brightonbeachbid.org

Regardless, it’s good to see IBM’s moral leadership on this issue.

IBM knows the standards game better than any other company I know, which makes its recent announcement to stop supporting rogue standards bodies welcome and important. This might well be a response to the shenanigans Microsoft allegedly played with OOXML, but whatever its origin, the result is encouraging:

(Selected) tenets of IBM’s new policy are to:

Begin or end participation in standards bodies based on the quality and openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property policies.
Advance governance rules within standards bodies that ensure technology decisions, votes, and dispute resolutions are made fairly by independent participants, protected from undue influence.
Collaborate with standards bodies and developer communities to ensure that open software interoperability standards are freely available and implementable.

For the full list, see IBM’s press release. Needless to say, if all companies adopted these IBM guidelines, we’d have truly open, interoperability-enhancing standards…which means we probably won’t see the industry flocking to the guidelines anytime soon and, indeed, I suspect that even IBM may have difficulty living up to its pledge in all scenarios. The next time a rogue “OOXML-esque” standard rears its head and gathers momentum, IBM could come to believe that the end (crushing a bad standard) may justify the means.

commentary

As far as changing passwords, the French and Spanish are the most lax. And the French tend to display birth dates on social networking sites and to use birth dates as passwords, the study found.

The Germans had the lowest rate of identity fraud of the countries, with 3 percent reporting problems.

People in English-speaking countries are targeted for identity fraud at twice the rate of many Europeans, according to a new study released by PayPal on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Germans were also found to be more cautious with their passwords. Only about one in four Germans reported ever sharing a password with anyone, compared with 60 percent of Americans and 56 percent of the French.

Ten percent of online shoppers in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada–not-surprisingly, places with high percentages of e-commerce transactions–reported being victims of identity fraud, compared with only 5 percent in France, Germany and Spain, the study conducted by Ipsos found.

Finally, more than half of all consumers surveyed still receive financial statements in the mail. Only 17 percent of French consumers and 23 percent in Spain own shredders.

In Canada, more than half of the respondents said privacy is their number one online concern.

One in three Americans said they write down their passwords to remember them, while fewer than one in five in all the other countries does so.

Mayor Charles Meeker of Raleigh said that plug-in electric vehicles tie into the company’s economic development plans and goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce imports of oil.

A coalition dedicated to paving the way for plug-in electric
cars in communities launched on Tuesday, highlighting the technical and economic challenges to electric transportation.

Consumers need to get accustomed to daily charging and many areas, such as cities, will need to have public charging stations. Initially, plug-in electric cars will be more expensive than gas-only cars. Also, there is some concern over how much the additional load of plug-in electric cars will bring to the power grid.

Electric vehicles were a major theme at this year’s North American International Auto Show and there’s been a great deal of interest in electric cars, like the Chevy Volt, years before their release.

The group’s goal is to accelerate plug-in electric car adoption by helping communities create multi-year plans for adoption. It will initially work with three communities–Raleigh, N.C.; Portland, Ore.; and Indianapolis, Ind.–and convene with over 20 communities later this year to share information.

“We believe this can create jobs and investments,” he said. “This is part of our stimulus strategy by taking advantage of this new paradigm.”

Project Get Ready is spearheaded by think tank the Rocky Mountain Institute and includes a few municipalities, utilities, and nonprofits as members. It counts automakers, including General Motors, and technology companies as advisers.

But communities need to actively prepare for the new technology in order to meet President Obama’s goal of getting 1 million plug-in electric cars on the road by 2015–one-half of one percent of the U.S. auto fleet.

The city has one plug-in electric vehicle and intends to increase that number to 15 or 20 within a year. It hopes to build eight charging stations in the downtown area, funded through parking fees and by partnering with utilities. It is also applying for federal government loans, according to city officials.

The region is working with two utilities to test smart-grid technology to control when and how quickly plug-in cars are charged so that they don’t stress the grid, Mitchell said. One of the challenges to adoption is developing a regulatory model that allows utilities to invest in smart-grid technology, he said.

(Credit:
Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)

Charging a plug-in electric vehicle takes about as much electricity as three plasma TVs and set-top boxes, according Joe Barra, director of customer energy resources at Portland General Electric. He said that since most vehicle charging will happen at night at off-peak times, the utility won’t need to substantially change its power generation.

The Indianapolis area is eager to test plug-in electric vehicles because the region’s auto companies intend to manufacture batteries and components for electric vehicles, said Paul Mitchell, a representative with the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership.

“Our hypothesis is that the challenges can best be overcome by focusing on city and community readiness,” said Laura Schewel, project manager and consultant with the Rocky Mountain Institute. The plan is to create a “menu” of techniques for addressing common barriers, such as high upfront cost, and to demonstrate that there is consumer demand, she said.

The company blames its woes on phone companies and large corporate customers, which have been cutting back on their capital expenditures more than had been expected. Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski said the company is conducting a comprehensive review of its business. And he said it is looking for a buyer for its metro Ethernet equipment business.

Telecommunications equipment maker Nortel Networks announced on Wednesday that it has slashed its business outlook and is looking to sell some of its assets as the economy worsens.

Meanwhile, Cisco Systems, which competes with Nortel in some areas, on Tuesday at an analyst conference reiterated its confidence in its long-term growth projections of between 12 percent and 17 percent. CEO John Chambers noted slower near-term growth, as customers tighten their belts, but even in the short run, Cisco still expects to grow 10 percent.

Of course, Cisco has diversified its business in different areas and has always been focused on Internet Protocol technology. It is also pushing video technology as a main growth area. On the other hand, Nortel’s products are focused on telecommunications, a segment that has come under severe pressure lately.

Nortel said its revenue for 2008 will be about 2 percent to 4 percent lower than it was the previous year. Third-quarter revenue will be about $2.3 billion, short of the $2.66 billion that some analysts had expected.

Willcom D4 is slated for a June release and is expected to be priced at 128,600 yen ($1,272).

The handheld-size device uses a 1.33GHz Z520 Intel Atom processor and runs
Windows Vista Home Premium (with Service Pack 1). Other prototype devices based on similar designs–referred to as mobile Internet devices or MIDs–have also been shown running the Linux operating system.

Microsoft and Intel were also credited with development of the device, according to the Japanese-language release on the Sharp Web site.

With a separate headset, the device can also be used as a phone using Wilcom’s Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) network, both Sharp and Willcom said.

Sharp got atomized Monday. The Japanese electronics maker along with Willcom announced the ultra-mobile Willcom D4 “communication device” based on Intel’s Atom processor and Microsoft’s Vista operating system.

Atom will find its way into fit-in-your-pocket MIDs from Gigabyte, Toshiba, LG Electronics, Lenovo, and BenQ, among others. Netbooks (inexpensive, Internet-centric ultra-small notebook PCs) such as Asus’s popular Intel-based Eee PC, MSI’s Wind PC, and Clevo will also use the chip.

The D4’s inclusion of a 40GB hard disk drive is an indicator that the device is meant to run Windows–because of the operating system’s typically larger footprint–not Linux.

(Credit:
Willcom)

The device weighs in at 470 grams (about one pound) and features a 5-inch sliding LCD (1024×600/262K colors) with an LED backlight, a 1.8-inch 40GB hard disk drive (Ultra ATA/100), 64-key QWERTY keyboard, a built-in camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a mirco SD card slot, and a USB 2.0 slot.

Willcom D4 ultra-mobile communications device

Intel Atom technology includes a single-chip with integrated graphics called the Intel System Controller Hub.

(Credit:
Forbes)

Fake Steve was quite the sensation last year, but Internet memes come and go faster than 24-point leads, despite the fact that FSJ remains an amusing source of tech industry satire. Lyons will be taking the place of Steve Levy at Newsweek, who departed for Wired earlier this year.

Lyons is leaving Forbes, which has hosted FSJ since Lyons was outed as the creative force behind the blog last year, for Newsweek, according to Silicon Alley Insider.

Daniel Lyons, the creator of Fake Steve Jobs, is taking his show on the road.

Fake Steve himself confirms that some sort of hiatus is planned for the next several months, alluding to the recent “concern” over his health in unfurling a plan to spend several months recharging his irreplaceable internal battery on an island in the South Pacific.

Daniel Lyons, creator of the Fake Steve Jobs blog.

What do you think Facebook will announce at next week’s F8 event?

( polls)

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Mobile or not, expect something big next week from the Facebook camp.

One of the 550-plus new iPhone applications was Facebook’s own, a slightly amped-up version of the Web-based Facebook for iPhone Web site introduced late last year. It’s more useful than than the mobile Web site, but it’s still watered down from its desktop cousin, with just a contact list and a chat app. Notably missing are the other Facebook applications that have helped make the social network such an appealing service for both users and developers.

There are still some road bumps. For one, Apple’s SDK and Android are vastly different. But if Facebook is forward-thinking, it’ll want people to develop applications that will work on both. Apple’s iPhone is clearly the weak link here with no Adobe Flash support in sight and a very limited amount of things you can do using the hardware and phone file system. One such solution for interoperability is Google’s OpenSocial initiative, however, Facebook has been at odds with adopting it. The middle-of-the-road solution is to use Web standards that are both interoperable and compatible no matter what modern device you’re using.

Today, the Facebook platform is alive and well, but the hot new platform is the
iPhone. People are lining up for hours to get their hands on one, and developers see dollars in those lines: Unlike with Facebook apps, you can charge for iPhone software, and developers keep 70 percent of the money collected through Apple’s app store.

Only a year ago, there was a huge buzz around Facebook’s new application platform. Big money was made by some, while others simply threw together whatever they could and released it to the masses in the hopes of being the next iLike.

Another bump is whether or not developers will be willing to dedicate their time to developing something for Facebook mobile or simply create a standalone native iPhone application. These individual applications hold more opportunity for the little guys to make a quick buck, but by tying into Facebook’s system they get a tight network of users who might share it with one another and cross-pollinate that activity to the desktop version.

Facebook’s UI has already begun to change to match the finger-friendly style. The latest profile refresh has moved the applications from a sidebar to different tabs–the same look can be found in Facebook’s iPhone-optimized Web app. Such a style could easily be shrunk down to fit a smaller screen, whereas the old one could not.

Update: Made a correction from 30 to 70 percent regarding developer revenue split on the Apps store.

I think we’ll see at next week’s F8 event a product or service that will help developers shrink down their applications to fit into Facebook’s mobile application framework. It’s a move that goes squarely against Apple’s engrained apps marketplace by having developers spend resources on coding for Facebook instead of themselves; however, the result will be the augmentation of the mobile Facebook experience that’s closer to what people have gotten accustomed to on their computers.

Facebook's iPhone application is one of the iPhone’s most popular applications.

It would make sense if the next step for the Facebook platform was a mobile version–something where whatever you developed would work on both desktop and mobile devices, starting with the iPhone and later Android. In that regard, Facebook’s mobile iPhone application is only the beginning, and just a preview of what’s to come.

I recently caught up with Praveen Asthana, who directs storage operations at Dell. While cloud-based storage so far has had an uneven reception in the market, he says the initial consumer reluctance to store valuable digital files “out there” is receding.

At this point, Dell is not offering more details other than to acknowledge that the idea is under consideration. Also, it is not clear whether the company would go it alone or in collaboration with another company. But Asthana still believes the change in consumer behavior is for real and that it suggests a shift that will involve the entire user food chain. “I think it will start with consumers,” he says, “and then go right up to small and medium business, and then corporations.”

Of course, Dell knows that it is not guaranteed to succeed where others have failed. If it were that easy, Xdrive would have turned into a money machine for AOL. Instead, the company is looking to dump the service only three years after acquiring it.

Perhaps. After its acquisition of EqualLogic last year, Dell now sells a broad iSCSI disk array product portfolio. The thinking is that Dell would be able to successfully extend its expertise as a supplier of storage hardware into storage services. It’s obviously more complicated than that, but Asthana’s boss is no stranger to applying managerial lessons learned in one area to another.

Meanwhile, another name with the bonafides is thinking about trying its hand.

If the scenario comes true, it would make for one heck of a scorecard with Dell conceivably facing off against the likes of Google and Microsoft (as well Apple).But with more people participating in digital photography and digital music–and all the attendant storage demands that follow–there’s ample room for companies that can get it right. Besides, Michael Dell knows how to pick his fights.

Dell.

Maybe that will soon change as more companies with the means and the motivation offer cloud-based storage to consumers. One recurring rumor has Google planning an upcoming consumer service with “infinite storage” called GDrive. Take rumors for what they are worth, but given Google’s (growing) cloud-centric history, it’s not unreasonable to expect an announcement along those lines.

Despite the early kinks attending MobileMe, what’s not to like about the concept? I’ll include Live Mesh in the category, though Microsoft still remains in beta with the product.
Synchronizing e-mail, calendars, and contacts–it’s a fine idea. Unfortunately, nobody has figured it out to anyone’s full satisfaction yet.

“What convinces me about this is that people now are comfortable putting their photos onto the cloud,” he told me. “When you read about someone’s house catching on fire, what’s the first thing they try and save? It’s the photos and the memories.”

Michael Dell has proved himself to be one of the savviest operators in techdom. He built a multibillion dollar business by figuring out how to sell commodity PCs, servers, and service quicker than most. Each time it stumbled, the company learned from its mistakes and moved on. Consumer-based cloud storage no doubt would be a stretch, but didn’t they say the same thing at other points in Dell’s history?

Microsoft declined to discuss what will be in Windows Server 2008 R2, but a spokesman confirmed that it is the server version of Windows 7. The release is due sometime in 2010, Microsoft said.

The server move calls into question just how different Windows 7 is going to be from Windows Vista on the desktop side. Steven Sinofsky, the head of development for the desktop version of Windows, has said that Windows 7 on the PC side would not make major changes to things like the kernel and driver model, but has maintained that it would be a major release of Windows.

The software maker confirmed its naming plans, following a report by ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley. Initially Foley reported that Microsoft was skipping its minor R2 release and moving straight to its next major release. However, Microsoft clarified that it indeed sees Windows 7 on the server side as a minor release.

In a somewhat surprising move, Microsoft said Monday that the next minor update for Windows Server will be the server version of Windows 7, which will be known merely as Windows Server 2008 R2.

The question is, if Windows 7 Server needs no more testing than a service pack, is it really possible for the desktop team to add enough features on top of it to make Windows 7 a big improvement upon the oft-criticized Windows Vista.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Microsoft has said that the desktop version of Windows 7 would include a new multitouch interface, but has not talked about other features.

Update releases integrate the previous major release with the latest service pack, selected feature packs, and new functionality. Because an update release is based on the previous major release, customers can incorporate it into their environment without any additional testing beyond what would be required for a typical service pack. Any additional functionality provided by an update would be optional and thus not affect application compatibility or require customers to recertify or retest applications.

If you are having trouble reconciling Microsoft’s server and client positions, you are not alone. I pressed Microsoft’s server side for more details on how this could be understood, but didn’t get much help. I’ll also check in with some folks on the desktop Windows team and see what I hear back.

Microsoft said on Monday that the server version of
Windows 7 will not be a major release and will bear the name Windows Server 2008 R2.

The move is surprising, given that in the past, Microsoft has used R2 monikers to signify a product with a few new features, as opposed to major changes to a product.

On its server roadmap page, Microsoft describes its minor, or update releases this way:

Microsoft has said it will share technical details on Windows 7 at its Professional Developers Conference in late October in Los Angeles.

“We are interested in this because it has some very unique properties and no one has really explored it at this level before,” Wilson said. “There are not product plans for this, of course. This is just one of many efforts to explore different form factors that are sort of a play off the Surface.”

And some of the learning Microsoft has done applies to more than just spheres, Wilson said.

Microsoft had pursued the notion of a spherical computer on its own, but concluded that the hardware work was too difficult to do by itself. Instead, it chose to go with technology from another company–Global Imagination–which already had a spherical computer display on the market for things like museum exhibits and marketing displays. Its product, known as Magic Planet, comes in sizes ranging from 16 inches in diameter to one that is 6 feet tall. It’s made of an acrylic, specially coated to allow projected images to display clearly.

For videoconferencing, Microsoft already has a 360-degree camera, known as RingCam, so a Sphere could provide an interesting display for that as well.

As noted Monday, an outside crowd will get its first look at Sphere later Tuesday as Microsoft shows it to academics attending the software maker’s annual Faculty Summit here.

Although it didn’t have to reinvent the, well, sphere, Microsoft did have a lot of work to change the way the software both senses and renders content.

Games, maps, and secret stuff
As for uses, Wilson said that while a sphere is impractical for many things, it does have some neat characteristics that make it well-suited to certain tasks. For one thing, many people can view and interact with a sphere-shaped computer, each having a different, but equally valid view.

“This has been a really fun project and it has got us thinking about other form factors as well,” he said. “It’s given us confidence in thinking about non-flat surfaces, and redoing the rendering pipeline was one good nugget of technical work that we did.”

“For one thing there are no straight lines,” Wilson said. You don’t move an object in a straight line so much as you rotate it around a sphere.”

Indeed, that property might be useful for Wilson himself. His studio is filled with different surface computer designs, only some of which he was really ready to talk about. Still, he was gracious enough to let me in, though he pointed to some interesting prototypes that he said were not quite ready for public consumption.

It’s also interesting from the perspective that any one person can only see just under half the screen. “You can imagine scenarios that involve gaming would be fun.” (Just imagine the board game Battleship, for starters).

Unlike the tabletop, though, Sphere is a ball-shaped display (either 18 inches or 2 feet in diameter) mounted on a pedestal. Its 360-degree display makes it ill-suited to some tasks, but perhaps even better for some types of gaming and mapping uses. At this point, though, it’s just a research effort.

Sphere got its start, in earnest, about a year ago. Wilson had a demo unit from Global Imagination sitting in his lab when one of his direct reports, researcher Hrvoje Benko, saw it.

“There is no privileged view of the Sphere,” Wilson said. “If you think about it in terms of multiple simultaneous users, that is an interesting property.”

“When Benko started, he saw this sitting in the lab…He sort of picked it up and ran with it,” Wilson said.

Other potential uses are videoconferencing and mapping. In one of the Sphere’s canned demos, it shows the Sphere rendering a 3D street scene and a user touching the device to start driving through the scene. It’s kind of the opposite of being inside a 3D world, since you are viewing it from the outside, but still a very interesting application–interesting enough that Wilson has started talking with the Virtual Earth team about some broader cooperation.

Update:Some folks asked for video, so below is a video from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Benko has also put some video up on his Sphere project site. In the latter video, check out the demo of what the infrared camera is seeing, as well as Sphere Pong.)

Beyond gaming, Wilson said that fact could allow a sphere display to be used for someone to have a public section that others can see, but also a second side, with a “personal stash of stuff.”

The shape of things to come?
But while he can rattle off several potential uses for such a product, Wilson says it’s not that he sees sphere-shaped computers as the next big thing.

“The basic design is really quite simple,” Microsoft researcher Andy Wilson told CNET News in an interview last week. Like the tabletop Surface computer introduced last year, Sphere uses a combination of infrared cameras for input and a projector for output to create a multitouch computer. “The camera and the projector share the same optical axis by virtue of mirrors.”

REDMOND, Wash.–When it comes down to it, Microsoft’s Sphere really is kind of like taking the Surface computer notion and squishing it into a giant ball.