Friday, April 13, 2007
Leopard delay proves just how hard software is
Michael Parekh
The company says it needed more time and resources to get the iPhone out the door by June, which is to be expected, the blogger says. “Apple is not immune from gravity, even though expectations for it’s products and services tend to be so much higher than it’s peers. Their engineers put on their pants one leg at a time (or don skirts), just as Microsoft’s do,” he writes. “While there will be much tea-leaf reading amongst Apple followers to figure out exactly why Leopard is delayed, and what the REAL reasons for the slip might be, the reality is that robust and material upgrades to the two consumer major operating computer operating systems today, won’t be seen until the second half of the year.”
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Storm worm mutations shows a change in tactics
Security to the core
The malware is taking on some interesting changes, Jose Nazario reports. “There was some confusion throughout the day because these new payloads and tactics were being used, AV wasn’t catching it, and vendors have a dozen names for this threat,” he writes. “That said, once we started to analyze it, sure enough it was the Storm Worm, our old friend. Note that we saw Storm this past weekend in “Iran-US War” messages as its hook. This is a new change for the team, moving beyond news events and into the typical tactics used by Bagle and Mydoom.”
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This is the way Wii surf
GigaOM
Wagner James Au discusses the launch of a new Internet channel. “The obvious immediate objection, or course, is “who’s going to browse the Web without a keyboard?” The most obvious immediate answer: the very young, who already send text messages over their cellphones more than they send IMs over their computers. They’ll acclimate quickly to the keyboard-free Web, and being so popular, developers will figure out ways to integrate the Wii’s pointer/nunchuck controller to Web apps which make the experience increasingly intuitive,” he writes. “And if the personal computer is no longer essential to the Internet, what happens to all the industries built around it?”
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Thursday, April 12, 2007
Who would want to be Vonage’s CEO now?
VoIP Insiders
Michael Snyder has left the firm and Jeffrey Citron will fill in on an interim basis, Garrett Smith reports. “But one has to wonder if Michael was thrown under the bus to “show investors” that Vonage was serious about cutting costs and making themselves into a viable, long term, profitable business,” he writes. “Seems that Michael is the “fall guy” here, especially since Vonage included a snippet in the press release about their plans to focus on reducing the company’s operational costs, and slashing marketing expense….signs of an investor driven move.”
Abramson gets Forrester Reaction
John Arnold: Could be bad news for Canada
Guardian: Now Vonage is really toast
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Technorati buyout of Personal Bee may make sense
/Message
The blog service picks up a news aggregator, which isn’t completely out of step, Stowe Boyd says. “Technorati — in the long run — has no hope of competing with Google and other giants in the search space, and as blogs become more central to what is happening online, Technorati faces a likely death,” he writes. “Moving toward a social media game is much more defensible, and potentially more attractive for acquisition. The Personal Bee is just one part of this effort at Technorati. The recent WTF feature was launched with the intent of getting into the Digg space. Personally, I think that Technorati should acquire Techmeme or Tailrank, and fill out a larger set of social media offerings, and gently move away from blog search.”
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Why you may need a ‘being space’
The Marketing Minute
The head of McLellan Marketing, Drew McLellan, discusses the trend in which companies offer more than just merchandise. “What if clients or business friends & vendors were invited to stop by the MMG office. We happen to be right downtown. Maybe they’re in between meetings or just need a place to catch their breath.They can grab a cup of coffee, hop on our wireless high speed internet (or use the computer in our open work station), make some phone calls or grab a book off our bookshelf,” he writes. “Do you think they’d take us up on our offer? Does it say something about our brand that we’ve created a space where they could? Would it alter or intensify their opinion of us and what working with us might be like?”
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Wednesday, April 11, 2007
There’s just no pleasing Facebook users
Charles Hudon’s Weblog
A new user interface from the popular social networking site gets a mixed review. “As someone who used to complain about the amount of sprawl and clutter on the home page (the page you see when you log in), I had finally adjusted to the density of information on the page and was starting to appreciate the way they managed to cram so much info on the page without feeling overwhelming. Now with the new interface, the page feels too sparse,” Hudson writes. “The point of the redesign (from my point of view, at least) seems to change my relationship with the home page. It’s no longer a dense dashboard, it’s a jumping off point.”
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Skype needs to refine enterprise edition
Disruptive Telephony
As the peer-to-peer phone firm releases a private beta of its latest version, including one for Macs, Dan York raises a question about its ability to run multiple instances of the service. “There is the very real issue of ‘which instances’ presence setting do you broadcast to Skype contacts?’ And also to the Web presence icon. I’ve seen the issue myself when I look at my blog from my laptop (with Skype running) and see that my Skype web presence says that I’m ‘Away’ or ‘Not Available’ . . . due to the fact that my other PC has had enough inactivity for Skype to automatically change the presence setting,” he writes. “It would appear that Skype’s solution out of that is to have presence be pulled from whichever Skype client logged in last. I guess it’s one way to do it… but I’d prefer a checkbox in the options that said something like ‘Make this instance of Skype authoritative for my presence’ (obviously worded a bit better).”
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If you want to explain Salesforce.com, think Darwin
Beagle Research
Following the firm’s buyout of content management specialist Koral, Denis Pombriant evaluates the company’s approach to the market. “For many people, trying to figure out what Salesforce.com is about can be like the blind men touching an elephant trying to figure out what it is. Salesforce.com has a CRM business which is currently bringing in most of its revenue, a platform business which is just getting started but which shows real promise, and a bulk services business which essentially sells undifferentiated seats which partner applications have tuned to specific uses,” he writes. “There might be other business plans but those are the ones that are most apparent to me. If you think about it from a Darwinian perspective, though, Salesforce.com’s actions make perfect sense because it is acting in a highly adaptable fashion.”
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007
‘Wilf’ offers a name for online loafing
GreenBambo
The British come up with an acronym that means “what I was looking for” to describe people who make an aimless trek online. A blogger called Uncle Angel explains why and when he wilfs. “It’s not that I might not find other things for myself to do, but I’m often not in the mood to do them. There are some books to read, but I feel disinclined to read at the moment, partly because I’m tired and partly because the gloomy climate is sapping me of energy. I need sunshine and warmth, but I’m not getting much of either,” he writes. “So I wilf to temporise, but I also do it in the hope that something new and interesting might distract me for a time. It’s why I started trying to find blogs that might be of interest instead of clicking on random links in the updated blogs box in the hope that one of them might be worth reading.”
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April’s Patch Tuesday could have been a lot worse
360 Security
As the cursor flaw scandal rages on, Tyler Reguly of Ottawa’s nCircle looks at the latest security update in more detail. “In the end, it’s not an overly big release for Microsoft. Even though they spanned two Tuesdays, there were only 6 patches released. Bringing us to a total of 22 patches, 4 months into the year,” he writes. “I’m actually quite surprised that we’re seeing a DoS patched in MS07-021. It seems to go against Microsofts new “policy” of not patching Denial of Service vulnerabilities. At least I thought that was their policy, given the number of public Denial of Services that they are not patching. I’m guessing it was a freebie that they got while fixing the other two CSRSS vulns.”
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Pulling the Blu-Ray encryption key is not the right move
Blu-RayFreak
A decision by the Advanced Access Content System makes it impossible to play newly released high-definition movies via versions of playback software, including versions of Intervideo WinDVD 8, says Stephane Dion. “No one doubts that the hackers will come back with the new keys very rapidly. If AACS LA really wants to play that game, the HD industry is going to suffer a lot from it,” he writes. “The average consumer that paid a hefty price will be the one that pays for that fight. The AACS LA should really think about their strategy before making this kind of upgrade mandatory each time a key is found by a hacker.”
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Monday, April 9, 2007
Apple’s iPod success should do Microsoft proud
Nyquist Capital
As the company celebrates the 100 millionth sale of its digital music player, Andrew Schmitt breaks down the numbers. “The only platform that draws comparison is Microsoft Windows, which is now the ubiquitous enterprise computing platform,” he writes. “This is clear, numerical evidence of the platform power of iTunes. The most interesting thing about the Apple TV is how it leverages this platform out of your pocket and into your living room. The guts of the Apple TV clearly show Apple has plans for this hardware beyond being simple a music/video player. iPod growth will slow, but should be replaced by growth in Apple TV and even iPhone. All three of these products leverage the iTunes platform.”
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The Blogger’s code of conduct: A draft
O’Reilly Radar
After making the call for a standard set of principles, publisher and Web 2.0 guru Tim O’Reilly decides to get serious. “We’re not quite there yet, but we have a plan,” he writes in notes accompanying the draft. “But we’re also working with wikia to put the draft through a wiki-based review process. Please feel free to join in and edit the wiki as well as encouraging others to do so. We’ll post the final version on bloggingcode.org, along with the html to display the badge and link to the code.” And if you don’t want to sign up? “We also decided we needed an ‘anything goes’ badge for sites that want to warn possible commenters that they are entering a free-for-all zone.”
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AMD restructuring could be just the beginning
GigaOM
As the chipmaker suffers through a bad quarter, Om Malik suggests it isn’t alone. “You can expect more companies will make such statements during this earning season, underscoring lack of demand,” he writes. “Erring on the side of caution, I think the web-based companies, especially those reliant on advertising – that everyone from Yahoo and as small as our lowly site, could feel the impact of this demand slowdown. The retail chains like Best Buy and Circuit City could be impacted as well. The good news is that this is market self correcting itself, and instead of a Bust 2.0, we might have a slow correction in the technology ecosystem.”
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