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Microsoft flips the switch on remote TV recording

Microsoft has quietly enabled the MSN Remote Record feature for its Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 operating system, a customised version of Windows XP that enabled users to watch and record television shows on their computers.

Users now can instruct the software to record a show through the internet. That feature should appeal to TV junkies who are travelling and don't want to miss their favorite shows, but more importantly allows them to search the electronic programming guide with MSN's search engine.

February 28, 2005 at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

VC massacre postponed

The predicted massacre among the over-confident and over-financed venture capital investors in Silicon Valley isn't happening.

"Why not?" asked Silicon Beat. Because most firms are still hanging in there. They cut costs by laying off some of their staff and sold some of the companies they invested in at a decent, although not spectacular, profit.

In another sign that the sector has weathered the storm, Shasta Ventures has raised $210 m from investors. Shasta specialises in technology for the consumer market.

February 28, 2005 at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blinded by Microsoft hate

Microsoft might have an image of being fiercely competitive, but in their eagerness to catch the world's largest software company with it's hand in the cookie jar, the blogosphere has made an embarrassing mistake.

On Saturday an image started circulating on the internet that "proved" that Microsoft's anti-spyware was enticing users to uninstall Firefox, an open source competitor of Internet Explorer. The image was an hoax, but many bloggers and websites, including Slashdot didn't bother to check, putting all their faith in the JPG-image.

This is what happens if you let your anti-Microsoft religion stand in the way of old school fact checking.

Microsoft's anti-spyware software  did come under fire recently when it turned out that is  prevented users from setting the Dutch Startpagina.nl as their homepage, suggesting that users switch to MSN.nl instead. Startpagina.nl is the number one website in the Netherlands and a major competitor for MSN.nl. Microsoft has since apologized for the mistake and adjusted the software.

February 28, 2005 at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Firefox update not for the mom and pop user

Users looking to apply the latest security upgrade of the open source Firefox browser have an unpleasant surprise waiting for them.

They are advised to manually uninstall the software before they can get the new security features. There is no simple patch for them to apply.

In terms of ease of use, Microsoft's Internet Explorer outshines Firefox – for now at least.

February 25, 2005 at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

Fuel cells not your thing? Help's on the way

Forget my previous post about fuel cell technology coming to mobile phones by 2008. Students at the Department of Industrial Design at the Indian Institute of Technology have designed a portable turbine that generates sufficient electricity to charge a mobile phone. The device would be ideal for people travelling on trains: just hold it out of the window you've got instant power.

In areas where electricity is a scarcity and where there is a constant wind source, it could also be used to power a radio or to run lights.

The device will cost 200 Rupees, or $4.59.

February 25, 2005 at 09:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Internet over powerlines gets real at last

The year 2005 will mark the breakthrough of broadband over powerline technology in the US, claims the New Millennium Research Council.

The NMRC is a group of scholars and policy makers, aiming to "develop workable, real-world solutions to the issues and challenges confronting policymakers" in the fields of telecommunications and technology.

Due to interference issues, internet over powerlines test projects have been as abundant as they have been big failures. But there are some real world deployments now, notes the NMRC. Homes in sections of New York City as well as Manassas, Virginia are being hooked up to the internet through the power grid. The provider in Manassas already had to put 1,300 prospective customers on a waiting list.

Internet over the powerline might have to compete with cable and DSL connections, but those wires are getting used less and less. Copper phonelines are being cut in favour of mobile plans, and cable TV is losing ground to satellite, the NMRC point out. The power line in the future might very well become the only wire that still comes into the home from the outside.

Meanwhile NMRC conveniently leaves out the possibility that the WiMAX wireless technology in the future replaces wired internet altogether. But hey, they have a whitepaper to promote here. And in their defence, the surge of WiMAX seems all but certain.

February 25, 2005 at 08:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mobile phone to go liquid by 2008

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone has developed a fuel cell that will provide 3G telephone sets with up to 9 hours of talk time. The catch is that it'll take until 2008 before the technology will be able to deliver on its promises.

One could argue that the two days of battery life that we get out of our mobile phones at this moment is sufficient, but 3G models will suck up a significant larger amount of power, requiring for a major overhaul in battery technology.

Fuel cells could provide that technology. They use liquid hydrogen or methanol to create electricity. The big advantage is that the technology allows for rapid recharging (refuelling to be exact) and has a larger storage capacity than traditional batteries.

Fuel cell technology might deal with the jungle of power adapters that reside under our desks, consumers instead will get a hydrogen storage unit the size of a car battery in their homes to refuel their devices – just forget about carrying that thing with you on a business trip.

February 25, 2005 at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The iPod shuffle is display-ready

The iPod shuffle might cost only $99 for the 512 Mb version, that still leaves Apple $35 to $40 in profit, according to an estimate by research firm IDC.

About two thirds of the costs are gobbled up by the 512 Mb flash memory chip that the portable media player uses to store its music.

The iPod shuffle uses the STMP3550 digital music decoder chip from SigmaTel Inc. Those willing to speculate should pay attention to the fact that the chip also supports the decoding of Windows Media audio files, although Apple has it programmed for AAC and Audible music formats.

The chip also offers support for an LCD display (!!!), voice recording and FM tuner.

Especially the lack of a display in the iPod shuffle has been a major point of criticism. The decoder chip supporting such a display however gives Apple the option to easily add one in future models.

February 25, 2005 at 06:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Will Microsoft kill Longhorn's security?

Microsoft has become awfully quiet about its Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) initiative. NGSCB is a set of new security technologies that will be part of Windows Longhorn.

The technology promised to greatly increase the level of security in Windows. But at the same time it sparked concerns about fair use and the need for hardware and software developers to adjust their products in order to profit from the new security technology.

Microsoft unveiled NGSCB, formerly codenamed Palladium, in 2002, and published a beta October 2003. Last year May, the company disclosed that it had severely watered down the programme based on user feedback. Microsoft missed a deadline for late 2004 to publish an update to the programme.

The project's website currently appears abandoned and the company won't comment on the direction the technology is taking.

The evidence that a major catastrophe has hit the NGSCB project is overwhelming. If Microsoft kills the technology and doesn't come up with a proper alternative, it sends a strong signal that it doesn't care about security, and has no intention to offer secure products to its customers.

For all that NGSCB had going against it, it did promise to offer a dramatic increase in security for the average user. It would be sad to see Microsoft make this mistake.

February 24, 2005 at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Computer users demand liability at last

Enterprise computer users including General Motors, AT&T and Alcoa (an aluminium producer) are bundling their forces to have software vendors accept liability for the software that they sell, reports The Wall Street Journal (paid subscription).

If successful, the lobby would mean the end of an era in which companies like Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Oracle can hide behind software licenses that severely limit a user's right to expect a product that does what it promises to do.

It's always struck me as amazing, but the software industry so far has gotten away with providing abysmal service without taking even a bit of responsibility.

"Can you imagine if GM produced a vehicle and said, 'We did a pretty good job of engineering this. It worked in the laboratory. Here it is, consumer, you go crash-test it,'" asks Eric Litt, chief information-security officer in GM's information-systems and services unit in the Wall Street journal story. "We wouldn't accept that as a society."

As a result of the limited liabilities, we have created the weirdest of situations: if a software vendor messes up, he can force his customer to buy an upgrade to correct his mistake. Economics 101tells you that this picture is plainly wrong because it gives the vendor an incentive to create crappy code.

Change here is long overdue.

February 24, 2005 at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's official: blogs threaten economic stability

Want to miss your car and mortgage payments? Starting a blog is an exelent way to achieve that, claims US employment lawfirm Littler Mendelson. The company warns that bloggers run an increased risk of getting fired over what they post on the web.

Bloggers initially have a sense of anonymity because… well… most blogs get about 5 hits a day, most of which are from the blog owner himself. But that can change overnight, as a stewardess with Delta Airlines and a newly hired Google employee have found out the hard way.

The Delta Airlines stewardess published photos depicting her in suggestive poses, wearing her work uniform and inside airplanes.

The culprit at Google mistakenly thought that the company's playful corporate culture meant that he could start telling everybody that they were stupid morons who didn't understand a thing about how the company should be run. In the process he also disclosed a trade secret or two, although nothing major got out.

Companies often lack a blogging policy, but can easily justify firing their employees if they disclose trade secrets are criticise their employers.

February 24, 2005 at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dell stays loyal to Intel relationship

Dell has shunned AMD and is holding on to Intel chips for servers, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins said.

It appears that Dell used the AMD deal to get Intel to the bargaining table and squeeze some steep discounts out of the company.

The move by the largest computer maker in the world is a blow to AMD's ambition to make the Opteron a mainstream processor, but isn't the end of the line. Sun Microsystems, HP and IBM sell Opteron based servers and workstations.

February 24, 2005 at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple delays rewriting of the constitution

Apple has agreed to extend the deadline on a subpoena that it issued to the ISP of a blog until after a hearing about the constitutionality of Apple's attempts to muzzle free speech.

The whole case revolves around a leak to bloggers about a project codenamed "Asteroid". Desperate to pursue the culprit to its fullest extend, Apple wants to force the ISP of the blog Powerpage.org to release his emails, thereby tracing the source of the Asteroid leak.

These tactics might be fully constitutional in the dictatorship that Steve Jobs envisions, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has its doubts that it will work in a democracy that is based on free speech principles. The two will meet in Santa Clara County Superior Court on March 4.

February 24, 2005 at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Could silicon trash be a treasure?

Those faulty Pentium processors that Intel throws away every day, might find some good use after all, researchers at the University of Southern California suggest.

When a computer generates an image on a computer screen, the user won't notice a few miscalculations. As long as it involves output to humans, computing cycles can afford the occasional flaw.

The use of faulty computer chips forms an enormous economic opportunity because it increases the yield of the chip making process.

The problem is however that we get on slippery road of having to determine where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable mistakes. An of course some day, somebody is cross that line. A computer is going to screw up your credit card payment and all hell breaks loose.

That's the exact reason why I choose to stay clear of refurbished products today.

February 23, 2005 at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A penny for my thoughts

Blogger Jason Kottke is going pro. He has quit his job as a web designer and is asking his visitors to donate $2.50 per month to help him pay his rent, buy a new car and take that vacation to Hawaii.

Kottke's approach reminds of Salon.com's efforts to become a subscription based online publication (the company breaks even, but that's it). Or attempt back in 2000 to get web visitors to pay $1 for each chapter of a book he posted on the web. The project got off to decent start, but faded further down the road.

Since Kottke is the first who is trying to do this, he might very well succeed. But blogs through a subscription model lack an essential economic feat: scarcity. With an endless supply of blogs, there is only an emotional incentive to pay the blogger for his work. If he stops blogging, we'll just visit some other site.

That's why advertising and the web are made for each other. Advertisers look for exposure though an abundance of eyeballs, not scarcity.

February 23, 2005 at 09:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Microsoft's mea culpa on the lack of IE innovation

Have you been wondering what Microsoft's Internet Explorer team has been up to after the IE6 launch and why Microsoft has so suddenly decided to speed up development of its Internet Explorer 7?

In short: what has the IE team been doing since IE6?

Over on the Microsoft Developer Internet Explorer blog, Dean Hachamovitch feels your pain. "I want to acknowledge that we have a problem if people are asking this question," writes Hachamovitch who runs the IE team on the IEBlog.

"Listing what we’ve done or our priorities will help but won’t address the problem. Responding to specific questions with a great product and great documentation (for developers, for IT professionals, for deployment specialists, and for other customers as well), and doing that consistently for as long as we’ve been quiet about IE will help more."

The team has been busy with new projects such as MSN Explorer and the MSN toolbar, as well as creating updates that shipped in SP1 and SP2, and updates for Tablet and Media Center PCs. And of course there were countless security holes to be patched in IE5, IE5.5 and IE6.

Thank you Microsoft for embracing blogs. We never would have gotten an answer direct from the source and honest as this one otherwise.

February 23, 2005 at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Craigslist founder stresses the need for citizen journalism

Craigslist founder stresses the need for citizen journalism

The folks over at Silicon Beat, a blog by the San Jose Mercury News, have a preview of an interview with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark where he talks about his plans to set up some kind of collaborative news site.

Recent scandals have shown that (especially in politics journalism) you can't trust the media anymore (case 1: Talon News; case 2: White House paid commentator; case 3: The CBS scandal). In an era where the political left and right are completely alienated from each other, the old safeguards that were put in place to ensure proper fact checking don't seem to work anymore.

"As a consumer of news, I've learned that there's too much important stuff which isn't printed or which is distorted on the way out,'' Newmark told the Mercury News. "One example being news out of the White House. We need to fix it."

"We, meaning the public, need to evolve a trusted institution with lots of fact-checking that we can trust and that we can prove does provide honest news," Newmark said.

February 23, 2005 at 07:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sony takes Clié off life support

Sony has pulled the plug on its Clié PDA in Japan. The company last year discontinued its line of Palm OS powered PDAs in the rest of the world, retreating to the gadget-crazy Japanese market.

The company's decision marks the complete and utter failure of product category that for a while was considered the Holy Grail. But PDAs soon lost much of their appeal for both the enterprise and consumer markets. The collapse of the internet bubble caused corporate IT budgets to freeze up, while the rise of smartphones made consumers abandon their PDAs in favor of the feature rich telephone.

PalmSource (the venture that owns the Palm operating system) now focuses on getting its software on smartphone. The market for enterprise class handheld computers is there for the taking for HP and Dell with their iPaq and Axim PDAs.

February 23, 2005 at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Woz to Apple: stop the bullying

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has leashed out against Apple's legal crusade.

The company filed lawsuits against several unnamed persons for leaking a pre-release build of the upcoming Mac OS 10.4. The drunken blog in January published an interview with Vivek Sambhara (desicanuk), one of the people named in the lawsuit.

Sambhara registered for an account with Apple Developer Connection (ADC), downloaded a copy of the Mac OS 10.4 beta and made the astronomical mistake of putting it on BitTorrent.

By registering for his ADC account, the med-student agreed to the terms of a non-disclosure agreement, which he violated the moment he put the data on BitTorrent.

Late December Apple ruined Sambhara's Christmas holiday when it served him with the lawsuit.

After reading the interview, Wozniak was appalled. "I wish that Apple could find some way to drop the matter. In my opinion, more than appropriate punishment has already been dealt out," he wrote in an email to the blog. He pledged to donate $1,000 to support the student in his defense.

Has Sambhara been punished? No doubt he has lost many nights of sleep over the matter. The question if he has been punished sufficiently is more tricky.

But it's more important to turn this around. What is Apple trying to accomplish with its lawsuit? Whatever damage has been done can't be reversed.

If anything, the case will make the next Sambhara think twice before he posts secret code on the web. Will pursuing this case any further set more of an example – or will the damage to Apple's image outweigh the gains from the scare tactics?

February 23, 2005 at 12:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft wandering around in the speech recognition market

You know that Microsoft is betting big on a market when they fly out Bill Gates to do the official announcement. But in the case of the company's Speech Server 2004, the company's efforts could be considered a losing bet, claims IDG News.

Launched in March 2004, Speech Server 2004 is Microsoft's attempt to enter the market for speech recognition software. The product was supposed to crush the competition by offering a low cost, easy to deploy solution. But Gartner puts Microsoft market share at 2.7 percent, far behind Nuance Communications' 34.5 and ScanSoft's 42.6 percent shares, writes IDG.

While Microsoft maintains its trademark optimistic tone of voice, partners point at several strategic mistakes that the company made. Speech specialist Pronexus Inc "bet the farm" on Microsoft's technology, but is seeing only a third of the revenues that it expected initially.

Pronexus' CEO blames the disappointing revenues on a failing marketing strategy by Microsoft. The software juggernaut went after small and medium sized businesses, but later realised that it should have gone after enterprise customers instead.

Given that this is Microsoft, I'm not too surprised. The company can afford missteps like these. An upgraded version of the software is expected for August. And if that turns out not to be working, there is always version 3 to make up for the mistakes they made in the mean time. Hopefully Pronexus will have shifted gears by then and decides to put its faith in the hands of a more reliable partner.

February 22, 2005 at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HP's self-destructing printer cartridges

HP's printer cartridges have a device build in that causes them to self-destruct after a predetermined amount of time, a lawsuit filed by a Georgia woman alleges.

The time bomb chip is secretly programmed to prevent the cartridge from working properly, which could be even before the ink holder is inserted into a printer.

The suit is seeking class action status and demands restitution, damages and other compensations.

February 22, 2005 at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Sun keeps trimming its workforce

Sun Microsystems has once again increased the number of layoffs in its software group.

The jobcuts are part of a corporate restructuring that was announced in 2004 when Sun appointed Jonathan Schwartz as its Chief Operating Officer and revealed its landmark settlement with Microsoft.

The number of cuts however keeps growing: it started at 3,300 but last week reached the 3,600 level.

Sun has been using its software business as differentiator, launching subscription plan licensing to attract customers to its hardware. Although this has allowed the company to return to profitability, overall results remain meagre with just $18m in profit in the most recent quarter.

February 22, 2005 at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

IBM to Dell: copy this!

It must be good to be IBM when you can stick 3 years and $100m of research in Dell's face, as Big Blue did today when it unveiled its X3 chipset. The new technology delivers a 38 percent increase in performance over its predecessor: X2.

X3 will be applied in IBM's X-series server line using x86 intel processors. By adding the proprietary technology to the commodity Intel processors, IBM claims it can avoid getting trapped in the commodity trap of evaporating margins.

Since the X-series is proprietary IBM technology, Dell can't touch it, let alone sell it. The Texas based computer company instead has to rely on technology developed by Intel or AMD. And IBM is all to happy to point out that it easily outperforms those solutions.

February 22, 2005 at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google charts new ethics territory

Google is under attack for a new feature in its Toolbar.

The service adds hyperlinks to webpages without the author's knowledge or consent. A street address for instance, will be turned into a link to Google Maps and a book's ISBN number gets linked to Amazon.

The service raises two questions. Is this a copyright violation and does Google unfairly promote its services?

Microsoft for starters wouldn't get away with a service that links to its maps.msn site. The company last year abandoned Smart Tags, a service similar to Google's, because of trademark concerns.

And secondly Google (potentially) gets revenues from changing the content of a page of which it doesn't own the copyrights. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

In Google's defence however, the company could argue that users install the software voluntarily. That might not be a strong argument in the discussion around copyrights, but does take away the pressure from the anti competitive side.

February 22, 2005 at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cannes gets Starwars III

Star Wars geeks better start booking tickets for the Cannes film festival in May. The event will be opened by Star Wars: Episode III – The Revenge Of The Sith.

The movie opens 19 May, but the true Star Wars fans among you marked that on your calendars months ago.

February 22, 2005 at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Virtual keyboards all over again

Last week at the DEMO conference in Arizona a company called VKB unveiled a virtual keyboard to much praise from investors, bloggers and media.

The annual DEMO conference allows entrepreneurs to unveil their products to an audience of investors, industry analysts and press. DEMO in past years has been the podium where the Palm PDA and TiVo were launched. The show charges the companies to get access to this A-level audience.

The event however has gone over the top if you ask me. Most product introductions fail to create any exitement, causing me to remove DEMO off my list of "conferences to attend". Having to justify their attendence, the audience is all too eager to spot the next big thing and will loose the ability to critcally look at the offierings. This is demonstrated by VKB's keyboard.

After all, Canesta unveiled a similar technology in 2003, as well as Virtual Devices.

Even VKB of Israel talked about the technology ages ago, by which it seems to have violated DEMO's policy requiring that product announcements are about new introductions. It's embarrasing that VKB dares to repeat an introduction it did two years ago. And even more embarrasing that the "high level" audience fell for it.

February 21, 2005 at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know that blogging has gone mainstream when...

when Jon Stewart starts talking about it.

Jon Stewart does "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. He puts up an act as an "anchor" for a news program, mixing real world news events with a dose of comedy. He is assisted by several "senior correspondents" that turn out to be experts on any topic that might arise. IMHO, the show's a blast and it is a regular item on my TiVo.

Just see Stewart's item on bloggers below. (via: http://homepage.mac.com/onegoodmove)

February 21, 2005 at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What happens when your TV becomes an open platform

Andrew Wallace from Portland, OR, has created and application that lets your TiVo display pictures posted on Flickr.com.

Wallace's application combines the open TiVo standards with the open Flickr standards and it's a great example of who embracing these increases the appeal of both products.

Flickr is a free, online service where users post pictures online. TiVo is a digital video recorder that is sold in the US primarily.

Using the TiVo device to show Flickr content on the TV puts the Flickr data in the living room, which is a far more convenient place to view pictures than behind the PC.

February 21, 2005 at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tax free internet cigarettes go up in smoke

A Michigan woman has received a $2,500 bill from the state tax agency for taxes on cigarettes that she has bought over the internet in the past 4 years.

Strapped for cash, the state has forced online cigarette shops to hand over their customer lists. Letters have been sent to 533 consumers owing a total of $1.7 m. They all bought their smokes from esmokes.com.

The retail websites often advertise their cigarettes as cheaper because they don't charge the state tax which in Michigan is $2 per pack.

In the end, buying cigarettes without the tax online is just like that brand new Apple Powerbook that you can buy on eBay for half the price, from that kind seller in Lithuania: too good to be true.

February 19, 2005 at 03:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One in ten is a smartphone

Smartphones will by 2009 claim 9.3 percent of the global mobile telephone market, Jupiter Media predicts.

Consumers are attracted to the devices because they prefer to carry only a single gadget over both a telephone and media player. Al least that what 62 percent of consumers told the researchers. They will even put up with compromises for the added capabilities, as long as the mobile phone remains the most important feature.

The smartphone in the past year has single-handedly killed the consumer markt for PDAs. Jupiter however cautiously adds that smart phones won't replace standard mobile phones, gaming devices, media players or cameras.

A smart phone is generally defined as a telephone with at least the following:
- mobile telephone
- address book
- calendar
- the ability to synchronize the device with a computer

February 19, 2005 at 02:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lawsuit reveals the true reason behind Apple's record profits

Users and resellers have filed class actions lawsuits against Apple computer for, well, being SOBs.

Consumers accuse Apple of selling them old computers while claiming that they were new. They also claim that the company cheated them out of their warranty by starting the countdown on the day the manufacturer ships the unit to the reseller instead of the purchase day.

Resellers meanwhile believe Apple stole their customer contact data and to send them marketing messages about the company's own retail store. They also say the vendor charged them parts that were used to repair units while within the official warranty period – getting this problem corrected would take several days.

Apple might be the underdog in the battle over the desktop computer (currently in the number 3 spot behind Linux and Windows), if proven guilty, the company deserves no sympathy for how it behaved.

Yet somehow we've seen this happen all before. That's just sad.

February 19, 2005 at 02:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gmail hungry for more and more users

Gmail just can't get enough users. Merely two weeks after Google allowed current users to invite 50 friends to start using the service, the company began giving away Gmail accounts to users who had asked to receive updates about the service.

"We also wanted to thank you. For showing us your support and for being so patient," the email stated. Thanks for nothing, most users will think. All the good user names by now have been snagged up. So unless you're looking to be londoner4235@gmail.com, you're out of luck.

Gmail remains in beta, and the company stresses that the latest move doesn't signal a change in that situation.

That may be so, the company seems to be collecting users as a squirrel does with nuts before winter.

February 19, 2005 at 01:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HP intensifies CEO search

You might want to add the name of "Russell Reynolds" to you Easter card list soon. That is, if you fancy the job as new HP CEO.

HP just hired the head-hunter to help the company find a new CEO.

Since Fiorina's departure the company's CFO Robert Wayman has taken over as interim CEO. Patricia Dunn became chairman of the board of directors.

Russell Reynolds has offices around the world including London. So go ahead and give them a ring. You've got nothing to loose.

February 18, 2005 at 09:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rental software going strong

Salesforce.com saw a 82 pct increase in revenues of the last quarter to a total of $54.6 m.

The company that seems to be single-handedly proving that software as a service is the next big thing made a $3.6 m profit, reached 13,900 customers and a total of 227,000 users.

The idea for the company's hosted CRM solution is mind-boggling simple. Or as one user said it at last year Dreamforce User Conference in San Francisco when asked if he would ever consider going back to the old fashioned SAP-style solution: "Are you asking if I would rather start paying more?"

February 18, 2005 at 04:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Windows wins security showdown against Linux

The IT headlines this week were dominated by both security and Linux, as LinuxWorld took place in Boston and RSA Conference had it's annual occurrence in San Francisco.

But yesterday the two events came together when two academics put Windows and Linux head to head in a security test. Microsoft Server 2003 kicks some Red Hat Linux 3 butt.

Next the spin doctors come in and start validating/battering the research methodology and accusing the researchers of being partial. But until the next study comes to claim something else, this one stands.

February 18, 2005 at 04:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Former cyber security tsar says it all

Thought Microsoft has a debatable reputation in the field of computer security? Leave it up to Richard Clarke to do the Microsoft thrashing for you: "Given their record in the security area, I don't know why anybody would buy from them," Clarke told the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Until January 2003 Richard Clarke was president Bush's national cybersecurity czar. Prior to that he was an antiterrorism advisor under the presidents Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. Last year he wrote a book titled "Against all enemies" in which he trashed Bush Jr's anti terrorism policy before and after the September 11 attacks.

In his 3 years as cybersecurity chief, Clarke warned against what would happen if the industry doesn't improve its security record. He referred to the unwillingness of the sector to invest money in security as "the dialog of death". Now that the industry has failed to change, Clarke pleads that it's time for the government to come up with rules and regulations that penalize companies for creating faulty products.

I fully agree with Clarke. Why can I sue Ford if my SUV rolls over, but does Microsoft have the right to protect itself from product liability claims just because they put so in their software licence?

February 18, 2005 at 01:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SCO's Nasdaq listing goes the way of its Linux claims

The Linux bashing company SCO is about to loose its listing at the Nasdaq stock exchange after the company failed to meet deadlines to publish its annual results over 2004.

The delisting could become effective as early as Friday 18 February.

A delisting would be mostly embarrassing rather than inconvenient. SCO's lawsuit against IBM – SCO claims that it owns the intellectual property behind Unix and demands $5 bn in damages – already has made SCO the pariah of the software industry.

Recent progress in the legal proceedings hasn't given SCO investors much reason to believe that the suit will have a favourable outcome for SCO.

No listing for a company with no future makes for a nice cleanup. If only they could loose the lease to their office next.

February 18, 2005 at 01:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What is wrong with this picture?

What would you do if a man comes to your door, telling you that he is the heir of the former president of Mozambique and that he will give you $5 m if you help him to free up the funds – you'll just have to pay him a $25,000 advance.

Or what if he has a package and tells you that it's filled to the rim with copies of playboy magazine. And when you open, the package turns out to contain a hand grenade that explodes in your face.

Or a man claming to be from the government takes away 25 percent of your pay check and uses it to starts a war against a distance Mideastern nation…

OK, we only allow ourselves to be fooled by the last one. Yet on the internet all three work like a gem.

Sometimes this world can be such a depressing place.

February 18, 2005 at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

East Coast LinuxWorld on the move again

After IDG World Expo moved LinuxWorld to the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, abandoning New York, the event next year will move to the new Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.

The event has outgrown its current facilities, the organiser told The Boston Herald.      "We're pretty much wall-to-wall with exhibits'' and people, said Darrell Baker, vice president of event service at IDG World Expo told the newspaper.

Prior to the event, IDG said it expected 6,000 – 7,000 delegates to flock to Boston. LinuxWorld was supposed to stay at the Hynes convention center for a few years before it would move to the larger facility.

New York still gets to host a LinuxWorld Summit in May this year.

LinuxWorld Boston 2006 will take place from 3-6 April.

February 17, 2005 at 04:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MySQL CEO to commercial software vendors: don't loose any sleep over open source.

"We hear so much about legacy vendors thinking that there is some sort of conflict in the software world and that open source is taking away business. That is completely wrong. The world hasn't seen even a fraction of the software it needs to develop in order to keep to this planet going. We have just scratched the surface. Software means ERP systems. There is so much more that hasn't been created yet in areas of medicine, research, entertainment, media, machine to machine. There is just so much to be done. In order to get there we must simplify what we've build so far. We must standardise, we must open up, we must turn them into building blocks so we can move to the next level. If we don't, we will be stuck at this level. We will have to hope for another y2k problem. This is not the end, it's not the beginning and not even the end of the beginning."

Marten Mickos, CEO of the open source database vendor MySQL, today in his keynote addresss at LinuxWorld in Boston.

Need I say more?

February 17, 2005 at 04:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft preparing a patent offensive against open source?

Microsoft is hiring intellectual property engineers, open source advocate Bruce Perens said at a press conference at LinuxWorld in Boston today. The company claims that it will use the new hires to look for prior art, but Perens suspects Microsoft is preparing for a full frontal legal assault on open source.

Prior art is a legal term that points to a way to invalidate a patent after it has been issued. The term means that someone else already had created a similar application before the patent holder applied for his patent. For example, someone arguing that he invented the wheel would (hopefully) see his claim dismissed based on the existence of prior art: wheels have been around for thousands of years.

"The bad news here is that open source still doesn’t have an effective defence against [patent litigation]," Perens said. He raised doubts as to wether IBM would come to the rescue despite Big Blue previously committing itself to doing so.

IBM has an interest in maintaining the patent status quo because for years it has been is the largest filer of technology patents. IBM also could be reluctant to side with the open source community if that would see the company picking a battle with a partner.

Perens's plea has a weak spot in the fact that there is no proof that Microsoft will take legal action against the open source movement. But he does rightfully point out that the patent threat against Linux still is very real.

And I'd hate to think of what would happen if he is right about Microsoft.

Bruce Perens, as always at LinuxWorld with his signature penguin tie

February 17, 2005 at 04:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You better scrub and floss that code

Any enterprise that does software development and uses open source should be worried about licence violations, if you ask Boston based start-up company Black Duck. Because when developers use general public licence (GPL) code in combination with proprietary code, they is a fair chance that they are violating the commercial software licence, the GPL licence and maybe even both.

Black Duck, exhibiting at LinuxWorld in Boston this week, develops an application that will analyse the binary code of any application that you might have developed in house. Using finger printing technology, it will effortlessly recognise any open source code inside the application and warn the user about possible conflicts between licences.

The GPL requires that developers reveal the source code of any customizations that add to the GPL-code. But in many cases, enterprises don't want to reveal the source code of projects they develop themselves. Companies violating the GPL run the risk of receiving a phone call from the Free Software Foundation. Linksys in the past has had the pleasure of receiving one of those, due to sloppy programming work by a partner in India.

For $25,000 Black Duck will scrub up to 25 megabytes of code. The software currently runs inside the company firewall, but Black Duck later this year expects to come out with a hosted solution that customers can access over the internet, CEO Doug Levin said.

"It is very easy to pick up stray code and put it in your releases. Software no longer necessarily becomes yours. The nature of software development has changed," Levin told vnunet.com

Levin currently has about a dozen customers. Yet Levin predicts that the market for software compliance management will grow to about $500 by 2009.

February 17, 2005 at 03:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Firefox hits 25 million downloads in 100 days

MOZILLA FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES 25 MILLION DOWNLOADS OF FIREFOX BROWSER

Non profit making,  Mozilla Foundation announced that its Firefox browser has been downloaded more than 25 million times. Released less than 100-days-ago, Firefox has quickly become the mainstay on many business as well as consumer desktops and is snapping at the heels of Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominance.

Spreadfirefox.com has also mushroomed. The volunteer advocacy group charged with promoting the browser around the world, has grown to more than 70,000 members. Spread Firefox was developed on the same model as the open source software itself.

"Twenty five million Firefox downloads is a significant achievement, and we see that number continuing to grow," said Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation. "

February 16, 2005 at 07:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Computer Associates keeps it real

Claiming that "open source is no religion" Computer Associates CEO John Swainson has a good shot at winning the prize for delivering the most realistic keynote at this edition of LinuxWorld in Boston.

Living in a fragmented world of IT shall remain a reality for years to come, both in terms of hardware (x86, Sparc, Power and mainframe) as well as software (Solaris, Windows, Linux, AIX and HP/UX). Any vendor trying to sell you a vision of a single monolithic architecture is just going after your money.

For the IT industry to truly help its customers and users, it should "put aside politics," Swainson told attendees at LinuxWorld in his keynote on Tuesday. "We can't afford to behave that way. We need to work together as a community and create standards that have flexibility. Just because Linux has arrived, doesn't mean Windows will just fade away."

I couldn't help but shed a tear over Swainson's honesty. Have we at last found an IT vendor that loves us for who we are? Oh, wait. Swainson is with Computer Associates. That company that under its founder CEO Charles Wang build a reputation of squeezing customers for every penny the have while cutting back on services. Too bad. Or maybe they really did change?

Swainson, the newly appointed CEO of Computer Associates

February 16, 2005 at 05:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

IBM joins the Solaris hunt

IBM earlier today launched a Special Interest Area, offering help to sofware vendors in porting applications from Solaris 10 to Linux on x86, Power or IBM mainframes. The programme is as noble as it is selfserving.

IBM claims that Solaris users are starting to have doubts about the long-term viability of the operating system. By helping software developers to switch over to Linux, IBM says it offers them a more stable platform – and in the process sets itself up to sell some of hardware to the Sun refugees.

"We believe that the Linux opportunity is significantly bigger than the Solaris opportunity," said IBM vice president for Linux Scott Handy. "There is no room for a third operating system on x86 [in addition to Windows and Linux]."

Yesterday Red Hat startedthe full frontal assault against Solaris by setting up its new Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (REL 4) as the perfect alternative for Solaris users.

But I guess Sun could expect some flack after it started claiming that Solaris 10 is superior to Linux.

February 16, 2005 at 04:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft reverses on Internet Explorer strategy

Microsoft will release a new version of Internet Explorer prior to the launch of Longhorn, the upcoming veresion of its operating system, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said in his opening keynote at RSA Conference in San Francisco.

The company had previously said a new browser version would only be launched as part of the Longhorn launch in 2006.

The absence of any kind of security – or at least any kind of security that stops spammers, malware and viruses from spreading – in Internet Explorer 6 has caused many users to switch to Firefox, giving the open source browser a huge boost. Last month 21 percent of the visitors to HPShopping.com, HP's online store, used Firefox, HP's Linux president Martin Fink told delegates at LinuxWorld in Boston this morning.

For more news about RSA Conference, tap into Vnunet.com's RSA special report and the Security Watchdog blog by vnunet.com and IT Week.

February 15, 2005 at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HP saves Linuxworld the drama. Any drama

HP's Martin Fink's started his keynote at LinuxWorld in Boston this morning with the promise that he wouldn't deliver any of the drama that HP showed last week with its CEO Carly Fiorina ouster. It was the high point in a keynote full of lows.

By dealing out clichés like: "The GPL is what enabled Linux to earn its wings," Fink told his audience what they already knew: Linux is here to stay and Linux is ready for the enterprise.

In a rare tidbit of news that accidentally must have slipped into Fink's keynote address, he told that HP Labs will start contributing to Xen, an open source virtualisation project out of Cambridge University.

Martin Fink, vice president for Linux at HP sings his audience a lullaby.

February 15, 2005 at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Novell's Jack Messman kicks off Linuxworld

Novell CEO Jack Messman keeps pushing for the datacentre. In delivering the opening keynote for LinuxWorld 2005 at Linuxworld, Messman revealed a deal with PolyServe to resell its clusering technology, as well as adding support for the open source Xen virtualisation technology that will be added to the next version of the SuSE Enterprise Linux Server 10 (SLES 10). By adding the new technologies Novell, aims to keep increasing the appeal of Linux for enterprise users to run their enterprise applications to run on the open source operating system.

   

February 15, 2005 at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

7,000 LinuxWorld attendees can't be wrong

LinuxWorld organiser IDG World Expo is expecting 6,000 to 7,000 delegates to attend the first edition of the event in Boston this week.

The Boston edition comes in addition to other LinuxWorld events in North America in New York and San Francisco. The fact that the inaugural event draws such a respectable crowd, shows yet again that Linux and open source have reached maturity.

Novell CEO Jack Messman will deliver the opening keynote on Tuesday morning. Other keynote speakers include CEO Jack Swainson of Computer Associates, Martin Fink, vice president Linux for HP and Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL.

To stay posted, look at vnunet.com's LinuxWorld Boston special, read IT Week's exclusive review of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, and of course your own Silicon Valley Sleuth.

February 15, 2005 at 07:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Siemens gets to WiMax Walhalla first

At the 3GSM convention in Cannes, France, Siemens has unveiledwhat it claims to be the first WiMax equipment.. The range includes modems and base stations for the upcoming high speed wireless networking standard.

The Siemens launch must give joy to Intel, which has been the main sponsor of WiMax. On the other hand, several parties have had their doubts about the viability of the wireless standard. Last year the American mobile operator Nextel abandoned plans to support WiMax.

February 15, 2005 at 06:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another way to look at Linux security

As the Silicon Valley Sleuth was sleuthing around at the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 launch tonight in Bostn, I got to speak with Evan Bauer, principal research fellow with the Robert Francis Group. In a previous life he had been a software developer (with DEC, among others) and has contributed to the Linux source code. He revealed the real secret behind Linux high level of security and stability:

"The last code that I contributed to Linux got eliminated in the 2.6 kernel. So you can now safely use Linux."

February 15, 2005 at 06:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Red Hat laughs at Sun's attempt to compete

Red Hat had little love for Sun Microsystems on this Valentine's day evening at Boston. By launching Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the company will keep doing what it has done so successfully over the past years: take away customers from Sun's Solaris.

It is no secret that many Sun users have abandoned the vendor over the past years and bought industry standard servers running Linux on Intel or AMD chips instead.

One analyst claimed that even within Sun's x86 business it's Linux all the way, saying that 80 percent of the Opteron servers Sun ships run the open source operating system.

Sun of course refuses to go down without a fight. So when it launched Solaris 10 last year, it positioned it as the perfect alternative for Linux users longing to buy software from a vendor who actually owns the code. To get more support from the industry and developers, Sun in January release the Solaris source code.

Red Hat isn't impressed: "There is more to open source than just looking at the code," Red Hat senior vice president of Enginering Paul Cormier told vnunet.com.

LinuxWorld Boston will kick off officially on Tuesday, with Novell CEO Jack Messman delivering the opening keynote.

Red Hat's Paul Cormier: "Sun Microsystems? whohahahahahah!"

February 15, 2005 at 06:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oracle spoils the dual core party

Before any enterprise swaps out its servers for new models equipped with dual core processors, it better reads over its licence for Oracle applications. The company is determined to charge customers per core, not per physical CPU.

Oracle justifies the unchanged licencing policy by pointing out that the "consumption" of its software won't change if customers switch to dual core processors. The company is joined by BEA Systems.

Microsoft is one of the companies that have vowed to keep charging per physical piece of Silicon, regardless of the number of cores it holds.

By refusing to adept to the changing hardware landscape, Oracle puts up a major barrier against the adoption of Intel's and AMD's dual core processors. The chip manufacturers were hoping that savings in software licences would entice users to quickly switch to new processors.

February 12, 2005 at 01:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Why Scoble will fail at changing Microsoft

The economist has a profile of Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble.

Anyone who claims to be at home in the blogosphere should know Scoble. His blog is a must read site and he is said to single-handedly have succeeded at changing the image of "Microsoft the bully" into "Microsoft the former bully with some nasty old habits".

But there is something severely wrong with this image: it isn't sincere. Scoble is a single instance of a single Microsoft employee writing a blog. He might be world famous inside the blogosphere but in the real world he is a nobody.

If Microsoft really wanted to make an impact, one of its highest ranking executives should start blogging. If Sun's COO Jonathan Schwartz can write a blog, so can Bill Gates. His words would outweigh anything Scoble says and give his company actual credibility.

The fact that Microsoft has hired Scoble as its representation in the blogosphere says a lot about how the company choses to communicate with the outside world.

As The Economist concludes in:
"Will corporate bloggers [such as Scoble] start to get tongue-tied and sound just like tedious press releases? Mr Scoble, for his part, hates the question but concedes that, theoretically, Microsoft's corporate view and his own could come into severe conflict, and it is not clear what would happen then. Will he criticise only the small things, but toe the line on the big issues? As his pageviews, fame and influence increase, it might become increasingly difficult for him not to feel self-conscious, and to resist the deadening effect that this can have on any writer's prose."

Bill Gates would never have that problem. And that's why Scoble reinforces the image of the old controlling Microsoft more than that he changes it.

February 12, 2005 at 01:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Cnet joins in RSS frenzy

Entering a space swarming with competitors, Cnet has launched its Newsburst online RSS Reader.

Newsburst doesn't do anything that any other RSS reader can't, except that users get to see news items selected by the Cnet editors. But the service also heavily pushes Cnet's reports.

I am puzzled about the ratio behind this new venture. The service doensn't offer anything new. If Cnet thinks the RSS is a good idea, they might want to consider launching a free internet provider in Europe, or even better, start on that offers flat fee dial up service. That too once was a promising technology where too many providers were fighting over customers and where in the end everybody lost.

February 12, 2005 at 01:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dell just keeps rolling

Dell doesn't even need a superior supply chain to beat the crap out of the competition, the company's rivals recently have done a pretty good job at taking themselves out. The PC and server manufacturer nonetheless in the last quarter posted record revenues of $13.5 b, a 17.3% increase over the same period last year.

The rise of Dell is so powerful that it caused IBM to sell its loss making PC and laptop business to Lenovo of China. And earlier this week HP fired CEO Carly Fiorina for her inability to turn the merged HP and Compaq into a leading technology company.

With two of Dell's largest competitors knocked out, celebrations must have erupted at the Dell headquarters in Texas. And it gave Dell CEO Kevin Rollins enough courage to declare $80 b in annual revenues as the next big target that he will be aiming for in a conference call with reporters. The company in the last for quarters combined posted $49.2 b in revenues.

February 11, 2005 at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Intel declares 2005 the year off the big catch up

Almost a year after Intel made an U-turn on its 64-bits strategy by copying AMD's Opteron, the company is ready to launch a 32/64 bits processor for desktop computers. The company only in January 2004 was trashing need for 64 bits computing power for home users. But now the chip giant is a devoted follower of the 64 bits religion.

"We view 2005 as the year of 64-bit computing," Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel's enterprise platforms group told vnunet.com. "We're going to bring 64-bit aggressively to the PC."

What a difference one year makes.

February 11, 2005 at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Love is in the air at LinuxWorld

The bags are packed and your friendly neighbourhood Silicon Valley Sleuth will soon be leaving the warmer surroundings of the Valley for Boston to check out the latest news and buzz at Linuxworld 2005. Kicking off on Valentine's day, the Linux-Lovefest is sure to attract a lot of attention from both the community and vendors alike.

Pre-show buzz is already building around the launch of Red Hat's new Enterprise Linux 4.0 and VNUnet's sister title IT Week will, on Monday, be posting one of the first reviews of the product. So be sure to check back to this blog, VNUnet and IT Week to get all the latest news and information to emerge from the show.

February 11, 2005 at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Call to all open source geeks: take a cheap shot at Microsoft

Are you sick an tired with Microsoft's FUD (Fear, uncertainty, doubt) campaign against Linux?

This is your chance to drive the company's Chief Linuxbashing Officer Martin Taylor in the corner.

Slashdot is having an interview with Taylor, and as usual is asking its readers to come up with the questions.

If you're having a slow day, just read through some of the suggestions, such as this one:

"I have heard rumors that you, in fact, prefer the taste of babies to chicken. Can you please confirm whether or not you eat babies,and if yes, your individual preference in terms of taste compared to the other white meats? (chicken = white meat, pork = the other white meat, babies = the other other white meat)"

February 11, 2005 at 06:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For suggestive nudity we charge you – full nudity gets you sued

Showing that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act really is good for anything a copyright holder would ever want to use against an unsuspecting web citizen, game publisher Tecmo sued several Florida website operators. The accused allegedly violated the DMCA by distributing code that took the bikinis of players in Tecmo's game: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, according to a Cnet report.

Although you could argue about the lack of good taste behind the group's decision to undress the players, Tecmo's attempt to muzzle the hackers might very well violate freedom of expression rights.

Unfortunately it's unlikely that we will ever find out now that the lawyers are in charge. They after all are interested more in a quick settlement than actual justice.

February 11, 2005 at 05:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MSN Messenger drops dead

If you couldn't connect to MSN Messenger the past days, you weren't alone. A "significant" number of users were affected by an outage at the service.

I hate to take this out on Microsoft but of the four instant messaging networks I use (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM), MSN – to my knowledge - is the only one that gets affected by outages.

It gets all the more embarrassing if you realize that of that group, Microsoft is the only one developing its own software that can run the service. I just don't know if MSN actually does run on Windows.

After all it’s common knowledge that Hotmail service uses Unix after several failed attempts to switch to Windows.

February 11, 2005 at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speculations fly after HP loses CEO

Now that Carly Fiorina has been scarified to the profit margin gods, speculations fly about what will happen with HP.

Would Intel's Sean Maloney be prepared to run the ailing computer and imaging company, Cnet asks in a story where headhunters are allowed to baselessly speculate. Or maybe Ed Zander, current CEO of Motorola and long time COO of Sun Microsystems?

Further than the name of the new CEO, the big question is what the new strategic course that HP's board is looking for. Will HP be split off into several smaller ventures, hoping that a stand alone printer company will perform better than the imaging unit does now?

Does HP's PC unit have any future, IDG News wonders? The business unit is only barely profitable while facing tough competition from Dell.

These questions will distract not only HP management, but should also concern any customer. That's a pity for HP, given that I just now has the perfect opportunity to go after some of IBM's customers after the Lenovo deal.

February 11, 2005 at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Too late for valentine, to lame for words

Unless you're into watching those dating shows on TV where people try their hardest not to be themselves, this one isn't for you.

The US cable company Comcast is starting a Dating on Demand service through its cable television network.

Using video on demand technology, users will be able to watch video taped profiles of people in their local area. See that hot boy or girl that you've been craving for? Just write down their user name, go online, pull out your credit card and start communicating.

The service will become available in Chicago, Washington DC, Portland, Baltimore and Denver over the next six months.

Online dating sites may be a success, but I'd doubt it if you can just copy their business model to the world of television.

For starters the computer is a device that you use individually. But the TV is a media you enjoy with other people and makes for much more of a passive activity.

Watching the profiles might make for great late night entertainment for alcohol induced students. So you better think twice before you publicly reveal your interest in collecting stamps from Lichtenstein.

February 10, 2005 at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WiFi VoIP on the rise

Sales of WiFi enabaled mobile phones reached $6.6 m last year, says research firm Infonetics. That figure might seem tiny, but the phones have only been available since the 4th quarter.

The dual models make for 14,6 percent of the total WiFi telephone market which last year reached $45 m or 113,000 units, says to the same study.

Motorala, HP and NEC have previously launched or talked about launching such products.

Anyone who has ever used a VoIP service such as Skype or Vonage can understand the appeal of having a portable version of the service – and that's exactly what the WiFi phones deliver.

February 9, 2005 at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft not amused by iPod appeal

Would Ford send out a memo to prevent employees from driving a Toyota to work? They probably could. But if the Russian car maker Lada would do the same, it would make a fool of itself.

Yet Microsoft is taking the Lada approach by sending out memos to its employees in an attempt to keep the iPod off the company's campus in Redmond, Washington.

Wired estimates that 80 percent of all the digital music players on the campus are iPods. The massive endorsement of a competing product is a slap in the face of the Windows Digital Media Group. The group which provides among others the Creative Zen with its operating system. But it has failed to make any impression on the digital media market.

Yet Microsoft feels it doesn't get the credit it deserves. "In the media group they all smoke the company dope on that one," an anonymous source told Wired News.

The memos make it all too clear that the management's frustration is rising – but at the same time sends out a signal that Microsoft doesn't intend to compete with the iPod by delivering a better solution, but by making more noise instead.

February 9, 2005 at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bad copyright holders!

You probably don't need any more proof that copyright holders can be, well, pure evil.

But just in case you needed more convincing, read this blog posting by Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research.

He tells the tale of his daughter's school play – and how the copyright owners demanded over $1300 for the right to perform three evenings in the school's auditorium.

The school doesn't have the money, so instead is opting for a smaller venue and only two performances. And any recording equipment is banned – no video cameras at this play.

As a professional writer I can relate to the need of the play writers to make money from their copyrighted materials (my landlord still doesn't buy the "but the internet stole my work" argument). But there also is a thing called fair use – I've never charged educational institutions for the right to use any of my writings.

On the other hand schools make a tidy little profit from selling photos and video tapes of the plays its students perform in.

But still… 1300 dollars for a school play?

February 9, 2005 at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google ousts blogger for lack of tact

Google has fired Mark Jen over his blog, writes fellow blogger Jeremy Zawodny with Yahoo.

Jen's tenure with the search company was limited to just a few weeks. Taunting common sense, he on his first day started blogging like he had landed a position as senior vice president (he doesn't disclose his title, but given his experience it's a safe bet to say it's nothing senior). He criticised his new employer and disclosed some minor facts that violated Google policy.

Google management found out, and Jen soon had to edit his earlier posts. But that apparently wasn't enough and in the end Jen found himself in the line for unemployment benefits.

There's a lesson for all bloggers in there:
Be carefull what you write about your boss, employer or business partners. If you're writing a draft for a blog post, think: how would you feel if you're standing in a bar telling the same story to a friend, you turn around and your boss stands right behind you and he has heard the entire story.

Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble of course says it much better

February 9, 2005 at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bye Carly

After years of struggles, HP's Carly Fiorina earlier today stepped down as president and CEO of the server and imaging company.

Fiorina has been under fire ever since she unveiled her plans to acquire Compaq, back in 2001. And more recently she was pressured by analysts to break up the company into separate units - hoping that those units indivually would perform better than the combined company.

Fiorina always seemed to successfully fend off the attacks on her position, but the constant bickering no doubt distracted her from leading the company.

Furthermore, under Fiorina's leadership HP had its share of problems. The company lost the position of largest PC manufacturer. The stock price was outperformed by Dell's and IBM's during Fiorina's tenure. Also analysts point out that HP failed to create much, if any, of a respectable services organisation.

Fiorina getting laid off after failing to perform is how things work in the upper management classes. But I will miss the CEO. Fiorina for one is a formidable speaker who could capture an audience talking about the most boring of subjects. That for one is a feat not found too often in the high tech industry.

And it's sad that I still have to point this out, but Fiorina was by far the highest ranking woman in business.

Picture: Carly Fiorina last January at CES in Las Vegas

February 9, 2005 at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gartner: Firefox is here to stay

Things are just so easy if they are in black and white. Linux/Unix versus Microsoft, Google vs. Yahoo and MSN, and now Firefox vs. Internet Explorer. The world just got a little more easy to oversee.

Research firm Garntner warns IT managers to prepare for a world that has two browsers, Zdnet notes in a Blog posting. That's something different from the age of Internet Explorer dominance that we have seen – where webmasters could easily ignore industry standards in preference of what Microsoft forced upon the world.

That might not be good news for those of you working as sysadmins or application builders, but as a user I feel nothing but blessed.

February 9, 2005 at 01:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FBI and IT: nothing new, but still amusing

The good thing about government agencies messing up IT projects, is that is will come out in the open some day so we can all have a good laugh about it.

In the US, the FBI has just flushed $170m down the toilet. The agency was supposed to build a computer system that allows its agents to share information – a response to the 11 September terrorist attacks.

Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, called the program a "train wreck in slow motion," according to Reuters.

The FBI has no idea how much longer and how much more money it will take before the system is up and running. The sad thing is, that everyone who works in IT knows that what happened to the FBI isn't unique. It just happens to come out in the open.

February 9, 2005 at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anti-spyware groups implodes

Reaching the conclusion that having 16 months of useless Dlibertesque meetings is worse than the current invasion of keystroke logging, spam sending and ad spitting spyware, the Consortium of Anti-Spyware Technology vendors (Coast) has been disbanded.

The organisation aimed to rid the world of spyware by creating industry standards, but in the end couldn't even agree about the definition of spyware. After all, one person's unwanted ad bar is the other person's marketing dream come true.

The organisation also allowed itself to be infiltrated by several vendors whose products can be considered spyware, including 180solutions from Bellevue, Washington and WeatherBug from Gaithersburg, Maryland-based.

We all witness on a daily basis what happens if you let the malware creators get involved in regulating their own industry – after all that's why the "CAN-Spam" act, American legislation that aims to regulate the sending of unsolicited commercial emails, is utterly useless.

Given that precedent, the death of Coast might not be such a bad thing after all.

February 8, 2005 at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google beta-fest continues with map service

Acting in its usual quiet manner, Google has added a map service at maps.google.com.

Much like existing similar offerings from Yahoo and Microsoft, it offer the user directions, in addition to that includes local information such as shops and restaurants. Google also has made significant strides in the design of the page, making it much less noisy and the ones of their competitors.

Yes again Google succeeds at innovating in a space where innovation has been absent for all too long.

February 8, 2005 at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Why price transparency and online shopping don't mix

Online retailers don't plan to sit and wait until online price comparison websites take away their margins, shows a research study by Michael Baye, a professor of economics at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.

His findings wouldn't have been noteworthy at all if it weren't for the doomsday predictions from the days of the internet hype. The internet was predicted to take away all friction points that enable local monopolies to exist, among them time, physical distance and limited access to information.

Price comparison sites would take care of webshops. By making prices transparent worldwide, comparison services would force retailers to drop their prices until all profit margins were squeezed out of retailing. Amazon.com would rule the world. And pigs would fly.

But the webshops weren't going to sit and wait for their inevitable demise. They battle the newfound transparency by constantly changing their prices – not just lowering them but also raising. By the time the comparison sites have updated their databases, the shop already has changed its prices.

Battling transparency is a matter of staying one step ahead of the not just competition, but the comparison sites too.

February 8, 2005 at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gmail ready for prime time?

Gmail has upped the number of Gmail accounts that current users can hand out – they can now spread the joy to another 50 users.

Anyone who doesn’t have a Gmail account yet can ask pretty much any blogger in the world for one. That's why I've decided the world doesn't need my 50 invites. Just do a MSN Search to find a blogger that does share (or find a very creative and nice way to ask me).

Because Google seems to be ready for a large increase in the number of accounts, speculation has it that the company is ready to officially launch the service. Gmail for a long time has been in beta.

If you didn't claim your Gmail yet, save yourself the trouble. You are bound to get a username that’s just as lame as the one you now have with Hotmail. And the service isn't all that great - system availability especially is a major issue.

February 8, 2005 at 03:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

IBM, Sony get sold on Cell processor

Sony, IBM and Toshiba today unveiled their Cell processor, a chip that the San Jose Mercury News describes as "a supercomputer on a chip". The chip will be applied for applications ranging from computers, gaming consoles and digitale television sets.

Intel should get very worried, because the chip is much more powerful than anything Intel currently produces. If all this is right, we might very well be at the forefront of a new, Intel-less era in computing history.

But then again, we've heard stories before of a company launching a chip that would change the world. Just think Intel Itanium or Transmeta's Crusoe.

February 8, 2005 at 03:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meet Microsoft's real nemesis: Windows

Did you think Linux was costing Microsoft truckloads of money? Think again.

The real bleeder over in Redmond is Windows itself. The endless number of illegal copies of the operating systems is costing the software maker a fortune in missed revenues. So Microsoft will start requiring proof from users that they acquired their software legally. Otherwise they won't be able to download software patches and updates.

This whole plan is nothing short of genius. Microsoft first created an operating system that excels in its level of non-security. Now it has found a way to use that fact to battle software piracy.

Who said that Microsoft couldn't innovate?

February 8, 2005 at 03:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

No sparks flying in Sun-Microsoft affair

Thanks to the European Union, the Sun-Microsoft settlement is getting less and less relevant, Java godfather James Gossling said at an event in Sydney, Australia.

"Our agreement with them is becoming less and less relevant because of a lot of the fallout of some of the antitrust action in Europe. Europe (has) been forcing Microsoft to open up those interfaces to everyone anyway. So the agreement we have with them looks a lot like the ones that the EU are getting them to do," Cnet quoted Gossling saying.

But the arrangement getting less relevant doesn't mean it's completely useless. As part of the deal, Microsoft paid Sun $ 1.95 bn in "and now shut up" money.

And as Sun COO Jonathan Schwartz recently said at a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley: "Two billion dollars buys a lot of love."

February 8, 2005 at 03:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BEA stays defiant against Oracle

Although Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison last January painted a humongous target on BEA as its next takeover target, BEA's CEO Alfred Chuang doesn't see his company getting acquired

"Oracle is busy integrating Peoplesoft and laying off 5000 people. Who we are busy hiring," Chuang said earlier today about Oracle's threat during the presentation of "Project Da Vinci" (see vnunet.com for more info).

BEA also isn't impressed with Oracle's plans to become the largest Application Server vendor in the world – a spot currently held by BEA. "When other comps are just trying to be, they are trying to move up their market share to just a fraction of what BEA has," Chuang said.

Still we've seen what Oracle's determination can lead to.


Alfred Chuang at this morning's presentation.

February 8, 2005 at 02:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pick a card, any card

Across the the pond in the UK, it seems that you Brits are increasingly divided  by ID cards, and you can see why.

Even the Patriot Act at its most restrictive didn't try and force residents of this land of the free to carry such cards. That being said, on the few occasions that the police have asked for a word the first one they use is usually "ID".

ID cards are useless. You need to be able to see a raft of supporting evidence, such as whether the person has a bank account, library card or gym membership, before trusting their identity.

We stopped talking about perimeter IT security years ago, recognising that a more holistic approach was needed. It's time that the UK government caught up.

February 4, 2005 at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

And here's one I prepared earlier

We've heard of wireless antennas made from Pringle tubes, and of course that childhood favourite a telephone made from tin cans connected by string.

But now we hear reports of high-tech uses for the curiously strong Altoids mints tin.

Limor Fried, armed with her master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute, has built an MP3 player out of one, pictured here

And the MP3 player is just the latest alternative high-tech use for the tin. It has been utilised for shortwave radios and more recently as an iPod battery pack, and even a set of iPod speakers has been made from two tins, using playing cards as backing to create some bass.

So what else can you come up with? A server in a Tic-Tac box? A mainframe in a Sherbet Dib-Dab packet? Come on, impress us …

February 4, 2005 at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Boob or breakthrough?

It's hardly big news for a dotcom gambling company to be brash and up-front with its advertising, but GoldenPalace.com has taken this to a new level. The site has paid £422 to win an unorthodox eBay auction which gives it the right to rent the cleavage of Scottish woman Angel Brammer.

The deal means that the online casino's domain name will be affixed to the 27 year-old's ample breasts for 15 days in the form of a temporary tattoo. It is, as yet, unclear whether the terms of the auction contain clauses preventing Ms Brammer wrapping up warmly to fight off the Scottish winter, which, would we guess, will limit the firm's 'brand exposure'.

For GoldenPalace.com, the stunt follows on from its purchase of the astonishingly expensive 'Virgin Mary toasted cheese sandwich' which cost the firm a cool $28,000.

February 4, 2005 at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let the Gates bashing begin – again

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is taking on open source and Linux again. After Microsoft claimed that the software is less secure than Linux in the past days, Gates now focuses on a perceived lack of interoperability of open source.

"That means letting different kinds of applications and systems do what they do best, while agreeing on a common ‘contract’ for how disparate systems can communicate to exchange data with one another," Gates wrote in an email to customers.

"Open source is a methodology for licensing and/or developing software – that may or may not be interoperable. Additionally, the open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application, which could add implementation and testing overhead to interoperability efforts,” Gates wrote.

Of course Microsoft's vision of interoperability means standardizing on all of the vendor's solutions. Industry partners have repeatedly said that scares them crazy.

And when it comes to open standards, Microsoft doesn't have a clean track record itself. Proof in case, the (failed) Passport single sign on system, that quickly faded away after the industry rallied behind the open Liberty Alliance.

February 4, 2005 at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

PalmSource sees the greener Linux grass

PalmSource will replace its proprietary operating system with Linux, following the ac acquisition of mobile phone software firm China MobileSoft.

The move might look smart, it also signals a degree of despair over at the developer of the Palm OS software for PDAs and smart phones. Following the collapse of the PDA market, the company last year revealed a new strategy for its software, focussing development on two new versions targeted at both low and high and smart phones.

While continuing development of the Smart phone Palm OS, few device manufacturers will find the system appealing now that Palmsource effectively has said it will kill the software over time.

On the other hand, PalmSource has upset only a few manufacturers with the move. It most important customer is still Palm One, but the number two Palm OS player Sony last year abandoned the market for PDAs. There are few credible players left.

China MobileSoft on the other hand currently has 10 licensees shipping its software on more than 30 phone models in China.

February 4, 2005 at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Help Microsoft come clean

We all feel for poor little Microsoft, that can't call its Media Player-less version of Win XP "Windows XP Reduced Media Edition". In continuing its constant crusade against the Windows monopoly, the European Commission has blocked that name from appearing on the store shelves.

But the question remains: now what?

So let's give Microsoft a hand. Dan Gilmore is collecting suggestions for more suitable names. Go wild and help Microsoft comply with the EU ruling.

February 3, 2005 at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Utility computing mostly hype

Utility computing isn't yet ready for prime time, a panel of grid experts concluded at the OSDL forum.

Not only does most of today's software lack support for utility models, there are many legal and practical hurdles too.

"There are sociological, technical regulatory and political issues, all of which tend to make this an interesting move, but it's not yet ready," IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky said according to a report in Infoworld.

The discussion comes days after Sun Microsystems started up the hype machine about its utility computing offering. Sun too however agreed that currently, utility computing are most suitable for high performance applications. No one should be looking at it this to run an ERP system.

February 3, 2005 at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mp3.com's Robertson returns to his roots

Michael Robertson, the CEO of Linspire and previously founder and CEO of Mp3.com, is returning to his roots. The entrepreneur is planning to launch an online music store that charges $ 0.88 per song, writes Cnet. iTunes charges $0.99 per song.

Unlike the iTunes music store, Robertson will offer his music in the unprotected mp3-format. Robertson claims he will be offering several hundred songs at the time of the launch next week.

He also says he wants to ink deals with major record companies. That may be a hard to sell deal, given the lack of digital rights management of his service.

Robertson has however pulled this off before with mp3.com, which offered music mainly from artists that didn't have a contract with a record label. The company was sued by record labels and was ultimately sold to Universal for 200 million dollars.

Robertson used some of those funds to launch his Linspire business. The company develops a Linux distribution aimed at the average consumer.

February 3, 2005 at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HP paints a big target on IBM

HP couldn't have planned it any better itself. At the moment that the company reveals its target of becoming the number one notebook seller in the world once again, IBM seems to be falling of the earth.

The sale of IBM's notebook and computer business to Lenovo is facing hurdles now that US regulators are questioning the security aspects of the deal. After all, those evil Chinese are bound to fill future IBM laptops with spying devices.

For all it matters, the damage already has been done: users are staying away from the IBM notebooks, also because they seem to have little confidence in Lenovo's service and support organisation.

HP meanwhile is laughing all the way to the bank. "To reclaim the number one position, getting IBM customers back will be instrumental," Alberto Bozzo, EMEA's general manager commercial products for HP's personal systems group told vnuet.com.

Ever since the unveiling of the sale to Lenovo, customers have been running for cover – and HP claims to offer them a safe shelter.

February 3, 2005 at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft pulls developers into office

Microsoft on Wednesday kicked off its first ever Microsoft Office System Developer Conference. The event is meant to position the suite as platform on which developers can start writing applications. XML will have to supply the lingua franca in this case.

“Already, there are a million professional developers targeting Office 2003, and a full third of those are taking advantage of the XML capabilities, and it’s a new technology and we’re really excited and inspired by that progress,” LeVasseur said according to Infoworld.

Microsoft's push into XML shows that the company is serious about making Office the front end application for enterprise software. The question remains if users are impressed by this initiative now that Oracle and SAP make a heavy to push for their own technologies to become the defacto standard.

February 3, 2005 at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HP smart phone in the works

HP will later this year introduce a smart phone, the company just disclosed at an event in San Jose, California. Unfortunately that's about all that the company will say about the upcoming product.

The iPAQ 6340 currently offers telephone capabilities, but still is more of a PDA than it is a mobile phone. The new model is said to make much more of a splash in the smartphone market.

As I said, HP hasn't given much details about the operating system it will use (although Windows Mobile is the most obvious candidate) or if it will create an HP/iPaq branded device or opt for some co-branded one instead.

Ted Clark, HP's general manager of mobile computing, reveals the company's smart phone plans.

February 2, 2005 at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sun submerges itself in the grid

Touting utility computing as the future of IT, Sun just unveiled the its latest additions to its utility computing offering, adding a $1 per GB per hour storage plan and a retail site for purchasing the $1 per CPU hour computing cycles. 

During the event at Sun's Santa Clara, California headquarters (a former mental hospital), Sun executive Jonathan Schwartz (president and COO) and Scott McNealy (CEO) spent a lot of time explaining why a utility computing model is the model of the future.

As Sun claimed -  and I tend to agree – consumers are used to using utility services ranging from Hotmail to Google. Schwartz: "[Consumers] are already using somebody else's infrastructure. the laggards are the enterprise."

Sun is being its usual defiant self. Some industry analysts have pointed out that Sun's utility computing model isn't as new as Sun would like us to believe, with IBM and HP among the vendors that offer similar services.

Yet asked about competition from IBM, Schwartz's eyes lit up:

"Bring it on," he said, mimicking what Bush last year told insurgents in Iraq.

It was too late for McNealy to intervene. "Don't say that," he hissed at his COO. Continuing: "[IBM] could try to do this. I don’t know if they are motivated."

Scott McNealy (sorry - this phonecam picture has to do)

February 2, 2005 at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)