- "Only a matter of time" before Apple builds a smart phone, Motorola's Zander says
- Google may be close to launching calendar
- Google sponsoring Wi-Fi in NYC
- A list of the domain names Google has registered
- Roll your own search engine with Rollyo
- VoIP buzz focuses attention, and dollars, on Skype and Vonage
- Quiz: How much of a geek are you?
- The weakest security link: Users
- Apple's iPod and Flash memory
- FCC extends VoIP 911 deadline
September 30, 2005 | Comments: (0)
"Only a matter of time" before Apple builds a smart phone, Motorola's Zander says
Despite its partnership with Motorola to deliver iTunes via Motorola's Rokr phone, Motorola CEO Ed Zander believes Apple's long-term plans may be to develop its own phone.
macworld.com laid out Zander's view of the partnership Friday, citing a CNET News.com interview with Zander from the day before.
Many industry analysts have said that Apple should develop its own smart phone, but Apple surprised much of the Macintosh community of users by partnering with Motorola instead, Macworld.com said. Nonetheless, Zander said Apple has other ambitions.
"And we know that they are going to build a smart phone - it's only a matter of time," said Zander.
The iTunes compatible Motorola Rokr was announced at a special event hosted by Apple in San Francisco, Calif. on September 7, 2005. However, since its introduction reviews of the device throughout the press have been mixed, Macworld.com said.
Earlier this week, Zander was reported to have made disparaging comments about Apple's iPod nano - comments some believed to be in response to frustration that the iPod nano upstaged the introduction of the Rokr.
"Screw the nano," said Zander. "What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs? 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.
However, while not denying the comments were made, Motorola has said they were taken out of context.
"Motorola has a great partnership with Apple," said Motorola in a statement provided to MacCentral. "Unfortunately, Ed Zander's comments made at a conference in San Diego on Friday were taken out of context. During the Q&A session, one questioner repeatedly asked what Zander thought of the Nano. Jokingly, Zander said he wasn't there to talk about the Nano - but to talk about the next big thing happening in the industry - the fusion of the phone and music. ROKR with iTunes was a good beginning, he said, and there's more to come."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 30, 2005 02:03 PM
September 30, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google may be close to launching calendar
It seems Google is getting ready to open its calendaring to beta users, perhaps much the same way it has some of its other services.
From a post on the GoogleRumors Web site:
A reader tipped us off to the fact that calendar.google.com now mirrors www.google.com. This is different from a few days ago when we checked and is different from other names, such as example.google.com that return cannot be found messages.
GoogleRumors also pointed out that similar behavior occurred prior to the launches of Google Talk and Google Blog Search.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 30, 2005 06:43 AM
September 30, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google sponsoring Wi-Fi in NYC
Google is apparently sponsoring Wi-Fi in New York City's Bryant Park. Free wireless access in that park is not new, but now there is a sign with Google's name on it. (Photo here.)
Thanks to Mark Evans for the picture, and I'll just point out that the comments under his post are worth reading.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 30, 2005 06:31 AM
September 30, 2005 | Comments: (0)
A list of the domain names Google has registered
SearchEngineWatch has a list of all the domain names registered to Google. Actually, there are a couple of lists.
Here's the link: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/txt/google_dom.html
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 30, 2005 06:13 AM
September 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Roll your own search engine with Rollyo
A bit of buzz is building about a Web tool for easily creating personal search engines. I read about the tool, Rollyo, on Boing Boing.
Rollyo's engine, called a Searchroll, uses Yahoo search underpinnings to let people restrict Web searches to a selected list of sites.
Rather than scouring the entire Web for information (Google's latest count claims 8 billion pages in its index), Rollyo narrows the search scope to a user's trusted sites. According to the Rollyo team, there's no programming involved in setting up a Searchroll, which can search just one site or as many as 25.
Rollyo is also using its search tools to stitch together online communities. Users can share their own Searchrolls and look through the Searchrolls created by other users. A fun twist on this theme is High Rollers, a list of high profile Searchrolls from celebrities such as Debra Messing and Rosario Dawson as well as popular bloggers and other cultural figures.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on September 29, 2005 02:44 PM
September 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
VoIP buzz focuses attention, and dollars, on Skype and Vonage
The skyrocketing interest in the promise of Internet-based voice and data services is apparent this week in news about VoIP providers Vonage and Skye.
Reports said Vonage may be planning to present an initial public offering (IPO).
Some analysts see now as the perfect time for Vonage to go public, IDG News Service reported. On Sept. 6, Vonage announced it had exceeded 1 million VoIP lines in service in North America, the first VoIP provider to do so. In March, Vonage announced it surpassed 500,000 lines.
Skype Technologies, for its part, went live with an updated version of its Internet telephony software, adding call forwarding and personalization options to its popular VoIP service, IDG News Service said.
Earlier this month, Luxembourg-based Skype agreed to be acquired by eBay Inc. for around $2.6 billion in cash and stock. Skype advertises a registered user base of 56 million, with more than 3 million people simultaneously connected to its service at any given time.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 29, 2005 02:04 PM
September 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Quiz: How much of a geek are you?
The BBC has posted to its Web site a short test that will judge just how geeky you really are by measuring your knowledge of computers and the Web.
Most InfoWorld readers will find it to be a breeze, so if you are in need of an ego boost or just looking for entertainment, I'd say check it out.
But don't be surprised to find questions such as 'What does RSS stand for?' and 'If you knew C++ what would you be?'
Some of the wrong answers are light-hearted and amusing, for this sort of thing.
The quiz is here. Thanks to digg.com for the link
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 29, 2005 07:39 AM
September 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
The weakest security link: Users
INS issued the results of a survey that found, you guessed it: End-users, and "their unwillingness to follow good security practices is the primary barrier to improving protection against malicious code."
Before you toss this study into the "I don't need a report to tell me something that obvious" pile, though, INS did come across some noteworthy tidbits.
-- More than half of respondents believe their networks and systems to be safer now than they were one year ago
-- 14 percent feel more vulnerable
-- Regulatory compliance is a "critical" factor driving malicious code mitigation for only nine percent of respondents, but 31 percent list it as playing a significant role.
-- The anti-virus tools most often deployed are signature-based scanning and heuristic analysis software. But 25 percent of respondents indicated plans to implement sandbox technology, snapshot technology, behavior blockers and immunizers in the next six months.
The full report is available as a PDF.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 29, 2005 07:06 AM
September 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Apple's little music player has more than just those wearing the earphones in a tizzy. Because the company got such a good deal on NAND flash memory, the rippling effect has been to drive prices down for consumers but, in turn, drive costs up for competitors.
The New York Times has the full story here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 29, 2005 06:41 AM
September 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
The FCC put off imposing penalties on VoIP providers that fail to get all their customers to acknowledge they were informed their 911 service may be limited.
The agency ordered most residential VoIP services to get an acknowledgment from all customers that 911 calls may not reach an emergency dispatcher or would not show the location from where the call was made, Reuters reported.
Vonage Holdings, the biggest carrier, with more than one million subscribers, said that 99 percent of its customers had responded to the company's notices about 911 risks, the International Herald Tribune reported.
The FCC had said that those VoIP customers who had not replied should have their accounts suspended. That has provoked criticism from some in Congress who worry about cutting off Americans from phone service they might need in an emergency.
The FCC's enforcement bureau said at least 21 providers had heard back from all of their customers and 32 providers had received replies from 90 percent or more. The agency had demanded compliance by late July but that was extended twice, until Sept. 28.
"In recognition of these substantial efforts and the very high percentage of received acknowledgments, the bureau announces that it will not pursue enforcement action against such providers," the agency said in a statement.
The agency left open the door to seeking action against those carriers that do not reach the 90 percent threshold by Oct. 31. And the agency said it expected providers to continue obtaining the acknowledgments until they reached 100 percent.
More than one-third of the VoIP providers that filed with the FCC did not have acknowledgments from at least 90 percent of their customers, according to the agency.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 28, 2005 12:03 PM
September 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
BEA on Wednesday announced the acquisition of M7, an Eclipse-based tools company. The purchase is intended to accelerate delivery of BEA developer tools on the Eclipse framework, BEA said.
M7 offers an Eclipse-based IDE called NitroX. NitroX supports development frameworks such as Struts, Hibernate, JavaServer Faces and JavaServer Pages. BEA said it will fit the acquired technology into its strategy of blending open source and commercial offerings.
BEA plans to merge its existing developer tools functions with M7's in the BEA Workshop for Java IDE, the company said, which will help BEA further its intentions to base its WebLogic Workshop on the Eclipse Tools Framework.
The BEA Workshop for Java IDE will be a commercially sold product. Pricing details are not yet available.
BEA did not immediately provide details on the cost of its M7 acquisition.
-- By Paul Krill, reporting live from BEAWorld 2005, in Santa Clara, Calif.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 28, 2005 09:20 AM
September 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
StarOffice 8, JBoss to support Microsoft
In two separate incidents, Microsoft's products have grown closer to rivals' software, and vice versa.
In the first, Sun Microsystems wove support for Microsoft's macros into StarOffice 8. This means that Sun's suite of productivity apps will now be more compatible with Microsoft Office.
Elizabeth Montalbano of the IDG News Service reported:
StarOffice 8 includes a macro converter that automatically converts Microsoft Office macros to work in StarOffice, said Iyer Venkatesan, a product line manager at Sun Microsystems. The product also enables easier conversion from Microsoft Office of features such as tables and password-protected files, he said.
Additionally, Sun improved the look and feel of the product to be more familiar to Microsoft Office users, Venkatesan said.
The new suite also brings migration tools for Microsoft Office files and macros, fonts, templates, clip art, and a commercial spell checker.
Some news reports are speculating that Sun's timing could lure Microsoft customers tired of waiting for the next version of Office, not slated for delivery until the second half of next year, and those anxious to upgrade, since Microsoft's current suite was released in 2003.
In the second initiative, Microsoft said it will begin working with JBoss to optimize interoperability between its own Windows servers and JBoss' open source, J2EE-certified middleware stack.
Stacy Cowley of the IDG News Service quoted a Microsoft exec saying that its work with JBoss is not to be taken as a softening stance on open source:
"Microsoft is not endorsing Java or J2EE with this agreement. We will still compete heavily with .Net against Java," said Bill Hilf, Microsoft platform technology strategy director. "But finding that shared customer base led us, like it should, to say, 'Customers are sure finding a lot of value in this. Can we do better?'"
Of course, to the half of JBoss customers who run the app server on Windows, the interoperability is more important than the reasoning behind it.
StarOffice 8 is available for download from Sun's Web site.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 28, 2005 07:13 AM
September 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Scientific American has an exhaustive piece on what is involved in arming Wi-Fi networks with the smarts and other associated requirements necessary for dealing with a growing number of users -- which could top 270 million by 2008.
The article is a good primer on how Wi-Fi works, what the common pitfalls are, security issues, and the ways in which wireless networks are beginning to act like their wired brethren.
Follow this link for the full story.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 28, 2005 05:38 AM
September 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)
"Triple play" will drive demand for fiber access - IDC
Businesses and consumers in growing numbers are ready to add network capacity through increased fiber access, a turnaround that could prompt wide-ranging IT purchasing decisions, IDC says.
The emergence of "triple play" - the integration of voice, video and data services on a single broadband connection - is driving service provider demand for more access network bandwidth. IPTV, HDTV, and VOD, in particular, are driving service providers around the world to upgrade their access networks with the capacity of fiber and the equipment that goes with it.
Worldwide fiber access equipment market will reach $1.9 billion in 2009, as users migrate to higher speed data services and innovative new services such as IPTV, HDTV, and video-on-demand (VOD).
"Fiber access networks are the 'last mile' technology that bring the capacity of optical fiber directly to consumers and businesses," said Sterling Perrin, manager of IDC's Optical Networks research. "Following the stagnation of optical core networking over the past few years, the fiber access market is showing real promise, and, ultimately, can drive a reinvestment in the core."
In terms of technology, choices for fiber access will be drawn clearly along regional lines. U.S. carriers will remain committed to broadband passive optical networking (BPON) technology. Japan will focus on Ethernet passive optical net-working (EPON) technology. Europe and Asia (excluding Japan) will favor point-to-point Ethernet, but there will be a small mix of EPON and BPON within both of these regions. Equipment vendors hoping to maximize on fiber access market growth will play in multiple technologies, and regions, if possible.
IDC said worldwide fiber access networking market will grow at a 16.6 percent between 2004 and 2009.
Video is a key driver for the move to fiber access in the U.S. and Europe and to a lesser extent in Asia.
To purchase this study, call IDC Sales at 508-988-7988 or email sales@idc.com.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 27, 2005 04:08 PM
September 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Tech execs pepper top of Forbes richest list
Four of the top five wealthiest men on Forbes list are executives, and founders, of technology companies.
Bill Gates, of course, reigns atop the pack, valued at $51 billion. His non-techie friend, the investor Warren Buffet, is second with $40 billion. Paul Allen follows, at $22.5 billion; next is Michael Dell and his $18 billion. Rounding out the top five, Larry Ellison has $17 billion.
The rest of the top 10 are all Waltons, as in WalMart Waltons.
Steve Ballmer ranks 11th, at $14 billion. Slightly further down the list, tied for 16th, are Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, each worth $11 billion.
The full Forbes 400 Hundred Richest Americans is available online, along with amusing polls on the worst thing people would do for a billion dollars, and the best dressed billionaire.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 27, 2005 07:44 AM
September 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)
The 3 biggest IT challenges today
Technology executives indicated in a PricewaterhouseCoopers study that the toughest challenges they face are:
1 Competition from well-established companies
2 A Fierce battle for talent (Think Microsoft, Google and Kai Fu-Lee here.)
3 Emergence of start-up competitors
PwC drew other conclusions as well. From the teaser for the study:
To profit from change, technology companies must manage rapidly evolving risks by using flexible strategies, business models and cultures.
The pace of change in the technology industry has slowed from the frantic pace of the '90's, and industry executives are not confident in their company's ability to understand, evolve and thrive in the current environment.
Attention to customers drives change for technology companies.
Developing partnerships and alliances is crucial for technology companies to thrive amidst change.
PwC noted that tech execs believe convergence to digital services and economic expansion in China, India and Europe will have the biggest impact on their business within the next decade.
The results were published in Embracing Change in the Technology Industry, the first in a six-part series that will be released throughout the coming 12 months.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 27, 2005 06:18 AM
September 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Does peer-to-peer networking pose security problems, or not?
P2P is seen as a security risk by more than half of companies, according to a survey by Sage Research.
While conducting the research for its Sage Market Pulse the company, in fact, found that 51 percent of respondents consider P2P a 'major' security threat.
Looking to get a handle on security, 44 percent of those surveyed plan to rate-limit use of P2P traffic through deep-packet inspection. That's one way of alleviating some security issues that those 43 percent working to deliver commercial services via P2P just might embrace.
Additionally, 39 percent of respondents plan to facilitate P2P traffic on their networks by caching frequently accessed content.
But back to that first statistic: If 51 percent of companies somewhat or strongly agree that P2P is a major security threat, what about the other 49 percent?
Is IT really split down the middle on whether peer-to-peer has security issues?
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 27, 2005 05:44 AM
September 26, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft and Palm join forces on the Treo to shake up consumer electronics industry
Palm's deal with Microsoft which will incorporate Windows Mobile 5.0 in a version of the Treo smartphone is a significant announcement for a number of reasons.
In the mobile world, one of the major complaints I always heard as I covered Microsoft and the many handset and handheld manufacturers is that you either did it the Microsoft way or you took a hike.
In other words if you want their OS on a cell phone or handheld you had to fulfill certain form factor and internal hardware requirements: a scroll wheel, a screen size of certain dimensions, unique audio and display requirements, browser specific, and a certain memory and processor configuration.
The deal with Palm changes all of that. For the first time that I can remember, Microsoft is compromising.
Palm will be offering a Treo handset or smartphone, that uses the Microsoft Mobile 5.0 but this time the OS will conform with the Palm design and hardware configuration not the other way around.
Has Microsoft learned a lesson here? I think so. Their Achilles heal up until know has been in the mobile space. They don't have near the market share enjoyed by Palm. By getting their OS placed on the single most popular converged handheld and handset they are suddenly a major player.
Of course, Palm gets to extend its marketshare by being able to offer either a Palm OS or Windows-based version of the Treo.
What does this mean to the consumer electronics [CE] industry?
The answer is, watch out. Microsoft is finally getting it. And if they begin to understand consumer electronics like they understand high tech, the likes of Sony, Sharp, Toshiba and Panasonic better watch their back.
As Rex Crum of MarketWatch points out:
"Palm and Microsoft competed directly for years in the handheld market."
However, I belive the winds of change are in the air. The combination of Apple, the iPod and Cingular, and now Microsoft and Palm Treo may indicate a whole new era as high tech begins, through partnerships something it has always done better than CE companies, to take on the traditional CE players.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on September 26, 2005 02:23 PM
September 26, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google taps its own for predictive modeling system
A new type of service is being used within Google that tries to forecast the future by collecting data on what its employees think will happen regarding specific events.
From The New York Times piece At Google, workers are placing their bets:
Google has created a predictive market system, basically a way for its employees to bet on the likelihood of possible events. Such markets have long been used to predict world events, like election results. Intrade, part of the Trade Exchange Network, allows people to bet on elections, stock market indexes and even the weather, for example.
In Google's system, employees can bet on how the company will perform in the future, forecasting things like product introduction dates and new office openings. It was devised under a program that allows engineers to spend one day a week on a project of their choice.
The natural question this raises: When will we see a beta version open to the public? Oh yes, and I wonder what Google's employees think will happen with the authors suing their company for massive copyright infringement?
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 26, 2005 07:52 AM
September 26, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft answers Google with search ads
Microsoft and Google are increasingly at each other's throats.
Today, it's in the search advertising space. Microsoft, in fact, is expected to unveil its answer to Google's AdSense with search ads of its own, according to The New York Times.
The article reports that Microsoft's search ad system will be part of MSN, and "is meant to improve on those of Microsoft's rivals by allowing marketers to aim ads on Web search pages to users based on their sex, age or location."
Yahoo is also investigating search ads, the story points out, but thus far has not yet made any formal announcements.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 26, 2005 07:42 AM
September 26, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Palm to add Windows Treo to lineup
Palm, Microsoft and Verizon are slated to hold a press conference this morning to unveil a Windows-based Treo. What's more, Palm is expected to announce that it will drop the PalmSource operating system and replace it with once-rival Windows Mobile 5.0.
Tom Krazit of the IDG News Service reported:
Palm and PalmSource had hoped to use Cobalt, the code name for a smartphone version of Palm OS, in an upcoming Treo, but it never came to pass, said Todd Kort, principal analyst with Gartner. Palm chose to use Garnet, an older version of the Palm OS, in the Treo 650, and was forced to do a significant amount of software development on its own to make Garnet suitable for a phone, he said.
In addition to the Windows OS, it has been reported that the smart phone will house: a 1 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities, and it will run on Verizon's high-speed EV-DO data network.
Analysts are saying that the move could be a boon to Microsoft's mobile OS.
Engadget has a photo of the Windows Treo. The Washington Post on Windows Mobile 5.0.
Check back on InfoWorld.com later today for the full story.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 26, 2005 06:47 AM
September 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Hurricane Rita scams hit before the storm
Several security organizations are reporting that online phishing scams are hitting the Web even before the massive Hurricane Rita makes landfall.
The SANS Internet Storm Center and The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team on Friday both posted warnings about Hurricane Rita charity scams. US-CERT recommends users do not follow unsolicited Web links received in e-mails. The safest way to donate online is to check the FEMA site for legitimate charities to donate to, according to US-Cert.
The Red Cross has set up a special email address for reporting suspicious sites. Send information to fraudalert@usa.redcross.org.
Phishing attacks of all kinds appear to be on the rise. According to research firm Gartner, the number of phishing e-mail recipients has grown 28 percent in 2005. The latest type of phishing scam, discovered Friday by SurfControl, is capable of displaying the padlock security icon on spoofed phishing Web sites.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on September 23, 2005 04:27 PM
September 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
A look at some practical new products from Demo 05
While some new products leave you scratching your head and wondering 'what were they thinking?' there were some very practical product introductions at Demo Fall 05 that I did not get a chance to write up during the event so I thought I'd just blog'em.
Demo for those not familiar with the annual, now bi-annual event, allows mainly startups to present never-before-seen hardware and software products to an audience that's made up mainly of investors.
Besides the usual VCs I saw taking notes during the six minute segments allotted to each company, there were also companies like T-Mobile and MasterCard looking around for something that they might be interested in buying or licensing.
Jingle Networks' 1-800-Free 411 is a service that gives users free 411 calls if they opt in to hearing a nine second ad before getting the phone number they need.
The typical fees for a 411 call range anywhere from $1.25 to $3.50 depending on your service provider. Last month I paid $27 for using 411 information so I'm in.
Since 80 percent of 411 calls are business related, according to Tom Latinovich, senior vice president of Business Development at Jingle, the nine-second pitch that precedes getting the number matches your inquiry to a relevant business.
If you call to get the number of the local pizzeria you might get an ad from another local pizza joint offering you two dollars off a large pie.
Video Egg is a B2B play offering its plugin video technologies to companies like eBay and the enterprise.
The gist of it is that once deployed on a Web site it reads any video format and, for example, would make uploading a video on eBay as easy as uploading jpegs are now.
VideoEgg can read at least 100 different file formats, according to Matt Sanchez, co-founder, president and CEO, and will even accept video straight from a camcorder.
Speaking of eBay, I also liked the product gNumber from a company called Unwired Buyer
I've lost enough auctions to appreciate any technology that will call me on my cell during the last five minutes of an auction to tell me if I've been outbidded.
gNumber allows you, in under 30 seconds, to place a new bid over your cell phone by voice, when you're not at a Web site. And if you're still not the high bidder it will tell you immediately.
It is eBay certified by the way.
Finally, if you're sitting in the back of a taxi with two colleagues and you wished you could conference them in to the mission critical call you have on your cell phone then Callpod is the solution.
It works with both tethered and wireless headsets and allows users to set up and share voice and data on the fly.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on September 23, 2005 11:13 AM
September 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Demand for in-home broadband slows, Pew report says
The pool of those interested in moving to broadband connections is slowing, according to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
"The migration to broadband is happening more slowly for dial-up users in 2005 than 2002," John B. Horrigan, Director of Research at the Pew Internet Project and the report's author, said in a statement. "Today's dial-up users are older, less educated, and with lower income than their counterparts in 2002, all factors associated with tepid internet use. With fewer new internet users coming online these days, the stock of potential broadband subscribers is not being replenished."
A May 2005 survey found that 53 percent of home internet users go online using broadband connections compared with 50 percent in December 2004, a small but statistically insignificant increase, Pew said. This is a slower growth rate than in a comparable time frame a year earlier; from November 2003 to May 2004, home high-speed penetration grew by 20 percent, from 35 percent of home users to 42 percent.
The findings, to be presented this week at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, less pent-up demand for bandwidth among today's dial-up internet users relative to late 2002, Pew said. In combination with almost flat internet adoption by non-users, these facts suggest that sustaining a high rate of home broadband uptake will be hard.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 22, 2005 02:00 PM
September 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Bloggers handbook gets published to help dissidents beat censorship
With the support of the French foreign ministry, Reporters without Borders published a guide book for dissident bloggers in repressive countries.
The group said that the book houses tips and technical advice on how to remain anonymous, get around censorship, set up and make the most of a blog, establish credibility as well as tricks for publicizing a blog and getting picked up by search engines.
From the Reporters without Borders announcement, the impetus of the book:
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.
The Handbook for Bloggers goes on sale today, or can be downloaded in English, French, Chinese, Arabic and Persian at www.rsf.org.
Contributors include prominent bloggers Dan Gillmor and Jay Rosen, and Canadian Internet censorship specialist Nart Villeneuve.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 22, 2005 10:54 AM
September 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Audio eavesdropping added to list of computer security threats
Researchers at the University of California Berkeley have found a way to decipher passwords and other private information by listening to clicks from a computer keyboard.
According to The Daily Californian, the eavesdropping technique translated audio recordings of keystrokes with up to 96 percent accuracy.
The Berkeley researchers used $10 microphones and a software program algorithm to detect minuscule differences in the sound each letter makes as it is struck, according to the article. Speech recognition techniques were also used.
Cal's new research is based on an earlier keyboard security research done by IBM.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on September 21, 2005 04:10 PM
September 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Ellison pans open source databases
MySQL and PostgreSQL database adherents may beg to differ, but Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is not sold on the enterprise-readiness of open source databases.
Asked for his take on open source rivals to his own commercial database platform at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Ellison was quick to pan them.
"As of right now, the open source databases do not have a lot of industrial-strength support. We'll see how it all plays out," Ellison said. Open source databases have limited uses such as for Internet caching, according to Oracle's brash CEO.
While the open source Linux operating platform has benifitted from investments from companies such as IBM and Novell, open source databases have not had this kind of support, Ellison contended.
"One of the myths around open source is open source is built by a bunch of guys who work at Radio Shack and when they go home at night, they log onto the Internet and write code," Ellison said. But this has not been the case with Linux, he said.
Ellison also commented on software pricing formats, saying he preferred prices based on the volume of revenue per employee at a user site as opposed to per-processor or multicore pricing formats.
"I think that licensing model works better for most people than what we currently have," Ellison said.
Posted by Paul Krill on September 21, 2005 03:57 PM
September 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google's plan for a computing platform to dethrone Microsoft
Google has dazzled the tech world with a series of new features, acquisitions and a hiring binge of stellar figures such as Vint Cerf. But what is the company really up to?
Author Stephen Arnold says Google is this era's transformational computing platform and could be about to push aside Microsoft from the center of the technology universe.
In the ebook, "The Google Legacy; How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software," Arnold says Google is about much more than search.
Google's computing platform, which Arnold calls Googleplex after the name of the company's Mountain View, Calif. headquarters, is a faster, cheaper and simpler computer processor and operating system than competitor systems, he says. Its price advantage is five or six to one over other hardware. Massively parallelized and distributed, its processing capability can be expanded indefinitely.
In addition, Google has re-coded Linux to meet its needs, Arnold says. This re-coding enables Google to deploy numerous current and future applications -- 50 or more -- without degrading performance.
Google products have the potential to be assembled into a version of MS Office -- including word processing -- and many other applications.
"Google has a next-generation computing platform," Arnold writes in a sample chapter. "That platform is optimized to deliver virtual applications to its users worldwide."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 21, 2005 11:29 AM
September 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
An insider's take on the Microsoft reorg
The anonymous blogger who writes Mini-Microsoft has a long post about the reorganization Microsoft announced, calling it a game of musical chairs that won't have all that much impact on product development.
From the post:
My only cynical take on this reorg is that it can be used as a Three Card Monty to break the continuity of accountable and hit a reset button to start the clock ticking all over again. Is it just shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic (or HMS Blackcomb)? It certainly makes me want to shut up and stop typing and just play a wait and see.
The entire entry is here, and it's worth a read to gain some insight, albeit unofficial and anonymous, into the minds of Microsoft executives and reasons for the reorganization.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 21, 2005 08:44 AM
September 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google trials free Wi-Fi service
Now that the word is officially out and, in fact, Google has confirmed it is beta testing a Wi-Fi service, opinions and speculations are emerging.
Some are saying that the service promises to boost Google's reputation and its ad revenue.
Other reports say the move will better help Google compete with rivals ranging from Microsoft to Skype. From The New York Times story Avidly seeking wireless clues from Google:
Having its own wireless service, some analysts said, could reduce the risk Google would face if a big Internet service provider, like AOL, which now generates a lot of Google traffic, fell into the hands of its rival Microsoft. AOL and Microsoft have held talks recently. "Google may want to have more control over its own destiny," said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.
John Battelle, author of Searchblog, writes that "maybe this is just a speculative test and it's teaching us the power of the Google Rorschach effect in real-time."
In Why I fear Google Wi-Fi, invesetment site The Motley Fool's Seth Jayson points out that the Secure Access client users need to download to use Google Wi-Fi is a "spooky irony.
It encrypts your Wi-Fi data streams and filters your Net experience through Google's "secure" servers. Basically, Google is saying "Use our encryption servers so one will snoop on your data -- except us." The terms by which Google will or will not save, transmit, monetize, report to the authorities, or otherwise exploit data you send through its servers are explained in less-than-clear fashion on a few layers of its privacy pages.
A story in The Register suggests that Secure Access gives Google "the advantage of knowing what you're looking at, and exactly where you are geographically -- a huge advantage to its core advertising business."
As Matt Whipp for PC Pro put it: Google has already bagged search and contextual advertising, rolled out e-mail, instant messaging, VoIP. All that's missing is to provide the Internet connection itself.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 21, 2005 06:13 AM
September 20, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Jobs discusses greedy record labels, Apple secrecy, and more
Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs skipped the formality of a keynote presentation and instead talked with the media Thursday at Apple Expo Paris to discuss the iPod, music and the need for secrecy.
Jobs said that some music labels are getting "greedy" as they reportedly attempt to force Apple to change the prices it charges on the iTunes Music Store.
"The problem is we are still competing with piracy," said Jobs, according to Macworld. "The labels make more money from selling tracks on iTunes than when they sell a CD. There are no marketing costs for them. We are competing with piracy, so it needs to be a fair price - if the price goes up people will go back to piracy," he warned.
Jobs said that about 75 percent of the iTunes Music Store catalogue is selling at least once a month, giving copyright holders money. "If they want to raise prices they are getting greedy," said Jobs.
Apple continues to see growth in the Macintosh market, which many feel is a result of the so-called "halo effect" caused by the incredible demand for the company's iPod MP3 player.
In June, Apple confirmed that the company would move from PowerPC based processors to Intel. Jobs said that the company would "find out" if the transition would impact its Mac unit sales, but said they remain on schedule.
Jobs also discussed Apple's reputation for secrecy, which has spawned creation of many popular rumor sites and articles that openly speculate on upcoming products. This, in turn, has led to several lawsuits and letters from lawyers demanding that Web sites remove stories from, Macworld said.
Jobs explained the company's motivation in not discussing future products.
"Microsoft is copying our operating system, Dell is copying our hardware. They just have to follow our tail lights," said Jobs smiling.
Seeing opening to take another jab at Microsoft, Jobs responded to a question about why Apple doesn't make iChat for Windows systems.
"Microsoft has to earn a living too," said Jobs.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 20, 2005 02:56 PM
September 20, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Wi-Fi: Google, airplanes and a hotspot spike
Wi-Fi is on the rise in services, hotspot numbers and, perhaps, even in elevation.
Google posted somewhat vague notices on its Web site today about a Wi-Fi service the company might plan to offer. In the beginning stages it will only be available in San Francisco.
Google has FAQs about the service and a page with a download for Google Secure Access software to be used with Google Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi might also wiggle its way into airplanes if some carriers and airlines have their way. Although foreign airlines Japan Airlines, Lufthansa and SAS already offer Wi-Fi, here in The States UnitedAirlines and Verizon are testing a service that would let travelers "tap, not talk."
Thus far, Wi-Fi is being proposed as an alternative to permitting cell phone usage on flights. At best, though, all airplane Wi-Fi would really do is shelve attempts -- and very temporarily, at that -- to let people place cell phone calls while flying.
Meanwhile, the wireless data hotspot market is expected to grow from just under $1 billion in 2005 to $3.46 billion by the end of 2009, according to market researcher In-Stat.
The more telling figure, however, is that the number of hotspots in action will double from 100,000 this year to nearly 200,000 by 2009, In-Stat projected.
Now that will benefit all of us wireless users on land, in the air, or via Google.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 20, 2005 10:24 AM
September 20, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Will Windows Vista surrender power to Big Media?
In addition to a slew of new features, the forthcoming version of Windows Vista, formerly Longhorn, may bring a new restriction on your ability to use whatever hardware and software you want with it, and the result could potentially carry even more restrictions not typically associated with mere PCs. At least that is what critics fear, in Technology Review's Will Windows Upgrade Hand Power to Big Media?
TR reports:
Ask analysts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the well-known Internet civil-rights organization based in San Francisco, and you'll hear talk of Vista turning into a highly restrictive sandbox -- where only the major movie studios decide who can play.
What's certain is that the new content protections in Vista have been designed in cooperation with media companies such as Disney and 20th Century Fox -- a first for Microsoft. Understandably, these firms have a vested interest in improved security. After all, music CDs have no effective copy protection and the content scrambling system in DVD players was cracked by hackers in 1999.
Microsoft, of course, maintains that with Vista it is trying to "understand the concerns of a lot of stakeholders to protect the content," according to the story.
So, the concern expressed is that Microsoft is giving media companies the tools to enforce DRM, which could result in "Hollywood-decreed micromanagement."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 20, 2005 07:06 AM
September 20, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Are VC's eyeing tech startups again?
The voracious hunger with which venture capitalists handed out money to tech startups during the Internet boom may never be seen again. But there is some growing evidence that VCs might be warming up to tech companies lately.
Take XenSource. This startup shopped around on Sand Hill Road and came back with seven offers in a mere three weeks, according to a story in The New York Times.
One VC quoted in the story put the starting date for the reheated competition at last fall.
The full story is Fighting to get in on the next little thing.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 20, 2005 06:15 AM
September 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Rather than being a futuristic concept, SOA is here now and benefitting enterprises, according to panelists at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Monday.
Panelists from companies such as EDS and ING touted the benefits of SOA in enabling adapatibility in an age of global competition
"We found SOAs to be a very useful technology that allows us to capture the value of legacy systems [and] encapsulate that value in the form of services," said J.R. Jesson, CTO of applications and industry frameworks portfolio at EDS.
"We're realizing globally as we compete up the chain in the marketplace, we're providing business results to customers. We must provide that at the speed of customers," Jesson said.
At Fidelity Information Services, the company deployed an SOA to help it cope with managing 40 systems and applications that were gained through acquisitions. The company also had eight different middleware systems. Technologies such as Java and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) have figured prominently in Fidelity's SOA, according to Miguel Rotella, senior vice president of integration solutions at Fidelity. SOA and Oracle's software stack help provide flexibility, Rotella said.
"[The stack] gives us that standards orientation," he said.
An official from Deutsche Post, a German bank, said the bank started an SOA initiative in 1999. "Today, the current discussion is how you can implement an SOA and one of the answers is an ESB (enterprise service bus)," said Michael Herr, a senior director at the bank.
Web services, while key to implementing an SOA, are not the be-all-to-end-all for such an architecture.
"Web services itself [is] very helpful, but not enough," Herr said. An SOA backplane is needed that is flexible enough to integrate existing infrastructure, Herr said.
Oracle, like rivals including IBM and BEA, appears intent on riding the SOA wave. With the potential sales of software and services that could arise in implementing SOAs, who can blame these vendors?
Posted by Paul Krill on September 19, 2005 04:32 PM
September 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)
A new worm has been discovered that apes Google's search site and tunes the results to benefit hackers, not Web surfers.
The P2Load.A virus modifies the HOSTS file on a PC so that when users try to access Google, they are redirected to a page that looks exactly the same as Google, but is not controlled by the company. Instead, the exact copy of Google even supports the 17 languages that Google does and redirects typos such as www.googel.com or www.gogle.com, in such a fashion that users are not aware of the change, according to security firm PandaLabs.
Once users inadvertently download P2Load.A, the next time they go to Google, the spoofed page comes up. Some of the search results are selectively changed, and the fake ads are swapped in place of Google's AdWords.
The Register quotes a Panda executive saying that the motivation of P2Load.A's creator is purely financial -- in the form of increased visits to untrusted Web pages.
PCWorld reports that users looking for a free Star Wars game may, instead, install the worm.
P2Load.A strikes both IE and Firefox, Panda said.
Some sites are calling for Google to offer a bounty on the virus writers, much the way Microsoft has done.
Full disclosure: PCWorld is owned by IDG, the parent company of InfoWorld.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 19, 2005 08:52 AM
September 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Are IT shops squandering budgets?
U.K.-based analyst firm Butler Group issued a report indicating that 92 percent of IT investments do not bring competitive value to IT shops. In other words only 8 percent of IT spending reaps quantifiable rewards for the enterprise.
Butler's report raises another important issue: Most companies do an inadequate job of tracking and monitoring IT investments. Furthermore, ROI and TCO studies should not be conducted in isolation because they fail to account for factors such as risk and IT capabilities.
Enterprises might want to bear that in mind as they plan their budgets for 2006. Forrester Research touted a new survey finding that more than half of the 900 respondents will have a bigger budget for IT in 2006 than they did in 2005. The average increase, Forrester noted, will be 4.3 percent.
This should be taken as good news for IT. Only 7 percent of respondents, in fact, said they would have smaller budgets in 2006.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 19, 2005 08:06 AM
September 16, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Bill Gates and Napoleon Dynamite: The video
We're talking about buddy movie material.
Microsoft's instant classic video of Bill Gates and actor Jon Heder spoofing the cult movie Napoleon Dynamite brought down the house at the Professional Developer Conference.
Here is a bootleg version made available by IFILM. The two protagonists seamlessly fit the geek routine to a tee. Not a stretch, of course.
Gates is shown recruiting Heder's fictional character, after which they are seen together in ill-fitting brown suits on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Wash.
Gates talked about his role later in an interview with InfoWorld's Jon Udell.
Anyway, check it out.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 16, 2005 02:11 PM
September 16, 2005 | Comments: (0)
IDC: On-demand CRM is on the move
One item on Oracle's enormous to-do list in the wake of its acquisition of Siebel Systems is to ramp up its on-demand CRM strategy.
IDC says the market generated about $300 million dollars in revenue last year. Salesforce.com led the category with 49.5 percent market share, followed by RightNow Technologies in second with a market share of 13.5 percent.
The good news for Oracle is that the third leading on-demand CRM vendor turned out to be Siebel, which entered the market in January of 2004, but still managed to score a fifth place ranking.
"On-demand applications made their presence known in a measurable way in the CRM market in 2004 and they continue building momentum in 2005," said Mary Wardley, vice president of CRM Applications research at IDC. "Although these applications currently compose a small percentage of the overall CRM applications market, suppliers of these applications are reaching end-user organizations during critical replacement cycles."
So Oracle has a good start. The integration now begins.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 16, 2005 11:39 AM
September 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
IT spending fears outweigh security concerns
According to the results of a poll released today, businesses care more about curtailing their budgets than they do about security.
The Maritz Poll surveyed small and medium-sized companies and found that 80 percent of respondents are concerned about security, spam, phishing, spyware and adware infiltration. Indeed, 40 percent indicated that in the last year they had been attacked by hackers, and 75 percent had been bit by a virus.
Furthermore, the firm found that 92 percent of companies have had security issues impact computer performance levels affected by as much as 50 percent.
All that said, only 53 percent saw their IT security budgets rise and only 47 percent expect those budgets to increase in the next year.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 15, 2005 09:55 AM
September 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft might buy stake in AOL
The NY Post reports that Microsoft and Time Warner are discussing a deal that could make AOL a part of MSN. The story says:
According to two sources familiar with the matter, Time Warner is in talks with Microsoft about selling the stake in AOL and then combining it with Microsoft's Web unit MSN.
Under the plan being considered, Microsoft would pay some money to Time Warner for the AOL stake, leaving the two companies approximately equal partners in the venture.
While the deal could fall apart, the companies are hopeful they can wrap it up within the next couple of months.
The Post also writes that Time Warner has had talks with both Yahoo and Google about AOL. The story is here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 15, 2005 06:53 AM
September 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Gates, Vista and Napoleon Dynamite
In conjunction with Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference, Chairman Bill Gates was interviewed by InfoWorld's Jon Udell and weighed in on a variety of serious issues, including the relationship of Office 12 to Vista and .Net, and how the .Net CLR and runtime will become widespread.
But Microsoft also screened a video at PDC of Gates playing the role of a programmer in a spoof based on the 2004 cult movie "Napoleon Dynamite."
The video showed the film's celebrated anti-hero reporting to work as a programmer for the world's largest software maker, according to Reuters.
In a face-off between the two nerd icons, Jon Heder, the actor who plays Napoleon Dynamite, beats Gates in a slapping match to become the head of the software giant.
Gates is shown recruiting Heder's fictional character, after which they are seen together in ill-fitting brown suits on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Wash., Reuters said.
In the last scene of the video spoof, Gates is seen scurrying into the office of his boss, Napoleon Dynamite.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 14, 2005 03:13 PM
September 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft uncorks workflow tools
Wednesday at PDC, Microsoft announced Windows Workflow Foundation, a new Windows technology that will let developers stitch together Microsoft Office apps and custom-built software into composite, enterprise-class workflow applications.
With WWF, according to Microsoft group product manager Scott Woodgate, Microsoft will be able to offer "the first workflow-enabled operating system."
WWF will have the effect of making Office, which in version 12 will support WWF, part of a distributed app dev environment. For example, with MS's SharePoint portal server as the front end, developers will be able to exploit Outlook for routing messages and use templates in Word, Excel, and Access to create powerful, process-driven apps.
Developers can take advantage of WWF using a GUI plug-in to Visual Studio 2005 or simply edit the underlying WWF code. Changes to the code are immediately reflected in the graphical schematic and applications can even be constructed to enable end users to change workflows. "With WWF, Microsoft will let programmers to isolate process logic and business rules as they create composite applications," says Woodbridge. Yet WWF is language-independent, using a sequencing engine to run processes. A BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) module is available now as a free download, but other orchestration schemes will be supported as well.
Perhaps the biggest shocker is that Microsoft is announcing WWF and making a beta version available the same day -- not long after releasing the WinFS beta early. For shipping versions of these and other nexgen APIs, we'll have to wait until the second half of 2006, when Vista and Office 12 are also supposed to ship. Until then, developers can take advantage of these four technologies' backward compatibility and play with betas on Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP.
-Written by Eric Knorr.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on September 14, 2005 10:37 AM
September 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Bartz: Open source won't take over software industry
Not all software will become open source, according to longtime Autodesk Chairman, President and CEO Carol Bartz.
Speaking at a Computer History Museum event in Mountain View, Calif., on Tuesday evening, Bartz noted that programmers developing open source software for free still have paying, daytime jobs.
"Where I fall apart with open source is it's [that] all those people are getting paychecks with software companies who are doing open source programming at night," Bartz said. Once those paychecks stop, what happens to those programmers, Bartz asked.
Interviewied afterward, she said that while open source programmers may be fanatic about the free software movement, not all software will be made available via open source. Her comments echoed similar sentiments expressed by a Microsoft executive in 2004.
Bartz also touched on the issue of basing programmers overseas.
"We find China to be a better development place for us than India for many reasons," she said. However, she added, "I personally think that India's important to our country and our industry as a longterm balance to China. I think China is going to be very difficult to do business with in the next decade." India, with its emerging middle class, will be more amenable to global and American business, she said.
Bartz also talked about her days at Autodesk and prior to that. After joining Autodesk in 1992, she discovered on her second day on the job that she had breast cancer, which required surgery and seven months of chemotherapy.
During Bartz's tenure, Autodesk has grown its revenues from $285 million to $1.23 billion in fiscal year 2005. The company has diversified beyond its AutoCAD software base, participating in endeavors ranging from graphics software for entertainment to assisting emergency management management efforts in places like the Gulf states, with software for shelter and evacuation management.
Commenting on Autodesk's attractiveness as a merger target, Bartz said the company once was viewed as having a crazy culture that would be difficult to assimilate. (Earler, she noted that the company has allowed dogs in its building, for example.)
However, "I think we have certainly proven that we have a good culture and a great product and a great market. We now also have become expensive and that's good," Bartz said.
Bartz is not ready to leave Autodesk. "You've got to leave when things are going well and they are, but not yet. I want to enjoy it," she said.
Although Bartz may be the best-known woman CEO in the technology industry, she is not an advocate of the concept of mentoring.
"I don't believe in those," she said. "I think you have to learn from everybody," including politicians and teachers, Bartz said.
She acknowledged being contacted about mentoring requests.
"I just don't like that idea," Bartz said.
Posted by Paul Krill on September 14, 2005 09:49 AM
September 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google launches blog search tool
Google announced a site for searching blogs, a move many people expect the other major search engines to follow.
The BBC reported that Google only started indexing blog entries made from June 2005. But now it is looking at ways of indexing older posts.
SearchEngineWatch wrote that Google defines blogs as sites that use RSS and other structured feeds and update content on a regular basis.
In the case of myriad media Web sites, InfoWorld included, it is commonplace to push out several different story types via RSS and, of course, to update content regularly. For instance, we deliver both blogs and news stories via RSS. But there is an important distinction between the two story types, and a blog search engine that fails to interpret the difference simply won't work.
To give the engine a test lap, I plugged in my own name, since I both blog and write news stories for InfoWorld. The returns were pretty reasonable, until the second page of results when I came upon a news story that we posted on August 29, 2005. True, it had my byline on it, but the article was not a blog. I kept sorting through the results and all was well until page 6, and then they became less relevant, though I did not come across any more news stories or non-blog items.
I gave up on page 8. But in any given search I rarely make it even that far. Bearing that in mind, and considering I encountered only one misplaced search result, I'd say that bodes well for Google's ability to narrow its search to blogs -- which is ultimately what will make or break this tool.
Remember that Google calls this a beta and, even though Gmail is technically still in beta, Google Blog Search is, after all, brand new.
There are different ways to access the engine: blogsearch.google.com (Google-style interface), search.blogger.com (Blogger-style interface), The Blogger Dashboard, or The Navbar on any Blog*Spot blog.
Google has a page of FAQs on the new tool.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 14, 2005 07:01 AM
September 13, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Search engines get in on Katrina relief
Google, Lycos, and Yahoo in separate efforts are putting their search technology to use to help survivors of hurricane Katrina find people and information through the Web.
Google last night announced via its blog two new search tools for Katrina relief. The company created a Katrina People Search people finder tool and a special search index that returns results only from Katrina-related Web sites, according to Google.
Google officials said the company indexed numerous public Katrina-related databases including the Katrinasafe.com site, which lets people involved in the disaster report their status or search for missing friends or relatives.
Lycos, meanwhile, is offering a similar search page that lets users scour multiple Hurricane Katrina sites for information about survivors and missing persons.
Yahoo, in addition to offering a people finder tool for Katrina sites, also launched a slew of message boards for coordinating people search. These public message listings include "Missing," "I'm Okay," and "Pets Lost and Found." Yahoo also lists other services grouped by city, parish, university, and relief center.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on September 13, 2005 04:23 PM
September 13, 2005 | Comments: (0)
IBM: Oracle's Siebel buy won't change us
Despite Oracle's acquisition of Siebel, which creates a potential applications juggernaut, IBM will stick to its guns and not be pressured into entering the applications market, IBM's Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive for the company's software group, said on Tuesday morning.
The company will instead remain in the business of selling ancillary software, hardware and services to applications users, Mills said during a teleconference pertaining to the vendor's SOA product rollout.
"The ecosystem surrounding all applications vendors, be it Oracle or Microsoft or any other vendor, is many times larger than the revenue of those applications, often a factor of 10 [times] bigger," said Mills.
"We're the largest providers within [Oracle's] ecosystem," he said.
"IBM realizes many billions of dollars a year from these relationships," with Oracle product users, Mills said
Mills added he is not concerned with the possibility that the former PeopleSoft and Siebel applications may be more finely tuned to run with an Oracle database than IBM's DB2. While Oracle cannot be expected to promote DB2, other application vendors may respond to Oracle's applications buy by forging tighter links with IBM, according to Mills. He cited SAP as an example of how this already has happened.
"The ecosystem adjusts itself and for every action there is a reaction," Mills said.
Posted by Paul Krill on September 13, 2005 11:53 AM
September 13, 2005 | Comments: (0)
More to WiMax than mobile apps?
While WiMax vendors eye mobile applications, it is the fixed wireless usage that will prevail as its bread and butter, at least according to a report issued this morning by Visant Strategies.
Visant projected that the worldwide wireless broadband audience of five million in 2005 is expected to grow by 40 percent yearly through 2010. The firm foresees a $3.4 billion annual opportunity for fixed and portable broadband equipment by 2010. Andy Fuertes, the report's author, wrote:
WiMAX will account for 50 percent of that multi-billion dollar market by the end of the decade, with much activity in the 3.5 GHz band. The market for cable modem and digital subscriber line replacement is expanding today while WiMAX in the mobile network remains 2 years to 4 years away.
Certified mobile WiMAX equipment will arrive during or after 2007 and mobile carriers typically test new technologies from 12 months to 18 months before implementing them throughout the network.
The full report is titled 802.16/WiMAX: Assessment of Fixed and Mobile Opportunities.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 13, 2005 10:06 AM
September 13, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft's highly-anticipated Professional Developer's Conference officially kicks off in Los Angeles.
Already the reports have begun circulating about what Microsoft will divulge at the show. The Redmond Giant is expected to unveil Sparkle, a purported "Flash-killer." Executives are also expected to give attendees a glimpse of Vista.
ITWorld Canada points out that a power outage struck the convention center yesterday, in PDC: Bridging the gap with XML, in which it discusses what developers should expect at the show regarding Vista, SQL Server and Visual Studio.
Computerweekly reports that developers will be given code for Vista, as well as the latest builds of Visual Studio and SQL Server, both of which are slated to ship in early November.
Tom's Hardware Guide offers a preview of its own fashion, including an explanation of what a hardware-centric site is looking for at PDC. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer previews the show in a news story and a blog post.
Microsoft's own Ari Bixhorn has a blog about the event. Caveat Emptor: this one is written with all the enthusiasm you might expect from Microsoft's director of Web services strategy.
We will have continuing coverage of PDC on InfoWorld.com.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 13, 2005 08:06 AM
September 12, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Oracle acquisition of Siebel is not good news for Salesforce.com
Marc Benioff's ambitious plans to make Salesforce a platform for the integration of all enterprise applications is not going to happen, at least not in the enterprise. Today news that Oracle will acquire Siebel is a stunning example of why it won't.
Salesforce.com announced today AppExchange, a technology or platform if you will, that allows its customers to incorporate third party Web services and Web service-based applications into the Salesforce.com architecture.
While it sounds like Benioff is on the cutting edge with an SOA-like solution, I am afraid this is not a solution that the enterprise is looking for.
True, Salesforce.com has been growing and winning more enterprise-level customers for its on demand CRM solution. But I'm afraid its growth stops there.
AppExchange is counter-intuitive to everything that is happening in the market.
The Oracle acquisition is not a mere reflection of Larry Ellison's desire to be king of the hill. It is also a reflection of the desire on the part of large companies to reduce the amount of applications and networks they need to support.
Instead of one throat to choke, one stack to manage, Marc Benioff would have us believe, that large companies want to go out and link dozens of smaller applications, some of them untried and untested, together.
And if you think that sort of sounds like the SOA paradigm you would be right. Taking components from here and there and linking them together is what componentization is all about.
But I tell you this idea runs completely counter to the real world where companies are trying mightily to jettison point solutions and the number of applications they need to manage and support in favor of a single solution from the likes of Oracle, SAP or Microsoft.
Salesforce.com and AppExchange may be right for SMBs in the short run, but even the M in SMBs are looking for and often need the same solutions that the enterprise needs.
The line between what a medium-sized, $1 billion company needs and an enterprise-sized $2 billion needs are mighty thin.
Salesforce.com needs to refocus its attention on smaller companies or slowly but surely its growth will stop and then atrophy.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on September 12, 2005 03:50 PM
September 12, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Oracle's Fusion vision expands with Siebel purchase
Oracle's acquisition of Siebel Systems adds greatly increased scale to Oracle's key Fusion vision for its integrated suite of products.
Fusion is already the platform for integrating business applications from PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Retek and others. The customers of these products are being wooed with a detailed roadmap, in which Oracle promises full support for years to come.
Now, the purchase of Siebel's CRM applications brings along an enormous customer base, which Oracle CEO Larry Ellison promised to support to the fullest as well, IDG News Service reported. "Because Siebel is the leader and understands the category, it makes us building the Fusion CRM function easier and less risky," he said.
Siebel founder Tom Siebel, a very proud business leader, nonetheless gave a spirited endorsement of the deal. "This is a very beneficial business combination that will allow us to be even more effective in delivering high quality, leading edge solutions into the hands of satisfied customers," Siebel said in a statement.
Oracle President Charles Phillips pointed to the increased scale of Fusion. "Our joint customers have consistently recommended this transaction to both com-panies for over a year," Phillips said. "We will embrace Siebel's best-in-class CRM products and make the features of those products the centerpiece of our Project Fusion CRM."
Oracle has changed the dynamic of the business apps market. "Where does this put Oracle? Right in IBM's face. Nobody can argue with Oracle's scale now," James Governor, principal with analyst firm RedMonk, in London, told IDG News Service.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 12, 2005 11:17 AM
September 12, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Schwartz says Galaxy brings Sun back to roots
During an event for press and analysts this morning, Sun president Jonathan Schwartz said that with its Galaxy announcements the company is embracing its own history.
Saying that one of his favorite customer quotes about Sun is "the past is your future," Schwartz explained that Sun has "spent the past 3 or 4 years getting back to our roots."
Part of that effort, he said, has been to strengthen Sun. "We've spent 3 years eating spinach," Schwartz continued, meaning that they have worked to bolster the company's products, strategy, and direction.
"Our strategy is the same as it was 20 years ago: the network is the computer," Schwartz said.
But he was not only harking back. Schwartz also discussed the current competitive landscape in the server market.
"We are very interested in moving the world's legacy assets forward," he added, mentioning AIX and HP-UX specifically.
HP, meanwhile, announced new virtualization software, some of which applies to HP-UX.
The full story on Sun's product announcements is here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 12, 2005 09:30 AM
September 09, 2005 | Comments: (0)
China continues to make waves as a burgeoning technology and industrial giant, this time apparently banning VoIP provider Skype.
A local arm of China Telecom, the country's biggest fixed-line telecommunications operator, has moved to block access to the Skype service, according to the Financial Times.
The move, by Shenzhen Telecom, highlights the concerns of Chinese operators about the impact of VoIP on their businesses, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said.
"An employee at a Shenzhen Telecom service centre said staff had been instructed to tell customers who complained about being unable to access SkypeOut that such internet telephone services were illegal in China under a 2004 regulation because they would 'destroy market order,'" the Financial Times reported.
Such services threaten the core business of the state-controlled but internationally listed fixed-line operators, China Telecom and China Netcom, the FT said.
Only six Chinese telcos, including China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Netcom, are allowed to operate such VoIP services, according to Shanghai Communications Administration, Shanghai Daily said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on September 9, 2005 04:17 PM
September 09, 2005 | Comments: (0)
WiMax gets real world test in Katrina relief efforts
WiMax is still an unproven technology, but the emerging wireless networking standard is being put to a real world test this week to help re-establish communications in areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
WiMax, also called 802.16a, is a wireless networking standard that promises wider coverage range and bandwidth than other Wi-Fi standards such as 802.11b. The WiMax standard is still undergoing testing, and products have not yet been certified to work with the technology. The first products may be certified by year's end.
Despite its lack of experience, WiMax is being deployed in an evacuation shelter and other places in the Gulf Coast that were hit by the hurricane, according to an Associated Press story.
Intel, which makes WiMax equipment, shipped WiMax gear to the Gulf Coast this week.
WiMax will be useful to connect existing Wi-Fi hotspots set up in shelters to the wider Internet, according to the AP story.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on September 9, 2005 11:30 AM
September 09, 2005 | Comments: (0)
The nefarious nature of AdCalls' free VoIP service
I'm not sure if this is a bellwether for what the forthcoming invasion of VoIP services will bring or not, but Engadget offers a take on the Skype-like services from AdCalls. The site warns that the sneakiness of AdCalls' business model may just cost you. They're not talking about cash, no, the price is "all your friends." Or, at the very least those you call using the services. Engadget explains:
AdCalls promises free long-distance calls from a PC while you watch ads scroll across the app's interface. Too good to be true, you say. You're damn right it is. Apparently by accepting AdCalls' end-user agreement, you give them permission to compile every number you dial and sell them to advertisers.
The rest of the story is here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 9, 2005 07:12 AM
September 09, 2005 | Comments: (0)
New Firefox beta available for download
The Mozilla Foundation has posted a beta version of Firefox 1.5, a.ka. Deer Park, to its Web site for download.
This latest iteration focuses on usability, performance, extensibility, security and privacy, according to a story by Juan Carlos Perez of the IDG News Service.
Though beta releases are primarily aimed at developers willing to provide feedback, anyone interested is free to download the software, Perez wrote.
Other noteworthy new features include: faster Web site navigation, improved tabbed browsing, the ability to bookmark RSS or Atom content, autom