Posts by Techwriter10

Another view on that ad. This person is not impressed and by the way, the woman in the ad is an actress. C'mon Microsoft, you couldn't find a real person to speak for you?

http://technologizer.com/2009/03/28/why-microsofts-lauren-ad-is-offensive/

Microsoft has been active lately, showing some signs of spunk. I reported last week that Steve Ballmer was going straight after Apple at the McGraw Hill Summit (as I wrote in Ballmer Wastes No Words Going After Apple). This week we see the release of an ad campaign comparing Apple prices with PC prices, and it actually appears that there is some cohesiveness in the Microsoft message. Ballmer says Apple's too expensive, followed by the ad campaign that reinforces that message. I know, Marketing 101, but it's a change from what we have seen from Microsoft (and a stark departure from those awful Seinfeld and I'm a PC ads).

Microsoft Feels the Touch

Just this morning I came across a video demonstrating the upcoming Windows 7 touch screen features. Not that touch screens are anything new, but it appears that Microsoft is going to make a concerted effort to make themselves sound innovative and less expensive, two messages that could really resonate in today's tough economy. Fact is, as the young woman in the new ad points out, she simply can't afford a machine with the specs she wants from Apple. It's a weakness and Microsoft appears to be successfully exploiting it.

Windows 7 Hype

Microsoft has always been good at cranking up the hype machine ahead of OS releases. I've been using PCs since the 80s back in the days of the DOS prompt. I've been around long …

20 times bigger than YouTube would be $20B US. I don't think that's going to happen, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it go for YouTube type money, over a billion dollars.

I wrote a blog post on my by Ron Miller blog this morning about how I came to write this post called Anatomy of a Blog Post.

Not as though it's ever going to happen, but suppose I were at a party one night and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google happened to be there. I would love to corner him and get him a glass of wine or scotch or whatever it is that CEOs at large corporations drink, and suggest to him that he buy Twitter.

I know, I know. I'm not the first one who has ever come up with this idea, but to me, it's not about the ridiculous growth of Twitter or the millions of eye balls on the Twitter site or the opportunity to stretch out those Google Ads into social networking. It's not even about search in the direct sense. It's because the two systems would complement each other so well.

Can I Call You, Eric

I have the feeling Eric Schmidt doesn't really stand on pretense, so maybe I would call him Eric (or Mr. Schmidt; that's cool too) and I would give him my elevator pitch. Google is great for doing research, right? You enter a few keywords and get back a site, picture, video, blog, whatever you're looking for that will get you on your way. But what if you have a specific question? In fact, just the other day on Twitter, Pete Yorn wanted to know how to make turkey burgers that weren't dry. He got his answers and tweeted a few minutes later:

ahh thanks....twitter...better than google? …

Hi:
I've been using PCs since DOS. I've used every version of Windows too and I have to disagree. I find Apple's hardware and software simply more elegant and smoothly integrated. Of course Apple has an advantage in this regard because they only have to tune their software to their own hardware.

I've made my feelings about Vista clear. In my view it's the worst OS I've ever used.

Thanks for your comments and for reading. I appreciate you taking the time to participate.

I was a bit surprised to open my PaidContent.org newsletter this morning and find that Steve Ballmer was taking direct aim at Apple in pointed comments at the McGraw Hill Summit yesterday.

Ballmer went straight for the jugular calling Apple too expensive for today's economy, perhaps because Apple's computer sales are truly softening and he senses they are vulnerable. The comments were part of a Q&A with BusinessWeek Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler.

He said what?!

Ballmer began with a volley directly at Apple's bow when said pointedly "No one's going to pay $500 more for a logo." PaidContent reports the audience literally gasped when he said it. That's because it's petty and you don't expect well-trained CEOs to make such statements in a public forum with the press around, but he's not totally off base here. Mac sales have been diving over the last several months.

But he wasn't finished of course. He then said Windows Mobile 6.5 pricing will be a big differentiator between Windows Mobile phones and those from his rivals (Apple being one of course). It's hard to say if it will or not. The cell phone market is fickle and shifts constantly (just ask Motorola), but right now as much Ballmer doesn't want to hear it, the iPhone and RIM's various Blackberry offerings are providing some pretty stiff competition.

Data plans versus phones

Ballmer wasn't done yet though. Next he went after the iPhone directly saying "[The] …

For the better part of this decade Apple has created some amazing products from the Mac Book to the iPod to the iPhone. They've had an enormous technological and cultural impact, but even with all of these accomplishments, the meteoric rise of the App store is simply astonishing. They went from zero apps to 25,000 apps in a single year.

By giving developers access to the same tools Apple itself used to create the first generation iPhone apps, an amazing thing happened. The developers came in droves and they created games, utilities, accessories. Some were mundane like the famous fart apps and some downright impressive like the ones that turn your iPhone into a wireless network drive.

A look at the numbers

The numbers really defy adjectives. Consider that it has only been one year since Apple came out with its SDK and 8 months since the App Store opened. In this short time, Apple claims:

• 800,000 SDK downloads
• 50,000 developers have joined the paid developer program
• 25,000 Apps in the App Store
• Over 60 percent of developers never developed an Apple app before
• 96 percent of all apps submitted were approved.
• 98 percent were approved in 7 days or less

While we're looking at the numbers, consider that between the iPhone and the iPod Touch there are now more than 30M units with access to the App Store, a number that continues to grow.

SDK evens the playing field

Even …

Great title, Lisa.

On Saturday afternoon during a weekend visit to New York City, we were walking back to the hotel when we spied a place called the Spy Shops. Think Q in James Bond and that's what you'll find here. A gadget lover's paradise, all designed for snooping. Naturally I had to stop.

The Old Change Your Voice on the Cell Phone Trick

For $50 you can get a device that lets you disguise your voice on your cell phone or how about a cell phone you give to a spouse you suspect of cheating and every call he or she makes transmits back to you? There was a pen that was actually a digital recording device so you could surreptitiously record a meeting and a small digital recorder with a sensitive microphone for picking up conversation that you could hide in your pocket for the same purpose. It's also voice activated if you want to hide it in a room. Both of these connect to your computer with a supplied USB cable.

You Want Nanny Cams? We Got Nanny Cams

Hidden video cameras, sometimes known as nanny cams because parents often use them to spy on the family nanny, are devices that go to incredible lengths to conceal a hidden camera to allow you to record activity in a room without being detected. There was one in a teddy bear, another in computer speakers, a third in the DVD player--and the electronics devices all worked--but …

Mart:
Thanks for the well researched comment. You are impressive and I stand corrected. I agree it's a stretch, but I see part of my job as a blogger is to try to make connections between news events that others might not have considered. It may be that the timing of these two events is completely coincidental, or it may be that Palm was trying to get their announcement ahead of Apple's.

Regardless thanks for your detailed response. I appreciate you taking the time to comment in this way and contributing to the conversation in such a meaningful fashion.

Ron

Good point. I didn't even bring up the patent stuff. I don't see Apple doing this, but nothing would surprise me really. Apple certainly does have the cash to win a pissing contest, but I don't seem them having any interest in buying Palm or Sprint. But if Apple does go the legal route instead of just waiting to see what happens--remember that Blackberry was supposed to be going after the iPhone too and nothing much has come of that--I will be disappointed. I think the iPhone can stand on its own up to any phone produced so far at least and I hope they fight on those terms, not specious legal grounds.

You're right that they previewed some of the enterprise stuff last year to let people know this was coming, but the normal way of operatig for Apple is to keep it completely under wraps until the product is announced.

I don't think they are shaking in their boots either, but I do believe they are feeling a bit of market pressure, so we'll see where this leads us.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Ron

Lots of news from Apple this week. There is of course the new Shuffle which has the web abuzz with chatter because the controls are on the headphones and not the device (stupid design doomed to fail) and there is the standard Mac Tablet rumor (Yawn; call me when they are releasing it OK?), but the biggest news to me was the fact that Apple has called a press conference next week to introduce some new features of the upcoming iPhone 3.0 software.

Apple, the company that can keep a secret better than the folks in Langley are giving a pre-release sneak peak? To me that means, Apple is feeling a little market pressure folks and that pressure is likely coming from the buzz that's growing around the Palm Pre.

Palm and Sprint Push the Issue

Palm hit the ground running with the Pre at CES in January, and they've managed to keep the hype machine fully stoked ever since. Just the other day they had a web event of their own along with their carrier Sprint. MocoNews.net reports that there wasn't much reason for this event except to keep the hype fires burning and keep the pressure on Cupertino. Of course, pressure works both ways and the iPhone has a distinct advantage in the marketplace, especially with the wildly popular App Store.

Palm and Sprint let it "leak" that there would be an …

When Google released Chrome last Fall, I wrote that it represented a direct attack on Microsoft and Apple. This week, my colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes in ComputerWorld that Android could be coming to a Netbook near you by the end of this year. If this reports turns out to be true, Google will have taken the final step toward competing directly with its big rivals Microsoft and Apple on the desktop itself.

First a Browser

Last Fall when Google released Chrome, I was curious about why the world would need another browser. Google of course sees it as a way to optimize its own online applications within a totally Google experience. That sounds like a reasonable goal as far as it goes, especially when Google is trying to sell a package of apps in the enterprise. If you are paying to use Google Docs, it might make sense for you to run them on the Google browser. The next logical step would appear to be an operating system on which to run those apps.

Now the OS

When Google released Android back in November, 2007, the focus was squarely on the mobile phone, which is consistent with Google's understandable fascination with the growing smart phone market. But an operating system that runs on the phone doesn't necessarily have to be limited to that right? If you take that same operating system and move it to say a netbook computer, it could …

Good point, Daniel. If they committed to this policy as a legal doctrine then it would trump even their obligation to shareholders I would think (so long as shareholders approved the policy).

As I said, there are a number of scenarios where this could be abused. I don't in any way imagine that Google is randomly checking people's data, by the way, but I can imagine them succumbing to any of the scenarios I've outlined in this post without too much trouble.

Thanks for commenting.

Last week, Google's Marissa Mayer and Eric Schmidt appeared in separate interviews on the Charlie Rose show, and not surprisingly they spoke in one voice where privacy and trust were concerned.

They both said that when we use online services, we give up privacy in the process. There it is on the table. They are providing the service, and you're providing the information, and should you be concerned about this trade-off, Schmidt says simply: "Trust us."

Um, I don't Think So

I'm a huge fan of Google services. I'm writing this blog post in Google Docs. I used Google Reader to find the idea for this story. I'm in Google services all day every day, but do I trust them with my information? Not completely. I worry a lot about how much information Google has about me and what I'm doing professionally and personally.

Google is also in the advertising business and the two goals of privacy and selling ads are often at odds. The information Google collects on its users is a virtual treasure trove of demographic information about virtually every aspect of our computing lives within the Google family of services.

Will They Ever Use or Share This Information?

Eric Schmidt says that Google would never use this information in a nefarious way because it's not the way his company does business. But times are good for Google even against the backdrop of a very dire …

Cool. Let me know if you get your hands on one. Would love to hear about your experience.

And I know I'm not the only one
To ever spend my life sitting playing future games
~Fleetwood Mac, Future Games.

When Microsoft released Microsoft Surface in 2007, it was easy to dismiss it, a PC the size of a table that cost $10,000. While everyone else was designing smaller and cheaper computing devices, Microsoft was producing a "big ass" table (as one parody of the first Surface promotional video called it). But what if the Surface table was just the beginning of the experiment, not the end? What if the table represented Microsoft's future vision of computing in general, not a one-off lab experiment marketed to the rich?

Microsoft's Future Vision

When I came across this video last week, a montage of Microsoft's possible computing future, I began to put it together and I was definitely surprised (Go ahead and watch, then come back and I'll explain why).

While the video is clearly promotional in nature, and uses plenty of movie magic to illustrate the vision, you can see how the functionality that we first saw on the Surface table could be extended out to every aspect of of our computing lives, and on devices of every size from smart credit cards to smart "newspapers" to intelligent shopping carts, that is if the vision is ever fulfilled.

Election Night Magic

You may recall on election that the networks used Surface functionality to show …

I recently had a conversation with Jeremy Roche, who is CEO at CODA, a high-end accounting software solutions vendor with more than 30 years in the business. Roche told me how his company began on the HP 3000, then moved to the DEC VAX, client/server and all the way to today where CODA recently began offering a cloud-based application built on the Force.com platform. For CODA, the cloud represents another step in the evolution of enterprise computing.

Roche says they considered a lot of ways to approach a cloud solution, including building their own data centers, before deciding upon Force.com. He says in the end, it just made sense to build on an existing infrastructure rather than building one from scratch.

Seeing a Future in the Clouds

Roche says his company has always considered the next generation of computing solutions. If it didn't he joked, his company would still be on HP 3000 computers and had been out of business long ago. That's why the company began looking at the cloud market two years ago. "We decided we wanted to be a part of it," he says. What the company saw was a delivery method that was on the uptake and one that could give them inroads into markets that traditionally couldn't afford CODA's high-end solutions.

Taking Advantage of the Existing Infrastructure

Roche's team began exploring its options including building a data center and hosting a cloud …

I would say that these changes, however you see them, were decided upon long before Jobs took his leave of absence. Apple may or may not get the current market (although that remains to be seen), but these decisions are made months in advance. By the way, for what it's worth, I'm strongly considering buying a Mac Mini as a backup desktop machine.

Ron

Seems every time I write a piece suggesting open source as an option, I get a couple of comments warning readers about the scary complexities of open source licenses. So I decided to ask a guy who knows free and open source (FOSS) exactly what the deal was regarding FOSS licensing and whether they were really any more or less complex than their commercial counterparts.

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier, who is Community Manager for openSUSE and has been working with FOSS in one way or another since 1996, says the bottom line is that you should always check the license language carefully, so that you are keenly aware of the terms, but you should never let the license scare you away from open source.

RM: Every time I write about opens source, I get comments about watching out for the licenses, that they can be confusing and get companies in trouble if they don't pay attention. Are open source licenses in general any more complex than their commercial counterparts?

JZB: Not really. The only difference is that open source licenses allow redistribution and modification -- and since there are a lot of different licenses with different conditions, companies should pay attention when they engage in those activities.

As a general rule, though, use of open source is no more complex --and is typically less complex -- than use of proprietary software.

RM: Comments also suggest open source users should be careful about …

Some Google Humility:

Google Apologizes for Gmail Outage:
http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/google-apologizes-explains-gmail-outage/2009-02-27

This is the mystery of the quotient - Upon us all a little rain must fall.
~Led Zeppelin, The Rain Song.

It's been quite a couple of weeks for Google. First there was the mistake that caused the entire Internet to be flagged as malware. Next came the great Gmail outage earlier this week (which I wrote about in Let's Not Use the Gmail Outage to Trash Cloud Computing). Google has been taking a few lumps and it's not what you expect from a company that has pretty much sailed through its history on a startling growth trajectory. But just when I was beginning to think that Google had lost a bit of its swagger, I read that the company is joining in the anti-trust suit against Microsoft in Europe. It's been a week where we've seen a couple of sides of the complex company that is Google.

Looking a Bit Humble?

In the wake of the Gmail outage this week, Google put up an Apps Status Dashboard to let users know the status of Google Apps at any given time. It also acts as an audit trail of sorts because you can check the status historically. When I saw this, I immediately thought that Google was feeling a bit of pressure, that these problems, prior to them unknown, were smacking them back a little.

The Status dashboard is not a new idea of course. It's something

I have an Asus Eee running Linux and it's a very good machine. The whole idea with a net book is that you use it mostly to access the internet. If you are using internet-based apps with it, then the underlying OS doesn't matter. I'm not sure why people would have any problem running a browser no matter what OS they were running. It's not rocket science and requires little expertise. The Eee has done a very good job of presenting apps in a tabbed interface divided by task, so if you want to use a local app like Open Office it's very simple to find and use. Anyone who has used a Windows machine should have not problem finding their way around.

Ron

Hi Lisa:

Great post. I'm the first person to get on Microsoft when they screw up, but when you look at the overall program, yes there is probably an ulterior motive there, but ultimately they seem to be trying to be good corporate citizens. Sure, they could have made the materials platform agnostic, but my guess is the people that made them didn't think about this from a marketing standpoint, but just what was practical for them. In this case, I'm willing to cut Microsoft a little slack because they seem to be trying to do a good thing for a change.

I didn't either, but I'm not sure it affected everyone, that the whole system went down or just part of it, and it also could be that happened while you were sleeping.

The great Gmail outage, which as far as I can tell lasted a couple of hours over night in the US has prompted some nasty articles such as this one from TechCrunch where they derisively refer to Gmail as Gfail. Let's grow up, people. Software fails all the time and online services like Gmail and other cloud vendors are not going be immune to outages from time to time.

Thunderbird Lost My Mail

How many of us can say that we have never had a problem with our desktop email client? Issues happen all the time. I used to use Thunderbird as my email client, but I gave up after persistent problems including losing my email. I use Mac Mail now and I had an issue last year where I opened my email client and my mail was gone. I called Apple Care and the tech helped me restore my mail, but the point is that stuff happens with software all the time, and just because it's a cloud application, doesn't mean it's never going to go down.

Cloud Services Still Convenient

I suppose if a service started to have consistent problems, you would have something to complain about. If Gmail were to start going down for a couple of hours every week, for instance, we might grow tired of it, no matter how convenient it is, but so far at least, I haven't seen that happening. The fact is that …

Hi Elo8:
Always like to see your thoughtful comments. Thanks. If they could cut some deals with high end hardware manufacturers and sell them in the store, it could have some legs, but I still have lots of doubts. As you say, it's much easier for Apple, which has actual consumer products to sell. This means MSFT has to make the deals and have enough left over to make a profit, no easy task, especially when you consider the real estate they will have to buy or rent to make this viable. I see it as quite a slog, and I'm not convinced that it can succeed, but thanks for providing your perspective.

Regards,
Ron

You have to give Microsoft credit. They keep trying, even if what they are trying is copying Apple. This time they have announced they are going to open retail stores. Sound familiar?

It should because it's what Apple has done so successfully with its Apple Store strategy. The problem Microsoft faces with this approach is that they lack a portfolio of good consumer products to sell and it will take gobs of money to set up these stores.

Step Right Up for a Microsoft Genius

Seems they want to set up something akin to Genius Bars at Apple Stores. Not only is it not original, it's much more difficult to pull off. Apple has people who understand its products and hardware because Apple makes its own computers. Microsoft has always faced the challenge of making Windows work on a dizzying array of hardware and software.

They have very little control over how Windows is implemented and configured and they can't possibly know every single hardware and software issue that crops up. No matter how smart the techs are that work at their stores, it's going to be difficult to assess and resolve problems successfully (as anyone who has ever tried to troubleshoot a Windows machine knows).

What Are They Going to Sell?

The real question is what will they sell beyond the service side of the store? Apple sells computers and peripherals with the Apple name on it. These products draw people into the …

Great post, Ken. Loved it. Nice job.

Ron

Cinchbald:
Thanks for the comment. I wasn't aware of that, but neither does it surprise me. Google seems to cave into anything Apple demands. Perhaps it has something to do with Eric Schmidt sitting on the Apple Board of Directors, but that is just stupid and petty. You're simply a small business person trying to make a living.

Ron

Mushy-pea:
Thanks for the comment. The Cisco suit was an interesting case of turn-about is fair play wasn't it? Thanks for pointing that out.

Ron

Hey Ken:

Thanks for the comment.

Honestly, I'm not concerned whether they are cool or not. I've always believed Apple makes superior products. What company has its customers' best interest at heart ever? They are all profit machines, but my point is that Apple makes damn good products and they should let them stand on their own instead of throwing up legal smoke screens to protect their turf.

I've never made it a secret that I'm a big fan of Apple products. I love my Mac Book Pro and my iPhone, but I have to say that Apple has been pissing me off lately. The company has decided to throw its legal weight around to protect its market share instead of letting the products speak for themselves. Two cases in particular stand out: the multi-touch patent and attempting to criminalize jail-breaking iphones.

Multi-Touch Patent

At the end of January, it surfaced that Apple had scored a patent for multi-touch technology and that it could, if it wished sue anyone else who used it. This legal maneuver seemed aimed squarely at Palm and the new Palm Pre (which I wrote about recently in Is the Palm Pre a Pre-tender or the Next Big Thing?). In this PC World article quoting acting Apple Grand Poohbah Tim Cook, it sounds like they may actually try to use the patent as a big stick:

Apple's acting chief and COO Tim Cook recently said, "we will not stand for having our IP [intellectual property] ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal [to protect it]."

Now, not everyone agrees that Apple has a legal leg to stand on with this patent, but it's clear they filed it to put a legal obstacle in the way of companies trying to challenge their market share. And let's face it, Apple has …

Thanks for the comment.

I agree, but it goes overboard on both ways. You have companies like Facebook claiming (and then recanting) that they own your content, then you have companies like Warner Brothers suing some woman who puts up a YouTube video of her two year old dancing to a Prince song claiming that she is violating IP rights by including it in a video in this fashion. There has to be a common-sense middle ground that takes normal modern usage into account.

Thanks again for the comment.
Ron

When Facebook changed its terms of service on Monday, it caused an immediate uproar, and when people screamed loudly enough, Facebook backed down. What this shows me is that although Facebook is a free service, it exists and is successful because we make it so.

The millions of people who sign up for the free service are the source of its revenue and as such, it's a symbiotic relationship. We use Facebook to connect with friends, and Facebook makes money. It is fairly trivial to make a service like Facebook--maybe not the application-building part, but certainly the community part, and if people decided to leave in large enough numbers, Facebook could lose significant ad revenue.

Whose content is it anyway?

It raises a question about online services in general. When you post content, whom does it belong to? Should you have a reasonable expectation of maintaining ownership? Amanda French did this analysis of terms of service on other free services and found that most (except LinkedIn) explicitly state that your content belongs to you. Certainly when you leave the service, the content should revert to you at the very least. That's why the Facebook change was so outrageous. It said, not only could Facebook use your stuff, even when you left you couldn't take your stuff back.

Brogan Weighs In

Many people were justifiably miffed, but others such as social media guru, Chris Brogan thought people were overreacting …

Tantonyong,
Thanks for the link. I will check that out (and this one works). BTW, I started following you on Twitter. You can follow me at:
http://twitter.com/ron_miller

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Ron

Richard;
Thanks for your comment. And you are correct that many people fail to see the difference. I think that to some extent the vendors in the space cause the confusion to some degree in the way they discuss cloud computing in general (as a buzz word) and that's one of the reasons I felt compelled to explore the idea in this post.

Ron

Siersema:
That sounds a lot like John Newton's electricity idea. Thanks for the great comment. Appreciate your input.

Ron

Thanks for your comment, Ken. Seems we are still working these terms out, but I agree with your definitions.

I'm afraid the link doesn't work. Requires a password, but I would be interested in seeing it at some point.

A couple of weeks ago Alfresco CTO John Newton posted the following tweet on Twitter:

"Does Cloud = SaaS [Software as a Service]? I don't think so. Cloud is computing, more like electricity."

My gut reaction was that they were equal, and up until that moment I had used the terms interchangeably, but Newton's post got me thinking that perhaps they were different. SaaS applications use cloud platforms, but are not exactly cloud computing. The more I thought about it, however, the less clear it got, so I decided to do some research and also take my questions directly to some cloud computing experts and ask if the two terms were indeed synonymous or if they were as Newton opined, completely different.

Let's Define Terms

SaaS is an acronym for Software as a Service. I've written about this in Does Using GMail Mean You're Stupid? and several other posts. For companies, using a service, it means they no longer have to worry about building an infrastructure for the software. Instead, the software is available via web browser and the hosting company in exchange for your subscription fee, handles all the heavy lifting on the back end. For some companies, it's a very attractive option.

So how does this differ from Cloud Computing? In a Gartner Voice podcast from last summer, Daryl Plummer, managing VP and chief Gartner fellow offered this view of cloud computing:

"Someone is going to …

I think this is going to have a huge impact on document management vendors who can help companies manage medical records in the same fashion as any other document type, but companies like the one you cite with a background and experience in the niche, will certainly have an upper hand.

Ron

I'm thinking it's more about video than stills, and you will be able to take amazing high-quality video with this camera. And I do believe that people will be using cell phones for much more than make calls and sending text messages (although that's obviously Job 1).

I have an iPhone and I use my phone for all sorts of tasks besides calling and texting and I used a Nokia N95 last summer for a few weeks with a 5.1 megapixel lens and video capability and it was great fun for videoblogging. I think the phone cameras are just beginning to catch up with the idea of having a video camera in your pocket and I see it driving all kinds of new social media and citizen journalism.

Ron Miller

ViewRoyal
The Apple multi touch patent has been widely reported across many reputable sources. It's hardly rumor mongering. I will grant you that the VentureBeat article is based on an anonymous source, but whether Google claimed a patent or not, has nothing to do with the veracity of that article. Apple still could have asked Google not to use multi touch and it is curious that they haven't used it, especially when hackers have figured out how to implement multi touch on a G1.

Ron

Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane
Jane plays with Willi, Willi is happy again
~Games Without Frontiers, Peter Gabriel.

I'm forever fascinated with the gamesmanship that goes on between Google, Apple, and Microsoft. You expect them to undercut each other at every turn, to do whatever it takes to get the upper hand in the marketplace--even to copy one another. This level of competition drives product innovation, lowers prices and acts a check against any one company becoming too powerful. In this context, what you certainly don't expect them to do is cooperate (maybe ever). Yet I came across a couple examples this week of these companies seemingly helping one another out.

Google Agrees to Leave Apple Multi-touch Technology Alone

My first example involves Google and Apple. VentureBeat reports that although Google is fully capable of handling multi-touch technology, a member of the Android development team told reporter MG Seigler that Apple simply asked Google not to use multi-touch on the G1 and Google agreed. Just like that.

I have no way of knowing if this story is true, but if it is, it's amazing. You have two companies who are competing in a high stakes game to be the future mobile phone OS and Google acquiesces on a key feature and agrees to leave it out. This is even more remarkable when you consider that the reporter points out that having multi-touch truly separates Apple from …

The EE Times reported earlier this week that the Dell E4200 and E4300 laptops are running both Linux and Windows on the same machine. Why both you ask? The Linux OS provides a quick boot for checking email and other "light" computing duties while the Windows side allows "heavier duty" computing like running Microsoft Office applications. It runs with two chips, one from ARM and one from Intel. The ARM chip, provides instant on booting and is much more power efficient, while the Intel chip provides the juice to run apps that require more computing power.

It's Two, Two, Two Computers in One

This is an interesting approach bringing the Smart Phone/Netbook idea to a larger laptop, but the dual boot, dual use idea has been tried before. When Samsung came out with one of the first UMPCs (later to be known as Net Books) back in 2006, it tried a dual boot environment. You could boot into Windows for your computing tasks and AVS Now, a multimedia front-end for playing music, viewing movies and viewing photos. I thought it was odd at the time, I will admit, as though Samsung couldn't decide if it wanted the Q1 to be a business or consumer device.

From a practical perspective, this implementation as described in the EE Times article would provide a way for users to perform tasks they tend to do on the road such as retrieve email without waiting for the endless …

The economic news has been so bad of late, it's actually difficult to imagine that some businesses are profitable. It's easy to get sucked into the abyss of huge layoffs, high unemployment figures and generally negative fall-out from the economic meltdown, but in spite of all this, there are technology companies that are making boat loads of cash and doing just fine.

One caveat here: Earnings can be interpreted in a number of ways. It seems either you made money or you didn't, but there are a number of factors that go into this. With that in mind, I give you give you five tech companies making money:

1. Apple

As incredible as it may seem, a company that sells expensive consumer electronics is making money in the worst recession in 50 years, but Macworld reports that Apple had record profits last quarter. In fact, it made more money last quarter (over $10 billion dollars) than in any quarter in its impressive history. I wrote about Apple's dazzling performance in Zune & iPod: A Tale of Two MP3 Players and The Economy May Stink, but Apple Comes Out Smelling Like a Rose.

2. Akamai

The content delivery network company (CDN) may not be a household name, but it helps deliver the content of some of the world's biggest web sites. Its extensive customer list includes Adobe, MTV Network and Fox Interactive (to name just a few). FierceOnlineVideo …

Great post and in a word, incredible. They do realize they are a security company, right?

Ron