Friday 29 February 2008

It's official! Hell has frozen over.

macbook on msn

 

 

 

On the front page of www.msn.co.uk there is a competition to win a new laptop. Nothing strange in that you might say. Well it's a Macbook Air! On the Microsoft portal they have a competition to win an Apple product! What's more the competition page states:

If you want to keep up with the leading technology company then don't miss the opportunity of winning this fabulous MacBook Air laptop!

What a strange day this leap year is turning out to be.

Thursday 28 February 2008

An interesting new online toy

joocecubeeffectFor those users who have been looking for an online desktop this is probably the most attractive one I've seen so far. It's called Jooce and can be found at www.jooce.com.

The system feels like a normal desktop environment and uses the applications on your host OS to open files such as .doc. What it does offer though is online storage and a place to view photos, videos and share files and folders. To call it web storage with a nice face would be grossly understating what this application can do. Apparently however it is memory hungry and so struggles on low end machines but even with that this is worth a look.

 jooce

[From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7267534.stm]

Wednesday 27 February 2008

Microsoft fined again!

Well another day and another fine for the software giant. The EU once again felt it was necessary to slap a fine on Microsoft for anti-competitive behavior, this time to the tune of $1.3 billion. I fully understand the necessity of keeping up monitoring of Microsoft and the necessity to investigate any and all attempts the company might make to unfairly use it's position however this really is starting to get ridiculous. The inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows is not a major hindrance to the other browsers, what is a major hindrance is the lack of quality shown by these browsers and the lack of real variety. I have Firefox, Safari and IE installed and I really don't need or want a forth unless that browser can offer something drastically different from what's already on offer. The only browser showing that possibility is Flock. These browsers all compete in the same market and yet Opera can complain about unfair competition when Firefox, who is in the same position, is gaining ground on IE. But maybe I'm wrong. Lets take a quick look at Firefox and Safari. They are both bundled browsers. Firefox is bundled in Linux and Safari comes with OS X. Are we saying that we want all those browsers removed from the OS's? Of course not but we do want IE unbundled because it's in a monopoly position? Well I've seen brand new Windows laptops with Firefox bundled so I don't see that as an issue anymore.

As far as operability is concerned the decision should've been delayed until we were able to judge how successful the latest announcement on interoperability is.

To Microsoft I say this.....pull out of Europe! Not completely obviously but give the EU exactly what they want. Remove IE, Windows Media and all other additional software from XP now, after all it's only going to be supported for a few more months anyway. Then let the people who have just bought their shiny new OS try to use the damn thing without the bundled applications and ensure that the OEM's do not bundle software to make up for it. It's time to make the EU suffer. Microsoft must also make sure that every single complaint is forwarded to the EU commission and let them see just how much they are helping their citizens. On the plus side Vista sales should improve because XP will be worthless.

Tuesday 26 February 2008

The Onion Election Glossary

For those people out there who take the US Election extremely seriously stop reading now.....for the rest of us check out The Onion's Election Glossary for an explanation of terms such as:

debate

A contest to see which candidate can answer the fewest questions.

and

hope

An intangible object within every American that is destroyed every four years in November.

The full article can be found here.

Friday 22 February 2008

The C64 returns

It gave me great pleasure to read that the Commodore 64 is returning, sort of. According to Engadget C64 games are coming to the Wii's Virtual Console for 500 Wii points each. Let the rise of retro gaming continue.

[Photo from Engadget]

Silicon Alley Insider have the solution.

I read through a posting by Silicon Alley Insider today which offers a solution to the Microsoft-Yahoo standoff and it makes perfect sense, the full post can be found here.

Basically the plan is outlined in 10 steps:

1.  Jerry, fly up to Redmond this afternoon and have dinner with Steve. Just the two of you. No bankers, no lawyers, no colleagues, no advisers.

2.  Jerry and Steve: Agree on the following:

  • Both of you are getting your butts kicked.
  • Both of you have tried for years to change this situation and have failed to do so.
  • Both of you need to do something radical.
  • Combining forces is smart.

3. Jerry, persuade Steve that a straight acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft would be a disaster for both companies. (Read this post if you'd like an outsider's perspective on this). This will be a tough sell: Steve will want to kill himself before he admits that he won't eventually be able to crush Google through money, power, energy, and relentless effort.  He will not want to hear that acquiring Yahoo will be a disaster. He will offer extremely compelling explanations about how Microsoft understands the integration and retention challenges, the morale challenges, the focus challenges, the internal-conflict challenges.  So it's time for some relentless persuasion of your own. Don't back down, Jerry. If you leave the dinner table without persuading Steve of this, your Yahoo baby (and Steve's Internet business) will be toast.

4. Jerry, float a better idea--a way to combine forces that avoids all of the problems of a straight acquisition:

  • Microsoft and Yahoo combine their Internet forces and assets in a stand-alone company called "Yahoo"
  • Microsoft will trade its Internet division and $10-$15 billion in cash for 51% of the combined company's stock (resulting in an overall valuation similar to Microsoft's $45 billion offer). 50/50 would make sense, but Steve won't agree unless he has control, and Steve holds more cards.
  • Microsoft will control a majority of the board.
  • The new board will immediately decide on the combined company's management team, and that team will immediately take control of the company. Not in early 2009. Now.
  • Steve will be chairman of both boards.
5.  Jerry, persuade Steve that, for the following reasons, this is a far better idea than a straight acquisition:
  • No deal purgatory
  • Less dilution and risk for Microsoft shareholders
  • Less of a tax hit for Yahoo shareholders.
  • Stand-alone company will be free to do whatever is necessary to maximize the value of its own business, without having to worry about whether this hurts Microsoft's core business.
  • Stand-alone company can grant stock options and hire and retain top talent who don't want to hitch their wagons to Windows and Office, be employees number 79,862 and 79,863, and work for Microsoft.
  • Stand-alone company will avoid the bureaucratic nightmare of having to fight for resources from a senior team who are also worried about fate of Windows, Office, Xbox, etc.
  • Stand-alone company won't have to compete with IBM, Oracle, Software-as-a-service vendors, Sony, Apple, and Research in Motion in addition to Google.
  • Stand-alone company will have a massive war chest and will be able to compete with Google for acquisitions.
  • Microsoft will have control and the ability to buy the rest of the stock if it later determines that a fully consolidated Yahoo is preferable.
  • Microsoft and Yahoo will be able to share technology and expertise in ways that benefit both companies (senior Microsoft management can facilitate this).
  • Microsoft doesn't need to do everything itself: Microsoft's shareholders will benefit from the success of this combined entity (as will Yahoo's), even if the entity ends up hurting Microsoft's core business.

7. Jerry, bring Steve a copy of The Innovator's Dilemma and ask him to read it before he goes to sleep. Suggest he focus on the chapter that describes how some companies have successfully resisted being disrupted (by creating stand-alone entities that are free to destroy the mothership).

8. Jerry and Steve: Shake hands and agree to hammer out such a deal.

9.  Go to sleep, wake up, call the lawyers/advisors, and tell them to smooth out the details.


10. Announce the deal.
Will this guarantee success? No. The new Yahoo will still have to execute superbly. But this arrangement, unlike a straight acquisition, will "maximize potential value" for both companies' shareholders.

Unfortunately it'll probably never happen, though in the tech world the strangest things have a habit of happening, but it really is a well thought out solution and would save both companies from the disastrous deal that is currently on the table. Personally I'd rather see News Corp. try to prop up the dead weight of Yahoo! than see Microsoft's online division collapse under it.

Thursday 21 February 2008

Microsoft becomes interoperable!

Today has seen some major changes to the way Microsoft operates. Microsoft are releasing information on their communication protocols as well as API's for Office which will let 3rd party applications communicate more effectively with Microsoft Platforms including Windows Clients, Servers and SharePoint Server 2007. These were only previously released under trade secret agreements, now they're open to us all. The Microsoft web site states:

Ensuring open connections to Microsoft’s high-volume products. To enhance connections with third-party products, Microsoft will publish on its Web site documentation for all application programming interfaces (APIs) and communications protocols in its high-volume products that are used by other Microsoft products. Developers do not need to take a license or pay a royalty or other fee to access this information. Open access to this documentation will ensure that third-party developers can connect to Microsoft’s high-volume products just as Microsoft’s other products do.

As an immediate next step, starting today Microsoft will openly publish on MSDN over 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a trade secret license through the Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP) and the Microsoft Communication Protocol Program (MCPP). Protocol documentation for additional products, such as Office 2007 and all of the other high-volume products covered by these principles, will be published in the upcoming months.

Microsoft will indicate on its Web site which protocols are covered by Microsoft patents and will license all of these patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates. To assist those interested in considering a patent license, Microsoft will make available a list of specific Microsoft patents and patent applications that cover each protocol.

Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols. These developers will be able to use the documentation for free to develop products. Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license.

Documenting how Microsoft supports industry standards and extensions. To increase transparency and promote interoperability, when Microsoft supports a standard in a high-volume product, it will work with other major implementers of the standard toward achieving robust, consistent and interoperable implementations across a broad range of widely deployed products.

Microsoft will document for the development community how it supports such standards, including those Microsoft extensions that affect interoperability with other implementations of these standards. This documentation will be published on Microsoft’s Web site and it will be accessible without a license, royalty or other fee. These actions will allow third-party developers implementing standards to understand how a standard is used in a Microsoft product and foster improved interoperability for customers. Microsoft will make available a list of any of its patents that cover any of these extensions, and will make available patent licenses on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

Enhancing Office 2007 to provide greater flexibility of document formats. To promote user choice among document formats, Microsoft will design new APIs for the Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications in Office 2007 to enable developers to plug in additional document formats and to enable users to set these formats as their default for saving documents.

Launching the Open Source Interoperability Initiative. To promote and enable more interoperability between commercial and community-based open source technologies and Microsoft products, this initiative will provide resources, facilities and events, including labs, plug fests, technical content and opportunities for ongoing cooperative development.

Expanding industry outreach and dialogue. An ongoing dialogue with customers, developers and open source communities will be created through an online Interoperability Forum. In addition, a Document Interoperability Initiative will be launched to address data exchange between widely deployed formats.

Something to note however, if you intend to make money using these protocols and API's then you seem to have to contact Microsoft regarding licensing. This is the day Microsoft embraced Open Source.

Does the world really need more than five computers?

From Greg Matter's blog:

THE WORLD NEEDS ONLY FIVE COMPUTERS

And, no, I'm not paraphrasing something that I bet Thomas J. Watson never uttered in 1943 anyway. But he should have because, ultimately, he might turn out to have been right.

Let's see, the Google grid is one. Microsoft's live.com is two. Yahoo!, Amazon.com, eBay, Salesforce.com are three, four, five and six. (Well, that's O(5) ;)) Of course there are many, many more service providers but they will almost all go the way of YouTube; they'll get eaten by one of the majors. And, I'm not placing any wagers that any of these six will be one of the Five Computers (nor that, per the above examples, they are all U.S. West Coast based --- I'll bet at least one, maybe the largest, will be the Great Computer of China).

I'm just saying that there will be, more or less, five hyperscale, pan-global broadband computing services giants. There will be lots of regional players, of course; mostly, they will exist to meet national needs. That is, the network computing services business will look a lot like the energy business: a half-dozen global giants, a few dozen national and/or regional concerns, followed by wildcatters and specialists.

Let me back up and explain what I mean by a Computer, and then why I think this is inevitable. I mean "Computer" as in the "The Network is the ...". These Computers will comprise millions of processing, storage and networking elements, globally distributed into critical-mass clusters (likely somewhere around 5,000 nodes each). My point in labeling them a Computer is that there will be some organization, a corporation or government, that will ultimately control the software run on and, important to my argument below, the capitalization and economics of the global system.

These Computers will be large for a number of reasons. It seems that the successful services are most definitely growing faster than Moore's Law. That is, in addition to upgrading to faster systems they are adding more of them and the compound growth is getting pretty spectacular in several cases. A company like Salesforce.com sees hypergrowth not in the form of some intrinsic demand on CRM (within an average company, definitely not growing close to Moore's Law --- Enterprise CRM is overserved by systems performance improvements), but rather the sum of consolidation of CRM systems across thousands and thousands of companies. Live.com is likely to fall into this camp, too. The growth seen by a Google or Yahoo!, on the other hand, is more directly a function of their pipe-filling roles: the greater the end-user bandwidth, the greater the demand on their infrastructure.

Moreover, there is most definitely an economy of scale in computing. To the extent that there is a scalable architectural pattern (cluster, pod, etc.), the per-unit engineering expense gets amortized over increasing capital volume. So, more and more engineering can be invested in driving higher and higher efficiencies at scale.

Our bet (meaning Sun's) is that, like the energy, transportation, telecommunications and power utility businesses, most of these companies will realize that they can become even more efficient if they rely upon a few, highly competitive and deeply technical infrastructure suppliers (think GE, Siemens, ABB for power systems, Boeing and Airbus for commercial aircraft, Ericsson, Nortel, Lucent/Alcatel, Nokia for telecom, etc.).

All this being said, a large enough enterprise (say, a big financial services firm) still have some pretty compelling reasons to build their own Computers. My only advice here is to approach the problem as one of latent scale. That is, think that you are building one of the world's five, but you just haven't quite grown into it yet! Same advice goes to start-ups: because either you will grow to become one of the big Computers, or you'll be acquired and be Borg-ed into one of them!

Naturally, we aim to be the premier infrastructure supplier to the world's Computers. Blackbox is just the beginning (More on Blackbox in a previous entry). Whatever its form (or color!) the emerging infrastructure will be far more efficient than what we think of for conventional enterprise computing. And, just as a reminder, that doesn't mean its piles and piles of cheap boxes, any more than you'd design a power plant with piles and piles of cheap portable generators. In the latter case, the little problems of noise, pollution, reliability and conversion efficiency are scaled into some really nasty ones.

Similarly, the cheapest computing is not necessarily obtained by lashing together racks and racks of the cheapest computers you can find. Engineering for scale matters. Really matters.

gmatter

It's a very interesting read and he makes some very interesting points but I have to wonder if this is the world the consumer really wants though? I'm not sure if I want my whole desktop online and more importantly I don't want to lose the choice. I want the option to choose email provider, office application, media players and other services and not have them thrust upon me by an overpowering force. It's not what the net is about and I can see the EU fighting such an idea tooth and nail. Here's a question to consider though, where does Apple fit into the grand plan above? I can't see Steve Jobs surrendering any time soon.

Gears of War 2 due in November 2008

After the success of the original Gears of War the news of the follow up has me salivating in anticipation already :)

gow2

Wednesday 20 February 2008

PS3 to become the next Wii

Browsing through the US Patent website today I discovered a newly published patent from Sony regarding, among other things, the EyeToy. I'll let you judge for yourself from the pictures below but it seems to me that Sony are about to take on Nintendo at their own game. The EyeToy looks to be supporting the kind of movement aware games we've now grown to love on the Wii and coupled with the immense power of the  console and the triumph of Blu-Ray over HD-DVD this could mean real problems for the Xbox360 and the Wii. 2008 could be Sony's year yet.

football baseball

22Hundred.net

Hey everyone. Just wanted to update you on what's happening with 22hundred.net. As you can see the site has undergone some changes recently and I think you'll agree it now looks a lot better. This is only the beginning and things are going to continue to change in the upcoming days and weeks.

This is where you, the user, comes in. This is your opportunity to tell me what you want to see on the web. Do you want a site devoted to news, tech or sports? What about a portal to the Internet? What sort of interactivity do you want built in? Chat? Forums? It's up to you.

So leave me a comment on this post outlining what you'd like to see and within the next few weeks I'll do my best to create the site you most want.

MMCC

Wednesday 13 February 2008

Firefox steals IE's Home button

I know this is silly but thought I'd point it out anyway. I just downloaded beta 3 of Firefox and the home button looks familiar. Take a look at the button from IE on the right and Firefox on the left and tell me they don't look strangely similar.

IEFirefoxHome

Tuesday 5 February 2008

Improved File Copy in Vista SP1

Mark Russinovich, a man regarded as a genius by many after the Sysinternals tools he developed, has outlined the improvements to the File Copy mechanism in Vista SP1. Many people will agree that this is great news because the speed that Vista copied files was appalling in many scenarios. For anyone interested in the technical details his post can be found at: http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/02/04/2826167.aspx

Monday 4 February 2008

Google are worried? Apparently.

A story from bbc.co.uk is reporting that Google are finding the Microsoft purchase of Yahoo, "troubling".

Google

Google has criticised Microsoft's proposed bid for Yahoo

Google has said it finds Microsoft's $44.6bn ($22.65bn) bid to buy rival Yahoo "troubling" and wants regulators to scrutinise the proposed deal.

 

This is a very understandable reaction from a company that has been dominating the online application space for a number of years now. Google's business model relies heavily on advertising, as we know, and the revenue from advertising is directly linked to the amount of traffic visiting the sites. The Microsoft/Yahoo deal may decrease this number of users, hence decreasing the amount of advertising revenue ergo decreasing the amount of profits Google are making and with Wall Street already concerned about the amount of profits Google are going to be able to make during the economic slowdown this takeover has produced a very defensive response.

But lets forget Google for a moment and take a look at this from the only viewpoint that really matters, the consumers. The regulators must look at this as a benefit to the consumer. The Search giant really is not producing many online applications that are of a truly high standard or for the applications that are a high standard the opposition is just as good. Lets take a look at some examples:

1. Google Maps. There is no questioning the fact that this is an extremely high quality application which can now be installed on Nokia N95 as well as having it on iPhone and iPod Touch. It's impossible not to be impressed with the quality of the imaging. On the other hand I used the application last week on my iPod Touch to find a restaurant near to where I work. Wondering why the distance to the nearest one was over 5 miles I checked where Maps thought my location was and it placed me in the middle of the Irish Sea! Maybe this is just an unfortunate example but Nokia's Maps application on the N95 using GPS is fantastic. What does place Google's application above the competition is the high quality of aerial photographs of cities that aren't in the US. If all Google products were as good as Maps and Search they wouldn't be worrying about this deal, they wouldn't need to.

2. GMail. This is one of Google's flagship products, and in many ways a product that has caused the most headaches for their legal department over the last couple of years. GMail is another mail client needle in a massive stack of mail client needles. The support of POP3 and IMAP certainly makes it easier to receive your email while using a wide variety of devices and the GMail application for N95 is very handy. In the GMail client the grouping of emails into conversations and ability to categorise emails using labels makes it quite appealing. However to anyone familiar with Outlook, as many office workers will be, Live Mail will be very familiar and usable. This can either be a curse or a blessing but personally I believe that it's a blessing. For anyone not wanting to access their mail through the browser they can download the Live Mail desktop application which allows you to add numerous email accounts and support POP3, IMAP and HTTP, what more could you want. Due to the Outlook like interface users get familiarity and generally users like familiarity. In fact this leads onto a much larger point.

3. Google Docs vs. Microsoft Office vs. Open Office. Many of the future battles for users will be fought in the Online Office space so lets take a quick look at the competitors.
Google Docs is a growing online office application offering Spreadsheet, Presentation and Word Processing software. The applications allow you to work on your documents anywhere that has an Internet connection and save them online. No more installation of software and no more documents and charts taking up hard drive space that your family photos and music could be inhabiting.  However the applications do not have the breadth of features that Microsoft Office and Open Office has. Also, if you're not connected to the Internet you cannot access your documents so no working on the plane. Finally, many companies are not going to be enthusiastic about saving their official documents online.
Open Office has both online and offline applications now. Their online application offers similar functionality to the Google Docs Application but with the familiar Open Office interface. Once again I feel familiarity is deeply important. The offline application is a viable competitor to Microsoft. Considering this is a totally free application the feature depth is impressive. It's support of other file formats however is a little questionable and in a world were many of the documents you author will be read or edited using Microsoft Office this is going to be a disadvantage. Once again though for students or for home users Open Office is a viable alternative worth considering.
Microsoft Office. I don't want to sound bias but this is the King of Office Applications. The depth of features and the number of users world wide make this the Office application that every user should have. While Open Office is successful it feels like Microsoft Works in comparison to MS Office. The new Ribbon Interface on Windows machines is beautiful to use and with Outlook Connector installed there is no mail server you can't get mail from, that I have found anyway. Word is the best Word Processor in the World by a considerable distance and excluding Mac applications PowerPoint is the best presentation application in the World. Excel may have some bad points but many users will never see them and anyone needing it for calculations like their finances it is perfect. Office is getting a live feature which is going to be a method of uploading your documents to an Internet storage location thus giving it access to them from any machine that has Office installed. With the Office applications making a lot of money I cannot see MS producing Office applications online anytime soon.

Looking at the examples so far we can see that the share of quality is pretty even. While Microsoft dominates the Office and Desktop OS environments Google dominates the Online application and search environments. With the Mobile World still very much up for grabs, and baring in mind that Apple's well and truly battling for it, Microsoft needs the injection of energy that Yahoo would bring. But herein lies the question, what will Microsoft do with Yahoo? The best case scenario is that Microsoft fully incorporate Yahoo R&D into Windows Live and scrap the Yahoo brand. They then need to re-release the Yahoo applications as Windows Live applications while incorporating functionality from Yahoo Mail and Messenger into the Live Mail and Messenger services. Full support for all Yahoo addresses should be kept and incorporated into the Windows Live Authentication mechanism. The Windows Live team then needs to give the Yahoo guys a big say in the future of Windows Live services. Yahoo 'get' the Internet and its users and Microsoft 'get' success and how to maintain it. Let the Yahoo developers create the high quality applications they are used to producing and release them under Windows Live.

Finally Microsoft needs to take a look at Windows 7. Is this really going to be a desktop oriented OS that's going to be rushed out because they can't handle the marketing of Vista, seriously guys the OS is excellent it should be an easy sell, or are they going to think about creating a hybrid OS. Fully incorporating applications created by the semi-independent, Yahoo driven developers into the OS and making it feel like your working in the Cloud as well as on your machine could open the door to the future of computing. A mobile driven, cloud driven, freedom driven OS that lets you work on anything, anywhere and at any time using tools developed by the Yahoo and Windows Live R&D team could be the Platform to re-launch Microsoft into a new Era. It's time to rebuild the brand and this deal is the way to do it.

Friday 1 February 2008

Bye bye Yahoo

Well after months of speculation it was finally announced today that Microsoft intends to buy Yahoo for a mere $44.6 billion dollars. The Microsoft press release can be found
here.

I have been wondering why Microsoft would spend so much money on failed Google competitor but the press release explains it perfectly. It's basically for the R&D. The Yahoo user group is still enormous and adding the quality of some of their applications to the Live suite will produce a very compelling reason for people to move from Google to Live. Yahoo Mail and Messenger UI's replacing Hotmail and Live Messenger should be the first move. As outlined in the statement this will produce a second major competitor in this market.

The deal has to pass the EU before it can happen and many people are questioning if that will happen and of course it will pass without a problem. The reason I say that is because the EU claims to be working for the consumer and trying to control the monopolies. As Google is virtually the monopoly in this area the creation of a viable competitor to them should not be an issue. Come on EU prove you work for us not just against them.

Goodbye Yahoo, it's been nice browsing you.