- Report finds licensing dissatisfaction
- Semantic Web takes the stage
- Microsoft releases AIDS research tools
- Benioff quiet about Google rumor
- Ballmer dances around SaaS
- Oracle's Project X
- Microsoft hails software asset management
- Did Google kill Kiko?
- Google quietly opens up Writely
- Tech Ed? One word: Gooooaaal!
January 30, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Report finds licensing dissatisfaction
In an independent report, Forrester Research has found that software licensing and pricing continue to be "marred by complexity, soaring maintenance costs and a lack of flexibility and alignment with business goals."
The company's "Trends 2008: Applications Licensing and Pricing" report featured interviews with 25 clients of leading enterprise applications providers and surveys of 215 business process and applications professionals, queried about software licensing and pricing experiences.
Forrester, which published the report last week, believes trends such as SOA and SaaS will provide the impetus behind a shift in how firms view application licensing and pricing and what they demand from application providers. But in the meantime, business process and application professionals must "arm their firms to mitigate licensing pain points," Forrester said. Some have concluded, however, that licensing and pricing complexity is a necessary evil to fight misuse and accommodate heterogeneity.
Among the study's findings were that licensing remains too complex and often has a lack of clarity regarding the value customers were receiving. Some firms reported paying 26 percent of total cost of ownership on maintenance. Some clients said they paid for maintenance but never used the services.
Users interviewed also were dissatisfied with the inability of vendors to accommodate specific business needs. Mergers and acquisitions, meanwhile, create "a hodgepodge of licensing and pricing models," Forrester said.
The study also found issues with existing customers being treated like "second class citizens" while new customers get significant discounts. Vendor lock-in was another concern.
On the positive side, some vendors have embraced what Forrester called its "licensee's bill of rights." Vendors have worked to shorten sales cycles by assigning dedicated relationship-building account managers. Discounts for loyalty, large account values and early adopter status also are being awarded. Meanwhile, some mid-market vendors tailor service and licensing to clients' specific needs.
Oracle was cited as offering a flexible custom bundle allowing access to all products in a suite and to reapply pricing based on user increases.
Interviewees with the most positive feedback about application providers were early adopters and/or active in user groups, with vendors facilitating open forums for user groups.
SaaS, meanwhile, will force customers to think about cost per-user per-month while SOA will drive customers to consider business process pricing, Forrester said. Customers, meanwhile, will demand third-party alternatives to vendor-controlled maintenance.
Forrester recommendations included educating an organization before contracting with an application provider, insisting on openness and negotiation and considering total costs on a 10-year basis.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 30, 2008 02:08 PM
October 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The semantic Web took center stage Friday afternoon at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, with officials from three companies showing wares in this vein.
According to Wikipedia, the semantic Web serves as an extension to the Web in which content is expressed not just in natural language but also in a format that can be used by software agents that can find and integrate information easier.
Presenting on the semantic Web were Radar Networks founder Nova Spivack; Danny Hillis, CTO of Applied Minds, and Barney Pell, CEO of Powerset.
Spivack introduced a service called Twine. "Twine is a new service for the end user side of the semantic Web and what Twine does is it ties it all together and helps you use [information]," said Spivack, describing the application as knowledge networking.
Twine learns about a user's interest and recognizes people, organizations and concepts. Twine uses natural language understanding and builds profiles of a user and his or her interests.
A user can take an object such as a flickr photo and "twine it," in which a semantic Web of data would be organized about the image. A twine also can be started for a team or a group.
Radar has been approached by banks, media companies and others that want to use Twine as a new way to manage knowledge, Spivack said. The company is about to proceed with an invitational beta program on the application.
Hillis showed an application called Freebase, which is in an alpha stage of release. It opens up silos of data and creates interconnections between them, he said.
"What Freebase is about is a database that has all kinds of data in it and an API that can be used for lots of other applications," Hillis said. Freebase is a platform specifically designed to be used through other applications that take advantage of the data in it.
At Powerset, the company is building a search based on keyword technology, creating a semantic index. Every single page is read sentence by sentence to create this index, said Pell.
For example, a user could search on wrestler Hulk Hogan and find out the kinds of things Hogan does, such as who he has defeated, Pell said.
Powerset also is in an early release stage.
Posted by Paul Krill on October 19, 2007 06:40 PM
June 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft releases AIDS research tools
Microsoft Research has released source code for software tools to advance AIDS vaccine research, with the company's spam filter playing a role in the effort.
Available for free download on Microsoft's CodePlex site, Microsoft is hoping to entice other scientists to use and build upon the tools to expedite development of a vaccine. The tools are intended to help researchers harness computing power to more quickly identify crucial elements of an effective cellular vaccine, Microsoft said.
Microsoft researchers began work in AIDS research in February 2005 after discovering that machine-learning technology, including methods for spam-filtering, had applications for vaccine research. The vaccine work combines technologies including graphical models to comb through HIV strains to find genetic patterns necessary for training patient's immune system to fight the virus, according to Microsoft.
Code for four tools is being released. Researchers can download pre-compiled programs and run them on their own computers, providing more control, Microsoft said. Or, they can download source code and compile the applications themselves, enabling scientists to modify and build on the code.
The tools let researchers sift through complex immune and viral genetic information from a population of infected people to pinpoint key strings of amino acids that must be present in a vaccine for it to be effective. Microsoft also is posting the actual tools on the Microsoft.com Web site.
Specific tools include:
* PhyloD, for incorporating a phylogenetic or evolutionary tree into analysis of patterns. This tool looks for correlations between a person's human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system and the virus that infected that person.
* Epitope Prediction, using machine-learning to relate Microsoft's spam-filtering technology to scan proteins for likely epitopes in people with any HLA type.
* HLA Assignment, for finding epitopes more accurately.
* HLA Completion, to help scientists address the hierarchy of any immune system's HLA types.
Posted by Paul Krill on June 13, 2007 11:01 AM
May 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Benioff quiet about Google rumor
Anyone who thought Salesforce.com Chairman/CEO Marc Benioff might comment Monday on rumors of an upcoming arrangement between Salesforce.com and Google was disappointed.
Opening up the Salesforce Developer Conference in Santa Clara, Benioff acknowledged there may be curiosity, in light of a Wall Street Journal report that said Salesforce.com and Google were discussing a possible partnership that could integrate Google online services such as email with Salesforce.com CRM tools. This would help the two better compete with Microsoft, the report said.
"Everyone wants to know what's going on with us and Google," Benioff said. He acknowledged he has not been known for withholding comments. "However, in this case I'm sorry, but all we can say is we can't comment at this time on what's happening with us and Google," he said.
Salesforce.com is promoting software development on its hosted, on-demand CRM platform. The company with facilities such as its Apex software is looking for developers to bolster the platform with specialty implementations that blend Salesforce.com software with what users need.
"Everyone has written Salesforce.com exactly for them," Benioff said. "They're not generic apps."
The company also is looking to have customers utilize the Salesforce.com on-demand database instead of a third-party offering such as MySQL. Salesforce.com expects to become a billion-dollar company next year, the first on-demand services company to do so, Benioff said.
Also highlighted at the conference was Adobe Systems's upcoming Apollo technology, allowing online applications to be run offline.
"You get native integration of these Web apps on your desktop computer," said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president for the platform business unit at Adobe. Apollo detects whether a network connection is in use or not, he said.
Posted by Paul Krill on May 21, 2007 02:57 PM
May 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
When it comes to SaaS (software as a service), Microsoft wants to turn being half pregnant into a brand. On Wednesday, at the Software 2007 conference, Steve Ballmer offered the Redmond spin on SaaS -- dubbed "software plus services." In other words, why use browser-based applications when fat Microsoft clients can connect to a range of services behind the scenes?
That's roughly the same tune Microsoft has been singing since the company introduced .Net seven years ago. In fact, in 2001, I did an interview with Microsoft's Charles Fitzgerald in which he cited the primitive nature of browser-based applications and declared that Web services would, without exposing themselves to the user, enrich Office and Windows. That's why today we have....auto updates??
This sentiment -- we'll be the concierge between you and the Internet -- stretches all the way back to Microsoft's initial resistance to the Web. Hey, you use our apps on the desktop all the time, why confuse yourself with a browser window to other brands?
Microsoft can't seem to resist regressing to that argument. Which is odd, since in 2005 (at the prodding of Ray Ozzie) Bill Gates issued a company-wide "services wave" e-mail that was similar in tone to the ultra-urgent "Internet tidal wave" e-mail he broadcast in 1995.
Well, that was then, this is now. Thanks to AJAX and Flash, browser apps are competing with desktop apps. Microsoft understands that, or it wouldn't have launched Silverlight. Plus, SaaS is riding a hockey stick of adoption -- and Microsoft knows that, too, which is why Ballmer said he would not rule out acquiring a large SaaS provider.
Old habits die hard. Everyone knows that when Microsoft aggressively pursues a software area, watch out. But Microsoft's SaaS attack just hasn't gotten off the mark. The whole Live initiative is as confusing as it is incremental. Microsoft may need to buy a big SaaS player just to discover which direction it needs to go.
Posted by Eric Knorr on May 10, 2007 12:27 PM
April 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Rumors are flying about Oracle's so called Project X, the details of which Oracle President Chuck Phillips will announce on Monday.
The buzz is that Oracle will release business process components abstracted from its huge portfolio of ERP and CRM applications -- and will provide a framework for reassembling them into new apps tailored to specific business needs.
Actually, Oracle has been throwing strong hints in this direction for awhile now, suggesting that Fusion middleware will provide the SOA infrastructure for a new, more modular world of enterprise applications.
The Oracle Web site teases that Project X will be "an important development initiative that has been underway to unify our broad portfolio of applications and help customers close the gap between evolving business needs and IT's ability to execute."
Ironically, one of the best descriptions of what Oracle may be up to comes from an interview I did last year with BEA CEO Alfred Chuang about the future of software.
"You will have vendors like us that will be selling platforms (and) application vendors that will be selling application components, yet they will be assembled on the fly by an end-user. End-users will be using a tool -- or they will be using templates or processes -- that will represent what their environment is. They can always go back to change the process on the fly, yet the components will continue to be usable within those processes."
I'm betting that's a spot-on general description of Project X, although obviously the "platform" as well as the applications will be Oracle's, not BEA's. We'll see on Monday.
Posted by Eric Knorr on April 13, 2007 12:55 PM
September 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft hails software asset management
Microsoft on Monday touted its efforts in software asset management.
"Software Asset Management is the entire infrastructure and processes necessary for the effective management, control and protection of software assets within an organization, throughout all stages of their lifecycle. As an industry-recognized business process, Software Asset Management is a way to help organizations realize greater value from their IT infrastructure," said Juan Fernando Rivera, director of the Microsoft Worldwide Software Asset Management Program, in an interview published by Microsoft.
Software needs to be recognized as an investment, not an expense, Rivera said. Managing and controlling these assets means having good purchase records and knowing what is being used. A process is needed to cover all stages of the software lifecycle, including knowing when updates are needed, when renewals are up and when it is time to retire software, said Rivera.
Four steps are recommended for software asset management:
* Take inventory.
* Perform a license reconciliation by locating documentation.
* Review policies and procedures.
* Develop an asset management plan moving forward.
Microsoft's own investments in software asset management include educational offerings for partners and customers, tools and content, a partner ecosystem that covers software asset management and customer engagement, including asset reviews.
"Software Asset Management is here to stay. It's about the customer and it's our responsibility to make it easier for them learn about Software Asset Management, realize its importance, and adopt it as a core business practice in their organizations," Rivera said. The full interview can be found here.
Posted by Paul Krill on September 18, 2006 02:53 PM
August 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Bloggers and pundits are engaging in a game of "CSI: Web 2.0" as they try to pinpoint who did in online-calendar startup Kiko.com.
Kiko.com -- including the Web site, the software, and the domain name -- went up for sale on eBay last week. One prospective buyer, who has no public buying or selling history on the popular auction site, has made a bid thus far for $49,999.00.
Whatever the future holds for Kiko, some people are taking this opportunity to point an accusing finger at Google, saying the release of Google Calendar was the fatal blow for Kiko. Take this article from the Guardian Unlimited, which invokes the phrase "Google creep":
"It only takes Google to experiment in a particular online area to kill off fledgling businesses. That appears to be what happened to Kiko. Google launched a test version of its Google Calendar application in April, and that seems to have rung the death knell for Kiko."
Google is becoming an increasingly common and easy target for these types of accusations. The company certainly is shifting more than a couple of technology landscapes as it dabbles not only in search innovation but also Web-based applications, news aggregation, and other projects not necessarily ending with -ation, such as its shiny new free wireless network in Menlo Park, Calif.
But did Google unfairly catch Kiko off-guard with the release of Calendar and pummel the upstart into submission with its hefty muscles? Not quite, if you agree with Richard White, who was a member of the Kiko team.
White shares his own perspectives as to what happened to Kiko, and opines quite explicitly that the company's demise was more due to self-inflicted wounds.
Among them, White writes, the Kiko team didn't stay sufficiently focused:
"We were on track to release the new version of Kiko in the middle of January, when we *lost focus* and starting working on something totally different altogether. This was obviously a suicidal move in hindsight as it cost us 2 months: Kiko 2.0 launched on March 15th instead of January 15th/ During that time two important things happened:
1. 30Boxes came out of nowhere and launched on Feb 14. Thus becoming the new internet calendar darling.
2. Screenshots of Google calendar were leaked and posted all over the Internet."
Additionally, White writes that the company released Kiko 1.0 too early while it still suffered a poor UI, souring some users' first impression. Moreover, he says the team attempted to cram too many features into Kiko 2.0, which resulted in a delayed launch.
I applaud White for his mature and honest perspective of what happened to Kiko and his restraint in not simply blaming Google. The company is a formidable beast, and thus an easy scapegoat: It has the brains and the dollars to crank out innovative products, combined with the enviable agility to do so relatively quickly.
But that doesn't mean that startups should just call it quits for fear that whatever they do, Google -- or Microsoft, or IBM, or any other tech giant for that matter -- will do it faster and better. We saw plenty of promising ventures keel over and die during the Web 1.0 boom, like WebVan and pets.com, but others, like Amazon.com and Salesforce.com (founded in 1999), not only survived, but thrived.
Now we're in the Web 2.0 era, and as hardware and software, as well as the needs of business and users, evolve, the potential for innovative and successful business endeavors expands exponentially.
Yes, the promising Kikos of the world might not survive, but inevitably, another young company will grow up to become the next seemingly unbeatable Googliath. But then a new onslaught of eager Davids will emerge, wielding slings the likes of which we've never seen.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 22, 2006 11:00 AM
August 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Google quietly opens up Writely
Despite all its fans, Google opened up public sign-ups to Writely, its online word-processing application, late last week with little fanfare.
Google snagged Writely last March, and until last Thursday, only a limited number of beta users had a crack at playing with it. Now anyone with an e-mail address can have a go.
Google and the Writely team weren't particularly forthright as to why the application, still in beta, is opening up to the public now. According to the Writely blog, "Maybe it was because we just won a very nice product review on CNET ... or maybe it was that ten-billionth person who emailed us to say, "Hey what's UP? When will Writely open again?" Well, in fact, now Writely is truly ready to open its doors to everyone, so let's just do it!"
For the time being, users won't be able to log in to Writely using their Gmail accounts (as they can with other Google applications, like Google Calendar), but according to the Writely blog, that will soon change.
Of course, the question still on many a pundit's mind is, what is Google's aim with its collection of Web-based productivity apps, including Gmail, Calendar, and Google Spreadsheets? Microsoft Office's market share seems to be a likely target, though as InfoWorld Contributing Editor Oliver Rist notes in his Enterprise Windows column this week, for the time being, the brows in Redmond need not sweat too much: Web applications just don't have what it takes to replace productivity applications on the desktop.
Yet.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 21, 2006 05:27 PM
June 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft's Tech-Ed Conference has been going on all week here in Boston, and there's been lots of great stuff going on -- we heard about the company's plans for its Live platform, its security wares (now "Forefront") and the company's plans for supporting AJAX. But if you had the good fortune to attend Tech-Ed, you can't help but notice that all that takes a waaay back seat to some other news, namely The World Cup, which is (smartly) being broadcast on huge flat screen TVs all over the Boston Convention center, with scores of entranced futbol fans crowded around them. Standing in the crowds, your ears hear German, French, Farsi and British accented English. Sure, a lot of them work for companies that are going to shell out thousands of dollars for them to watch the World Cup in the air conditioned comfort of the Boston Convention Center, but what the hell. They're having fun. The World Cup has also added a strange kind of exhilliration to the otherwise staid (read: dull) trade show thing. I walked in this afternoon just in time to see the hall erupt as England went up 1:0 against Trinidad and Tobego. (England ended up winnning 2-0). No offense to Microsoft, but you don't see folks jumping out of their seats, shouting and hugging each other over User Account Control. ;-)
But hey, Microsoft is a company that gets it. They know they've got a worldwide community of developers. It's just smart planning to have the World's most important sporting event available for easy viewing -- not to mention copius amounts of coffee, fruit, soda and sweets. And it's nice to realize that the otherwise "on message" folks in Redmond realize that there are some things more important that software applications. ;-)
I'm not the only one to notice that application development isn't the first thing on everybody's mind here at Tech-Ed. Check out Julie Lerman's blog for some nice pix of the World Cup scene here at the show.
Posted by Paul Roberts on June 15, 2006 03:43 PM
May 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft confirms Ultimate Office
Microsoft confirmed this week that it is planning an Ultimate version of Office 2007 that will be similar to the enterprise edition that is available only to large businesses.
According to a cNet story, the new retail package will offer nearly all the components available to large businesses in one $679 product.
A company spokeman told Microsoft Watch that "Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 will give people working at home access to the full line-up of 2007 Microsoft Office applications so they can create, find, manage and share information across boundaries using the toolset they're familiar with at the office."
The Ultimate Edition was first noted by sharp-eyed folks at Bink.nu who spotted it in a slide during Bill Gates' WinHEC keynote this week.
Posted by Caroline Craig on May 26, 2006 06:15 AM
January 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Macromedia's, er, Abode's Internet apps platform advances
Having completed its merger with Macromedia, Adobe within a few weeks is set to release a public beta version of its Flex 2.0 rich Internet application development technology. Flex also will begin bearing the Adobe name.
With the upcoming release of Flex, Adobe is looking to expand the user base from its present installed base of 5,000 to 10,000 users to 1 million developers in a few years, said David Mendels, senior vice president of enterprise and developer business at Adobe. The company plans to do this by separating the Flex tool and framework from Macromedia server technology and allowing deployments on any J2EE or .Net server.
"We're server-agnostic," said Mendels, who moves over to Adobe from Macromedia. Adobe held a party at the former Macromedia offices in San Francisco on Thursday evening to tout the merger and its resulting products.
Flex 2.0 features improved performance, a new IDE based on the Eclipse platform and new licensing options.
Asked about the burgeoning AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript plus XML) for rich Internet application development, Adobe officials described Flex 2.0 as similar but more powerful than AJAX.
"It's the same model," as AJAX, Mendels said.
Flex 2.0 already has been available in a less-developed alpha release. The general release is set for the first half of this year. Flex applications use Adobe's ubiquitous Adobe Flash technology on the client side.
-- By Paul Krill, reporting from Adobe's party.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 20, 2006 10:41 AM
January 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft enhancing Project application
Microsoft is offering a tool enabling users of the Microsoft Office Project 2003 project management package to develop and update PowerPoint 2003 presentations.
The Microsoft Office Project 2003 Project Presentation Add-in is available as a free download. Users can build and update PowerPoint 2003 presentations with real-time project data, thus eliminating redundant data entry and potential clerical errors, according to a Microsoft representative.
The add-in works with Microsoft Office 2003 and requires Project 2003 and PowerPoint 2003.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 5, 2006 11:16 AM
December 02, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Word, Excel eyed for software-as-a-service plan
Microsoft's software-as-a-service offerings, unveiled last month, may eventually include access to applications like Word and Excel, according to Sam Ramji, director of the Microsoft Emerging Business Team. Currently, Microsoft hosted services include infrastructure components such as Microsoft Operations Manager. But there have been a number of requests from Microsoft partners to add applications such as Word and Excel; these requests have been passed on to the Office Live team, Ramji said earlier this week.
Posted by Paul Krill on December 2, 2005 04:11 PM
November 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Edify, a maker of voice response systems, is being acquired by Intervoice for $33.5 million in cash.
Intervoice, which makes converged voice and data solutions, is purchasing Edify from Edify parent company S1, according to S1 and Intervoice. The acquisition is intended to strengthen Intervoice's position in the voice automation market, the companies said. The merger will unite Intervoice's development tools, applications and global presence with Edify's Web-based tools, natural language applications and North American presence, the vendors said.
The merger is expected to close in December. Intervoice President and CEO Bob Ritchey will continue in these same roles with Intervoice while Edify President and CEO Mitch Manditch will stay with the company through a transition period. The Edify name goes away as a result of the merger.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 18, 2005 03:59 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
August 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Plumtree Software, one of the earliest pioneers of the market for enterprise portal software, is being acquired by BEA Systems for approximately $200 million in cash.
The companies are holding a conference call with reporters and analysts right now.
Plumtree carved out a valuable space in the portal market with a platform that supported both Microsoft's .Net and J2EE. BEA Systems has its own portal platform, which is based on J2EE.
BEA plans to keep the Plumtree and BEA portal product lines separate. Plumtree's portal is designed for business users. The Plumtree product line includes servers for collaboration, portal, search, and analytics.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on August 22, 2005 02:11 PM
August 10, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google armed its Google News site with the ability to deliver content via either RSS or Atom.
Google execs called support for RSS and Atom the single more requested feature by users, in a story by the IDG News Service.
This new capability will let site visitors establish feeds either for specific Google News sections, such as Sci/Tech, or for specified search terms, such as Linux or databases. Also, users will be able to set up feeds for sections they customize on Google News.
The move is widely seen as a reaction to Yahoo News incorporating content syndication; the company also extended feeds to mobile phones in March.
Dave Winer yesterday explained why he is "not giddy with delight" over Google News supporting RSS.
It wasn't so easy to find someone celebrating Google's RSS support, though I'm certain they are out there.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on August 10, 2005 07:41 AM
August 03, 2005 | Comments: (0)
This morning, the Mozilla foundation announced that it built a money-making unit.
In a story by James Niccolai of the IDG News Service, Mozilla explained its intent:
While the goals of the subsidiary, called Mozilla Corp., include generating revenue and profit, its primary interest is not in making money, the group said. Instead, its main objective is to sustain the development of Firefox and other products, and help the foundation promote its goal of driving open standards on the Web, it said.
The products Mozilla builds, namely the Thunderbird e-mail client and the increasingly popular Firefox browser, will remain free and according to Niccolai's story there are no plans to offer paid services.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on August 3, 2005 08:07 AM
July 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Next Firefox release slated for September
The Mozilla Foundation is planning to release the next major version of its Firefox browser in September, according to information posted to the foundation's Web site. The release will be called Firefox 1.5, although in the past it had been informally dubbed Version 1.1.
Several reports circulating this week said the September release date was a delay from an earlier summer release time frame. However, Computerworld is reporting that the 1.5 release is not delayed, and will ship by "late summer" as previous roadmaps had promised.
Mozilla engineer Ben Goodger posted an updated roadmap to the Mozilla site this week, citing the September Firefox 1.5 release as well as the planned Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 versions:
"We are planning for a Firefox 2.0 and 3.0, but will divide the planned work over (at this point) three major Milestones, 1.5 (September 2005), 2.0 (unscheduled) and 3.0 (unscheduled). All major development work will be done on the Mozilla trunk, and these releases will coincide with Gecko version revs."
Although specific features of Versions 2.0 and 3.0 are still up in the air, Goodger said likely goals for the releases include improvements to Bookmarks and History; per-site options; accessibility compliance; and enhancements to the Extensions system, Find Toolbar, Software Update, and Search.
The beta release of the browser, called Firefox 1.4, is slated to go out in August just ahead of the 1.5 release.
Earlier this week the Mozilla Foundation issued fixes for recent updates to Firefox and its Thunderbird e-mail client. Both the Firefox 1.0.6 and Thunderbird 1.0.6 releases were stability updates designed to fix extensions that did not work in the recent product refreshes.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on July 22, 2005 04:43 PM
July 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Blogs and their power were the subject of a panel discussion at the AlwaysOn conference at Stanford University on Thursday, with panelists making some interesting observations.
"We're seeing about a million [blog] posts every single day," said Dave Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, which tracks blogs.
"It's really taking off and it's not just a U.S. phenomenon," Sifry said. Blogs are being published in languages such as Korean, Chinese and Portuguese, he said.
Panelists discussed potential business models for blogs. "Most are going to be some kind of media model. There will have to be some kind of ad support," according to Allen Morgan, managing director at venture capitalist Mayfield.
Younger audiences have been more familiar with blogs than older persons, said Ned Desmond, executive editor at Time Interactive. With some older audiences, "We find that they barely know what a blog is," Desmond said.
Panelists noted how blogs have the potential to change the definition of who is a journalist. Coverage of the first of the London bombings this month presented a synergy of blogging and traditional journalism, with persons on the scene who were not journalists able to get photos via cellphone.
(From my vantage point, I wonder if perhaps blogs and cellphones could present a new generation of potential Abraham Zapruders. Zapruder was the amateur filmmaker who filmed the visit of President John F. Kennedy to Dallas on November 22, 1963 and ended up with vivid footage of the assassination.)
Panelists pondered the potential that something posted on someone's blog could come back to haunt them decades later. But Dan Gillmor, founder of Grassroots Media and a former columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, pointed out that people have become more forgiving.
Gillmor recalled that Douglas Ginsburg once lost a chance to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice after reports leaked out about past marijuana use. But the current president and his predecessor have had similar issues in their past but were elected anyway, Gillmor noted.
"I think we're going to learn to cut each other some slack. If we don't, we're screwed," Gillmor said.
Posted by Paul Krill on July 22, 2005 03:22 PM
May 20, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Another twist in blogging's fate
I came across a new type of blogger this morning while scouting out links for our Special Report on IDG's Syndicate show and other related news from the blogosphere.
Corporate blogs have become something of a norm. Sun has a host of internal bloggers, and IBM last week set out guidelines for its employees to blog by, just to name two of many. But what I believe is a first emerged today: a Microsoft employee blogging for a media publisher.
John Carroll blogged this morning that he has accepted a job with Microsoft, but will continue to post entries to ZDNet's site. This is different than what Scoble does for Microsoft; he is an employee paid to blog, but his writing is neither affiliated with nor does it appear on a media site.
Carroll was up front with his intentions:
Will I be biased? I've been programming professionally for more than 11 years. During that time, I've used a wide variety of computing technology, and had opinions on all of them. I found that I preferred programming with Microsoft technology. So, if by "bias" you mean I will rely on 11 years of computing experience to guide my opinion, then yes, I will be biased.
Bias does not imply lack of reason. It just means that you have weighed the alternatives and come to your own subjective conclusions. People with opinions are better sources of information than those who lack them. Who do you think is a better source of information, some milquetoast generalist who feigns disinterest or an enthusiast whose affection for his favored technology drives him to understand all he can about it?
A more typical commentary come out of Microsoft this week as well, in the form of CEO Steve Ballmer quoted attempting to curb some of the momentum RSS has gathered:
We believe RSS is important and will be around for a while but it is not going to change the world. It is a little too simple, that is also the reason everyone's using it. We are working on more existing powerful stuff, around XML/Web services [sic] that will address many issues beyond RSS. RSS will be around, but whatever we are working next will be cooler and more prevalent.
Having said that, there are groups in MS that believe RSS has the potential to change everything and many future technologies will be built around RSS, the internal debate goes on.
Ballmer also dismissed Google's Gmail and Blogger as competition to its own Office suite. Undaunted, Google this week introduced ads for RSS feeds, and demonstrated a personalized service of its homepage that will provide news and weather.
The RSS traction continued when Yahoo announced version 2.0 of its Media RSS Module, and Macromedia boosted its blog aggregator.
For coverage of the Syndicate conference, see our Special Report: Blogging takes center stage at IDG Syndicate. (Full disclosure: IDG is the parent company of InfoWorld.)
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 20, 2005 09:01 AM
May 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Gates to outline Office 12 and the 'New World of Work'
At its annual CEO Summit on Thursday, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates will offer up some details about the next version of Office, called Office 12, and lay out how he feels it fits in with his company's "New World of Work" vision.
Due into beta sometime this fall, Office 12 represents a "significant development," Gates is expected to explain during his keynote, that will advance information work in this new world. The upcoming version, not expected to be delivered until late 2006, is expected to help users better manage their communication and collaboration in a unified environment as well as to more readily visualize and extract important in-sights from large amounts of incoming data.
Gates will contend that information workers will prove to be the driving force behind business innovations and that for them to adapt and succeed in the new world of work they need more sophisticated tools that help them apply whatever unique talents and experience and judgment that can have a positive impact on their respective businesses.
"Office 12 has a couple of key areas of focus such as allowing users to better connect with partners and customers through new and simpler ways of collaborating. Right now you work with other people through e-mail, instant messaging but in the future users will have greater control over how people reach you and what type of context you want to be contacted in," said Betsy Frost, senior director of marketing and strategy for Microsoft's Information Worker Product Group.
Gates will outline how he believes workplace trends such as the shift from manufacturing to a services-oriented economy will shape and direct technology innovation over the next 10 years, along with the growing need for people collaborate more effectively across companies and time zones.
He will also discuss other forces in play including the increasingly larger and more complex stream of information that workers must deal with in an "always on, always connected" environment, as well as greater demands for transparency and accountability of business processes.
"In the transparent organization companies have to be more accountable because of regulatory concerns, but there is also this notion of the enterprise content lifecycle. Companies that can efficiently collaborate and can create, track and manage content securely will give IT the ability to centrally define archival and expiration policies that will naturally integrate Word and Excel," Frost said.
Posted by Ed Scannell on May 19, 2005 09:22 AM
May 16, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Big Blue says to employees 'blog, but follow these rules'
IBM, it seems, has embraced the idea of letting its employees have their own blogs -- but not without providing a set of guidelines for would-be-bloggers to follow.
The short and sweet list, posted by IBM employee James Snell, consists of 11 items.
1. Know and follow IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines.
2. Blogs, wikis and other forms of online discourse are individual interactions, not corporate communications. IBMers are personally responsible for their posts. Be mindful that what you write will be public for a long time -- protect your privacy.
3. Identify yourself -- name and, when relevant, role at IBM -- when you blog about IBM or IBM-related matters. And write in the first person. You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM.
4. If you publish a blog or post to a blog and it has something to do with work you do or subjects associated with IBM, use a disclaimer such as this: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
5. Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.
6. Don’t provide IBM’s or another’s confidential or other proprietary information.
7. Don't cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval.
8. Respect your audience. Don't use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, etc., and show proper consideration for others' privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory -- such as politics and religion.
9. Find out who else is blogging on the topic, and cite them.
10. Don't pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don't alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.
11. Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective.
Naturally, IBM goes on to provide greater depth for each point, but I'll let you read about that at Snell's blog.
With the high-profile firing of some bloggers during the last year for various reasons, some reasonable and some not, this is unquestionably a good idea, and IBM is doing more for its bloggers than just protecting the corporate hide.
Some people in the industry have been calling for blogging guidelines. Technorati founder and CEO Dave Sifry, for instance, spoke about this very topic at the end of April, and my colleague Paul Krill blogged about it here. In fact, Sifry suggested several policies that companies should outline for employee bloggers, most of which showed up in IBM's list.
Sifry's point was that blogging works well for companies that have a culture of trust, not one of fear.
Indeed. The same goes for just about everything else employees do while at work.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 16, 2005 02:42 PM
May 05, 2005 | Comments: (0)
A film about bloggers. Why not? If a major movie studio were to make a film called 'Blog' who would they cast? Josh Hallett has some ideas about that on his blog.
(Thanks to Dave Winer for the link.)
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 5, 2005 06:33 AM
May 03, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Opera browser hits 2 million download mark
Firefox is not the only browser to manifest as an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Opera Software today demonstrated that it is graining traction as well. Opera 8, in fact, has been downloaded 2 million times since it was posted two weeks ago.
The latest incarnation of Opera includes stronger security and anti-phishing capabilities, as well as speed and simplicity features, according to the company.
Opera 8 is available for download at http://www.opera.com/download.
Opera 7, for its part, was downloaded approximately 60 million times, the company said.
SpreadFirefox yesterday announced that the Firefox browser has been downloaded 50 million times.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 3, 2005 09:05 AM
May 02, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Firefox reaches 50 million download milestone
It took a mere 171 days for Firefox to be downloaded 50 million times.
SpreadFirefox proclaimed the 50 millionth download, and posted several amusing anecdotes about the crazy things people have done to promote Firefox.
Web analytics firm Onestat.com last week said that Firefox has captured 8.69 percent of the global browser market, while Microsoft has 86.63 percent.
When it comes to business users, however, Firefox may have surpassed its creator's goal of 10 percent market share. Janco Associates' Browser Market Share Study listed Firefox at 10.28 percent, as of last week.
Meanwhile, some in the mainstream media are opining that Firefox is safer than IE.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 2, 2005 08:32 AM
April 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Firefox hits 10 percent, Netscape flaw found
At least according to one consultancy, Firefox is now the browser of choice for 10 percent of business users. Janco Associates issued a report this week, The Browser Market Share Study, that breaks down the stake claimed by each of the top seven browsers.
Internet Explorer 83.07%
Firefox 10.28%
Mozilla 3.81%
Netscape 0.92%
AOL 0.85%
MSN 0.76%
Opera 0.41%
This morning's news about Netscape was less positive for that browser. Danish security firm Secunia warned of what it called a "highly-critical" vulnerability in the Netscape browser which makes it feasible for attackers to create Web sites that exploit the flaw, execute code on a visitor's PC, and thereby gain access to that system, Scarlet Pruitt of the IDG News Service reported. The buffer overflow is confirmed in Netscape 7.2, has been reported in 6.2.3 and could affect other versions as well.
Opera Software, meanwhile, last week unveiled Opera 8 and armed the browser with security features built to fight phishing.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 27, 2005 07:29 AM
April 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Magneto, Microsoft's Blackberry-killer
His name is Ya-Qin Zhang, and he is the mind behind Microsoft's mobile plans. The company hopes to detail the initial results of his efforts -- the forthcoming next-generation of Windows Mobile, code-named Magneto -- in early may, according to The New York Times.
The story, At Microsoft, a Smart Guy Has His Hands Full With the Smart Phone Business, profiles Ya-Qin Zhang, discusses Magneto, and focuses mostly on Microsoft's chances in the mobile fray.
The Wall Street Journal has a story on Blackberry-maker RIM facing competition from the likes of Nokia, Motorola and Samsung, not to mention Microsoft.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 25, 2005 07:32 AM
April 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
An open source BI partnership-to-be?
Paul Doscher, JasperSoft CEO, meet Sam Mohamad, CEO of Greenplum. Good, now that the introduction is out of the way, you two should pick up the phone and start talking about how you can work together.
Although it appeared that neither of you knew about the other last week, both of your companies announced themselves this morning, along with open source BI tools.
Mr. Doscher, you provide reporting in the form of JasperReports.
Mr. Mohammed, your company provides data warehousing software that Greenplum CTO Luke Lonergan explained to me is not only complimentary to reporting tools from the likes of Business Objects and Cognos, but works to ensure that those tools perform better.
Greenplum as of today offers what it calls "Super Warehousing" software and JasperSoft has an embeddable reporting engine and a front-end reporting tool.
So, your technologies could be fit to work together and, more important, could potentially make open source BI more attractive to customers.
My colleague InfoWorld editor at large Ephraim Schwartz, who co-authored the news story about JasperSoft and Greenplum with me, tracked down customers to gauge their reaction to open source BI. One said he was willing to give it a try; the other commented that open source simply doesn't meet his requirements for an RFP.
But if you two CEO's, Mr. Doscher and Mr. Mohamed, work together -- or better yet put your CTO's Barry Klawans and Luke Lonergan, respectively, on the job -- to figure out a way to make DeepGreen ensure that JasperReports performs anywhere close to Cognos and Business Objects, that could potentially go a long way toward convincing prospective customers that open source might be right for their BI needs.
Once you integrate your products with each other, you can get together with SpikeSource CEO Kim Polese. I don't believe introductions are necessary as you both mentioned SpikeSource in our discussions last week. But just in case, SpikeSource offers certification services for open source products.
Certify DeepGreen as the warehousing product that works in conjunction with JasperDecisions reporting engine and JasperReports front-end and, voila, you have a certified partially open source warehouse, engine and reporting presentation layer. Or take it one step further and offer a version of DeepGreen with JasperDecisions embedded into it.
I know, I know. None of this is as nearly as easy as I am making it out to be. In fact, a partnership between your companies might not work, but if you do manage to pull it off, and maybe even certify your collective of products to work within the rest of an open source stack, well, that certainly won't guarantee success, but it just might get you in the door that leads to IT shops.
I wouldn't waste any time, either, because this morning MySQL inked a pact with Business Objects that will see the MySQL database embedded into Business Objects XI.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 18, 2005 06:45 AM
April 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Firefox site visitors up by 237 percent
The latest factoid circulating around the Web today concerning Firefox is that the Web site's unique visitors have increased by 237 percent between June of last year and March 2005, according to Neilsen//NetRatings.
The statement Neilsen//NetRatings issued quotes Ken Cassar, director of strategic analytics at Neilsen//NetRatings advising Web site developers to be mindful of Firefox's growing popularity and make sure their sites accommodate the browser.
Good advice. But it's not just Web sites that have to work with Firefox. Applications are important, too. I've blogged before about how two of my most frequently used apps are IE-dependant. So I'm still waiting for the apps to support Firefox before I can abandon IE altogether.
The Neilsen//NetRatings study pointed out that 71 percent of visitors to the Firefox site are men, and 29 percent are women. There's an amusing discussion thread on Slashdot about how the gender of Web surfers is determined.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 14, 2005 11:03 AM
April 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
This morning, HighBeam Research issued two tools: HighBeam Blog Enhancer and HighBeam RSS. The former was built to enable its members to share HighBeam research articles with other members as well as non-members. HighBeam described the latter as a tool to create RSS feeds based on keyword or by publication.
Registration as a basic member is free, but you'll need to throw down the $99 per year to access the full text of HighBeam's articles, which pretty much means you need to be a paid member to make use of the blogging tools.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 14, 2005 09:59 AM
April 04, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Content and compliance are front and center this week
Content management, regulatory compliance, and storage are all coming together.
This week Interwoven and Hummingbird announced products designed to help customers comply. Last month, IBM outlined its content management plans, and EMC unveiled a new version of its Documentum product.
We also have a special report, Compliance tips from the front lines, at the top of our site this morning that includes stories about compliance lessons learned, the demands that HIPAA creates, some of the tools that can help customers meet compliance regulations, and a piece about preparing for the feds.
Windows IT Pro has a story about storage vendors getting into the content management arena. Database Trends & Applications has a pair of stories about using information lifecycle management for compliance and the benefits of compliance.
InfoWorld senior editor Cathleen Moore posted a rather astute blog about how compliance is impacting ECM.
For those looking to build their own CMS, TechWorld has some advice.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 4, 2005 08:42 AM
April 01, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Last year, speculators thought Google's promise of 1GB free storage to accompany Gmail was an April Fool's joke. Turns out it wasn't. So most folks are shying away from saying that the company's announcement this morning that it will jack up that storage level to 2GB is anything less than serious.
That's not to say that Google doesn't have a prank kicking around its Web site today, though. I read about it in a story on The Washington Post Web site, but for the full experience go straight to the source.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 1, 2005 10:01 AM
March 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
One bidding war over, another still underway
Oracle bested rival SAP in the battle for Retek and announced that it plans to acquire the retail software provider for $11.25 per share.
SAP confirmed that it is dropping out and cited a desire to practice "financial discipline" as the chief reason.
While the Oracle vs. SAP skirmish is over, another is breaking out in the telco sector. The New York Times reported this morning that both Qwest and Verizon want to buy MCI, and each penned a letter proclaiming itself the most appropriate suitor for the troubled telecom.
Verizon's chairman, in fact, wrote in his letter that any cost savings Qwest might gain by swallowing MCI were "modern fiction," The Times reported.
InfoWorld's own Ephraim Schwartz posted a blog entry explaining one of the reasons that SAP and Oracle were fighting over Retek. Retek is the key for reengineering the supply chain for real-time manufacturing and integrating that with real-time demand retailing, Schwartz wrote.
The difference between the two bidding wars may turn out to be that Retek sold for the highest offer, while it seems MCI may not be taking Qwest's bid all that seriously. But we might not even know that until March 28, the date MCI's board said it would respond to Qwest.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 22, 2005 07:16 AM
February 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Blogs are all the rage at Demo today
This morning at the Demo conference several vendors trotted out new blog products for attendees to see.
InfoWorld Editor-at-Large Ephraim Schwartz is in Scottsdale, Arizona for the show, and wrote a news story covering the various products.
I'll let you read his article for yourself, but within it you can expect to find information about rapid-fire blogging software, a tool that helps bloggers target specific groups, software for creating publicly available Web folders that can be used to publish to a blog or other site, password protection for blogs, and a combination software and hardware device for managing corporate blogs before they are published.
Schwartz also reported on blogs and monitors from Demo yesterday.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 15, 2005 01:04 PM
February 10, 2005 | Comments: (0)
We are all faced with the seemingly infinite distractions living in the cloud that take us away from actual work. Email and instant messaging, which sometimes are and sometimes are not for work purposes, are the most common examples. Other obvious ones are corporate intranets, fresh blog postings, and other sites that update frequently.
With that in mind, researchers at the University of Maryland and researchers at Microsoft are studying new potential types of interfaces that gauge individual workflow and adjust distractions accordingly, The New York Times reported this morning.
One idea is that rather than hearing that chime every time a new email comes in, a user could be sent an email alert based on current workflow and even the importance of the incoming message.
I admit that in clicking from page 1 to page 2 of the article I switched over to check my email and found only more spam this time, so then I launched the Word document I used to write this post and let that app fire up, while I finished reading the Times story.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 10, 2005 06:48 AM
February 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Gartner last week held a business intelligence summit in London, at which analysts presented the most common mistakes customers make that constrict them from taking full advantage of BI software.
The analyst firm included ways of thinking and approaching BI that can ultimately become the 7 fatal flaws:
1 If we build it, they will come
2 Managers need to negotiate the numbers
3 Data quality problem, we don't have one
4 Our enterprise applications vendor will deliver the best solution
5 Darwin was right, BI projects need to evolve
6 We can outsource the whole thing
7 Just give me a dashboard
Gartner surveyed 1300 CIOs and determined that companies plan to increase spending on BI by about 6 percent in 2005. According to the survey, CIOs think that BI, in tandem with improving business processes, will be important in "delivering IT's contribution to business growth" through 2008.
With those stats in mind, the firm also outlined 3 three recommendations for IT shops:
1 Make sure to have senior level business sponsorship for BI
2 Have a unified BI infrastructure
3 Leverage existent wisdom and evolve your BI initiatives
Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 8, 2005 06:18 AM
January 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Firefox and Netscape still blazing
One company's apparent monopoly is another's seemingly infinite frontier. Just ask the folks building the open source Firefox and the Netscape browsers.
Nate Mook at BetaNews has a story about an update to the beta version of Netscape's revived browser that not only fixes bugs, but also aligns the code base with Firefox 1.0 to resolve security issues.
Building Netscape atop Firefox 1.0, Mook reports, will also enable the team to make significant changes, including a new UI, to Netscape.
Serving as evidence that the Firefox browser itself is continuing to take the industry by storm, BusinessWeek has a story citing numbers from WebSideStory indicating that Firefox gained 4.6 of the 4.9 percentage points that Microsoft's IE slipped during the past 6 months.
All that, of course, still leaves Microsoft with more than 90 percent of the browser market, but Spread Firefox counts 18,509,605 downloads of Firefox thus far. And that number comes from a modest goal and slogan of marching toward 1 million downloads.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 18, 2005 09:57 AM
December 22, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Time Magazine has an article this week about the growing importance of blogs, with a particular focus on Power Line, the blog that sniffed out Rathergate.
The story includes a sidebar with 10 things that have been learned about blogs:
1 Blogging can get you fired
2 Bloggers get scoops, too
3 Bloggers can be fakers
4 Bloggers keep news alive
5 Bloggers can be titillating
6 Bloggers make money
7 Most bloggers are women
8 Candidates love blogs
9 Pets have blogs, too
10 Anyone can do it
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 22, 2004 11:00 AM
December 22, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Please say "Yes" if you find voice activation systems annoying
Often, we in the high-tech world are shown demos of things that we're told will make our lives better, even if we're sitting there wondering if the opposite will be true.
Take voice activation apps. I've witnessed a demo where the computer asks questions and the person doing the demo happily, willingly speaks the answers and everything works out fine and dandy.
If this were only the case in the real world.
First of all, the notion of being ordered around by a piece of software and an X86 chip is a bit degrading in and of itself. But is the artificial intelligence of these applications up to snuff? While I certainly can't speak for all these systems, I can cite a personal example from earlier this week.
Due to pick up some family members from the San Jose airport, I called the airline's help line to get a prognosis on the flight's arrival. I already knew the flight was delayed because the airport was fogged in for several hours that morning.
So, the system asks, "What is the departure City?" With teeth gritting, I respond, "Austin."
It then asks, "What is the arrival city?" I then respond, "San Jose."
I hear back, "You are looking for flights from Boston, Mass. to San Jose. Is that correct?"
After a few seconds more of frustrating attempts to make this thing work, I gave up and sought out real live, human help - somebody with an actual pulse and heartbeat.
I suppose someday these systems will get the kinks out of them so the computer can figure out the difference between Austin and Boston without the customer having to shout loud enough to drown out airplanes flying overhead. The issue of people being instructed by a computerized voice is one that shall remain, however.
Perhaps customers should be greeted with an apology: "We realize you may find these systems annoying, but they are helping to keep your costs down. We apologize for any inconvenience and frustration this system may cause as we introduce it, and we seek your feedback to improve it."
Funny thing, an hour before all this, I was using one of those self-serve checkout stands at the supermarket, where you run your items over the scanner and bag the merchandise yourself. I think those are actually kind of fun.
Putting aside the issue of job losses from these types of systems, which is a another matter altogether, it is inevitable that people are going to increasingly have to interact with computers in situations where they dealt with humans in the past. (Come to think of it, human customer service agents aren't always the easiest to deal with, either.)
It will be up to technology vendors and companies deploying these systems to make sure user experiences are seamless and pleasant, rather than demeaning and frustrating.
Posted by Paul Krill on December 22, 2004 09:23 AM
December 21, 2004 | Comments: (0)
An upcoming conference about RSS Content Syndication
IDG World Expo today announced a new conference focusing on content syndication. The theme of the inaugural show will be RSS: Risk, Reward and Revolution.
The B2B conference is billed as executive-level, and created for content owners and producers, media execs, corporate marketers, advertisers and public relations professionals.
Syndicate will take place May 17-18, 2005 at New York City’s Marriott Marquis Times Square. For more information please visit www.syndicateconference.com.
Full Disclosure: IDG World Expo is a part of IDG, the parent company of InfoWorld.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 21, 2004 08:55 AM
December 21, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Meta Expects Packaged Software Prices to Drop
Consider it an early Christmas gift for CTOs and IT shops. Meta Group this morning issued a statement detailing its prediction that for the first time in a decade the prices of overall packaged software will actually decrease throughout the next 3-5 years.
The analyst firm wrote that it anticipates continued market consolidation to result in lower prices. Furthermore, Meta listed several additional reasons that back up its estimate:
Traditional software providers will be squeezed by emerging software and application infrastructure alternatives entering the marketplace. Solutions from open source providers, infrastructure services vendors, offshore developers, Web services, business process outsourcers, etc., will supply customers with bargaining chips that will pressure vendors to deliver flexible solutions at prices below traditional pricing thresholds.
The firm also said that these factors will shift the balance of power toward IT customers who, in turn, will be able to apply pressure on vendors to improve reliability and performance while demanding lower prices.
CTO's, however, will need some extra cash as Meta predicted in October that IT salaries will rise by as much as 15 percent in the next three years.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 21, 2004 07:07 AM
December 17, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Google pact with libraries is not a revolution just yet
Google's agreement with several libraries has gotten a lot of attention this week and I have even seen it called 'revolutionary.' That is an awfully big word, albeit an overused one, to be throwing around during the week that Google has merely announced its intentions.
In an impressive business move, Google aligned with one of my favorite places The New York Public Library, as well as with academic institutions Stanford, Oxford, Harvard and the University of Michigan, to digitize volumes the libraries possess.
That means I could look something up that is in a book at Oxford without leaving my desk in The States. Presumably.
Gartner said that Google's efforts are an important first step because it removes one of three "daunting obstacles" to creating a virtual library of this scale.
The other two major obstacles are actually digitizing the tomes and protecting copyrights.
InfoWorld editor at large Ephraim Schwartz yesterday blogged about the error rate that is inevitable when scanning such a large number of books.
Copyright protection is not a trivial issue and to judge its impact on the effectiveness of text searching within books, consider Amazon.com.
When it was first introduced, I thought Amazon.com's technology for searching books would become my personal killer feature for using Amazon. After all, I still like physical bookstores and buy them from, rather than online, to help preserve the species.
The Amazon technology is pretty nifty, particularly the box that pops up containing the first line, which I always read before buying a book. But I have not come to rely on Amazon's text search because more often than not the books I have wanted to search are not searchable due to copyright laws. Maybe that's just me.
Granted, Google is one of the world's programming superpowers right now, and I don't doubt that whatever they come up with, when they come up with it, will be spectacular but, thus far, the revolution is more conceptual than it is concrete.
For a perspective on what the Google pact means for smaller libraries see InfoWorld Associate Editor Jack McCarthy's blog post.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 17, 2004 10:56 AM
December 14, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Google partners with libraries
Google's plan to digitally scan books so that users can access them from its Internet search engine is being greeted with delight at the tiny library in my hometown of Half Moon Bay, Calif.
Google said Tuesday that it is working with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford as well as The New York Public Library to scan books from their collections.
You might think some libraries would feel threatened at the prospect of virtual books. You would be wrong. At Half Moon Bay Public Library, Manager Maya Kennedy said the plan offers a potentially great service for her readers.
Half Moon Bay Public Library has struggled valiantly to serve its community in the face of overcrowding and underfunding. And with fewer than 70,000 items, including books, CDs and periodicals, Half Moon Bay is simply too small to provide a comprehensive collection.
"There's no way we can hold all the products users would need," she said. "This could be very exciting to have greater access to these libraries, certainly more than we could ever have at our small library. People could eventually be able to access this from their homes, work and from the libraries."
Half Moon Bay is not alone. A $350 million bond issue to fund new library construction across the state prompted scores of community libraries to come forward to ask for help. Only a fraction succeeded in obtaining funding.
In comparison, Google is offering to put technology to use in a truly transformative way.
The announcement expands the Google Print program, which assists publishers in making books and other offline information searchable online. For more information and examples, please visit http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html.
"Even before we started Google, we dreamed of making the incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly organize searchable online," Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products, said in a statement. "Today we're pleased to announce this program to digitize the collections of these amazing libraries so that every Google user can search them instantly."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on December 14, 2004 02:57 PM
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