The design
I've never liked it very much, and it hasn't really changed in the time I've been there. And for some reason, MySpace users have this habit of creating really garish, childish designs which wouldn't look out of place in preschool.
Phished accounts
It's a real pain when Holly 21, from California, blonde with big boobs, asks you to be her friend cos she likes getting wild with strangers. Maybe not in real life I guess, but in cyber geek world it's just irritating.
Wannabe bandsSorry wannabe rock stars, but I'm not going to add your crappy unoriginal indie band music or be your friend. I don't give a crap about half the bands I actually hear every day so why the hell am I going to like you??
Random adding
This is what MySpace is for I guess, but being on Facebook so long I've realised I have enough friends. And I probably won't add you because you are younger than my socks.
Meanwhile, an article in the San Mateo Daily Journal offers opinions not from analysts and self-styled Internet experts, but from real users (what a novel concept!), in this case teens:
"I didn't like MySpace because it's all over the place; it's not uniform throughout like Facebook is. Too much custom work can be done," Junipero Serra High School senior Mike Rulon-Miller said.
Students felt MySpace was limited to commenting friends, uploading single photos, listing activities and adding music to the Web.
"I think [Facebook] functions better, plus Facebook is more of a social thing whereas MySpace was just pictures and messages. There was no 'MySpace Chat,'" Redwood High School senior Ben Karp said.
In addition to "Facebook chat," members can upload unlimited photos, unlike MySpace. Facebook's organized layout allows users to browse applications and friends' pages with ease.
"I feel like its a classier version of MySpace," St. Ignatius High School senior Kyle Nelson said.
Facebook also offers applications that range from games like virtual Scrabble to iLike, a music inventory where members can select their favorite music and add concert events to their site's events calendar.
And here's an observation from eWeek's Nicholas Kolakowski:
Facebook, meanwhile, has taken steps into online advertising -- but not nearly to the extent of MySpace, which seems determined to plaster much of its online real estate with ads.
If I had to distill all of this, it sounds to me as though:
Sounds like a recipe for decline to me. The only questions are whether it's too late for MySpace, and whether another competitor can do the same to Facebook.
I'd love to hear from readers about the reasons for MySpace's fall from the top of the social networking mountain. As I said, I'm on the outside looking in, but find it a fascinating topic.
After some media reports sounded the alarm that ISPs might be planning to shut down service to subscribers suspected of infringement after issuing warnings -- a so-called "three strikes" policy -- the providers are now speaking out to quash that notion.The issue flared up earlier this week, according to Corbin, when several executives from major ISPs were part of a panel discussion at the Leadership Musical Digital Summit in Nashville on their industry's role in fighting copyright infringement.
"No American ISP (including Comcast) that I know of is talking about a so-called 'three strikes and you're out' law or process," Waz said. "While we have always supported copyright holders in their efforts to reduce piracy under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and continue to do so, we have no plans to test or implement a so-called 'three strikes and you're out' policy."Corbin writes that the issue first arose in December when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced "it would stop suing Internet users for illegal file sharing, moving instead to the 'graduated response' system, pejoratively dubbed three strikes."
Under that scheme, the RIAA said it would lean on ISPs to combat illegal file sharing by sending out warning letters to suspected infringers. The letters would carry the imprimatur of the ISP, a subtle but important departure from the dictates of the 1998 DMCA, which required providers to forward along cease-and-desist notices it received from copyright owners. Critics have warned that the direct involvement of the ISP in the process could lead down a slippery slope where content filtering and privacy invasions through techniques like deep-packet inspection become the norm.
David Deliman, a spokesman for Cox Communications, told InternetNews.com that the provider "has not signed an agreement with RIAA and we do not have a 'three strikes' policy."Despite the ISPs' denials, don't expect this rumor to go away soon. The RIAA is continuing its efforts to get ISPs to agree to the "three strikes" rule, and the ISPs' efforts to refute the speculation are fairly limited: "we have no plans," "has not signed an agreement," no deal with RIAA "at this time." Unless I'm missing something, I'm not see an "it ain't gonna happen" in the bunch.
Don't hide. "The worst thing you can do as a manager is stay locked in your office and feel bad for the decisions you made. You have to make a business decision. You made your decision. You're going to have to live with it. It's going to be tough but, as a manager, as a leader, you cannot afford to show that you are completely put down by what happened and you can't function." -- Laurent Duperval of Duperval ConsultingThere's some other good advice in the article. Hope it helps.
Stop second-guessing yourself. "You have to look at the big picture: If you didn't make those decisions the whole ship could come down, which means a lot more people would have lost their jobs, including yourself." -- Roberta Chinsky Matuson, founder and president of Human Resource Solutions
Communicate. "Be transparent as far as what is happening or will be happening, and the better off you will be. The longer you wait and the less transparent you are the more it comes back to haunt you." -- Dave Willmer, executive director of IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology
Don't assume it's business as usual. "That's a mistake that can be common as people say, 'Well, you know what? We're going to have to work twice as hard because half the people left, but we still need to get the same jobs done.' That is unrealistic." -- Duperval
We are still some way off from truly intelligent agents that predict accurately what you want, when you want it, delivered to your current location. But Twitter is much more than the glorified e-mail system many claim it to be. Twitter is certainly a huge step toward semantic predictive filtering -- it allows you to lock directly into and maintain your own personalized community of interest, where you can follow or un-follow who you wish, communicate across boundaries and push/pull information as you require it. It employs a number of simple and abbreviated filtering features such as #hashtagging, @names, RT (Retweeting) and DM (Direct messaging) which many social networking tools do not have. It is only a small step from here to automated versions.Wheeler first got to thinking about the Twitter-semantic web connection by reading "Twitter Drives Traffic to Blogs and Social Networks," by Alan Cann at the University of Leicester. Cann writes:
Twitter *is* the semantic web, network as filter. If I send you crap, you drop me from your network. The semantic web is here, and its name is Twitter (and bits of Facebook which don't consist of advertising spam and zombie vampire superpokes).With the unprecedented explosion in Twittering, it's certainly a thought-provoking point of view and bodes well for the still-evolving semantic web.
Salesforce.com today announced a beta program for its Service Cloud that incorporates Twitter. The Service Cloud is a program for businesses that takes advantage of online knowledge bases, communities and social networks to provide customer service and help. Now, the Service Cloud will scour the Tweetosphere for tweets that apply to a particular business. Customer service representatives could then interject themselves into a Twitter conversation to provide immediate help.Help would be one thing. If a Twitter user is complaining about a problem with a company's product or service, and the service rep is able to provide assistance...well, one hardly could complain about that. I might even try it with a phone company whose name rhymes with the word Horizon.
[I]magine having the same discussion in a cafe, where a customer service rep on a break happens to overhear you and helps out. If it happened once, you probably wouldn't mind and would be happy to have a fix for your problem. But what if every time you talked about any product in that cafe, a customer service rep or salesmen was sitting next to you and jumped in with some advice.Answer: It would get old, really fast. Who knows, maybe Alesforce.comSay's new feature will inspire the implementation of code language on ItterTway. It could happen.
A Google post unveils a new service, "Google Undo Send" which allows users to unsend e-mails they don't want delivered within a five second window.Not bad. In fact, a friend of mine told me yesterday that he had just fired off a hot-headed reply to a complaining reader and immediately regretted it. Let's hope it's only a matter of time before other email platforms incorporate these kinds of safeguards.
We've all been there. After an upsetting email from a boss or a significant other, you reply back without a breather. Instantly you regretting hitting the send key, and you realize you want your words back. "Undo Send" has the ability to recall e-mail as long as it is done within five seconds (with an option to increase the unsend time window to 10 seconds).
Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.A Cisco employee on Twitter saw this tweet and replied:
Who is the hiring manager. I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.You can read more on this brand new web site, Cisco Fatty.
Years ago, in my first newspaper job, I was editing a press release (on paper!) that referenced a local doctor who was well-known as an extreme right-winger (a John Birch type who thought fluoridation of water was a Communist plot). I inserted the word "neo-fascist" in front of his name and showed it to one of my colleagues for a few harmless laughs. Then I must have gotten distracted, because I forgot to cross out "neo-fascist" and handed the press release to a typesetter.Granted, CF, no Internet existed back then to transmit details of my blunder to millions of people around the globe. You'll just have to live with that. But Internet folly, like Internet fame, is fleeting. Remember the incident involving the Ketchum ad agency guy who tweeted some unflattering remarks about Memphis prior to giving a presentation to employees of FedEx? That was in January. Who talks about that now?
The next day our editor was scanning the back page as the paper was running off the presses and the offending word jumped out at him. I was out at lunch, but was told he literally ran down the hall shouting, "Stop the presses!" Other reporters were sent out to intercept trucks delivering the papers. When I returned from lunch and learned what had transpired, I thought my journalism future was over at age 22.
I got suspended for a week. If I wasn't such cheap labor ($12K a year), I'm sure I would have gotten fired. But as dark as things seemed then, I learned a lesson and went on to a successful writing and editing career. I'm also occasionally asked to tell "the neo-fascist story."
"You've built up this perception of the guy without talking to him at all prior to this? Secondly, I'm one of those highly paid developers whose used as a factory so I dont have time to chit chat myself. Especially to those who've built up a perception of me through hearsay." -- CraigThere are dozens more comments, if you're interested in following the debate. And please feel free to add your own.
"Is this about the quality of work, or that he has poor personal skills (which can be worked on) , allegedly smells and doesn't respect one member of the management team (you). I suspect he is not off somewhere blogging about your hygiene. The article smacks of character assassination, if you didn't like him and got him sacked just be honest and say so." -- Paulo
"I've had to clean up code after both "good" and "bad" developers. No one writes perfect code. I may be frustrated with the code, and I may even go have a talk with the dev, but aggressiveness is not appropriate when dealing with coworkers." -- Timetheos
"If there's one thing I've learned about being a good coder, it's that the more experienced and the better you are, the more able you are to churn out SIMPLE code to solve HARD problems. Over my 20 years or so in programming, this is the one area where I've never stopped improving.
"I used to be exactly like 'Josh' in my youth but I've learned to be a lot more palatable, and so will he, after some hard lessons have been learned. The only time I brush my fellow coders off is when it's obvious they haven't consulted the appropriate documentation, and I believe this is the proper balance between spoon-feeding and pushing someone to learn for themselves." -- Mark
"I've been around plenty of Joshes, and sometimes been one. If I was guessing, I'd say that there's a fairly even split in this collection of comments between developers and management. In my experience, most of the time -- MOST of the time -- the issue is not with the developers, it's with nontechnical or insufficiently-technical management swooping in insisting on trying to 'lead' a development team.
"You. Will. Fail.
"In fact, most of you already have, but because you chased off the skilled developers, you can comfort yourself that because 'they' wouldn't fit into your idea of how to manage a development project, 'they' were wrong. You then hire droids to replace them and wonder why the project goes over budget and over deadline." -- Turtle
"'Josh' probably wasn't all that good of a programmer. I've seen this many times. He writes crappy code that no one else can understand then believes no one can understand it because it's so brilliant. His managers think he's the greatest because he can get things done fast. He gets it done fast because he's doing everything quick and dirty with no regard to maintainability." -- Patrick
Cisco's device, dubbed Project California, takes servers into new territory by cramming computer power into the very box that contains storage capacity and the networking tools that are Cisco's specialty. Demands on data centers are rising as jobs move from PC software to the Internet and customers are looking for more efficient ways to build those data centers. Today companies must cobble together thousands of discrete servers, storage banks, and networking products -- a time-consuming, complex arrangement that often leaves a lot of capacity unused and sends power consumption through the roof.
Cisco's approach could help companies use fewer machines -- saving money not only on hardware, but also on power and IT staffing. Cutting costs is paramount as the demand slump compels companies to slice budgets. San Jose (Calif.)-based Cisco is due to unveil details of the new devices on March 16.
That, of course, is today. We'll post an update after Cisco CEO John Chambers announces more details. We tried to talk him into making the announcement in a guest post on this blog, but he seemed oddly reticent. CEOs can be weird.
Beyond the implications for the enterprise, Cisco's new box threatens to "disrupt the very structure of a corporate computing market in which Cisco has traditionally acted as a partner rather than competitor to the big server makers," BusinessWeek reports.
For decades there was more than enough room for growth within separate gargantuan niches, letting Cisco focus on the switches and routers that direct network traffic while other manufacturers concentrated on the computers that process and store users' requests. But with the economy in shambles and growth not likely to return for years, tech titans have increasingly been eyeing each other's territory. Project California is a clear sign that Cisco is invading in a big way.
That's a good thing, and here's why: Paradigm shifts force businesses to reconsider how they're doing things. Inevitably, that means reassessing customer needs and striving to meet them. If they fail to, the alternative (in this case) is a one-way ticket to the well-populated tech-company graveyard.
Cisco's new box clearly represents "out of the box" thinking. And that's what tough times call for. If it forces companies like HP and others to revamp their business strategies and respond effectively, the customers will benefit.
Hmm. Now that I think about it, that really is sexy.
Cisco today unveiled its long-awaited push for a greater role in the enterprise datacenter, with a major new product initiative called the Unified Computing System aimed at unifying network, storage, server and virtualization capabilities into one system.At the heart of the Unified Computing System is Cisco's new UCS B-Series blades, based on the Intel Nehalem processor family. The new Cisco blades mark the evolution of Cisco's networking convergence efforts and seek to bring Cisco into broader competition against blade vendors like HP, IBM and Dell.
While Cisco's long been relegated to handling datacenter networking, the efforts aim to rev up its ability to win more of the business traditionally dominated by HP, IBM and Dell -- and to cash in on what it sees as an evolution in datacenter architecture.
"Today is an important day for us," Cisco CEO John Chambers said during the company's launch event. "We're really talking about the future of the datacenter and how this will change the datacenter forever."
Chambers had a slew of high-level executives on hand today -- either appearing alongside Chambers or being conferenced in remotely -- to tout the launch, including EMC CEO Joe Tucci, Intel CEO Paul Otellini, VMware CEO Paul Maritz and Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft's server and tools business. Their purpose aimed to highlight the broad open ecosystem of partners that Cisco is bringing in on the UCS platform.
Other vendors involved with Cisco on the UCS effort include Accenture, BMC, Red Hat, Novell, Oracle, and SAP.
And how is Cisco's new blade server and datacenter strategy playing in Analystville? Let's take a look.
From Computerworld:
"It's both a risk and an opportunity," said Jason Ader of William Blair & Co. "There will be a battle over who controls the customer accounts." The problem is that HP and IBM have been partners on data center projects with Cisco in the past, offering their servers with Cisco switches. Ader said Cisco will also need to adjust to seeing a tremendous drop in the gross profit margin it makes on switches with the new UCS.
From eWEEK:
The biggest takeaway from all of this is that Cisco is finally in the server business, Forrester Research data center and virtualization analyst James Staten told eWEEK.
"It's definitely a shot across the bow for HP, and John (Chambers) was explicit to say that, which I was glad to hear," Staten said. "The best thing about this is, that he's doing this not just to do it; he's doing it because there is an infraction point in the market, driven by 10GB Ethernet. And he's leveraging it well.
"The tough part here is that the server buyer has no relationship with Cisco. And they don't know why they need one. So it's definitely a CIO [high-level] sale, and CIO sales can be very tough."
From IT PRO:
Philip Dawson, analyst at Gartner, said he believed that the move was firmly targeted against HP, which was trying to make moves into networking with its ProCurve business.
He said: "In the current climate, it's interesting how Cisco have entered the market. It will allow them to kick the tyres [of its competition] a little bit, and try and get successful.
"When it gets a foundation and the market hopefully recovers, that allows it to have done the donkey work and take advantage."
From Dow Jones Newswires:
"This is the most significant, riskiest move Cisco has made in recent memory," said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. "This product release moves Cisco into the
$40 billion server market. Even a small percentage of this market moves the revenue needle for Cisco, so the upside is obvious."
Finally, from the Wall Street Journal, quotes from two chief executives who obviously read our blog post this morning, but (unlike us) are stingy with the attribution:
"It's going to change the game," said EMC's Tucci.
"John, you've changed the game," added Bob Beauchamp, CEO of software company BMC.
No matter what your political persuasion, if you're an IT professional you have to feel good about President Obama appointing the first federal chief information officer.Today, not so much. As most of you probably have read, the FBI Thursday morning raided the former offices of new federal CIO Vivek Kundra, who recently left his post as chief technology officer for the District of Columbia. The action was part of an investigation into bribery charges and resulted in the arrests of the district's IT security chief and the chief executive of an outside contractor.
The down side? Any low-cost laptop you buy will probably be missing something. It might be underpowered, fall short on RAM, lack hard drive space, and/or come without a CD/DVD drive. And it's almost certainly missing key security features.My favorite choices in the Harvey list are Firefox, the VLC Media Player, OpenOffice.org, Zimbra, and the GIMP photo editing tool. I'd probably love the Ubuntu operating system if I ever got off the sideline and installed it. Check out her comprehensive article here.
The solution? Open-source software. In many cases, manufacturers of these lower cost notebooks are already relying on open-source technology as a means to lower the price.
Compared to its commercial counterparts, open-source software generally requires fewer resources and provides greater security. By going with open source on your laptop, you probably won't feel the effects of a slower processor and less memory, and you'll be less likely to be victimized by hackers.
Some may argue that the availability of Web apps and cloud computing means that you don't need software on your laptop at all. However, if you ever want to use your laptop when an Internet connection isn't available (and after all, the point of a laptop is that you can use it anywhere), you really need installed software.
With all the interest around e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle and its new Apple iPhone app, it's no wonder that Research in Motion's ubiquitous BlackBerry also is getting some attention, with the launch of the eReader Pro for the device.
The free application, from Fictionwise's eReader.com, works across a slew of models of the BlackBerry.
For Fictionwise and eReader.com, the news marks the latest sign of booming interest in e-books. Last week, in an effort to better capitalize on the trend, book retail giant Barnes & Noble acquired Fictonwise and said it plans to use the company as part of its overall digital strategy, which includes the launch of an e-book store later this year.
I'm being slightly facetious in that I don't expect to be doing a lot of heavy reading on my BlackBerry; the screen, after all, is only 2 1/2 inches in diameter, compared to the Kindle's comparatively roomy 6 inches. I don't even find browsing the web on my BlackBerry to be particularly enjoyable, since most web sites still don't show well on the small screens of smartphones.
But in the interests of actually knowing what I'm talking about, I downloaded the eReader software onto my BlackBerry (as well as onto my laptop, for comparative reasons). After a little bit of hassle setting up my account (large screens always are better than small screens for scanning instructions), I was ready to go. I decided to download from eReader's menu of 25 free ebooks The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss, which won out over, among others, The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward--A New Approach (I'm weird that way). I downloaded the ebook on both my BlackBerry and laptop.
The eReader has some cool features. Among them, you can change the font settings and bookmark where you leave off if you're not finished. (Of course, the other great feature is that it's free, compared to the $359 you have to shell out for a Kindle.)
As to the reading experience itself, on the laptop, it's absolutely great. The text is set against a parchment background, and the font and type size make reading a pleasure.
On the BlackBerry, it's serviceable: Plain text against a white background. Also, you can see maybe one-fourth as many words on the BlackBerry screen as you can on the laptop. The novel has 3,617 pages (or screens) on the BlackBerry, nearly three times the number of pages on the laptop.
And while I don't imagine myself plowing through the entire book on my BlackBerry, eReader does add a nice new feature to a device I already have a hard time putting down. Just what I need.
Is it too early to begin planning for the economic recovery? HP doesn't think so.
Instead, it's making a case for enterprises to ramp up their spending on hardware.
Sound crazy? Not to Hewlett-Packard, which says that companies need to be ready because it's during upheavals that the stars realign, old industry leaders fall from grace and new ones ascend to prominence. As a result, they'll need new hardware to better position themselves as the economy recovers.
That's the pitch as HP launches new products and services it says can pay off for companies as soon as the market rights itself.
Tough times call for creative marketing approaches.
You can take many Apple rumors with a grain of salt, but this one may have legs. According to a DigiTimes report, Taiwan-based Quanta Computer will build a new netbook computer for Apple. Quanta manufactures laptops for most of the top consumer electronics vendors, so its involvement in an Apple netbook project wouldn't come as a surprise.
DigiTimes, which cites a story in the Chinese-language Commercial Times, says Taiwan-based Wintek will supply touch panels for long-rumored Apple netbook, and that panel shipments will likely start in the second half of 2009.
Here's Wei Yi Lim of Dow Jones Newswire:
And Nick Farrell of The Inquirer:
Apple Inc. is planning to launch a netbook computer with a touch screen monitor as early as the second half of this year, two people close to the situation told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday. The mini laptop computers will likely have monitor screens that are between 9.7-inches and 10-inches, one person, who declined to be named, said.
Another person said other specifications and functions are still under evaluation.
After famously saying that Apple could not make a $500 netbook that was not a piece of junk, Jobs' Mob is about to make one.These writers and many others seem pretty sure it's a done deal. But not everyone is convinced. Here's David Coursey, writing in PC World:That is not to say that it will cost less than $500, it is just that it seems Apple has finally woken up to the fact that in the middle of a recession no one wants to spend more than they have to on a bit of computer gear, no matter how nice it looks.
There has been much speculation about a supposed new Apple netbook computer, and the rumors have once again re-emerged. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but the current MacBook Air would seem to fit most definitions of netbook, except for one. Why does Apple need another?
Apple may be--probably is--working on something, but it probably won't be a real netbook anymore than my iPhone is a full-fledged computer.
Meanwhile, Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica takes a more balanced view, before concluding:
There are many reasons for Apple to release a netbook-like device, and reasons for it not to. Even though the company continues to beat the drum against sub-$500 devices, however, it's clear that Apple is at least entertaining ideas in this space. We're just not convinced any Apple netbook prototypes will ever emerge from Cupertino.
Now it's my turn to speculate. No doubt, Apple entering the sub-$500 market would represent a sea change in the company's philosophy. But the global economy is undergoing a painful transformation, and companies that survive do so by adapting to changing market conditions. Coursey says there's only one way the MacBook Air doesn't fit the definition of a netbook. I'm assuming he means the $1,800 price tag, which pretty much excludes the ultraportable from the netbook category.
Still, it seems that many media folks are placing an awful lot of stock in the original stories reported by Commercial Times and DigiTimes. Dow Jones went a little further and got two people to confirm off the record, but even then, one of the sources said specs and functions still are to be determined. Which, to me, means whether the device fits the definition of a netbook still is to be determined.
Of course, Apple could end the speculation today by announcing (or denouncing) the netbook rumor. Don't hold your breath, though; part of Apple's marketing strategy always has been to stoke the rumor mill to build buzz. And you can't say it hasn't been effective.
My meaningless prediction: Apple will unveil a netbook-like machine priced in the $600-$800 range. In other words, a netbook-plus. Or a MacBook McAir, if you will.
I shouldn't talk about specific acquisitions. We're unlikely to buy anything in the short term partly because I think prices are still high.Of course, there has been plenty of speculation that Google indeed plans to make a buyout offer to Twitter. And MarketingPilgrim's Andy Beal is certain that Schmidt's non-denial denial means exactly that:
[T]here are plenty of good reasons for Google to acquire Twitter -- the top reason is Google's ability to place AdSense ads in your Twitter stream -- but there's an even bigger reason why Google should, nay must, acquire Twitter.Twitter is becoming an important communications channel -- intrinsic to the web. Aside from the being able to pick up the company for a fraction of the $15 billion Google has in cash, Twitter is a key component of the search engines' ambitious goal: to organize the world's information.
Don't believe Google's sleight-of-hand talk about the timing not being right. The timing is perfect! While other companies pull back on spending -- causing Twitter's valuation to drop due to lack of interest -- Google can fly in under the radar and pick up perhaps the most important internet start-up since Facebook.
Count me as hoping that doesn't happen. Look, I'm a big Google user, like most of us. It's a fantastic search engine. But I have no desire to see Google dominate the Internet in the same way that Microsoft dominated the computer industry for far too long. But it seems as if we're headed that way.
Since 2001, Google has made more than 50 acquisitions (here's a list). Most of been relatively small companies, but not all. Among the major ones:
In addition, Google has purchased Jaiku, a Finnish microblogging site that is supposed to be a competitor to Twitter. You'd think Google would try to ramp up Jaiku to compete with Twitter, but the truth is, Twitter is approaching (or has hit) critical mass, so it may be too late for that.
What makes Twitter a threat to Google -- and therefore a potential takeover target -- is its emerging real-time search capability, something even the mighty Google does not have. Unfortunately, what Twitter doesn't have -- yet -- is a viable business plan. Plugging into Google's AdSense program might solve that problem.
The thing is, most Twitter users like the service just the way it is. Injecting ads into the tweetstream may not play so well, and could prompt an exodus to an emerging competitor.
My main concern, however, has to do with the growing Google Goliath. I don't think it's healthy for one company in any industry to amass so much control. And when we're talking about the "world's information"...well, for me, alarm bells go off.
Silicon Valley startup Roku announced it is teaming up with e-commerce giant Amazon.com to allow owners of its digital video player to rent or buy movies and TV shows from Amazon. The 40,000 on-demand videos from Amazon are in addition to the 12,000 videos from Netflix that Roku video player owners could already choose from.Check out Troy's full story here. It's a space worth, uh, watching.
Valley startup ZillionTV unveiled a service and device that it will introduce later this year. The company, which is backed by five of the six biggest Hollywood studios, plans to offer a free set-top box, to be distributed by Internet service providers, through which consumers will be able to watch about 15,000 videos on-demand.
Time Warner revealed a plan dubbed "TV Anywhere" that would allow cable and satellite TV subscribers to watch on computers or other Internet-connected devices all of the programming they get on their televisions.
The White House has named Vivek Kundra to fill the position of chief information officer -- the first time such a position has existed under a presidential administration.
As federal chief information officer, Kundra, currently chief technology officer for Washington, D.C.'s city government, will be responsible for managing the government's entire technology portfolio and budget, and for overseeing its enterprise architecture. ...
Kundra will work with the as-yet-to-be-named federal chief technology officer to advance the administration's overall technology agenda -- portions of which, particularly when it comes to improving government communication and services online -- sync with his work as District CTO.
Adrian M. Fenty, D.C.'s mayor, named Kundra as the city's CTO in March 2007. There, he oversaw more than 600 employees, and provided technology services to its agencies and citizens.
Not only is this an important milestone for IT professionals, it's an acknowledgment of the critical role effective information technology must play in helping to run an enterprise as vast as the federal government. And while IT pros would be the first to tell you that technology in and of itself is no panacea, modern organizations simply cannot flourish, or even survive, without it.
According to this New York Times blog post, Kundra's experience as D.C.'s CTO bodes well:
In just 19 months with the District, Mr. Kundra has moved to post city contracts on YouTube and to make Twitter use common in his office and others. He hopes to allow drivers to pay parking tickets or renew their driver's licenses on Facebook.
A contest he launched in October -- "Apps for Democracy" -- brought 47 entries from residents offering applications to give District residents Web and cellphone access to crime reports, pothole-repair schedules and other city data, The Post reported.
Mr. Kundra, who likes to refer to citizens as "co-creators," estimates he spent $50,000 for contest costs and prize money; he hopes to save $2.6 million over what it would have cost to hire contract developers.
And Computerworld reports that "Kundra wants to use technology such as cloud computing to attack the government's culture of big-contract boondoggles and its hiring of contractors who end up 'on the payroll indefinitely.'"
We have enough challenges ahead without mediocre and inefficient government computer networks. Here's hoping Kundra has what it takes to make the federal IT operation -- and, by extension, the government -- well-run and efficient.
In an interview with CNET News, Dart said that the kind of sex services being advertised on Craigslist frequently involves minors as well as people forced into prostitution against their will. The federal lawsuit filed by Dart's office claims that Craigslist's erotic section is a powerful marketing tool for pimps and prostitutes and makes it easier for criminals to elude police.In this current economic climate, people are trying to cope in lots of different ways. My friend is a therapist. Her business has recently exploded. It makes sense that the stress and the growing unemployment rate would lead to an uptick in the world's oldest profession, or at least in legal, beyond repute romantic hook-ups. Let's just hope Craigslist can find a way to weed out those breaking the law.
"This (lawsuit) was my act of last resort," Dart said. "We're seeing some outrageous stuff here that we hadn't seen before. Our people on the street have seen the volume increase. It's become much more complicated for us. We can debate the whole 'Pretty Woman' thing. If a woman decides that this is a viable choice for employment, but that isn't the ones we're focused on."
He detailed how women were performing sex acts while their children were unattended in the next room. Dart described the many juveniles arrested when police followed up on suspicious Craigslist ads.
... A Craigslist spokeswoman said Thursday that criminal acts are rare at the site compared with the overwhelming amount of legal activity. She added that Craigslist helps law enforcement track down criminals every day.
Failing to do what you say you will do. Allgeier calls this the No. 1 way to ruin your personal credibility. And while she notes that we all do this from time to time, if you make a habit of it, you will be perceived as someone others can't count on. It's not just big things, either, like web redesigns or server upgrades. It's not calling people when you say you will, not fixing a co-worker's laptop when you promised, etc. The little things can add up to a big (and unflattering) picture.Those are some of Allgeier's personal credibility busters. Now here are some of mine:
Breaking appointments (or frequently rescheduling them). This sends several messages: 1) I'm disorganized, 2) I'm unreliable and 3) You're unimportant.
Bringing too much "personal life" into your workday. Chatting on the phone with friends, spouses and children, excessive personal emails and IMs, talking incessantly to co-workers about your life and problems...equals a person not focusing on the job.
Putting others down to pull yourself up. This is a common one, and almost all of us fall into this trap now and again, especially if a co-worker got a raise or promotion that we thought we had earned. Remember, the only people who like complainers are other complainers, and even they eventually get sick of it (your complaining, not their own). It's also a dangerous practice; trashing someone in an office almost always gets back to them.
Putting yourself down rather than learning from mistakes. Organizations are leery of people who engage in self-deprecation. Why? Because they don't have confidence that you'll be able to step up when needed. A "can-do" attitude is inspiring and motivating -- more so than ever in tough economic times.
Making too many excuses -- even if they're legit. People quickly lose patience with excuse-makers, and the excuse-makers quickly lose credibility.
Being a rigid rule enforcer rather than a flexible problem solver. (Think Dwight on The Office.) Rules and policies are fine, even essential -- until they get in the way of solving a serious problem. Then they become obstacles.
Losing the balance between accomplishing tasks and maintaining constructive relationships. This is a big problem in the IT world from what I've witnessed over many years. "I promised the CEO the site would be ready by Monday, and you're going to have to make that happen, no matter what." It would have been nice if you first checked to see if that were possible. This kind of "get it done now under any circumstances" attitude makes you seem unreasonable and drives good people out the door.
MulletsFeel free to add your own "credibility busters."
T-shirts with obscenities on them
Speaking "Klingon"
WoW fanaticism
Ditto Second Life
Constantly doing "cartoon voices"
Excessive bathroom runs
Late for all staff meetings
Texting during meetings
A new variant of the Koobface worm (has) widened its attack to include MySpace, Bebo, Friendster and MyYearbook, according to Jamz Yaneza, threat research manager at antivirus vendor Trend Micro.No big problem if that's as far as it goes, for as Yaneza explains, the social networking browser cookies on users' computers are encrypted. But "Koobface sends these cookies to a hacker-controlled Web site, where they try to decrypt the cookies," Adhikari writes.The new variant, which Trend Micro calls Worm_Koobface.AZ, proliferates via e-mail to potential victims on social networking sites. The virus steals cookies from victims' Web browsers, giving them access to users' preferences, and, in some cases, passwords, Yaneza told InternetNews.com.
"[T]he worm can masquerade as the user, then send links to the user's friends that will take them to sites containing malware."Not sure if this means the hackers are becoming more clever or just lazy, but:
The approach takes hackers beyond the need to design Facebook applications that target victims, as they did recently in the "Error Check System" attack, Yaneza said. While such apps can spread quickly by disguising themselves as communications from friends, social networking sites can disable and block them with relative ease.None of the socnet sites being targeted are reporting any problems with the Koobface variant so far (of course, would they really want to report that unless they had no choice?). Good thing, too, because it is a bear to get rid of:
The worm, which Trend Micro said runs on Microsoft Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and Windows Server 2003, digs in by launching a rootkit attack, moving deep into the operating system of the victim's computer and resisting attempts to remove it, according to Roger Thompson of anti-virus vendor AVG."If it's hiding in a particular directory and an antivirus application browses that directory, it removes itself from the list of files returned to the antivirus software," he said.
If you're a socnet member, here's what to be on the lookout for in your email:
Messages urging you to get the new Adobe.
Links to a video seemingly sent by a socnet friend (details from TrendMicro here) with messages such as "You look just awesome in this new movie."
Trend Micro reports that Koobface looks for cookies from the following socnet sites:
The much-hyped market for online data storage appears to be winnowing, and a few high-profile names are among the casualties.Shread interviewed Taneja Group analyst Jeff Boles, a man after my own heart when it comes to actually using these services, on the consumer level.
HP and Yahoo have notified users that they will be shutting down their online data backup services at the end of the month, following the closure of AOL's XDrive service in January.
Yahoo's free Briefcase service was bypassed by users who preferred the greater storage capacity of its e-mail and Flickr offerings, while the XDrive Web site now directs users to offerings from Box.net and ElephantDrive.
HP's Upline service got off to a rocky start last year, suffering an outage soon after it launched in a blow for one of the cloud storage market's higher-profile entries. HP is no longer backing up customer files, but will allow customers to access files through the restore feature through the end of the month.
And all this before Google's long-awaited GDrive service even arrives.
The worldwide PC industry will experience its sharpest shipment decline in history this year as the global economy continues to deteriorate, said technology research group Gartner Inc. on Monday.To repeat and put in perspective, the steepest decline in PC shipments until now was 3.2 percent back in 2001, the first year after the Internet bubble exploded and the economy tumbled into a recession. Remember all the web sites that sprouted up back then detailing the disintegration of the tech industry via insider accounts and rumors about executive firings, layoffs, bankruptcy and legal proceedings? This year's slump is predicted by Gartner to be nearly four times worse.
PC shipments are expected to decline 11.9 percent to 257 million units in 2009. Until now, the worst decline in PC shipments was in 2001, the height of the tech-bust-fueled recession. That year, unit shipments contracted 3.2 percent, according to Gartner.The forecast Monday was largely expected, as technology heavyweights like Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp. had issued lackluster earnings and forecasts.
