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Yahoo to Google: It's usability, stupid! (video)
Google may have an overwhelming market share in the online search market, the company has been famously incapable of making as much as a dent in areas such as web mail, or instant messaging.
Yahoo's Jeff Bonforte today offered some free advice on what caused this failure: a complete lack of usability.
Google is ruled by engineers, but they make for a lousy target audience because they will try any new application that has a blinking light and makes rattling sounds. The challenge is to get to the masses.
In the video below Bonforte explains the challenges that Yahoo is facing, as well as Google's faillure in web usability.
February 28, 2007 at 05:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
The chipwars will continue
Intel today unveiled plans to convert its existing 90nm chip factory near Albuquerque, New Mexico into a 45nm facility. Construction on the $1bn to $1.5bn project is scheduled to start late 2008.
The move hardly comes as a surprise: Intel has always had four semiconductor fabs ready within one year after switching chip manufacturing technologies. The New Mexico plant simply provides the last piece of the puzzle.
The good news for consumers is that AMD also is preparing to have two 45nm fabs ready by 2008, and will rely on Charter Semiconductor to provide additional production capacity.
Users, in other words, can expect a flood of 45nm processors to hit the market in the coming years, causing prices to come down at an unprecedented level.
Quad core processors for everyone! And go short on your Intel and AMD stock.
Intel chief executive Paul Otellini with an image of Intel's first 45nm "Penryn" chip in the back
February 27, 2007 at 01:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Apple's TiVo rip-off gets delayed
Apple needs more time to figure out how to build a user friendly set top box that provides users with access to the digital media on their desktop computers.
The Apple TV was promised to start shipping by February but will now be delayed by an estimated two weeks.
It is unlikely that few people outside of the army of Mac fans will notice. The Apple TV is a $299 media adapter that provides access to a user's digital photos, music and video as well as podcasts.
Support for iTunes content, including DRM-ed video and music would be the main benefit. But its missing a digital video recorder that would allow users to record and play back television shows.
TiVo will sell you a box that will record your TV shows and that offers all of the Apple TV features except for iTunes DRM support. It will even offer a video download service together with Amazon that will launch in the future.
And if you prefer to avoid TiVo's monthly subscription fee, you can opt for one of the many media adapters. Starting at $60 for a model that supports music and photo streaming, you can go all the up to the $349 Netgear Digital Entertainer HD that will hook you up with Youtube shows on your TV, as well as digital movies, music and images.
Apple probably does have one thing going for its however. Setting up a third party media adapter can be a royal pain in the you-know-where. The Apple TV is sure to work brilliantly provided you don't venture outside of Apple's nicely decorated walled garden.
February 27, 2007 at 01:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Servers are back
Server sales have finally broken the dotcom sales record. Companies in 2006 spent $52.3bn on the power hungry boxes, according to the latest IDC date.
And just like Sun Microsystems was hit hardest by the server sales decline after the internet bubble burst, the company is now first in line to profit from its rebounce. The system maker grew sales by 15.4 per cent to surpass Dell for the number 3 spot.
The 2006 data has "market shift" written all over it. Companies aren’t buying more servers so much as that they are buying more expensive ones. That bodes well for companies with a legacy of system building, while box pushers suffer the consequences of focusing on volume and failing to innovate. Sun again is the obvious winner, while HP and IBM failed to even keep pace with the average market growth.
The reason for all this server joy apparently is virtualization. Consolidating several boxes on a single, bigger server makes for lower energy bills and easier maintenance. We've been talking about it for years, but server buyers only now are starting to implement it.
Blade servers did well too, despite HP's Anne Livermore embracing the firm's c-Class systems as if it had some infectious disease at a launch event
February 27, 2007 at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Digg is the new Apple
Digg users are increasingly turning into a vigilante mob that will jump to the site's defense at it sees fit.
A recent example is found in a Digg submission that blasts Yahoo for "shamelessly" ripping of Digg and bragging about it. The rant referred Yahoo's suggestion board, that allows users to submit suggestions for site enhancements and lets other users vote on it. Yahoo readily admits that the service offers "Digg-style voting".
The most famous outbreak of Digg user fury targeted AOL when the company redesigned its Netscape.com portal as a Digg.com copycat for general news (Digg at the time offered mostly technology links).
But why do Digg users claim that they have a moral ownership of Ajax powered voting boxes, rounded corners or social bookmarking? Digg didn't invent any of those features, it just happened to create the most user friendly implementation. Calling something a Digg ripoff is a stretch of the imagination.
The Digg vigilantes are starting to resemble the Mac fan boys. Apple users proudly proclaim that Windows Vista is copying design features from OS X, but they conveniently fail to notice that Apple didn't invent items like Dashboard (sidebar in Vista) or desktop search technology either.
In both cases, the loyalty seems to stem from the underdog effect. Apple nearly got crushed by the PC, Microsoft and its own management. Digg currently is the only major social bookmarking websites that remained independent – Wired.com owner CondeNet acquired Reddit and Yahoo has snapped up Del.icio.us. Digg is the only one that has a moral claim on being community driven, not money driven.
But an army of overly vocal backers doesn't mean that you are right.
Oh no, a site that allows users to indicate that they like a story or idea. How dare they!
February 24, 2007 at 01:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack
SETI@home finally finds something
James Melin, a government employed software programmer from Minnesota, has the honour of being the first person to put the Seti@Home programme to good use.
The software helped the developer retrieve a laptop that was stolen on 1 January.
The software automatically starts up and connects to the server whenever it has an internet connection. So Melin monitored the Seti@Home log files to pin down the IP address for his machine. He forwarded the data to the police which subpoenaed the internet provider to give them the subscriber's address.
A few days later, Melin had his laptop back. The contents of the hard drive was intact, except for the addition of a dozen rap songs. But it did contain his wife's novels and screenplays.
Which just goes to show that having a geek husband goes a long way. "I always knew that a geek would make a great husband," she told the Associated Press. "He always backed up all my data, but this topped it all. It became like `Mission: Impossible' for him, looking for hard evidence for the cops to use. ... He's a genius -- my hero."
The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Life (SETI) however still has to yield any direct results.
Millions of public funds finally get put to good use
February 23, 2007 at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Hacker nabs child porn lovers: a case of pick your poison
The conviction of a Ronald Kline for possession of child pornography poses a moral dilemma in online security. Because the evidence in the case was collected by a hacker who illegally broke into Kline's computer.
The former judge has to serve a 27 month jail term and will a registered sex offender for the remainder of his life. The hacker, then 20-year-old Bard William from Canada, broke into his computer by posting a specially crafted file on a mailing list popular with child pornography downloaders.
There is no excuse for Kline's actions. But William is just as guilty of crafting malware and breaking into innocent people's computers.
If President Bush doesn't have the right to spy on US citizens, some random kid from a Canadian basement should be banned from those practices as well. Yet no legal charges have been filed against William, where at least Kline would have a very strong case against him.
He's doing his superman thing again...
February 23, 2007 at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
How not to grow your VoIP business
Etrade during the dotcom boom would pay new clients hundreds of dollars to sign up for a new stock trading account. The reasoning was that otherwise the company would have to pay an equal sum on traditional marketing to lure in new clients.
Vonage should consider adopting a similar strategy, now that the company's customer acquisition costs have jumped to $306 for each new account. At $25 per month, the company will suffer a loss on every client that cancels his account within one year – not factoring in maintenance, network traffic and customer service costs.
Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on television commercials and seedy adware banners, Vonage might just as well pay new subscribers $200 for a two year commitment.
The provider doesn't seem to have much choice. Deep pocketed providers such as cable provider Comcast have kicked off an aggressive VoIP offensive that makes Vonage look pale by comparison.
(disclaimer: I cancelled my personal Vonage account earlier this year after the company claimed it would take 1.5 months to port over my number to a competing service)
February 22, 2007 at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Britney Spears' hair goes online
The valued readers of this blog of course have better things to do than to scan all the latest news around Britney Spears, but you might want to know that the pop idol on Friday cut off all her hair.
Esther Tognozzi, the owner of the hair salon where it all took place now is auctioning off the goods on a special website. The bidding starts at $1m. She originally listed the goods on Ebay, but that auction soon was canceled.
In other news, Spears on Wednesday checked out of a rehabilitation clinic only hours after she had entered it. So our "hit me baby one more time" girl is doing just fine.
Wait... how is this related to high tech? Oh, wait, Ebay.
Think of the wonderful things that you could do with Britney's hair
February 22, 2007 at 01:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Google Desktop falls victim to XSS flaw
Online attackers can gain access to the Google Desktop application through a cross site scripting attack, researchers at Watchfire have discovered.
We've seen cross site scripting vulnerabilities before, but this one is amazingly easy to demonstrate on your home or office computer, provided that you are running Google Desktop and haven't just updated it.
Curious? Go to your Google Desktop search page and type in the following:
under:<script>alert(This is all it takes)</script>
Once you enter that instruction, an alert box will pop up with the text "This is all it takes" inside. Displaying an alert box might not be anything serious, but that attacker can also insert more harmful commands that can expose confidential information, or worse.
Now go to Google and download the latest Google Desktop update.
February 22, 2007 at 01:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
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