DaniWeb IT Discussion Community http://www.daniweb.com/forums/ Tech support, programming, web development, and internet marketing community. Forums to get free computer help and support. en-US Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:40:12 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.daniweb.com/alphaimages/misc/rss.jpg DaniWeb IT Discussion Community http://www.daniweb.com/forums/ News Story Is Google Feeling Heat From Microsoft? http://www.daniweb.com/news/story240710.html Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:00:17 GMT If the new Google interface design (http://www.flickr.com/photos/searchengineland/4117327765/) is any indication, it appears that Google might actually be feeling a little heat, or at least some influence, from Bing. Danny Sullivan (http://searchengineland.com/staff), who has been covering search... If the new Google interface design is any indication, it appears that Google might actually be feeling a little heat, or at least some influence, from Bing. Danny Sullivan, who has been covering search for years, had a post in his Search Engine Land blog last week about the new interface overhaul Google is undertaking for its core search product. When I looked at the screen shot that Sullivan provided, it's hard not to see the Bing influence here.

The question is what does it mean? Well, first of all, it means competition is good for consumers, a point I've been making since I started this blog. Bing's clean interface is one of its core strengths and it didn't go unnoticed by Google. But does that mean Google feels threatened by Bing? Not necessarily.

How Do You Generally Search?

I don't know about you, but when I conduct a search I generally start with Google. I have my search box in Firefox set to Google by default. I enter my search criteria, press Enter, and usually I find what I need in the first several results. I don't tend to look much further, and I don't look at the other stuff like content filters. If I do a News search, I might click a date filter in the left column, but beyond that, I don't tend to use any of the other tools that show up in the interface.

For someone like Sullivan, who is a great blogger, reporter and search guru; he's always paying attention to this stuff because it's what he does. But for the average searcher, most of the extraneous stuff is just that. It's nice to have on the oft chance you need it, but if the search engine is doing its job, chances are you very rarely (or never) use the bells and whistles. Bing has some nice tools for filtering or narrowing down your search criteria, but I wonder how many people use them?

What's Wrong With Using Google?

Last week, I had a long exchange on Twitter with Disa Johnson, who runs the site Search Return.com. Johnson suggested to me that Google had lost its way. For her, Google wasn't a search engine, so much as an ad revenue generator. Further, she didn't like that they had spread out into Gmail and other tools, much less a browser and an operating system.

For me, however, I use Google because the search engine works--pure and simple. It gives me the answers I want quickly and efficiently most of the time. I also use Google Docs, Gmail, Google Reader and several other Google tools. I do so because the tools are free, convenient, and as a friend of mine says, "It's Google. They are going to constantly improve it."

Should Google Worry About Bing?

Generally, I don't think Google has a lot to worry about where its core search product is concerned. They consistently control anywhere from 65-70 percent of the search market, but there are warning signs on the horizon. It appears that Microsoft and News Corp are in talks to implement at least parts of the plan I outlined in my recent post, Mark Cuban's Plan to Kill Google. The jury is still out whether that will matter because as one commenter pointed out in my post, while News Corp (or any site) can block the spiders from finding it, it won't stop others who link to that site. Others pointed out that if you pulled out the top 100 or top 1000 sites from Google and moved them to Microsoft, others would gladly take their place. Neither does it mean that there would be a mass exodus from Google to Bing.

But Johnson thinks users are more fickle than that. She believes it could turn on a dime. I'm not so sure I agree, but it is clear from the new interface design, that Bing is at least having some influence on the Google design team, and for us as consumers, we can rejoice. As long as Microsoft acts as a check on Google and pushes them to make improvements to the product, the better off we will all will be, but extrapolating that into a massive Google meltdown, is to me, taking it all a bit too far. Google isn't going anywhere any time soon. ]]> Search Engine Optimization Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread240710.html News Story Droid Could Bring Motorola Back From Dead http://www.daniweb.com/news/story239749.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:33:44 GMT Until Motorola came out with the Droid, they were the forgotten cell phone company, but it wasn't that long ago that everyone wanted one of their phones: the Razr. This was in 2004, in the days before the iPhone when smart phones were found only in the pockets of executives and sales people. The Razr was thin and sleek and it flipped open in a very cool way. But after that, Motorola all but disappeared -- until now.

It's clear that Motorola recognized this was an opportunity and they have seized it, building a great feature-filled phone running Google's Android phone OS, but will it be enough to bring this company back from the dead in the cell phone market?

Hands-on with the Droid

I like to get my hands on a phone and see how it feels, so I took a pilgrimage to my local Best Buy yesterday where I encountered a sales person who was as enthusiastic as I am about gadgets. I asked her about the Droid and with a gleam in her eye she removed one from her pocket and handed it to me. I was immediately struck by its weight. This is one solid phone (maybe too heavy for some), one which should survive a fall. As I pushed open the keyboard, I was impressed with the large keys (for a cell phone). I played with the controls. I oohed at the 5 Megapixel camera. It was nice.

She showed me some video that she took with Droid in-store and it was amazingly clear. She pointed out that the one draw-back was it was such high-quality, it created large files and she needed to connect it a computer to share it. To get to the memory card, you need to pull off the battery case, not the most convenient method in the world, but it didn't detract from my overall positive feelings about this phone.

Not Perfect By Any Means

When I tweeted about my experience (alright I was gushing), some of my followers pointed out short-comings. People actually didn't like that keyboard, I suspect because the keys are flat, making it hard to type by feel. Another person pointed out a strange bug with the camera and the fact it's not a multi-band phone. These are real issues for consumers, but people appear to be still buying this phone.

Sales Are Decent

The Wall Street Journal reports that analysts are estimating first week sales of around 250,000 units. This is pure speculation, however, because Verizon wasn't saying. Compare this with the iPhone 3Gs, which sold 1.6 million units in its first week and it doesn't look as good, but as the article points this was a US-only release and the iPhone was an established product.

Bottom line, this is a nice phone and Motorola should be proud. Whether it will be enough to help them return to respectability in the cell phone game remains to be seen, but this is a great start and it's something to build on. ]]> Cellphones, PDAs and Handheld Devices Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread239749.html <![CDATA[News Story Verizon and AT&T Play Legal Mumbly Peg]]> http://www.daniweb.com/news/story239223.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:56:47 GMT Verizon made an ad making fun of AT&T's 3G coverage (and it's manliness). AT&T wasn't happy because it suggested their 3G coverage was spotty. So they sued saying the ads were misleading consumers, and anyway they had way more customers and their customers loved them, and Verizon just couldn't handle that. Verizon counter-sued saying AT&T was just jealous and their network sucks (and its mother dresses it funny). Now word is they are going to have a fight after school on the playground.

Playing Legal Mind Games

According to Engadget, AT&T sued first saying:

"Verizon's misleading advertising tactics appear to be a response to AT&T's strong leadership in smartphones. We have twice the number of smartphone customers... and we've beaten them two quarters in a row on net post-paid subscribers. We also had lower churn -- a sign that customers are quite happy with the service they receive."

Apple Insider Reports that Verizon did all but stuck out its tongue in court and say "na-na boo-boo" to AT&T in its counter-suit:

"AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon's "There's A Map For That" advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon's ads are true and the truth hurts."

They go onto say that the truth (at least as Verizon sees it) is that AT&T has failed to invest adequately in its network (and it's ugly too).

Lawsuits as Marketing Strategy

Verizon is clearly trying to gain some publicity points with this kind of stance (and heck, I'm blogging about it, so it's working). They want to put AT&T on the defensive. They know the Droid is selling well and gaining some traction and they want to get some of that attention that AT&T has garnered for having the iPhone. Makes perfect business sense, even if it sounds a bit immature and undignified in practice.

They Both Suck

Let's face it, if you're a consumer, they both suck and you don't need a judge to tell you that. As consumers, we are generally caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to cell service. We get a nice phone for a discounted price in exchange for a 2-year contract tying you to said provider.

Then they nickle and dime you for data fees and texting charges. They send you long, complicated bills, which are hard to read and impossible to dispute. Have you ever tried calling AT&T or Verizon for tech support or with a question? Have you gone into their stores? Neither one is likely to win a popularity contest any time soon.

A Pox On Both Their Houses

Fact, is most people don't like either company. We go with them because there a few reasonable alternatives out there. Let them beat each other over the head with frivolous law suits. They just have to realize that for most of us, it's entertainment and nobody really cares about either one of them enough to take sides. ]]> Cellphones, PDAs and Handheld Devices Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread239223.html <![CDATA[News Story Mark Cuban's Plan to Kill Google]]> http://www.daniweb.com/news/story238775.html Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:04:54 GMT Mark Cuban, the eccentric owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, has a post in his blog this week suggesting a way to kill Google by paying the top one thousand most popular sites $1M each to leave the Google Index. He wonders if Rupert Murdoch's plan to leave the Google Index could mark the beginning of a full-scale exodus from Google, one which could be expedited with some cash payoffs from Microsoft. Now, I'm no legal expert, but it seems to me that such a ploy would not fly with the government, but for the sake of argument, let's say it would. Why would you want to wipe out Google?

Pay Me, Pay Me, Pay Me My Money Down

I'm sure Microsoft is looking for ways to choke Google. After all, that's what competitors do, but I'm not sure it's in a top web site's best interest to abandon Google, no matter how much cash is involved. If I'm getting a fair amount of traffic from Google, and I make a lot of money, would the million dollar bribe be enough to entice me to cut off that gravy train?

I suppose it's possible. After all a million dollars is not a trivial amount of money to most of us, and if it involved other enticements like placement guarantees and ad deals, it might look good. What's interesting is that the numbers involved in a scheme like this would probably not make a company like Microsoft flinch. Remember, Microsoft was ready to pay $45 billion at one point for Yahoo!.

Play Both Ends Against the Middle

Cuban's plan gets a little more interesting when he suggests that perhaps Google wouldn't stand still while its closest competitor tried to force the market away from its search engine. Maybe Google would up the stakes. After all, they have money too. Maybe the top sites could get Google into a bidding war with Microsoft, but would this be healthy for anyone except the companies that were the recipients of this largess? It probably wouldn't be great for smaller companies who wouldn't be worth the attention in a playing field that was now defined by cash payments.

Too Many Questions

But in the end, there are way too many questions left unanswered. Would Microsoft stock holders stand for this use of Microsoft cash resources in a scheme that still might not work? Would Google up the cash stakes, or more likely tie up such an approach in court for so many years that it wouldn't matter to most of us for a long, long time? Would the government stand by and watch this game without stepping in?

I'm not sure, but for me personally, I can't see the advantage of choking Google in this fashion, or if anyone would be willing to take the risk it would involve of leaving the world's most popular search engine, cash payments not withstanding. Google simply drives too much traffic and why kill the golden goose for spite? ]]> Pay-Per-Click Advertising Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread238775.html News Story How Does Apple Avoid The Commodity Trap? http://www.daniweb.com/news/story238289.html Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:27:23 GMT At a time when prices are being driven down across the spectrum of electronics, one company clearly has avoided this trap: Apple. While others struggle to squeeze profits from a market that is becoming increasingly commoditized (sub-$200 netbooks anyone?), Apple maintains its edge and its hefty... At a time when prices are being driven down across the spectrum of electronics, one company clearly has avoided this trap: Apple. While others struggle to squeeze profits from a market that is becoming increasingly commoditized (sub-$200 netbooks anyone?), Apple maintains its edge and its hefty profit margin. It got me wondering just how Apple continues to charge prices far above the rest of the market and not only get away with it, but thrive.

Design

First of all, you have to start with quality. If you are going to charge a hefty amount for your products, you better make damn sure you make good ones. I know that critics will say that Apple's proprietary propensity is one reason it maintains control of its market, yet it doesn't seem to bother its loyal legion of customers as much as it does its critics. As I wrote in Apple's Value is so Much More Than Skin Deep, after using PCs for more than 20 years, I didn't come out of the womb as an Apple fan boy (see my missive: The Myth of the Apple Fan Boy):

Quote:
I used the product and I fell in love with it...It is a gorgeous piece of engineering and I paid a lot of money for it, a lot more than I would have had I bought a comparable PC, but when you get down to it, in my long experience, there simply is no comparable PC.
Marketing

Apple is genius at marketing its products. It creates a mystique around them. It builds up interest and excitement. People look forward to their product announcements.

Part of the reason is the design, but part of it is Apple's expertise at creating desire. This is not minimize the importance of the design because mystique can only take you so far. At some point you have to deliver quality goods and Apple for the most part has done that.

Service

The best tech support I ever received was from WordPerfect back in the DOS days. It was free, they knew the product inside-out and they would take the time to help you. Apple Care is a close second. It's not free (except for the first year), but I've called them many times and I find mostly quality people who know what they're talking about.

Just last weekend, the WiFi connector stopped working on my son's iPod Touch. I called Apple Care. The tech had me try a couple of things. They didn't work and he arranged for me to ship back the current unit and send me a new one. No fussing. They just did it and even shipped me a box to return it in.

Apple has been criticized for not getting into the Netbook market, and for not substantially lowering its prices in the midst of a recession. Yet what is their motivation to drive down their own prices? It would only force them toward the commodity trap that they have so successfully avoided and why would they do that? ]]> Apple Hardware Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread238289.html News Story My 5 Favorite Free iPhone Apps http://www.daniweb.com/news/story238040.html Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:37:28 GMT One of the great things about the iPhone is of course the App Store, which is a growing eco system of interesting applications. I tend to stick to the free ones, and not long ago I went and downloaded a bunch of new freebies. These are my favorites from that bunch: *Louvre* This is one cool... One of the great things about the iPhone is of course the App Store, which is a growing eco system of interesting applications. I tend to stick to the free ones, and not long ago I went and downloaded a bunch of new freebies. These are my favorites from that bunch:

Louvre

This is one cool app for art lovers. It opens to a picture of the outside of the Louvre with famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) glass pyramid, then displays a cover flow with the different parts of the app. You can explore Louvre artwork, take a tour, or explore rooms inside the museum. It's amazing, comprehensive and the navigation is elegant and simple. You can even bookmark favorite places, so you can find your way back easily.

Nasa

If you want to keep up with news from Nasa, this app is a must-have for Nasa fans. It has information on missions and includes images and educational video. For instance, this month it features a video on the Crab Nebula, which is visible in the November sky using a telescope. Like the Louvre app, it's fun and educational, but it also is a very smart move by Nasa because it lets people know what they're doing with our tax dollars (and a lot of it is pretty neat, let me tell you).

ESPN Score Center

I don't know how I missed this one before because it's an essential application for any (American) sports fan. It takes a while to load the first time you open it (I mean several minutes), but once it's ready to go, you can customize the interface to include only the sports you're interested in. What's more, you can define your favorite teams, so they appear prominently at the top of the list of the scores. It also has a ticker with the latest sports news (like you see on ESPN Sports Center) at the bottom of the screen. You cycle through the different sports by dragging across the screen to reveal the next page (in a similar fashion to the Weather app when you add multiple cities). The navigation is not quite as elegant as some of the others, but it's very useful for keeping up with the latest sports news.

The Weather Channel

The standard iPhone Weather app gives you temperature and a general forecast, but if you want a more detailed weather picture, this app is for you. The first time you load it, it asks if it can find your location and then customizes the weather for your location without having to enter any information. You can see the current weather details, an hourly, 36 hour or 10 day forecast. What's more you can view the weather map, video and severe weather alerts for your area.

Yelp

I've been using the Around Me app to find restaurants, but a friend recently recommended Yelp and it offers a similar functionality, but with the user reviews front and center. Once again, it asks to find your location so you can use it wherever you are, then click one of the selections such as Restaurants to find the ones in your vicinity. You can filter by distance, price and whether it's open. I would also like to filter by restaurant type and which ones reviewers liked best (number of stars), but in spite of these limitations, it provides a good starting point for finding food or other stores in an area. Also includes a "Talk" client where you can post questions to people who happen to be online.

So there you have it: my five recent free favorites. Leave a comment and let me know some of yours. ]]> Apple Hardware Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread238040.html News Story The Internet Still Confuses Rupert Murdoch http://www.daniweb.com/news/story237489.html Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:33:13 GMT You can always count on Rupert Murdoch, the cantankerous News Corp. chairman, for a good laugh and he didn't disappoint this week during an interview on Sky News Australia in which he boldly stated his sites would pull out of Google Search. In fact, he once again accused search engines of outright stealing his content.

Let's Examine The Facts, Shall We

Here's what Murdoch has to say about search engines:

Quote:
Sky News: You've been particularly critical of what you call 'the content kleptomaniacs' and the plagiarists. Are you particularly talking about Google here?
Murdoch: Well, the people who simply pick up everything and run with it and steal our stories...they just take them.
Sky News: Who?
Murdoch: There's Google. There's Microsoft, um Ask.com. There's a whole lot of people.
If you go to Google News and enter a search for News Corp (or anything you like), you see a list of headlines, which are live links, the publication name and a blurb. You don't see the full story or even a full paragraph. There is just enough there to make a decision and click through. I'm wondering what exactly Google is stealing here.

The Sky News interviewer, David Speers, goes on to ask Murdoch is that not just driving traffic to his web site (which by the way, most sane business people see as a good thing), and Murdoch admits that it's just a headline (where in the previous sentence he suggested they were stealing his content). So which is it, Rupert?

Saying Goodbye to Google

To his credit, the Speers asks Murdoch why he doesn't just block his sites from Google. And Murdoch, unbelievably (at least to me), says, "I think we will." In his view, he sees Google traffic as valueless (or at least not having enough value to make it worth his while to want it).

The Man Is a Walking Contradiction

Ultimately, Murdoch rambles, contradicts, and often makes little sense in this interview. In most instances, he shows a distinct lack of understanding how the web works (yet in his paradoxical way sees the end of print, perhaps with in 20 years, as part of our changing world). While Murdoch has grown a worldwide media empire from meager beginnings, and that's an impressive feat, the fact is that times have changed, and Murdoch can't seem to get his arms around the extent of the change.

At one point, he suggests that newspapers made a mistake by not charging on the internet from the beginning, which may be so, but that ship has sailed. He says, search engines steal his content, yet he admits that they don't. He says that they should charge for content, but he's not sure how to do that. He seems to get that the internet has changed everything, at least on some level, yet he doesn't understand how search engines would help him.

One thing is clear. He wants to return to the days of silos and the fact is that those days are over. Maybe the days of the huge media empires are over too and maybe that's a good thing for us all. ]]> Pay-Per-Click Advertising Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread237489.html News Story If Windows, Linux and OSX Opened Cafes... http://www.daniweb.com/news/story236836.html Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:31:12 GMT Attachment 12481 (http://www.daniweb.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=12481)The New York Times reported today (http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/11/06/technology/tech-us-france-apple-louvre.html) that Apple has opened its first Apple Store in Paris, underneath the Louvre no less, and just... Attachment 12481The New York Times reported today that Apple has opened its first Apple Store in Paris, underneath the Louvre no less, and just two weeks after Microsoft opened up a Windows 7 cafe in Paris in another location. The idea of these two companies competing in a retail environment, and especially a Windows-themed cafe, got me thinking about what would happen if three cafes opened each run in the same style of the operating system it was named for. I figure it might look something like this:

Windows Cafe

The Windows Cafe is in a bland store front. The furniture consists of straight wooden chairs with tables with sharp angles. Unfortunately, every so often when you sit in a chair it crashes the to the floor, but you get used to this and figure it's just part of the experience of going to the Windows Cafe. (To be fair they have been testing chairs from a new manufacturer and they are reportedly less prone to breaking in this fashion.) Pictures of a smiling Bill Gates and Windows logos adorn the walls. The coffee tastes fine most of the time, but a surprising number of patrons get sick there, so that it's become standard practice to use hand sanitizer before you go in to protect yourself. The coffee is expensive, and refills are definitely not free, but it's a known quantity, and many people are comfortable going there.

Linux Cafe

The Linux Cafe is a funky place in an artsy neighborhood with eclectic furniture donated by the patrons. It doesn't match, but it's comfortable and the walls are covered with donated pictures and paintings by local artists. The coffee is free, served in black cups (or you can just bring your own), but you need to make it yourself. If you can't do it yourself, the cafe has consultants available to help you for a fee. It's great for people who know about coffee brewing, but many people are intimidated by the idea of making their own coffee and stay away, even though very few people ever get sick who go there.

Apple Cafe

The Apple Cafe is a modern, state-of-the-art facility. The tables are stainless steel and the chairs are ultra-contemporary. Shrines to Apple CEO Steve Jobs are dotted around the wide space. The cups are cool and come in a variety of bright colors. The coffee is well made by a highly trained staff, and even though it costs a lot more, people line up around the block for a chance to drink it. Just don't ask the staff about their coffee-making techniques because they are extremely tight lipped about this. People occasionally get sick there, but it's rare enough for the cafe to brag about its safety record.

So there you have it. Three cafes with three distinct personalities just like the operating systems they represent

Photo by Marfis75 on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.
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]]> OS X Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread236836.html News Story Google Tries Transparency with New Dashboard http://www.daniweb.com/news/story236389.html Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:35:48 GMT "If we went into an “evil room” and had an “evil light” shined on us, and we then behaved in an “evil” way we would be destroyed… there is a fundamental trust between Google and its users.”
~Eric Schmidt, Google CEO

Google released an exciting new product today called the Dashboard. I don't usually call Google products exciting because it makes me sound like I'm writing their marketing literature, but the Dashboard provides a way to see an overview of all your activity across every Google product you use. And if you're like me, that's a lot. Instead of guessing what information Google has, you can now see it all in one convenient place.

Getting To The Dashboard

Accessing the dashboard is a simple matter. Follow these steps:
  1. Go to Google.com.
  2. Click Settings > Google Account Settings and your account page opens.
  3. At the top of the page in the right column labeled Personal Settings, click View Data Stored with Account (next to the Dashboard label). The Google Accounts page opens with all of the information across each of your Google accounts.

Why It's Great

I always loved that quote at the top of this post from Google CEO, Eric Schmidt above. It suggests that for some reason we should just trust Google with our data. It's an absurd notion of course, and even more so in that ridiculous quote, but Google Dashboard is a good first step. It gives users a one-stop shop to see all of their data and settings.

As individuals interested in accessing and understanding data, this is a huge step forward. For businesses, it's even more important, especially from a regulatory and compliance point of view. It gives everyone, big or small, access to their data in a simple fashion, which is as it should be.

Google's Free Tools Are Attractive and Scary

When I saw Marissa Mayer's presentation recently on the Google's new social search, one thing jumped out at me. You have to give Google information about your social networks in order for the search engine to display social search results. This seemed like a huge thing to ask users, and it goes directly to the heart of the problem many people have with Google. Yes, the tools are wonderful and free and available wherever you go, but any thinking person has to wonder about the portfolio of information that Google has on each of us -- our mail, our search history, what we read and the pictures we take, the videos we watch and the ones we add, and on and on it goes. And the social search would mean Google would have access to our friends too (whom we associate with).

All of this is a bit scary, so you'll have to pardon me if I don't trust Eric Schmidt's assertion that they won't ever step into that "evil room." But for starters, the Dashboard at least gives us insight into what information that Google has on us its databases, and gives us the opportunity to change our privacy settings and to delete services we don't want anymore. It may not be a panacea for paranoia, but it's a start, and I'll take it. ]]> Network Security Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread236389.html News Story Leslie Stahl Needs To Get a Clue About P2P http://www.daniweb.com/news/story235660.html Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:16:36 GMT Attachment 12439 (http://www.daniweb.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=12439) Leslie Stahl had a piece Sunday night on 60 minutes on the supposed impact of piracy on the movie industry. (You can watch it here... Attachment 12439
Leslie Stahl had a piece Sunday night on 60 minutes on the supposed impact of piracy on the movie industry. (You can watch it here.) Her piece was so slanted toward the Motion Picture Association of America, it was almost laughable (if it weren't so maddening).

At one point, Stahl explained P2P networking using Bit Torrent in a way that made it sound like it was used exclusively for movie pirates and that it was the brand new gee-wizz technology--neither of which is true. In fact, many mainstream media companies are using P2P technology to deliver their content, and have been for years, because it's cheap and efficient.

BitTorrent is Mainstream, Baby

BitTorrent, the software that Stahl shows off in the piece was developed by Bram Cohen, who is Chief Scientist and company co-founder of BitTorrent, the company. His company, the one if you listen to Stahl's piece is responsible for moving pirated content around the internet, has many media companies as its clients.

According to its web site, clients include Fox, MTV, Warner Brothers, Lions Gate and Paramount. If the movie industry is so worried about piracy on BitTorrent, it certainly has no problem using its 100+ million client network to distribute content.

The MPAA flacks interviewed in the piece who suggest that pirates are stealing their profits neglect to say MPAA members are using the same technology the piece was demonizing.


Understanding P2P

P2P (or peer to peer) networking is nothing more than a technology for distributing content across a network of peer computers, taking advantage of the computing power of each one. Like any technology it can be used for good or ill, depending on who is using it. I published an article for StreamingMedia.com back in July, 2007 about the mainstreaming of P2P. As I wrote at the time, quoting Monty Mullig, who was was SVP of digital media technologies at Turner Broadcasting System Inc.:

Quote:
“I would say that P2P as a technology, per se, hasn’t been the problem for content and copyright owners. It’s been the use and the way some services that are based on P2P technology have been deployed. There are plenty of ways to use P2P distribution that don’t infringe on the interests of copyright holders,” Mullig says.
Imagine that. There are ways to use the technology that don't infringe on copyright owners. You would never know that from the piece broadcast on Sunday night.

Stahl Unbalanced

Stahl's piece was flawed in so many ways, but she seemed to mix the up idea of pirates creating physical copies and selling them for money with those who were distributing movies for free over the internet. Meanwhile, she failed to acknowledge (while never even naming by name) that P2P technology has legitimate content distribution uses. Further, she had spokespeople from the MPAA and director Steven Soderbergh, but never saw the simple contradiction between the MPAA's position in this piece and the fact their members are partners with BitTorrent.

My fellow-DaniWeb blogger Davey Winder wrote the other day in a post, Hold the Front Page: Piracy is Not Killing the Music Business, a recent study found that people who downloaded music tracks illegally actually spent more on music than people who didn't. Winder suggests that it's not piracy that's the problem at all, but a failure to understand the way content is distributed in 2009.

He's spot on of course, and the same lesson applies to the MPAA. It's time for them to stop demonizing software and trying to tie piracy to organized crime and figure out ways to use the technology to sell and distribute their content. 60 Minutes has a long reputation for hard-hitting investigative pieces, but this piece did it a disservice. At least try to get a dissenting opinion next time. Wouldn't have been that hard to find.

Photo by hellochris on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.
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]]> Network Security Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread235660.html News Story My First Impressions of Google Wave http://www.daniweb.com/news/story235180.html Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:54:36 GMT A few weeks ago I received a Google Wave invitation from my friend David Knopf (after publicly begging for one in my post Hoping to Surf the Google Wave). Since then, I've had a chance to use it and I've seen the good, the bad and the ever-present potential of the tool. While it does have tremendous potential, I think some of my initial concerns as outlined in my post A Curmudgeonly Look at Google Wave, have proven true.

The Good

Just the other day, I was invited to be on a panel to discuss Google Wave at the Gilbane Conference in Boston on December 3rd. Larry Hawes, the Gilbane consultant organizing the panel, invited me to participate on Twitter and moved the conversation to a Wave. There, the participants were able to get an idea of the scope of the panel discussion, the logistics and organization of the panel and we were able to exchange bios and pictures for the conference program. We did this quickly and efficiently all inside a Wave.

As John Blossom, a panel participant who is president of Shore Communications, Inc and author of the book Content Nation, pointed out, we were able to use Wave to do in a few minutes, what would have taken hours and many emails back and forth to achieve with traditional email. It certainly proved the power of Google Wave, but at the same time, it also proved its weaknesses.

The Bad

As you exchange information back and forth, people reply to blips in the Wave. (Blips are like individual emails or responses). All of the blips are active within a Wave at any given time. The problem is that each blip is its own separate "conversation" and while I might be responding to Blip 1, another respondent might be replying to Blip 2 and a third starting an entirely new blip.

As you can imagine, it can get confusing trying to keep up with this kind of flow, especially when it happens in real time. As I worried in my Curmudgeonly post, as you get more participants, it makes it all that much more difficult to keep up with the flow of the conversation.

And the live typing where you can watch as each participant types his/her response in real time only adds to the confusion. I would hope that Google would eventually enable users to turn this off. As I suspected, it can get really annoying and I don't really see much purpose to this feature.

While the technical folks have taken to this tool as the early "wave" of adopters, I still worry that it's far too complicated for the masses and that people will quickly become confused. While I agree that traditional email is clearly broken, it's not clear that Google Wave in its current state is an adequate replacement for the average user out there.

The Potential

I still believe the potential is so great, and its greatest strength could lie in its API and the third party developers who building gadgets and plug-ins for Google Wave. I also think that that the idea that you can use Wave in web sites and blogs independent of the client itself has tremendous potential. Google Wave provides a two-way communications platform, the likes of which we haven't seen to this point.

But for now, Google Wave is clearly a work in progress. Some people like John Blossom have done some very creative things with Wave, using it as a living, breathing publication with an on-going live discussions with his readers. But it's clear that people are still trying to define what it is and what it's best suited to do, and it's still very early, too early to making any definitive judgments about it. ]]> Site Layout and Usability Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread235180.html News Story Is Google Android Strategy to Trip up Win Mobile? http://www.daniweb.com/news/story233891.html Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:45:28 GMT There was a good analysis in the NYT yesterday (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/microsoft-google-and-the-bear/) regarding the Google Android strategy, which according to author Saul Hansell, is intended not to make money for Google, but to block Microsoft from getting traction in the... There was a good analysis in the NYT yesterday regarding the Google Android strategy, which according to author Saul Hansell, is intended not to make money for Google, but to block Microsoft from getting traction in the mobile space. Given that Google is giving Android away, it's a theory that makes a lot of sense.

Yes, There is Such a Thing as a Free Lunch

For Google, the apparent reason for giving Android away is that if it expands access to the internet, it increase the likelihood that people will use Google services and view Google Ads. And Google Ads are really what it's all about for Google. Hansell writes:

Quote:
After all, Google isn’t approaching smartphones like a normal business. It has made Android open source available freely to any handset maker to use and change at will. It says its only reason is to expand the use of the Internet on cellphones because it believes this will allow more people to use its search engine and other products on which it sells ads.
He goes onto say that Microsoft is handling the Mobile Windows market like any other, charging for the right to install Windows Mobile on each phone, just as they charge PC makers to install Windows on each machine they sell.

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Freedom?

Microsoft says when you get Win Mobile, you get a familiar interface, familiar tools and you can get up and running quickly. There's something to be said for this. With Google's strategy, the handset makers get Google for free and they can adapt it as they wish, but when you pick up the phone, you have to learn how to do everything based on that handset maker's implementation. It's entirely possible, in fact, that you could could own one Android phone, then pick up a second one from a different manufacturer and not know how to use it.

But reports from far and wide suggest that Microsoft is playing into Google's strategy because the most recent release, 6.5, has not received favorable reports. Even Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft CEO admitted the company screwed up the release. When a lot of people expect Microsoft to screw up in this fashion, it's not a great testimonial when your own CEO comes out and says as much.

And Then There's iPhone and Blackberry

All of this doesn't even take into account that as of right now, it's neither Windows Mobile nor Android which are at the top of the market share heap. Instead it's Apple and Blackberry, two companies that have gone at it from different directions, but are finding great success.

So it may be that Hansell is right. Google doesn't give a hoot about making money directly on Android (or it would be), but the mobile revenue stream should matter to Microsoft because all things point to an increasingly mobile world.

It would be nice for Redmond if we had a complete Windows experience across our entire lives. We used it at home, on our laptops and netbooks, at work and on our phones (even in our cars), but in reality the world is becoming more fractured than that, and if Microsoft wants to play in the Mobile space it needs to come out with an OS that kicks butt and takes names, a task made harder by its own ineptitude, not to mention a competitor running interference with a free OS, and the iPhone and Blackberry sitting back and capturing the lion's share of the market. ]]> Windows Vista and Windows 7 Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread233891.html News Story Microsoft and Apple: A Tale of Two Earnings Report http://www.daniweb.com/news/story233180.html Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:27:28 GMT There was a a lot of news coming out Microsoft and Apple last week: * On Monday, Apple released its stellar earnings report (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/07/21results.html). * On Monday, Microsoft opened up the SharePoint 2009 Conference (http://www.mssharepointconference.com/) in Las... There was a a lot of news coming out Microsoft and Apple last week:

* On Monday, Apple released its stellar earnings report.

* On Monday, Microsoft opened up the SharePoint 2009 Conference in Las Vegas

* On Tuesday, Apple released its latest product line

* On Wednesday, Microsoft announced a deal with Twitter to expose Twitter information in Bing

* On Thursday, Microsoft released Windows 7.

* On Friday, Microsoft released their earnings report, which was shall we say, less than stellar (compared to Apple's).

And so it went in a week full of big news. Google got into it too, announcing its own deal with Twitter. It was enough to make your head spin, but surely one thing that stood out among all that news was how well Apple did in its earnings and how poorly Microsoft did in comparison.

Apple Scores a Record Quarter

As I wrote the other day in Win 7 Left in the Publicity Dust, Apple had a quarterly earnings report for the ages:

Quote:
Not only did they do well, they did freaking incredible scoring their best quarter ever. In the middle of the biggest recession in 50 years, Apple generated a whopping $1.67B profit.
You don't need to be a financier to know that's doing really well and the profits resulted in earnings of $1.82 per share (according to numbers on Mac World). And here's some other tidbits:

Quote:
Comparing those numbers to Apple’s year-ago figures, quarterly profit rose 46 percent, while earnings per share jumped 44 percent. Revenue increased 25 percent from the September 2008 quarter. At the end of the [quarter], the company had $34 billion of cash on hand.
That we are in the middle of a recession, only makes those numbers that much more impressive. Meanwhile, Microsoft's numbers came out today, and the results: not so good.

Microsoft's Number Are a Different Story

When the good news is that you beat analysts expectations by not having a quarter as *bad* as analysts thought, it's not such a great thing. And Microsoft's numbers were mediocre at best. Mary Jo Foley reports on her Ziff-David blog:

Quote:
For the quarter, which ended on September 30, Microsoft’s net income was down 18 percent, to $3.57 billion, and revenues down 14 percent, to $12.92 billion — both compared to the first quarter earnings for fiscal 2009.
Foley said the losses were due mostly to Microsoft's biggest earners, Windows and Office, taking a big hit. To be fair, it should be interesting to see if there is a turn-around next quarter with the holiday shopping season and the release of Windows 7 and the new Zune along with more time for Bing to bake. There had better be or Microsoft could be starting to show signs of faltering a bit.

Hard Not To Compare

These two companies battle each other and when one is doing so much better than the other, it's hard not to see the contrast and point it out. It's clear at this point, that Apple is doing great at the high end. Its computers and laptops are selling well and at a high profit margin. The iPhone market continues to grow.

Microsoft has yet to find a new product that can match the success of products rolled out by Apple this decade, still living off its Windows and Office profits. But if that continues to diminish, how will Microsoft continue to maintain its profits in the years to come? It's not an easy question to answer and one that the powers that be in Redmond are very likely puzzling over even as we speak, hoping I'm sure, that their recent moves will result in their own stellar earnings reports in the future. ]]> Windows Vista and Windows 7 Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread233180.html News Story Poor Win 7 Left in the Publicity Dust http://www.daniweb.com/news/story232060.html Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:33:42 GMT It's supposed to be Windows 7's big week, but other news just seems to keep getting in the way. And it's not just competitors like the news coming out of Apple this week, it's big announcements coming from inside Microsoft too. You would think that Microsoft could at least keep its own house in order, but that doesn't seem to be the case this week.

Apple's Earnings Surprise

As Joe Wilcox writes in Beta News, the timing of Apple's news this week was not coincidental. On Monday Apple released its quarterly earning reports and it blew analysts' expectations away. Not only did they do well, they did freaking incredible scoring their best quarter ever. In the middle of the biggest recession in 50 years, Apple generated a whopping $1.67B profit.

Consider that Apple sold more than 3 million Macs and 7.4 million iPhones in the quarter. The only bad news was that iPod sales were down 8 percent as people gravitated toward the iPhone. Beyond that, the only thing Apple has to worry about is unrealistic expectations for next quarter.

Apple Releases new Toys

As though the outstanding earnings report weren't enough, Apple released a new line of Apple products on Tuesday generating yet another wave of publicity. There was the new Mac Book, the updated iMac, the new Mac Mini server and of course, the superbly named, Magic Mouse (who wouldn't want one, so much cooler sounding than Mighty). The social networks were buzzing with folks talking and talking about this new line and it continues today, but it wasn't just Apple stealing that spotlight from Windows 7. Microsoft has had some news of its own.

SharePoint 2010 Anyone?

Meanwhile, in a case of poor corporate planning, Microsoft was holding a major conference in Las Vegas this week announcing their own upcoming SharePoint 2010, which includes a cloud and server versions. Steve Ballmer gave the keynote, and as I wrote the other day in Ballmer Gets that Sidekick Issue a Matter of Trust, he gave interviews afterward to ward off the bad publicity generated around the Sidekick data loss incident.

Oh And Bing Makes Deal With Twitter

As though all this weren't enough to cause the folks in charge of Win 7 publicity to be biting their finger nails down to bare knuckle, today Microsoft announced a major deal between Bing and Twitter with a rumor that one with Facebook is not far behind. This is of course great news for Microsoft, but it's a day ahead of the Windows 7 release party. You would think that this week of all weeks, they probably wanted to keep the company focus on one thing and that's Windows 7.

In the context of all this news, suddenly the Windows 7 release seems pretty anti-climactic, doesn't it? If it were competitors alone trying to undermine the big release, you could understand it, but when the publicity competition comes from inside your own company, you have to wonder why there wasn't a little bit better coordination here. Windows 7 should have the spotlight to itself and now it's sitting backstage all alone and feeling blue watching everyone fawn over SharePoint and Bing (and magic mice). ]]> Windows Vista and Windows 7 Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread232060.html News Story Ballmer Gets that Sidekick Issue A Matter of Trust http://www.daniweb.com/news/story231667.html Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:54:53 GMT Attachment 12206
I've lived long enough to have learned
The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned
But that won't happen to us
'Cause it's always been a matter of trust
~Billy Joel, Matter of Trust

When word got out last week about the Sidekick data loss debacle, you knew it would be fodder for every cloud critic on the planet. When you're Microsoft and you lose data, there isn't going to be any place to hide. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, gets this.

That's why he was trying to soothe cloud consumer fears, while at the same time pushing the new SharePoint Online service in an interview with Network World yesterday, following his keynote at the SharePoint 2009 Conference in Las Vegas. Perhaps calling the data loss "not good" was minimizing the impact, but overall Mr. Ballmer seems to get the enormity of the problem (even while hoping to minimize it; that crazy political tightrope that CEOs like him must walk).

Kicking Sidekick data to the Curb

Microsoft had a major data loss last week involving Sidekick smart phones. This much is clear. There are indications (at least coming from Microsoft) that they are in the process of recovering the data, and that their initial fears that the data had been lost for good was fortunately not the case. But the Sidekick data disaster has to be seen in the context of the bigger cloud picture, particularly for Microsoft's ongoing cloud strategy.

Fear in the Cloud

Even the most avid cloud advocates must have a niggling fear in the back of their minds that a data loss similar to the one that happened to Sidekick is out there waiting to happen. Microsoft is in the process of trying to build a cloud business. The Network World article reports that SharePoint in the cloud already boasts 1 million users, and they have a big cloud strategy around the Azure platform. There is a lot at stake here involving the whole future strategy of the company and the shift from the desktop to the cloud.

Microsoft Trust Issues

When you're Microsoft, you face an even deeper issues of trust. Many companies are probably wondering if they can trust their data with Microsoft, and this just feeds into those concerns. Ballmer admits that his company has used this scare tactic against competitors, and they will be likely to throw this right back at them:

Quote:
"It is one of the things that we highlight in competitive battles; that our competitors have had a whole lot of outages in their services. We do highlight it [when they have a problem],” he said.

“I'm sure our competitors will highlight this outage,” he said.
You better believe they will. They are probably feeding the social networks, printing the brochures and shouting about it from the rooftops, as we speak. This isn't going to go away because whether they fix it or not, the fear is out there, and it has Microsoft's name attached to it.

That's why Microsoft's job just got harder. This one incident could have a major impact on their cloud strategy and it's going to take a lot of soothing talks from Steve Ballmer and a spotless track record to regain the trust. I'm sure this interview is just the beginning.

Photo by bargainbriana on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.
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]]> Windows Vista and Windows 7 Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread231667.html News Story German Book Publishers Cool to eBook Market http://www.daniweb.com/news/story231190.html Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:13:46 GMT In a story this week by German news magazine Der Spiegel (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,655422,00.html), I was surprised to learn that German book publishers are actively avoiding the eBook market, fearing it will eat into their print publishing business, instead of seeing it... In a story this week by German news magazine Der Spiegel, I was surprised to learn that German book publishers are actively avoiding the eBook market, fearing it will eat into their print publishing business, instead of seeing it as an obvious new market for consumers to read their books.

eBook Market Slow to Grow in Germany

For now, the eBook market in Germany is lagging far behind the US and other countries where eBook readers are being sold. In fact, according to numbers cited in the article, 10,000 readers have been sold in Germany. Recent projections have the Kindle selling 1.2M units in the US in the 4th quarter of 2009 alone (and that's just one manufacturer). German readers bought just 65,000 eBooks in the first six months of this year compared with some estimates that have Kindle owners buying 600,000 ebooks per *week*.

This is partly due to the way that Germany regulates its publishing industry keeping book prices artificially high in an effort to protect authors, publishers and small book sellers in a highly competitive marketplace, and partly because German publishers want to keep the prices of eBooks high.

To that end, eBooks are only made available only after the paper back version of book has hit stores, and then, unlike the US where the eBook is sold for a fraction of the cost of the hard cover version, German eBooks are sold at the cost of the cheapest printed version, not exactly making it an attractive buy to the average German consumer.

Why Fear the Future

The whole approach seems rather silly to me because the eBook market represents just another way to market and sell the book. eBook Readers remain too costly for most consumers to buy their books in this fashion, and as I've written in the past, unless they come down substantially, it's likely eBooks will remain a niche market for the foreseeable future. That said, there is a market there and to ignore or to quash it, makes little sense to me. If the idea of these pricing strategies is to protect the publishing business, then it doesn't make sense to cut off a market that could contribute to the revenue stream for author and publisher alike.

Exploring the Lower Costs

Yes, eBooks cost less than their paper counterparts, but there is a corresponding lower cost of production for a digital copy. There is no printing involved, eliminating the need to run expensive presses and to roll trucks (and planes) to distribute the books to a network of book sellers around the world. This would seem to increase profit margin by eliminating a substantial part of the cost of producing the printed work, and therefore justifying the lower cost.

Regardless, eBooks aren't likely to completely eliminate the market for print any time soon. There will always be people who prefer to hold the printed work in their hands, and publishers can encourage this market by creating special print versions. For German book publishers to try and limit a market that could help publishers and writers make additional money seems to be missing a substantial opportunity, and carrying their desire to protect the industry a bit too far. ]]> Cellphones, PDAs and Handheld Devices Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread231190.html News Story A Black Eye for Cloud Computing http://www.daniweb.com/news/story229934.html Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:27:36 GMT To put it mildly, it's been a bad week for cloud computing. First of all word got out that Microsoft, the keepers of the data for users of Sidekick phones completely hosed the data. I mean kaput, gone, vanished. See you later, bye. If you don't have a back up, you are pretty much screwed because the keepers of the data have committed the ultimate sin and lost it.

Meanwhile, the The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports that MobileMe might be having a data leak and letting people randomly see the contents of your address book. This is the kind of nightmare scenario that cloud computing naysayers always seem to bring up, but we quickly dismiss as not likely to happen. Well, it did happen and it happened twice in one week.

We're Not Talking an Outage Here

Last month, I made fun of they hysteria that developed when Gmail went down for a few hours in my post, The Day Gmail Stood Still: A Tale of Horror, but losing a service for a few hours is a minor annoyance. Losing your data? That's catastrophic and there is no sugar coating it. That these two cloud computing doomsday scenarios were perpetrated, not by some Mom and Pop cloud company, but by two of the largest computing organizations, Apple and Microsoft, makes the situation all that much worse.

Tough to Defend

As a fan of cloud computing, I tend to dismiss the control arguments I hear when people say they won't let their data out of their sight. The easiest argument here, which frankly is the one that vendors always seem to say, is that your data is probably safer with them than it is with you. After all they have fail-safe systems, back-ups of their back-ups and your data is safer with them because you won't be as thorough. What's more their reputation is on the line, right? If something like this happens, well their whole business model is basically up in smoke.

Apple and Microsoft Are Not Pure Cloud Vendors

If Google or Salesforce lost or leaked data in this fashion, it would be truly a monumental failure since this is what they do for a living. That it was Apple and Microsoft, is still horrible, but this is not their primary business model. They still sell other services, hardware, software and so forth. The cloud business is a sideline and maybe that's the problem.

As we navigate this new way of computing, let's not panic and throw the baby out with the bath water, but neither can we idly dismiss data backup and data leak concerns as the worries of control freaks. It's something we should all be concerned about. Something we should all be asking hard questions about and something we need to take much more seriously because next time, the data could be yours and it won't be so abstract. Remember it's ultimately your data and always make sure there is a way for you to back it up locally so that you have a copy too in case your vendor turns out to be someone incompetent, like say Apple or Microsoft. ]]> Network Security Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread229934.html News Story The Myth of the Apple Fan Boy http://www.daniweb.com/news/story229385.html Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:32:37 GMT I have to say that I really hate the term "fan boy." It's usually used as a dismissive term to put down someone who speaks favorably of a product. It suggests that if you like a particular brand, it must mean that you blindly support everything that company does, and will come to its defense even when it's not warranted. The term is most often used with the word "Apple" in front of it, as in "oh, he's just an Apple Fan Boy."

If you speak positively about Apple products, it could be that they are often good, but it doesn't mean they're perfect. Nor does it mean you automatically defend every action of the corporation behind the brand. I use Apple products. I've got an iPhone, a Mac Book Pro and several iPods. I buy them because they are mostly well designed, they work very well and they look great. Yes, they're expensive, but in my 20 years of working with computers and gadgets, I would gladly pay for what I perceive as quality. That doesn't make me a "fan boy." It makes me a smart and reasoned consumer.

Definitely Not Flawless

All that said, it doesn't mean I don't go after Apple in this space when they deserve it because regular readers know that I do. I remember when I bought iPod Mini, having never used an iPod before, I sat there frustrated trying to figure out how to use it. Once I understood the elegance of the scroll wheel, I was hooked, but it was not apparent how to use it out of the box.

As someone who just performed a RAM upgrade on my Mac Book Pro, I would like to talk to the Apple engineers and ask them what they were thinking using five of the smallest screws I've ever seen to hold down a protective case over the RAM. I think two would have done it or maybe a thumb screw would have been nice. Instead, I had to use a Jeweler's screw driver to get the screws out. This was certainly not the most user-friendly approach I've ever seen.

That Famous Apple Arrogance

Let us not forget the famous Apple arrogance or the strange cult of personality that surrounds Apple Grand Poobah, Steve Jobs. Apple doesn't always plan right for obvious demand as happened with the release of iPhone 2.0. That they insist on giving AT&T exclusive rights to sell the iPhone remains baffling to me. They have taken away features users obviously still wanted like fire wire, and they have taken petty steps like blocking iTunes syncing on the Palm Pre. They have even sent out their lawyers to harass a small business.

But They Make Good Stuff

When it comes down to it though, I buy Apple products because they make good stuff most of the time. I couldn't care less if they are fashionable or cool. It doesn't mean Apple's a perfect company, far from it. It only means that what they do right, they do very, very well. There's no shame in reporting that, but it doesn't mean I'm going give to them a free pass for their foibles and screw-ups, nor does it mean I'm a mindless "fan boy," who doesn't consider all of the facts before making a purchase decision. ]]> Apple Hardware Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread229385.html News Story Dell Cell Phone Would Face A Steep Climb http://www.daniweb.com/news/story228583.html Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:22:50 GMT The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Dell plans to build its own cell phone running Google's Android operating system, and release it some time next year. It's worth noting that Dell has tried to get into the gadget business before. They made a couple of failed stabs at the MP3 player market. They also tried a PDA back in the day. None of these attempts made much of a dent in the market. That's why I'm wondering why they think they can succeed in the crowded cell phone market.

Partnering with AT&T

The announcement includes news that AT&T will distribute the phones, which like the iPhone, will boast a touch screen, but even though Android phones have gained in popularity, if for no other reason than the sheer number of them, they will be competing at AT&T with some fairly heady company including Apple and Blackberry, not to mention the very nice Samsung Propel. I've been curious about Android phones for some time, and up until recently they were only available from T-Mobile and Sprint. There are also plans for Verizon to offer Android phones very soon. That AT&T now has at least one in the works certainly makes sense, but is Dell the right partner?

Apple Didn't Make Phones Either

It's worth pointing out that before the iPhone, Apple was famous for computers and MP3 players. They had never delved into the phone market, yet they've done extremely well by any measure. So there is a precedent for a company that hadn't made cell phones having great success in the market (and with AT&T as exclusive partners to-boot), but Apple's Apple and Dell's Dell and I don't see the success being matched here. Dell makes decent, low-cost computers and they've done very well doing that. They've never been able to duplicate that success in the device market.

Need a Homerun to Work

They can make a phone of course without my permission. Last time I checked, Michael Dell didn't confer with me over business decisions, but if they hope to make any dent in the crowded US smart phone market, they better hit a home run first time out. There can be no bugs. The interface has to be flawless. The display has to be sharp. The case has to be elegant. The price has to be low and they have to market it aggressively and intelligently. They need to get a few very key players on their side. They need to leverage social media channels. In short, they have to do everything right, and even then, there is no guarantee they will succeed.

As an AT&T customer, and pretty much stuck there because of the nature of my family plan contracts, I'm happy to see more competition. I'm also thrilled to see an Android phone, but I'm just not convinced that Dell is the company to deliver the goods. Still, I would happily be proven wrong and to see them develop a killer phone that took the market by storm. I just don't believe that's going to happen. ]]> Cellphones, PDAs and Handheld Devices Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread228583.html News Story The Incredible Arrogance of Being Eric Schmidt http://www.daniweb.com/news/story228410.html Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:46:03 GMT In wide ranging interview (http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20091007/live-from-new-york-google-cofounder-sergey-brin-meets-the-press/) with Peter Kafka of the Digital Memo Blog, (http://allthingsd.com/) Google CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brinn did their best to give people the impression... In wide ranging interview with Peter Kafka of the Digital Memo Blog, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brinn did their best to give people the impression that Google was run by a couple of arrogant SoBs. Whether it was purchasing Android or suggesting that Google could never be evil because of the fundamental trust between Google and its users, they came off as cavalier and pretentious. (But to their credit, they weren't afraid to mention Microsoft by name or admit that Bing is good for competition, unlike Steve Ballmer who refused to name Google in an interview last week.)

See No Evil

Without a doubt my favorite part of the interview was where Schmidt suggested that it was simply not possible for Google to be "evil," whatever the heck that means, because users wouldn't stand for it. Here's what Schmidt said to Peter Kafka (in a quote that is positively Kafkaesque) when he asked him "Why won't you be like Microsoft in regard to antitrust?":

Quote:
"If we went into an “evil room” and had an “evil light” shined on us, and we then behaved in an “evil” way we would be destroyed… there is a fundamental trust between Google and its users.”
Seriously, Eric? An evil room with an evil light? My goodness that's some heavy load of crap he's throwing there, isn't it? I have to admit I use a lot of Google tools (I'm writing this post in Google Docs), but do I trust Google to stay away from the evil light? Not so much.

Million Here, Million There

And as though that weren't enough, his co-founders can casually throw around a million here and there and he doesn't even know until after the fact. That they talk about it so casually in an interview is beyond belief to me. 'Oh by the way, Eric old boy, just bought Android for a few mill. Forgot to mention it old chap.' Here's how Schmidt describes it in the interview:

Quote:
One day Larry and Sergey bought Android, and I didn’t even notice. Think about the strategic opportunities that has created. Sergey found Google Earth one day while he was surfing on the Web. And then he walked into my office and told me he bought them. “And I said, “for how much, Sergey?” And it turned out to be a few million.
Ya, a few million. Who would have noticed, right? My wife came home the other day and said she bought a company. I said, "How much, honey?" And it turned out to be a few million. Oh no bother then. Thanks.

When asked about Google employees feelings of entitlement around salary and perks, Brinn had this to say:

Quote:
We cut down on snacks, etc to “reset expectations” re: entitlement.
Wow. That's some tough love Sergey, eh?. You mean employees have to actually pay for their food? Whoo Boy, you guys are really are hard core.

And these are just three examples. I encourage you to read the whole interview to get the whole picture. These comments show a real lack of connection to what most of us face in the real world on a daily basis. There is a sense of entitlement and arrogance that comes shining through throughout the interview. Let's face it though, whether it's Ballmer, Jobs or Schmidt, it's tough living in that end of the stratosphere, and arrogance just seems to go with the territory. ]]> Search Engine Optimization Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread228410.html News Story Use a Real Email Address and Other Web Site Tricks http://www.daniweb.com/news/story228042.html Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:35:08 GMT I'm not a web developer by trade, but I visit web sites all the time, and as journalist I'm looking for a couple of key things. First of all, I want to find your press page and a press contact. Short of that I want to find an email address. Note that I don't want to find a form, which could as far as I know never be seen by a human and rot in the IT dustbin for all time. In short, you want to make it really easy for people to contact you.

Don't Use A Form

Some companies seem to have a real fear of contact, but social media marketing guru Seth Godin writes in his blog this week that having a real email contact is essential to a successful web site. He points out that too many sites use an email form, some of which even limit the number of characters a person can write. What could be more unfriendly than that? You want to make it easy for your customers (and yes, journalists) to find you.

Godin guesses that many companies use the form because they are afraid of Spam. He's probably right, but as he says, you can filter the Spam a lot easier than you can find customers (or journalist s who really want to write about you). He even offers a trick of using a mailto: to link with a built-in subject line to help you identify email from interested parties.

Don't Forget the Press

In the post, All Kinds of People, Visit Your Online Media Room, Not Just Journalists; author David Meerman Scott suggested that the press room isn't just for the press. It often contains lots of great content that you may want other interested parties like customers to see too. You may notice if you scroll down that I was quick to comment and criticize this advice, but I can admit when I'm wrong. I don't think that Scott was suggesting you clog your media page with junk, he just wants you to let others know that there's lots of good stuff there.

However, I still stand by that last part of my comment about including an email address for your press contact where I wrote:

Quote:
You want to offer some good advice for companies about their media room? How about prominently displaying your contact email and phone number. That's job 1 and you would be surprised how often companies fail to provide this crucial piece of information.
Most companies want publicity. If a journalist like me is writing about you, that's usually a good thing because it gets your name out there. I find it horribly frustrating when I go to a web site and I can't find the press page, or worse I can't find a press contact including both email and a direct phone number (not the central company number). You want to make your press contact information highly visible. Let people know that the given email is for journalists and analysts only and direct the rest of the (unwashed) masses to the main email address, which by now, if you've been paying attention, you've displayed prominently on every page (or at least on an easy-to-find Contact page).

The purpose of the web site is to get the word out about your company, to provide great content and to let people know who you are and what you're about. If you succeed at that and fail to provide easy contact methods, you have thrown all of that good work out the window. The great thing about these tips is that they don't require a huge effort to achieve and they can pay off for you and your organization in big ways. ]]> Site Layout and Usability Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread228042.html News Story Hoping to Surf the Google Wave http://www.daniweb.com/news/story227584.html Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:21:07 GMT I have watched you on the shore
Standing by the ocean's roar
Do you love me, do you surfer girl
~Beach Boys, Surfer Girl

Google Wave invitations went out last week to 100,000 lucky people and I didn't get one. I'm stuck on the shore line while the fortunate few are riding the first Google Wave. I don't mind telling you, I really want to get my hands on an invitation. I know what you're thinking if you're a regular reader: 'Aren't you the guy who wrote A Curmudgeonly Look at Google Wave when it was first announced?' Well ya, I was and that post (which is my second most popular ever with over 50,000 views) represents a snap shot of what I felt at the time, but I'm also a technology journalist and I'm innately curious, and I want to try this dammit.

What's This All About?

If for some reason, you're not familiar with Google Wave, you can learn more in this 8 minute Google video. It is an elegant looking email/communications/social/collaboration platform. You have the ability to share email and communication in a single interface, so instead of sending multiple emails or messages to multiple people, you point them to a single wave, which acts as a central communication hub where you can share text, documents, pictures and video (which you can edit and share in real time). Using the platform, you can build widgets. Some early ones allow you to run your Twitter stream (or a Twitter search) directly in your Wave. I'm sure over time we will see companies develop widgets that communicate directly with internal enterprise applications.

You can drag and drop files and addresses making it very user friendly, but what's really exciting about this whole phenomenon to me is that you can embed Waves into blogs and web sites, so that you forgo the need for a Wave client if you don't want one. On the flip side, say you embed a Wave in a blog post, you can then watch the comments section in real time in the Wave client. Having this choice to use the client, embed it in a web site or use both is very powerful indeed.

Social Implications

This ability to use Wave as a single container on your web site or blog means that you can communicate and socialize in a single tool. While FriendFeed (which recently purchased by Facebook) provides some of this ability for social applications, it hasn't really caught in a big way. Wave has the ability to take the idea of FriendFeed to an entirely new level because you can incorporate your entire social and communications infrastructure inside a single platform without a lot of heavy lifting.

If Google can get it working right, it could be huge because it will act as a single social and communications center regardless of the application. Think about this for a second. You could have a single hub where you could see your email, instant messaging, text messages, Twitter stream, Facebook traffic; in short, everything in one place. Then think about the fact that you don't even require a client to get this done, that you can embed it in a web site or blog fairly easily.

Not Everyone's Excited

Before you get carried away with my enthusiasm, remember that post that I wrote the week Google first announced Wave. There are potential issues here and I'm not the only to consider them. Technology luminary Robert Scoble calls it "overhyped" and "noisy" in a recent blog post. Meanwhile Anil Dash likened it to the Segway (the much hyped self-propelled scooter device) on Twitter where he wrote:

Quote:
I have huge respect for the Google Wave team, but it seems as more people try it, they agree that it's like a Segway for email.
I'm not sure these two esteemed gentlemen don't have agendas of their own here, but the fact is Google Wave is supremely interesting technology and as a person who follows and writes about it, it's something I want to try and decide for myself. For now, I'm forced to sit on the sidelines and watch while others debate its merits. And I find that very frustrating, Earthling. ]]> Site Layout and Usability Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread227584.html <![CDATA[News Story Who's Going to Develop an Ideal Academic eBook Reader?]]> http://www.daniweb.com/news/story226996.html Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:12:21 GMT On the face of it, you would think eBook Readers would be perfect for an academic setting, but according to a post on Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/28/kindle-dx-called-poor-excuse-of-an-academic-tool-in-princeton/) this week, Princeton students participating in a pilot program were... On the face of it, you would think eBook Readers would be perfect for an academic setting, but according to a post on Engadget this week, Princeton students participating in a pilot program were unhappy with the Kindle DX's feature set, particularly ones essential to students such as annotation and highlighting. Given that eBook Readers at some point will be relegated to niche devices (if they aren't already), you have to think that the academic setting would be *the* perfect niche, and that means that one of the eBook manufacturers is going to have to step up and develop a product specifically geared to the needs of this market.

Why Academics?

Let's face it, text books are heavy, expensive and they use a lot of trees. They are also require frequent updating, forcing reprints and quickly making the paper versions obsolete. If a student could carry one light-weight device with all of the texts, hand-outs and homework, it would be make life so much simpler for them. Of course, there would need to be some cloud-based updating and backup because you know that some students would inevitably lose the device. The feature set should also include solid annotation and note-taking tools, the ability to highlight text and access related materials in online libraries and on the web. None of this is beyond the reach of the current state of technology, so it begs the question: Why hasn't someone created a device like this?

What do Students Want?

IREX, which just last week introduced a new eBook reader to the market, has been studying the academic market, and IREX’s North American CEO, Kevin Hamilton says, they have learned that students have very specific requirements including:

Quote:
  • Students strongly preferred a larger screen that more closely resembles the size of a textbook.
  • Students said that the readability, weight and size of eReaders are strong, but that battery life and the speed of turning pages need improvement.
  • Students strongly preferred reading on an eReader rather than a laptop / netbook.
Who's Going to Meet Demand?

Hamilton understands that the lack of note-taking ability is a problem, one they plan to address in the their latest offering in the first quarter next year. "The IREX DR800SG will have note taking capabilities available via an easy firmware upgrade in Q1 2010 and our other eReaders have had this feature available for years." He adds, "Our business eReaders are very popular among attorneys, academics, etc. because they allow a user to make annotations while reading. This will surely spill over to the U.S. market as we implement the note-taking capabilities on the IREX DR800SG."

The long-rumored Apple Tablet is also set to take the market by storm at some point and you have to believe that that it will come equipped with all of the features that students and business people alike would want. One thing Apple usually gets cold is usability, and I can't imagine they aren't watching and making adjustments to market needs. Meanwhile, you have to wonder why Sony and Amazon aren't taking this part of the market more seriously and giving students what they want out of the gate.

These devices will only carry so far as pure book readers. They have to do more and the academic market is one that is ripe for the picking. At some point, one of these players (or perhaps one we haven't seen yet) needs take advantage of this market because I think it's going to be substantial. ]]> Cellphones, PDAs and Handheld Devices Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread226996.html <![CDATA[News Story Ballmer Won't Call Google by Name in Interview]]> http://www.daniweb.com/news/story226546.html Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:15:26 GMT In a strange part of what was otherwise and interesting and insightful interview with TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/microsoft-ballmer-interview-exclusive-techcrunch-bing-mobile-azur/) this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/exec/steve/) went out... In a strange part of what was otherwise and interesting and insightful interview with TechCrunch this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went out of his way to avoid naming Google, instead referring to them repeatedly as "the incumbent." This seemed to be a deliberate strategy and left me shaking my head wondering why he couldn't refer to Google by name. (The whole interview is interesting, so I encourage you to watch it, but the part I'm referring to begins at around 6:30.)

The Harry Potter Strategy

This reminded a bit of Harry Potter, where of course they refer to the evil Voldemort, as "he who must not be named." Perhaps by not naming Google, Ballmer (and by extension his strategy team) believe they can demonize the company and maybe reflect some of its own bad karma back to Google. It's important to remember that Google started this whole thing by inserting the "do no evil" nonsense into its business charter, which was no doubt a subtle dig at Microsoft.

These two companies could back on forth on this all the live long day and you wouldn't have a definitive answer. When companies get as large and rich as Google and Microsoft (and yes, Apple), they have the capacity to do great good and they have capacity to be evil. When the nature of the business is to destroy your competitor, some nasty crap can go down in the process.

The Advantage of Not Being the Incumbent

What Ballmer said when he was referring to Google as "the incumbent," was that his company had a bit more flexibility than "the incumbent," which could be true, but it's not as though Google has been sitting around resting on its success. But Ballmer argues that when you're on top like Google is, and by a good margin, you don't necessarily have the same flexibility to try new things as the company who has less to lose. One idea that Ballmer brought up was natural language processing. Again, I don't think this was just picked out of the air. He maintained that Microsoft could try things and still begin to creep up in the market share department.

But Google is not exactly sitting around doing nothing. They have recently developed Caffeine, a new algorithm. They are constantly introducing new services into Google Labs. This year, for example they introduced Google Voice and just last week, they debuted Sidewiki, a fascinating new project that enables visitors to add content to any web site. So while Ballmer would like us to believe that that "the incumbent" is slow and inflexible, the evidence suggests that's just not true.

And for the record, even though Ballmer would like us to believe his company is the underdog, it's not as though Microsoft is a poor relation here. They have plenty of resources to put to bear on this battle.

Microsoft Needs to Focus on Its Products

As Ballmer and TechCrunch reporter Michael Arrington pointed out, this has had a good year for Microsoft. It introduced Bing, the Zune HD and Windows 7 is having its coming out party next month. But when the chief executive speaks, he is always speaking deliberately on behalf of the organization. Ballmer understands this, so it seems more than a bit strange when he won't name his competitor. Can this nonsense get any more absurd? If you think these products are good, then why not simply let them stand on their own and stop the Harry Potter antics. ]]> Windows Vista and Windows 7 Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread226546.html News Story Could Windows 7 Lead Us From Recession? http://www.daniweb.com/news/story225709.html Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:12:33 GMT Windows 7 is coming next month. That's hardly news to any of you, I'm sure, but have you considered that this major OS release could be the catalyst to end the recession? I'm guessing not many of you have come to that conclusion, but consider this: Many, many companies steered clear of Vista, but companies still using XP will be looking to upgrade in the next 18 months. And it could be very much like the book, "If You Give a Moose a Muffin:" If you give a company a new OS, chances are they are going to need some new hardware to go with it, and that could set off a hardware buying frenzy.

Slowly Coming Out of It

The numbers have suggested the economy probably has hit bottom and we are slowly moving in a positive direction, so perhaps Microsoft can't be given sole credit for this (if it comes to pass), but the writing is clearly on the wall. When I criticized Microsoft in my recent post, Has Microsoft Chosen Subterfuge Over Quality, I garnered a lot of comments, more than any other post since I've been writing this blog, and what a lot of people said is that I should see Windows 7 in action. The word is that this is a much more stable OS, that companies are going to like it, and that they are going to buy it.

Unfortunately for them, they are probably going to have upgrade their hardware to do it. That means the Dells and HPs of the world are sitting back and licking their chops at the prospect. This transition could be the beginning of a hardware/software boom for Microsoft and its many partners. But only if Windows 7 is as good as people say it will be.

Let's See What It Looks Like

Ultimately, the real proof will be when we see Windows 7 in production. I'm kicking myself at this point that I didn't download the free Beta versions that were available last summer because I really want to see how well this works in a true production environment. How easy is it to use? Unlike Vista, does it really stay out of the way for the most part? I have watched some videos and clearly it is pretty, but overall it doesn't look entirely different to me than Vista without all the annoying messages asking me "if I'm really, really, really sure I want to install this software."

The changes could be mostly under the hood where it is said it is faster, more efficient and less intrusive. Vista was so restrictive in its attempt to save PC users from themselves that it made it virtually unusable for me. I found people who liked Vista had loaded up on the RAM with a minimum of 4 gigs to make it usable. The hardware requirements for Win 7 suggest you could run it on a 1Ghz PC with 1 GB of RAM, but I'm guessing it wouldn't run very well under those conditions. You certainly couldn't run the new fancy slide show wall paper with only 1 gig, not if you wanted to run a couple of programs along with it.

So Windows 7 may end up being a fresh start for Microsoft, and if it is, it could lead many businesses to switch. Microsoft shops are not likely to move to the cloud (where the underlying OS becomes far less important) or Linux in one fell swoop. Many companies, if the word on the street is good, will make the transition to Windows 7, and when they do chances are they going to want some hardware to go with that. And that's going to be very good for the economy. ]]> Windows Vista and Windows 7 Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread225709.html News Story Google is a Distant Second in China http://www.daniweb.com/news/story224883.html Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:17:51 GMT When you are dealing with a populations as large as China's, even when you take into consideration that three quarters of the population doesn't have internet access, you are still talking about a very large number of those who do. So it's no surprise that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! want a piece of this rather large and likely growing pie.

So far at least though, it's not one of the big American search engines making the biggest impact in China. According to an article in this month's Forbes Magazine, it's Chinese search engine called Baidu that's a run-away number one.

Baidu is Local

According to the article, Baidu is a local firm started by a US educated entrepreneur by the name of Robin Li. What Li has been able to do is take control of the search market in China by marketing his search engine as a native tool that understands the language and culture better than any American company could. Li has managed to build a Google-like market share in the neighborhood of 65 percent of Chinese searches. Google has about half that, but according to Forbes is growing rapidly and putting pressure on Baidu. (It's worth noting that this PC world article reports that Google is much less successful than Forbes suggests.)

Treading Dangerously in Foreign Markets

While the Chinese market is tantalizing because of its size and potential for Herculean growth, it is also fraught with political and economic danger. The Chinese government has been known to try and control information now and again, and when that happens, Google (and other American search engines) are caught in a very awkward position trying to operate within the rules and customs of the local market, while not appearing to kowtow or cooperate with what many consider to be oppressive regimes.

In a March, 2009 Business Week article, writer Douglas MacMillan underscored this tension when he wrote:

Quote:
Big Internet companies that do business abroad often find themselves in a quandary. While at home they champion privacy and free speech rights, overseas they often have to play by rules that don't reflect those same freedoms.
It's not always an easy line to walk and American companies torn between supporting freedom and (as Jackson Browne once wrote) "the struggle for the legal tender" often find themselves in a moral pickle.

Worth the Struggle?

Ultimately for these companies, the prize of huge pay-per-click advertising revenue is worth the struggle. Interestingly, the market graph in the Forbes article shows Yahoo, number 3 but fading fast while Microsoft did not even make it on the chart, which suggests they have little presence, or at least not enough to warrant mention. Meanwhile, Li and his firm struggle with their own alleged ethical lapses (as Forbes reports) while Google continues to increase its Chinese presence and puts pressure on the reigning market champion.

This all goes to prove while it's well worth it for businesses, even small businesses, to expand beyond their local markets, it's not always an easy task even when you have the deep pockets of Google. Just because you're Number 1 in the US doesn't mean much when you crash the shores of a market giant like China. But even a small piece of that advertising market could make it worth the effort, and as you might expect, Google is going after it full bore. ]]> Pay-Per-Click Advertising Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread224883.html News Story All in All: A Good Week for Microsoft http://www.daniweb.com/news/story223777.html Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:08:35 GMT Attachment 11664I confess I'm not always kind to Microsoft. They stumble and bumble and often make bad decisions, and as such make a great target for a blogger like me, but looking back at the announcements they've made over the last couple of weeks, when you add it all up, they at least seem to be trying to move forward.

They may be awkward at times (as geeks often are), but the Zune HD, the CodePlex Foundation, and the newly announced Bing visual search tool all add up to a good week for the behemoth from Redmond. In fact, when you put it all together, even the most ardent of the anti-Microsoft ilk, would have to admit, it's a nice effort.

Zune HD

While this isn't a perfect device by any means, the design alone is a huge step forward from its clunky (and indisputably ugly) predecessors. This one looks sleek and sexy, and from a functionality standpoint, it has a lot going for it. Sure, they should have avoided those pre-roll ads in the free apps I wrote about the other day in Microsoft Ads Mess with Fuzzy Zune HD Feelings, but this is a device that people will take a long look at this holiday season. It may end up being too little, too late from a market standpoint since Apple owns this space, but at least they're in the game now.

CodePlex Foundation

When I wrote DotNetNuke Co-founder Defends Role with Microsoft's CodePlex last week, I got some pretty passionate responses in my comments section, which show just how much Microsoft is mistrusted and frankly disliked because of its software and its past business practices. No matter how much they may try to convince the open source community that this project is completely independent, it carries the name Microsoft on the sponsorship name and as such it's going to be suspect.

Don't cry for Microsoft though; it made its own bed over the years, but on its face the CodePlex Foundation is at least an attempt to provide a useful service. The jury is still out on how independent and technology agnostic it is, and if open source community members will ever get past its understandable distrust for Microsoft, but they are at least putting it out there.

Bing Visual Search

Sometimes you have to give credit where credit is due and the Bing visual search tool is neat technology, plain and simple. Sure, once again they undermine it by requiring users to install Silverlight, but if you can get passed that (and I know some of you can't), you will find a very cool way of searching. You can search by category such as Baseball or Billboard 100, then filter down. Do you want to see baseball's top pitchers or the best batter? Do you want to see the Number 1 songs from the 1960s? It provides a clean and easy to navigate interface and when you find what you want, clicking a picture takes you to a standard list of results.

As a writer I look for patterns and I try to report them to you. I've found a clear pattern here, and it shows a company looking to the future and trying to find its footing. While Microsoft still certainly has has a long way to go, they are hanging in and looking for an edge, and that bodes well for a competitive marketplace. As I've written in the past, we really gain nothing by completely weakened Microsoft, but an unchecked Google and Apple. And I don't think any of us want that.
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]]> Windows Software Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread223777.html News Story Microsoft Ads Mess with Fuzzy Zune HD Feelings http://www.daniweb.com/news/story223588.html Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:27:59 GMT Yesterday Microsoft launched the long-awaited Zune HD (http://www.zune.net/en-us/products/zunehd/default.htm). By all reports, this is a pretty nice device with a large 3.3 inch OLED screen with HD video and HD radio playback. As a media player, it offers access to a limited App Store and a very... Yesterday Microsoft launched the long-awaited Zune HD. By all reports, this is a pretty nice device with a large 3.3 inch OLED screen with HD video and HD radio playback. As a media player, it offers access to a limited App Store and a very nice $15 all-you-can-eat monthly music subscription service. It looks like Microsoft put a lot of thought into the design, and at the very least, I wanted to get my hands on one at Best Buy and take it for a spin. Yet in spite of these unusually fuzzy feelings for a Microsoft product, our friends in Redmond found a way to undermine them. Ars Technica reports that Microsoft has chosen to run pre-roll ads prior to launching its handful of free apps. Seriously Microsoft? Ads? Really?! What are these people thinking?

Zune Hasn't Been the Biggest Success

If you've followed Microsoft's foray into the MP3 player market, the results to this point haven't been pretty (as I wrote in my most popular post ever: Zune and iPod: The Tale of Two MP3 Players), but the Zune HD with its sexy redesign has some serious potential. It's reasonably priced and according to this review from CNET provides a very nice user experience. I found the original Zunes to be clunky looking, but this one looks sleek and cool like somebody would really want to own one.

Do You Need a Few Extra Bucks?

Given the time and thought, the company obviously put into this new product, the ads make little sense to me because people generally hate ads, and they really, really hate pre-roll ads. It's going to make people upset that Microsoft has chosen to roll an ad in exchange for a free app. I know, it's free, and maybe they *can* make some money here, but the question is *should* they? I don't think so. Last I heard, even with this economy, Microsoft was a cash-rich company. Don't forget they were ready to pay $44 billion for Yahoo! at one point.

I really don't think they have to nickel and dime their customers in this instance for a few bucks in ad revenue. It undermines the company's credibility (yet again) and there's no good reason to do it. Do they have a right to do it? Absolutely. Is it smart? Not really.

Why Kill The Good Will?

I'm just one blogger. I'm sure there are people who don't give a rat's pattuti that Microsoft included the ads. In fact, I'm not Microsoft's target market, and I'm probably not going to buy a Zune HD no matter how nice it might be. I've already got an iPhone and I don't need another device to run apps or play media. I know that the ads probably won't be a deal killer for most people if they want this device, but they sure were a good buzz killer, and Microsoft needs all the positive vibes it can get right now. ]]> Cellphones, PDAs and Handheld Devices Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread223588.html <![CDATA[News Story Maybe Apple's Onto Something with the FM Radio]]> http://www.daniweb.com/news/story223257.html Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:04:45 GMT With the September 9th Keynote in our rear view mirror, we can begin to look back at it with a more unbiased eye, and explore some of the new features more clearly. It's obvious by now that this wasn't in any way a major announcement. This was exacerbated by the tantalizing rumors that floated all about prior to the Keynote (as I wrote in Apple Rumor Mill Comes Up Empty Again). But one new feature that slipped under the radar a bit was the announcement that for the first time, Apple was including an FM Radio in the Nano line.

"BFD," I hear you say, "so it has a radio. Whooptydoo," which is to be honest, is what I thought until a conversation convinced me that perhaps Apple is onto something a bit deeper.

Buying Songs From The Radio

I was having a casual GTalk conversation with my publisher at FierceContentManagement, Ron Lichtinger, when he pointed out there might be more to this FM Radio than meets the eye. In particular, he suggested, "Being able to buy songs instantly from the radio and storing it on your iPod is pretty darn cool – satellite radio has been doing it for a while, but that’s satellite radio. FM (and High Def) radio are free, but now, you’ll be able to tag and then pay for songs (through iTunes of course) as you’re listening to them." And that's when it hit me that including the FM radio was actually another smart move from Apple

What this does is take the same marketing scheme recording companies have used since the advent of radio, and gives it a new digital twist. Instead of hearing the song on the radio a few times and thinking, 'I really like that. I should get in my car and go to my brick and mortar shop, or buy it the next time I'm in iTunes,' you could potentially click a link and buy it instantly in iTunes. Are you a big fan? Maybe they could try to upsell you to the album, or if you're a really big fan, the Deluxe Album (with extras like unreleased tracks which I wrote about in Apple Brings the Digital Album to iTunes).

Keep Feeding that Cash Cow

This could potentially mean more revenue for the iTunes store of course, which in turn could provide additional revenue for the sagging recording industry at the same time. "With the amount of people that buy iPods, that could be a lot of potential revenue for a beleaguered media format," Lichtinger says. He's right of course. It opens up a potentially large revenue stream where none existed before and it didn't require a huge technological leap for Apple to do it.

The new Deluxe Albums and the FM radio provide a couple of new sources of revenue for the iTunes Store, which has always been a cash cow for Apple. The FM radio, which seemed like a throw-in at first glance, could be so much more than that. Now if they could only put a camera on the Touch and everyone would be happy. ]]> Apple Hardware Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread223257.html News Story Are eBook Readers Moving Beyond Books? http://www.daniweb.com/news/story222930.html Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:20:13 GMT When interface guru Jakob Nieslen reported on the Kindle 2 (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/kindle-usability-review.html)usability last March, he pointed out it was great for books, but not much other content. Why is this significant? Two recent reports suggest that the eBook Reader could move... When interface guru Jakob Nieslen reported on the Kindle 2 usability last March, he pointed out it was great for books, but not much other content. Why is this significant? Two recent reports suggest that the eBook Reader could move beyond a simple device for reading books, and could become so much more.

In one instance, Apple has released a multimedia "eBook" into the iTunes store. In the other, news reports on Friday suggested that Time, Inc could be working a new Reader for the purpose of distributing their magazines. Suddenly, this market is looking even more interesting.

Time Keeps On Slipping Into The Future

A report on NBCBayArea.com on Friday, quoting an internal Time, Inc. presentation, suggested that the company is hard at work on an eBook Reader that could be available by the end of the year. This means that a high-profile publisher is attempting to get in on the ground floor of a developing market, rather than waiting to react to it, as the publishing industry has done for the last 15 years.

One key element of the memo as I saw it, was this sentence: "Whoever defines the interface wins." This is consistent with Nielsen's work, who believes that interface design and usability is the key to success for any device. The question remains whether the fact they understand this can translate into a device with high usability.

Another interesting nugget in the report was word that Time is not keeping this to themselves, but are in talks with other publishers. This suggests that Time would like to build a device that would be *the* Reader for magazine subscribers. It's an idea, if true, that has a lot of potential and could help revive a sagging publishing market.

Apple Introduces Multimedia eBooks

Meanwhile, ReadWriteWeb reports that Apple has released a comic book and song in a Deluxe package similar to the ones I reported on last week in Apple Brings the Digital Album to iTunes. This particular package combines a comic book along with a song and, according to the RWW report, includes lots of extra goodies like alternative album art, a video on how the package was made and much more. It weighs in at an impressive 400 MB.

Could this type of packaging be the future of eBooks? Rather than simply transferring the paper book to the Reader, could it include much more ancillary materials including author interviews, alternative endings and so forth? This is a much more intriguing possibility than simply giving customers something they can buy on paper in a new format.

This approach could also bode well for another eBook Reader sweet spot, text books. Today's students want the book along with PowerPoints, related PDFs and other materials. Imagine a multimedia text book package available on a Reader device like the Kindle. That could transform the market because it would provide all of the course content in one convenient device, and possibly mean lower-costs for text books.

For now, these approaches appear to be nothing more than speculation, but if they come to pass it could take the eBook Reader device to another level, and that could also make it more attractive to buyers looking for an experience they can't get on paper. ]]> Cellphones, PDAs and Handheld Devices Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread222930.html <![CDATA[News Story DotNetNuke Co-founder Defends Role with Microsoft's CodePlex]]> http://www.daniweb.com/news/story222521.html Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:47:44 GMT Microsoft announced a new organization this week called CodePlex, which according to its web site, is "a non-profit foundation formed with the mission of enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities." Now, you don't normally see Microsoft and Open Source in the same breath without raising a hair of suspicion (and in some cases howling laughter). In fact, my colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, who has been writing about Linux and Open Source for many years, wrote in his Cyber Cynic column yesterday, he finds Microsoft's motives in this project dubious to say the least.

That's why I was surprised to find a press release in my In Box yesterday from open source vendor, DotNetNuke proudly trumpeting the fact that their chief architect and co-founder, Shaun Walker was joining the CodePlex Foundation interim Board of Directors. It's worth noting that DotNetNuke is built on Microsoft's .Net platform. In that context, Walker's role with the new foundation makes sense at least on some level, but will it fly in the open source community, a place that has been known to be cold and unforgiving?

Can Microsoft Change Its Stripes?

Walker says in the past he has been critical of Microsoft projects when he didn't believe they were created in the best of interest of the open source community. "A specific area where I have expressed public criticism of Microsoft in the past is regarding their Port25 website, which is supposed to represent the 'Open Source Community from Microsoft;' however, it traditionally has offered minimal support or representation for open source projects which are native to the Microsoft platform," Walker said.

Walker believes CodePlex is different and it represents and evolutionary change for Microsoft."This should not be seen as a sudden change in direction, but as another evolutionary step by Microsoft in terms of recognizing and accepting the importance of open source." He adds, "Microsoft has been progressively becoming more supportive of open source projects over time." He cites as proof their decision to start the CodePlex open source project hosting site, a projects he sees as "highly beneficial in helping stimulate a rich open source developer ecosystem on the Microsoft platform." In fact, Walker is so convinced of this change that he moved his company's code base from it original home on SourceForge to the CodePlex site.

How is it Different?

When asked about possible open-source community criticism for his role with a Microsoft-sponsored initiative, Walker fiercely defended his decision. "The CodePlex Foundation is completely independent from Microsoft with its own distinct mission, vision, values, and charter," he said. He added, "It is technology-agnostic and is intended to facilitate the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities."

He says this starkly different from the earlier Port25 project, which he said was "owned, maintained, and controlled by Microsoft." He says the two projects are completely different. "Port25 is intended to be a window into the collaborative efforts which are occurring between Microsoft Corporation and open source communities," he explained. "Microsoft's sponsorship of the CodePlex Foundation is intended to address a fundamental problem which they currently face as a company, and which other large software companies in the industry face as well: how to allow greater participation in open source projects."

Whether this flies within the Open Source community remains to be seen, but Walker believes it's in the best interest of his company to be involved with this program, at least initially. Only time will tell if Microsoft has set up this site out of benevolence or self-interest. ]]> *nix Software Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread222521.html News Story Apple Rumor Mill Comes Up Empty Again http://www.daniweb.com/news/story222104.html Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:00:51 GMT Yesterday was Apple's Keynote, and you would think we would have learned by now that Apple rumors are meaningless. As the buzz grows louder before each of these events, there are rumors so convincing we think they must be a fait accompli. I mean how many of you thought you would wake up this morning to find the iPod Touch still doesn't have a camera? Not many, I'm sure and even fewer hands would go up if you suggested the *Nano* would have one. Yet each keynote, we still believe.

Remember the last one? Sure you do. There was a rumor about the $800 Mac Book. It was so solid it was sure to happen, only it didn't. And the Tablet, that one surfaced this year too, yet there was no Tablet. Why do we fall for it every time? It must be that we want to believe.

What Happened to that Camera?

If we were sure of anything prior to yesterday's Keynote, it was that the Touch would have a camera. What we got was pretty good: a price cut, more power; but we wanted a camera, dammit and we didn't get one. I for one am completely shocked, but not nearly so much as the fact that Nano was given one (along with a pedometer and FM radio). Steve Jobs likes to keep us guessing and this one came out of left field. No iPod has ever had an FM transmitter before (or a pedometer for that matter, a neat but frivolous feature).

The Touch deserved this feature. It's worked hard to be a good solider in the iPod line and Jobs gave it to the Nano?! What a slap in the face that was. Rumor has it (if you still believe Apple rumors) that the Touch is so devastated by this decision that it's in hiding and refusing to see anyone. Consumers who fully expected a camera on our Touch this morning feel the same way.

As for That Tablet

Then there's the Tablet. You know the one. People were actually describing this thing and pricing it. It felt so real, and yet once again the rug was pulled out from under us. Alas, there was no Tablet and we were left empty and wondering why Apple would treat us so badly. And there are clearly people who want to buy this lovely bit of vaporware (can hardware be vaporware too?). A market salivating for a product that doesn't exist (at least not yet). Why would Apple do that? Maybe it just wasn't ready for prime time. Perhaps next time.

The Beatles-iTunes thing didn't happen either, a minor disappointment compared to the other items that were rumored yet never materialized. Sure, what they announced wasn't bad, but the Apple rumor mill is so strong and so convincing, it's hard not to be disappointed by what got left out, even if Apple took no part in generating these rumors.

For now, we are left to sit and wait until the next Keynote when you can be sure we will play this same game all over again. And we will still believe. You know we will. ]]> Apple Hardware Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread222104.html News Story Apple Brings the Digital Album to iTunes http://www.daniweb.com/news/story221797.html Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:54:05 GMT Apple introduced a new feature today that lets you buy an album from iTunes complete with extra material like bonus recordings, video footage, lyrics and more. This is the kind of package I was suggesting the record companies need to bring to CDs a couple of weeks ago in my post Record Companies... Apple introduced a new feature today that lets you buy an album from iTunes complete with extra material like bonus recordings, video footage, lyrics and more. This is the kind of package I was suggesting the record companies need to bring to CDs a couple of weeks ago in my post Record Companies Must Stop Being Stupid to Salvage CD Sales. By supplying these types of bonuses, Apple is luring the true fans to buy not just one or two great songs, but an entire package of music and multimedia in a move that should not only boost iTunes sales, but also salvages the idea of the complete album for a new generation of listeners.

One and Done

I know I probably sound old when I say it, but most albums these days only have one or two tracks worth buying, which is probably why young people have been conditioned to buy the couple of songs they like, rather than the whole package. Back in the day, we bought a vinyl album and we listened to the whole thing. As part of that experience, we learned to like the other tracks. And it turned out, they often were well worth listening to. Later the CD enabled us to skip tracks we didn't like, and a remote made that dead simple.

Digital Age

With the advent of iTunes, the idea of a whole package of music went out the window. People bought the songs they liked, made playlists of these individual tunes and packed them on the iPod to take on their way. The idea that an artist could tell a musical story disappeared. In the old days, artists like Bruce Springsteen and Kurt Cobain would agonize over the order of the tracks. They wanted the perfect transition, just the right flow to tell a musical story, but digital music took that control away from the artist. Listeners could reorder tracks themselves if they wished.

Enter the Digital Album

Today, Steve Jobs brought the album back. One example is Bob Dylans' classic Highway 61 Revisited (Deluxe Version) which gives you all of the great tracks that came on the original including Like A Rolling Stone, Tombstone Blues and Ballad of a Thin Man, but also provides 13 bonus tracks from the original sessions and some live footage from the Newport Folk Festival. For Dylan fans (and you can count me among them), this is an amazing opportunity to listen to and see some rare material. Jobs has taken the digital buying experience to another level with this concept, and at the same time probably banged another nail into the CD's coffin.

This approach to me is pure genius and it's the reason why Jobs has a reputation of a man on a mission. Even after all these years, and a year of illness, he and the organization he heads continues to think and innovate and the Digital Album is just further proof of their ability to do this. ]]> Apple Hardware Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread221797.html News Story Has Microsoft Chosen Subterfuge Over Quality? http://www.daniweb.com/news/story221775.html Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:52:35 GMT It seems that Microsoft is now so threatened by Google that they have allegedly hired a high powered Washington lobbying firm to smear Google to government regulators. What's so interesting isn't that this approach is so petty and childish--although it is that--it's that Microsoft, rather than relying on the quality of its own products to grow the company, would rather "screw" one of its chief competitors. It's definitely a "wow" moment.

What They Are Doing

According to the AOL Daily Finance article--Microsoft Secret 'Screw Google' Meetings in D.C.-- where this story broke, the general purpose of this group of people is to talk trash about Google to government regulators and policy makers in order to throw road blocks in front of Google. Writer Sam Gustin says his sources describe the activities this way:

Quote:
"...Microsoft is trying to harm Google in the regulatory, legal, and litigation arenas because they're having problems with Google in the competitive marketplace."
To Google's credit, the article goes onto say, when asked for a comment, they wouldn't bite (and why would they):

Quote:
"Of course we keep an eye on what's happening in the industry," Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich says, "but the focus of our Washington advocacy has always been advancing good public policy for the Internet and our users."
Microsoft May Want To Be Careful on That Front

Microsoft has had its share of run-ins with government regulators both in the United States and in the European Union. One of the reasons they were so successful in the 90s was because of well-publicizied anti-trust activities around Windows sales, which the US Government forced them to stop doing. More recently, Microsoft has had even bigger regulatory headaches from the EU. You would think they might be a little sensitive to this approach, given their history.

They Could Try Making Really Good Products

I'm fairly sure that Google and Apple (and other tech companies) are also playing dirty pool behind the back of their competitors. The idea in any capitalist game is to do your level best to wipe out the competition. I get that, but instead of trying to "screw Google" in Washington or try to one-up Apple's 'Get a Mac' ads, Microsoft could just try making products that work, that people want because they're really good.

Instead, the corporate strategy recently seems to be to spend hundreds of millions of dollars hiring lobbyists or ad agencies with the goal of trashing their competitors. It's a sad testament to the current state of the organization, and it's really time for Microsoft to refocus its priorities on its products and its customers. ]]> Windows Vista and Windows 7 Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread221775.html News Story The Day Gmail Stood Still: A Tale of Horror http://www.daniweb.com/news/story221425.html Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:20:08 GMT A week ago today, the unthinkable happened. That's right, Gmail went down...for *two* hours. You would have thought, judging from the amount of chatter on Twitter that we were experiencing an epic attack, a horrible natural disaster, perhaps the end of life as we know it; but it was none of that. Just couldn't get our email for a couple of hours. I'm surprised the Obama administration didn't step in and declare a State of Emergency. It certainly seemed plausible based on the reaction to the outage.

My favorite tweet, which captured perfectly, the level of hysteria we were seeing on Twitter as people learned Gmail wasn't working, was this one:

@scalzi: MIN 30 OF GMAIL OUTAGE THE CITIES ARE IN FLAMES & PEOPLE EATING PETS TO SURVIVE.TO FUTURE GENERATIONS: WE MEANT WELL

What Went Terribly Wrong

The funny thing is that this was not a denial of service attack. It wasn't a North Korean hacker trying to bring the west to its knees by disrupting this most vital of services. No, it was good old fashioned human error. I know it's hard to believe that with all of the super smart people at Google that it's possible that one (or maybe a few of them) screwed up, but apparently that's what happened.

The Official Google Gmail Blog post on the outage described the cause this way:

Quote:
"... At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system "stop sending us traffic, we're too slow!". This transferred the load onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request routers were overloaded."
What it Really Means

That approximately 80 percent of my tweets for 90 minutes involved this outage--so much traffic in fact, that ironically it could have taken down Twitter with it--tells you the extent to which people depend on this service. In spite of the fact that for most of us, Google's services are provided free of charge, we still go ballistic when it goes down. (Those who pay for it have a bigger gripe, but I'm willing to bet that's a small percentage of the people who were complaining.)

But regardless of whether you pay for Google services or not, the reaction (some might say overreaction) shows we have become dangerously dependent on them. We expect our services to be up all the time, and when they are not, we get REALLY upset. And when the collective web gets upset at the same time in the age of social computing, it can get ugly in a hurry.

What Should We Do?

We have to remember that computers are fallible. Networks are fallible and so is the genius of Google. Sure, Google has to put more contingencies in place, and test them regularly to make sure they work and this doesn't happen very often in the future. But we also have to realize that chances are, it will, and we have to learn to accept that. You have to ask yourself, how often do key applications go down inside the enterprise. How often do you experience issues on your internal networks?

These things happen when you're dealing with technology, so let's make a deal that the next time that Google goes down for a short time, maybe we don't have to discuss it ad nauseum on Twitter. Instead, perhaps we can all relax and enjoy the moment, maybe call a friend, go for a walk, spend time with family or send an email. Check that last one. ]]> Search Engine Optimization Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread221425.html