Articles in “May 2007” from Datamation Blog

It was the first time in more than 20 years that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs shared the same stage. The much-hyped meeting of the tech giants took place Wednesday in Carlsbad, near San Diego, at the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital Conference. The (short-sighted) conference organizers limited the number of journalists they let in, but luckily for us, Larry Magid was on the scene for internetnews.com. As Magid wrote, many observers expected fireworks between Gates and Jobs, but it turned into a love fest. I'm sure the chumminess between the two old rivals had some Microsoft-hating Apple-heads squirming in their seats. Magid wrote that,

& having covered both Apple and Microsoft for the past 25 years, the evening felt like a family reunion. I felt as if I were watching two senior relatives reminisce about the good times they had in their youth. At one point both were asked if there were any qualities in the other person that they wished they had. Gates said, "I'd give a lot to have Steve's taste for both for people and products. I'd see Steve make decisions based on a sense of people and product. The way he does thing is different. It's magic." Jobs said that he admired Gates' ability to create and maintain partnerships. " & (W)e weren't so good at partnering with people. In fact, Microsoft was one of the few companies that we could partner with. Microsoft was very good at partnering. If Apple had that in its DNA it would have worked really well but Apple didn't have that until a few decades later." In a rather poignant comment that got "aahs" from the crowd, Jobs summed up his relationship with Gates by quoting a line from a Beatles song. "You and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead."

In other news, there was actually some of it this week from Carlsbad (a name that makes me cringe, due to the haunting memories of a blistering hot day spent schlepping around LegoLand, but that's another blog.) The biggest news out of the conference was Microsoft's introduction of a new "Surface" PC with a 30-inch touch-screen about the size of a coffee table. The company will release it later this year for use in hotels, casinos and other businesses. That's all well and good, but I covered Microsoft a few years ago when just about all Gates talked about was how Tablet PCs would change everything. So keep any table-top PC enthusiasm in check for a year or two and see if Bill is so keen on them.

I read once that direct-mail companies consider a 3 percent response rate to be a success. If so, then spammers enjoy even greater success, based on a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to the research firm's latest data, 4 percent of email users in the United States say they've ordered products touted in unsolicited emails. I don't know about you, but I can live with that level of gullibility in our society. Other highlights of the phone survey of 2,200 American adults:

37 percent say they're getting more spam in their personal email
10 percent say they're getting less personal email spam
51 percent haven't noticed a change in personal email spam
29 percent say they're getting more spam in their work accounts
8 percent say they're getting less spam at work
55 percent haven't noticed a change in work spam

Interestingly, even though roughly one-third of respondents report increases in spam, the percentage of people who consider spam a big problem has fallen from 25 percent in 2003 to 18 percent now, and the percentage who say it's no problem at all has risen from 16 percent in the earlier survey to 28 percent. Have we given up or merely adapted? Perhaps neither. The key to understanding these changes may lie in the nature of the spam we're receiving. I speak of porn spam, which respondents indicate is considerably more offensive than email pleas for banking assistance from Nigerian royalty. Fortunately, porn spam also appears to be less prevalent. Three years ago, 71 percent of Pew survey respondents reported receiving pornographic spam. That number dropped to 63 percent two years ago and 52 percent in the latest survey.

As someone who has been hair-challenged for most of my adult life, I found this headline in Monday's New York Times irresistible:

Bad Hair Days Lead Pair to Web Incubator and Venture Capital

The article is about how niche web sites are again attracting venture capital, mostly in the form of smaller funding along the lines of Internet incubators. It's a good read, and inspiring for those who fret that all the good web ideas are taken.

Just hours after posting about Jakob Nielsen's dim view of web sites that go nuts with the Web 2.0 interactive toys, sources informed me -- I can't reveal who or how -- that the CIA has just unveiled a new, interactive public web site. Fortunately, we can reassure our Danish friend that the new CIA site appears to pass the first test: Its use of interactive features is modest and tasteful, at least the parts I'm allowed to tell you about. Too modest, I'd say. The only "interactive" feature of the new CIA site (that I could find, anyway) is the virtual tour of CIA headquarters. OK, is it just me, or does that strike you as a really bad idea?! However, far and away the most interesting part of the CIA web site is the "Kids' Page," where young Americans are given short descriptions of the agency's functions that are so dumbed down they read like Presidential Daily Briefings. While that's innocuous enough, things get a little weird in the "Parents & Teachers" section of the "Kids' Page," which contains "Teacher Resources: Suggested Lesson Plans Using the CIA Web Site." What a gross and inappropriate use of tax money public service! Look at some of the lesson plans the CIA is willing to help our nation's teachers with:

Plan A: Examples of Problem Solving
Plan B: Gathering and Analyzing Information About Your Classmates
Plan C: Myths About CIA vs. Reality
Plan D: Intelligence's Role in War (And the Buildup To)
Plan E: Codes and Code-Breaking
Plan F: The Importance of Accurate Communications

OK, is it just me...

Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen is concerned that the interactive tools and other dynamic toys that are part of Web 2.0 technology are causing many online businesses to abandon the basics of good site design. That is, those web firms that were practicing good web design in the first place. The truth is, the low bar for entry onto the Internet has always encouraged bad, or non-existent, web design. Which Nielsen knows, since he's been complaining about it for as far back as I can remember. But he's definitely right that the dynamic elements of Web 2.0 can be counterproductive if overused or misused. As Nielsen says in this BBC News article, with few exceptions, interactive tools should be viewed as features of the site, since most people aren't interested in supplying your damn content for you! Well, he explains it a little differently:

"The idea of community, user-generated content and more dynamic web pages are not inherently bad, [but] they should be secondary to the primary things sites should get right."

Nielsen cites research showing that of users visiting interactive sites, only about 1 percent regularly contribute and another 9 percent just occasionally contribute. That means 90 percent are just goofing off. That's more (hopefully) than your workforce! The point is, Nielsen says:

"Most people just want to get in, get it and get out. For them the web is not a goal in itself. It is a tool."

So what does Nielsen think that web sites should get right? I'll answer by presenting this link to Nielsen's Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design.

OK, maybe the rumored Microsoft-Yahoo merger apparently isn't going to happen. And maybe Forrester analyst Charlene Li is right that such a merger would be a bad idea -- there's no real upside for Yahoo, and a Redmond-Silicon Valley culture clash would all but be inevitable. But the technology world has stared bad ideas in the face many times before, only to blunder ahead nonetheless. Shall we review the synergies apparent at the time of the AOL-Time Warner merger? Even if there's no marriage to Microsoft on the spring calendar, Yahoo continues to face severe competitive issues, namely that Google is crushing it in terms of attracting users and advertising revenue. Where does Yahoo fit into an Internet whose main engine of information-gathering and revenue generation -- search -- is dominated by Google? As this perceptive analysis points out, just two years ago the two companies had similar revenue. In the quarter just ended, Google's revenue was more than twice Yahoo's. Worse, Yahoo's increasingly muddled business model -- remember last fall's "Peanut Butter Manifesto"? -- has blurred the company's image to Internet users, a group that naturally gravitates toward clear value-add. What's Yahoo's value-add? Is it in search? Video? Social networking? See what I mean? If Yahoo continues to struggle with Wall Street expectations, and if it loses more and more ground to Google, shareholder pressure will force the company to seek a strong partner. And I still don't rule out Microsoft.

Occasionally I'll post an article or column from our IT Management sites on Digg.com, the popular user-submitted news site. It's a great way to boost traffic -- if you select the right content, that is. Fortunately, I have many years of experience discerning the interests of tech readers, so I only serve up sure-fire winners. Here are the total number of "Diggs" I've received for each submission (made using a super-secret code name) this year:

2
1
3
4
1
7
6
955 (it's amazing what the word "naked" in a headline can do for you)
5

Sorry, I'm not prepared to reveal the tricks of my trade, no matter how much you beg. However, based on recent events, I can offer you one tip on how to capture the attention of the Digg community: Arouse the mob!

Worried that rival SAP will "lose" electronic evidence related to its lawsuit alleging massive theft, business software vendor Oracle is asking a court for help. In a statement provided to our pals over at internetnews.com, Oracle attorney Dorian Daley said the company has filed a motion in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco:

"...to ensure that SAP is preserving the critical electronic records and data related to SAP's theft and misuse of Oracle's intellectual property." "We believe an order is necessary because for the past six weeks, SAP has failed to address Oracle's requests for preservation of specific records."

Oracle, as you may recall, filed a lawsuit in late March accusing SAP of illegally accessing Oracle's computer network to steal proprietary information. There's more:

In its latest motion, Oracle accused its rival of "stalling" and said "this failure to meet and confer about its preservation activities raises questions about whether SAP has in fact protected highly relevant evidence from alteration or destruction -- as the law and Oracle's proposed order require it to do." "To make matters worse, SAP recently wrote to Oracle questioning its obligation to provide certain of those core materials in discovery," the motion continued.

Hmm. That doesn't sound very cooperative! To hear SAP tell it (to internetews.com), the German software maker "intends to play by the rules." Further, it accuses Oracle of "rushing to court" rather than settling procedural matters informally. Nice and informal. That's the ticket! No need to bother the court with this messy procedural stuff. Unfortunately for SAP, being in the computer business and all, it can't fall back on the kind of excuses proferred by other organizations we know.