conversation at Interop, Novell VP of product management Alan Murray noted that a recent InformationWeek cover story showing the Linux penguin sweating profusely due to having a gun pointed at its head representing the imminent threat of litigation from Microsoft was missing something.
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Are The Browser Wars Flaring Up?
It's been awhile since we've talked of browser wars, but a new round could be upon us.
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Shazam! Nokia to Develop Lightning-Detecting Cell Phone
Well, strike me down! In the spirit of saving lives (because dead cell phone users aren't very profitable), Nokia has applied to patent the use of FM and GSM technology that will detect potential lightning strikes and warn users to head for the nearest tree, er, shelter. If Benjamin Franklin could only see this!
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90% Of Cell Phone Owners Rate iPhone Over Theirs
That lovely statistic comes from a recent Strategy Analytics’ Wireless Device Labs study on the perceptions of technology. I have to find a small amount of fault in their methodology, though. The study participants' reactions were based on a video they watched of the iPhone, and not actually using the iPhone itself. Would the results be the same with hardware on the table?
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The Consumer Effect Strikes Again
LifeSize Communications competes with Cisco in the Web video business, but John Doyle says he's grateful for all the attention Cisco CEO John Chambers is giving to the promising new technology because there's huge opportunities to compete at different price points with varying levels of complexity for installation, deployment, and management.
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When Irrestible Forces Meet Immovable Objects
What happens when storage demand is growing at close to 80% and apps must be rolled out and available globally while consolidation is taking place across servers and data centers and branch-office infrastructure and virtualization is believed to be the cure for all ills?
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Driving Toward Solid-State Drives
One of the more interesting conversations I had at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) last week in Los Angeles was with two guys from Samsung. They talked about their company's push into solid-state memory as an enhancement -- and eventually a replacement -- for rotating hard disk storage on computers. Samsung isn't the only manufacturer working to develop plug-compatible flash memory-based storage. In January the five largest drive makers -- Samsung, Seagate, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and Hitachi, formed the Hybrid Hard Drive Alliance to promote the technology. HHD seems to be ready, and the market seems to be primed. The only hold-up seems to the price.
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Join Us For Our Second Life Kaffeeklatsch -- Let's Talk Sculpties
Join us in Second Life Friday for our regular kaffeeklatsch to discuss technology and business issues in Second Life and real life. For this session, let's talk about a major new feature introduced to Second Life Wednesday: "sculpties."
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RFID: Reasons For Increased Deployment?
While various naysayers have tried to argue that RFID's time has come and gone, infrastructure player Reva Systems says the uptake for the technology is coming along quite nicely.
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Dell Ubuntu PCs Are Best Friend Linux Ever Had
Is Linux its own worst enemy when it comes to gaining converts on the desktop? That's what I said in a recent post, in reference to Dell’s impending release of systems equipped with Ubuntu Linux. And, boy, did I get an earful of reader comments. This time, I’ve got another beef: Now that Dell has formally announced the machines, the Dell page offering the Ubuntu boxes for sale (here) doesn’t contain the same clear caveats about the potential unavailability of some Windows-related multimedia drivers, which Dell previously had explicitly noted in an earlier post on its customer blog page.
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Linden Lab Needs To Bring In Professional Management
Linden Lab is a wonderful company that's working miracles every day. But it doesn't have experience managing a booming business, and that shows. It needs to bring in people who know how to take a company from emerging startup to billion-dollar giant.
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Wireless Wrap From This Year's Interop
Wireless and mobility were big topics at this year's Interop. Let's take a look at the wireless news in review.
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Does Your VoIP System Play A Greeting Message For Hackers?
Most big companies have yet to install Internet-based phone systems, but many are considering it. Here's a warning for them: VoIP presents big security risks, a pair of Interop speakers said Thursday.
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Vegas BBQ –- Burn, PC, Burn
Picture a beautiful sunset over the desert, the glow of the Vegas skyline in the distance. Then a towering wave of flames leap into the air that crackles with the heat -- a man just set his computer on fire.
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Windows Mobile Contributed To Surge In PDA/Smartphone Sales
Defying logic, enterprise users flocked to Windows Mobile 5 in droves during the first quarter of 2007, despite the announcement that Windows Mobile 6 would be available in the second quarter. The PDA market actually grew 40% compared to the year-ago quarter, fueled by strong WinMo5 sales.
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In a Web 2.0 World, Who Gets the Credit?
I had a fascinating breakfast conversation this morning with a couple of Really Smart Guys: Alan Cohen, Cisco Systems' vice president for mobility solutions, and Techdirt analyst Carlo Longino. We started out talking about Cisco's efforts to unify disparate forms of communications and connectivity across enterprises, and about the dreaded buzzword "collaboration," which has risen once again to the top of just about everyone's lips at Interop. After a while, though, we were discussing how new Web-based collaborative tools (Wikis, Web conferencing, online project management systems, blogs, etc.) will transform not only traditional ways of doing business but conventional notions of credit and blame.
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Report: The End Is Nigh For Mobile Enterprise Vendors
According to The 451 Group, tech vendors that sell mobile office and productivity apps will see their market consolidate with few survivors remaining. The research also highlights that the number of premium enterprise-device users will remain limited when compared to the overall mobile market, which will be dominated by consumers. This is not good news for the mobile enterprise.
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The Salesforce.com Effect Comes To Interop
In its 22-year history, the Interop trade show has been synonymous with networking, and this year's exhibitors are true to that heritage. But there's a recurring, software-oriented theme from many of the vendors I met with: the impact of Salesforce.com on the networking business.
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I Want My Seamless Mobility
I have heard a lot about seamless mobility -- the dream of universal wireless access where users can roam freely between wireless LANs and cellular networks and back again -- this week at Interop. I keep hearing vendors promise dual-mode access, but when I raise the issue of the pink elephant in the room, the vendors just smile at me and change the subject.
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Stampede To Optimize Windows Mobile Devices
It's about time someone stepped up and offered a useable optimization platform for smartphones. Do your smartphone applications run too slow?
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How Much Watching Does Big Brother Have To Do?
I was wandering around the outer bounds of the Interop show floor this afternoon and stopped by a booth from a company called SpectorSoft, which sells Internet monitoring software for small businesses and home use. Never having tried their software, I can't comment on it; from the short demo that I saw, it looked like it could be quite effective. It was the booth that made me feel a bit uneasy.
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Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale Talks About Identity, Anonymity, And Preserving Freedom In Second Life
I talked at length with Philip Rosedale, founder and CEO of Linden Lab, about anonymity and identity in the virtual world, and what the company would do if China or some other authoritarian nation demanded to know the identity of one of its users.
Continue reading "Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale Talks About Identity, Anonymity, And Preserving Freedom In Second Life..."
Where's The Real Shortage: IT Workers Or IT Jobs?
At Interop in Vegas, reps from tech services companies were pounding a familiar mantra: Offshore outsourcing is necessary because there aren't enough tech workers in the U.S. to meet demand. Will the Senate listen to them?
Continue reading "Where's The Real Shortage: IT Workers Or IT Jobs?..."
Can Dell Figure Out How To Make A Cell Phone?
So, is Dell going to make a cell phone or not? In a recent interview with CRN, Michael Dell spoke about the possibility of his company developing a mobile device, but he didn't seem to know what kind of mobile gadget to make.
Continue reading "Can Dell Figure Out How To Make A Cell Phone?..."
At Interop, Security Talk Is Largely About Network Access Control
Here at Interop, there's a lot of focus on security and a lot of that security attention is aimed right at network access control. It's a hot-button topic here. The question plaguing many IT and security managers, though, might be where to get started.
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Zoho Launches Notebook Beta
Hosted software provider Zoho this week at Interop launched its new multimedia writer, called Zoho Notebook. So, is it any good? Zoho first showed off Notebook at DEMO but didn't release a public version until yesterday.
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Strong Authentication, Great Value Proposition
Positive Networks, a provider of hosted VPN services, is using Interop to promote a two-factor, telephone (land-line or cell)-based authentication system for users looking to access corporate applications. The company will look to hook customers with the authentication technology -- it's free -- then sell a series of add-on services.
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Better Traffic Management Comes To Windows
Zeus Technology introduced at Interop a Windows-based version of its Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager (ZXTM) software, which previously ran on Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.
Continue reading "Better Traffic Management Comes To Windows..."
The Greening Of Interop
My assumption has always been that the best way to get enterprises to go "green" -- to institute conservation policies via decreased energy use and technology recycling, for example -- was to hit them directly in the pocketbook (or via regulations, of course). It's the bottom line that counts.
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Why People Still Use Microsoft Office: Saving Time And Peace Of Mind
Reader Alex Wieder writes to describe why people pay for Microsoft Office -- saving time and peace of mind. His letter suggests something I'm coming to suspect: That Microsoft's Office monopoly persists on inertia and could well disappear in a few years as OpenOffice.org and other alternatives become more attractive.
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Will Google Be Eaten By The Niche Players?
Google is increasingly looking like a big, slow giant tech company and less like the nimble innovator that defined the beginning of Web 2.0. Yesterday Web video search engine Blinkx successfully went public, proving that there is plenty of room for small Web video companies, even when Google controls both YouTube and its own video platform.
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All On A USB Stick
USB flash drives have become ubiquitous, among both tech professionals and consumers. They're used to pass along product information at trade shows, as a means to take your data and apps with you (when your MP3 player doesn't have enough space), as a backup device -- and as a fashion statement.
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Was Making A Cell Phone Call From The Top Of Mount Everest Really Necessary?
I smell a publicity stunt. Seriously. I've been an armchair climber of Mount Everest for about 12 years now. I think I've read every book on the subject, and I follow each season's news of summit attempts. What makes the news seem less spectacular is that China set up mobile (i.e., temporary) base stations so the call could be completed, and the climber's trip was sponsored by Motorola. Did the parties involved really prove anything new here? No, they didn't. They do, however, get bragging rights. And that's what matters.
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Verizon Wireless' Strigl Rattles Saber, Says iPhone Killer In The Wings
No, Denny Strigl wasn't talking about T-Mobile's new smartphone. Verizon Wireless' COO recently said in an interview that Verizon is preparing to battle the iPhone with a product it will release later this summer. He even went so far as to take a potshot at AT&T's network, saying, "The issue is not the Apple-ness of the iPhone itself, but with the cellular network that it is running on." Will the war for new customers and growth in the cell phone industry be waged -- and won -- by providing the best devices, or the best service?
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Dell's Ubuntu Offering Shows Why Linux Is Its Own Worst Enemy
Dell is moving full speed ahead with its rush to deliver Ubuntu Linux on a bunch of upcoming laptops and desktops, but there's a potential problem looming: Multimedia support on the machines may be spotty.
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Interop Sets A High Bar For Tech Vendors
Large industry shows like Interop Las Vegas are a great place for vendors to launch new products, for end users to find what they need to improve their business processes, and for us journalists to gather story ideas and to network. But what became obvious to me this time around is that vendors use these shows to test the limits of their technologies.
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Progress Report: CRM For Google Apps
Since launching Etelos CRM for Google Apps -- a lightweight CRM app that works with Google's productivity suite -- on Feb. 28, Etelos has nearly 3,000 businesses representing 30,000 individuals using the product, Etelos CEO Danny Kolke said at Interop today.
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Net Neutrality: Not the American Way
I've always had a problem with the Internet-freedom crowd who declare that "net neutrality" – the principle that no one has the right to prioritize or charge higher rates for bandwidth regardless of how much is used or what it's being used for – is an inviolable right on the order of bearing arms and speaking freely. And now Mayor Michael Bloomberg has crystallized my vague unease. In his vision for the future of New York City, Bloomberg called for relatively stiff fees for motorists who drive into Manhattan on weekdays ($8 for cars and 21 bucks for trucks). This is a form of "congestion pricing," which has been employed successfully in cities like London and Stockholm. And to me, metered pricing for Internet usage (a.k.a. "traffic shaping") is another form.
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Making Corporate Data As Accessible As A Blog
One of the more compelling product pitches I heard at Interop today came from a low-profile developer of software components called /n Software. Got lots of corporate data built up that your knowledge workers can't find or access? Need a lightweight, low-impact way to disseminate data from various systems internally or to partners?
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You Shall Use No 'N' Before Its Time
I was a bit nonplussed when I discovered that vendors catering to small businesses and individuals were starting to push 802.11n-compliant devices. Not only is it not certain that they even need them (since the only real advantage to individual home users would be if they're planning to stream video across it, and how many cable companies are advertising that these days?), but there is the small issue that 802.11 isn't going to be certified by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee for, oh, a couple of years.
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Linden Lab Delaying Voice In Second Life For 'A Few Months'
In an abrupt turnaround, Linden Lab, which develops and operates Second Life, says it'll be "a few months" before voice is available in the service. Until very recently, Linden Lab was saying voice would be available tomorrow (Wednesday).
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Small Business Is The Next Frontier For Telephony At Interop
The small- to medium-sized business (SMB) market is big at this year's Interop as vendors scramble to find new markets. Are SMBs really ready to kick down for routers and IP PBX systems?
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Microsoft Enlists Startup To Help Secure Linux Desktops
Patent claims against Linux notwithstanding, Microsoft is working with a startup to ensure a key security initiative includes support for the open-source operating system on client computers. On Tuesday, Avenda Systems said it will build Linux client software for use with Microsoft's Network Access Protection (NAP) technology. That software will allow NAP to interact directly with Linux clients.
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Why Pay For Microsoft Office When OpenOffice.org Is Free?
I've given NeoOffice, the Mac port of OpenOffice.org, a workout recently, editing and annotating word-processing documents, printing them out, and sharing the files. It's got me wondering: Why do otherwise sane people pay for Microsoft Office?
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Join Us For Our Regular Kaffeeklatsch In Second Life
Join us at 6 p.m. Pacific time/Second Life Time today for our regular InformationWeek/Dr. Dobb's Journal kaffeeklatsch, where we discuss technology and business issues in Second Life and real life.
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Benioff Doesn't Deny Google Partnership Rumor
Salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff yesterday did not deny rumors that his company may be planning a partnership with Google. Let the Google Apps CRM rumors begin.
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IT And Enterprise 2.0: Why They Need To Get Along
There’s tension between IT departments and grassroots Web 2.0 efforts in the workplace. IT likes top-down hierarchies. The Web 2.0 crowd prefers free-form work styles. They need to get it together.
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Good Advice On Web Ops: Don't Forget The Users
Coradiant is working with Splunk to add user performance and experience information to the types of data that Splunk collects in its IT search engine. The two companies are looking to provide a more integrated analysis of Web operations performance.
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High-Performance Wireless LAN Is Key To Business Mobility
There has been a lot of talk about improving the performance of the wireless LAN here at this year's Interop. Why do IT departments need high-performance Wi-Fi? Without it, initiatives like business mobility and unified communications will go nowhere fast.
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Chambers Prods CIOs: Add Business Value Now
John Chambers has some feedback and some advice for CIOs. Speaking in an Interop keynote address, the Cisco CEO says half of CIOs are viewed as adding value to their business while half are viewed as expense areas "and that's not good."
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How Do We Get To The World Of Seamless Mobility?
Mobility continues to dominate the agenda here at Interop. John Chambers electrified the crowd this morning with his vision of a new mobile workforce, while yesterday Avaya, Citrix, and others launched new solutions with mobility at the forefront. That's all great, but I'll ask the same question I asked yesterday: How will all of this proposed mobility work when the wireless carriers don't seem ready to cooperate?
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Chambers Talks Internet Phase 2
I first wrote about John Chambers back in 2001, just before the tech bubble burst, in a lengthy profile for The Industry Standard. At the time, Chambers was still predicting that Cisco would go on growing its revenue at 35% to 40% indefinitely. As even a lowly tech journalist could predict, that didn't happen: Cisco went from being a phenomenal engine of growth to a solid tech giant growing at more like 10% to 15% a year. Chambers managed that shift adroitly, and today, now that Bill Gates has stepped aside at Microsoft, he's one of the two or three longest-serving CEOs of major U.S. tech companies.
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Will The iPhone Be Available Without A Contract?
According to The Boy Genius, the answer to that question is yes! It is showing off some internal AT&T screen shots that indicate the iPhone will be available to prepaid customers. The beauty of the prepaid model is that you can enjoy all the positive aspects of the iPhone without being locked into a multiyear contract.
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T-Mobile Launches First Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone In The U.S.
At the tony little Spanish restaurant Boqueria in Manhattan's Flatiron district, T-Mobile hosted a small gathering for tech industry press and analysts to show off its newest gadget. The Wing, which is available starting today for $299, is the first Windows Mobile 6 smartphone to hit store shelves in the United States. The informal launch party featured tapas, sangria, some tasteful Spanish-style music, and haughty high-tech talk.
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Long Lines=Good News
I knew I was about to attend a trade show in Las Vegas -- specifically, Interop -- when I hit the cab line at the airport. A couple of hundred people patiently walked up and down the roped-off aisles, one hand pulling their suitcases and the other clutching their cell phones, explaining to business associates why they may not make that lunch meeting, but they'll let them know as soon as they check in.
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IBM's Power6 Spotlights Big Blue's Processor Prowess
Did you know IBM was the first company to ship a dual-core processor? Most people don't; they incorrectly assume it was Intel or AMD. Wrong. IBM rolled out its Power 4 module, which contained two 64-bit, 1-GHz processor cores, in 2001. Yesterday, Big Blue's deep expertise in chip technology was on display when it launched the latest update to its multicore Power family.
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Loose Lips Sink Product Launches
I was flying out to Interop Monday morning when I heard two execs a row ahead of me talking about a big upcoming product announcement. They might as well have just chucked all their expensive corporate security technologies out the window.
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Can Unified Communications Really Break Down All The Silos?
Today was the pre-meet here at Interop -- that strange time right before all the keynotes kick off and the endless slew of press releases inundates your e-mail in-box. Despite the calm before the storm, news already was breaking.
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Negroponte: Intel Marketing Victim Or Sour Grapes?
So Nicholas Negroponte accuses Intel and others of pricing him out of some contracts that would have otherwise gone to his One Laptop Per Child plan? Shocked? You shouldn't be. This is a highly competitive market, after all.
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Mobile Banking Takes One Step Further From The Counter
According to a new report from Celent, mobile banking will outstrip online banking in growth over the next three years. It says 35% of online bankers also will use mobile banking. Today that figure stands at less than 1%. Who will lead the way? Gen Y.
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AT&T Has Finally Decided What To Call Itself
We've only waited six months for the combined AT&T/Cingular Wireless entity to decide what its brand will be going forward. Looks like the AT&T globe is kicking the orange-colored Cingular Happy Jack out the door. Even though I think Cingular has better brand equity, I am glad that AT&T has stopped equivocating and finally made a decision.
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A New Mac User Describes Some Problems
Jim Rome writes about Mac drawbacks after switching from the PC. Overall, he likes the Mac, but he has problems with music and the user interface. He also describes how he uses virtual desktop software to manage multiple running applications.
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I'm In UR InfurmashunWeeks Splainin LOLcats K Bai
LOLcats are the latest fad making the rounds of the Internet. They're pictures of cats doing goofy things, with captions superimposed on the images, spelled out crudely as though the cat himself were doing the typing. They're hilarious.
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Who Owns Linux? Linus. . .And A Detergent Company In Switzerland
In case you were wondering--and I was, given the noises Microsoft has been making lately about the open-source operating system--Linus Torvalds does indeed own the trademark on Linux. Interestingly, so does Rosch, a detergent company based in Switzerland.
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Apple And Cingular Can Keep Their iPhone, 'Cause I'm Sticking With My BlackBerry
Google is abuzz today with last Thursday's news that the FCC has granted regulatory approval to the iPhone. This means Apple's new gadget could hit the market next month -- I'm betting Steve Jobs will announce it's shipping during his keynote speech at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference ( WWDC 2007) in San Francisco on June 11. Me, I don't care. I'm sticking with my BlackBerry. It's rock solid, the phone sounds not half-bad if you use it with a Bluetooth headset, and, most important, it's got a hard keypad.
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(Missing) Without A Trace: The IBM Tapes
Did you read about the missing IBM Tapes? It's almost like another undecipherable episode from "Lost," except it's a car that may have crashed in this case, apparently, and it's tapes that got lost in the aftermath.
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Look For Mobility To Be Big Next Week At Interop
I am packing my bags for Interop Las Vegas next week. I expect to hear vendors talk more about mobility at next week's show. I think smartphones and other wireless gadgets will soon become central to enterprise telephony.
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"Live Free Or Die Hard" Coming To Second Life
When I heard they were making a fourth Die Hard movie, I thought that was great news, because I love the Die Hard movies. When I heard Kevin Smith was going to be in it, I thought that was even better, because I love Kevin Smith (even if he did try to sabotage the InformationWeek Web site). And when I found out that Bruce Willis was going to be promoting the fourth Die Hard movie in Second Life, I thought (in the words of an action film that isn't one of the Die Hard movies): "Oh, yeah! This just keeps getting better and better!"
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Microsoft Awarded For Hurricane Katrina Efforts
Before Hurricane Katrina even hit land, a small group of Microsoft Consulting Services employees began building, on their own and without prompting from some marketing group, a Web application to help those affected tell loved ones they were still alive after the storm. This week, the American Red Cross honored the company for its brief departure from the competitive hustle and bustle.
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Microsoft Shifts Server And Developer Tools Business
Microsoft announced today that it is moving senior VP Bob Muglia and his server and tools group from Microsoft's platform products and services division to the business division. The move makes some sense, but it's partially a head scratcher.
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AT&T To Offer Data Protection For Non-Smartphone Users
Let's face it. Not all enterprise workers are deemed worthy or important enough to use a smartphone (i.e. BlackBerry or Treo). Many millions of knowledge workers are stuck using regular, consumer-grade devices as their work mobile phone. But that doesn't mean their phone numbers, contacts, and other data isn't any less valuable than their smartphone-equipped betters, er, colleagues. AT&T has decided that their information is worth protecting, too, and will start doing so on June 8.
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3G Wireless Data Usage Set To Jump Nearly 10x By 2011
The research from iGR shows that in 2006 all mobile data customers sent and received about 0.73 terabytes of data per month. iGR expects that number to climb to 6.94 terabytes in in the next four years. That's a lot of bytes flying through the air. Will the networks be able to handle it all?
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Google Unified Search Is Only The Beginning
Something is happening in online search and we don't really know where it's headed. That's my conclusion, two days into the buzz surrounding the debut of Google's new "universal" search. The feature beefs up the results returned when you do search on Google's home page, adding news, videos, images, and maps to the search results you used to get.
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We're Taking A Field Trip In Second Life
InformationWeek and Doctor Dobb's Journal are leading an intrepid band of explorers on a Second Life field trip Friday -- to the beta grid, where we'll be playing with voice in Second Life. Everybody's welcome, so if you're reading this, join us at noon Second Life Time (which is the same thing as Pacific time in the U.S.).
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RealNetworks Buys Sony Division For Mobile Media Technology
RealNetworks bought a division of Sony called Sony NetServices for $9 million. The deal will give RealNetworks technology that broadcasts music, video, and games to mobile phones in Europe. Is mobile content still a viable long-term play?
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FCC Gives iPhone Thumbs Up: Guess That Means Apple Will Make The June Deadline
The iPhone today was officially approved by the FCC. That's right, Mac fans, you were right and we bloggers were wrong. It looks like your iPhone party will commence on schedule next month.
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Will Google's Universal Search Spell The End Of Search Engine Marketing?
Google yesterday unveiled its new universal search, a move that adds content such as relevant videos, images, news, and maps to standard Web links with search queries. Will this move spell the end of search engine marketing?
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What's Hot From WinHEC? Windows Home Server
LOS ANGELES -- Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference is winding down, and I'm trying to figure out what I've seen that's important. I mean really important. Not data, but real information. I'd say three things. One is the Rally technology I wrote about on Tuesday. Another is the speed that solid-state memory (like flash RAM) is showing in overtaking hard drives as primary storage for PCs. And the third is how really just plain neat the Windows Home Server product looks. You may not have heard much about it yet, but trust me, by the time it ships late this year, you're going to want it.
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The Top 10 Most Influential Security Visionaries Of All Time
AT&T chief security officer Ed Amoroso, speaking before a packed auditorium Thursday at his company's cybersecurity conference, wanted to test the collective knowledge of those in the room. How well-studied were they in the visionaries who've had the greatest impact on IT security? Not very well, it turns out, as few could put names to the faces projected as part of Amoroso's slide show. Amoroso was giving props to the giants on whose shoulders today's security pros stand.
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Protecting Children Online: How Much Can--And Should--MySpace Do?
Just yesterday, the superintendent of our school district sent an e-mail to all parents detailing how two men attempted to entice a 12-year-old girl -- who was one block from her school -- into their van. In our extraordinarily safe community where parents hover over their children like chickens over new-laid eggs, this was huge news. No one can stop talking about it. An artist rendering of the two men already has been plastered throughout town. Yet very few of the parents I've talked to are aware of the current debate going on about whether MySpace should release the name of registered sex offenders it has found on its popular social networking site.
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Qualcomm Plans Healthcare And Wellness MVNO
Just when you thought the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) model might go away, some big giant pulls it back into the limelight. The giant this week is Qualcomm and its play is a health and fitness MVNO. So Qualcomm wants to become a service provider?
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Microsoft's Windows Home Server Takes Interesting Storage Twist
Longhorn, Centro, Cougar, and the ever-humble "Home." What's with all the names? Well, now that Vista is well on its way -- sales reputed to be 40 million and climbing -- Microsoft appears to be shifting its attention to a dizzying array of variations on its Windows Server operating system.
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Did Anyone Else Notice that Apple Lost $4 Billion in Value Yesterday?
It's stories like this that make bloggers cringe. Yesterday, tech blog Engadget received supposed insider information about a delay of the iPhone until October, and another delay for Leopard, pushing the new OS to January of 2008. Duty bound to report to its readers, it filed a post. Within minutes, some people who read the post were selling their Apple stock, which dipped 3% in mid-day trading yesterday. The origin of the information was an internal Apple memo...which turned out to be fake. Fake or not, Apple's market capitalization sunk by $4 billion once the memo became public.
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Now Every Mobile Phone Can Be an iPhone
Well, not exactly. Today Samsung announced that is has developed an 8 gigabyte microSD card. Since many phones are equipped with microSD card slots, they'll be able to carry just as many songs or videos as the forthcoming iPhone. The experience probably won't be quite the same. But what the heck, that's a lot of storage for a phone.
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Device Management Is The Next Battlegound For Business Mobility
The first wave of the mobile business wars was defined by two fronts. Front one was the vertical market. A few verticals, like healthcare, led the way to mobility and vendors who were ready for these markets and their unique demands won. Those who kept waiting for the universal mobile office in-a-box lost. The other front was push e-mail, which RIM's BlackBerry has obviously captured. What's next in the fight for mobile business dollars?
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Will Mobile Advertising Really Work?
Get ready for advertising on your cell phone. According to AOL CEO Randy Falco the mobile advertising market could be worth $5 billion in the next five years. Is this just a move to defend AOL's decision to buy Third Screen Media? And does mobile advertising really have a chance?
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Voice In Second Life Gets Two Thumbs Up. Or Claws. Or Tentacles. Or Whatever Appendage Is Appropriate For Your Avatar
I had a chance to test-drive voice in Second Life this afternoon and found it to be an outstanding experience, after a few bumps and problems getting started. Read the first-impression review of voice in Second Life.. Voice is going to fundamentally change the Second Life experience, in which communication has now consisted exclusively of text chat, with the sometime addition of out-of-band phone calls and Skyping.
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OK, So I Was Wrong About Origami
LOS ANGELES -- A year ago Microsoft tried to manipulate the launch of its Origami ultra-mobile PC (UMPC). The reaction wasn't quite what Microsoft anticipated: Origami was basically laughed back into the laboratory. Even I piled on with a blog entry that sniped, "Origami is proof of that old adage that when what you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Microsoft's got Windows, so everything looks like a Windows PC. It's a company that needs some new ideas. Meanwhile, I don't expect we'll hear much more about Origami." So this week at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) here what am I hearing about? Right. Origami.
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Newest Iteration Of Wi-Fi One Step Closer To Certification
According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, we can expect 802.11n products at our local electronics retailer in the near future as its certification program creeps towards a launch set for late June. The WFA also says products that are certified under the 802.11n draft 2.0 will get a fancy new logo. Sounds exciting. Will reality live up to the hype?
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Searchology: Google Unveils Universal Search
Google today is releasing new search infrastructure to combine its video, local, book, and images search systems with its text search. Marissa Mayer is describing the new system as I type, but basically it will lead to much more relevant search results.
As an example, searching for the "I Have a Dream" speech will return a Google Video clip of the speech itself, just below the text of the speech.
Google is also adding contextual navigation links (like Ask.com) to let users drill down to a particular type of information like "books" or "blogs."
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Lost Your Data? What's It Worth To You?
Should virtue be its own reward when it comes to returning lost data these days? Sharon Gaudin's story about IBM's plea to find lost tapes with sensitive employee data really got me into one of those Stephen Colbert finger-wagging moments.
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A Darkness on the Edge of the Universe
It hasn't made front pages yet, and it has little to do with "business innovation powered by technology," but an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University has provided the strongest evidence yet that our universe is pervaded by invisible dark matter. It's a discovery that could at once confirm the Einsteinian view of the fundamental laws of gravity, and re-shape our basic thinking about the cosmos.
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Searchology
The entire Bay Area tech press corps seems to be here at Google this morning for an event the company is calling "Searchology." No less than five professional video cameras, plus the odd consumer camcorder, have been trained on the front of the room, where two video screens display "Search ] ology" above a bar of the blue, red, yellow, and green that most everyone now associates with Google.
Elliot Schrage, VP of global communications and public affairs is scheduled to speak shortly, followed by Craig Silverstein, Google's technology director, Ben Gomes , software engineer, and Kerry Rodden, senior user experience researcher.
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Oracle Acquisition Is Latest Twist In Obsession With SAP
Ah, obsession. It drives the plot of the world’s most famous love stories. It gave Glenn Close a role in “Fatal Attraction.” It manifests as a disorder that keeps psychiatrists busy. And it lingers between the lines in every announcement that has come from Oracle and SAP this week: an obsession, with the other company.
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Washington State Becomes First To Ban Texting While Driving
Many states already have laws on the books that ban talking on mobile phones while driving. Since composing text messages is even more distracting than typing a phone number, it seems pretty obvious that texting while driving is dangerous. The lawmakers in Washington agree. Starting January 1, 2008, drivers caught in the act face fines of over $100 and the confiscation of their phone.
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Welcome to the 21st Century! Leave Your Phone Number Behind
This is a first: I just entered the contact information for a new contributor to InformationWeek into my address book, and here's what I put in: His Skype address, his e-mail address, his Second Life avatar name, his Twitter URL, and his blog URL. It feels weird to not have a phone number for the guy -- welcome to the 21st Century, Mitch!
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Windows Rally Technology at 1: Walking, And Ready To Run
The Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, WinHEC 2007, going on this week in Los Angeles, marks the first birthday of Microsoft's Windows Rally technology. Rally is a package of software technologies built into Vista that make it supremely easy to set up a wireless network and add devices to it. That may thrill you, or it may not. I've struggled to get wireless networking going in enough situations that it thrilled me, I can tell you.
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Enterprise Search Is This Year's Hot Topic For Business Intelligence
This morning I soaked in the latest updates from the world of enterprise Web technology at the packed-out Enterprise Search Summit in New York City. Based on what I heard, no one seems to know for sure what enterprise search will look like in the next few years. But everyone agrees on one thing: It's hot.
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Zander Bets Big on 3G Networks
This morning's announcement of Motorola's new product lineup for 2007 represented the greatest comeback since, uhh, last night, when the Phoenix Suns outscored the San Antonio Spurs 12-1 over the last couple of minutes to tie up their NBA playoff series. Whether the new mobile phones will have a similar effect on Ed Zander's career prospects remains to be seen.
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A Civil Society -- Online
Back in the old, forgotten days BTW (Before The Web), when screens were green and text was all you had to work with, I spent a couple of years as the sysop of an local online forum called the Women's BBS -- a discussion group where women (and men) could feel free to discuss political, personal, and technical issues without having to deal with the obscene pick-up messages, virulent insults, and other pleasantries that we got from folks uncomfortable with our presence.
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Motorola Disappoints With "New" Device
This morning in a studio in Chelsea on the west side of Manhattan Motorola unveiled a slew of mobile devices that will be hitting the market in coming months. The portfolio marks what's next for Motorola. Too bad it was a rehash of the devices announced three months ago at 3GSM. The one new device was, well, read on to find out...
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Where Is Motorola’s Strategy?
With only one new device being announced today, audience members were left wondering what’s really next for Motorola. The hype meter definitely misled many of the tech press on this one. We actually expected Motorola to make a significant step forward. It didn’t.
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Preventing Jerks From Taking Over The Internet
Cory Doctorow's latest column deals with a subject that's been on the top of my mind for a couple of months now: Keeping conversation civil on the Internet. When Web designer Kathy Sierra felt forced to cancel a speaking engagement after receiving death threats on her blog, it underscored for me how ugly the Internet has become, and how much I, and other people, had come to take it for granted.
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Some CIOs Taking Budgeting Precautions For Possible Downturn
OK, so two that I'm aware of...
But my momma once said that it only takes two determined people to botch everyone else's best-laid plans. Of course, she was saying this to my little brother and me while whupping our asses for spilling paint all over the garage.
But there are two companies (one in retail, one in financial services) that are sufficiently worried about a downturn in the market (the word they used was "recession") that the CEOs have asked their CIOs to prepare a "plan B" budget for next year that takes this into account. On what are they basing their concerns? One CEO said that things have been going so well for the past three to four years, that we're just bound to have a downturn. Roll the bones, baby...
Alternate or contingent budgets are nothing new, but these two companies at least are putting together real plans to prep for the worst at a time when most indicators show nothing but good days ahead for the near term.
McCartney Catalog Going Digital, But Abbey Road May Be At Risk
It's a Beatles two-fer Tuesday this morning, with a dose of news sure to interest the over-40 crowd. First up, while the Beatles' catalog still isn't available for download on iTunes or any other music service, EMI has announced that Sir Paul's Wings and solo work will soon be released digitally.
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If An FBI Analyst Can Steal National Secrets, What Are Your Workers Lifting?
Looking back on the story about the former Marine and FBI analyst who stole classified information from both the White House and the FBI's own database, I think there are some important lessons to be learned from this one.
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Photo Essay: Things To Do In Second Life
Second Life resident Hannah Hannya shares a lovely photo essay illustrating things to do in Second Life. A main source of power for the virtual world is that it's not a game, it's not a 3-D modeling tool, it's not community software. It's a set of software and networking tools that you can use to build games, or 3-D models, or communities, or do a great many other things -- including taking fine photos. Great job, Hannah!
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Why Is Everyone So Afraid Of IT Analysts?
The ink was barely dry on last year's InformationWeek cover story analyzing the credibility of IT analysts when the e-mails started hitting my inbox. Some readers applauded our efforts to examine the criticism often leveled at the analyst market, while others thought the story fell flat for lack of specific or new examples. Funny thing about the latter -- whenever I'd get a supposedly jilted customer on the phone, they'd clam up.
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You Can Order The iPhone Today On eBay For $1,000
Do you have $1,000 sitting around for the iPhone? If so, you can buy the most-coveted cell phone of the 21st century from some retailers on eBay.
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RIM CEO's Mea Culpa Over-Reaches
Didn't anyone teach Research in Motion co-chairman Jim Balsillie to never say never? Apparently not. In a recent interview about last month's BlackBerry email service outage, Balsillie said, "It shouldn't have happened, and it won't happen again." Jim might have to eat those words eventually.
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Why Linux Will Turn Microsoft's Ballmer Into A Boy Named Sue
Microsoft is between a rock and a hard place. Google is eating its lunch on the Internet, and big PC vendors like Dell are warming up to Linux. What to do? Sue, Sue, Sue.
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Will T-Mobile Be The One To Carry The iPhone In Europe?
According to people familiar with the negotiations, T-Mobile (the one based in Germany, not the U.S.) is the front runner in Europe to carry the iPhone. Some analysts don't believe that the German company is the best match for Apple's product, though. What's giving them pause?
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Will AMD's Quad Core Be A Phenom?
Will AMD's announcement that it'll ship its Phenom (previously, Agena) desktop and Barcelona server quad-core processors later this year blunt the advantage Intel has achieved by being first to market with quads?
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Research Shows Hispanics Are A Key Mobile Demographic
According to research from M:Metrics, young Hispanics are among the most active consumers of mobile content. The mobile Web in the U.S. could be defined by this key demographic.
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Is Microsoft Still Just Posturing Over Open Source?
Microsoft is now on a public relations offensive about open source and patent law, with the company's general counsel claiming in a Fortune article that open source software infringes upon at least 235 Microsoft patents, with 107 accounted for by the Linux kernel and graphical user interface alone. But is Microsoft still just blowing hot air?
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Microsoft Preps Storage As A Service
The rumors have been out since at least last April, if not earlier, that Microsoft was readying a hosted storage service under the Windows Live banner. Here and there little snippets leaked. Now, apparently, it's a soon-to-be reality. Microsoft is readying the rumored Live Drive service, now called Windows Live Folders, as a hosted, collaborative storage service delivered over the Web.
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Reading The WinHEC Tea Leaves
Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, known to its friends as WinHEC, is this week in Los Angeles. It will be a week of Deep Geek -- and it won't be all Vista all the time, either. You can download the program as a very colorful Excel spreadsheet. The six session tracks and more than 100 hours of sessions reveal a lot about what's on Microsoft's mind when it comes to Windows: the top three things seem to be fixing Vista's device driver shortfall, pushing Windows Server, and making sure connected devices and a handful of new hardware technologies play well with its flagship operating system.
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Internet Age Verification: Why Are We Kidding Ourselves?
I've singled out Linden Lab for criticism for its scheme to require users of Second Life to offer proof of age before accessing adult content. But Linden Lab is only following standard practice on the Internet, where operators of porn sites and the government agree to pretend that we can verify the ages of people who access adult content online by requiring them to submit electronic documents.
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The Smart Folks At Dr. Dobb's Journal Lead By Example Doing Business At Second Life
I've been privileged in my short but intense career in Second Life to be able to look over the shoulders of some of the smartest businesspeople in the virtual world -- the team working for our sister publication, Dr. Dobb's Journal,. John Jainschigg, their online editor-in-chief, is always doing 12 things at once and moves three times faster than a normal person, but I was finally able to sneak up on him and put him in a cage until he told me what DDJ is up to in SSL.
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Why Doesn't Microsoft Have A Cult Religion?
Apple has one. So does the Java community, Oracle, IBM, and Google. Lord knows anyone who uses Linux or free and open source software is dedicated to spreading the gospel of St. Linus Torvalds and St. Richard Stallman. But does anyone really worship the Gods of Redmond?
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Jaiku: Like Twitter, But With More Features
Jaiku offers an alternative to Twitter that might be more attractive for many users. Jaiku includes built-in tools to integrate external sources of information -- weather, headline news, blogs -- into the stream. It also allows you to set up groups of users, for your friends, family, customers and partners, or anyone who shares a common interest, something that Twitter will likely get but doesn't now have.
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My Cousin In Mumbai Could Have Written That
It's every reporter's secret nightmare: a rival in Asia, connected to the West by mobile phone and by modem, who can do your job just as well as you can for a fraction of the salary. The Web site Pasadenanow.com this week started outsourcing reporting on City Council meetings and other local affairs to two Indian journalists, one in Mumbai and one in Bangalore. Combined salaries: $19,200, not enough to even pay for a studio apartment for a year in Pasadena, much less actually live and work there.
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Newspaper Reporting Being Outsourced To India
Farewell, Nation, this may be my last blog post. Some in the IT community, particularly those whose jobs had been displaced or were about to be displaced by Indian outsourcers, said I'd get my comeuppance after I wrote a column a few years ago about my sister-in-law potentially losing her job overseas. It seems my turn on the unemployement line may come sooner than I think as journalism jobs are now being sent to India...
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Will The CIA Censor Google Earth?
Controversy surrounding satellite mapping services like Google Earth continues to grow. This week Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, the head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, told AP that commercial satellite services may need to be edited or censored to protect U.S. interests. Is this just another example of someone who can't deal with the reality of the Web?
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A Day In The Life Of Cigna's CISO: 7 Things You Didn't Know
I recently visited Cigna chief information security officer Craig Shumard at his company's offices in suburban Connecticut. On a clear, sunny day that slowly melted away the last vestiges of winter -- mostly scattered mounds of snow encrusted with rock and dirt -- across the rolling hills of the employee benefits provider's campus, I got to see firsthand how the security chief at a big-time company operates and interacts with his staff. It was impressive, to say the least.
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Microsoft's Virtualization Problems Keep Coming
Two months ago, Microsoft denied reports that the next generation of its Windows Server virtualization software, code-named Viridian, was behind schedule. Last month, Microsoft pushed back the first beta for Viridian from the first half of this year to the second half. Now, it's cutting out some features altogether. Not a great storyline.
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Will Black Be The New Green For The Web?
Did you know that an all-white Web page takes roughly 74 watts to display, while an all-black page uses only 59 watts? This little piece of information could lead to a revolution in Web design.
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Poll: Majority Would Buy Google Or Yahoo-Branded Mobile Device
A recent study by The Equs Group shows that 55.5% of U.S. consumers would purchase a mobile device made by Google or Yahoo if such hardware existed. That's a lot of trust in brands that have no history in actually designing, engineering and manufacturing mobile devices.
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RIM, Motorola Ready To Rumble With iPhone
With RIM's recent product announcements, it's clear the Canadian smartphone maker isn't ready to cede any market share to Apple's yet-to-be-released device. And in an interview this week, Motorola CEO Ed Zander leaked Motorola's plans to launch a new "media monster" device next week. The battle is joined!
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No Longer Live, Not On Memorex: The Cassette Is Dead
It's official: those mix tapes that used to melt when you left them on the dashboard have been relegated to the dustbin of technological history. A spate of stories out of the UK is proclaiming that the cassette is dead, on the news that Currys, the British equivalent of Best Buy, has announced it'll stop selling them.
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The Cutest Video On Installing Ubuntu Linux Done By a Librarian In Washington, Vermont, That You'll Ever See
Blogger and librarian Jessamyn West got several PCs as donations, but they didn't have an operating system. So she installed Ubuntu Linux, and videotaped the process. The result is not only the cutest video on installing Ubuntu Linux done by a librarian in Washington, Vermont, that you'll ever see. It's also the only one with a catchy Zydeco soundtrack. Watch it after the jump.
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Why Do Workers Steal Data?
I was fascinated by Sharon Gaudin's recent article reporting that 45% of professionals steal data when they leave their jobs. I couldn't help wondering why they do it. A desire to suck up to their new supervisors? A sense of grievance against the company that they're leaving? Or just because they can?
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Nokia Goes Green With Cell Phone Charger Alerts
Nokia is determined to help its customers be a little greener. New Nokia phone chargers will use alerts to remind users to unplug their chargers from electrical sockets once their phones are charged.
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Unlock Your Car Door With Your Mobile Phone
Can you really open a car door with a cell phone? According to one story floating around the blogosphere, yes you can.
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USB Cellular Modems to Replace PC Cards?
ABI Research says cellular data modems that attach to computers via USB, rather than PC Cards or ExpressCards, may be the wave of the future. As a user of a laptop without an ExpressCard or PC Card slot, a USB modem became my only choice. You know what? It works just fine.
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With Santa Rosa, Intel's Laptops Get Serious About Wireless
Are you a desktop PC person, into having the highest performance processor, graphics card, and memory you can cram into a mini-tower? Then you're so yesterday, because Intel sees consumer laptops as the next big thing (okay, they already are). The chip giant intends to use its new Santa Rosa platform and next year's Montevina, to drive the market from its current density of less than "half a notebook per household" to one notebook per person.
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C'Mon, Palm. Where Are the Real Innovations?
Palm released yet another incrementally updated version of the Treo smartphone yesterday. The 755p bears CDMA technology and will be found on Sprint's network first. The biggest step forward this time? No more external antenna. It may be the first Treo device to offer built-in Microsoft Direct Push Technology email, but it still runs Palm's Garnet OS, and doesn't bother updating the wireless data radio, or most other facets of the device.
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Frequent Traveler Fights Back!
This has probably happened to a fair number of you frequent travelers: you're being helped at a hotel registration desk, when the phone behind the counter rings. You know what inevitably happens... Yep, the person serving you picks up the phone to deal with the call-in customer instead. Well, last night, after I got stuck in Dallas on my return home from the Software 2007 show and was put up at a local hotel chain, this happened to me. Here's what I decided to do...
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Take 5: Business Mobility Beyond Push E-mail
Welcome to this week's edition of Take 5, our regular feature on Over The Air where we ask a wireless or enterprise IT industry insider five questions about a specific area of interest. This week's guest is Shirley Macbeth, senior director of marketing for Sybase iAnywhere. Our topic is "Business Mobility Beyond Push E-mail." Let's dig in.
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Cognos Brings Business Intelligence To Your BlackBerry
Doug Henschen at Intelligent Enterprise takes an in-depth look at the mobile version of Cognos 8. You want reports and KPIs on your BlackBerry, you got it!
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Bill Gates... YouTube Watcher, Zillow User
Isn't it nice to know that while the world's richest man may have his mind sharply focused on the future, he also wastes time on the same Web sites as you?
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Where's Web Software Fallen Short? Ask Diebold
If there's one area where software on the Web is suspect, it's in the area of the wisdom of crowds. So much could be accomplished; so little has been. My candidate for the party that's fallen short more often and by a wider margin than any other is Diebold Inc.
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Microsoft, Kraft Foods Enter Second Life; Starwood Hotels Returns
Looks like Microsoft will announce its arrival into Second Life tomorrow. Kraft Foods entered the world earlier this week with a virtual supermarket. And Starwood Hotels, which made a big splash last year by prototyping one of its upcoming hotels in-world, is back with the final product.
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What’s the Most Innovative Software?
That’s a trick question, because most of the innovation I’m seeing at the Software 2007 conference in Silicon Valley this week isn’t in traditional, on-premise software, it’s in software services.
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Think OpenOffice.org Instead Of Microsoft Office, Save Yourself Hundreds Of Dollars
In my transition from Windows to the Mac, I faced a real quandry with regard to Microsoft Office. I don't spend much time working in an office suite. I don't want to spend $300 for software I'm not spending much time with. But when I need an office suite, I need it badly, and I need it to be Microsoft Office-compatible. I don't want to mess around with an open-source alternative that might let me down when I need it most.
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How Long Will You Wait For Silverlight?
Microsoft's been coy about when version 1.1 of its Silverlight Web technology, which has been labeled an Adobe Flash-killer, will come out. But Microsoft architect evangelist Alexander Strauss may have leaked a bit of news in his blog.
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OK, The iPhone Research Has Got To Stop!
Even I am getting sick of it. But it's my duty to report, so deal. The latest findings from the ChangeWave Alliance show that 9% of respondents are likely to buy an iPhone when it launches sometime next month. ChangeWave surveyed one of the largest samples yet, nearly 3,500 people. The most interesting result from the study reveals that the number of people preparing to change carriers in the coming months is increasing, likely because of the iPhone Effect. ChangeWave goes so far as to say, "Apple's iPhone rocks the cell phone industry."
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Sun's JavaPhone Could Beat Apple To The iPhone Punch
Seems like everybody wants to get in on the "I've got a better smartphone" party. The "best press coverage for something that doesn't exist award" goes to Apple, which has earned plaudits for its iPhone, even though there's a big question mark as to how well the thing will work. Now Sun has struck back.
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HP Looks To Trounce Competition With Fire-Breathing Laptop
HP lifted the curtain on more than a dozen new laptops at the HP Mobility Summit in Shanghai, China, today. On the ultrahigh-end for consumers you'll see HP's new 20.1-inch (yes, you read that correctly, t-w-e-n-t-y inches) multimedia laptop. HP didn't mention if it comes with its own dolly to cart it around. Business customers will also find a slew of new ultraportables aimed at them, starting with a 12.1-inch laptop that weighs a mere 3.6 pounds. More on the fire-breather inside.
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Too Much Innovation?
Is there such a thing as too much innovation? Yes, say CIOs at the Software 2007 conference. Well, that's not entirely true -- it's not a matter of too much innovation but, how it scales...
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Lunch With FedEx CIO Rob Carter
I’m here at the Software 2007 conference in Santa Clara, Calif., attended by a who’s who of Silicon Valley CEOs and other executive managers, all talking about what’s next in software innovation.
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Woman Gives Birth -- Husband Twitters
One of my Twitter friends, Nick Wilson, posted the message about 15 hours ago: "Mrs W showing early signs of oncoming labor, could be an interesting morning..." Nick continued updates throughout the childbirth, and then announced the new arrival when it was done.
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Advice to Software Vendors From The CIOs of Disney, FedEx, Unilever, and Motorola
Here are the quick, one-paragraph answers the CIOs on the panel here at the conference offered as advice to software vendors in how to deal with large customers like their companies...
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The Real Value of Web Services
Now on stage at the Software 2007 Conference are CIOs from four large companies -- Fedex, Unilever, Disney, and Motorola. Rob Carter, CIO of Fedex, just said that by using Web services, Fedex is able to transform the whole paradigm of how and why customers use Web sites. Rather than relating to Web sites as "desinations" where users "go somewhere to do something," Fedex is using Web services to create "connections," where customers can embed features and technologies in their own applications and create a connection between themselves and Fedex.
CIOs, Your Vendors Are Avoiding You!
I'm sitting in ballroom A at the Santa Clara Convention Center for Software 2007, watching Marc Benioff walk through a product demo (when are software CEOs who keynote industry events going to resist the temptation to put an audience to sleep with a demo and instead talk about compelling issues like overhauling restrictive maintenance contracts, promoting customer-driven innovation, and the like?). Earlier today I moderated a panel that included Dennis Moore, head of emerging technologies at SAP Labs, and Cliff Reeves, GM of Microsoft's .NET platform strategy. Both Moore and Reeves each dropped a mini bombshell about how their companies will approach customers in the future -- and it involves bypassing the CIO...
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AltaVista Search Researcher Recalls Days Of End User 'Technical Support'
Louis Monier, one of the original search engine researchers who is still tackling search-related work at Google, has a story to tell about the early days of the AltaVista search engine. Monier was the head of the development team, and one of his motives for wanting to keep AltaVista's index of the World Wide Web up to date was to keep his developers free from support calls.
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Did Dispute With Insurer Force Amazon To Settle With IBM?
Back in March, InformationWeek.com readers were the first to learn that Amazon had been sued by its own insurance provider as a result of IBM's patent claims against the Web retailer. On Tuesday, Amazon caved in to IBM's demand for payment before the case got to a jury. There could be a connection here.
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Generic Names Get Lost In A Search-Driven World
In a world where companies, products, and even people live and die by online search, the quest for unique names is taking precedence over being average or mundane.
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Patent Impact: How Innovation Is Different In IT
In researching the Supreme Court's major patent ruling last week, some of the most interesting interviews and comments centered around how innovation is different in IT than in other industries. One of the defining differences—reinforced by Amazon's surprising settlement with IBM announced today—is the degree to which IT technologies and innovations build on each other.
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Where BI And CRM Need Major Home Improvement
I've long held the view that The Home Depot and Lowe's -- like many of the largest retailers -- use IT and their pricing power to strategic advantage over smaller, locally owned businesses.
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Mobile Ubuntu Linux Coming To A Smartphone Near You
After years of waiting for a successful mobile version of Linux, it looks like Linux is finally on its way to a cell phone near you thanks to some Ubuntu developers and Intel.
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Who Wants Samsung's Q1 For Vista Ultramobile PC? (I Do.)
You gotta hand it to Samsung, a company which doesn't fear to tread in areas others have pursued without much success. Take its new Ultra-Mobile PC (please).
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Getting Reacquainted With Twitter
I blew the dust off my Twitter account over the weekend and started using it again. It struck me again how Twitter's critics don't get that its appeal is social. It's not about staring into the mirror and talking about yourself all the time. It's a big chat room. It's about holding conversations with other people.
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AT&T Gives The Midsize Biz Something To Be Happy About: Unified Messaging
AT&T's unified messaging product has been available to small businesses for about three years. AT&T has scaled the product for medium-sized businesses and supports up to 100 access lines. Now slightly bigger companies will know the joy of the single in-box.
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Forum Nokia Offers Up New Version of Its Series 40 Platform
Announced at the JavaOne show in San Francisco this week, the 5th Edition of Series 40 offers developers new API support and the newest advances in Java technology. The goal? Easier development for the highest-volume platform available, i.e., better stuff on mobile phones for plebs.
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Mobile Ubuntu Linux Coming To A Smartphone Near You
After years of waiting for a usable mobile version of Linux, it looks like Linux is finally on its way to a cell phone near you thanks to some Ubuntu developers and Intel.
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The Future of Software - You Decide
Hey, Nation, we're looking for help on ideas that would help improve the state of enterprise and desktop software. We're polling our readers, but also would love for additional help through this blog. So here's the question, and please post your answers below:
As you look at the future of software, what ideal (but realistic) feature or features would you like to see built into either an enterprise or desktop application?
Voice Coming To Second Life May 23, Maybe, According To Somewhat-Unclear Statement From Linden Lab
Linden Lab released a statement on its blog which, if I'm reading it correctly, makes me very happy: They're planning to activate voice on the mainstream Second Life service May 23, after a couple of months of pounding on it in the service's beta area. I was ambivalent about voice when it was first announced, but, having spent more and more time in Second Life -- more and more time doing business in Second Life -- I can see where it's essential, and I'm extremely jazzed about it.
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Second Life Adding Age Verification. Identity Thieves Celebrate
Linden Lab plans in mid-May to introduce age verification systems to Second Life designed to keep kids out of adult areas. It's almost certainly legally necessary, to protect the company and adult content providers in-world from civil and criminal prosecution. But, still, it's a bad idea. It won't stop kids from accessing adult content. And it provides tremendous opportunity for identity thieves, creating a rich store of Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, dates of birth, and other identifying information.
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Are You Ready For The $10-Multicore-Cell Phone Future?
Draw a line that connects these three dots: Dot One is labeled "Intel Road Map Stretches From Quad Cores To Mobile Internet." Dot Two is labeled "Nokia Licenses Moore Microprocessor Patents." Dot Three is labeled "India Looks To Produce World's First $10 Laptop." What does the space enclosed by these three lines look like? The future of computing. And what does the space outside the lines look like? I'd say, the computer business as we know it today.
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Carnival Of Mobilists # 71
The Carnival of Mobilists # 71 is up over at Silicon Valley Himalayan Expedition. This edition includes a wide range of mobile topics including music phones, how to measure mobile marketing, SMS and mobile marketing, a look at the mobile data market, Nokia S60 applications development, VoIP and the Nokia N95 smartphone, and the Google Phone. Check it out.
What Fool Would Name Excel To A List Of Great Software?
When it came to naming the Greatest Software Ever Written, 11 out of my 12 candidates stood up fairly well to critical review. The one that didn't was Microsoft's Excel. There may well be double the number of dubious candidates on my present list, the Greatest Software on the Web.
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Tweens Are The New Wireless Growth Market; They Want Grown-Up Phones, Not Kiddieware
According to a new report from researcher iGR, tweens, or those between 5 and 9 years old, are the newest growth segment for wireless. Is the market really that saturated?
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Corporate Linux Desktop Barriers To Fall?
"My guys are big advocates of Linux," says Martin High, director of IT at Valeo Behavioral Healthcare in Topeka, Kan. "We're taking a hard look at it on the desktop." Wait. On the desktop? For a business?
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Accepting The Wisdom Of Many Over The Wisdom Of One
Having just finished an article on so-called online "influentials" based on the notion that 10% of the population unduly influences the other 90% in what to buy, wear, eat, etc., I decided to finally read The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, and found myself wholeheartedly buying into his premise that the consolidation of information provided by groups results in better decisions than could have been made by any single person.
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Video: A Four-Minute Tour Of Real-World Companies In Second Life
This nifty video includes Sears, IBM, Dell, American Apparel, NBC, and more, but it's missing Dr. Dobb's Journal, our sister publication, and those villains at CNET. The video was produced by virtual worlds consultants the Project Factory. Watch it below the jump. (Via Metaversed)
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Maybe It Is Time To Make Useful Mobile Business Products
Do you think the mobile business sector is stuck in technology worship and unable to actually, you know, build useful products? That's what Daniel Taylor over at the Mobile Enterprise Blog argues. And I think he's right.
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Samsung Debuts New Ultra UMPC
Samsung takes another shot at the Ultra Mobile Personal Computer (UMPC) with an updated model. Can the Q1 Ultra overcome the major shortcomings of its predecessor, which was named one of the biggest tech flops of 2006?
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Evidence That The iPhone Might Arrive On Time?
According to Boy Genius, AT&T has circulated an email to its retail outlets limiting personal vacation requests from June 15 to July 15. The reason? AT&T is saying those 4 weeks might be the "biggest selling period we have seen in a few years." Does this all-but-confirm the iPhone's launch?
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Dell Joining Microsoft, Novell in SUSE Deal Is Big Boost For Linux
The news that Dell will jump into the deal between Microsoft and Novell to boost the latter's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server pours some more water on what's been a steady drip, drip, drip of added support this year for the open source operating system. (I mean that in a good way!)
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Is Microsoft Really Trying To Buy Yahoo?
Yesterday the New York Post shocked the blogosphere by reporting that Microsoft was in talks to buy Yahoo. Within minutes of the report bloggers were firing away on the topic. And then the Wall Street Journal stepped up as the "official" voice and claimed that the Post's report was without justification. So is Microsoft going to buy Yahoo or not?
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Vodafone And Orange Fight For The iPhone
While we're still waiting for the June launch of the iPhone on this side of the pond, U.K. carriers Orange and Vodafone are fighting it out for exclusive rights to the device when it debuts in Europe later this year.
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Greatest Web Software: Let's Hear Your Choices
What are the examples of the best software on the Web--the software that's made it what it is today? It's not an easy question.
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Listen To InformationWeek's Mitch Wagner Interviewed About Second Life On Radio Slovenia
I got an e-mail the other day from someone who said he's a journalist for Slovenian Public Radio, and he wanted to interview me for a segment he's doing on Second Life. We did the interview Tuesday morning at 9 am PDT, over the phone, for about a half hour. His English was great. I babbled.
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Why Is Linden Lab Still Publicizing Misleading Usage Stats?
In the past three weeks, I've seen press releases, news stories, and at least one press conference touting Second Life's millions of users. The NBA touted Second Life's 5 million users at a press conference to announce their new area in Second Life. Kraft included the number in an e-mail about its virtual supermarket in Second Life. BusinessWeek uses that number. But the number is bogus, technically accurate but highly misleading. Linden Lab, which develops and operates Second Life, knows it, but they highlight that number anyway.
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Sun To Reveal 'Project Indiana' At JavaOne
Sun Microsystems is set to embrace a more open source future, but will it do so with the help of a software layer that "doesn't matter if Solaris or Linux is underneath?"
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Adobe Adds Scene7 To Its Hosted Services Picture
Keep your eye on this acquisition. It could be a turning point of Adobe's plans to build a services strategy, not to mention saving your mailman's back and kill off that 110-page L.L. Bean catalog.
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Bloggers Be Aware (And Beware): Legal Pitfalls Abound
One myth of the blogosphere is that anything goes. After all--or so conventional wisdom says--that's what distinguishes bloggers from their colleagues in traditional media. Because they aren't hampered by timid editors, journalistic conventions, or even manners, they provide the public with unfiltered access to important events and opinions in a way that is both powerful and empowering. Indeed, the recent storm of hysteria over the proposed blogger code of conduct perpetrates the myth of the unfettered virtual reporter/pundit as someone who must be protected against lily-livered censors.
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Why A Microsoft-Yahoo Merger Would Spell Disaster For Both
An open letter from Eric Schmidt to Bill Gates: "Dear Bill, reports suggest Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo. Go for it! Please! I'll lend you the money!" OK, that's not really from Google's CEO to Gates, but it could be.
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Will The Monster Of Instability And Bugs Devour Second Life And Grind Up Its Bones?
You ever have the experience of moving to a new city -- a great city, like New York, Los Angeles, Paris, or London? For a couple of months, just walking down the street is magic, but then one day you wake up and, well, you notice the uncollected trash and the panhandlers and the fact that public transit is never on time. You still love it there, but you also wish that your bus stop didn't smell like pee. That's kind of where I am with Second Life.
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Microsoft Pursuing Deal To Buy Yahoo? Here Are Some Mergers We'd Really Like To See
The Web is abuzz with the news that Microsoft has restarted acquisition talks with Yahoo. But if you're talking about mega-tech-mergers, I can think of a bunch of hook-ups which make a lot more sense.
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SMS Really Means "Send Messages, Stupid!"
Korean teenagers send an average of 60.1 text messages per day. That's 2,000 per month. I did a quick calculation on how Americans might stack up. Americans are sending about 20 billion text messages per month. Divide that by 236 million wireless subscribers and you get 84.75 messages per month per user, or 2.82 per day. That's assuming everyone sends some text messages. They don't. Younger users likely account for the bulk of text messages sent in the U.S.
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Microsoft Looks To Buy Yahoo: Will They Pull The Trigger This Time?
According to a report in today's New York Post, Microsoft is pursuing a deal to acquire Yahoo. And the report claims that Microsoft may be desperate to buy Yahoo. Translation: Microsoft may actually close the deal this time.
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'Mob Rule' In Digg Case? Not.
In the wake of Digg's decision to allow entries to include the encryption key for AACS copy protection, several stories have appeared with headline's like "Mob Rule at Digg." I'm no great fan of Digg. It's obviously open to easy manipulation, and too much of what rises to the top is only slightly more important than who fathered Anna Nicole's baby. But the idea that Digg somehow caved in to pressure from a bunch of cyberdelinquents seems to me to be way off the mark.
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Mobile TV More Popular Than First Thought?
New data suggests that there is indeed some interest in mobile TV services. According to Research and Markets, between 60% and 85% of people who had experienced video on a handset said something to the effect of, "When can I buy one?" The biggest reason behind peoples' interest? Boredom.
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Intel, Inspired By Apple TV, Eyes Handheld Web Browser
Call it an Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC), call it a handheld Web browser, but whatever you call it, it's Intel's most important new foray since it tried--and failed miserably--to become the major supplier of cellphone chips. Whatever the name, the planned lightweight platform is the Apple of Intel's eye in more ways than one.
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Microsoft Buys Mobile Advertising Company ScreenTonic
Microsoft this week agreed to buy mobile advertising company ScreenTonic for an undisclosed sum. Will this move make Windows Mobile 6 a mobile advertising platform?
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More Than A Quarter Of Companies Do Not Enforce Wireless Security
According to a survey by Infosecurity Europe, 26 percent of companies do not enforce wireless security. So all those Wi-Fi networks out there are wide open?
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AMD Bolsters Its Mobile Strategy
Perhaps Dr. Ruiz and company should advertise it as "Turion... it's not your father's Core 2 Duo, and that is a good thing."
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Cellular Companies Want To Have Cake, Eat It Too
The Internet Neutrality debate took an entertaining turn this week when several cellular carriers responded to a petition by VoIP provider Skype asking the Federal Communications Commission to extend its consumer broadband principles to the wireless industry. What we got was a sideshow performance by Verizon Wireless, AT&T and a sock puppet "industry association," the CTIA. It appeared that after years of aggressively marketing broadband services, the wireless industry suddenly realized their network performance was inadequate for services like Skype's. At least that's the way I read it.
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The Muppets' Cookie Monster Eats A Computer In A 1971 Video
Well, actually, it's not the Cookie Monster, but a precursor. The Muppets created the skit for an IBM training video, and later performed a version on the Ed Sullivan Show, says Boing Boing, which also links to a Wikipedia entry about Cookie Monster. There's a Wikipedia entry about Cookie Monster?
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Why Green Computing Now Matters To CIOs
I spoke this morning with Ned Renzi, a partner in Pittsburgh-based VC Birchmere Ventures, and he's the first investor I've talked to about the whole "green" computing phenomenon who's been able to capture why some CIOs are starting to pay attention to the concept, and why all should start thinking about it soon. And the reason isn't solely based on an inconvenient truth...
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Want Free Business Software? Just Look At The Ads
Forget the mantra of Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff and a handful of other industry chatterbugs that "Software is Dead," and consider an even more radical concept: Paying for software is dead.
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Tips To Offshore-Proof Your Tech Career
For IT professionals, the word "offshore" is probably on the same list of dreaded terms as "death" and "taxes." But unlike dying and paying Uncle Sam, being a casualty of offshoring isn't inevitable.
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T-Mobile First To Launch Nationwide Fixed-Mobile Convergence Service
Over The Air reported in the past that T-Mobile was running a trial for a service whereby cell phones that have Wi-Fi on board can roam seamlessly between Wi-Fi hotspots and cellular networks. Looks like the trials were successful, because T-Mobile decided to deploy the service across the entire U.S. starting in mid-June. Who will benefit most, businesses or consumers?
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RIM Throws Consumers A Curve Ball
Research in Motion unveiled its latest prosumer smartphone today, the BlackBerry 8300 Curve. The Curve is RIM's second stab at providing consumers with a tricked-out smartphone that combines the best of business and pleasure. This larger version of the Pearl includes a full QWERTY keyboard, improved media player, and a 2-megapixel camera. But still no 3G.
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How Should You Look When Doing Business In Second Life?
Avatars are among the most fascinating elements of Second Life. In the real world, how you dress and wear your hair makes a statement to the people you meet. The same thing is true in Second Life; how people look says something about what they think of themselves, and what they want other people to think of them. In Second Life, of course, everything about your appearance is customizable: Hair, clothes, body shape, and even gender and species. This past week and a half, I've been focused on people doing real-world business in Second Life, and it's got me thinking about how they present themselves.
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Sleeping On The Floor In Watts
"They sleep on the floor." I'll admit I did a double take when Sgt. Deana Stark, of the Los Angeles Police Department, made that statement as we drove through the Jordan Downs housing project in Watts today. It took me a moment to realize what she meant: that many of the families that live in the 700-unit development in South-Central L.A. are afraid to sleep in their beds for fear of being hit by stray gunshots during the night.
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Phoenix CIO Breakfast Taking Shape
Phoenix, New York City, and Washington are shaping up to be the first of the cities in the CIO Nation "CIO Breakfasts" (check my blog of April 2 for more info on how you can participate). If you're a CIO in any of these cities and are interested in attending, please let me know (post a response here or e-mail me at bgillooly@cmp.com). These are no-obligation opportunities to simply gather with your peers, exchange ideas and best practices, and of course get a free omelette. The Phoenix timeframe is looking to be the first week of June (because, as I told Steve Phillips, CIO of Avnet and one of the participants: Who doesn't want to be in Phoenix in the heart of June? I remember one day a couple of years ago -- and this was in September -- standing in a parking lot in 112 degree weather. Needless to say, it was a very short time outside the car, and, yes, I was the only person within eyesight who was outdoors...!
Besieged E-Gold Founder Claims (Not Unconvincingly) To Be Victim Of A Fed Vendetta
Bloggers live for feedback to their controversial postings and in this regard, my entry earlier this week about a federal grand jury's decision late last week to indict E Gold Ltd, Gold & Silver Reserve Inc., and the owners of these digital currency businesses on charges of money laundering, conspiracy, and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business did not disappoint. The following day, I received an e-mailed link to E-Gold's highly articulate and well-sourced defense.
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A Day At Avaya's Demo Center
Last month, Internet Protocol telephony provider Avaya opened the doors to its brand new Executive Demo and Briefing Center in New York City's Penn Plaza. The center is designed for existing customers and potential customers, as well as analysts and journalists that want to learn about the applications that Avaya can enable. Now I've got hands-on experience with some of Avaya's products and what's to follow is a list of the most interesting ones I saw.
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A CIO Who Understands Enterprise 2.0
I just got off the phone with a retail CIO -- someone who really understands how to make Web 2.0 technologies work in the enterprise -- who told me how they're scrapping a blog approach for franchise updates and going instead with a wiki/RSS combination that is catching fire. He asked for anonymity because he wants to be selective about who knows what they're working on, but if you're interested in connecting with this CIO, post a response here or shoot me an e-mail at bgillooly@cmp.com and I'll make the connection. But here's what they're doing and why...
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Digg Does The Right Thing
Digg found itself in the middle of a classic journalistic dilemma yesterday and it made a decision that gives me hope for the future of journalism on the Internet: it decided that its first obligation was to the free flow of information. It's especially interesting since Digg was responding to a censorship demand based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), because it came on the same day that Google invoked the DMCA as a defense in a similar case. Wouldn't it be ironic justice if the DMCA, which Hollywood bought from Congress in 1998, turns out to be the Internet's best defense against Hollywood?
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The IT Paycheck Battle of The Sexes
Hey ladies -- if you're out there -- take a look at these numbers. You're earning about 86 cents for every dollar your male IT counterpart makes. (But you sort of knew that already, didn't you?)
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Mail Should Be More Relevant (Call Me Mr. Obvious)
What if your e-mail program was more intelligent, was able to let you know only when you got important e-mails, but not unimportant ones? And I'm not talking a spam filter. The unlikely company spurring this blog: AOL.
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Clearwire To Roll Out WiMax Card For Laptops
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently approved a WiMax laptop card that will connect users to Clearwire's WiMax wireless broadband network. Even though Clearwire's network presence is limited to a few dozen markets in the U.S., this is a big step forward for WiMax.
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Two-Thirds of Survey Respondents Said "Zero Chance" They Would Buy An iPhone
Research firm Markitecture conducted yet another study on the awareness of the iPhone and shed some interesting light on the potential success of the device. Of the 1,300 people surveyed across the U.S., 77% were at least aware of the iPhone, but only 6% said they were likely to buy it in the next year.
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Could An Enhanced Google Talk Spell The End For Skype?
According to a bunch of IP bloggers, Google may soon add both a multichat function and conference calling to Google Talk. If Google Talk has these functions, other peer-to-peer VoIP clients, especially Skype, may find themselves unable to compete. Could this be Google's play to kill Skype?
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Small Businesses Steal The Show At Mobile Business Event
Last night I had the pleasure to moderate a panel for the New York City chapter of Mobile Monday entitled, "Mobile Business 2.0 — How Mobility Will Impact Business from the SMB to the Enterprise." We addressed the big issues that going mobile poses for so many businesses.
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Life's Sweet With Muni Wi-Fi
I'm sitting in a rented Dodge Magnum outside a Starbucks in a strip mall parking lot in downtown Anaheim, and … I've got an Internet connection! (And no, I'm not piggybacking on the T-Mobile for-fee access inside Starbucks.) This wonder of modern technology is being brought to me by EarthLink's new municipal network for Anaheim, which is being built out as we speak and is scheduled to be 80% complete by early summer. This is my first experience with muni wireless, and while both I and my colleagues have been fairly skeptical about the prospects for muni Wi-Fi, I have to say that at the moment it's PFC: pretty freaking cool.
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Dell Does Ubuntu, Anointing Winner In Linux Distro Wars
Dell's announcement that it will sell PCs equipped with the Ubuntu distribution of Linux makes it official: the Johnny-come-lately version of the open-source operating system has hit the big time.
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The NBA Provides A Lesson For Real-Life Companies On Doing Business In Second Life
I really wanted to hate the NBA Headquarters in Second Life. Dozens of real-life companies have started operations in Second Life, and only a few of them actually seem to understand how to do business in the virtual world. But, much to my disappointment (at first) and later, delight, the NBA really seems to get it, and it's built a Second Life area that will be appealing to geeky basketball fans.
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The First Slam-Dunk Second Life Strategy
In recent months, InformationWeek's Mitch Wagner has immersed himself in Second Life, chronicling much of the time he's spent there and positing many potential business applications for the virtual world. While he's argued persuasively to our readers and to his coworkers that SL has near-term business utility, I've been something of a skeptic.
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It's Important To Ridicule The Things That Don't Interest Us On The Internet
I think it's important to ridicule new things on the Internet that don't interest us. When people come up with a new service or tool like Twitter or Second Life, it's very important that we announce that it's just silly, it appeals only to self-centered losers, perverts, and criminals, and it's a big waste of time. We must let it be known that we ourselves are too busy, and our lives are too full of children, mortgage payments, and work, to get involved in such nonsense. And we must make these proclamations on our blogs, without any trace of being aware of the irony.
Age Is Just A Number, Or Is it?
Feeling old? Apparently for some people, the IT profession makes them feel older than they are because employers are ready to put them out to pasture.
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Ballmer Says iPhone Won't Succeed. Has Windows Mobile?
Steve Ballmer seems to be full of bluster these days. In his latest potshot at the iPhone, the Microsoft CEO says, "the future of the mobile handset business will primarily depend on software influence rather than hardware." In other words, Apple's hardware approach to sales won't work and Microsoft's software approach is better. Let's take a real look at the success of Windows Mobile's software-drive success, shall we?
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Alltel Offers One-Day Pass For Mobile Internet
In what looks like an attempt to draw in more customers to its wireless data services, Alltel is offering subscribers the opportunity to sample them for one day. The $1.49 fee buys 24 hours of access to Alltel's Axcess mobile Internet content such as games, news, and sports information. Will it work?
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