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Microsoft remains a 2.5 trick pony

Microsoft's Thursday earnings report was both good and bad news for the software company.

The good news is that sales of Windows are up significantly, indicating that consumers are buying new Windows Vista systems. Similarly, there is a significant uptake in Office sales.

The bad news is that Windows, Windows Server and Office are the only profitable business groups. The gaming group (Xbox) and Online services group (Live search, Hotmail, etc) continue to bleed red ink.

Microsoft is splitting out its earnings in a very strange way, throwing sales of the Zune (pictured above) Windows CE and Windows Mobile in with Xbox sales. Similarly, sales of Microsoft's CRM and ERP suites are thrown in with Office sales.

It is however, safe to assume that Office accounts for the majority of the $4.8bn that the business division sold (and the $3.4bn in profits that it got from those). Similarly, Windows Server sales are the driving force behind the "server" division. SQL Server after all doesn't run on Linux, HP UX or Solaris.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has repeatedly called Google a one trick pony that has failed to succeed anywhere outside its search advertising business. Microsoft however is only doing slightly better. It has built a successful business for its Office and Windows (and Windows Server) software, but the online and gaming groups are still hurting, despite large investments.

Another one of Microsoft's great successes

April 28, 2007 at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Cisco admits to blogging fear

Cisco blogger John Earnhardt is wondering if the of network gear should do more blogging. Earnhardt is a senior manager of policy communications for Cisco's Worldwide Government Affair Group (simply put, he's in public relations).

He proudly proclaims that the company has "a handful of blogs", and points to event driven blogs and concludes that Cisco is doing "a decent job of giving some flavor of what we are interested in."

Earnhardt however must be doubting that statement (thank goodness!), because he continues his blog posting questioning if the company should open up more. If it should, for instance, provide a blogging platform for all its employees.

The answer to that question can only be a resounding: Duh! I can't believe that companies are even asking that question in 2007.

If you're restricting what your employees blog about, you're essentially saying that you don't trust them. But don't you also trust that they won't harm the company when they talk about it during the weekend and at night when they aren't at work?

Of course things will go wrong. Employees will make stupid mistakes and they will write things that might make you decide to fire those employees. But again, wouldn't that employee be making the same comments in public before? Blogs just do a better job at exposing those people, but it doesn't turn your number one workers into a secret exposing devil.

What exactly is Cisco afraid of? That its carefully crafted PR strategy is undercut by Cisco employees giving honest facts? Doesn't that say more about the (perceived) honesty in your PR strategy than it does about your employees?

Cisco coined the phrase "the participation age", but for some reason Earnhardt claims that for Cisco is enough to just talk and not participate.

April 27, 2007 at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Sun puts some real business in 3D environments (video)

If you're one of the many folks who have (legitimately) been scratching their heads
over the use of Second Life, you might want to look at Sun's MPK20 project. The company showed off a very early prototype on Thursday at an open house of Sun Labs.

Instead of building fancy pavilions on overprices virtual land, MPK20 uses a 3D environment as a collaboration tool. The people you run into aren't strangers but work for the same company, or at least work on the same project. The platform allows for VoIP conversations but you can also look at a presentation or share a document.

You can watch a video demo below.

Click To Play

April 27, 2007 at 09:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBack

The Simpsons take on Google

The world just becomes so much clearer when you look at it through the eyes of The Simpsons.

April 25, 2007 at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Windows Vista proclaimed "Me II"

Could Windows Vista proof a repeat of Microsoft's Windows Millenium Edition (Me) marketing disaster?

Several people are starting to ask just that question after Microsoft released a $3 software bundle for developing nations and Dell brought back Windows XP systems.

Windows Me was released in 2000. Microsoft at the time was the laughing stock of the high tech world. It had just been convicted of abusing its monopoly and had completely missed out on the internet boom (well, it acquired Hotmail, but that was it). The Windows Me launch prompted headlines like "Windows washes even whiter", to indicate that the launch was 99 per cent marketing fluff. The market agreed. Consumers held on to their Windows 98 systems and Me sales tanked.

So is Vista a useless update? At work we're still running Windows XP, mainly because several of our applications won't support Vista or Internet Explorer 7. Having run the operating system on a home computer for several months now, I can hardly say that it wows me. The user interface is pretty. It is slightly easier to find documents and applications than it was in Windows XP. But the nicest feature by far is the deep sleep mode that drastically shortens the boot-time.

If shaving off the odd minute from the boot-time is your best feature, something is severely wrong.

Microsoft will tell you that Vista is all about security. But security is a checkbox item: essential to have but mostly a pain in the behind when it's flawed. Secondly, most users are confident that they are safe online until they catch a virus. Security doesn't drive sales.

A second sales pitch would talk up Vista's multi media capabilities. We have yet to see applications that use the stunning graphics that Windows Vista supposedly should offer. And a Netgear media adapter that is supposed to play content from the PC on the stereo won't function, even though both Vista and the device are supposed to support the same industry standard.

Lastly, I'm pissed off that my cell phone won't synchronize with Vista's bundled calendar and address book applications. Syncing requiresOutlook 2007 - for some reason Vista doesn't support Outlook 2003. But I certainly won't shell out  $500 for Office 2007. Instead I downloaded OpenOffice and increasingly find myself using Google Docs and Spreadsheets.

Now that I think of it, Linux should be well equipped to perform all the tasks that are currently performed on my computer. Perhaps it's time to create a Linux partition.

April 25, 2007 at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (66) | TrackBack

Of open source billionaires

What would have happened if Bill Gates was born 15 years later, somewhere in Finland. One boring summer he would set out to build an operating system, name it Linux and set if free for the world to use and play with.

His impact on the world would have been about as great as it is today, but he never would have topped the Forbes list of the richest people in the world.

But if Linux is so great, where are the Linux billionaires?

At first glance they may not be any. Torvalds certainly doesn't rank very high on the Forbes list, and neither does GPL and GNU inventor Richard Stallman, or Red Hat CEO Matt Szulik

But 40 years from now, Bill Gates and all the other Microsoft billionaires may very well proof to be an abnormality, a footnote in history: in the early days of the IT industry, companies were able to artificially lock in users, forcing them to buy all software from a single vendor. This allowed them to create an illegal monopoly that had to be broken open by force. Consequently open standards emerged that prevented a repeat of the monopoly nightmares.

And as the link above points out, open source is today is powering the ideas of the latest generation of billionaires. Just look at Youtube and Google. But then open source is like air for the world's economy. You shouldn't notice it when it's there, but will dearly miss it if it isn't.

Matt Szulik - not a billionaire, but influential nonetheless.

April 25, 2007 at 01:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Open source to Adobe: Apollo, move over!

The Dojo open source Ajax development framework has released a beta of its Dojo Offline tool. The tool provides developers with an easy to use way to add offline functionality to their services.

Think about being able to access you Gmail or Yahoo mail at all times, regardless of your network status. Or being able to use Google's Documents and Spreadsheets applications in a way that is similar to Word, with the added advantage of data sharing and online storage.

Adobe has been beating its marketing drum for its Apollo technology since early this year. But following the Dojo release, Apollo looks mostly like a bloated attempt to squeeze more software revenues out of develops by creating a new platform.

Essentially, Dojo requires a 300KB download that will be delivered in an intuitive way. Developers add a few lines of code (more if they require granular customization) and their application receives offline capabilities. Furthermore, the user experience is essentially the same for both the online and offline application.

With Apollo, developers have to create an entirely new application that users access as a regular application. The Ebay auction tool that the company has been showing off for instance doesn't look anything like the user interface on the Ebay.com website.

Users furthermore don't have a clear incentive to download a special runtime engine (6MB for the Windows version) that allows Apollo applications to function.

Looks like open source wins again.

April 25, 2007 at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Google scores top brand position

Google's brand is worth an estimated $66.4bn, according to Millward Brown's second annual 'Brandz' ranking. That makes it the world's most valuable brand.

The search engine's brand value surged 77 per cent in the past year, allowing the company to surpass Microsoft and GE for the top spot.

The ranking is based on rather fuzzy mathematics. In additional to quantifiable metrics such as current earnings, it also takes into consideration expected future earnings, and (it gets worse) factors like customer loyalty. Add all those variables, shake well, and Google (with a stock market based $149.2bn market capitalization) is valued higher than Microsoft, despite its $281.8bn market cap, as well as GE's $357.9bn.

Google is a valuable brand and the company will probably be able to expand to numerous online markets. But don't overestimate the stretch and flexibility of its brand.

Google's brand has proven a failure in conquering the online email or messaging markets in a way that resembles its search success. And let's not forget that until the Youtube acquisition, Google Video was left in the shadow of a start-up company.

Next year the study should factor in a firm's track record in expanding to new markets. That will cause Microsoft to plunge into a deep hole (it's still a two-trick pony that relies on Windows and Office), while a firm like Cisco should rank much higher.

April 24, 2007 at 01:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBack

In memoriam: Boris Yeltsin

Russia's first post-communist president Boris Yeltsin has died.

Although he oversaw a regime that brought out the worst in many of Russia's capitalists and waged bloody wars in Chechnya, he should be primarily be remembered dismantling the countries communist regime.

The Yeltsin era was one of peace dividends that only ended with the terrorist attacks of September 2001 and Bush's subsequent invasion of Iraq.

It was a time when the Russian president refused to get off an airplane during an official visit to Ireland. After waiting for several hours, the hosts were told that the president was "unwell". It was generally accepted that he was drunk at the time, as well as during many other public appearances.

Good times.

April 23, 2007 at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Dell's virtual tree hands on

Last Friday's posting about Dell's virtual tree give-away has struck a cord. Numerous blog postings are pointing out Dell's questionable promotion in which the company advertised a virtual tree give-away as being environmentally friendly.

We were kind of tied up with our real life on Sunday and coudln't attend the Dell's virtual party, but made sure to drop by on Monday and pick up a free Dell tree.

Our company bean counters wouldn't clear the expense for some Second Life private land where we could plant the saplings, but we found a public park that would tolerate them for a few minutes (our successful planting of 1 and 2 "meter" tall trees is pictured on the right).

Some commenters argued that Dell has every right to give away virtual trees, and we couldn't agree more. But Dell crosses a line when it starts portraying a virtual promotion as somehow being environmentally friendly.

As the 'Watts up with that' blog pointed out: " Maybe [Al] Gore will fly in on his private jet to make a 'virtual appearance' to preach to the faithful."

UPDATE:
Commenter "Honey" from our Friday post has a picture from the actual party here. At the Dell party he/she pointed out the hypocrisy of marketing virtual tree planting as environmentally friendly, and now seems to have been permanently banned from Dell's Second Life island.

view from the top... not so pretty

Dell's second life pavilion, the day after the party

April 23, 2007 at 08:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack