anotherkey

2005-11-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

I should have been clearer. My new blog is over on WordPress's new hosted service, which is still in beta. I've been posting frequently over there.http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/

I'm still playing around, though, and learning the new system. I'm also setting up a separate blog over on TypePad to learn that blog tool. And have yet another one over on DABU too.

Oh, and of course, there'sour book blog(which is also on TypePad) and the Channel 9 video blog, done on modified version of Community Server. So, I'm getting around to a variety of blog tools and services. I find I don't like a lot about all the tools. It's interesting to me that no one has really come out with a big blog breakthrough lately.

I'm getting another demo of Flock tomorrow, too.

Oh, and ou might check in onChannel 9. I just uploaded three videos, including my first Xbox 360 one, an interview with a Vice President in charge of half of our developer division (we're shipping Visual Studio"within days"I hear).

2005-11-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

Come visit me on my new WordPress blog

I should have been clearer. My new blog is over on WordPress's new hosted service, which is still in beta. I've been posting frequently over there.http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/

I'm still playing around, though, and learning the new system. I'm also setting up a separate blog over on TypePad to learn that blog tool. And have yet another one over on DABU too.

I'm getting another demo of Flock tomorrow, too.

2005-11-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

Senators back Net phone reprieve
Net phone customers without 911 access may not be faced with a forcible disconnection after all.

Is Windows Vista out of sync?
Also: Firefox 1.5 release candidate 1 released.

2005-10-31T17:55:00.000-08:00

Eric Soroos: OS X proxy utility and Radio SOCKS support
OSX Proxy Settings in Radio: "An application + script that reads OSX's current proxy status and puts that info in the proper places in a Frontier/Radio install. This is probably most useful for people who swap proxy settings based on network locations."

Support for SOCKS (version 4) proxies: "Support for SOCKS (version 4) proxies. Socks proxies are at the tcp connection layer, rather than the application layer like an http proxy. Most notably, this is the dynamic proxy provided by ssh."

Evectors localizes Radio UserLand to German
Paolo Valdemarin announces the release of theGerman version of Radio. This joins theFrenchandItalianlocalized versions of Radio from Evectors.

Marc Barrot: activeRenderer 2.0
Marc Barrot announced a new version ofactiveRenderer: "I've just released a new 2.0 version of activeRenderer. One of its interesting new features is the ability to render OPML and RSS content as outlines through web services..."

Rogers Cadenhead interview about Radio UserLand
Rogers Cadenhead wasinterviewedby the Network Professional Association about Radio UserLand and his new book Radio UserLand Kick Start.

Redirects used with enclosures
Radio UserLand now supports redirects used when downloading enclosures which is commonly used to support podcast hit counters. When you add an enclosure to a weblog post, Radio also now follows redirects when gathering information about the file size/type of an enclosure.

2005-10-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

Survey highlights age discrimination in IT

(InfoWorld) - Bill Gates is likely to get many birthday cards on Friday, probably from fans and critics alike. He'll also get one congratulating him on the"rare feat"of turning 50 while still being employed in the IT sector.

Amicus, a manufacturing, technical and skilled persons'trade union in the U.K., said it sent the card to Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect to draw attention to age discrimination in IT. The union commissioned a study, conducted by the Labour Research Department, and found that of 500 IT workers who responded, 71 percent believe that their employers treat people less favorably because of age. Over 80 percent of IT workers in the U.K. are under 45 years old, Amicus said.

The Labour Research Department is an organization that conducts research and publishes news and information for trade unions.

The higher up on the corporate ladder a person is, the more likely he or she is to discriminate based on age, or at least that's the perception among workers, the study found. Senior managers are blamed for treating older people unfairly by 79 percent of the workers. A lesser 56 percent said line management is responsible for the poor treatment.

Recruitment, redundancy, pay, promotion, and training are the most important areas where discrimination exists, respondents said.

Older workers aren't the only ones affected by age discrimination. On the other end of the spectrum, some workers say they feel discriminated against for being too young. They may be told their pay is lower than colleagues'because of their age or that they are too young to be considered for promotions, according to the research.

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Nancy_Gohring@idg.com (Nancy Gohring)

2005-10-24T15:29:00.000-07:00

Images: Cisco's emergency radio system
Cisco has developed an Internet Protocol system to create compatibility between radio networks at public-safety agencies.

iPod chipmaker plans stock sale
PortalPlayer posts third-quarter earnings that beat estimates, announces plan to sell up to 4.5 million shares.

Photos: Firefox fans find unique ways to celebrate browser
Oregon State's Linux User Group finds unique ways to celebrate milestones of its favorite Web browser.

Cisco's new tool for emergency communications
The company unveils an Internet Protocol technology that links incompatible radio networks.
Cisco's emergency radio system

Oracle goes for girth
Oracle takes a dual approach to fight the competition: Fusion Middleware and industry-specific, niche applications.

British music industry fights with itself
Also: Space elevators stuck on the first floor.

2005-10-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

We releaseda set of changes that improve the generation of RSS in Radio 8. Includes support for theandelements in RSS 0.92; macros are now processed as feeds are built; a big speed bump; a bug fixed. The code also got a lot more maintainable.

2005-10-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

New Radio macro: Monthly Archive links
David Phillips has written a new Radio macro that creates links to Radio's monthly archive pages. You can see how the macro works onDavid's weblog.

2005-10-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

CNET reviews Radio 8. Nice review. We need a spell checker. They like Blogger better, but gave it the same score, 8 out of 10. But the best part are theuser comments. You guys really like us. Wow.Thanks!

Washington Post on Radio:"The program, its templates and other elements work smoothly, and you can go from downloading the program to publishing your thoughts on the Web during a coffee break."Thanks![Scripting News in RSS]

For tomorrow's press release."Radio UserLand is at the sweet spot of the next generation of the Internet, bringing together XML-based web services, a decentralized approach to computing and the power of software,"said Charles Fitzgerald, director of business strategy in the platform strategy group at Microsoft."This next generation of the Internet promises more control for end users and renewed opportunity for developers."

BTW, did you notice theproduct shotnear the top of the page? We had some fun. Radio doesn't actually come in a box. But we wanted to imagine what it would look like if it did.

WebMonkey:"Radio manages to create a dynamic environment for the exchange of information without asking too much of each individual user. They've made it simple for beginners to get involved in a kind of active network that would've required much more know-how a few years ago. If you're looking for more than just a tool, but an effortless way to get a site launched and incorporated into an online community, Radio may be your best bet."

This is a test. Please ignore.

Joshua Allen verifiesthat Radio works on Windows XP. [Scripting News]

Last night, as part of the mop-up on Radio Community Server, I did a rewrite of the notification code on the server-side. Some people had asked what the Please Notify entries on their Events pages are about. Here's the scoop. Some RSS feeds have an element in their header called"cloud"that tells a reader how to subscribe to the channel. When you're subscribed to such a feed, Radio automatically requests notification. That's what Please Notify is about. Then when it changes, if everything goes well, the cloud sends a short message to Radio saying"Hey this resource changed."Then again, Murphy-willing, your Radio reads the feed and if there really are new items, it adds them to your News Aggregator page. Until yesterday, this feature of the community server was turned off, now it's back on, and appears to be working.

inessential.com:Radio UserLand 7.0b34is out. Among the bug fixes is one that has annoyed me for a long time -- on Windows 2000, when you click the Edit With Radio button, Radio actually comes to the front now rather than just flashing in the taskbar. AFT.

2005-10-21T17:29:00.000-07:00

Rick asks former MSFTies what they think

Rick Segal has been askingformer Microsoft employees what they think of Microsoft and getting some interesting answers. One question he asks is to compare me with Mini-Microsoft.

Winer sticks up Office's new XML formats because of installed base

Dave Winer sticks up for Microsoft Office's XML formats. Hey, thanks! Here's Brian Jones, of the Office team,explaining what developers can dowith the new file formats. (That's a clip of a longer video we ran on Channel 9 earlier in the year).

2005-10-20T19:28:00.000-07:00

Time to switch to WordPress

My comments are down again (Update: I should be clear that this isn't a UserLand problem, the servers are being hammered by spammers and Dave Winer is graciously hosting the server here, not UserLand). OK, it's time to switch over to WordPress. I won't do it if I don't force myself over there. Life has just been so busy lately. Every extra minute I've been trying to answer email. I have 244 emails waiting to be answered. I'm sorry.

Oh, and James Torio, thanks for saying nice things about me inyour Master's thesis(as seen on Doc Searls'weblog).

See ya over onhttp://scobleizer.wordpress.com/. We'll clean up the house as we go along. I'm also going to open a TypePad blog, and also post over in my DABU blog (which is athttp://www.robertscoble.com) so that you can see how the blog tools compare (and so I can see that too).

One thing I'm interested in is which tool is most powerful? Which one is easiest to use? Which one gives best stats? Which one provides the best OPML and RSS options? Which one has best ping-server support? Which one has the most responsive company behind it? Which one is the easiest to customize?

What else is important in a blog tool? Well, let's move over to WordPress and talk about it.

Winer sticks up Office's new XML formats because of installed base

2005-10-19T17:54:00.000-07:00

DW:mySubscriptions.opmlcontains the RSS channels I'm tuned into.

Radio 8 essays:Adam Curry,Mark Paschal,Meryl Evans. [Scripting News]

Well, it looks like everything got published. Cool. I'm going to release it. Wish me luck!";->"

We releaseda set of changes that improve the generation of RSS in Radio 8. Includes support for theandelements in RSS 0.92; macros are now processed as feeds are built; a big speed bump; a bug fixed. The code also got a lot more maintainable.

New feature:Google-It! Macro for Item Templates.

Stapleris a"tool for Radio UserLand that creates RSS feeds from sources you select, scraped hourly (or every N hours, variable for each source) from HTML web sites."

2005-10-19T02:34:00.000-07:00

UserLand Radio Comments Servers Scheduled Maintenance
The UserLand Radio Community comment sites are being moved to a new server this weekend.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Dates:

Sunday December 5, the Radio UserLand Community comment servers

Steve Hooker: Backlog RSS file of all the posts
Steve has released a new tool that you can use withFeedster's new backlogfeature. "A tool to make a Backlog RSS file of all the posts that went to your front page."

Rogers Cadenhead interview about Radio UserLand
Rogers Cadenhead wasinterviewedby the Network Professional Association about Radio UserLand and his new book Radio UserLand Kick Start.

New preference: Using non-standard FTP ports for upstreaming
The FTP upstreaming driver in Radio UserLand has been updated to support a new optional port parameter to allow you to use a non-standard FTP port.

On the FTP Option preferences page in the desktop website, you will see a new port text field where you can define the custom port (by default it's empty and will default to 21 which is used by most FTP servers).

Evectors localizes Radio UserLand to German
Paolo Valdemarin announces the release of theGerman version of Radio. This joins theFrenchandItalianlocalized versions of Radio from Evectors.

UserLand Radio Community Server Scheduled Maintenance
The UserLand Radio Community services are being moved to a new server.

Your content is already being upstreamed to the new server and existing content has already been moved. The server changes will not require you to re-publish your site or make any changes to your Radio configuration.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Date: Sunday November 14, the Radio UserLand Community Server

New New York Times News Feed - Campaigns
The New York Times had added another RSS News Feed, this one on the 2004 Election Campaign. To subscribe to the feed, point your browser at thisRadio Userland Pageand click on the coffee mug located next to feed #4 on the list. This brings to 20 the number of unique New York Times feeds available through Radio UserLand.

Cadenhead: New sample chapter from Radio UserLand Kick Start
Rogers Cadenhead has posted another sample chapter from his new Radio UserLand book on theoutliner. "When I began using Radio as a version 7 beta tester three years ago, I thought it was heresy to create Web content -- much less source code -- in an outliner. These days I'm an outliner junkie, writing programs, magazine articles, and everything else I can in either Radio or the Java Outline Editor (JOE)."

SocialDynamX releases FM Radio
After their preview release in March, SocialDynamX has released the final release version ofFM Radiotoday.

It offers the following:

1) Spell check.

2) A slick Windows editing surface.

3) Tabbed browsing.

4) Outlook style news aggregation.

5) Simple image insertion.

2005-10-18T04:52:00.000-07:00

Radio is the first Web server to doupstreaming, a necessary feature for servers running on users'desktops.

Lawrence:"Being part of the development of Radio 8.0, it's awesome to see there are going to be lots of people who are going to be playing around with a CMS (at under $40 US) and with an entire weblogging system already in place." [Scripting News]

Garret:"Dump anything in Radio's www folder, and it's been filed, uploaded, backed up, statically rendered, content managed, diced, chopped, ground, and served on a platter." [Scripting News]

inessential.com:Radio UserLand 7.0b34is out. Among the bug fixes is one that has annoyed me for a long time -- on Windows 2000, when you click the Edit With Radio button, Radio actually comes to the front now rather than just flashing in the taskbar. AFT.

The editor of soapbox, which I admire,posteda newbie intro to Radio as a weblog tool. Gotta love it. [Scripting News]

Sometimesthings work just like you wanted them to.

Radio:"When accessing a server on the local machine, MSIE/Mac doesn't yield enough processor time to allow the server to do its processing. The net result is a glacial pace, when it should be lightning fast. The addition of a single system call to the loop that's waiting for a response from the server would probably cure the problem."

WebMonkey:"Radio manages to create a dynamic environment for the exchange of information without asking too much of each individual user. They've made it simple for beginners to get involved in a kind of active network that would've required much more know-how a few years ago. If you're looking for more than just a tool, but an effortless way to get a site launched and incorporated into an online community, Radio may be your best bet."

Washington Post on Radio:"The program, its templates and other elements work smoothly, and you can go from downloading the program to publishing your thoughts on the Web during a coffee break."Thanks![Scripting News in RSS]

2005-10-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

New Feature:Titles and Links in Radio-generated RSS.

DW:mySubscriptions.opmlcontains the RSS channels I'm tuned into.

The editor of soapbox, which I admire,posteda newbie intro to Radio as a weblog tool. Gotta love it. [Scripting News]

Marty Heymanwarns:"Radio is an Insidious Plot for global domination by Userland Software!"[Scripting News]

Interview: Dave Winer on Radio Userland. We interview Dave Winer, founder of UserLand Software, about his newest creation, Radio Userland. Thirteen years in the making, Radio Userland puts an industrial strength Web server on your desktop. Designed to be extended by developers, Radio will also appeal to the masses with its news aggregator and weblog features. By Andy King. 0312

We releaseda set of changes that improve the generation of RSS in Radio 8. Includes support for theandelements in RSS 0.92; macros are now processed as feeds are built; a big speed bump; a bug fixed. The code also got a lot more maintainable.

BTW, did you notice theproduct shotnear the top of the page? We had some fun. Radio doesn't actually come in a box. But we wanted to imagine what it would look like if it did.

Two-Way-Web:SOAP meets RSS.

2005-10-15T10:45:00.000-07:00

Robb and Scoble:Radio UserLand for Webloggers.

Dan Shafer:My First Review of Radio 8. [Scripting News]

Oliver Wrede:Golden Rules for Newbies to Frontier and Radio UserLand.

WebMonkey:"Radio manages to create a dynamic environment for the exchange of information without asking too much of each individual user. They've made it simple for beginners to get involved in a kind of active network that would've required much more know-how a few years ago. If you're looking for more than just a tool, but an effortless way to get a site launched and incorporated into an online community, Radio may be your best bet."

It's not hard to find programmers to work on Radio, though. This evening I added afeaturefor our friends the bloggers, making sure that it's easy for people to credit their sources. This should emit a loud sigh of relief in Radio UserLand and perhaps elsewhere. The Supremes are singing You can't hurry love, no you'll just have to wait. We're figuring this stuff out in real-time, as always.[Scripting News]

I have my instant outliner going again. Radio users can subscribe using the OPML coffee mug onDHRB. The new thing is that notification happensvia instant messaging, not polling. And there's somethingreally newin there. A remote procedure invocation protocol. They are not remote procedurecallsbecause they don't return values and are asynchronous. But you can pass parameters, complex ones, using the encoding of XML-RPC. It's the loop-close on theworkwe did in Keystone with the Jabber folk last August. Works with AIM too. We're bootstrapping on theRadio-Devmail list. [Scripting News]

Sometimesthings work just like you wanted them to.

Here's the most interestingRadio BlogI've seen so far, but understand that I've been looking for something like this ever since we released the beta of the decentralized blogging tool in Radio. It's the zig to Blogger's centralized zag. (Or the blig to its blog?) As Blogger has grown, it's climbing a scaling wall, and the performance has suffered, much as the performance of Weblogs.Com has suffered as it has grown. [Scripting News]

Today'sCraig Burton tutorialis on channels in Radio. It's by far the best docs on our software. I hope everyone runs his latest tutorial, it's a Java window, he presses all the buttons and narrates. Craig talks very slowly and explains everything. His tutorials are eye-openers. [Scripting News]

Yesterday I did a feature for Radio called Magic Folders. A router for folders. Now if you plop a file into theimagesfolder it goes into the images folder (via FTP) on My Blog. I think stories are going to work the same way. Just a little bit of glue to create a workgroup. They're magic because there's almost nothing there, like any good router it's just a glue-bit."When you see one of these, do this."

2005-10-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

My new blog running slow

So much for WordPress. It's running like snails in salt. Great, comments don't work. New blog doesn't work. Maybe that's the computer's way of telling me I should take the week off.

I'm emailing Matt at WordPress right now to find out what's up.

Update: now my comments are running here, and my blog athttp://scobleizer.wordpress.comis running fine again. Maybe it's a good thing to have a few blogs. Decentralized infrastructure. One goes down, the other keeps working. ;-)

Update: I was reminded again that Dave Winer is hosting my comment server, not UserLand, and that that server is getting slammed by spam. I'm sorry for not making that clear. I really appreciate Dave's hosting of my blog. I'm getting a lot of traffic and my main blog has almost always been up (I can't remember the last time my blog was down like what WordPress behaved like tonight).

One thing I forget is just how much tuning I did of UserLand's templates, too. They are damn small compared to the other systems I've seen. That does translate into fewer bites transmitted and a faster response time (particularly on cell phones).

Engadget finally gets its hands on Xbox 360

Lots of Xbox 360 news today too. I visited Bungie this morning and did an interview, but they wouldn't show me their new stuff, though. The interview was still cool. I'm not sure if I'm the first video inside their new offices, but might be.

Anyway,Engadget has an Xbox 360 hands-on preview."Hate to say it, but as of November 22nd the Xbox 360 is going to be only game in town."

I hate to say it, but I hate it when people say they hate to say it. But, it's more evidence of the brand damage we've done by shipping products that aren't done as well as the Xbox 360.

How deep is that brand damage? Well, when the team showed me the Xbox for the first time they said"looks like something Apple designed, huh?"

My answer? No, it looks better.

The team, by the way, is being taxed heavily right now.The BBC reportsthat launching in three countries all within a few days of each other might not have been that smart.

I'll be at Xbox launch parties both here in Redmond and in Ireland. More on that after my schedule gets a bit more firmed up. I think I'll be in Dublin. Anyone know of a good game store in Dublin to hang out in?

Microsoft settles with Real for $761 million

Bloomberg:Microsoft to pay RealNetworks $761 million in settlement.

It's interesting thatGoogle NewsandMSNBCbrought me the news first, not blogs or Memeorandum or Digg.

Update:just showed up in Memeorandum(at about 11:25).Here's the Microsoft press releaseon the settlement.

Time to switch to WordPress

Oh, and James Torio, thanks for saying nice things about me inyour Master's thesis(as seen on Doc Searls'weblog).

What else is important in a blog tool? Well, let's move over to WordPress and talk about it.

New video iPod, new Channel 9'Clipster'feature, and much more while I was away

Sorry I've been offline for the past couple of days. Yesterday I was in an all-day meeting with MSN Search team. Today I was just busy. Visited Bungie's new offices at 8 a.m., did an interview with the CRM team, and the Microsoft.com test team, and got a look at some future HDTV stuff that Microsoft is working on too (damn, can't wait to show you that).

Anyway, it's been a very busy news cycle. Yesterday Real and Microsoft announced that we're getting along again and todaySteve Jobs worked his Apple magic and brought out lots of new stuff. The new video iPod looks like a great way to watch Channel 9 videos.

One thing, though. Steve Jobs better never tell me we're copying him next time I meet him in the street. Why? Cause he brought out a video-playing computer (we call those Media Centers) and a portable video-playing device.

Congrats Steve for finally getting that people want to watch video. Geee,wonder where he got that idea from? Heheh.

Which brings me to something that the Channel 9 team just released tonight: video clips.

See, watch that Portable Media Center clip above. If you click"watch clip"it'll actually play just the part of the video whereCharlie Owen shows off a Portable Media Center. That's a piece of an hour-long video.

You'll also see that we've rewritten the video player interface from scratch. So, it looks cooler and it works WAY faster! Now you know why we're using streaming servers. Click on the white bar underneath the video and it'll jump to that part. Lets you scan through my boring videos a lot easier.

Jeff Sandquist has a lot moreon the new"Clipster"feature andwe're talking about them on Channel 9(there's more than just a new video control too).

I'll be using this feature a lot in the future to point out key parts of the videos so you don't have to watch an entire hour.

Update: the new feature doesn't work in Firefox, sorry. We'd love help converting this feature to Firefox.

More tech news, whew it was busy today

A ton of Microsoft news today.

eWeek, via Memeorandum:Microsoft Has New Mission for Media Center.

One of the blogs there that caught my eye was Thomas Hawk'sApple Unveils Media Center Type iMac. He said:"Personally I'm a little underwhelmed from what I've seen so far."

Another one that caught my eye is Joe Wilcox and Michael Gartenberg'sanalysis of Apple's moves today. Joe said"Overall, I think Apple delivered a cohesive set of new products."

One thing I totally agree with Joe on is that Apple is WAY WAY WAY better than Microsoft at coming up with names."Apple Front Row"certainly beats"Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2005."

Oh, andYahoo and Microsoft announced a planto interoperate instant messaging clients today. That's important because Yahoo and Microsoft have a LOT of people using those two products. Hey, I wonder if AOL will join in the fun?

2005-10-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

BT plans Bluephone boosts for 2006

(InfoWorld) - British Telecommunications plans to sell 20 different converged Wi-Fi and cellular phone models next year as part of its BT Fusion service, an executive said on Wednesday during the Smartphone Show in London. BT also has other plans to expand the service and has a keen eye on the competition.

The converged Wi-Fi and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phones, many of which will support 3G, will come from manufacturers including Nokia, LG Electronics, Motorola, and HTC, said Dave Woodbridge, general manager of mobile devices for BT."We're spending huge amounts of time working with the manufacturers,"he said.

BT launched Fusion with much fanfare earlier this year. Customers use a single handset to make cellular calls over the wide area network and low-cost VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls in their homes via a Bluetooth connection to BT's broadband service.

When Fusion launched, it was criticized for using Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi. BT said then that the converged Wi-Fi and GSM handsets of the time were still too expensive for the mass market.

BT is planning to launch a business version of Fusion, Woodbridge said. The plan is in line with those of other handset manufacturers and vendors that are also promoting the use of single handsets that enable voice over Wi-Fi in the office and cellular elsewhere.

Woodbridge initially suggested that BT has an advantage over operators such as the U.K. network of Vodafone Group, which doesn't own a landline network and thus can't offer a similar service as efficiently. End users might prefer a service like Fusion that allows them to browse the Web over Wi-Fi in the home at a faster rate and lower cost then browsing over a 3G cellular service, he said.

However, the trend toward bundled cellular price plans is a threat to Fusion:"Bundled minutes on GSM are a concern for us,"he said. That's because the cost of browsing becomes less of an issue when customers subscribe to monthly cellular packages that include large volumes of voice and data for a set price.

Vodafone ultimately does benefit from the Fusion service because BT doesn't own a cellular network and resells service to customers from the Vodafone network.

The Fusion service may also be threatened by free VoIP services like Skype, which customers could use in the home instead of Fusion. Calls on Fusion in the home cost�0.03 ($0.05) a minute during the day and�0.055 an hour in the evening and on weekends. BT will compete with services like Skype on quality of service because it's unlikely that BT could legally block access to such free services, Woodbridge said.

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Nancy_Gohring@idg.com (Nancy Gohring)

Samsung improves DRAM technology to increase output

(InfoWorld) - Samsung Electronics on Thursday announced it had produced its first DRAM (dynamic RAM) computer chips using 70-nanometer production technology. The manufacturing technology improvement means the company will be able to double the number of chips it makes on a single silicon wafer, the raw material of a chip, once the process is widely in use in the company's factories.

Samsung, the world's largest memory chip maker, said it produced a 512Mb DDR2 (Double Data Rate 2) DRAM chip using the 70-nm technology.

A nanometer is a measurement of the size of transistors and other parts that are etched onto chips. The more transistors on a chip, and the closer they are together, the faster the chip can perform tasks. For manufacturers like Samsung and rivals Micron Technology�and Infineon Technologies, developing smaller technologies is important for increasing output and reducing costs.

The price of the most widely used DRAM chips have fallen by over a third so far this year to $2.53 each, according to DRAMeXchange, an online clearinghouse for the chips. DRAM are such heavy volume chips for manufacturers that they trade on spot markets similar to commodities such as oil and wheat.

Samsung estimates the number of chips it will be able to obtain per silicon wafer will be at least 100 percent higher compared to the 90-nm technology in use on most of its DRAM production lines today. Chips are made on silicon wafers about the size of dinner plates. Thousands of chips can be made on each wafer.

"We won't use the 70-nanometer technology for DRAM until the second half of next year,"said Sung-hae Park, a Samsung representative. The company already makes NAND Flash memory chips using 70-nm technology, but its DRAM is mainly produced using 90-nm and 80-nm processes.

The company had to make several technological innovations to tweak 70-nm production technology to overcome limitations of stacked DRAM cells and improve the data refresh function, Samsung said in a statement.

The company started using 90-nm technology for DRAM production in mid-2004, followed by 80-nm in the second half of 2005. Samsung said it would begin using 70-nm technology for DRAM in the middle of next year, starting with 512Mb, 1Gb, and 2Gb capacities.

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Dan_Nystedt@idg.com (Dan Nystedt)

BenQ developing PCs for automobiles

(InfoWorld) - Taiwanese electronics maker BenQ�is developing PC products to be used in automobiles, catching a ride on the trend to combine computers with cars.

The company is researching several products, but so far has nothing ready to formally announce, said a BenQ representative.

Since more new cars are equipped with a display panel for use with GPS (Global Positioning System) to help drivers find their way around, it's now more possible to add increased PC functions inside a car, the BenQ representative said.

At the earliest, the company would announce new products for the automotive sector at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January, according to the BenQ representative.

CES will have special exhibition space set aside for auto related products, including its Automotive Aftermarket section, and the Digital Car/Telematics section, devoted to mobile electronic components, navigation devices, software or hardware integrated into vehicle systems and other products, according to the CES Web site, http://www.cesweb.org/default_flash.asp.

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Dan_Nystedt@idg.com (Dan Nystedt)

Google and Comcast to buy AOL stake, reports say

(InfoWorld) - First it was Microsoft, now it's Google and Comcast: It seems everyone wants a piece of America Online�(AOL).

Fresh rumors surfaced on Thursday of negotiations regarding Google and Comcast buying a portion of AOL. These discussions, reported by news organizations including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, follow on the heels of previous reports that Microsoft has been working on buying AOL or a portion of the company from Time Warner, AOL's current owner.

Spokespeople from AOL, Google, and Microsoft all declined to comment.

Each of the tie-ups makes sense and analysts agree that the loser won't be left completely in the cold.

The rumors have all the companies interested mainly in AOL's portal with its valuable content, not its Internet access business.

"AOL has some great content that is broadly appealing to consumers,"said Joe Wilcox, senior analyst with Jupiter Research."One thing that Microsoft lacks for MSN is a lot of good content."For Microsoft, owning all or some of AOL means that it can earn more revenue from ad sales and also extend the reach of its search application. Currently, AOL uses Google for searches.

Part of Microsoft's interest in AOL may also stem from concern over Google's market momentum."Microsoft is concerned about Google and the things they might do,"Wilcox said.

There may be more of an upside for Google than Microsoft, said Patrick Mahoney, an analyst with the Yankee Group."They've been dabbling in a portal or home page strategy yet they don't have really any content assets,"he said. If Google wants into the content market, AOL offers a solid entry.

AOL's content could also be good for Comcast, which could benefit from additional content as it moves away from solely serving as a pipe to the Internet. Some reports describe a deal where Google and Comcast together make a bid for AOL.

The timing for any of these negotiations makes sense, Wilcox said."We've crossed that threshold where broadband has enough momentum over dial-up,"he said."What we see is a lot of emphasis now from MSN and AOL on delivering content for those fatter pipes."

Also, Google is recently flush with cash, putting it in the position to make a significant acquisition or investment.

Both Wilcox and Mahoney were suspicious of the fact that the rumors of both negotiations have been leaked."It was very convenient for Time Warner management that people are really excited about AOL right now,"Mahoney said. Time Warner has been pressured by some major investors to sell off AOL. Such leaks about negotiations can drive up a company's value as additional suitors compete.

Regardless of which of these companies -- if any -- end up with AOL, the loser won't be left destitute."There's always someplace else to look,"Wilcox said. Mahoney agrees."It will benefit somebody but I don't think anyone will be a loser,"he said.

SEE ALSO:

AOL CEO quiet on Microsoft rumors

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In Brief: Funk ships endpoint integrity suite

(InfoWorld) - Funk Software is now shipping a suite of endpoint integrity products that includes the new Steel-Belted Radius/Endpoint Assurance and an update of its Odyssey Client.

The suite is designed to protect enterprises against viruses, worms, and other threats to network security. It allows enterprises to determine the security and compliance of clients connecting to their networks, and offers the ability to automatically remediate non-compliant endpoints. The products are built upon the open standards developed by the Trusted Computing Group's Trusted Network Connect (TNC) subgroup, and are compatible with security and infrastructure products from McAfee, Symantec, PatchLink, ProCurve Networking by HP, and others.

ZendCore for Oracle available
October 12, 7:35 a.m. PDT
Oracle and Zend Technologies have announced that Zend Core for Oracle for IBM AIX, Linux, and Sun Solaris, and the beta version of Zend Core for Oracle for the Windows platform are now available. Zend Core for Oracle accelerates the building and deployment of mission-critical, PHP-based Web applications. Zend Core for Oracle also offers an updated PHP"OCI8"driver to connect with the Oracle Database, providing enhanced reliability, stability, and performance for Oracle Database-driven Web applications. Oracle offers free downloads of the products fromhttp://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/php/index.html. Zend Core for Oracle is also available athttp://www.zend.com/core/oracle.

Nokia releases new family of development tools
October 11,7:30 a.m. PDT
At Symbian's Smartphone Show in London, Nokia launched a new family of developer tools in an effort to unify all of its programming software. The Carbide c++ brand will include a variety of tools aimed at different types of developers, including professional Symbian OS developers, developers for the Nokia Series 60 and UIQ platforms, and entry-level developers. Nokia also launched a support program called Forum Nokia Pro Symbian Zone for companies that develop applications for the Symbian OS. The program offers developers reference material and early access to updates to the Symbian OS library of APIs.

Fujitsu-Software AG offering manages SOA assets
October 10,6:55 a.m. PDT
Fujitsu and Software AG on Monday announced a joint offering for managing integration components within a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The CentraSite SOA repository enables maximum visibility and re-use of Web services components within and across organizations. The first three products enabled with CentraSite are Fujitsu's Interstage Business Process Manager, which models, automates, and optimizes business processes; Software AG's Enterprise Information Integrator, which provides a single view of information to business users; and Software AG's Enterprise Service Integrator, an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Fujitsu and Software AG are also developing a community program for partners and other technology vendors that they plan to introduce at the beginning of 2006.

CTO leaves Borland
October 6,7:05 a.m. PDT
Borland Software announced that CTO Pat Kerpan is leaving the company to pursue opportunities outside software development and more in line with his Venture Capital roots. Kerpan had been with Borland since the acquisition five years ago of his company, Bedouin. As CTO, Kerpan was an advocate for Borland's SDO (Software Delivery Optimization) vision as well as the company's decision to leverage Eclipse as a framework. The company has not announced its transition plan for the CTO role.

IBM addresses computing needs of maturing workers
October 3,7:30 a.m. PDT
IBM on Monday unveiled technologies aimed at making the work environment more conducive to maturing workers'comfort and productivity. The four new accessibility tools include Keyboard Optimizer, which helps users adjust keyboard settings to suit their typing style; Web Adaptation Technology, which magnifies the contents of a Web page and adjusts font, image, and page layout to improve readability; Mouse Smoothing Software, which enables users with hand tremors to eliminate excessive cursor movement; and Reflexive User Interface Builder, which helps developers build applications with popular graphical user interfaces that are still accessible to users with disabilities and mature workers. The tools are available for free download in a new accessibility section on IBM'salphaWorksWeb site. IBM recently announcedbusiness consulting servicesthat helps companies prepare for the baby-boomer transition.

Quest releases Application Assurance Suite for Java and Portals
September 30, 6:35 a.m. PDT
Quest Software announced at BEAWorld the release of its Application Assurance Suite for Java and Portals, which lets users rapidly measure, analyze, and optimize applications during development. The suite is the next generation of Quest PerformaSure integrated with Quest JProbe, and it enables development and QA teams to correlate end-user transactions to performance impacts on Java applications and portals. New to this solution are features for diagnosing issues in portals, memory performance analysis, and automated performance blueprinting. Other features include automatic optimization of SQL statements in Java applications when used in conjunction with Quest's database tools; line-of-code isolation; automatic application mapping, which reveals the interdependencies of components; and transaction correlation, which speeds problem diagnosis. Quest's Application Assurance Suite for Java and Portals is available now priced starting at $7,000 per CPU.

�

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Three indicted for'massive'software, music piracy

(InfoWorld) - Three California men were indicted Wednesday for their alleged participation in a"massive"software and music-CD copying scheme, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.

Arrests in the scheme to illegally copy 325,000 software and music CDs were part of the largest CD manufacturing seizure in the U.S., the U.S. attorney's office said. The indictments follow the arrests of five people and searches of 13 locations in California and Texas on Oct. 6.

Two of the suspects were involved the large-scale replication of Symantec Corp. antivirus software, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan's office said in a press release. All three were also charged with illegally copying Latin music, the office said.

Indicted late Wednesday were Ye Teng Wen, also known as Michael Wen; Hao He, also known as Kevin He, both of Union City, California; and Yaobin Zhai, also known as Ben Zhai, of Fremont, California.

The three were charged in two separate indictments for conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and traffic in counterfeit labels; criminal copyright infringement; trafficking in counterfeit labels; and aiding and abetting, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Wen and He were charged in a 10-count indictment, and Zhai was charged in a seven-count indictment.

Replicators can use sophisticated equipment, sometimes including silk-screening machines to copy artwork on CDs or DVDs, to make tens of thousands of counterfeit CDs or DVDs, the U.S. attorney's office said. A counterfeit-music CD found at a retail store last month in Chicago came from two of the people arrested in this operation, law enforcement said.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America both praised the antipiracy operation. Law enforcement officers"successfully toppled a highly sophisticated pirate network capable of generating millions of dollars in illegal proceeds,"said Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA's chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement.

Wen, He and Zhai are scheduled to make their initial court appearance on the indictment Oct. 27. Zhai was released Wednesday on a $150,000 bond. Wen and He were released on Oct. 6 on $75,000 bonds.

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2005-10-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

Steve Hooker: Backlog RSS file of all the posts
Steve has released a new tool that you can use withFeedster's new backlogfeature. "A tool to make a Backlog RSS file of all the posts that went to your front page."

TrackBack for Radio is released
Radio supports both inbound and outbound TrackBack pings. For outbound TrackBack, all you have to do is enable the feature, and Radio will do the rest. Inbound TrackBack works similarly to comments -- a TrackBack link next to each post opens a pop-up window which displays inbound pings.

To enable TrackBack for Radio, follow the instructions on thispage.

New Radio feature: Comment notification via email
Today we released a new feature for Radio UserLand: comment notification via email. If the feature is enabled, whenever a new comment is posted to a Radio weblog, an email will be sent to the weblog author, notifying them that a new comment was posted.Screenshot.

New Radio macro: Monthly Archive links
David Phillips has written a new Radio macro that creates links to Radio's monthly archive pages. You can see how the macro works onDavid's weblog.

Radio 8.1 released
Radio UserLand 8.1 has beenreleasedand a new installer is available for download for new users which includes all the latest changes since the last 8.0.8 release. Note: There wasn't an application upgrade in this release so the application version will still read 8.0.8.

If you are an existing Radio user, just update Radio.root to receive the latest updates including the most recent changes released in September.

Mac developers: Partner on developing a slick interface for Radio
From John Robb: "Question: If any Mac developer(s) want(s) to work with UserLand to build a slick interface for Radio (like this one for Windows), let me know. I suspect based on UserLand's sales into the Mac community that it would be worth $50-$100 k in revenue to the partner in the first year (more in follow on years)."

UserLand Appoints Product Manager for Radio
UserLand Software today announced that it has named Steve Kirks product manager for its Radio UserLand personal web publishing and weblogging product.

Preview chapter from Radio UserLand Kick Start
Rogers Cadenhead has posted a new preview chapter onBacking Up Datafrom hisRadio UserLand Kick Startbook which will be published on October 6.

2005-10-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

WebEx attacks SMB collaboration market

(InfoWorld) - One month after closing its acquisition of Intranets.com, WebEx Communications is launching an updated, rebranded version of Intranets.com's hosted collaboration software suite, a move aimed at expanding WebEx's share of the SMB (small and medium business) market before Microsoft conquers the space.

Santa Clara, California-based WebEx is doing away with the six-year-old Intranets.com brand. Starting Tuesday, the online suite of document management, project and contacts management, calendaring and database tools will be named WebOffice. The software will retain its current pricing, which starts at $60 per month for five users. A WebOffice Personal edition intended for single users is priced at $50 per month.

The Intranets.com business unit, which WebEx runs as an independent subsidiary, is being renamed WebExOne.

With WebOffice, WebEx is embedding its Web conferencing service more deeply into the collaboration suite, for an additional add-on fee. It is also launching several new, standalone conferencing products aimed at encouraging users to make online conferencing a routine part of their workday.

Adding WebEx Meetings to WebOffice costs $50 per month per host user, with a five-user minimum. That fee covers unlimited meetings, with up to five attendee participants per meeting. (Additional attendees can be accommodated for a higher fee.) WebOffice Personal's monthly fee includes one meeting-host license.

WebEx is also launching two standalone products on Tuesday, MeetMeNow and PCNow. MeetMeNow works like a Web conferencing version of instant-messaging systems: The application resides in the system tray of a user's PC and allows users to launch instant Web conference meetings with a few clicks. It carries a $50 per month price tag. PCNow, priced at $15 per month per PC, lets users access remote computers through a Web browser.

With MeetMeNow and PCNow, WebEx will be going head-to-head against Citrix Systems, which offers similar services with GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting. WebEx's fiercest rival, however, will be Microsoft, whose Live Meeting and SharePoint collaboration tools are aimed straight at the SMB market that WebEx so covets.

Intranets.com currently has a customer base of 9,000 organizations and 300,000 end-users. By making WebOffice simple to deploy and intuitive to use, WebEx hopes to expand its share of the SMB market and become the collaboration provider of choice for small businesses and project teams at larger enterprises, according to Karen Leavitt, vice president of marketing for WebExOne.

IDC analyst Robert Mahowald thinks WebEx has a short window of opportunity in which to extend its Web conferencing dominance into a similar command of the SMB collaboration software market.

"Looking over their shoulder, they see Microsoft with a new version of Office and an on-premises version of Live Meeting coming out next year,"Mahowald said."[At WebEx], there's a sense of'we've got to get ensconced in our customers now.'"

Team collaboration will be a major focus of Microsoft Office 12, which is expected to include deeper SharePoint integration and tools to enable easier Web publishing distribution of documents to colleagues, Mahowald said. Microsoft's purchase earlier this year of collaboration software maker Groove Networks, whose technology the company plans to incorporate into Office, also indicates its ambitions in the market.

Still, Mahowald thinks WebEx's WebOffice line is promising -- and, whichever vendor they choose, Mahowald expects customers to benefit from the growing availability of robust collaboration tools.

"These combinations of real-time and non-real-time application team suites are becoming more common,"he said."If people could be convinced to use these products, I think the result would be tremendous productivity gains."

�

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Symbian, Intel show off reference design

(InfoWorld) - As part of its efforts to target mass market devices, Symbian Ltd. demonstrated Tuesday at the Smartphone Show in London a reference design for Symbian OS phones that it developed with Intel Corp. It's the first reference design announced by Symbian, although the company is working with other chip makers too, said Simon Garth, vice president of marketing for Symbian.

Historically, handset makers assemble all the components necessary to build a phone, including the silicon, the OS and the user interface."Each had to do the same thing,"Garth said."It's inefficient."

Symbian is now working with chip makers like Intel to offer handset manufacturers a reference design that includes silicon, the OS and drivers such as for video capabilities. Symbian expects the reference design will help drive down costs for handset makers, which can still customize their handsets on top of the reference design.

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ISO to review OpenDocument as a standard

(InfoWorld) - A standards body will soon consider adopting the file format used by the OpenOffice.org software suite, among others, as an international standard.

The commonwealth of Massachusetts recently made headlines when it mandated use of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) for its internal documents from Jan. 1, 2007. OpenDocument is already used by the free software suites OpenOffice.org and KOffice, and by the commercial StarOffice suite from Sun Microsystems Inc., but Microsoft Corp. does not support the format in its Office suite.

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) submitted the OpenDocument specification to a joint technical committee of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission for publication as an international standard, according to an ISO spokesman.

The committee will send the specification out to its members, probably at the end of this month, and they will have five months to study and vote on it, according to ISO spokesman Roger Frost.

Supporters of OpenDocument expect more governments to follow the lead of Massachusetts if the format becomes an ISO standard, and encourage other software developers to get ready.

"Suppliers need to realize that it's in their interest to adopt the standard, because it will maximize their access to future markets,"said Ian Lynch, a spokesman for the Open Document Fellowship, a group that aims to support volunteers promoting the format.

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Mobile e-mail may push beyond executive corridor

(InfoWorld) - Mobile e-mail isn't just for the chief executive and president anymore. At least, that's what many of the companies presenting at Symbian Ltd.'s Smartphone Show said on Monday. Companies including Visto Inc., Nokia Corp. and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB are all talking about their"push"e-mail applications that aim to be attractive throughout the enterprise as well as to smaller businesses.

"We think there is going to be explosive growth of e-mail on Symbian,"said Simon Garth, vice president of marketing for Symbian.

While there's been a small group of"noisy users"of push e-mail products like the Blackberry, from Research In Motion Ltd., overall user numbers are relatively small, said Tony Cripps, a wireless software analyst at Ovum Ltd. But the Blackberry has raised awareness of the benefits of mobile e-mail and now mobile workers lower on the corporate ladder and in small businesses are increasingly looking for access, he said."The great unwashed masses are keen to get it if they can,"Cripps said.

Visto is one push e-mail provider that thinks it can address those potential users, mainly because its offering can be used with a wide variety of devices."A range of device choices will help get this to the mass market,"said Sanjay Kamble, vice president of marketing for Visto."We're taking this out of a device-centric mode to a service-centric."

He wasn't alone among speakers at the show who delivered thinly veiled jabs at the Blackberry. Some of Blackberry's competitors criticize the very popular offering because the e-mail software is largely tied to a specific device."Users should be able to get e-mail on the phone you want. They shouldn't have to buy a compromised phone because they want e-mail,"Garth said.

Even Rogers Wireless, the Canadian mobile operator and one of the first to offer the Blackberry to customers, believes that device choice will help drive mobile e-mail into a wider market. There are customers that want to do e-mail but they don't want that service to dictate the type of device they can buy, said Robert Munro, a senior director at Rogers Wireless. Rogers has been offering e-mail to users via the Visto platform, allowing users to choose from a variety of devices.

Rather than develop its own e-mail client, Symbian relies on partners that develop e-mail applications that operate on the OS. That strategy offers a choice of e-mail products that meet a variety of end user needs, Garth said. By contrast, smart phone OS maker Microsoft Corp. has included a push e-mail client in Windows Mobile 5.0 and the Blackberry has push e-mail as its core offering.

Historically, mobile e-mail solutions were Web-based or used complicated short messaging mechanisms to deliver e-mail messages to devices. The more recent push e-mail solutions deliver e-mail to mobile devices automatically when new messages arrive at the e-mail server.

Nokia recently introduced a push e-mail platform and Sony Ericsson recently released an upgrade to its push e-mail platform.

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Identity Management: An Increasing Requirement in the Regulatory Compliance Challenge

Nancy_Gohring@idg.com (Nancy Gohring)

Liberty Alliance releases legal, privacy guidelines

(InfoWorld) - The Liberty Alliance Project, an industry consortium working on standards for federated identity systems, released a set of guidelines Tuesday that aims to help organizations deal with some of the legal and privacy issues that arise from such federated identity projects.

The technologies that underlie the Liberty Alliance Project are mature enough for companies to build federated identity systems, according to Russ DeVeau of Liberty Alliance Communications. But companies must also agree on what types of information will be shared and the security and privacy measures they need to have in place to achieve what the Liberty Alliance calls a"circle of trust"among the organizations involved.

"The biggest barriers are how organizations actually work together to federate,"DeVeau said.

Federated identity refers to the use of a single sign-on point through which users can then move onto other Web sites or applications without having to enter their user names and passwords repeatedly. Proponents say it can make life simpler for consumers who have to juggle a handful of different user names and passwords, and can mean better security and savings for organizations through fewer password resets.

The 15-page document, targeted at policy managers, was developed through Liberty Alliance's Public Policy Expert Group (PPEG), which includes members from the Business Industry Political Action Committee, a U.S. pro-business group; the U.S. General Services Administration, a U.S. government procurement and policy agency; plus Oracle and Sun Microsystems.

The Liberty technical architecture does not inherently address liability or indemnification, as those are issues that are contractual between the service vendor and the customer, said Michael Aisenberg, chair of Liberty's PPEG and director of government relations for VeriSign.

The guidelines published Tuesday offer the advantage of being developed in the marketplace rather than imposed by a government, Aisenberg said. They are the closest thing that exists to a global statement of industry best practices for federated identity, he said.

"The problem with many technologies in the past has been the intrusion of government saying'Here's a solution, everyone has got to deploy it,'"Aisenberg said."That freezes technology in place. That stagnates the incentives for innovation. That makes a telephone system rely on copper for 100 years."

The Liberty Alliance was founded in 2001 and has about 150 members including vendors, private companies and government agencies. The guidelines can be viewed at http://www.projectliberty.org/resources/whitepapers/deployment_guidelines_v2_9.pdf.

�

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Update: Microsoft, Real Networks close to settlement

(InfoWorld) - Microsoft and RealNetworks are close to settling a long-running antitrust lawsuit against the U.S. software giant in a settlement deal valued at about $750 million, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The two companies have called a press conference in Seattle at 10 a.m. Pacific Time Tuesday, but did not indicate what the topic will be.

Both Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates and RealNetworks Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rob Glaser will conduct the press conference, according to a"media alert"sent to journalists. Company executives declined to discuss the matter prior to the press conference.

Under terms of the settlement, Microsoft would provide a combination of cash and promotions for RealNetworks'music and game services through Microsoft's online services and software, and the two companies would collaborate on technology initiatives in he future, according to the report.

RealNetworks filed its antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in December 2003, alleging that Microsoft used its Windows operating systems dominance to restrict RealNetworks'position in the market for media software for the PC.

The lawsuit claimed that Microsoft forced PC manufacturers to include its Windows Media Player while at the same time placing restrictions on how competing players may be installed.

RealNetworks initially claimed damages in excess of $1 billion.

Microsoft has already settled or resolved many of the big antitrust suits filed against it. Last April, the company paid Sun Microsystems $1.6 billion to settle charges against it. Before that, it paid the former America Online $750 million to settle an antitrust complaint brought by AOL's Netscape division.

Microsoft is currently appealing a separate antitrust ruling against it by the European Commission. Asked to comment on whether a settlement between the two companies would make it easier for Microsoft to win that appeal, Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, said that the Commission is committed to ensuring full compliance with its March 2004 decision in the case. The Commission's role is to ensure"proper application of E.U. competition rules to benefit consumers and companies in Europe, not for the benefit of one particular company."

(Simon Taylor in Brussels and Nancy Weil in Boston contributed to this story.)

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Hitachi to expand work on vein-recognition systems

(InfoWorld) - Hitachi announced Tuesday it will expand its finger-vein authentication system business as interest in the technology grows.

On Nov. 1, the company will establish a dedicated Finger Vein Authentication Business Center with four regional subsidiaries in North America, Europe, China, and Asia, according to a press release. The company will customize finger-vein authentication systems for customers in those regions, it said.

Finger-vein identification systems are more compact than iris-identification systems and less susceptible to duplication than fingerprint-identification systems, Hitachi said. Light is projected through a person's finger, enabling a high-contrast matching of vein patterns.

Hitachi has developed a finger-vein recognition system small enough to be installed in laptop computers and mobile handsets. The company began researching finger-vein authentication technology in 1997 and holds a number of patents in vein pattern biometric certification systems, it said.

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2005-10-08T22:37:00.000-07:00

New Radio 8 feature. Now you can post to categories without posting to the home page. If you have categories enabled, there's a new checkbox, the first one, called Home Page (it effectively becomes a category). By default it's checked. Now you can easily publish multiple weblogs, going to lots of different locations, from one edit box.Screen shot.

Radio 8 essays:Adam Curry,Mark Paschal,Meryl Evans. [Scripting News]

2005-10-08T00:24:00.000-07:00

Mike tells me how a small donation can have huge impact

We always hear about rich folks who just aren't nice. Or, worse.

But over lunch I went over and met with Michael Murray, chairman of Unitus.

You might have heard of him. He worked at Apple on the Mac team and at Microsoft was Vice President of Human Resources for a number of years.

He told me about his non-profit organization and how they are helping entrepreneurs in super poor areas in the world. He started the meeting by pulling $2 out of his pocket and explained that more than half the world's population (billions of people) live on less than $2 a day.

I can't even buy a latte for that.

Anyway, he's found a way to help bootstrap communities with simple microloans. I video'd the interview, I'll have that up next week. It's inspiring.

Can you make a difference in the world? He told me about how a $100 loan (not a donation, but a loan) can totally transform someone's life.

Half of an iPod Nano. Think about that for a moment.

He's starting a blog today to tell more. I'll link to that when he gets it up, buthttp://www.unitus.comhas more details on how this works.

Oh, don't remember Mike? He wrotethe famous Shrimp and Weenies memothat became famous in the early 1990s.

Mike will speak on Microsoft's campus next Monday on Microsoft's campus in building 118 at the Mt. Si room at 11:30 a.m. so Microsoft employees can learn more about this concept (as part of our annual Giving Campaign).

My brother and I argue about search roles

Heh, while I was stuck in traffic on the way home tonight my brother called. We had one of our usual heated conversations -- this time about search engines (he had read my post about PLAYing with search and thought I was nuts for wanting search engines to display stock quotes for terms like PETS, PLAY, etc). He thought I was wrong. I thought he was wrong. That's sorta how it is in the Scoble household (we've been like that ever since we were little kids). But,he blogged the conversation about what search engines should doover on his ComputerWorld blog.

I came up with something that looks like convinced him to come over to my side, though: that we need search engines that understand the role you are in when you're searching.

For instance, let's say you get interested in buying an HDTV (like I am). So you go to the search engines. Here, I'll save you the time. Here'sGoogle for HDTV,here's Yahoo,here's MSN,here's Ask Jeeves.

These resultsets are TOTALLY UNSATISFYING. Here's why. I already know what HDTV is. I saw it the other night at Chris Pirillo's house. So, now I know what it is, I know I want one.

But the engine doesn't ask me what role I'm in. None of them do. We need a new search engine that understand that different people will come to an engine seeking different kinds of things. Some who are looking for HDTV probably are writing reports and need to know how it works. Some are probably wondering about the HD DVD vs. BlueRay debate. Some might have just heard it's the hottest thing and are wondering what it is.

But I'm in a different role. I want to buy one.

So, let's just focus in on Google since that's the hot search engine of the moment. First link: an introduction. I don't need that. I already had an introduction. Second link: how HDTV works. I don't care. Next. Third link: an info site about stations and some product comparisons. Hmmm, maybe useful later, but I'm looking for something else right now. Fourth link: Amazon.com. Huh? I'm not ready to buy yet. I wanna know what's available. It predicted I was in a different role. Fifth link: a magazine site. OK, it's clear the search engine isn't going to give me what I want, so I'll probably go off and read that site for an hour and come back. Sixth link: an ATI card? I'll have to put that on my gift list too. Seventh link: HDTV Buyer site. News and info. Another site I'll have to go and check out later. And on and on it goes.

What WAS I looking for? When you first get interested in something, what's the first thing you need to know? All the choices that are available, damn it!

Where's the link to"manufacturers of HDTV?"Sony. Toshiba. Dell. Gateway. Samsung. Panasonic. So on. They aren't there (well, except for the ads -- hey, do search engines have an economic disincentive to keep you in the wrong role so you'll click on the ads? Hmmmm.).

So, what COULD the engine do? Well, first of all, if you could watch, say, millions of users, you'd be able to see that a lot of people visit the manufacturers sites and you'd be able to see that a lot of people go to a few pages on those sites with the words"HDTV."You'd be able to build a model of those sites, and be able to, if you invested the dev time and the processor power, to bring back something at the top of the page that had something like: see all the major manufacturers of HDTV sets.

We know this can be done. Why? Cause Google did it for Seattle Hotels. Here's theGoogle result for Seattle Hotels. They make a nice little list of all the hotels available and even give you one of those Google Maps.MSN Search has the exact same thing. Yahoo goes even further.They have pictures and ratings!!

So, why can't they do this for HDTVs? Of course they can. It just hasn't gotten onto the dev list of any of the major engines yet. Yet.

Oh, Yahoo Shopping has something like this but they screw it all up. Again, I'm not in the role of buying yet. I'm in the role of LOOKING. So, why can't I geta list like this one on Yahoo Shopping, but with features, reviews, AND LINKS TO THE MANUFACTURER'S OWN SITE????

Not to mention that if yousearch for HDTVs (plural) on Yahooyou get a sports cafe. Huh?

Google doesn't havethat kind of noise.Neither does MSN.

Building good search engines is hard.

Believe it or not, but folks from all three of the big search companies are watching here (particularly my coworkers at MSN).

What would you like to see them do differently?

Oh, Ask Jeeves and Clusty gets really close with the bar along the right side (here's a search on Ask Jeeves for HDTVsand thesame search on Clusty). If they had a list of manufacturer's of HDTVs there, they would have nailed it.

One more'oh': I can just hear some of you saying"why didn't you search on'HDTV manufacturers'?"OK, smartypants. Go do the search for that and tell me, did you find Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic, JVC, Samsung, Gateway, Dell, or other manufacturers? I did that search on all three of the major engines and didn't.

Hey, everyone who thinks this search thing is done and doesn't need more work is fooling themselves. It's looking a lot like 1997 when everyone thought search was done.

2005-10-07T01:16:00.000-07:00

Yahoo biggest threat to Google, Sullivan says

Danny Sullivan, on Search Engine Watch,says that Yahoo is the most virulent threat to Google.

Rumor: Weblogs.com sold to Verisign

Latest rumor,as reported on Jason Kottke's site:Weblogs.comsold to Verisign?

Note: this is different than weblogsinc.com, which WAS sold to AOL yesterday.

Dave Winer is my friend, so I can neither confirm nor deny this rumor (he owns weblogs.com and is in the air traveling right now). It sure will be interesting to see what happens in this space, though.

Weblogs.com is an important (and often ignored) piece of blog infrastructure. It's a ping server. When I post on my blog, it pings weblogs.com and tells it"something was just published."This lets search engines like Google/MSN/Yahoo visit. It also lets a whole raft of services be built on top of it. Most of the Blog Search engines watch this server for pings.

MSN explains more about how they give instant answers on search

Jamie Buckley, over on the MSN Search blog, replies tomy PLAYing with search results.

HD DVD format battles heat up

Interesting BusinessWeek article on the fight that's going on in the industry over HD DVD formats. If you haven't been following this one, it's interesting. I have friends involved inside Microsoft and the stories are fascinating. I wish I could share some of them with you, but for now this BusinessWeek article will have to do (it's not very positive toward Microsoft's position, either).

Some things worth pointing out from this article, though. BlueRay's technical claim is that they can do higher capacity discs. The problem is that claim is at least partly smoke and mirrors. I've learned not to believe in smoke and mirrors claims (remember how I got burned believing Longhorn would ship this year?) Be careful whenever a company or a group tells you it'll do something but then can't demonstrate it.

Another piece is that the Xbox 360 won't have an HD DVD when it ships (from either camp). I've spent a bit of time with the Xbox team lately. They said they couldn't get enough volume before Christmas on a drive. They wouldn't tell me which one they are going with, though, saying they are still considering their options for future products. An add-on drive could easily be added, though, to the new Xbox.

Also, watch what happens with the DRM on both standards. The folks I talked to at Microsoft feel strongly that you should have fair use rights to the videos you get on future media. Translation, we want to make sure you can plug in an HD DVD in your future Media Center on one machine, like up in my office, and then watch it on another machine somewhere else in your home (or on your Xbox 360). Or, like my Slingbox lets me watch TV anywhere I'm connected to my home TV via the Internet. BlueRay's DRM seemed to prevent that kind of usage.

Also, we want to make sure you can copy a DVD to a portable device so you can watch that movie elsewhere, like on our portable media centers. It'll be real interesting to see what Apple does when it brings out a video iPod.

But, it looks like this fight is just getting going and is becoming more interesting no matter which side of the fence you're on.

One other thing: why don't we just get rid of the idea that we need media altogether? I regularly deliver, on Channel 9, 1GB-long videos with only a few complaints. I'm sure that in a few years folks will be able to download 10GB files without any problems at all. The Media Center already has the ability to download huge video files in the middle of the night through RSS.

I think my bet is gonna be against either of these formats. Maybe Microsoft should have invested in BitTorrent?

What do you think?

Why MSN Search won't PLAY with certain stock symbols

Lots of people at MSN Search have been writing me back explaining why PLAY doesn't pull up a stock quote chart on MSN (query result here). They pointed out that most stock symbols will pull up a chart. Here'sMSN's result for searching for AAPL, which is Apple Computer's stock symbol, to demonstrate.

But why not for PLAY? That's PortalPlayer's symbol.

Well, they say that most people searching for Play are coming there for some other reason and they want to make sure that their engine always returns the most relevant result.

On one hand this explanation makes me cheer. It's what I have been wanting to hear for a long time. That we have a PHILOSOPHY! Here's the philosophy in algorithms. That relevancy should be sacrosanct.

But, on the other hand, I'm not sure that this is the best philosphy to have. I'd rather the engine be consistent. I often search on stock symbols. Why? Cause I watch money shows and they use the stock symbols on the screen and that's how I learn more about the company that is going by.

Anyway, this demonstrates just how difficult it is to make a great search engine. Those pesky users always wanting more.

Oh, and neither Google, nor MSN, have a stock chart when you search for"PortalPlayer, Inc."Shows that there's still more to do.

Oh #2. Watch Ask Jeeves for another trend in search engines: providing answers to questions. Ask it who theinventor of the cotton ginis, for instance, and you get a Web answer in bold.

Update: there aremore details on instant answers and PLAY on the MSN Search Blog.

Monolith's musician on the Red Couch

I'm sitting with Nate Grigg, musician forMonolith. Don't know Monolith? They have some killer games coming out.

He wrote the music and sound effects forF.E.A.R, which won the best action game of E3.

He also was bragging about the gameCondemned, which he said he just finished that game's effects and music. He says it's the best looking game that Monolith has ever produced -- it's an Xbox 360 game. You can hear Nate's music by watching thevideo trailer on Sega's site.

So, how did he do the"weeerrrreeeerrrr"sound? He was using a really old sampler that he had since college. It lets you take speech samples. And mess with them. Take a loop and crunch it and expand it over time.

It's crazy, he says. It's like taking a snapshot of a sample and changing its position or its length.

He does all his production on PC."The PCs do what I want them to do,"he says.

I sure am getting excited about Xbox 360. I'm hearing it's already sold out at most stores so if you want one for Christmas you've gotta hunt around.

Reuters has a listof Xbox 360 games that'll be available at launch. Monolith's Condemned isn't on that list, but will be available"soon."

Yahoo publishes RSS usage report

Yahoo just releaseda whitepaper on RSS usageand came out with a publisher's guide to RSS too (both are on their guide to RSS page).

Of the big three companies (Google/Microsoft/Yahoo) Yahoo is definitely getting RSS the best.

I believe, in fact, that real soon now this will start to turn their usage model upward. Translation: they are going to gain market share in the search space. Now, where is that market share going to come from? Well, 85% of the referers last month to Channel 9 came from Google.

It's suprising to me that the big companies still aren't taking RSS totally seriously. Yeah, Microsoft is putting RSS all over the place. Yeah, you can spit out MSN Searches via RSS. Which, actually, is pretty advanced and interesting. But Yahoo is going further.

The marketplace still hasn't rewarded Yahoo for this. I'm pretty sure it will. As Dean Hachamovitch over on the Internet Explorer team says, first there was Browse. Then there was Search. Now there's"subscribe."Yahoo ruled in the Browse age. Google ruled in the Search age. Now who'll rule in the Subscribe age?

That's the big question and right now Yahoo is out front.

Key findings in the Yahoo RSS report? Not many people are aware of RSS. Even fewer use RSS. But, those who use it are in an ultra valuable demographic (educated, affluent, young, and all that).

Translation: lots of opportunity to add value in this Subscribe world. The market is ahead of us, not behind us.

2005-10-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

Story about single-play DVDs is false

Ed Bott reports the truth:no truth to Microsoft single-play DVD story.

Yes, the news system can be hoaxed. But, it cleans itself out pretty fast. Bloggers, please include links to original sources and the source where you saw it. Also, correct any post where something false is reported. Help the system clean itself out.

For instance, will Slashdot correctthis post?

O'Reilly author notices Microsoft's openness

Giles Turnbull, a Mac user who writes over on O'Reilly:"There's something that Microsoft is doing much better than Apple."

"Not only doing it better, but improving with each and every day that goes by. It is a cutting-edge activity for large corporations, something that few businesses today have even tried, let alone got right. But Microsoft has got it right and is reaping the benefits.

"What is this mysterious activity I'm talking about?"

You'll have to visithis postto find out.

I notice that his readers give the usual"Microsoft doesn't deserve credit"kind of reactions. That's OK. I'm seeing that our products are getting better thanks to a better conversation. I'm noticing that many many more program and product managers are wondering what their audience will think about their products and services. That's massively good and I don't really care if anyone notices externally.

He's right that most other companies are terrified of this new world. I just got another note from one of my readers who says an organization he's on the board of directors on is freaked out that he has a blog and is going nuclear.

I can smell the fear when I go in a room of PR or C-level executives. Personally, I like working at a place where I don't have fear of telling you what I think at 1:42 a.m. without checking with PR first.

My condundrum: loving both Web and Windows apps

A few of my readers have noticed that I'm caught in a condundrum: that I praise both Web Services and Windows Apps at different times. Rick Segal sorta hones in on this too andsays he's looking to fund great apps, period, but isn't scared of non-browser-based apps (maybe he noticed that Skype sold for about $3 billion).

Some see my condundrum as being one brought upon by where I work. OK, it certainly is a possibility that I'm drinking the Redmond Koolaid, but I've noticed something deeper:

1) I LOVE Web apps when I only need to use them occassionally. Like maps. I've only used Google Maps or Virtual Earth maybe 10 minutes out of the past week.

Also in the past week I've filled out expense reports. Those were Web based and it worked fine, for the most part (although wait until you see what the InfoPath team is working on there!). And there are tons of little apps that I use often that the Web is awesome for.

2) I LOVE Windows apps when I need to use them more than an hour a day. For instance, when my blog reading went over an hour a day, I switched over to using a Windows app. Recently I've been playing around with NewsGator online (they make both an online service and several Windows apps for different uses). The online service is far less productive for me. And, yes, I've tried some RSS aggregators that have been"AJAX-ized."Better, but not even close to the productivity you'll get from, say, FeedDemon or NetNewsWire on the Mac.

So, why is this? Well, just think that if you needed to install a piece of software just to read a new blog. Wouldn't that be frustrating? Yes. So, having things available in a"no install"way is very important, and very cool. It's what's driving businesses like Amazon, Google, Yahoo, eBay because you can get incredible reach and volume very quickly. Jonathan Schwartz is right about that.

But then, there's the issue that if you really want to use a Web app for more than an hour a day it just feels unstatisfying (and, is provably less productive than having a full-blown application).

Anyway, just my condundrum of the day. Continue on...

2005-10-04T18:02:00.000-07:00

ARM unveils new Cortex chip core for mobile devices

(InfoWorld) - Processor designer Arm Ltd.'s latest core design, the Cortex A8 processor, could be the core that allows ARM and its partners to expand their products beyond mobile phones and into the future digital home, company executives said Tuesday.

Arm is well-known in the chip industry for its processor core designs, which can be found in millions of mobile phones that use chips from companies like Texas Instruments Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Freescale Semiconductor Inc. The Cortex A8 will appear in several next-generation high-end mobile phones, but Arm and its partners see a much wider range of applications for the new core, said Warren East, the company's chief executive officer, in a press conference at the Arm Developers'Conference.

Chips based on the Cortex A8 will run between 600MHz and 1GHz, depending on the needs of the chip maker and the device, said John Cornish, director of product marketing at Arm. The low-power versions of the core will consume no more than 300 milliwatts of power, making them ideal for embedded devices that require long battery life or quiet operation, he said.

The faster versions of the A8 core will deliver enough performance to run consumer home media devices like DVD players, personal video recorders (PVRs), and high-definition televisions, Cornish said. ARM and its partners have long eyed this market, but their chips are primarily used in mobile phones.

Many chip companies are vying to control the future of the digital home, should that future ever arrive. The exact definition of the digital home is a little sketchy, but most companies envision a scenario where homes hum with multiple high-definition televisions connected wirelessly to each other and the Internet. DVD burners, mobile phones, PCs and refrigerators are also part of that network, depending on which vendor is giving the presentation.

Arm believes that smart mobile devices, like smart phones or portable media players, are the future of consumer computing, said Oliver Gunasekara, director of corporate business development with Arm. PCs aren't going anywhere just yet, although shipment growth is expected to slow. But there are far more mobile phones in use than PCs, and they already deliver enough performance for many people, he said.

"The vast majority of people use office documents, send e-mails, browse the Web, maybe play a few games. Most of these are low-performance applications,"Gunasekara said. High-end mobile phones can already tackle these tasks, and the introduction of phones based on the Cortex A8 will set a new performance standard and reduce the costs of today's powerful phones, he said.

If Arm partners also have success with home media devices based on Arm's cores, it will allow software developers to build applications that can share data between phones and devices like PVRs, Gunasekara said. By the end of the decade, Arm hopes that about two-thirds of its cores are used in nonmobile devices like PVRs and digital televisions, East said during the press conference. Currently, about two-thirds of its cores go into mobile phones.

The Cortex A8 is one of the first Arm cores that delivers enough performance to make inroads into this market, Cornish said. Arm included its Neon multimedia acceleration engine and its Jazelle RCT Java acceleration technology on the Cortex A8 core, he said. It is also the company's first superscalar core, which means it can process more than one instruction during a single clock cycle.

Executives from TI, Freescale, Samsung and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (better known for its Panasonic brand) joined Arm's East on stage to announce they had signed licenses for the Cortex A8 core. The companies plan to use the core in chips for mobile phones and consumer media devices that will start to become available in 2007 and 2008, they said.

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Tom_Krazit@idg.com (Tom Krazit)

Google, Sun tout software deal, hint at services

(InfoWorld) - Google Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Tuesday unveiled a partnership to distribute the Google toolbar with the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), but stopped short of revealing any future plans to bring Sun applications such as the StarOffice productivity suite to the Web through Google services.

That does not mean that the union still won't pose a problem for the companies'common rival Microsoft Corp., as both Sun and Google executives hinted that it's likely at some point they will jointly provide applications as services, a plan Microsoft also has in the works, analysts said.

At a press conference in Mountain View, California, Tuesday, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and Sun Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Scott McNealy unveiled a deal between the companies that they said will start with the marriage of the Google desktop and Java, and expand in any number of directions. Sun plans to make available a version of the JRE including the Google toolbar in the next 30 days.

"We want to leverage the network economics [with] a very strategic partnership to promote the Java Runtime Environment and the Google toolbar,"McNealy said at the event at the Computer History Museum Tuesday morning."Going forward there's lots more we can do. They have a lot of smart folks at Google ... This is a very natural partnership. There's going to be a lot of money following if we do this thing right."

While a press statement said that Google also is exploring options to expand distribution of OpenOffice.org -- the open-source suite on which Sun's StarOffice is built -- executives did not elaborate on how this would be done.

Schmidt, McNealy and Sun President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz, who joined the two CEOs on stage to field questions after the press conference, only alluded to future plans the companies may have to deliver software such as OpenOffice.org as a service on a joint network built using Sun infrastructure, the news that many analysts and industry-watchers believed would be the focus of Tuesday's event.

In fact, though Sun's share price was up almost 10 percent to $4.56 before the press event, it went down again to close at $4.20, just $0.01 higher than its closing price the previous day.

Sun and Google also Tuesday declined to admit their union was designed to compete better with Microsoft, a chief rival for both Google and Sun.

Sun's Schwartz said that the partnership was not intended to highlight two companies'coming together to fight a common enemy, but to illustrate how they are uniting on common goals.

"It's not about who we're against, it's what we're for,"he said."There is plenty of commentary on the Internet about who is going to be sensitive to our partnership. To me the one marketplace I'm focused on is customers, not Microsoft... Freeing the Internet or lowering costs and driving participation are all value propositions for the customer."

"The point here is both [Google and Sun] are dedicated to software as a service, to the network as the computer,"McNealy said."All $2.2 billion of our R&D [investment] has some applicability to somehow make the Google experience better, or we wouldn't be doing [the partnership]... We can only talk about what we're talking about now and there is a lot of conversation and cross-pollination [between us], and we expect more to come."

"One thing to understand about Java is that it's a programming platform,"Schwartz said."As Google looks to expose more and more APIs (application programming interfaces) [on the Web], they need to make sure that platform can evolve. There's lots of opportunity here."

He added that the two companies would not spell out exactly what the opportunity is"partially because of the element of surprise"about what they plan to deliver in the future.

Jean Bozman, a research vice president with research firm IDC, said she expects the software distribution deal unveiled Tuesday to be just the tip of the iceberg for the companies.

"When they said'stay tuned,'that means to me there are other announcements down the line,"she said."But we didn?t get the details today."

McNealy and Schmidt also said that Google, already a Sun customer, would be expanding that role, but declined to reveal exactly how that would be done.

Following the press conference, Schmidt said that the companies"would never pre-announce anything."However, when asked whether the companies have no plans to offer applications as services using Google's network, he cautioned,"Don't put words in my mouth; I never said that."

However, Schwartz in an interview said cryptically that he's"not convinced the world needs a Web-based office productivity suite."But, he added,"you'd have to talk to Google about what they are up to."

During the press conference, McNealy stressed that Sun is determined to"take back the Web"and regain some of its former glory epitomized in a previous marketing slogan that Sun was"the dot in dot.com."He declined to say exactly what that might mean in the future for the Sun-Google relationship.

However, McNealy did hint that partnering with Google was a clear statement that Sun plans to provide infrastructure to offer customers applications as services the way some of its existing customers already do.

"We've made some progress with software-as-services companies such as Salesforce.com,"McNealy said."What better way to make a statement than to partner with Google, the leader of Web services."

�

SEE ALSO:

Sun, Google partner on Java, OpenOffice

Google, Sun to bring StarOffice to Web

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Elizabeth_Montalbano@idg.com (Elizabeth Montalbano)

Business Objects plans to buy Infommersion for $40M

(InfoWorld) - Business intelligence software vendor Business Objects�plans to buy information visualization software developer Infommersion�for about $40 million in cash, it announced Tuesday.

Infommersion is a privately held company based in San Diego. It sells Xcelsius, an application that presents business intelligence data from back-end systems as interactive charts, graphs, and dashboards, and can package them in document formats including Adobe Systems'PDF (Portable Document Format) and Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation tool.

Business Objects, of Levallois-Perret, France, plans to use Infommersion's technology to enhance the way its software presents data.

The companies expect to close the deal in the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory approval.

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Peter_Sayer@idg.com (Peter Sayer)

Siebel deepens MS Office integration in SMB software

(InfoWorld) - Siebel Systems�released an updated version on Monday of its Professional Edition, a lower-cost version of its CRM (customer relationship management) software aimed at the midmarket.

Siebel Professional Edition 7.8 deepens the software's connection to Microsoft's Office applications, adding integration with Microsoft's Sharepoint collaboration tools and allowing users to directly access Siebel contacts and appointments from Microsoft Outlook. The new version also introduces integration with Siebel Contact OnDemand, Siebel's hosted software for call routing and other telephone communications infrastructure.

Siebel's Professional Edition debuted in early 2004 and is now used by several hundred organizations, according to Rob Reid, Siebel's SMB (small and medium business) group vice president. The package includes Siebel's sales, service and marketing software, with other functionality available as add-on modules. Its price tag is $995 per user, about half the cost of Siebel's enterprise CRM software, which allows greater scalability.

Siebel's future product road map and pricing is somewhat uncertain right now because of its pending acquisition by Oracle Corp., expected to close early next year. Reid doesn't anticipate major shakeups for Siebel's Professional Edition, however.

"I can?t speculate on what will happen, but I do not believe that we will be any different than we are now,"Reid said.

REFERENCES:
Siebel creates cheaper, SMB software version, Dec. 8, 2004

Dell bets on Linux to capture enterprise market

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Stacy_Cowley@idg.com (Stacy Cowley)

Copan readying new storage Revolutions

(InfoWorld) - Storage startup Copan Systems�has ambitious plans for the upcoming months, according to senior company executives. The plans include the release of three new products, a number of tie-ups with other storage players and a ramping up of the firm's international operations.

"Over the next few months, we're going to show the real power of the MAID (massive array of idle disks) architecture for backup, archiving and specialty applications in tiered storage,"Dave Davenport, president and chief executive officer of Copan, said in a recent interview."We're going to have new software and capabilities."

Copan made waves last year in the storage industry with the release of its Revolution 200T disk-based library which emulates a virtual tape library and targets enterprise users. The MAID technology only powers up and spins disks when customers need to either save data to disk or access information held on the media both prolonging disk life and lowering power consumption, according to Davenport.

Revolution 200T includes what Copan dubs Disk Aerobics, monitoring and management software designed to anticipate which disks may fail so that data can be rebuilt on spare drives before the suspect disk actually fails."Before, it would've taken days to reconstruct a [failed] disk, but we can automatically copy the data over to another disk, so it only takes a few minutes to move that data to a new disk,"Davenport said.

Every 30 days, Revolution 200T spins disks to check their functionality. Copan customers typically only require one annual service call to replace failed disks and ensure the system has sufficient spare disks, according to Roger Archibald, Copan's vice president of marketing and business development."The system can also call home if it's running out of good disks,"he said.

Revolution 200T has a three-tiered systems architecture and includes what Copan calls Power Managed RAID, full RAID 5 data protection software that spins the drives when they're needed.

Now, the company is planning to debut other Revolution-branded products based on the MAID technology."When we first came out with Revolution, we knew we had an uphill battle for a while,"Davenport said."We wanted to get validated so our first version [of the Revolution product] was a virtual tape library, a very low risk strategy."

"About one-third of our customers are using Copan for archiving as well as backup,"Archibald said."In the latter part of this year, we'll release a more file-oriented product specifically targeting archiving."Other Revolution products will focus on improvements in the areas of disaster recovery and compliance, he added.

Later this month, Copan will unveil version 3.0 of Disk Aerobics which will feature a proactive fail capability as well as Disk Scrubber, according to Archibald."If Disk Scrubber sees a bad sector, it will reconstruct the data and write it to a different place,"he said. The company will also be offering remote replication from one Copan system to a second remote Copan system or from a Copan system to a traditional tape system over Fiber Channel or via a Fiber Channel over Internet Protocol (FCIP) extension, he said. By the end of this year, Copan will offer native IP connectivity, Archibald added.

Over the coming next few months, Copan expects to announce some significant OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deals, according to Davenport. Additionally, a number of leading storage software vendors are working to modify their products so that they run natively on Copan's MAID architecture not as tape emulation as they do now, Archibald said. He expects Copan and the as-yet-unnamed software companies to make a joint announcement on this front in the first quarter of 2006, he added.

Copan has about 30 customers in the financial sector, health care, media and three national laboratories, according to Archibald. The users include Baptist Memorial Healthcare, Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Time Warner Cable. Copan announced Tuesday that its products now manage more than 2.5 petabytes of customers'data.

With a staff of over 12,000, the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) based in Galveston uses Revolution 200T to back up more than 300 non-storage area network (SAN)-attached servers containing some 60 terabytes of financial, academic and patient data.

UTMB's IT setup is split between storage software from Symantec Corp.'s Veritas division and EMC Corp.'s Legato business, according to Matt Johnson, senior software systems specialist at UTMB. The organization has a mix of operating systems -- Solaris 9 and Solaris 10 from Sun Microsystems Inc. and Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 from Microsoft Corp. Most of UTMB's servers have gigabit public and private connections to a 10-gigabit backbone. The center has three tape libraries including a Dell Inc. 136T (an eight-drive LT01) and a Sun StorageTek L180 (a six-drive LT02), he wrote in an e-mail response to questions.

UTMB installed Copan's Revolution 200T in the spring of this year as"a near-line/high-availability backup solution,"Johnson wrote.

Why did the organization chose Copan?"Aside from the reduced footprint and cost and performance increase, the strongest factor was the high level of experience of the support staff,"he wrote. As to the major benefits UTMB has experienced to date with Revolution 200T, Johnson cites"extremely fast backup and restore times as well as more than five weeks of on-hand backups."The center has been able to cut the time spent on backups and restores from a full night and into the following business day to 4.5 hours and only one person now needs to administer the system, he said in a Copan release.

Although Revolution 200T was integrated into UTMB's disaster recovery plan, the organization didn't need to carry out any system restores in relation to the recent hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast, Johnson wrote.

Johnson welcomed Copan's plans to come out with new Revolution products.

"MAID architecture by design will provide a number of features that to this point were nonexistent,"Johnson wrote."I am using the Copan [system] for the sole purpose of backing up our non-SAN-attached servers. I would like to explore the possibility of taking full advantage of MAID architecture in future projects."

Privately held Copan launched as a company back in December 2002 and has been selling its tape library mainly into the U.S. market since August 2004. The firm opened its European headquarters in London in July of this year and Tuesday announced the appointment of two vice president of sales -- one London-based for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the other based in Hong Kong for Asia-Pacific.

Copan currently employs 70 people, but CEO Davenport expects headcount to grow to 80 by the end of the year.

To date, Copan has raised US$39 million in venture capital funding from investors including Pequot Ventures, Pinnacle Ventures and Austin Ventures."We will probably look at some additional equity investment some time next year,"Davenport said."We have no defined timeline."Copan plans to"go cash positive in the second half of next year,"Archibald added.

Although Copan started out with Hitachi Computer Products (America) Inc. manufacturing Revolution 200T, the arrangement didn't work out and was terminated by mutual agreement, according to Davenport. Copan is currently finalizing the move of its manufacturing to Sanmina-SCI Corp., he said. Going with Sanmina, a general-purpose electronics contract manufacturer, instead of one focused on the storage market"allows us to scale to a greater level,"Davenport added.

The Copan name comes from the Copan Ruins in Central America, an archeological site dating back to the Mayan era, according to company information in print and on the Web. Because the site's artifacts were well-preserved and yielded much information about the Mayan civilization, the firm thought the name Copan an excellent moniker to apply to an organization specializing in long-term storage.

�

SEE ALSO:

Brushing up on HP and AppIQ

A call to action: It's time for EMR

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China_Martens@idg.com (China Martens)

Sun, Google partner on Java, OpenOffice

(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems�and Google�plan to cooperate more closely in their desktop software development efforts, the companies said Tuesday.

Sun will now include the Google Toolbar as an option in the desktop version of its Java runtime environment. Google and Sun have also agreed to"explore opportunities to promote and enhance Sun technologies like the Java Runtime Environment and the OpenOffice.org productivity suite,"the companies said in a statement.

Google and Sun have scheduled a press conference in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday morning where Google Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Eric Schmidt and Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy are expected to offer more details on the agreement.

(Elizabeth Montalbano contributed to this story)

Google, Sun to bring StarOffice to Web

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Robert_McMillan@idg.com (Robert McMillan)

Google, Sun to bring StarOffice to Web

(InfoWorld) - Google and Sun Microsystems are expected to unveil a collaborative effort Tuesday that will bring StarOffice productivity applications to Google users, according to sources familiar with the companies'plans.

The move is expected to be part of a larger technology initiative in which Sun will help Google build a network to provide Web-based applications that will enable the companies to compete with their common rival, Microsoft.

Google and Sun are expected to hold a press conference in Mountain View, California, Tuesday morning where Google Chairman and Chief Executive Officer�Eric Schmidt and Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy will be on hand to unveil a partnership between the search giant and the computer systems vendor.

Company representatives have been extremely tight-lipped about what exactly will be announced, but industry sources have speculated that Google is interested in offering more Web-based applications to compete with Microsoft.

The Redmond, Washington-based software company has made no bones about its aim to unseat Google as the leading search-engine company. Microsoft executives also have said it will begin offering more services rather than packaged software in the next year.

Sun, too, sees Microsoft as one of its chief rivals in the software market, but has been having trouble garnering widespread adoption of its software portfolio, including its StarOffice productivity suite. The company just released a new version of StarOffice that includes features that allow Sun's productivity suite, which is based on the open-source OpenOffice suite, to better interoperate with Microsoft Office.

Sun also believes it has momentum for StarOffice in a recent decision by the state of Massachusetts to move to open office file formats for documents created by the state's government agencies. The state going forward plans to support the newly ratified Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, as the standard for its office documents. Suites that support OpenDocument include OpenOffice, StarOffice, KOffice and IBM Workplace. Microsoft Office does not support the file format.

A pairing of the two companies, then, could give Google the technology it needs to rival Microsoft in providing applications as services, while giving Sun an edge in the applications business as well.

Google, Sun tout software deal, hint at services

Sun, Google partner on Java, OpenOffice

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Elizabeth_Montalbano@idg.com (Elizabeth Montalbano)

Update: EarthLink selected for Philadelphia Wi-Fi network

(InfoWorld) - The city of Philadelphia has selected EarthLink�to deploy a citywide wireless broadband network, the largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the U.S., the company announced Tuesday.

The Wi-Fi deployment in the U.S.'fifth largest city is expected to be finished by the fourth quarter of 2006, EarthLink said. EarthLink, a large Atlanta-based Internet service provider, will deploy a mesh Wi-Fi network covering 135 square miles (349 square kilometers).

Under the terms of the EarthLink proposal, no city or taxpayer dollars will be used to fund the project. EarthLink will finance, build and manage the wireless network, and share revenue with the city's Wireless Philadelphia initiative.

The infrastructure portion of the contract totals about $10 million, said Dianah Neff, the city's chief information officer and acting chairwoman of Wireless Philadelphia, a nonprofit group set up by the city. EarthLink's proposal was one of 12 the city received from vendors, she said.

EarthLink's proposal to pay for the cost of building the network was among the major reasons the city selected the provider, Neff said. The city's request for proposals did not require that the Wi-Fi vendor pay for the cost of building the network; the city had considering using bonds or private funding to allow Wireless Philadelphia to pay for construction, she said.

Philadelphia's plan to build a citywide Wi-Fi network has met criticism from Verizon Communications Inc., which offers DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and wireless broadband service to the Philadelphia area. Verizon and other incumbent telecommunications carriers have questioned whether tax dollars should fund Internet services in competition with private companies and if cities understand the long-term costs of maintaining Wi-Fi networks.

EarthLink's funding proposal addresses those criticisms, Neff said."We have believed from the beginning that the nonprofit could take on the [funding] risk,"she said."EarthLink stepping up and offering to fund this at their risk ... was very important to us."

Two other bidders proposed alternative funding arrangements, Neff said.

EarthLink's proposal also best matched Wireless Philadelphia's goals of strengthening the city's economy and improving its neighborhoods by providing citywide broadband access, Neff said.

A Verizon spokesman didn't comment directly on the city's choice of EarthLink. Verizon didn't file a proposal because the city's requirements"do not fit out current business model,"said Brian Blevins, Verizon's director of external communications. Verizon offers DSL and its wireless EV-DO (evolution-data optimized) product in the Philadelphia area, and it has begun deploying a fiber-to-the-premises network in southeastern Pennsylvania, Blevins noted.

EarthLink and the city have reached agreement on the major terms of the contract and are working to complete the agreement within 60 days, Donald Berryman, president of EarthLink Municipal Networks, said in the press release. EarthLink will first build a 15-square-mile Wi-Fi network to test the equipment and service, he said.

"Wireless Philadelphia represents an important milestone in the deployment of wireless broadband in the United States on such a wide scale,"Garry Betty, EarthLink's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement."It provides a competitive alternative to high-speed Internet offerings and gives many Internet users the ability to stay connected, no matter where they are in the city."

Palm-Microsoft deal sends ripple effects through the enterprise

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Blu-ray support hinges on disc copy, says Intel

(InfoWorld) - Intel, which last week expressed support for the HD-DVD format for high-definition video discs, is open to also supporting the rival Blu-ray Disc format should its backers commit to allowing the copying of content from discs onto home multimedia servers, an Intel executive said Tuesday.

Intel's decision to join the HD-DVD Promotion Group and come out in favor of the format, which it did together with Microsoft, was a departure from the company's usual stance of technology neutrality.

The decision was born out of a belief that the interests of consumers are being ignored as the world's largest consumer electronics, computer and content companies prepared to bring two competing and incompatible high-definition optical disc formats to market, said Donald McDonald, vice president and general manager of Intel's digital home group. He was speaking at a news conference at the Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan, on Tuesday.

The HD-DVD group, led by Toshiba, NEC, and Sanyo Electric, is planning to put its system on the market in late December in Japan, while the Blu-ray Disc group, led by Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), is planning to launch its system in 2006. Both are vying to replace DVD as the de facto standard for high-definition movie discs.

"The reason we provided support for HD-DVD is that basically it has committed to several features. Specifically, the mandatory managed copy,"said McDonald.

Mandatory managed copy guarantees that consumers will be able to copy the content on their discs to home servers so that it can be accessed from around the home. It will also mean movies can be copied onto portable devices for viewing on-the-go.

"We have not heard an unequivocal statement from the Blu-ray camp to say that you'll be able to have mandatory managed copy without any kind of complications and any kind of issues. So we could be thrilled if they were able to deliver a similar commitment,"McDonald said."The opportunity is for Blu-ray to unequivocally commit to having exactly the same consumer friendly features."

Intel's statement of support doesn't mean its technology won't work with Blu-ray Disc. Like other technologies the company will build the technical support required for the format into its chipsets and devices, he said.

�

HD-DVD, Blu-ray prototypes square off at Ceatec

The industry cools down

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Martyn_Williams@idg.com (Martyn Williams)

2005-10-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

In Brief: IBM addresses computing needs of maturing workers

(InfoWorld) - IBM on Monday unveiled technologies aimed at making the work environment more conducive to maturing workers'comfort and productivity. The four new accessibility tools include Keyboard Optimizer, which helps users adjust keyboard settings to suit their typing style; Web Adaptation Technology, which magnifies the contents of a Web page and adjusts font, image, and page layout to improve readability; Mouse Smoothing Software, which enables users with hand tremors to eliminate excessive cursor movement; and Reflexive User Interface Builder, which helps developers build applications with popular graphical user interfaces that are still accessible to users with disabilities and mature workers. The tools are available for free download in a new accessibility section on IBM'salphaWorksWeb site. IBM recently announcedbusiness consulting servicesthat helps companies prepare for the baby-boomer transition.

Chinaboasts nearly 373 million mobile phone users
September 30,6:35 a.m. PDT
The number of mobile phone users in China continues to expand at over 3 million new subscribers per month, hitting 372.8 million as of the end of August, the government said. In July, China reported 368 million users, meaning the figure increased by 4.8 million during August, according to statistics from China's Ministry of Information Industry. There were 342.3 million fixed-line telephone users in China as of the end of August. The numbers compare to just 57.4 million mobile phone subscribers in India as of the end of June, 2005, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Both countries boast populations of over 1 billion people. China Mobile (Hong Kong), the world's largest mobile phone service provider, added 3.6 million subscribers in August, bringing its total to 231 million handset users, according to the company's Web site.

Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 supports Mac OS X'Tiger'
September 29, 7:55 a.m. PDT
Macromedia announced the availability of the Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Updater, a free incremental release that adds support for Mac OS X 10.4"Tiger"and Mac OS X Server 10.4"Tiger", and also updates support for Oracle 10g, Red Hat Linux AS 4, Solaris 10, and IBM WebSphere 5 Network Deployment. In addition to expanded support, ColdFusion MX 7 Updater offers security fixes and other enhancements. To download the free ColdFusion MX 7 Updater go tohttp://www.macromedia.com/coldfusion.

Samsung breaks ground for $33 billion expansion plan
September 29,7:55 a.m. PDT
Samsung Electronics has begun construction on a $33 billion expansion of its chip-making base outside Seoul. The funds, which will be spent between 2005 and 2012, will be used to expand Samsung's existing semiconductor facilities at Hwaseong, roughly 50 kilometers south of the South Korean capital. When completed, Hwaseong, which is now home to five Samsung chip production lines, and nearby Giheung, where the company has 11 production lines, will be the world's largest semiconductor manufacturing base with a total of 24 production lines and six R&D lines, Samsung said. The planned expansion is expected to create 14,000 new jobs, according to the company. The expansion at Hwaseong will focus mainly on memory chips and system-on-chip applications, which integrate several semiconductor components on a single piece of silicon.

Baracodaunveils RoadRunner family of wireless scanners
September 27,7:15 a.m. PDT
Baracoda announced Tuesday the availability of the RoadRunners family of mobile, Bluetooth-enabled barcode scanners. Baracoda RoadRunners, which enable ISVs to quickly integrate mobile data capture into their wireless offerings, are targeted at mobile workers in the areas of pick-up and delivery, salesforce automation, inventory tracking, and asset management. The scanners fit easily into a pocket and feature an integrated stylus, advanced scanning capabilities, and support for Pocket PC 2002, Windows Mobile 2003, and PalmOS. The devices also work with Symbian and Java-based mobile phones such as RIM's BlackBerry and Motorola i605 devices. By year end the Baracoda RoadRunners will have added functionality for reading RFID tags.�

Flashlinedebuts product for managing SOA, Web services
September 26,7:50 a.m. PDT
Flashline has introduced Flashline for SOA, which provides governance, registration, and lifecycle management of Web services and SOA. The product focuses on architectural compliance and policy enforcement during planning and design phases of the software development lifecycle. The chain of relationships and dependencies is managed ranging from artifacts such as WSDL and XML schemas to business processes and applications.

�

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newproducts@infoworld.com (InfoWorld staff)

HP to buy blade management expert RLX

(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard�is to buy RLX Technologies�as a way to provide better systems management for HP blades running Linux, the company announced Monday. The deal is part of HP's strategy to plug holes in its enterprise management product portfolio via acquisition.

Once a seller of blade hardware, RLX exited that business late last year, to focus on software -- its blade and Linux management suite, RLX Control Tower.

HP didn't reveal the financial terms of the deal, which is set to close within 30 days pending unspecified conditions, according to an HP statement.

Once the purchase is completed, RLX will become part of HP's BladeSystem business in the company's Technology Solutions Group. Final integration of RLX with HP should be finished next year, HP stated in additional information relating to the proposed purchase on its Web site.

Initially, HP intends to optimize Control Tower for its BladeSystem architecture, according to the statement. Within six months, HP expects the RLX software to be 100 percent compatible with its BladeSystem products, the company stated on its Web site.

Over time, HP plans to integrate Control Tower into its existing server, storage and enterprise management software suites, Systems Insight Manager (SIM), ProLiant Essentials and OpenView. The ultimate aim is to simplify and unify the management of HP servers whether they're running Linux, Unix or Windows, the release stated. HP will incorporate Control Tower into its plans to develop a (SOA) service-oriented architecture based on integrating SIM and OpenView, the company said on its Web site.

RLX employs 36 staff and has around 200 customers around the globe. The firm was a pioneer in the blade hardware market. Although RLX quit the hardware market in December 2004, some customers are still using its blades and HP committed to supporting them through their warranty periods.

Today's blade market is widely seen by analysts as a two-horse race between HP and IBM. However, HP has significantly lagged behind IBM when it comes to market share in the Linux-based blade space, with some experts suggesting that in the second quarter of 2005 Big Blue sold three times as many of the servers running the open-source operating system than HP did. HP hopes the addition of RLX management technology to its Linux version of SIM will help attract more customers for its blades.

HP stated on its Web site that it has no plans at present to open source Control Tower, but may revisit that policy in the future.

HP has been pursuing a steady strategy of acquiring companies and their technologies to fill in gaps in its enterprise management software suites, including the pending purchases of IT asset and service management software vendor Peregrine Systems Inc. and storage area network management software firm AppIQ announced last month.

�

HP to help mobile operators launch new services

HP launches new iPaqs

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China_Martens@idg.com (China Martens)

Blinkx improves multimedia search engine

(InfoWorld) - Blinkx has enhanced its Blinkx.tv multimedia search engine by creating an online library where amateurs and professionals can upload, for free, videos they have created to make them available for viewing to Web searchers, the company announced Monday.

Videos submitted to the library, called My Blinkx.tv, get transformed into Flash format, and whatever is said in them is transcribed and indexed. The videos are also tagged with metadata, such as their creation date, length, title, owner's name and any other relevant information about them.

Once that process is done, videos can be retrieved and viewed by visitors to My Blinkx.tv via keyword searches through the My Blinkx.tv service. At press time, the service wasn't yet operational.

My Blinkx.tv visitors will also be able to create"channels"based on a specific search term. For example, a user might create a channel for all videos that My Blinkx.tv finds for the search term"Hurricane Katrina,"said Blinkx founder Suranga Chandratillake.

Once a channel is created, My Blinkx.tv will continue populating it in the background with new videos that match the corresponding search terms, so that the next time users access their channels, they will see videos that have been added to them."We use cookies to save channels on the site, so the next time you visit we know who you are and which clips you've got,"he said.

Users who clear their browser cookies, lose their My Blinkx.tv channels, he said. If there is demand for it, Blinkx may add a log-in system to let users register and keep their channels without the need for cookies to retain them. But for the moment"we don't want to be intrusive,"Chandratillake said.

Users will have the option of watching a channel's videos one at a time, or watching all of them one after the other, like on television, Chandratillake said.

Users don't necessarily have to visit My Blinkx.tv to access their channels. They can set up what Blinkx calls a"smart folder"in their PCs that will be automatically populated in the background with videos that match a chosen search term. Users can periodically open the smart folders to check what new videos have been added to it.

Although initially My Blinkx.tv will only feature noncommercial videos, mostly from amateur video bloggers, the company intends to strike deals with commercial video producers to include their videos in the service as well.

Blinkx, based in San Francisco, isn't charging visitors for viewing videos, but later it may give owners the option of making their videos available for a fee, which would be split between Blinkx and the video owners. Another way to generate revenue from the service in the future could be by showing ads to visitors, and again splitting the ad fees between Blinkx and the video owners, Chandratillake said.

The multimedia search engine on which this new service is based, Blinkx.tv (http://blinkx.tv), points users to video and audio clips hosted outside of Blinkx that are available on the Web. However, the videos in the My Blinkx.tv library will instead be hosted by Blinkx, because content owners have given the company permission to do so, he said.

Google updates desktop search tool

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MessageLabs releases new security services

(InfoWorld) - MessageLabs�announced Monday the release of new security software that scans Web traffic for viruses, detects spyware and filters content to enforce company Internet policies.

The company's Web Protect service's antivirus functionality uses a heuristics approach with multiple virus scanning engines, while its antispyware feature scans in real time. Incoming and outgoing Web traffic is scanned for malicious code, spyware, adware and phishing attacks, it said. The services are administered through MessageLabs'portal.

Its Web Control product includes URL filtering that allows companies to be in control of how its employees use the Internet.

"We started to see an increasing amount of spyware and malware in the Web browsing area,"said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer for MessageLabs."We've realized there's quite an unplugged gap here."

Users are increasingly seeing spam messages with URLs that may lead to malware or viruses, a convergence between e-mail and HTTP�threats, Sunner said.

Its Web scanning product has"near-zero latency,"according to Martin Brown, group product manager for MessageLabs. IT managers can set restrictions tailored to a company's Web use policies, Brown said. Web Protect and Web Control were in beta testing for about five weeks among 10,000 end-users in the U.S. and U.K, he said.

If employees try to access a restricted site, they can be directed to a link for the company's online use policies, he said.

Pricing for antivirus and the URL filtering service is�2 ($3.53) per user per month,�3 per user per month for antivirus with antispyware protection or�4 per user per month for antivirus, antispyware and URL filtering services, Brown said.

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Jeremy_Kirk@idg.com (Jeremy Kirk)

Microsoft adds native PDF support to Office 12

(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. is adding native support for PDF (portable document format) in the next version of its office productivity suite, code-named Office 12, which is expected to be available next year.

Microsoft unveiled the support in a meeting with partners at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus Saturday, a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail Monday morning.

Office 12 will allows users to save files in any Microsoft Office program, such as Excel, PowerPoint or Word, as a PDF file by using the"save as"command, according to Microsoft. Users can redistribute the created PDF files electronically as read-only files, but they cannot be viewed from within Office itself. A PDF file viewer is still required to view Office-created PDF files on screen.

Microsoft rival Adobe Systems Inc. created PDF as a way for documents to be shared easily across applications that support disparate file formats, and it is widely used as a standard way for Internet users to send and receive documents.

Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of the Microsoft Office product development group, demonstrated PDF support in Office 12 during Microsoft's last meeting of the year with about 3,000 of its Most Valued Professionals (MVPs).

Microsoft announced in June that XML (extensible markup language) would be the default file format in Office 12, with the reasoning that XML-based documents would be easier to archive and share since XML is an open standard. Microsoft plans to use the Office 2003 Open XML schemas as the default for saving and creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations in Office 12.

Microsoft also is developing another file format, Metro, that allows users to view Office files without using Office applications. The technology is seen by some as Microsoft's own version of PDF. However, Microsoft plans to release Metro as part of the next client version of Windows, Windows Vista, so it's not likely the technology will be used on other operating systems the way PDF is.

Open file formats have garnered attention recently when the state of Massachusetts announced a planned migration to open file formats for all documents generated by its government agencies. The state going forward plans to support the newly ratified Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, as the standard for its office documents.

Developed within the standards body OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), OpenDocument is an XML-based file format that covers the features required by text, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents.

Suites that support OpenDocument include OpenOffice, StarOffice, KOffice and IBM Workplace. Microsoft Office does not support the file format.

A beta of Office 12 is expected to be available before the end of the year.

Microsoft org chart redone, Bush drops from No. 1

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Elizabeth_Montalbano@idg.com (Elizabeth Montalbano)

Symantec buys BindView Development for $209 million

(InfoWorld) - Symantec will buy security compliance software vendor BindView Development�for $209 million in cash, it announced Monday.

The deal will close in the first quarter of 2006, subject to approval from regulators and shareholders, Symantec said.

The two companies provide software that may help businesses and government organizations comply with regulatory requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Federal Information Security Management Act in the U.S., or the Basel II financial regulations in Europe.

Symantec's security systems use software agents to ensure compliance with security policies, while BindView's approach is agentless, Symantec said. The two approaches are complementary, it said. The agent-based approach is more suited to complex, mixed IT environments, while the agent-less model requires fewer staff to manage and is suited to companies with large numbers of similar systems spread across many sites, it said.

Last month, Symantec announced its intention to buy WholeSecurity, a company in Austin, Texas, that develops software for detecting new viruses based on their behavior, rather than their code.

In August, it bid for another security compliance software developer, Sygate Technologies of Fremont, California.

�

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U.K. town a global contender in bot battle

EqualLogic aims at enterprises, backs Microsoft

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Peter_Sayer@idg.com (Peter Sayer)

Lenovo makes a push in Africa

(InfoWorld) - Lenovo Group, which took over IBM's PC business five months ago, is setting up a distribution structure to sell products in Africa, the Chinese company said last week.

The initiative is the first major investment by Lenovo in Africa, Yushaa Matthews, the company's South Africa-based sales manager said in an interview. In Kenya, Lenovo will establish a distribution structure for products including PCs and mobile phones, the Nation, Kenya's official newspaper, reported last week.

Product components will be made in China and shipped to assembly plants in Africa, according to published reports. PCs sold in Africa will cost $400 without monitors.

Lenovo opens innovation center in Beijing

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Trojan uses unpatched MS Office hole

(InfoWorld) - Microsoft said Monday it is investigating a recently released Trojan horse that targets a hole in its Microsoft Office software suite that was first identified in April.

Symantec�has issued an advisory that the Trojan, named Backdoor.Hesive, can arrive as a Microsoft Access file, exploiting a Microsoft Jet Database Engine buffer overflow. The code can allow an unauthorized user access, Symantec said, allowing an intruder to upload files, modify registry values and get system and network information.

A Microsoft spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail response Monday that the company is encouraging users to be cautious when opening .mdb files from an unknown source. A patch has not been released yet, according to the company.

The Trojan is not widely distributed and can be easily removed, Symantec said. The company rated its damage potential as"medium."

The flaw in Microsoft Office was first identified in April by HexView, a computer security firm. The vulnerability is caused by a memory handling error when parsing database files, HexView reported. The Trojan can be triggered after a user opens an affected .mdb file in Microsoft Access, according to an advisory issued by Secunia, a security firm, in April.

SEE ALSO:

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New Trojan swaps porn for Koran

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Gig-E Wireless Bridges. Online price estimates: www.lightpointe.com

Jeremy_Kirk@idg.com (Jeremy Kirk)

Showa Denko eyes big jump in HDD capacity

(InfoWorld) - Showa Denko, a Japanese manufacturer of disks for hard-disk drives, will build a new research and development center as part of an attempt to realize a coin-sized drive that can hold 40GB of data, it said Monday.

The company, which produces disks for drive makers such as Toshiba, will spend�3 billion ($26.5 million) on the center, which is scheduled for completion in April next year, it said. The facility will be built in Ichihawa City in Chiba, east of Tokyo.

The storage needs of computer and digital consumer electronics users are growing rapidly, and drive makers are racing to produce drives that are both smaller and offer higher capacity. The key to doing this is the ability to cram data bits closer together on the disk.

A big step forward was taken earlier this year with the realization of the first commercial drives employing a new system called perpendicular recording. In this technology the magnetic field that is used to store data runs perpendicular to the disk surface and so requires less space. This means more bits can be stored on each disk and leads to an overall increase in capacity.

Showa Denko is making the disks for the first perpendicular recording drives, which are available from Toshiba, said Yoshiyuki Kusanagi, a company spokesman in Tokyo. They are capable of storing about 133Gb in each square inch of disk space. That's roughly the same as drives using existing longitudinal recording technology but whereas longitudinal is hitting its limits, the perpendicular method is only in its infancy.

Showa Denko hopes the new research center will help it realize its goal of a capacity of 1,000Gb per square inch by 2010. At such a capacity a 0.85-inch hard-disk drive would be able to store 40GB of data, it said.

Although not as well known as disk-drive makers, companies such as Showa Denko are vital to the hard-disk drive industry. The company's maximum disk production capacity is 10.7 million disks per month, and it is currently in the process of expanding this so that it will be able to make 13.75 million disks per month by March 2006.

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Martyn_Williams@idg.com (Martyn Williams)

Yahoo-backed group plans online library of books, film

(InfoWorld) - Yahoo has thrown its weight behind a San Francisco group that hopes to develop an online library of digitized texts and films in the public domain, available for download and reuse in high resolution formats.

The company is one of a number of organizations supporting the Open Content Alliance, which plans to set up an online archive bringing together existing digital collections of books and films, and to add new works to the archive.

Adobe Systems and Hewlett-Packard will supply software. Books will be provided by the University of Toronto and O'Reilly Media, and films by the Prelinger Archives and the U.K.'s National Archives. Yahoo will index that content, and fund the digitization of a collection of American literature selected by the University of California, according to an announcement posted to Yahoo's official blog on Sunday by Brewster Kahle.

As founder of the Internet Archive, another of the organizations involved in the project, Kahle has experience indexing huge volumes of data. The Internet Archive operates an online service called the Wayback Machine, which contains a series of snapshots of entire Web sites chronicling the development of the Internet medium.

The cost of the book and film archive will be borne by the companies contributing the content, or by other sponsors such as Yahoo, Kahle wrote. With that funding model, the library should be able to store millions of books, films and audio recordings, he added.

The library should be ready to offer its first digital content by the end of the year.

Some of the works will be released under one or other of the Creative Commons licenses, which allow artistic works to be distributed or reused under certain conditions. In this way, third parties could transform some of the classic books in the digital library into audio books, or reprint them and offer them for sale, without additional permission, Kahle wrote.

The group plans to demonstrate book scanning and other technologies it will use at an event on Oct. 25.

The Open Content Alliance's digital library is not the only one under construction. Google Inc. is building another, Google Print, for which it plans to digitize millions of books, including some still covered by copyright. However, Google has attracted criticism from various publishing industry groups, including the U.S.-based The Authors Guild, which has filed a lawsuit to stop the service. Google maintains that the portions of copyright works it will show through Google Print are covered under laws relating to fair use.

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Peter_Sayer@idg.com (Peter Sayer)

2005-10-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

For tomorrow's press release."Radio UserLand is at the sweet spot of the next generation of the Internet, bringing together XML-based web services, a decentralized approach to computing and the power of software,"said Charles Fitzgerald, director of business strategy in the platform strategy group at Microsoft."This next generation of the Internet promises more control for end users and renewed opportunity for developers."

BTW, did you notice theproduct shotnear the top of the page? We had some fun. Radio doesn't actually come in a box. But we wanted to imagine what it would look like if it did.

2005-09-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

Comment moderation
Radio UserLand now supportscomment moderationso you can delete comments posted to your weblog.

Several performance fixes were also released for the JavaScript comment and trackback counters and support was also added to upstreaming so Radio automatically will retry upstreaming files that failed to upstream the first time.

David Davies: WAP RSS Browser Radio tool
David has created a new tool for Radio UserLand: "What it actually does is to use Radio's aggregator data from all my subscribed-to favourite RSS feeds and convert that to a set of WAP files. I can then browse these files with my WAP phone."Screenshot.

UserLand Radio Community Server Scheduled Maintenance
The UserLand Radio Community services are being moved to a new server.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Date: Sunday November 14, the Radio UserLand Community Server

Radio UserLand Kick Start book shipping this week
From Rogers Cadenhead: "I've received a few e-mails from readers wondering when they'll be getting Radio UserLand Kick Start, which comes out this month. I checked with my publisher, and it appears they'll be shipped from the Sams Publishing warehouse to Amazon.Com this week."

Preview chapter from Radio UserLand Kick Start
Rogers Cadenhead has posted a new preview chapter onBacking Up Datafrom hisRadio UserLand Kick Startbook which will be published on October 6.

2005-09-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

False security alarm from Microsoft
Blog: Microsoft sends out enough security alerts to worry about, but the one it sent Wednesday night can be disregarded. At about...

PDAs facing extinction
Blog: A little more than a year ago, questions were raised about the PDA's ability to survive after Sony abandoned its handheld...

Joy: Future of the Web is mobile devices
Want to see where the Web is headed? Bill Joy, Sun co-founder and venture capitalist, says look no further than your cell phone.

AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini
It might look like an Apple machine, but this new desktop has Intel inside.
Photos: New Mini knock-off

DVD dispute burns at PC makers
Dell, Hewlett-Packard assail Intel and Microsoft, which have lined up in the opposite next-generation format camp.

Firefox momentum slows
Also: Net phoning starts to win friends.

2005-09-28T17:07:00.000-07:00

Robb and Scoble:Radio UserLand for Webloggers.

WebMonkey:"Radio manages to create a dynamic environment for the exchange of information without asking too much of each individual user. They've made it simple for beginners to get involved in a kind of active network that would've required much more know-how a few years ago. If you're looking for more than just a tool, but an effortless way to get a site launched and incorporated into an online community, Radio may be your best bet."

2005-09-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

2005-09-25T18:53:00.000-07:00

Zander recalls'tearful'first days at Motorola

(InfoWorld) - It was Jan. 5, 2004, Ed Zander's first day at Motorola. The company was plagued by quality issues, financial confusion, and slippery launch dates. Plus, it was well below zero degrees Fahrenheit in Schaumburg, Ill., a long way from the mild Silicon Valley climate where Zander had spent the last several years.

"I cried,"Zander joked, answering a question about the first thing he did upon taking over the storied communications company. It took about six months before Zander felt comfortable with the situation at Motorola, he said Friday during a leadership seminar hosted by the Churchill Club.

Motorola was plagued by a slow-moving culture that did not recognize the looming opportunity in converged mobile devices, Zander said. More than a year and a half later, Motorola's core phone business is drawing rave reviews for slick designs like the Razr and the Motorola Q, and the company's stock (MOT) is up more than 50 percent since Zander took over as chairman and chief executive officer.

Transforming Motorola in those early days was more about holding business unit leaders accountable for the performance of their division rather than implementing a winning strategy, Zander said. While preparing for the company's first earnings calls weeks after his first day,"I asked for the numbers and got 17 different sets of numbers. It was the only blowout I had while I was there."

It took a massive reorganization, which included thousands of layoffs and the spin-off of Freescale Semiconductor Inc., to get Motorola to a point where it could focus on Zander's strategy of"seamless mobility,"a world where someone can be connected to the Internet in the home, in the office, in their automobile, and just walking down the street, he said.

In this world, Motorola will face competitors beyond fellow mobile phone vendors such as Nokia Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Zander said. He expects that companies such as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., and even new partner Apple Computer Inc. will release several devices that blend communications and computing. HP has already started to move in this direction with its h6300 series iPaqs, and Apple and Motorola just released the long-awaited Rokr music player phone.

Some analysts and Apple fans believe that Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs will eventually develop an Apple-designed smart phone, based on Apple's traditional insistence on keeping tight control over the hardware that runs its software products. Zander declined to comment specifically on the idea of an Apple smart phone, but said"all computer companies are thinking about voice."

He did have some harsh words for Apple's new iPod nano, which many analysts believe stole the spotlight from Motorola's Rokr phone during a recent launch event.

"Screw the nano. What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?"Zander said. People are going to want devices that do more than just play music, something that can be seen in many other countries with more advanced mobile phone networks and savvy users, he said.

Motorola, and Zander, will have to keep their eyes on many different evolving technology trends in order to keep the momentum going over the next few years, he said."This is the only industry where you can whack yourself out of a $12 billion company overnight,"he said.

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Tom_Krazit@idg.com (Tom Krazit)

Web hosting vendor EV1Servers.net prepares for Rita

(InfoWorld) - As powerful Hurricane Rita barrels toward the Texas and Louisiana coasts, about 25 employees of Houston-based Web hosting vendor EV1Servers.net are hunkered down inside the company's offices and two data centers, ready to ride out the storm and maintain services for their customers.

Since early this week, the company has been making storm preparations, from bringing in a redundant backup emergency generator to sending nonessential workers to join the evacuations ordered by the city.

This time, many tech businesses are better prepared than in 2001, when Tropical Storm Allison inundated Houston with torrential rain in early June 2001, flooding much of the downtown.

Robert Marsh, CEO of EV1Servers.net, said lessons learned from Allison four years ago included relocating essential electronic equipment to higher floors from basements, where critical communications and IT equipment was swamped during Allison."There was certainly a lot of that going around"at the time, he said.

EV1 is a managed Web hosting company that owns and manages some 25,000 hosted servers for business customers. A separate division provides Internet access for about 300,000 customers.

To get ready for Rita, which was packing winds of 135 mph Friday and projected to hit the coast near the Texas/Louisiana border early tomorrow, EV1 sent seven Web technicians to a hotel in Wichita, Kan. The technicians, who handle customer trouble tickets, will be in an emergency call center established to help customers after the storm passes. The workers were sent to Kansas in a chartered jet early Thursday.

In Houston, EV1's 25,000 servers are located in two data centers housed in concrete buildings designed to sustain Category 4 storms, he said."We have absolute confidence in our facilities,"Marsh said."But it becomes a little dicey when you look at the transport backbone to the Internet,"which could be disrupted by downed lines and other storm-related problems.

For that reason, EV1 has redundant services with seven bandwidth providers using 28 separate 1-Gigabit links."We have the ability with at least one of those carriers to provision new service"if needed within hours, not days, he said."If we lose one provider, if we lose two providers, we're probably still in good shape. If we lose four carriers, then we'd have a problem."

The company hosts more than 1 million Web sites on its servers.

Inside its data centers, the company has many spare parts on hand, including IT equipment and parts for the building's air conditioning, electrical and other systems, he said. Also standing by in case they are needed are an air-conditioning specialist and an electrical specialist. In addition to emergency generators, the buildings have 10,000-gallon supplies of fuel, and standing deliveries of additional fuel from nearby fuel depots if needed.

Flooding is not a concern, Marsh said, because even the 36 inches of rain dumped by Allison never caused water to threaten the buildings.

As for the EV1 personnel riding out the storm, cots, blankets and other essentials have been gathered for them, and for some of their family members who were not able to evacuate. Employees were allowed to park their personal vehicles in the company's warehouse to protect them from damage.

Marsh, who will ride out the storm with his employees, said he has already received offers of poststorm help from competing Web hosting companies in Dallas and New Orleans.

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Todd_R._Weiss@idg.com (Todd R. Weiss)

U.S. state finalizes plans to phase out Office

(InfoWorld) - The state of Massachusetts has finalized a proposed move to an open format for office documents, a plan that involves phasing out versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite deployed in the state's executive branch agencies.

Massachusetts released a final version of its Enterprise Technical Reference Model on the state's Web site Wednesday. According to the site, the new version, effective that day,"incorporates a new discipline for data formats within the information domain."As part of this new discipline, the state going forward will support the newly ratified Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, as the standard for its office documents.

Developed within the standards body OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), OpenDocument is an XML (Extensible Markup Language)-based file format that covers the features required by text, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents.

Microsoft Office and other productivity suites such as Lotus Notes and WordPerfect that Massachusetts government agencies currently use support proprietary document formats. Suites that support OpenDocument include OpenOffice, StarOffice, KOffice and IBM Workplace.

Massachusetts expects its agencies to develop phased migration plans away from productivity suites that do not support OpenDocument with a target implementation date of Jan. 1, 2007.

While a number of government agencies across the world have expressed plans to drop Microsoft and other proprietary products in favor of open-source and open-standard technologies, Massachusetts is the first major public-sector institution to do so in the U.S.

To capitalize on any momentum the state's decision may have on further migration away from proprietary office formats, Microsoft competitor Sun Microsystems Inc. next week is expected to release an update to its StarOffice productivity suite, and unveil new customers for the product, according to a company spokeswoman.

Update: Windows-based Treo could be coming on Monday

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Meet the super-performing SDLT 600 drive.

Elizabeth_Montalbano@idg.com (Elizabeth Montalbano)

Progress adds Eclipse, ESB link to apps platform

(InfoWorld) -Progress Softwareis adding Eclipse integration to its OpenEdge application development and deployment platform as well as links to affiliate Sonic Software's ESB (enterprise service bus).

Produced by the Progress OpenEdge Division, OpenEdge is a 4GL-based business applications platform that features development tools, a deployment environment, application server, database server, management tools, and integration capabilities. The Progress 4GL is being renamed Advanced Business Language in the new release, Version 10.1.

Highlighted in OpenEdge 10.1 is an Eclipse-based development environment.

"The reason we're doing that is because everyone else is, so we want to bring the industry-stand development toolset into the 4GL world,"said Elisabeth Strenger, senior product marketing manager at Progress.

Also featured in Version 10.1 is an adapter to link OpenEdge to the Sonic ESB, to provide access to services such as dynamic routing and guaranteed message delivery. SonicMQ, which provides for messaging between applications, is also packaged with Version 10.1.

Adhering to an SOA theme, OpenEdge 10.1 offers language constructs and mechanisms intended to make it easier to design and implement reusable service components.

"I think it's great to see them modernizing the product like this,"said analyst Carl Zetie, of Forrester Research."They're taking into account things like SOA and moving toward more modern UIs."

Progress interfaces are being updated with Eclipse backing as well as through improved support for Windows interfaces, Zetie said.

Version 10.1 also features auditing services at the application and database level, which provide for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations.

"Essentially, what it does is it lets you establish an audit trail of every single transaction that you have run throughout your application or against your database,"Strenger said.

Failover capabilities in Version 10.1 combined with more online administration and streamlining of routine maintenance allows for more control of the data management environment and ensures higher availability of systems and data, according to Progress.

"This is part of our continuous availability story,"Strenger said.

Now in beta testing, with general availability set for early next year, OpenEdge 10.1 prices vary based on which components are purchased.

Sixty percent of OpenEdge customers use it to write commercially sold applications while the remainder are IT shops or governments that buy it for internal applications, Strenger said.

Nokia joins Eclipse in mobile tools move

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Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet outdoor wireless bridges

paul_krill@infoworld.com (Paul Krill)

Harvesting patient data

(InfoWorld) - There is heightened interest in business models that mine patient data for nuggets of actionable insights -- insights for which Big Pharma will presumably pay a premium. A number of transactions of late are beginning to consolidate this industry (such as the Netherlands'VNU's approximately $7-billion merger with IMS Health, which is acquiring PharMetrics). This new evidence of liquidity is obviously good news for the venture investor.

Daniel Paterson, vice president, marketing and corporate development, with PharMetrics, says,"Selling outcome studies from health plans to pharma is exciting...the dollars are in marketing now, as they need more than just script data."He adds that the unmet need is in bridging the drug utilization information with medical improvements. Understanding usage patterns is ultimately of the most value when overall medical care is improved.

There is a parallel with bio-IT vendors looking at drug impact on a molecular or cellular level. These longitudinal data tools will allow pharma to optimize sales force deployments and distribution strategies based on medical impacts of their compounds across various population sets. This is the corollary to predictive pathway tools attempting to do the same by understanding molecular impacts on certain patient populations. These tools will have different impacts on the"four Ps"of the drug delivery ecosystem: physicians, patients, pharma, and payers. The objective is to drive down costs while improving efficiencies of healthcare delivery. Says Charles Popper, president of TechPar and former CIO of Merck:"Pharma is clearly looking for initiatives that will replace television ads...they want to monetize data in new and novel ways, as they are not getting the growth they wanted in lives covered."He observes that these are ways to get closer to the consumers -- all very new thinking within pharma.

Marc Schiller, CEO of Adherence Tracking, a startup focused on capturing longitudinal patient data housed within pharmacy benefit management companies, feels that the opportunities are potentially enormous. Traditional solutions that simply report and analyze script data do not provide complete pictures. He also feels that the historic providers of these services have created a pricing umbrella that startup companies might exploit; it is not uncommon for pharma to pay more than $500,000 for a modest study.

There are some caution signs out there, however. For one, does pharma possess the requisite marketing talent to best leverage the data that these new tools promise to generate? A new generation of marketing executive needs to come of age within pharma. Additionally, historic compensation schemes were predicated on performance against IMS data, which raises issues around credibility and acceptance of new data. Ultimately, these are complex data sets, so there is the ongoing concern that this complexity cannot be neatly distilled to actionable data. This may begin to explain why IMS has a significant consulting practice that customers find necessary to effectively use their tools.

Capital concerns

So where does that leave us? With the explosion in the number of data sources, many entrepreneurs are out building companies to interpret unique data sets. While the promise is seductive, gaining early revenue traction is still tricky. Pharma is notorious at"piloting"novel solutions, but converting these pilots into recurring sustainable revenue streams can be elusive. Venture investors will insist on seeing some signs of conversion before committing significant dollars.

The other concern often expressed is that large, established vendors can quickly compete with their own proprietary solutions, which, while not necessarily providing complete solutions, may be just good enough. The power of the incumbent is real; the ability to bundle and leverage solutions with consulting services is a powerful competitive advantage. Having a thoughtful response to that will be essential as you articulate your strategy.

Investors will also be interested in your partnering strategy -- be it to access unique data or establish compelling channels of distribution. How you leverage or co-opt players in the greater ecosystem will be essential. But for many of us, the most important element of the strategy is to demonstrate extraordinary capital efficiencies. These data business models should be highly leveraged, which is to say you should not need to raise very much capital relative to the opportunity. Some of the companies recently sold have returned 2 to 4 times invested capital because of the care demonstrated in how capital was deployed. No wonder there is now renewed interest in this space.

-- Michael A. Greeley is managing general partner of IDG Ventures. E-mail:mgreeley@idgventures.com.

SEE ALSO:

A call to action: It's time for EMR

Digital health care and privacy issues

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Michael_A._Greeley@idg.com (Michael A. Greeley)

Troubled CardSystems to be sold

(InfoWorld) - A Mountain View, Calif. electronic payment company plans to buy CardSystems, the transaction processing company which had data on 40 million customers compromised when hackers broke into its servers recently. On Friday, CyberSource Corp. announced that it has signed a letter of intent to acquire the CardSystems assets, a transaction that could close by year's end.

The deal gives CyberSource an opportunity to expand into new areas beyond the e-commerce transaction services that have built the 175 person company, said Bruce Frymire, a company spokesman."It brings a lot to CyberSource,"he said."It's a processing platform, which we have not had at this point. It also gives us retail point of sale processing."

CardSystems is used by 120,000 merchants to process more than $18 billion worth of transactions annually, Frymire said.

Online thieves were able to break into CardSystems'Tuscon, Arizona, operations center and steal credit card information from the company's servers. The intrusion, which was disclosed in June, was detected after fraudulent charges began appearing on some of the stolen accounts.

CardSystems'Chief Executive Officer John M. Perry has since admitted that the stolen records were improperly kept, and his company's business has taken a hit following the disclosure. Both American Express Co. and Visa U.S.A. Inc. have said that they intend to sever their relationship with CardSystems by the end of October.

Whether or not the planned CyberSource acquisition will affect these defections may be a factor in the deal."Certainly that would be a matter of serious interest to us,"Frymire said of the impending departures.

CardSystems and CyberSource are working to ensure that merchants experience no disruption of service, he added.

CyberSource says the transaction is subject to further due diligence and may also be subject to regulatory approval. Frymire would not say how much CyberSource expected to pay for the privately held Atlanta company.

REFERENCES:
Stolen records in latest breach were improperly kept, Jun. 20, 2005
Security breach may have exposed 40M credit cards, Jun. 17, 2005

The summer of PKI love

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HP dc7600 Desktop: Superb security, competitively priced. $899.

Robert_McMillan@idg.com (Robert McMillan)

2005-09-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

Problems surfacing with iPod Nano screen
Some owners say the screen is too easily scratched. Others say their screens cracked or failed unexplicably.

2005-09-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

Sample Radio script: Aggregator archive search
Dave Winer: "Neat search script for the Radio aggregator, made the post above work, even though the Times article it points to is more than a week old. Read the comment at the head of the script to learn how it works. For geeks only."

TrackBack for Radio is released
Radio supports both inbound and outbound TrackBack pings. For outbound TrackBack, all you have to do is enable the feature, and Radio will do the rest. Inbound TrackBack works similarly to comments -- a TrackBack link next to each post opens a pop-up window which displays inbound pings.

To enable TrackBack for Radio, follow the instructions on thispage.

Guardian review of Radio UserLand
Karlin Lillington writes, "WithUserLand's Radio blog software, even a tech nincompoop can get a basic, cleanly designed blog up and running very quickly. I'd found both Blogger and Movable Type too tedious to work with: life was way too short to spend time trying to figure them out. But Radio did the trick for me, and was a cinch to set up. Of course, the more computing skill you have - and the more you learn as you fiddle with your blog - the more you can do with your site."

Preview: Mozilla WYSIWYG editor
Jake provides a preview of the new Mozilla WYSIWYG editor for Radio UserLand: "In a lot of ways, it seems more powerful than the editor included with IE 5 and up (Windows only). For example, it's got multi-level Undo/Re-do, and it uses inline styles to do its formatting, instead of the rather ugly HTML that IE produces."Screenshot.

A version of the Mozilla WYSIWYG editor will also be released for Manila users.

David Davies: WAP RSS Browser Radio tool
David has created a new tool for Radio UserLand: "What it actually does is to use Radio's aggregator data from all my subscribed-to favourite RSS feeds and convert that to a set of WAP files. I can then browse these files with my WAP phone."Screenshot.

Dave Winer on Radio UserLand Kickstart
Dave on Radio UserLand Kickstart: "If you've been wondering about the programming and content management environment behind the blogging tool and aggregator; the object database, verb set, outliner, debugger, website framework, get this book, it's great. I'm really excited about this."

2005-09-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

Demofall's emerging-tech carnival
A showcase for emerging technologies, Demofall features short product pitches, some big ideas and plenty of venture capitalists.

A one-stop digital-media shop
Blog: Demofall One of the amazing things about the Demofall show, which ended on Wednesday...

2005-09-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

Steve Hooker: Backlog RSS file of all the posts
Steve has released a new tool that you can use withFeedster's new backlogfeature. "A tool to make a Backlog RSS file of all the posts that went to your front page."

UserLand Appoints Product Manager for Radio
UserLand Software today announced that it has named Steve Kirks product manager for its Radio UserLand personal web publishing and weblogging product.

2005-09-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

Google's digital library tests law
Also: Dell unveils music player.

Photos: Innovation on display
DEMOfall gives those on hand a unique chance to see dozens of companies'products and services in a short period of time.

McNealy holds hope for'iPod moments'
Sun CEO lays out six initiatives he hopes will transform his company's tarnished image.
Photos: McNealy takes the stage

2005-09-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

Google's secret club met with criticism, doubt
Blog: The first rule about Google's partner forum is: You do not talk about Google's partner forum. The search company's upcoming...

Chinese Internet vs. free speech
Also: E-tailers get Apple nastygrams.

Intel dives into the ultra-low power pool
The company's new process follows Texas Instruments, Freescale's drive toward more efficient power for phones and mobile computers.

Bugs found in open-source antivirus tool
A pair of serious security flaws has been identified and fixed in Clam AntiVirus, a popular open-source antivirus application.

Cisco, Macromedia team on Web conferencing
Cisco Systems licenses Flash technology from Macromedia in effort to appeal to small businesses.

Akimbo unveils download-to-own video
Akimbo Systems will begin selling select digital programming to customers in early 2006.

2005-09-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

WebMonkey:"Radio manages to create a dynamic environment for the exchange of information without asking too much of each individual user. They've made it simple for beginners to get involved in a kind of active network that would've required much more know-how a few years ago. If you're looking for more than just a tool, but an effortless way to get a site launched and incorporated into an online community, Radio may be your best bet."

Yesterday I did a feature for Radio called Magic Folders. A router for folders. Now if you plop a file into theimagesfolder it goes into the images folder (via FTP) on My Blog. I think stories are going to work the same way. Just a little bit of glue to create a workgroup. They're magic because there's almost nothing there, like any good router it's just a glue-bit."When you see one of these, do this."

A new macro and howtoshows Radio users how to add a link element to weblog and category home pages, pointing to their associated RSS feeds. The equivalent feature isalso availablefor Manila.

A tiny changein Radio's aggregator makes referer logs more interesting. Please read this if you have a site that's a source for Radio users, and you watch your referer logs. This change could be confusing if you don't read the doc carefully. Thanks!

New Radio 8 feature:Web Bug Simulator.

Susan Kitchens providesthe kind of first-time user feedback that we need."Radio displays the links as underscores. But I haven't yet figured out how to access the URLs."Yes, that's something we need to call out on theoutliner page. To see the HTML behind the links choose the Format Text command in the HTML menu. It toggles.

Dan Shafer:My First Review of Radio 8. [Scripting News]

2005-09-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

New Radio feature: Comment notification via email
Today we released a new feature for Radio UserLand: comment notification via email. If the feature is enabled, whenever a new comment is posted to a Radio weblog, an email will be sent to the weblog author, notifying them that a new comment was posted.Screenshot.

New Radio User Guide
You can now find a new organization for Radio UserLand documentation in theRadio UserLand User Guide. Scott Shudaannouncesthe new Guide.

Mac developers: Partner on developing a slick interface for Radio
From John Robb: "Question: If any Mac developer(s) want(s) to work with UserLand to build a slick interface for Radio (like this one for Windows), let me know. I suspect based on UserLand's sales into the Mac community that it would be worth $50-$100 k in revenue to the partner in the first year (more in follow on years)."

Radio and Salon Radio Community Server Scheduled Maintenance
The Salon and UserLand Radio Community services are being moved to fast new machines which should provide for a better experience when publishing or reading your Radio weblog.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Dates:

Wednesday March 31, the Salon Radio Community Server

and on

Friday April 2, the Radio UserLand Community Server

Rogers Cadenhead interview about Radio UserLand
Rogers Cadenhead wasinterviewedby the Network Professional Association about Radio UserLand and his new book Radio UserLand Kick Start.

Salon Radio Scheduled Maintenance
The Salon Radio community and comments servers is undergoing server maintenance on Tuesday evening.

You may be unable to upstream or add/view comments during the maintenance.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Date:

Tuesday August 16 7:00-11:00 PM Pacific, the Salon Radio community and comment servers

Manila-Blogger Bridge tool: Change to settings to post to Blogger
Rogers Cadenhead has posted ahowtoon the new settings required to post to Blogger using the Manila-Blogger Bridge tool.

The server setting has changed from plant.blogger.com to www.blogger.com. And the path from /RPC2 to /api/RPC2.

Eric Soroos: OS X proxy utility and Radio SOCKS support
OSX Proxy Settings in Radio: "An application + script that reads OSX's current proxy status and puts that info in the proper places in a Frontier/Radio install. This is probably most useful for people who swap proxy settings based on network locations."

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Dates:

Sunday December 5, the Radio UserLand Community comment servers

2005-09-16T08:56:00.000-07:00

Tip for Radio newbies. If you want your channel choices to be reflected in theTop 100, you must turn onupstreaming.

This is a test. Please ignore.

It's not hard to find programmers to work on Radio, though. This evening I added afeaturefor our friends the bloggers, making sure that it's easy for people to credit their sources. This should emit a loud sigh of relief in Radio UserLand and perhaps elsewhere. The Supremes are singing You can't hurry love, no you'll just have to wait. We're figuring this stuff out in real-time, as always.[Scripting News]

Oliver Wrede:Golden Rules for Newbies to Frontier and Radio UserLand.

Teaser screen shot. It'll probably be under the Christmas Tree shortly after Christmas Day. (It's a Web app that runs on your desktop. You get the source code, of course.)

Today'sCraig Burton tutorialis on channels in Radio. It's by far the best docs on our software. I hope everyone runs his latest tutorial, it's a Java window, he presses all the buttons and narrates. Craig talks very slowly and explains everything. His tutorials are eye-openers. [Scripting News]

Dan Shafer:My First Review of Radio 8. [Scripting News]

The editor of soapbox, which I admire,posteda newbie intro to Radio as a weblog tool. Gotta love it. [Scripting News]

Pfieffer Report:"In a funny way, we are back to where publishing was before DTP came around: content creation and management is once again the playground of larger players, and requires heavy investment, just as publishing technology did before XPress arrived."Amen.

2005-09-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

Katrina Before and After Eagle Eye imagery at MSNBC

Check this out. TheVirtual Earth team did flyovers of the New Orleans area before and after the floodandshows you in great detail what New Orleans looks like now.

Chandu Thota has been putting in lots of late nights trying to get this done. It just turned on an hour or two ago andChandu has more details here.

The two sides of what did PDC deliver or not

Deep Ganatra:The hype created about PDC is totally worth it.

Niels Hartvig:Amazing first day at the PDC.

Well, thank you Deep and Niels. Not everyone agrees.

Geek News Central asks"where is the big news?"

Well, geeks, here's the scorecard.

1) Office 12 demonstrated publicly for the first time. Tons of new features and new UI.
2) Windows Vista features demonstrated publicly, including search integration, new performance enhancements, new sidebar.
3) LINQ (Language INtegrated Query). Cool database stuff for .NET developers.
4) Windows Presentation Foundation/E."E"for everywhere.
5) Start.com updates released.
6) Atlas (our AJAX Web development toolkit) demoed for first time.
7) Microsoft Max. A new photo sharing and display application.
8) Digital Locker. A new place to find, try, and buy software.
9) New sidebar and gadgets and new Microsoftgadget Site.
10) Coming later today? Sparkle. A new way to build Windows applications.
11) Coming later today? Lots of server stuff.
12) Coming later today? More Office stuff.
13) Coming later today? Workflow stuff.

Among other things. I hear MSN has some stuff for developers. I hear the Virtual Earth team has some stuff coming out. There's some identity stuff coming. And more. I'm forgetting a bunch.

Google's new blog search makes a great first impression

Google launches its blog search service, says SearchEngineWatch's Chris Sherman.

OK, let's try it out.

First, let's trymy name. Hey, an ego search is a great way to tell whether something has a good algorithm. Why? Because you should be already familiar with the result set.

This one sucks. Sorry. Oh, wait, it's sorted by relevance by default. It still sucks. Velveetaland is the most relevant blog about my last name? Give me a break.

So, I click on"Search by Date."Ahh, this is much better.

But this thing really shines when you click on advanced search. For instance, I didthis query for my last name that includes the word"pdc"in any of the posts.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Why wow? Because it's so freaking fast.

The speed is what kicks all the other blog search in the teeth. Oh, and you can subscribe to a query via RSS. Look at the bottom of the page.

Nicely done.

But, now, we have to do the hard work of comparing this to other engines. I'll do several more tests over the next few hours.

Dev focused podcasts

Michael Lehman is posting tons of podcastsfrom the PDC.

Jackie Goldstein is talking aboutADO.NET on .NET Rocks.

Todd interviews BillG

Todd Bishop of the Seattle PIhas an interesting interviewwith Bill Gates.

More playing with Google blog search

Google blog search just gets better. Do a search for a generic term, say,"camcorder."

There's a lot less spam on Google search than on other services.Here's a search for camcoderon Technorati. I'll let you compare, but the Google search is a lot better to me.

Let's try a few more.

Quilting.Technorati.Google. I like Google better.

But, not all is lost for Technorati. Technorati seems to have more up to date results than Google.

Back to doing advanced searches. I just did a search for"PDC"that contained either"Day One"or"1."Google's resultseems a lot better thanTechnorati's.

Now, it might be unfair to compare only Technorati to Google's result set, but I could go on all night and compare them all and I just need to get some sleep. I'd love it if someone did a comparison to all the blog searches out there.

Report a bug, get a knife?

Steven Sinofsky gave me a set of knives today. I didn't quite get what they were for (I had to miss his keynote to post videos). But,after reading Silicon Valley SleuthI get it. Report a bug in Office, get a knife. They are nice knives too!

2005-09-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

New Radio feature: WYSIWYG editing in Mozilla
Today we released a new feature for Radio, WYSIWYG editing for Mozilla. The editor works in Mozilla 1.3b or later on all platforms.

2005-09-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

Novell enlists SugarCRM as open-source partner
Signs marketing partnership with start-up that develops and sells an open-source customer relationship management software package.

Microsoft rallies developers for Vista and more
Developers gather in L.A. to hear the latest from the software giant on the upcoming Windows release and other software matters.

eBay bets big on Skype
In a $2.6 billion deal, the online auctioneer adds Skype's Net phone service to assets that include Shopping.com and PayPal.

13 billion year old explosion detected
Blog: Scientists at Caltech have detected an explosion at the far edge of the visible universe that likely close to the time of...

Nickels and dimes to fetch goods at Amazon.com
Online retailer hooks up with Coinstar to push business. Promotion lets machine users exchange their coins for a redemption code.

20 entrepreneurs under 35
Also: Online poker lures underage players.

2005-09-12T10:22:00.000-07:00

Siebel releases fourth upgrade to CRM OnDemand in'05

(InfoWorld) - Siebel Systems unveiled the latest version of its CRM OnDemand software, release 9, Monday. The news comes on the same day that Oracle announced its bid to acquire Siebel for $5.85 billion as a way to become the dominant supplier of CRM (customer relationship management) software.

CRM OnDemand 9 is Siebel's fourth release of its hosted CRM software to appear this year, according to a company release. The new version integrates with IBM's Lotus Notes groupware as well as Siebel's own hosted contact center, Contact OnDemand, and the company's on premise CRM software.

Enterprise users and channel partners can customize CRM OnDemand to enable them to brand the applications as their own before they deploy them to their staff and customers, the release stated.

Siebel is hoping that adding full support for Lotus Notes will attract more customers. Previously, the company's software only supported Microsoft's Outlook groupware. Siebel is trying to compete against the hosted CRM market leader Salesforce.com, which is due to talk up the next release of its rival software this week at its Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco.

The new release of the Siebel software also includes IVR (interactive voice response) integration with third-party systems enabled via SOA (service-oriented architecture), according to the release. Siebel has also improved its analytics features in CRM OnDemand 9 as well as extending the capabilities of the software's data warehouse tracking and its real-time performance statistics, the release stated.

More information about CRM OnDemand 9.0 is available at www.crmondemand.com/.

�

Judge dismisses SEC disclosure complaint against Siebel

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China_Martens@idg.com (China Martens)

Oracle ships Windows edition of new database

(InfoWorld) - Oracle has released the Windows edition of its newest database product, Oracle Database 10g Release 2, the company announced on Monday.

The Windows version includes Oracle's Database Extensions for .Net, designed to make it easier for developers using Microsoft's .Net programming environment to work with Oracle's product.

Oracle's big selling point for the first 10g release was its new grid capabilities, for linking database servers together and sharing work among them. It also added an automated storage management system, for managing disks and files more easily. That product shipped early last year.

Release 2, which began rolling out in June, extended the storage management system to work with clustered databases. It also made it easier for users to automate some administration tasks and brought other performance and security tweaks, Oracle said.

The Windows version of Oracle 10g Release 2 joins Linux and Unix versions of that product, which began shipping in June.

Oracle and IBM continue to dominate the database market, but Microsoft has been gaining share gradually with SQL Server 2000. Databases running on Windows represent the fastest-growing segment of the market, according to the most recent figures from Gartner.

Rival files Korean FTC complaint against Oracle

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James_Niccolai@idg.com (James Niccolai)

Cognos melds disparate BI software into one application

(InfoWorld) - Cognos�is preparing a new software update, Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, that will pull together all of its analytics and reporting tools into one application.

The software, scheduled to be announced Monday and to begin shipping worldwide in November, integrates Cognos products including ReportNet, Metrics Manager, PowerPlay, DecisionStream, and NoticeCast. Although Cognos is replacing a software suite with a single application, customers will still be able to license only the functionality they need, Cognos Vice President of Product Marketing Leah MacMillan said.

"Customers have the ability to license by user role, which grants access to certain functionality. So, you could start with reporting and license for that,"MacMillan said. Customers on maintenance subscriptions for Cognos's individual products will be able to carry forward their licenses to the relevant parts of Cognos 8 Business Intelligence; for example, customers using ReportNet will receive licenses for the new software's reporting features.

The update aligns Cognos's BI software on a unified, Web services-based architecture, a change the company expects to simplify deployment and administration. The complete application includes portal, query, reporting, dashboarding, analysis and event management functionality.

Other enhancements in Cognos 8 include more robust alert and event management tools, scorecards with deeper functionality, more flexible portal features and improved self-service reporting tools. Self-service reporting was a major focus area in user feedback, MacMillan said.

"One of the top requests we had from business users was'make it easier for me to create my own report -- I don't want to have to ask IT,'"she said.

Beta tester John Hasenzahl, director of knowledge services and data event management for trucking company Schneider National Inc., said he sees major advances in the new versions of Metrics Manager and ReportNet. Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Schneider National has been using Cognos software for six years and supports several thousand users on it.

"Metrics Manager (version 7) had shortcomings that were holding up our deployment, mostly to do with the granularity of the metrics,"Hasenzahl said. Different business units at Schneider National want to view data in different ways, and the old software made such customization difficult. Version 8 resolves that problem and allows for the heterogeneity Schneider needs, he said.

Performance benefits are noticeable as well: PDF (portable document format) rendering, a very CPU-intensive process for Schneider with the previous version of ReportNet, now goes faster and consumers fewer resources, Hasenzahl said. He also sees advantages in the software's new, unified architecture.

"We think it's really going to help our ability to maintain and upgrade and put in fixes for the applications much more easily,"he said."It's definitely going to reduce the hours we spend on maintenance."

Schneider uses most of Cognos's BI applications. It will definitely move into production with the new versions of ReportNet and Metrics Manager, but it may hold off on a complete version 8 overhaul, Hasenzahl said. It would be an expensive upgrade, even though Schneider has maintenance contracts, he acknowledged.

"There is a cost for us, I'm not sure how much,"he said."We haven't made the determination yet (on a full upgrade)."

Cognos 8 BI's cost varies depending on its configuration. Cognos estimated the licensing fee for a sample deployment at $220,000, including 150 report consumers and 15 authors, along with several other licensed roles.

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Stacy_Cowley@idg.com (Stacy Cowley)

Update: Oracle to buy Siebel Systems in $5.85 billion deal

(InfoWorld) - Oracle has agreed to acquire business applications vendor Siebel Systems�in a deal valued at approximately $5.85 billion, or a net value of $3.61 billion taking into account Siebel's cash reserves, the companies announced Monday.

The deal marks Oracle's latest step in its bid to remake itself as a global business applications powerhouse, following the closure of its $10.3 billion acquisition of PeopleSoft�at the start of the year.

Oracle plans to support the existing suite of Siebel products for"some time to come,"said Larry Ellison, Oracle's chief executive officer, during a conference call to discuss the deal. Oracle had been planning to include a CRM (customer relationship management) suite as part of Fusion, the company's vision for a next-generation suite of products."Because Siebel is the leader and understands the category, it makes us building the Fusion CRM function easier and less risky,"he said.

Siebel's OnDemand offering, a hosted CRM solution, was a key reason that Oracle was interested in making the acquisition."We think that's a very important asset and we want to preserve and invest in it,"said Ellison. He expects that all features and functions in Siebel software will migrate to the OnDemand offerings.

In contrast to its hostile PeopleSoft takeover, Siebel's management is behind the deal. Chairman Thomas Siebel, along with the rest of the Siebel board, have agreed to vote in favor of the deal, Oracle said in a statement. Siebel's stockholders will hold a special meeting to decide whether to approve the deal. Oracle does not need the approval of its own stockholders to go ahead with the takeover, it said.

"It's just clear as day that this is in the best interest of our partners, customers, shareholders and employees,"said Tom Siebel, chairman of Siebel Systems.

Ellison vaguely said that Siebel has agreed to continue to work with Oracle for some number of years. He didn't elaborate on how long or in what capacity.

Oracle executives expect that closing this deal and integrating Siebel into Oracle will be far simpler than the PeopleSoft acquisition."This is drastically easier than PeopleSoft,"Ellison said. That's because Siebel supports the deal and because Oracle now has the experience to digest a major acquisition. Also, PeopleSoft had just bought J.D. Edwards prior to Oracle buying PeopleSoft, adding complexity to that deal, Ellison said."Siebel is a much less risky transaction and we're more experienced in doing integration,"he said.

Observers agree."The Oracle/Siebel integration will be much smoother than the Oracle/PeopleSoft integration. They're much more complementary,"said Rebecca Wettemann, vice president, research with analyst Nucleus Research.

Oracle executives said the acquisition would create duplicate functions, especially because both companies have CRM research and development teams. Oracle expects to choose the best personnel from the teams but did not comment on how many workers might be laid off as a result of the acquisition.

In January of this year, Oracle announced it would lay off 5,000 people as a result of the PeopleSoft acquisition.

Oracle and Siebel expect the deal to close early next year, subject to regulatory approvals. Oracle was forced to battle the U.S. Department of Justice over its PeopleSoft merger, due to complaints that the deal would be anticompetitive.

Buying Siebel would make Oracle surpass SAP as the world's largest vendor of customer relationship management (CRM) software, Oracle said, bringing it 4,000 customers and 3.4 million individual CRM software seats.

The deal is likely to put pressure on SAP."SAP in the short term will be challenged to show why and how it can deliver more value than Oracle and Siebel,"analyst Wettemann said.

Oracle hopes the acquisition will strengthen its number one position in the applications business in North America and will move it closer to its goal of being No. 1 globally, said Ellison.

The companies'joint customers have recommended the tie-up, Oracle said. Many Siebel implementations run on Oracle's database software."Our customers haven't been shy about their opinions,"said Charles Phillips, Oracle's president. He said customers want to form a single strategic relationship for all of their major enterprise applications and they want consistency with pricing terms and upgrade policies. Customers have also said they'd like to be able to access a single consulting organization for consistent information about implementing a full suite of applications. The Siebel acquisition should help Oracle respond to those demands.

Oracle agreed to pay $10.66 per share for the company, more than a 10 percent premium over Siebel's closing stock price Friday of $9.13 per share. The total value of the proposed deal is $5.85 billion, but Oracle will effectively pay $3.61 billion given Siebel's cash on hand of $2.24 billion.

Siebel releases fourth upgrade to CRM OnDemand in'05

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Nancy_Gohring@idg.com (Nancy Gohring)

China moves against SkypeOut VoIP calls

(InfoWorld) - Chinese telecommunications companies are blocking access to cheap Internet phone calls in China by cutting off software services such as SkypeOut, the popular VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) service, analysts and service providers said Monday.

Under current regulations in China, PC to phone services are strictly regulated and only China Telecom Corp. and China Network Communications Group (China Netcom) are permitted to carry out some trials on a very limited basis, said a spokesman at China Telecom, the nation's largest phone carrier.

Until recently, carriers in China have stood by as users in the nation downloaded Skype Technologies'popular Skype software and paid for the SkypeOut phone service. Such offerings, along with others from rivals, allow users to make inexpensive phone calls from their PCs to telephones worldwide.

But Chinese phone companies have apparently seen enough customers switching to the Internet phone services that they are now concerned about losing revenue, according to one analyst in the region who asked not to be identified because the carriers are sensitive about the topic.

Some telecom companies in China may even be going so far as to cut off broadband Internet service to users who continue to call through SkypeOut after being warned against doing so, the analyst said.

Even a joint venture between Skype and Hong Kong-based Tom Online�to provide a Chinese-language version of Skype's software to users in China has been caught in the middle of the fray.

"The service we promote jointly with Skype is just PC to PC services, it doesn't include PC to phone"said a Tom Online�representative. Over 3.4 million people in China have already downloaded the software, he added.

There is little controversy in China over the PC-to-PC voice calls, but calls made from PCs to overseas telephones, which would normally bring significant revenue to telecom companies, have become a hot-button issue, he said.

FCC delays VOIP emergency dialing requirement

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Dan_Nystedt@idg.com (Dan Nystedt)

Update: EBay to acquire Skype for $2.6 billion

(InfoWorld) - Online auction site eBay�has agreed to acquire Internet telephony company Skype Technologies�for $2.6 billion, the companies announced Monday.

The deal will help eBay move into new business areas while allowing Skype to expand the customer base for its VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) services, the companies said.

For instance, in addition to its current transaction-based fees, eBay could allow deals to be monetized on a pay-per-call basis through Skype. And for its part, Skype could make it much easier for customers to pay for its fee-based services through PayPal, the online payment service owned by eBay.

Skype currently has 54 million members in 225 countries and territories and is adding 150,000 new users each day.

The company was established around two years ago by Scandinavians Niklas Zennstr�m and Janus Friis, who had made a name for themselves years earlier with the launch of the music file-sharing service Kazaa.

Last month, in an interview with IDG News Service, Friis said that he and fellow co-founder Zennstr�m had"built [Skype] to be independent."That comment came after the Luxembourg-based Internet telephone operator had already held acquisition talks with several companies, including News Corp., Microsoft, and Yahoo.

Microsoft has since acquired VoIP company Teleo.

Both Zennstr�m and Friis will assume positions within eBay's executive team, said eBay President and Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman, in a conference call.

By acquiring Skype, eBay hopes to improve communications between buyers and sellers by allowing them to speak with each other, according to a statement. Buyers will gain an easy and quick way to talk to sellers and receive the information they need to buy items. Sellers, too, will benefit by being able to build relationships with customers and closing deals, it said.

"We have already tried to reduce friction in e-commerce,"Whitman said, referring to the acquisition of PayPal as a means to make it easier and more safer for customers to pay for online purchases.

With Skype, eBay intends to reduce friction in online auction services even more by allowing people to talk through sales that would be too complex to communicate via e-mail or instant messaging, she said.

But some analysts warn that real-time communications could hinder rather than enhance online auction sales.

"Language skills could be an issue, especially in Europe."said Ian Fogt, senior analyst at Juniper Research, a unit of Juniper Media."It's one thing to express yourself in a foreign language, say English, via e-mail; but it's something completely different when you're on the phone speaking with someone real-time in a foreign language."

Fogt also questioned whether eBay needs to own a VoIP company to encourage users to use this form of communication, suggesting that a partnership would suffice.

On another front, the Skype acquisition could complicate eBay's plans to expand its business in China -- where rival Yahoo recently purchased a 40-percent stake in online auction site operator Alibaba.com.

China Telecom Corp., one of China's two principal carriers, last week began cracking down on Internet users in southern China who use Skype's SkypeOut service to make international phone calls from their computers. Under existing regulations in China, only licensed carriers are allowed to offer VoIP services that link computers and telephones.

With the acquisition of Skype, eBay will now have to handle this issue and face the political ramifications of a China Telecom crackdown on SkypeOut."It's going to raise their profile in an unhelpful way,"said Duncan Clark, managing director of BDA China, a telecommunications consultancy in Beijing.

Whitman played down the Chinese incident as well as possible regulatory hurdles, such as the requirement to offer 911 emergency call service over VoIP in the U.S., and talk about taxing Internet phone calls.

SEE ALSO:

Are eBay and Skype a good fit?

China moves against SkypeOut VoIP calls

Are eBay and Skype a good fit?

Report: eBay may buy Skype for $2 billion to $3 billion

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Get a complimentary report analyzing EAS market vendors. Go!

John_Blau@idg.com (John Blau)

2005-09-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Support for SOCKS (version 4) proxies: "Support for SOCKS (version 4) proxies. Socks proxies are at the tcp connection layer, rather than the application layer like an http proxy. Most notably, this is the dynamic proxy provided by ssh."

Dave Winer on Radio UserLand Kickstart
Dave on Radio UserLand Kickstart: "If you've been wondering about the programming and content management environment behind the blogging tool and aggregator; the object database, verb set, outliner, debugger, website framework, get this book, it's great. I'm really excited about this."

Yahoo News RSS feeds
A page withXML coffee mugsignup links to the new Yahoo News RSS feeds. If you have Radio UserLand running, just click a mug to subscribe to a feed.

Radio 8.1 released
Radio UserLand 8.1 has beenreleasedand a new installer is available for download for new users which includes all the latest changes since the last 8.0.8 release. Note: There wasn't an application upgrade in this release so the application version will still read 8.0.8.

If you are an existing Radio user, just update Radio.root to receive the latest updates including the most recent changes released in September.

Marc Barrot: activeRenderer 2.0
Marc Barrot announced a new version ofactiveRenderer: "I've just released a new 2.0 version of activeRenderer. One of its interesting new features is the ability to render OPML and RSS content as outlines through web services..."

Steve Hooker: Backlog RSS file of all the posts
Steve has released a new tool that you can use withFeedster's new backlogfeature. "A tool to make a Backlog RSS file of all the posts that went to your front page."

Salon Radio Scheduled Maintenance
The Salon Radio community and comments servers are being moved to a new server this Thursday.

New comments will temporarily be disabled while the comment server is being moved.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Dates:

Thursday March 17, the Salon Radio community and comment servers

2005-09-10T10:52:00.000-07:00

Pfizer takes care of Hurricane survivors

Hurricane survivors are being served by Pfizer. That's not really noteworthy here, but I appreciate that. What's interesting is that they are astutely using bloggers to get the word out (one emailed me about it).

"Toughen up Scoble"bloggers say

A few bloggers, fromDave WinertoDan Farber at ZDNettoGreg Linden, founder of Findory, wanted me to ask Bill Gates tougher questions.

Fair enough.

There will be a next time. I do have to wonder, though, are you guys all the types who, when first invited up to see someone, you start asking the hardest questions you can right out the gate? Or do you try to build some kind of relationship with your subject first?

Me? I find it's best to build a friendship or an understanding first. Playing"gotcha"with people just isn't my style. I think a lot of people invite me in because they know I won't try to hurt them.

You might think about why I was so nervous. I work in a group with 300 people. Let's say I did something stupid. My actions reflect on those 300 people. So, when I do something of such high visibility, I have a responsibility to other people. It's not just about myself.

To be fair, I've picked three of the bloggers who criticized my interview. There are a ton of other blogs that said it was an excellent interview. I appreciate those comments too.

Adam notices that I've been busy lately

Adam Herscher:Damn you, Scoble!

Heheh. Sorry Adam!

2005-09-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

Evectors localizes Radio UserLand to German
Paolo Valdemarin announces the release of theGerman version of Radio. This joins theFrenchandItalianlocalized versions of Radio from Evectors.

2005-09-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

Steve says Microsoft is roadkill (and a few other things)

Steve Gillmor saysa lot of things this morning. Let me compress his 911 words into a few smaller chunks:

1) Microsoft is road kill.

2) Jim Allchin killed Hailstorm.

3) Hailstorm is coming back in a"no evil"form, at Google.

4) Steve's daughter-in-law has said goodbye to Office.

5) Microsoft is road kill. Just in case you missed it the first time.

Well, Steve, first of all, let's not rewrite history, OK? The truth is Jim Allchin didn't kill Hailstorm (if you don't know what we're talking about, Hailstorm was unleashed back in 2001 --here's a News.com article on it).

So, who killed Hailstorm? Me. And I didn't even work at Microsoft back then. Well, truth be told I can't take ALL the credit. Heh. There were a LOT of screams about Hailstorm back then. But, let's go back in time to Hailstorm days, shall we? Here's what geeks like me were saying.

We hated Hailstorm and told Microsoft that over and over again. Microsoft does eventually listen when enough people complain. Anyone remember Smarttags? Microsoft wanted to do those too, but backed off after tons of people like me bitched and moaned.

So, what did we say about Hailstorm?"It's evil that Microsoft is trying to make money off of my data."Don't remember when people were saying that? I do. How about this one?"There's no way in hell I'm putting my corporate data on Microsoft's servers."Heck, I WORK there now and I'm still wary of leaving my data on the servers. Is Bill Gates reading my email? At one time I cared.

Go back and read Slashdot. I don't remember anyone sticking up for Hailstorm. I sure didn't.

We thought Microsoft was evil and rapacious and was gonna take over everything in our lives if we let them.

So we killed Hailstorm. Ahh, but now Steve says it's coming back and Steve says we're ready to turn over the keys to Google simply because they tell us they won't do any evil. Hmmm, why is Marc Lucovsky evil when he works at Microsoft but not evil when he works at Google?

Yes, I know why: Microsoft did a series of things to lose customer trust back in the late 1990s and are still trying to regain that trust. It's going to take 15 years to do that job. A cautionary tale is there for you. If you lose customer trust it'll take you more than a decade to win it back.

Of course, I should be thanking Steve Gillmor. He has lowered expectations of Microsoft so low thatour customers have even stopped making really creative guessesof what we're going to show next week at the PDC.

I've been interviewing tons of teams the past week (which is why I didn't blog yesterday) and the stuff I'm seeing is going to invalidate Steve's"Microsoft is roadkill"thesis.

Steve: you haven't even come close to guessing what we're gonna do next week. And I LOVE that!

Oh, one other thing: whoever named Hailstorm"Hailstorm"made a bad decision. He should never be allowed to name another product ever. Ever been in a Hailstorm? It hurts. It's evil. I'm glad we killed it.

But, don't take my words the wrong way. Microsoft is betting big on Web services. Let's talk next week.

Follow the development of KatrinaSafe

JSawyer is a Microsoft employee working on an app, KatrinaSafe, to help get Katrina victims back in touch with their families. It's interestingto follow his blogas they develop the app.

Foxy RSS reader coming?

Hmm, a new RSS reader,SearchFox RSS, is coming I was just told. Anyone try this yet? I'll try to get on this weekend, but am slammed with PDC stuff. Here's what the site says:"SearchFox RSS is an RSS reader that aggregates and personalizes feeds. It uses machine learning technology to automatically rank and personalize incoming feeds to reflect each reader’s unique interests.

Yahoo, now a social software powerhouse

Don't miss what Yahoo is doing. I swear those guys at Yahoo are reading my blog.Yesterday they hired Christian Lindholm(I said I'd hire him in a seconda few months back).

He used to work at Nokia. Here's a hint: he's not gonna do a Yahoo cell phone. No, the prize is bigger than that and Yahoo knows it.

Yahoo just became a powerhouse in social software.

Steve Gillmor has this whole industry wrong. It's not Google with its Hailstorm remake that we should be worried about. It's Yahoo with its Flickr that we should be freaked out about.

Bill and Steve? Where are you? When are we going to get seriously into social software?

Luckily Yahoo hasn't quite figured out what the center of the social software world is gonna be. And I'm not gonna give them a roadmap to figure it out. Oh, damn, I just did. A map. Heheh.

Yeah, Christian was the guy behind Nokia's Series 60 phone, but he was also the guy behind Nokia's LifeBlogs service.

While the rest of you are paying attention to Google and its Hailstorming, Yahoo is really doing the interesting stuff. I predict that in two years the tide will have turned and Steve Gillmor will say that Microsoft screwed up by not buying Flickr when the price was cheap.

Google hires Internet pioneer; Skype to go to eBay?

Chief Internet Evangelist? That's a cool title. Who has it? Vinton Cerf,just joined Google. Hey, SteveB, put that chair down! :-)

Over on Fred's AVC blog I see thatSkype is thinking of selling out to eBay.

Oh, and you don't even need to read blogs to find out these two pieces of news. Bloomberg reported them on its Sirius channel.

Sensis buys 400 Tablet PCs

A leading Autralian advertising and search company, Sensis,just bought a few hundred Tablet PCs.

Biz moves to Odeo

Biz Stone leaves Google and goes to Odeo.

Congrats Biz!

2005-09-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

David Davies: WAP RSS Browser Radio tool
David has created a new tool for Radio UserLand: "What it actually does is to use Radio's aggregator data from all my subscribed-to favourite RSS feeds and convert that to a set of WAP files. I can then browse these files with my WAP phone."Screenshot.

Radio 8.1 released
Radio UserLand 8.1 has beenreleasedand a new installer is available for download for new users which includes all the latest changes since the last 8.0.8 release. Note: There wasn't an application upgrade in this release so the application version will still read 8.0.8.

If you are an existing Radio user, just update Radio.root to receive the latest updates including the most recent changes released in September.

Radio UserLand/BitTorrent Tool for Windows
FromAndrew Grumet: "I've finished an initial version of a RSS+BitTorrent integration tool for Radio Userland's news aggregator. This is beta software, Windows only."

2005-09-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

An idea for the Virtual Earth team: open up!

I've been playing withVirtual Earth's"locate me"technology and I'm very disappointed. It works by triangulating in on wifi hotspots near you and using those to figure out where you are. One problem: it only works if the access points near you are in the database. When it works it's very cool. For instance, when I'm on Microsoft's campus it'll actually show you where you are down to what part of each building you're in.

But, I just tried it here in the Hyatt in Monterey and it says I'm in Seattle. Why? Because I'm using a T-Mobile hotspot and the database doesn't have good information for this access point.

Here's where an open to the public system would be far more useful. Sorta a"Wikipedia"approach. Why can't I go into the database and say"this access point is actually at XYZ location?"

Then geeks could build out the system and make it better over time. Heck, not ready to go full bore wikipedia style here? Give all Microsoft employees access. There's 57,000 of us. We could make this system far more useful in a very short period of time. At least I could make it work in the Monterey Hyatt.

I'm the last blog to link to SimplyFired.com

On the way to dropping my son, Patrick, off with his mom we heard on KGO radio a story about a contest about workers that got fired. The guy who won, a developer, got fired for eating pizza. All the stuff onSimplyFired.com.

Yeah, I know I'm the last blogger to link to this. Sue me.

Peter recommends Plazes

I love my readers. I take a risk, post something, and immediately they start writing in suggestions. Peter Rukavina, for instance, just recommended I check outPlazes, which gives me location-awareness in an open way like what I suggested. I forgot about that. I'm off to try it out.

Stuart Henshall suggests virtualizing phone numbers for Katrina victims

Tom Evslin:A brilliant idea for helping Katrina victims.

"Stuart Henshall at Skype Journal has a brilliant idea for helping Katrina victims put their lives back together through restored communications."

I agree.

Some more Katrina sites

MSN has a donate to the Red Cross page.

Note to Microsoft employees, you can volunteer your time here:http://katrinarelief(this link will only work if you're a Microsoft employee).

Alan Gutierrez and friends havesetup a Wiki herethat has tons of"want to help"information.

Paul Short told me that the Army.com Web site is helping victims of Katrina to find jobs by putting upa job board.

J Sawyer links toa project a bunch of MSFTies are doing:KatrinaSafe.com. A place to share information about evacuees.

BlogML will let you move your blog from service service

Darren Neimke has come up with BlogML, a new markup language to describe blogs.

2005-09-05T14:44:00.000-07:00

Plumtree preps new portal version

(InfoWorld) - As it prepares to consummate its merger with BEA Systems, Plumtree Software is going ahead with plans to launch a major new version of its portal software at its user conference next month.

Plumtree is keeping the technical details of its Plumtree 6.0 platform under wraps for now, but the new version will include Plumtree's broadest support to date for different system configurations, according to Jay Simons, Plumtree?s vice president of product marketing.

"For all of our products, we're offering native Java and .Net interfaces,"Simons said.

Plumtree's Odyssey show next month in Hollywood, Fla., combines for the first time its annual customer and developer conferences. It will also give the company's customers a chance to hear more about its future within BEA, which agreed last month to buy Plumtree for $200 million. The acquisition is scheduled to close within the next few months.

One customer planning to attend Odyssey, Applebee's International Inc. portal communications manager Frank Ybarra, said he's not worried about the looming BEA transition. BEA has publicly pledged to continue developing Plumtree's software as an independent product line, and all Plumtree's communications with customers so far indicate that product support won't be interrupted, Ybarra said.

Plumtree has struggled for share in a portal market increasingly dominated by applications and middleware giants such as SAP AG, IBM�and Oracle, which often sell portal software as an add-on to customers buying from their broader software stacks. Restaurant chain operator Applebee's could have gone that route -- its ERP (enterprise resource planning) backbone is built around PeopleSoft software -- but the company decided Plumtree's functionality outclassed its rivals enough to make the integration challenges of working with multiple vendors worth handling.

Overland Park, Kansas-based Applebee's selected Plumtree nearly four years ago, but only in the last year has it begun making regular use of its corporate portal through its 1,700 restaurants, many of which are operated by independent franchise owners.

"We did a fairly slow rollout and really tried to prove out the concept,"Ybarra said."We're not a technology-focused company. Our job is to sell hamburgers, steaks and salads."

Still, he can point to one portal project that has quickly paid off for Applebee's: The company developed a new electronic system for auditing its restaurants, replacing inspectors'paper checklists and clipboards with PDAs (personal digital assistants) running software that connects to Applebee's portal. Data that used to take months to manually compile is now quickly available, and managers can use analytics software to examine their operations in more detail than was previously possibly.

Applebee's next project will be developing knowledge-mining strategies to pull together information such as best practices and sales tips and package them for prominent display on its portal. For that, Ybarra expects to work closely with Plumtree and take advantage of features in Plumtree's forthcoming 6.0 update.

"What we want to see happen is a way of making our portal more effective at connecting knowledge. We definitely see Plumtree as a partner in making that happen,"Ybarra said."We want to make the portal a recognized daily information source. We're on the way there, but we're not there yet."

�

Pure portal era ends, as BEA charts new course

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Product Previews

(InfoWorld) -Oracle, Zend to ship PHP developement tool
Oracle and Zend Technologies in late september plan to release a final production version of Zend Core for Oracle, which is currently available in beta release. Zend Core for Oracle integrates the Oracle database with Zend?s PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) development environment. Also featured is an Oracle OCI8 (Oracle Call Interface) driver, which provides the C code-level API for working with the Oracle API.
Zend Core for Oracle,Zend Technologies

McAfee Offers Secure Messaging Services
McAfee announced last week secure messaging services for enterprises and small businesses. The products -- McAfee Secure Messaging Service for Enterprises and McAfee Secure Messaging Service for Small Businesses -- are based on the Perimeter Manager product line from Postini, a McAfee partner, and they offer threat prevention and policy management. Formerly called McAfee Managed Mail Protection, the services quarantine spam and virus-infected e-mails before they enter the network. Customizable spam settings, as well as whitelisting and blacklisting functionality, allow users to manage their definitions of legitimate and unwanted e-mail.
McAfee Secure Messaging for Enterprises and for Small Businesses,McAfee

Serena Enhances Requirements Management
Serena Software is shipping Serena RTM (Requirements&Traceability Management) 5.6, a requirements-management package enabling the identification and authentication of changes made to an application?s original requirements. The product features integration with Serena?s ChangeMan Dimensions enterprise change-management package and TeamTrack issue-management package. Web functionality is enhanced, as well. RTM 5.6 costs $2,000 per named user or $6,000 for an unlimited number of users.
RTM 5.6,Serena Software

GoldenGateFinds Database Discrepancies
GoldenGate Software last week released a tool that can root out data conflicts between databases without interrupting their use. Called Veridata, the software can compare data sets in live databases at high speeds. Users select pertinent tables or data fields in the target and source databases and then run the tool. While information in the databases continues to be updated, the tool spots persistent discrepancies and reports them. It currently works with Oracle databases and Hewlett-Packard?s NonStop databases. Support for additional platforms is coming soon.
Veridata,GoldenGate Software

SEE ALSO:

Consolidation vs. federation

Basic security checks for a stand-down review

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IDC: Global disk storage market reached $5.6B in Q2

(InfoWorld) - The total worldwide disk storage systems market grew 9.9 percent to US$5.6 billion in factory revenue in the second quarter of this year as compared to the year-ago quarter, according to an IDC analyst. The growth was the highest year-on-year growth over the last eight quarters, the analyst said in a report released Friday. Total disk storage systems petabytes grew 59.3 percent year over year to reach 457 petabytes in the second quarter.

IDC defines the total disk storage systems market as the combination of internal and external systems.

In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) maintained its lead in the second quarter of 2005 with a 23.5 percent revenue share followed by IBM Corp. with a 20.5 percent share. EMC Corp. held the third position with 14.4 percent, then Dell Inc. with 8.3 percent and Sun Microsystems Inc. with 6.1 percent. Of the top five vendors, Sun was the only one to forfeit market share, with a fall in revenue year-on-year of 10.4 percent.

The storage market offers opportunities as organizations become more dependent on"the value of their business information,"Brad Nisbet, program manager in IDC's Storage Systems program, said in a release.

In the external disk storage systems market, overall factory revenue grew 8.6 percent year on year to $3.8 billion. EMC cemented its lead with a 21.2 percent revenue share, followed by HP with 18.8 percent and IBM with 13.8 percent. Dell was in fourth position with 8.3 percent, displacing Hitachi Data Systems Corp., which fell back to fifth position and a 7.3 percent share.

Dell's success is in large part due to its partnership with EMC, which allows Dell to resell cobranded Dell/EMC storage systems. In the IDC study, the analyst attributes revenue to the seller or brand of the product, not the manufacturer. For instance, Hitachi's sales in the study don't reflect the company's OEM (original equipment manufacturer) sales to both Sun and HP.

Dell had the largest year-over-year growth in external disk storage systems with 27.1 percent. HP and IBM also had double-digit growth, of 13.7 percent and 13.4 percent respectively. The uptick was not surprising in HP's case because the company had an unexpectedly weak second quarter in 2004, IDC noted. The top five vendors accounted for close to 70 percent of the external disk storage market.

IDC defines the total network storage market as the combination of NAS (network attached storage) with Open and iSCSI SANs (storage area networks). The market grew to nearly $2.5 billion, an increase of 16.1 percent year-over-year growth. EMC's still the dominant player with a 27.9 percent revenue share, followed by HP with 21.3 percent. However, Dell and IBM posted the strongest year-on-year revenue growth with 33.2 percent and 22.9 percent respectively.

Turning to the NAS market, which grew 9.5 percent to $475 million revenue. There were only two players of note -- EMC was the leader with 40.2 percent revenue share, followed by Network Appliance Inc. with 35.2 percent.

The Open SAN market, including iSCSI, topped $2 billion in revenue, growing 17.8 percent year on year. EMC and HP effectively tied for first place, EMC with 25 percent revenue share and HP with 24.8 percent. IBM was in third position with a 14.3 percent share.

Dell reworks the autoloader

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China_Martens@idg.com (China Martens)

2005-09-04T18:11:00.000-07:00

IDC: Global disk storage market reached $5.6B in Q2

IDC defines the total disk storage systems market as the combination of internal and external systems.

Dell reworks the autoloader

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IBM
IBM Content Management manages all your information, smarter and more affordably. Learn how.

China_Martens@idg.com (China Martens)

Sharp shows new dual-view LCD

(InfoWorld) - Sharp Corp. has begun mass production of a new LCD (liquid crystal display) that can simultaneously display different information depending on which direction the screen is being viewed from, the company said Thursday during a news conference at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin. The Japanese manufacturer also named its first customer: General Motors Corp.

Adam Opel AG, the German arm of the U.S. car manufacturer, plans to test the dual-view display in its Vectra Caravan model, according to Michael Kurpies, director of marketing at Sharp's German subsidiary.

The plan at Opel is to use the left side of the screen as a navigation system for the driver and the right side as an in-car entertainment center to show DVD movies.

The new LCD, which is on display at Sharp's booth, uses a number of proprietary technologies. One of them is a means to superimpose a so-called"parallax barrier"on an ordinary TFT (thin-film transistor) LCD. This and the other technologies enable the dual-view system to send light from the backlight into right and left directions, making it possible to show different visual content on the same screen depending on the angle.

Sharp sees the new dual-view LCD finding applications in other areas, such as PCs.

At the IFA show, the Japanese manufacturer also unveiled a 4G-byte hard disc MP3 player. The product, with the less-than enlightening name HR-MB35, measures 57 millimeters by 106 mm by 17 mm, supports MPC, WMA and WAV files and promises 18 hours of playback from one charge.

The IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung) will run in Berlin through Sept. 7.

Motorola produces sample HD display using nanotubes

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John_Blau@idg.com (John Blau)

Jabber to roll out IM appliance next week

(InfoWorld) - SMBs looking for an easy solution for instant messaging will get access next week to a new secure business-grade IM appliance from Jabber. On Tuesday, Jabber will ship its JabberNow appliance, which the company says can allow SMBs and enterprise workgroups to set up secure IM in about 15 minutes.

The plug-and-play appliance is based on Jabber's XCP (Extensible Communications Platform) for enterprises, which in turn is based on the XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) open standard.

The decision to package Jabber's enterprise technology into an appliance was driven largely by government customers who were looking for quick IM and presence interoperability with state and local agencies but didn't want to require the smaller agencies to buy into a whole software stack, said Michael Helfrich, senior vice president of product strategy and marketing.

"With the appliance, we took XCP and insulated the complexity of configuration. We made it Linksys simple,"he said, referring to the easy-to-configure wireless router from Cisco Systems.

Other industries Jabber is targeting with the appliance include financial services, manufacturing, legal, and consulting.

Adding to its SMB appeal, the JabberNow appliance snaps into existing enterprise infrastructure and requires minimal IT support, Helfrich said.

JabberNow is natively interoperable with any other XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) server and works with any XMPP client, Jabber officials said, including the recently announced Google Talk IM client. The appliance also ships with a Macromedia Flash-based Jabber client and can be configured to work with AOL's AIM network.

Within the next month Jabber plans to ship connectors for both IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and Microsoft Live Communications Server.

Other add-on features available include message archiving, an SMS (Short Message System) gateway and LDAP integration. The appliance supports up to 1,000 users. Pricing starts at $2,495 for 25 users.

Looking at the company's road map, in the first quarter of next year, Jabber is planning to release connectors that will allow an XMPP-based phone to ring an SIP phone. Jabber has based its technology on XMPP but is committed to adding support for other IM and telephony protocols -- including SIP and SIMPLE (SIP for IM and Presence Leveraging Extensions) -- where it makes sense, Helfrich said.

Product previews

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cathleen_moore@infoworld.com (Cathleen Moore)

Congress looks to pass data breach law

(InfoWorld) - WASHINGTON - The U.S. Congress will look to pass consumer data protection legislation as it returns next week from its mid-year recess, but if Congress fails to act, a tough new state law will force interstate companies to disclose virtually all data breaches, no matter how small the risk.

A New York data breach law, signed by Governor George Pataki on Aug. 10, would take effect in mid-December. New York, the 19th state to pass a data breach notification law, would allow no exceptions for companies that have their own disclosure policies.

The New York law requires companies to disclose any unauthorized breach of databases that contain New York residents'personal information such as Social Security, drivers'license and credit card numbers, with a limited exception for some encrypted data. The New York law makes no exception for small data breaches or breaches unlikely to result in identity theft, despite concerns raised by groups such as the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) that customers could be bombarded with too much notification in cases where there's little chance of harm.

Congress and about 35 state legislatures have considered data breach notification laws this year as more than 60 companies, complying with a 2003 California law, announced breaches affecting millions of U.S. residents this year. Although the California law requires that companies notify only California residents, it has become the de facto national standard, with companies sending out notices to all customers.

The New York law would replace the California breach notification law, which includes some notification exceptions, as national standard if Congress doesn't pass its own bill preempting state legislation, said Dan Burton, vice president of government affairs for Entrust Inc., a security software vendor."If you're breached, you've got to notify,"Burton said of the New York law.

Even data brokers have called for a national breach notification law to preempt what the ITAA and others call a"patchwork"of state laws, and a data breach bill is likely to be one of the top technology-related bills in Congress during the rest of 2005. While some industry groups have advocated a preemptive breach notification bill with few other regulations, consumer and privacy groups have called for sweeping ID theft protections.

With the 19 state laws already passed and Congress focusing on the issue, even enterprise customers normally opposed to regulations recognize that a national law is likely, said Kevin Brown, vice president of marketing for Decru Inc., a storage security vendor."In today's legislative environment, I don't think you're going to get a bill that just cancels the state laws,"Brown said."They'd love to have less regulation in general, but in this case, I think everybody's fairly realistic. What enterprises are looking for is guidance."

Privacy advocates such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Democracy and Technology have called for Congress to regulate data brokers that sell personal data without the owners'knowledge. The owners of that data have a right to know how data brokers are profiting from their information, those groups have argued.

Several issues complicate the prospect of a bill passing. With congressional elections this November, Congress will be in a hurry to wrap up its work in October and get out on the campaign trail. Other issues, including a response to Hurricane Katrina and several appropriations bills, will demand congressional attention, as will a second tech-related issue: freeing up wireless spectrum after a transition to digital television.

In addition, Congress is hardly united on the path to take on breach notification. After the series of high-profile breaches earlier this year, many in Congress rushed to respond. Burton counted nine data breach bills introduced this year, and three Senate committees began putting together their version of data breach notification bills.

Some of the bills, including one moving through the Senate Judiciary Committee, go beyond breach notification. The Judiciary bill, sponsored by Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter, would allow consumers to ask data brokers for a report on what personal data they hold. The Specter bill would also limit the commercial sale of Social Security numbers, and set rules for the government use of personal data.

One high-ranking Senate staffer working on another bill called the sale of Social Security numbers a"different issue entirely"that could distract from the passage of a breach notification bill."We don't want to get into an omnibus privacy bill,"the staffer said."That may not be legislatively feasible."

Beyond a continuing debate about the ground a data breach notification bill should cover, disagreements continue over what should trigger notification. ITAA and other industry groups have pushed for Congress to require notification only when it's likely that the breach resulted in the compromise of personal data. Consumers could otherwise get flooded with notifications and ignore the important warnings, said Greg Garcia, vice president of information security at ITAA.

Some bills would make no notification exemption for encrypted data, but companies would then have little incentive to protect personal data by encrypting it, Garcia said."We thought, what is the purpose of that -- notify early and often?"he said."There ought to be a fairly reliable risk-based test to the extent that information that has been breached is likely to be exploited."

But Entrust's Burton questioned how Congress could define a breach that's likely to be exploited, leaving interpretation to the breached company. Instead, an easier route is for Congress to require notification of any breach beyond breaches involving encrypted data, he said."The standards that most of the states have -- any unauthorized access -- is probably the right standard,"he said.

While Congress seems to be headed to a breach notification law sooner or later, some groups question whether such a law would actually benefit consumers. In most cases of credit card fraud, customers are responsible for US$50 or less, noted Tom Lenard, research director of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank. In the end, the cost of a breach notification law to companies, which pass their costs on to consumers, may be larger than the benefit, he said.

Instead of a law, Congress should look to industry to manage the problem and cut its losses due to data theft, he said."Even in the best of circumstances, the cost/benefit analysis doesn't work out all that favorably,"he said."There are lots of incentives for businesses to solve this problem themselves."

Other technology issues

Beyond data breach notification, a handful of other technology-related issues have surfaced in Congress this year:

-- Digital TV transition: Congress seems poised to set a firm date for U.S. television stations to abandon analog signals in the 700 MHz radio spectrum band. Technology companies are asking Congress to set a firm date after nearly two decades of debate, because that chunk of spectrum could be used for a variety of wireless technologies.

Several concerns remain, including what would happen to the millions of U.S. TV sets still receiving over-the-air analog signals. But lawmakers want to move a bill forward, partly because spectrum auctions could bring billions of dollars to the federal budget.

-- Spyware: An antispyware bill passed through the House of Representatives in May, but the bill seems to be stalled in the Senate. Some critics have said the bill is overly broad, and technology vendors should be given more of a chance to deal with the problem.

-- Telecommunications reform: Several lawmakers have pushed for telecom reform, with some advocating a wide-ranging rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and others pushing for Congress to crave out exemptions to traditional telecom relations for VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol). It appears, however, that telecom reform will take a back seat to other issues until 2006.

Lucent gets subpoenas from US regulators

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Grant_Gross@idg.com (Grant Gross)

Plumtree preps new portal version

"For all of our products, we're offering native Java and .Net interfaces,"Simons said.

"We did a fairly slow rollout and really tried to prove out the concept,"Ybarra said."We're not a technology-focused company. Our job is to sell hamburgers, steaks and salads."

�

Pure portal era ends, as BEA charts new course

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Download the free EMC Backup-to-Disk Software Resource Kit

Stacy_Cowley@idg.com (Stacy Cowley)

Air travel to become more high-tech, study says

(InfoWorld) - Almost half the world's airlines plan to offer some form of in-flight communications for passengers by the end of 2007, with most favoring Internet access, e-mail and SMS (short messaging service), according to a new study released this week.

Perhaps surprisingly, more than a third of airlines surveyed also said they expect to let passengers use mobile phones on planes by that time, according to the Airline IT Trends Survey, published annually by SITA, a big provider of IT services to the air transport industry.

"Mobile telephony -- which is the least mature and probably the most controversial option -- will be embraced by 36 percent of airlines by 2007, which is quite remarkable considering the product is not yet available,"said Peter Buecking, SITA's president, in a presentation Thursday that was shown over the Web.

The findings are based on responses from senior IT executives at the world's top 200 airlines, as well as big players in cargo and other markets, said SITA, which has headquarters in Geneva. The airlines that responded account for two-thirds of the world's airline revenue, it said.

The communications services are designed to snag new customers and build loyalty at a time when many airlines are struggling to turn a profit. Airlines are also turning increasingly to self-service systems, such as online ticket sales and check-in kiosks, to cut costs and move customers through airports more quickly, the survey found.

Seventy percent of the world's airlines now sell tickets through the Internet, and 30 percent of all tickets issued are electronic, up from 19 percent a year ago, SITA said.

Sixty percent of the airlines questioned reported using self-service kiosks. Most of those are tied to a particular airline today, but many will be general-purpose kiosks by 2007, where passengers can check in with any airline, SITA found.

More passengers may also be able to print boarding passes before leaving for the airport, a measure that could reduce crowding at airline counters. That's because almost two-thirds of airlines said they plan to introduce bar codes on tickets, rather than magnetic strips, by the end of 2007.

The bar codes could also allow passengers to present their boarding passes at the gate on a mobile phone or PDA (personal digital assistant), rather than using a paper copy.

Paul Coby, SITA's chairman and the chief information officer at British Airways PLC, said airlines will be"the world's first fully Web-enabled industry."

Life will only improve, of course, if the technologies work. The high-profile failure of a computerized baggage system at Denver International Airport shows that things don't always go as planned. That system cost millions of dollars and a decade to build, but it is due to be scrapped this year, in part because it damaged or lost too many bags.

Nor is the rate of advance evenly distributed. Airlines that are strapped for cash or unwilling to spend will create a world of"haves and have nots,"SITA said. That's bad news for the industry, since airlines that switch to electronic tickets only, for example, must still interact with paper-based systems at technology laggards.

"Even in North America and Europe there are several airlines that are struggling financially, making it hard for them to keep up with the technology pace-setters,"Buecking said.

In the Asia Pacific, by contrast, technology investments are strong thanks to growing ticket sales. Asia Pacific airlines are now the leading innovators, according to the survey, particularly with communications services for business travelers.

Still, North America already had a considerable lead, so other regions are playing catch-up. Sixty-three percent of tickets in North America are sold through online channels today, compared to 24 percent in Europe and 10 percent in Asia, the survey found.

The report didn't discuss one of the biggest annoyances for airline passengers: being bumped from overbooked flights. Nor is technology likely to improve that much, since it results from business decisions at the airlines, said James Fremantle, an advisor with the Air Transport Users Council, a U.K. consumer watchdog for the airlines industry.

Many airlines sell a number of higher-priced,"flexible"tickets that allow travelers to cancel or switch flights at the last minute. To compensate for those cancelations and other no-shows, airlines overbook planes to ensure all their seats are full.

The Air Transport Users Council does not take a negative view of this, Fremantle said. Selling the premium-rate tickets and ensuring planes are full helps airlines offer lower fares overall, he said.

Better technology could help reduce bumping to some extent, by helping airlines build more accurate models for determining how much they need to overbook flights.

The U.K. advocacy group welcomes new technologies -- so long as they lead to a better experience for passengers, Fremantle said.

Sales at world's largest notebook maker surge

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Sun releases open-source JavaServer Faces code

(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems Inc. has recently open-sourced the code for its implementation of JavaServer Faces (JSF), its framework for building user interfaces to Java-based Web applications.

"JavaServer Faces has had external contributions, and this open-source strategy will make it easier to get contributions into the technology,"Sun developer Roger Kitain, JSF's co-specification lead, wrote in a Web log post announcing the code release. Sun is placing the code under its Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL).

Sun's latest builds of its JSF 1.2 implementation, which the company calls"mostly stable,"live on Java.net's GlassFish project page. GlassFish is Sun's open-source application server development initiative. Sun set GlassFish loose under its CDDL earlier this year, at its JavaOne conference.

Sun has been increasingly adding to its list of open-source projects this year as it looks to revive developer interest in its software stack. Last month, it launched OpenSSO (Open Source Web Single Sign-On) to encourage developers to work on application security using authentication and single-sign-on technologies.

�

SEE ALSO:

Sun to overhaul iForce partner program

Sun completes $4.1 billion StorageTek acquisition

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Stacy_Cowley@idg.com (Stacy Cowley)

2005-09-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Redirects used with enclosures
Radio UserLand now supports redirects used when downloading enclosures which is commonly used to support podcast hit counters. When you add an enclosure to a weblog post, Radio also now follows redirects when gathering information about the file size/type of an enclosure.

Salon Radio Scheduled Maintenance
The Salon Radio community and comments servers is undergoing server maintenance on Tuesday evening.

You may be unable to upstream or add/view comments during the maintenance.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Date:

Tuesday August 16 7:00-11:00 PM Pacific, the Salon Radio community and comment servers

Cadenhead: New sample chapter from Radio UserLand Kick Start
Rogers Cadenhead has posted another sample chapter from his new Radio UserLand book on theoutliner. "When I began using Radio as a version 7 beta tester three years ago, I thought it was heresy to create Web content -- much less source code -- in an outliner. These days I'm an outliner junkie, writing programs, magazine articles, and everything else I can in either Radio or the Java Outline Editor (JOE)."

New New York Times News Feed - Education, Home&Garden
Two new New York Times News Feeds are now available to Radio UserLand users: Education and Home&Garden. You can subscribe to them by visiting thispage.

New Radio theme: MyRadioDesk
Cristian Vidmar: "MyRadioDesk is my first public Radio theme: it resembles a desk with common elements on top: a sheet of paper, a calendar, some post-its, some stamps and so on."

New preference: Using non-standard FTP ports for upstreaming
The FTP upstreaming driver in Radio UserLand has been updated to support a new optional port parameter to allow you to use a non-standard FTP port.

2005-09-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

Comment moderation
Radio UserLand now supportscomment moderationso you can delete comments posted to your weblog.

Several performance fixes were also released for the JavaScript comment and trackback counters and support was also added to upstreaming so Radio automatically will retry upstreaming files that failed to upstream the first time.

Salon Radio Scheduled Maintenance
The Salon Radio community and comments servers is undergoing server maintenance on Tuesday evening.

You may be unable to upstream or add/view comments during the maintenance.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Date:

Tuesday August 16 7:00-11:00 PM Pacific, the Salon Radio community and comment servers

Radio changes: Enclosure preferences
We released some minor changes for Radio: There's a new preference on the Enclosures prefs page to choose where you want to save downloaded enclosures. There's also an updated help outline with some recently added macros/directives.

BBC RSS feeds list updated
Yesterday, BBC News Online made available 68 new RSS feeds for every section of their site in both the World and UK editions. Radio users can use the XML coffee mugs on the BBC RSS feeds page to easily subscribe to the new channels using Radio's aggregator.

Salon Radio Scheduled Maintenance
The Salon Radio community and comments servers are being moved to a new server this Thursday.

New comments will temporarily be disabled while the comment server is being moved.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Dates:

Thursday March 17, the Salon Radio community and comment servers

Redirects used with enclosures
Radio UserLand now supports redirects used when downloading enclosures which is commonly used to support podcast hit counters. When you add an enclosure to a weblog post, Radio also now follows redirects when gathering information about the file size/type of an enclosure.

2005-09-01T23:30:00.000-07:00

New Radio UserLand book from Rogers Cadenhead
Rogers just announced that his new book on Radio UserLand will be published this summer by Sams Publishing: "There's an amazing amount of stuff you can do with the software -- I can't think of another $40 program that supports Internet content management and publishing, information aggregation, programming, object-oriented database storage, and a long list of buzzworthy acronyms: HTTP, HTML, XML, FTP, XML-RPC, SOAP, and RSS."

New Radio UserLand tool: Workbench.root
Rogers Cadenhead has released a new tool calledCadenhead.root: "I have released the first beta version of Workbench.root, a Radio UserLand tool offering simple scripts that extend the functionality of the software: My goal is to offer a bunch of scripts that Radio UserLand users of all skill levels can put on their Web pages and Web site template files."

New Radio feature: Comment notification via email
Today we released a new feature for Radio UserLand: comment notification via email. If the feature is enabled, whenever a new comment is posted to a Radio weblog, an email will be sent to the weblog author, notifying them that a new comment was posted.Screenshot.

Radio and Salon Radio Community Server Scheduled Maintenance
The Salon and UserLand Radio Community services are being moved to fast new machines which should provide for a better experience when publishing or reading your Radio weblog.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us directly at webmaster@userland.com.

Dates:

Wednesday March 31, the Salon Radio Community Server

and on

Friday April 2, the Radio UserLand Community Server

Yahoo News RSS feeds
A page withXML coffee mugsignup links to the new Yahoo News RSS feeds. If you have Radio UserLand running, just click a mug to subscribe to a feed.

2005-08-31T20:44:00.000-07:00

I have my instant outliner going again. Radio users can subscribe using the OPML coffee mug onDHRB. The new thing is that notification happensvia instant messaging, not polling. And there's somethingreally newin there. A remote procedure invocation protocol. They are not remote procedurecallsbecause they don't return values and are asynchronous. But you can pass parameters, complex ones, using the encoding of XML-RPC. It's the loop-close on theworkwe did in Keystone with the Jabber folk last August. Works with AIM too. We're bootstrapping on theRadio-Devmail list. [Scripting News]

DW:mySubscriptions.opmlcontains the RSS channels I'm tuned into.

OK, it sure came back a lot faster. Now let's see if everything got published. For that I have to look on the Events page to see what got uploaded. Back in a minute or so.

Sometimesthings work just like you wanted them to.

Susan Kitchens providesthe kind of first-time user feedback that we need."Radio displays the links as underscores. But I haven't yet figured out how to access the URLs."Yes, that's something we need to call out on theoutliner page. To see the HTML behind the links choose the Format Text command in the HTML menu. It toggles.

Two-Way-Web:SOAP meets RSS.

2005-08-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

TrackBack for Radio is released
Radio supports both inbound and outbound TrackBack pings. For outbound TrackBack, all you have to do is enable the feature, and Radio will do the rest. Inbound TrackBack works similarly to comments -- a TrackBack link next to each post opens a pop-up window which displays inbound pings.

To enable TrackBack for Radio, follow the instructions on thispage.

David Davies: WAP RSS Browser Radio tool
David has created a new tool for Radio UserLand: "What it actually does is to use Radio's aggregator data from all my subscribed-to favourite RSS feeds and convert that to a set of WAP files. I can then browse these files with my WAP phone."Screenshot.

2005-08-29T17:46:00.000-07:00

Maryam holds a BBQ and lots of geeks show up

Had a great BBQ here today. Had lots of geeks here. Maryam invited a bunch of her friends. At one point I was talking with Joe Beda of Google (he works on the Google Talk team), Ted Leung who is working for Mitch Kapor doing an open source PIM, and a few people from Microsoft (Matt Carter who works at eLearning, Ben Constable and Vikram Dendi, both of whom work on secret projects at Microsoft andLiz Lawley, who works at Microsoft Research and her husband Gerald), Nate Grigg, musician at Monolith, Keith Pleas, works at Patterns and Practices at Microsoft, Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, and Chris Pirillo, founder of Lockergnome.

I joked with people that it was the FOM-BBQ. Friends of Maryam BBQ. Of course, the geeks were here because of the wives or significant others who were really the ones Maryam invited. Tena,Elizabeth,Ponzi,Rachel,Julie, Kim, Cathia, Jennifer. See, you want to start a geek event? Invite the significant others. The geeks come along. Heheh. Bunch of kids too, between the Xbox and the Slip-n-slide they were most entertained. Maryam joked with me after this post that I never link to the women. So I only linked to the women here. I do what Maryam tells me to. If Maryam had her own blog she'd be more popular than me, that's for sure!

WinFS video uploaded

I just uploadedthe WinFS video to Channel 9.

Tomorrow's video? Iain McDonald talks to us about Server R2.

Update: theWinFS team has a blogtoo.