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Should corporate blog deserve the journalism treatment?
The Diva Marketing Blog is upset with Jupiter Research.
In its quest for the truth, blog took a good look at a recent study from the analyst firm in which it predicted that 70 per cent of all site operators will have implemented blogs by the end of 2006.
The figure seems steep, the blog noted. But instead of blindly tearing the study apart, the blog decided to contact Jupiter Research and ask for additional details and a copy of the study. That's where things went wrong.
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In Jupiter's defence, the firm tends to work with survey data. The 70
per cent prediction likely is based on companies telling the research
firm about their blogging plans. The Diva Marketing Blog counters the
Jupiter data by pointing to the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki, which indicates that only 5.8 per cent of the Fortune 500 companies currently have a blog. The wiki howeer doesn't however show the number of internal blogs that aren't accessible to the general public.
The Diva Marketing Blog saw its request for additional information denied because the blog is written by a firm that offers commercial blog consulting services. That's enough to grow Jupiter's suspicion: the firm has an interest in reading the report so they can better inform their clients. By claming to be a blog/journalist they try to obtain a free copy of the report that otherwise would cost them thousands of dollars.
The firm actually is say that its willing to work with blogs just as it works with journalist, but that it verifies the blog's background and independence. In that, it treats bloggers the same as it treats journalists.
The Diva Marketing Blog is quick to cry foul, but Jupiter's decisions makes perfect business sense. It's like Toyota operates a car blog and asks Ford to testdrive its latest car for a review.
The analyst firm however could have been more proactive and address some of the fundamental questions that the blog raised about the research methodology without disclosing data from the study.
Tags: jupiter research, blogging, blog, weblog
Security giants discover blogs
Symantec has joined the blogging movement and launched its own blog. Postings on the blog date back to date May, but the official launch posting was put up only on Monday.
McAfee only weeks ago launched its Avert Labs Blog.
Both sites add some much needed credibility to the online security
blogging landscape that is currently dominated by 2nd tier
organisations like F-Secure and the SANS Internet Storm Center.
Large corporations however have proven that it's hard to truly embrace blogging if there are multiple layers between the rank and file employees and upper management. So it remains to be seen if these blogs can independently report about news that involves their clients or their products.
Red Hat's patent shield put to the test
Red Hat has been slapped with a patent lawsuit for an alleged infringement of a Firestar Software patent in one of the JBoss open source applications.
After a year of talking about putting up patent shields, the time has come to put them to the test. But most cynics will argue that the defence mechanisms will do little to avert disaster.
The OSDL's Patent Commons project is purely informational. It won't deter any patent claims.
Patent pledges from IBM, Novell, Sun Microsystems, Nokia and others are about as comforting as the Sweden promising not to invade Canada. They come with the best intentions, but from the wrong people.
They certainly won't help Red Hat in its fight against Firestar Software.
While there's been a lot of talk about protecting open source applications from patent claims, very little has been done. It's starting to look like the technology industry mostly interested in comforting their customers and taking away their concerns in an effort to secure their revenues.
The large patent holders and filers meanwhile have too much to loose from the current system to warrant any real changes.
Photo credit: Ken Duncan
Password reset for your gun
A German inventor claims to have come up with a way to fight gun accidents and thefts: password protection.
The feature would prevent the device from firing if it doesn’t use a cartridge that has a matching password embedded. The cartridge could lock up after a preset amount of time or each time it's reloaded. The embedding would take place in the gun store.
Given the trouble that most users have in remembering their computer passwords, gun passwords should make for comical if not deadly situations.
The system furthermore is unlikely to make a difference. Many guns that today are used in crimes in the US have been obtained on the black market (including the back door of the gun shop). If an untraceable gun can be purchased that easily, a password protection system won't last long either.
Photo: Jesper Noer
Unknown iPod update delayed?
The next generation iPod has been delayed, claimed a financial analyst with American Technology Research. His report caused a 2.5 per cent fall in Apple's stock price.
The analyst claimed that a next generation wide screen video iPod player was scheduled to be released this fall, but its launched has been delayed until the first half of 2007. The next iPod Nano won't end up in store until December instead of the earlier predicted release date in September.
Delay is relative, since Apple hasn't even officially announced the products.
But there are two important factors to keep in mind: Apple sells the majority of its iPods during the holiday shopping season. Secondly, the company expects consumers to buy a new iPod about every 18 months, so it would have to release new models at an equal rate.
The iPod Nano was launched in September and the video iPod in October.
Neither one of the models would suffer from a delay when it comes to the 18-month refresh cycle, although Apple couldn’t afford to miss out on the Christmas shopping.
The smoke clears on the Linux battlefield
A week after Novell ousted its chief executive, Red Hat reported earning that exceeded analyst expectations.
The Linux vendor reported sales of $84m and net income of $13.8. Revenues from subscriptions (read: support contracts) increased by 45 per cent year-over-year.
The summary: Red Hat is firing on all cylinders. It's business model is working and customers are saying that the services are worth paying for – even if anyone can download the software free of charge. (Disclaimer: you'd have to manually compile the official Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but Fedora is available for free).
Novell meanwhile is faced with declining earnings as its legacy Netware software is becoming ever more legacy. It's Linux business meanwhile is failing to attract the same level of attention and developer excitement that Red Hat is getting.
Netware might be bringing in the cash, but its increasingly looking like a distraction. Why not sell it to Computer Associates – company that is known for milking outdated software products - and use the money to become a truly open source company?
Photo: adam stevens
Web2.0 enterprise database goes live
Touted at the first Web2.0 application for enterprises, DabbleDB has launched and received its first round of venture capital funding.
DabbleDB makes creating and maintaining a database child's play, as the online demonstration will show you. In summary, it lets users import, sort and manipulate data and share it over the web.
But while covering themselves with a Web2.0 sauce, the company's founders are making a capital mistake by charging a fee. At their current stage, it's key to get as many people as possible to play with the application and create some kind of viral buzz.
Charging between $120 and $1800 per year ensures that few people will bother looking at the product.
It's a small effort to drop the fees for the 'individual' service while still charging users who seek more advanced features such as multiple user accounts and encryption.
You can't get to Web2.0 by acting like an old economy company.
Sweatshop owner says Apple knew and approved
The Chinese original equipment manufacturer Foxconn that makes the iPod media players for Apple has admitted that it has broken Chinese labour laws by requiring its employees to work about 80 hours extra each month.
China caps off the maximum amount of overtime at a slightly less inhumane 36 hours per month.
Adding insult to injury, the company went on to pound its chest over the fact that it had actually paid its employees the legal minimum wage for the overtime – apparently it felt that was quite a generous thing to do.
And for those who still want to complain thereafter, Foxconn countered that Apple knew and approved of this all.
If Steve Jobs approved, that must makes everything all right. Any other complaints?
Microsoft launches SourceForge competitor
Microsoft has unveiled an open source developer website.
The Codeplex website lets developers "create new projects to share with your fellow developers around the world, join others who have already started their own projects, or use the applications on this site and provide feedback."
There's no Microsoft logo to be seen on the site, except for the copyright and legal disclaimers in the bottom of the page. The company must realise that its logo doesn't sit very well within the open source community.
The website looks like a desperate attempt to get in touch with the open source community rather than an attempt to solve any real world problems. Sadly enough, Codeplex looks very much like a clone of the SourceForge project.
That just makes it a typical Microsoft product: rip off somebody else's idea and claim it as your own. Because why join a large community if you can try and stimulate confusion by creating your own?
Tags: microsoft, sourceforge, Codeplex, open source, developer
Microsoft ventures into unified communications (video)
Microsoft is looking to kill the telephone with its forthcoming unified communications products.
Unified communications seeks to tear down the walls between communications devices and services. The idea is that communications will come to the user rather than the user having to manage mobile, landline, email and instant messaging communications separately. Just to give you an idea of what such a world could look like, you can watch the video below.
Tags: Microsoft, unified communications
Microsoft touts roundtable communications (video)
Microsoft at a company event in San Francisco unveiled its Roundtable communications device. Slated for release in the second quarter of next year, its features a 360-degree camera that transmits images of all the meeting participants and will zoom in the person who's speaking.
Te demo is a failed attempt to humor the audience, but For all the fans of "The Office" (the US version), the demo features Rainn Wilson who plays Dwight Schrute on the series.
7 rules to make for great software
Susan Kuchinskas over at The 360 is complaining that advanced blogging tool require a PhD in computer science. As a mainstream users she able nor willing to get into that much detail.
"I want to create content and share it, I don’t want to fool with software," Kuchinskas summarizes her craving for user friendliness.
Kuchinskas' gripes summarize why so many great technologies struggle to leave the realm of technology enthusiasts. It's easy to make a cool gadget and sell 60,000 units. It really tough to go beyond that.
Ray Lane, the former number two at Oracle and now a partner with the A-list venture capital investor Kleiner Perkins apparently has seven rules for a potentially successful software start-up.
While the rules are supposed to apply to enterprise software, they appear more relevant in the consumer segment. Essentially, software should have its users do all the marketing (hype word alert: viral marketing) and must be easy to use.
But did we need a venture capital investment firm to come up with that?
Tags: software, venture capital, viral marketing
Blog watching: Hitler cats
Who said that blogs were useless?
If it weren't for this Hitler cats blog, we might never have been able to unraffle the evil plot within the feline society to take over the world...
If we would assume, just for the sake of argument, that there is any link between the mass murderer and cats, nature played a cruel joke on Hitler. He was after all was very much a dog person.
Via: Ongoing
Phisher gets to work on his 'dropping the soap' joke book
Jayson Harris, a 23-year-old from Davenport, Iowa, will get to spend time away form a computer for at least 21 months, and probably another 3 years thereafter as well.
Harris has becolme the first catch for Microsoft's anti-phishing efforts, attorney Aaron Kornblum wrote on a corporate blog. The phisher gets to spend 21 months in jail, has to pay over $57,000 in restitution and following his jail term is subject to three years of supervised release – which typically means that he can't come near a computer as well as imposing other restrictons.
All that for running a phoney MSN billing website that in reality was set up to steal personal information.
The $57,000 is labelled as a restitution payment to Harris' victims, indicating that running a phishing website can fairly lucrative, but that you shouldn't order that Ferrari just yet.
Beat Microsoft's WGA at its own game
If you feel that Windows XP has no right to periodically contact Microsoft to perform an anti-piracy check, programmer Guilaume Kaddouch has the tool for you.
His RemoveWGA blocks Windows XP from contacting Redmond on the premise that one anti piracy check is enough.
The period check-ins are a genuine privacy concern and could cause issues for enterprises.
But most users will download it to shut up the piracy warning messages that pirated copies of Windows XP are sending to users.
There is no excuse for running pirated software. If you desire a free operating system, get Linux. If you don’t believe that Office is worth any of your money, give OpenOffice a try.
Novell reshuffles executives
Novell has ousted its chief executive officer Jack Messman and appointed Ron Hovsepian as his replacement.
Having spoken with Messman on a few occasions, he never came across as a true open source believer. He had the vision to acquire the SuSE Linux distribution, but realized that getting open source revenues would be a challenge. Instead of buying open source software, enterprises use them primarily as leverage to negotiate rebates from traditional closed source vendors.
Novell was invited to bid on projects, he argued, was merely being used to lower prices. The software never had a real shot at making it. Messman was fine with that, as long as those buyers would give him some "compensation business" in return.
It might make sense as a business strategy, but undermines Novell's credibility as an open source vendor.
It wasn't the lack of vision by the way that got Messman fired. The board decided that the company simply didn't perform as well as it could and should. Investors don't really care about open source, they're just in it for the money.
Jack Messman at Linuxworld Boston 2005
Tags: novell, open source, linux, jack messman, ron hovsepian
Cisco's enterprise wireless push
Why should having a wireless network make life any more complicated for administators than having a wired one? Cisco is betting that a few years from now, this will be a silly question.
The company today unveiled its new Cat3650g, which promised network administrators a single solution to manage both wired and wireless networks, and in the mean time offers some new wireless features such as temporary user accounts for guests, location based services and better security.
We sat down with Ben Gibson, Cisco's director of wireless and mobility marketing to discuss how the company sees the new device increase the use of wireless networks inside corporations.
This interview is available as a mp3 download here or you can use the embeded player below (21 minutes audio - download size: 19.4Mb).
The Cat3650g - it looks as pretty in real as it does on you screen
Tags: cisco, networkers 2006
Cisco eyes video conferencing market
Cisco is betting that there is a multi billion market for a beefed up version of video conferencing, the company's chief executive John Chambers said in his opening keynote at the Networkers 2006 tradeshow today in Las Vegas.
When Chambers met with reporters later that day, we made sure to ask him what's up with this telepresence. You can watch his response in the video below.
Tags: cisco, networkers 2006, john chambers
John Chambers shows a futuristic network vision (Networkers Video)
Cisco as a standard element in its John Chambers keynote presentations tends to present a future scenario of where unified networks can take the world, and the opening keynote today at Networkers 2006 in Las Vegas was no exception.
Watch the video below to see how Cisco sees the future of entertainment and sports broadcasting.
Tags: cisco, networkers 2006, john chambers
Chambers beats network convergence drum
Cisco chief executive John Chambers in his opening keynote at the Networkers 2006 show in Las Vegas gave his usual speech about networks and architectures converging.
But don't mistake Chambers beating his networking drum for a dull Gates-like keynote. His talks generally are insightful and offer something new.
Chambers predicted that networking loads will get on the Moore's Law curve, doubling every 18 months. For the networking industry this means that they will have to respond to that trend in their products if they hope to grow revenues rather than get caught in Moore's trend.
He also touted online presense as the main new area of investment for his company, with 'telepressense' likely to become an "advanced technology" later this year. Cisco uses the AT label for technologies where it can be a market leader and where revenues will exceed $1bn.
Crowd surfing
Tags: cisco, networkers 2006, john chambers
Microsoft dismisses 70 per cent bug increase as 'insignificant'
The number of critical vulnerabilities that Microsoft has fixed so far this year is up 70 per cent since last year.
But apparently there's no reason for concern yet, the company responded when we asked if it has an explanation. A five month period falls within what Microsoft considers statistical insignificance.
Having more critical bugs fixed of course is a good thing.
But it isn't if you play the numbers game: a set percentage of software vulnerabilities is bound to hand up in the hands of criminals and government spy agencies who will use them to steal all kinds of confidential information.
If more bugs fixed equals more bugs exploited, the world is getting ever less safe.
Is Microsoft ready for the truth in the post Scoble era?
Microsoft blogger Philip Su is testing Microsoft's ability to face criticism from within in a big way.
The developer in a blog posting last week explained how Microsoft's culture forced developers to agree to unreasonable deadlines while an army of vice presidents fussed over minor features, leading to the embarrasing delays in Windows Vista's launch.
"Windows can be a scary place to tell the truth," Su summarized the disaster that is called Windows Vista development.
You can argue about the details and to what extent Su's work provides him with enough insight to judge Microsoft's overal development culture, but one statistic pretty much says it all. A rough calculation indicates that Windows Vista developers on average churn out 1,000 lines of code per year. The average for commercial developers in the US is 6,000.
In addition to the headache of dealing with employees who openly question the company's management style, this also tests the Microsoft's willingness to tolerate and foster such dissent in the post-Robert Scoble era.
Surely the upper echelons – who's ignorance is so ruthlessly exposed in the blog posting – aren't happy with Su's actions. The real question: is Microsoft genuinely ready to face the truth face first?
Nokia and Siemens in shotgun telco marriage
Nokia and Siemens have formed a new joint venture called Nokia Siemens Networks for their telecommunications equipment business.
The deal has "market consolidation" written all over it.
Business strategists will tell you that there are two types of joint ventures: growth opportunity driven ones and defensive ones. In the first case you're teaming up to pool resources such as know-how and capital for a rapidly emerging market. The second case is a desperate attempt to turn the tide on a stalling part of the business.
It's perfectly clear which is the case here: Nokia claimed that the merger would save four to five per cent in manufacturing costs for telecoms equipment, and generate overall business savings of two to three per cent.
For Siemens furthermore, the joint venture offers an opportunity to disinvest from the telco business. The company last year 'sold' its handheld business (it actually had to pay BenQ to take over all its contractual liabilities) and has always said that it wants to completely abandon its communications business.
The party holding the shotgun in the wedding is Cisco. The company is rapidly taking over the telecommunications business with its powerful "everything over IP" sales pitch.
The days of Cisco the router vendor are far behind us. The company within years has become the world's largest maker of telephony equipment. The company under John Chambers is turning into the General Electric of the communications industry.
Simon Beresford-Wylie of Nokia gets to head up the new Nokia Siemens Networks.
Photo: Nokia
Open source Ajax developer tool takes shape
The DoJo open source JavaScript toolkit today received the official stamp of approval from Sun Microsystems. Take into consideration that IBM earlier this month did the same thing, and it’s a safe beta that DoJo will become the world's leading Ajax development tool.
The open source project allows developers to create JavaScript for online applications that use a-synchronous JavaScript and XML. Simply said: making a site like Gmail or Flickr or Digg becomes a lot easier with DoJo.
DoJo today is used for some commercial application, but the application lacks several enterprise features such as accessibility support and internationalization. Both Sun and IBM have vowed to help iron out those issues.
Just as important is the sheer fact that they are backing the application and will be providing it to their clients.
Commercial vendors had better watch out.
Tags: open source, ajax, dojo
HP eyes design (video)
Design isn't just a way for Apple to turn a mundane portable music player into a billion dollar industry. Printer and computer maker HP is using design to improve the brand awareness across its products.
In the video interview below, HP's vice president for design Sam Lucente talks about the role of design in his company.
Tags: HP, design, sam lucente
Bye bye Bill Gates
Bill Gates will take the coming two years to clean out his office, as the Microsoft chief software architect is set to quit his job in June 2008 at age of 53.
Nobody in the history of computing has given shape to the technology landscape as much as Bill Gates has.
Like him or hate him, at least 95 per cent of the world's computer using population touches Gates' Windows software. But most of the world seemed to focus on Gates' failures more than on his successes.
Gates is synonymous with the blue screen of death, with some of the worst executive public speaking skill in the industry, ruthless monopolism and being able to get convicted but not punished for it by the US justice system.
There was simply too much to hate about Bill Gates, but in the end his bank account suffices to silence buy out each of his critics.
In 2008 he'll start working closer with his charitable foundation to spread those riches around the world, focusing on projects that are overseen by others.
You might disagree with how Gates made his money, but there's no arguing over how he's spending it.
Gates playing a video game against Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES last January
Tags: bill gates, microsoft, retirement
Remembering Bill Gates Silicon Valley Sleuth style
In the short history of this blog (it's been up since November 2004), Bill Gates is probably the most mentioned individual, and certainly the most photographed one. For your enjoyment, below you find a selection of photos that have been taken of Gates at numerous events that I had the privilege of attending.
WinHEC 2006 last May in Seattle: it could have been a great Windows Vista celebration but didn't work out that way.
January 2006, Gates delivers the opening keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show.
RSA Conference 2006 in San Jose… Bill Gates sings the audience to sleep with a newsless opening keynote.
November 2005: Gates and Ray Ozzie travel down to Silicon Valley to unveil the company's "Live Software" strategy.
Time will tell if the event will turn out to be Microsoft's desperate
attempt to cling on to a life line, or a brilliant move to move
Microsoft into the internet era.
September 2005, Gates kicks off the Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles.
September 2005, Palm unveils that it will be launching a Windows powered version of its Treo smart phone.
Bill opening CES Las Vegas in January 2005; the keynote is a
record low with three failing demo's and host Conan O'Brien ruthlessly pooring salt in the open wound.
After one of the failed demos, O'Brien quipped: "Who runs this company?"
Tags: bill gates, microsoft, retirement
Amazon goes grocery shopping
Amazon is venturing into online grocery shopping.
Looking at Grocery webpage, users are greeted by boxes of breakfast cereals and laundry detergent.
Don't look for fresh vegetables, meats or fish, for Amazon won't carry them. The company has learned from the expensive mistakes of Webvan.
But I just can't see myself ordering some cookies, tea and baking mix online, only then to drive to the grocery store to get all the items that I couldn't find on Amazon.
Even Amazon seems to realise that, and instead is positioning the store are one for rare items.
"When we carry a brand, we'll try to carry every flavour available: not just the most popular flavours of Jell-O, but all flavours from apricot to wild strawberry and the 70 flavours in-between," the online store said in a press release.
Just go ahead and buy your everyday Jell-O and detergent at the corner store. But if you're in for something fancy that's less time sensitive, Amazon expects you to go online.
AOL takes a shot at social news
AOL has unveiled a beta of its new Netscape homepage. The page aims to take social bookmarking to a new level, breaking out of the current technology and web focus on services such as DiggDel.icio.us.
Social bookmarking site rely on users to vote for a submit stories to the service. The more votes or submissions, the higher a link will show up on the service's front page.
Digg is currently by far the largest social bookmarking site so it's to be expected that people refer to the new Netscape as a potential Digg killer. Ultimately the users will decide on that.
At first glance however, Digg has little to be worried about. I instantly understood the service the first time I visited Digg. The site has a clean design that steers visitors to the content that they are looking for.
The Netscape service is flashing and blinking on all sides and the abundance of banner ads get in the way of the content.
Signing up is easy and intuitive and has some nice features – it uses Ajax to instantly validate if your desired user name is available for instance. Submitting a story too went just fine, but Netscape failed in the ultimate test: voting for recently submitted stories.
There is no way to vote for a story in the queue without clicking on it. Users are alos unable to view submissions for a single, particular category (don't make the mistake of clicking on the 'channels' because that gets you to the front page of that section, not the submission queue).
Netscape can iron out these minor issues, but it demonstrates a larger problem: the company is too eager to capitalize the service with banner ads and doesn't understand what makes an social bookmarking service great.
You can copy a website, but you can't copy Web 2.0 understanding.
HP goes on an IBM blade hunt
HP at the unveiling of its blade new c-Class blade architecture painted a huge target on IBM.
Its new blades are easier to manage and more power efficient, the company's server chief Ann Livermore said at the official unveiling.
HP typically doesn’t play the "blame it on the competition" game, and shouldn't have done so this time.
If you're shopping for a Ford, you're not interested in what's wrong with a Toyota.
HP furthermore is pushing Windows on its blades where IBM is mostly a Linux blade shop. The potential for customers jumping ship is close to slim to none.
Ann Livermore
Awkward moment. Livermore: "I really love this thing," she said, briefly touching the box like it was a child suffering from small pocks.
The beast has a back too.
Tags: HP, blade server, ann livermore
HP bets big on blades (video)
HP this morning launched it's new c-Class blade server architecture, which the company touted as the platform for all its future blade products.
Below you find a video of HP's senior vice president Ann Livermore talking about the role of blades and how its influences its adaptive enterprise vision.
Tags: HP, blade server, ann livermore
Yahoo mail worm author merely job hunting
A person claiming to be the author of Monday's Yamanner worm that targeted an unpatched vulnerability in Yahoo's mail application has contacted several security vendors, asking them for a job.
The security industry collectively told him to get lost.
In addition to the rule that you don't negotiate with terrorists, the author doesn't provide any proof that he crafted the worm. If he was merely out to show off his programming skills, he could have written a proof of concept worm and inform the proper authorities.
By setting his creation loose, he effectively ran over a child with his car to demonstrate a design flaw, and only then contacted the manufacturer about the issue.
Subject: I have written JS/Yamanner@MM Worm
Hello
I have written JS/Yamanner@MM Worm that has been discovered 12 June 2006. I found that in Yahoo! mail and use it to execute scripts ( collecting yahoo addresses from someone mail, sending this email using Ajax technology to them and then redirecting them into a sample site).
…
Finally I should mention that I don’t like to disturb no one. Since I live in iran and taking a Job in good computer companies is very hard (becaue getting Visa is very hard from US) I just want to prove that I have some abilities in web programming . And I like to work with professional team like you if there is any way to do that.
Microsoft turns the knife on its self inflicted SPOT wound
Microsoft has unveiled an updated SPOT watch: the Abacus Smart Watch 2006 started selling today for $179.
Microsoft must like rubbing salt in its own wounds. Most of the world would have forgotten about SPOT if the company wouldn't have reminded them of this technological failure by keeping it on life support.
SPOT uses the FM radio signal to broadcast data such as weather and traffic info. Microsoft was hoping that consumers would fork out $10 per month for such a service, but has now lowered the subscription rates to $39.95 per year.
That's still 40 dollars too much for a service that comes bundled with most mobile phones.
But more importantly, the first SPOT watches were uglier than a kitten that's fallen in a filled kitchen sink. Wearing it required a major lack of fashion awareness and indifference to your friends' opinions.
The updated version is about three millimetres thinner and has a more fashionable wrist band.
But before you surf to Amazon (where it's out of stock), ask yourself why you would need weather info or stock quotes on your watch.
Sun takes another shot at blade servers (video)
Sun Microsystems' first attempt to start a line of blade systems was a painful failure. But the server maker has gone back to the drawing board and in the coming months plans to release the first of what it calls the third generation blade server products.
Below you find a video interview with John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun's Systems Group.
Without starting a "generation" fight: Sun claims that it is jumping from its discontinued first generation line to the third generation. Less biased parties contend that the upcoming Sun technology should be called just second generation.
Tags: john fowler, sun microsystems, blade, server
Nintendo: Wii is cool, really!
Just because the world is disgusted by the Nintendo Wii name (pronounced "wee", just like the IE icon does), doesn't mean that it sucks.
The console maker therefore has gone on the offensive in an attempt to paint the Wii critics as visionless drones.
The Gameboy after all was flamed too when it first came out in 1989 because it would scare away girl gamers. And just look at the Gameboy's enormous success.
The company just failed to mention that the Gameboy, until the introduction for the PSP, didn't face any real competition (you can't count the Gizmondo as a serious contender).
Nintendo has failed to impress when the it competition. A poorly picked name won't help there.
Dilbert does Cisco endorsement
You probably haven't given it much thought, but there goes a fair amount of research into something that's as seemingly trivial as a Dilbert cartoon.
Some cubicle slave inside the bowels of Cisco's offices must have known, and came up with the idea to have Dilbert author Scott Adams show off the capabilities the company's Unified MeetingPlace product, Cisco's meeting application.
The result is a video demonstration by Adams. It may have 'paid endorsment' written all over it, but it still does a good job at showing off the product. And at least the video sticks out from all the suits and ties videos.
I just wish that Cisco had made the video more blog-friendly by allowing me to embed it into this website rather than forcing me to link to it.
PS.
As we're on the Dilbert topic (again...) I just must offer you this quote:
"I know someone is going to read this and point out that the Bible predicts the creation of the nation of Israel. By that standard, I have a cookbook in the kitchen that has predicted a lot of my meals. So you’ll have to do better than that."
Enjoy your meal.
Tags: Cisco, scott adams, meetingplace,