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Digg goes bigg
Digg.com has just received $2.8m in venture capital funding from Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar, Netscape pioneer Marc Andreessen and Greylock partners.
Just the two first names should tell you that this is a company to watch. I've called Digg a Slashdot killer before, and I still stand by that assertion.
The site uses a voting mechanism (a vote is called a "digg") that allows its visitors to pick which stories should be on the front page.
The service has plenty of bugs to work out – currently the majority of stories on the front page are in the "man bites dog" or "20 cool wall papers for your desktop" category, that personally I couldn't care less about. But you can't argue with the masses. They will also face ever more Digg Spam – site cheating their way to the front page by recruiting a group of people to dig their own stories.
Digg's value lies in the fact that it allows for the smallest of blogs to reach a massive audience – 500,000 per day for Digg.com at this moment, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Of those 80,000 are registered users who are able to 'Digg' stories.
Digg's background is foggy – the site is a project of Kevin Rose, formerly of TechTV.
Tags: pierre omidyar, marc andreessen, greylock partners, kevin rose, digg
October 28, 2005 at 07:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Forbes digs into the blogosphere's underworld
Forbes magazine current issue features a cover story on the dark side of blogs. Blogs can break companies, careers and politicians, as the publication illustrates.
The story makes some spot on observations. Blogs have made it easy to publish both positive and slanderous content. Nothing new there, but it's now easier than ever to do so.
Example 1 from the story:
Industry analyst Sara Radicati wrote a critical report on IBM Lotus Notes. Blogger Ed Brill launched an attack and rallied an army of consultants who make money from selling the application and undermined her authority by claiming the study was paid for by Microsoft.
Example 2:
Circle Group Holdings developed a fat substitute. The publicly traded company was on its was up, until an anonymous blogger attacked the company, calling its CEO deceitful, unethical and a pathological liar. Investors got scare and the stock plummeted. It turned out that the author of the slander pieces was a former stock broker who is under investigation by the SEC for taking part in stock price manipulation scemes.
The examples are fair enough. But reading the article, I kept feeling that the complaints are those of the old world versus the new world. Of a world that understands and embraces blogging (sometimes for the wrong reasons) versus one that shuns away from it.
The story actually goes on to illustrate how you can defeat attack bloggers at their own trade. Circle in the end found an ally in the FinancialWire online news service – they too had had a run-in with the blogger by the name of Timothy Miles. Together they dug up some dirt on him and put it out on the internet, fighting fire with fire.
These cases more than anything illustrate that companies need a blogging strategy. You need to have established a presence online so you can be ready when you need to be.
If an attack comes, clients and partners will look for your side of the story. If it isn't there, you're screwed.
Attack blogs are just like bullies in school. They're only successful it they catch you off guard. That is why Robert Scoble is such a huge asset to Microsoft – because they are probably the most attacked company in the world.
In the process, your blog can provide a powerful tool in advertising your company and your products. But that's something that Forbes forgot to mention.
Tags: blogoshpere, forbes
October 28, 2005 at 06:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Performance issues for Silicon Valley Sleuth
You might have noticed that performance of this blog has been spotty at times. I'm sorry.
This blog is hosted by Six Apart, and they are in the process of moving their data centre to a new facility. This is causing the occasional outages.
October 28, 2005 at 06:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Foreign call centres screw up big time
Outsourced call centres are degrading customer satisfaction, a study by Harris Interactive has found.
Consumers who have dealt with foreign call centre agents loath them more than consumers who haven't. This signals that these outsourced call centres do even worse than individual expect.
"Organisations that outsource call centres overseas may also have to contend with damage to their brand and reputation," said the Harris Interactive study.
47 per cent of the adults questioned in the study have less respect for companies that use Indian or other offshore call centres and another 50 per cent doesn't trust giving them financial details, fearing identity theft.
Was there nothing good to mention?
Why yes. A full 4 per cent said that the foreigners were friendlier than domestic agents and 2 per cent found them more helpful.
Photo: Janet Arndt
Tags: offshoring, outsourcing, call center
October 28, 2005 at 01:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Hotmail ate my email
Take a look at some forums for large broadband internet providers, and you'll see users complaining that they are unable to send emails addressed at Hotmail or MSN. It takes a good observer however to notice the problems, because the email doesn't bounce. Instead it will simply vanish as if it never existed.
Microsoft too is puzzled by this issue. They were notified about a forum where Apple ranted about the problem on Tuesday. They have been investigating the problem ever since, but refuse to provide any background about what is going on.
The Hotmail outage doesn't just affect Apple users. Subscribers of Comcast, Rogers and Cogeco (all broadband internet providers) too have reported problems with sending email to Hotmail and MSN.
When presented with these problems, email security experts all have the same conclusion: spam filters gone bad.
In these days of botnets, broadband providers are the number one sources of spam email messages – one source told vnunet.com that Comcast is notoriously bad in curbing spam originating from its network. So the likely cause here is that whenever Hotmail gets fed up with one provider, they tweak their servers and make it harder for that one provider to reach them. This will then cause the provider to investigate what's going on and ideally have them call Microsoft – but in some cases (like Comcast's) they take more drastic measures and just shut down their servers.
"These things almost become like a comedy of errors," Andrew Lochart, director of product marketing for email security vendor Postini told vnunet.com.
It might be funny to Mircrosoft and the providers, but as usual the users are caught in between.
Tags: Microsoft, hotmail, spam, botnet, Comcast, rogers, cogeco
October 28, 2005 at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Apple accused of copying iPod ad
Apple is under fire for copying its latest iPod TV commercial featuring Eminem off an earlier add for Lugz boots.
The two use similar colours and concept. And given that Apple prides itself with its focus on unique design, admitting that the company copied the ad would be a moral defeat.
Apple's advertising agency ensures that it is merely a coincidence. And the Mac faithful are gathering behind their idol.
If there is any truth to the rumours, I doubt that we will ever find out.
Lugz
iPod
Tags: apple, lugz, ipod, eminem
October 27, 2005 at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Catholic school adds 11th commandment: thou shalt not blog
The Pope John XIII catholic high school in the state of New Jersey has instated an immediate ban on blogging for its students, according to a report in the The Daily Record.
The school's principal reverend Kieran McHugh told the 900 students that the personal journals attract sexual predators. Students have to cancel their MySpace, Typepad or Blogger accounts or face suspension.
The Catholic Church is an authority in knowing how great the threats from child molesters really is. The institution after all for years moved around child molesting priests between its parishes in an effort to cover up the sexual abuse scandal inside its church.
Mind you, McHugh isn't telling students not to blog from school – his blogging ban extends to after school hours.
"I don't see this as censorship," McHugh told The Daily Record. "I believe we are teaching common civility, courtesy and respect."
The story goes on to quote concerned parents and other parties who voice their fear of the gore that is apparently spreading on these blogs – that most parents never heard about until the ban. Of course something like that would never happen within the walls of a respected institution like the Catholic Church… oh… wait.
Never mind the free speech violations that the ban is obviously violating. The Pope John XIII high school is a private school, meaning that they board can come up with any rule it wants.
But then again, if the Church is fighting a new trend, you know it has to be good.
Forgive me father, for I have blogged.
Photo: Michal Adamczyk
Tags: blog, blogosphere
October 26, 2005 at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Blackberry bug sends mystery emails
The BBC has been hit by bug in its BlackBerry software that caused the service to copy fragments of other people's emails into messages.
Research in Motion confirmed to vnunet.com that the problem is caused by a bug in its BlackBerry Enterprise Server software version 4.02.
The bug could turn out to be a painful mistake by RIM. The company is facing increased competition from Good and Microsoft in delivering email to portable devices. While RIM has gained user loyalty with its robust and proven service, messing up email delivery could quickly kill that image.
Tags: blackberry, palm, treo, Microsoft, good
October 26, 2005 at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Google gone wild
Blogs showed their ugly sides once again today, with their failure to check facts and taking baseless speculation for fact.
Screen shots emerged of a new Google product called Google Base. The information to some seemed to represent a new online classified advertising service – especially because it offered to "post" information about several categories including "vehicles".
Not being stopped, the false prophets once again started their lie machines. Even The New York Times' John Markoff couldn't resist.
If only they had taken the effort to check their facts and visit the official Google Blog, where product marketing manager soon revealed that the service in fact allows publishers to submit information to the search engine to augment the information that Google already collects with its spiders.
Oops.
PS: Markoff actually quoted from the Google statement, but did so in a way that very much questioned its contents.
Tags: google, blogosphere
October 26, 2005 at 06:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Are online gaming economies getting out of hand?
A gamer has paid $100,000 for a virtual space lot in the online role-playing game Project Entropia.
While it is common to players to sell virtual goods in massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), I've never before heard of so much money being shelled out for virtual goods.
Project Entropia is different from most MMORPGs in that players don't pay monthly fees to play the game and can download the client software for free. Instead the developers sell virtual tools and arms that you need inside the game for real cash. And in this case they even sold an entire space resort.
The new owner can make money by renting out the 1,000 apartments on the property, its mall and billboards. He gets to tax for hunting and mining rights. And all that money he can change back into real dollars.
But the buyer has few guarantees that his investment will be worth anything. What if developer Mindark of Sweden tomorrow decides to pull the plug on the game? What if a space invasion tears down the apartment complex?
The game developer allows the laws of the economy to kick in by auctioning all goods. But what's next? Nothing is keeping the game developer from staring a bank that creates loans for the games' currency: the Project Entropia Dollar (PED) (which has a fixed exchange rate of 10 PED for one dollar).
Last month a gamer was arrested in Japan for hacking into a computer game and robbing fellow players. Now if you hack any game, I would target a thriving economy like Entropia's – so far $150 million was spend in 2005. While the hacking is illegal, no laws prohibit a mugging in the game because nothing is actually being stolen.
Am I the only one that starts to have visions of The Matrix here?
Tags: MMORPG, gaming, entropia, mindark
October 25, 2005 at 09:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Walmart folds Xbox 360 demo
Walkmart has unplugged all models of the Xbox 360 that it had on display because the devices interfered with in story systems.
The gaming console transmits a signal over the 2.4GHz band (it isn't clear what part of the device is doint that) – the same band used by Walmarts hand scanners for the store's inventory system.
The 2.4GHz band provides free unlicensed wireless spectrum that is used by a plethora of devices, ranging from cordless phones to the Wifi networking technology. Microwaves also cause interference in this band.
Microsoft has since created a software patch fixing the problem, which has already been distributed to the Walmart stores.
Tags: Microsoft, walmart, xbox 360
October 25, 2005 at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
DoJ warms up for another fight against Oracle
The Department of justice has requested additional information from Oracle about the company's planned acquisition of Siebel Systems as part of a routing anti-trust investigation.
While the investigation itself is routine, it's less common to ask for additional information. That is sure to get the rumour mills spinning as to whether we can expect a repeat of last year's legal battle over Peoplesoft.
For all the money that was wasted on the lawsuit – both taxpayer's and Oracle shareholder's – it was a fun event that helped us get trough the usually boring (newswise) summer months.
We learnt about SAP's planned merger with Microsoft, and Oracle's other potential acquisition targets such as Siebel Systems and BEA. And of course the dramatic downfall of Peoplesoft soon after Oracle won the judge's approval for the acquisition.
Could a sequel be just as good?
Ellison unveils his plans for the merged Oracle and Peoplesoft venture last January
Tags: oracle, Peoplesoft, siebel, SAP, BEA, Microsoft
October 25, 2005 at 03:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Contest rules general template
- To enter the contest, contestants have to create a post on their blog. (if you don't have a blog, you can get one for free here).
- In your post, link to the posting announcing the contest.
- Send either a trackback to the Silicon Valley Sleuth Posting or or leave a comment with the URL of your posting in the comments section so I can see your entry. Trackback has to show up on the Silicon Valley Sleuth blog posting for entry to be valid.
- Entries will be judged and the winner picked by Silicon Valley Sleuth staff using arbitrary criteria that won't be disclosed. The winner will receive notification by electronic communications. The price will be mailed free of charge to any street address in the world.
- This contest is supposed to be fun. Silicon Valley Sleuth reserves the right to cancel this contest if lawyers get involved, upset or hurt, or if things are getting overly complicated in any other way.
- Prices are delivered as is – no guarantees are made about their working condition. Some prices will not work in certain areas of the world because of the license by which they are governed. It's the price winner's responsibility to comply with all the rules and regulations set forth in the product's license. Any local taxes or fees (such as custom's fees) are the prices winner's responsibility.
- Employees of VNU and any of its subsidiaries are excluded from this contest.
- The end date of the contest will be posted in a blog posting on the Silicon Valley Sleuth blog.
October 24, 2005 at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Motorola's iTunes phone goes bust
We can officially write off the Motorola Rokr, better known as the iTunes mobile telephone, as the largest technology disappointment of 2005.
Return rates for the mobile phones are six times the industry average, claimed Albert Lin, an analyst with American Technology Research. Users are complaining that the devices are impossible to hook up to the iTunes music playing software.
The phone has plenty going against it. Costing $250, it is one of the more expensive models on the market today - only high end smart phones are priced more expensively. And then you get a phone that artificially caps off the number of songs that you can play at 100 for no apparent reason.
That didn't stop Motorola from launching a marketing campaign that touted the device as music player. Consumers saw the TV commercial featuring Madonna where a bunch of musicians are crammed into a phone booth and concluded that the Rokr was a music playing mobile phone.
But it isn't.
"People were looking for an iPod and that's not what it is. We may have missed the marketing message there," Motorola chief executive Ed Zander told Bloomberg last week.
Zander is really saying that if you're looking for a music playing mobile phone, get the Nokia 3250 music telephone or the Walkman phone from Sony Ericsson. The Motorola Rokr isn't up for the task.
Steve Jobs unveils the Motorola Rokr last September in San Francisco.
Tags: apple, motorola, walkman, sony ericsson, nokia, itunes, rokr
October 24, 2005 at 07:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A day in the life of a Silicon Valley journalist
Below is an unedited conversation I had with a PR spokesperson over Instant messenger... only names have been altered for privacy and job security reasons.
[18:37] SV Sleuth: uh.... one more question...
[18:37] SV Sleuth: John's business title would be?
[18:38] PR flack: hold on
[18:38] SV Sleuth: (not in his bio...)
[18:40] PR flack: it is not in his bio?
[18:40] SV Sleuth: nope
[18:40] PR flack: yeah... we're pretty good at this stuff
[18:41] SV Sleuth: I could say something about such info being more important than knowing that he likes ocean kayaking, but that would be cheap
[18:41] PR flack: we're still new at this PR stuff... too many of us mistake PR
[18:41] PR flack: for internet dating
[18:42] PR flack: and enclose the wrong info
[18:42] SV Sleuth: can I quote you on that?
[18:42] PR flack: only if you include my picture
[18:42] SV Sleuth: deal!
Any similarity to Tom Cruise is coincidental
October 22, 2005 at 02:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft makes a bid for the forced software bundling crown
Bundling software appears to be the nasty trick of choice this year to gain users.
Yahoo in September got flamed for hiding a slew of applications in the download package for its instant messenger. It caused Yahoo blogger Yeremy Zawody to call his employer "insulting and disrespectful". But cautious users at least could stop Yahoo's bundling before anything nasty happened.
Apple last week went even further. Users looking to download the new Quicktime player – needed to play movie trailers and video streams of Apple corporate – are forced to install the iTunes music player. If you feel like you don't need yet another music player, you can manually uninstall the application, but Apple conveniently fails to point that out.
Apple's unasked bundling might trump Yahoo, Microsoft still gets the first price in the contest for the most evil bundling scheme.
Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff wanted to view some Microsoft documents that the company had made available in the Microsoft Document Explorer format. Inconvenient, but nobody can force Microsoft to use PDF. But things don’t stop at the Document Explorer – this application requires the .Net framework version 2.0… which is still in beta. Which is in beta because… it isn't yet a finished product. Not even a bureaucrat in Soviet Russia could have come up with that one.
and the winner is...
Tags: yahoo, Microsoft, apple, messenger, yahoo messenger, Microsoft Document Explorer, bundling, quicktime, itunes
October 22, 2005 at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
What is Oracle's CFO hiding?
Oracle this week for the second time cancelled a meeting with financial analysts. (free registration)
This made for the second time that Oracle cancelled the meeting, the first time being in September.
The software maker claims there is nothing going on. Fincial analyst Adam Holt with J.P. disagreed, telling Marketwatch.com that it "raises questions about Oracle being unprepared to give an update to fiscal 2006 guidance, or something being more fundamentally wrong."
He added that "we can't recall another example of an analyst day being postponed this close to the meeting and for the second time."
Credit Suisse First Boston' Jason Maynard however said there is nothing to it: "We do not believe there are any other ominous or problematic reasons for the cancellation," claiming that the company was just tied up with the Oracle Open World user event last September and the recent acquisition of Siebel Systems.
It does appear however that there is something fishy going on SAP's Jeff Nolan is all to happy to point out.
Tags: oracle, SAP, analyst meeting, Jeff Nolan
October 21, 2005 at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Scoble to Microsoft's rescue
Robert Scoble hits the nail on the head when he analyses his value for Microsoft in this interview on Activewin.com:
"People liked us (Microsoft employees) after meeting us. That reduced their fear and got them to see that we were just passionate technologists and not quite as evil as they'd heard about us."
He is talking about the Channel 9 website, but I would argue that the same goes for Scoble as a blogger. He has put a human face on the company that has been tainted by Bill Gates' and Steve Ballmer's quirks and infamous fame.
Robert Scoble is the prime example of a corporate blogger. For many people in the technology field he is the third best known Microsoft employee, trailing only behind Ballmer and Gates.
But I keep asking myself the question to what extent a "Scoble" would have an equal impact for Apple, IBM or Google. Fact is that following the anti-trust suit, Microsoft's image had become that of the monopolistic crime syndicate that doesn't innovate and everybody hates. Few companies share that fate (Computer Associates comes closest, but I don't know of any CA "Scobles").
Blogs have allowed Microsoft to break down the Berlin Walls that the company built in the past decades – the "Ministry of non-information" AKA their Waggener Edstrom PR firm is living proof of that.
Unique problems here called for a unique solution called Robert Scoble.
October 20, 2005 at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
PSP hacking feast
As previously reported, Sony's PSP is being targeted by trojans. The most aggressive trojan around will actually delete critical files from the system, rendering it useless.
Security firm F-Secure has created a video demonstrating this and other exploits for the PSP.
One will show how a bug in the PSP operating system allows a specially crafted image file to crash the system – without any permanent damage. In another demonstration, the security experts show how arbitrary code is run on the device, and lastly, they "brick" the device. To brick, in case you're wondering, means that code makes your PSP just as useful as a brick. You can stack it and throw it around the room, but it's useless as a gaming device.
Luckily these are all exploits that the user has to download. Users aren't going to be in real trouble until we start seeing PSP worms that spread themselves like Windows viruses.
October 20, 2005 at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I am no Mac whore
Media are biased towards Apple because "90 per cent of the mainstream writers [are] Mac users," John Dvorak writes in his latest PCmag column.
He goes on to argue that this is Microsoft's bad, because those writers no longer can relate to the Windows platform as Microsoft gets ready to launch Windows Vista.
Dvorak points to technology columnists for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other mainstream media, who have all admitted to being Mac users. Especially the WSJ's Walt Mossberg, it seems, has never met a Mac he didn't like.
But I regret his notion that: "Every time Steve Jobs sneezes there is a collective chorus of "Gesundheit" from tech writers pounding away on their Macs." And the 90 per cent is highly overstated - at least at the technology events that I attend.
This blog is published by vnunet.com. We don't do "blogs on the side" like most media but have made them part of our online publishing strategy. On the vnunet.com news site we too write about Apple products. Why? Because people read it. Actually, people read it like crazy. Yesterday's story on the new Powerbooks and Power Macs was the number one traffic driver. Last week's coverage about the new video iPod too got us readers by the dozens.
So do stories about Windows Vista by the way. Just because we write about it, doesn't mean we like one better than the other. I might drive in a Ford, but don't take that factoid to say that I hate Toyotas.
We strive not to be biased in our reporting. If Apple does something right, we'll write it down. If they screw up, we'll again report it. The latter will cause the Mac faithful to start jolting verbal manure in our direction. They are just proving that behind a keyboard, everybody can pretend to be a big man. I don't edit those comments, except when they contain obscenities or rant for the sake of ranting (the single line: "you suck" kind of comment. If you try to explain why I suck, I'll gladly leave your comment).
Please let me know what you think. I already know that I occasionally suck, but if you can make a good point, go ahead.
Uhoh, a photo of Bill Gates with a Windows powered Treo. Bias allert?
Tags: Dvorak, apple, microsoft, media bias
October 20, 2005 at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
The irrelevant war: Blu-ray vs. HD DVD
Few standards wars are relevant, but in the larger scheme of standards feuds, the struggle between the Blu-Ray and HD DVD backers has set a new low.
Yesterday HP gave the Blu-ray Association a public scolding by asking the group to include technologies that would enable compatibility between Blu-ray and HD DVD.
The two groups are battling to set the standard for your and my next generation DVD player. They believe that we need tens of Gigs of storage space to store high definition movies and lots and lots of bonus features. The bonus features, they believe, are actually the main reason why you and I still buy DVD disks.
Of course there are technology license revenues at stake, which justifies a good old battle. But as always the two are completely leaving out their customer: us.
I don't care which one wins, just like I don't care about Pepsi or Coke. Create an artificial battleground as much as you want, you won't get me excited. We all know that the standard with the most porn wins anyway, so go into your studios and get to work.
But please gentlemen, keep pulling each other's hair and say nasty things. In the mean time I'll be patiently waiting for IP TV to take away your business altogether. The longer you take, the further your window closes.
working prototype of a blu-ray player by Sony.
October 20, 2005 at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
In the UK, Gmail now stands for greedy mail
Google has changed the name of its gmail service in the UK into Google Mail following a dispute over the Gmail name with Independent International Investment Research (IIIR).
The latter has been using a email service called Gmail since 2002. Even IIIR realised that it had little affiliation with the name, but it appears that the firm got greedy, demanding up to $64mln for the UK Gmail naming rights.
Google however thought I could make better investments with its billions of dollars, and called IIIR's bluff. Starting today, all new accounts in the UK will receive the googlemail.com domain.
What the world knows as:
in the UK now is:
October 19, 2005 at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Drunk drivers ask judge to open breathalyser source code
A group of more than 150 defendants accused of driving under the influence of alcohol are asking a judge to give them the source code of the device that police used to prove their guilt.
The more I think about this, the more it makes sense. A computer does a calculation and tells me I'm guilty (of being drunk). But who says that the computer is right? As long as computer programmes have bugs, there is a chance that they will cause me to get wrongly convicted.
The DUI case is real, and will come before panel of Florida judges this Friday.
But surely the state of Florida has certified these Intoxilyzer 5000 machines?
Yes, back in 1993 they have. The manufacturer, CMI (with the great URL: Alcoholtest.com) has since made changes to both the hardware and the software.
In once case the company even shipped the device with a bug and had to recall it. The bug was rather obvious. The breathalyser takes two breath samples. If the results of those aren't within a certain range, it will tell the officer to take a third sample. But in this case the application was challenging correct samples and didn't challenge incorrect ones. So don't say that the machine can't have bugs.
It gets even more fun. Theoretically a judge could force CMI to open the application's source code, but this is highly unlikely. The company, which refused to discuss the case, instead claims that the software code for the 25-year-old device is a trade secret. Never mind that the actually application is less than 24 kilobytes in size (yes, kB) and still runs on z80 processors that were introduced in 1976.
It seems that there are plenty of reasons for the defendants that justify taking a closer look at the source code for this device. And if previous rulings are any guideline, they have a pretty good chance that their request will be honoured.
While the ancient technology being used gives you a feeling of the 'state of the art factor' of these trade secrets, it also indicates that this case will only have a limited impact acting as a legal precedent.
But just for the sake of it, let's think what other applications have closed source codes and could cause harm to individuals….? Oh wait, I'll make this one easy: which application doesn't?
Speed detection lasers, credit card transaction software, software with utility companies that calculates you monthly phone and gas bill would just be a few examples. Wonder how far we can take this.
tags: open source, dui, Intoxilyzer 5000
October 19, 2005 at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
If you ever spat from a tower…
If you ever spat from a tower, threw rocks in a lake or did any other useless yet highly amusing experiment with gravity, then this movie is for you.
For a yet to air Sony TV commercial, the crew launched 250,000 bouncy balls down San Francisco hills. Now there's a job that I would have liked to have.
The above link contains a "the making of" movie.
Tags: sony, bouncy balls
October 19, 2005 at 06:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
GPS navigation live traffic update demonstration (video demo)
How does receiving live traffic updates to your route navigation system help? This post contains a video that gives you a demonstration of TomTom 5 live traffic updates. Read the previous post for more details about this software.
In the movie, I'm asking the system to calculate a route from a random address in Mountain View to a random place in downtown San Francisco, which it claims will take 45 minutes. Then I fetch the latest traffic information. Turns out there has been an accident on highway 101 at the Holly street exit. Pressing 'avoid' creates an alternate route that takes 6 minutes longer than the original one, but avoids the backup on the highway.
For this demonstration the iPaq was in its docking station, which allows it to use my computer's internet connection – data wasn't fetched over the wireless GPRS data connection.
Click here to view the movie (5.6 Mb .wmv download)
Tags: tomtom, route navigation
October 18, 2005 at 07:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Be the traffic master
TomTom has finally released the US version of its TomTom 5 GPS navigation software – it has been available in Europe for a few months. Getting my hands on the upgrade, I must say that I'm delighted to find out that the software can now use a GPRS connection to constantly get updated traffic information. This will help me get to my destination as fast as humanly possible.
In Europe you're seeing GPS phones being sold with the TomTom software bundled with the device, making for a zero headache installation. Here in the US I'm running the application on an HP iPaq. Bluetooth provides a link with the GPS receiver, and also hooks up to my GPRS enabled mobile phone that is connected to the internet.
Setting up the latter has been a pain in the butt. My wireless carrier Cingular refused to help me setting up the device ("You didn't buy it from us, so we won't support it," the bastards said. Never mind that it's their data service that I need to log on to).
But any problem I have, somebody else has had before me, and so Google in the end lead me to the answer. But let it be said that dialing in to number *99# with area code 0 isn't something that you can easily figure out yourself.
After wasting an hour or so to get the internet connection working, I can now receive traffic updates while driving. The software will automatically update the route based on those traffic updates. How cool is that?
I'll give the software even more shouts for getting only traffic information for the route on which I am travelling – getting only the bare minimum of traffic data and keeping my data bill under control. If you want to be more cost sensitive, you can also use your internet connection at home to get the latest data just before you leave and pray that nothing nasty will happen in the mean time.
The traffic information service is part of TomTom Plus Services and is free until the end of the year. I just hope that they'll price it at a decent level thereafter.
The technology is there, now we just need to make it a little easier to set up.
Tags: tomtom, route navigation
October 18, 2005 at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Barney the whiner
In a case of "you can still try, of course", the owners of Barney the purple dinosaur are suing websites that depict the children's cartoon character in a violent manner.
"Your Web site depicts a plush Barney toy in a violent manner or position," lawyers for Barney trademark owner Lyons Partnership wrote to website operators. "We are writing to request that you remove this violent content toward Barney on your Web site."
Barney, in case you don't watch the US Public Broadcasting System (PBS) a lot, is a purple dinosaur from the toddler TV show 'Barney and Friends'. He is happy and joyful to the extend that you suspect that he's on drugs. His unwarranted jubilations tend to drive some people crazy.
If your first response to the legal complaint is: "freedom of expression", you are probably right. As a public figure, Barney can expect his fair share of parodies.
And as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told Cnet, Lyons should know this. The foundation told the venture to shut up back in 2001 after it sent out similar letters, which they did. Even further back, in 1999, the company lost another case where Lyons wanted to limit what individuals could say and do with the Barney character.
You can try, but you will fail every time.
Photo: Internet weekly parody news story
And another potential target for Lyons' legal machine
Tags: barney, lyons, frivolous lawsuit
October 18, 2005 at 05:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Gates' billions fund computer history museum
The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA has received a $15m donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The funds represent the largest single donation in the museum's history. They will be used to further build out the museum's exhibition by creating a "timeline of computing history" exhibition.
The museum currently has only a small part of its collection on display, showing some of the early mainframes and other big iron computers. It's the largest collection of 'stuff your wife won't let you have in the living room' that I've ever seen.
The Computer History Museum currently however is best known for the numerous events and press conferences that it has hosted, such as the recent Sun-Google partnership and last year's Bill Gates speech.
The museum itself is part of Silicon Valley's history too – being housed in a building that was originally constructed to house the corporate headquarters for Silicon Graphics (aka: SGI). The moving plans were abandoned shortly after the company was forced to significantly downsize after the burst of the internet bubble.
Photo: computer history museum
Tags: bill gates, gates foundation, bill and melinda gates foundation, donation, microsoft, computer history museum, SGI
October 17, 2005 at 07:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft's culture clash
There are two Microsofts. The first is the old Microsoft, that thinks that the word "compete" is synonymous to "kill". It's the Microsoft that got into a truckload of trouble for abusing its Windows monopoly, and the kind of Microsoft that has gotten weaker after Steve Ballmer took over as CEO back in 2000 from Bill Gates.
Ballmer started building the second Microsoft, which tries to compete the fair way: by making better software.
Anybody working for the new Microsoft will confirm that this division within the company exists – as they have told me. They will also tell you that this transgression to the new Microsoft is still in progress. Because despite all the work that the new Microsoft has done, the old Microsoft every now and then rears its ugly head.
The proof is in this posting on the Windows Server blog, where 'Patrick' (no last name posted) with the Windows Server team has a field day picking on MySQL. He enthusiastically points out that the open source database company has been flamed by some open source advocates for doing a deal with SCO, and then continues to rejoice in the fact that Oracle acquired Innobase, a company that is a contributor to the open source project. He suggests that the acquisition has dire consequence for mySQL.
Why does 'Patrick' represent the old Microsoft?
For starters he completely missed the point on the use of blogs. Nobody is interested in hearing an obviously biased point of view on a company with which Microsoft competes. Use blogs to defend yourself against attacks or explain what you are doing and why. Don't try using them as a blunt weapon – it will backfire.
Secondly, his comments are completely irrelevant for Microsoft users. Patrick, instead of ranting about the open source competitor, take a deep breath, wipe the foam off your mouth and start looking at how you can help your customers and users. You don't win over customers by pointing to your opponents misfortunes, you do that by creating value in your products.
Patrick is stuck in the era of the cold war in software, when Microsoft's business plan was build around the knowledge that customers would buy its software because they had slaughtered every competitor in the marketplace.
Those days are over. You can't slaughter open source projects the same way you slaughtered Netscape or Be OS. Microsoft's multi billion dollar bank account is useless against a competitor that doesn't have a business you can steal away. The new Microsoft understands that. The old one has to evolve or become a dinosaur.
Tags: microsoft, competition
October 17, 2005 at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
A Silicon Valley bookstore fairy tale
Kepler's ookstore in Menlo Park, a small town in Silicon Valley, is your old fashioned, welcoming kind of bookstore. The staff is knowledgeable and friendly, the selection is broad. And most importantly, the café next door has the best outdoor area in all of the San Francisco Bay Area that's great for sipping wine in the evening sun.
Menlo Park is home to Sand Hill Road, the street with the largest concentration of venture capital investors in the world. Including some of the investors that funded Amazon.
Kepler's last August went out of business. Knowledgeable staff is of very little economic value when Amazon will tell you exactly what book you need. And never minder that bookshops like Borders and Barnes & Noble actually did evolve and seem to be doing well.
The community that failed to keep Kepler's in business in the first place now was outraged. Fundraisers followed, volunteer pools were formed. A group of 23 patrons donated over half a million dollars to relief the store's debt. So early October the store reopened.
In a bizarre twist of fate, Silicon Valley came to the rescue of the store that it had killed. One of the donors who gave more than $25,000 is venture capitalist John Doerr, who allowed Amazon to kick off its bookstore killing venture.
Changing industries is fine, as long as it doesn't hit home?
Tags: keplers, amazon, silicon valley, doerr, KPCB,
October 17, 2005 at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Xbox 360 sold out already
Even before its official introduction, it appears that the Xbox has sold out.
Amazon.com had been taking pre-orders, but stopped doing so. On its UK and German website, the web shop has put up a message stating that:
"We have been informed that the Xbox 360 will be in short supply on the day of release, and, unfortunately, this means we can't guarantee that pre-orders will be delivered by day of release. We are working with our suppliers to ensure that we fulfil all orders as soon as possible, and will ship the consoles as soon as we receive them."
If you were determined to get your hands on one of the new Xbox gaming consoles, you can still try and get one in a retail store. But then you'd better get your sleeping back out.
Microsoft's next generation gaming console is set to start shipping in the US on 22 November and Europe on 2 December. Having a large stock of Xbox 360's is of great importance, as Microsoft needs all the sales it can get in competing with Sony's Playstation 3. The latter isn't scheduled for release until 2006 and Microsoft needs all the sales it can get leading up to that day, because the PlayStation will greatly out-perform the Xbox through the new Cell processor.
Tags: xbox, xbox 360, amazon, Microsoft, sony, psp, psp3
October 14, 2005 at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Win free iPod goodies!
Silicon Valley Sleuth has received a poster showing the new video iPod as well as gift certificates for one free download of Desperate houswives, ten free iTunes music downloads and one free iTunes audio book download.
The audio book gift certificate is a limited edition version featuring a picture of the cover of the latest Harry Potter Book.
To do something meaningful with these items, I've decided to give them away through a contest:
To enter the content, you need a blog. If you don't have one, you can get one for free here.
The rules of this contest are:
- Create a post on your blog that: (A) says something about the iPod video or new iMac and (B) includes one of the photos from the Apple event that are posted on this blog under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 2.5 License. (meaning: it's free, but attribution required!)
- In your post, link to this posting. Then send a trackback ping to this URL or leave a comment with the URL of your posting in the comments section so I can see your entry.
- Entries will be judged and the winner picked by me using arbitrary criteria that I won't disclose. The winner will receive notification by electronic communications. The price will be mailed free of charge to any street address in the world.
- This contest is supposed to be fun. I reserve the right to cancel this contest if lawyers get involved, upset or hurt, or if things are getting overly complicated in any other way.
- It's the price winner's responsibility to redeem the iTunes gift certificates. As of this moment, the certificates are unused and I am convinced that they are legitimate (Apple gave them to me after all). However, no guarantees are made about the validity of the certificates. Some coupons can only be redeemed from inside the US. And otherwise: see rule number 4.
- Employees of VNU and any of its subsidiaries are excluded from this contest.
- This contest ends Friday October 21 at 5pm Pacific Time. The winner will be contacted within 7 days after that time.
The goodies:
poster measuring 2 by 3 feet (that's 60 by 90 cm, roughly)
harry potter - audiobook download coupon (retail value: $51.95)
video download coupon (retail value: $1.99)
Limited edition Harry Potter audiobook download gift certificate
Also includied (not displayed) a gift certificate for 10 iTunes music downloads (retail value: $9.90)
tags: apple, ipod, steve jobs
October 14, 2005 at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBack
The patching race
Yet again security experts needed only hours to create a worm to exploit a recently published Windows flaw.
The company on Tuesday issued a slew of security advisories and patches, including three patches rated 'critical'. Within 24 hours Symantec was able to penetrate a system using one of the exploits. DeepSight too claims to have created proof of concept code.
There is no reason for concern just yet: these exploits are all issued by security vendors rather than real hackers. It's a rather obvious attempt to pitch their products, which will now defend against the very same attacks that they have proven to exist.
The message is clear: "If we can do this, so can hackers and worm authors."
US-CERT meanwhile said it has received unconfirmed reports that an exploit is available. It is also seeing increased scanning of port 3372, which is used by the flawed service.
So patch up!
A different kind of patch (to mix in some seasonal spirit)
Photo: Ben Pritchard
Tags: Symantec, deepsight, security, windows, patch
October 14, 2005 at 05:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Remember that Microsoft car joke?
Do you remember the joke that if Microsoft would be making cars, we would crash in the middle of the highway? Crash as in: our software would cease to operate.
Well, turns out that we don't need Microsoft for this. Toyota is doing a pretty good job all by itself. The Japanse car maker is recalling 160,000 of its Prius hybrid cars. A software glitch in the automobiles can cause the warning lights to illuminate, prompting the computer to enter a "fail safe" mode that stalls the gas engine.
Luckily, the Prius still has an electric engine, which will enable the driver to keep driving and pull over.
The Prius is a wildly popular hybrid car that combines both a gas and electric engine. It saves power by storing the braking energy as electric power. Also the electric engine will power the vehicle at low speeds (up to 25 mph), speeds at which gas engines are less efficient.
Toyota Prius takes crashing to a new level (it should have come with a Ctrl-alt-delete button)
Tags: toyota, prius, hybrid, software, crash
October 14, 2005 at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Symantec warms up for the last dance
Symantec is seeking to squeeze a few additional dollars before Microsoft comes and ruins the party. The security company earlier this week quietly raised the prices for a renewal license of its consumer anti virus and firewall products by $10 to $5. Given its installed base of 40 million, Symantec could cash in an additional $250m, Merrill Lynch calculated.
The vendor itself claims that the prices reflect the addition of new features to its products. But there is reason to believe that the Symantec is merely milking the cow just a little more before Microsoft launches its OneCare consumer security suite and the enterprise grade Microsoft Client Protection.
Microsoft's entry into a market will likely bring down prices, and for once that may not be a bad thing:
"The existing vendors have made a very good living for the past few years," Current Analysis' Andrew Braunberg, a senior security analyst, pointed out when Microsoft announced Microsoft Client Protection, adding that the software behemont is likely to end the fat years.
Symantec's price hike is a move by a company that knows that the party is over. It's just turning up the volume one more time before the music ends.
Price gouching is everywhere...
Tags: microsoft, symantec, internet, security
October 14, 2005 at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Apple takes movie trailers high definition
As a minor part in yesterday's Apple event, CEO Steve Jobs said that the company has started offering high definition (HDTV) versions of movie trailers on its website.
HD trailers require QuickTime 7, which comes bundled with the iTunes 7 music player unfortunately – illustrating that Apple too will bundle software that doesn't have to be bundled. But after you sat through the install, you can download movie trailers with stunning resolutions.
The website talks about "480p", "720p" and "1080p", which I guess is supposed to (roughly) indicate the height of the movie window; the 480p option of the Ice Age 2 trailer opened a windows with a resolution of 850 by 450 pixels; the 720 shows the trailer in 690 by 1024 pixels.
Bear in mind that a regular television only does 640 by 480 pixels, and you understand that the detail in these trailers will blow you away.
Just make sure you have broadband. The 1080p trailer for Ice Age 2 will set you back 155Mb.
Tags: quicktime, hdtv, trailer, apple
October 13, 2005 at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Video iPod demo (video)
The new video playing iPod won't be in stores at least for another week, but Apple had some units available for demonstrations after Steve Jobs' presentation this morning.
Any iPod owner will tell you that using the device is straightforward, and with the new version nothing really changed, as you can see in this movie: 1.0 Mb .wmv download
The files shows me navigating to a folder containing episoded of the TV show "Lost" and starting to play an episode.
These photos on your website or blog?
These photos are available under a Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 2.5 License. Attribution required: www.SiliconValleySleuth.com
tags: apple, ipod, imac, steve jobs, video ipod
October 12, 2005 at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Apple's new iPod TV ads (video)
To promote its latest iPod models, Apple has created two new TV ads. You can preview both ads here, one with U2 and one with Eminem.
Watch the U2 clip: 1.82 Mb .wmv download
Watch the Eminem clip, including a preview of outdoor advertising by Steve Jobs:3.74 Mb .wmv download
These photos on your website or blog?
These photos are available under a Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 2.5 License. Attribution required: www.SiliconValleySleuth.com
tags: apple, ipod, imac, steve jobs, video ipod
October 12, 2005 at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Apple goes video (Photos)
New iMacs may be great, but what got everybody excited at this morning's Apple event was the video iPod in combination with the addition of music videos, short movies from Pixar and episodes from five Disney television shows to the iTunes store.
The new iPod comes in a 30Gb and 60Gb version selling at $299 and $399 respectively. Both feature a 320 by 240 pixel TFT screen, which is slichtly wider than the screen in current iPods.
Movie downloads from the iTunes store will all cost $1.99.
You've read the story? Now come see the pictures! Also make sure you check out additional posts on this site with more photo content.
The new iPod will still display photos...
But here Jobs is standing next to picture of the device playing a U2 video.
The new iPod family: left the video iPod, right the iPod Nano
Showing off the new iTunes6 media player which features a video purchase and download section...