10 Reasons Why Microsoft's Gonna Snap Up Yahoo In 2007

Microsoft sat back while Google showed everyone how to take a search engine from 2 kinds having fun to a top 20 American company. How did they do it? Well just look at their revenue numbers and you will see a massive percentage comes from the Adwords & Adsense products. Now Microsoft is trying to get into the online advertising game but can they hope to compete without acquiring Yahoo and their volume? Microsoft gonna make a move at Yahoo and its going to happen in 2007.

Here are 10 reasons why:

1. The search algorithm… duh… Microsoft’s horrid search algo is by far the single biggest problem that Microsoft has right now. The problem is that when there are no users using the search engine then there are a ton of ads that never are shown. If Microsoft were to acquire Yahoos search algorithm this would be a GIANT step in getting users back.

2. Overture Yahoo Search Marketing. Microsoft used to broker every thing through the company formally known as Overture for showing ads on msn.com search. They are now trying their own company but its chugging along at a very slow pace. Most advertisers like Microsofts Adcenter but agree there is just not enough volume from its search engine (see #1).

3. Yahoo Publisher Network - YPN IMO is the best contextual advertising network there is. They have a great quality control team and also a REAL PHONE NUMBER THAT REAL PEOPLE ANSWER if you have contextual questions. Nobody provides the level of customer support in regards to contextual advertising that Yahoo Publisher Network does.

4. Flikr - Again Microsoft may have a similar product but the volume is here. Boom another zillion people to market to.

5. del.icio.us - While Google is signing up or buying all the 2.0 advertising space Microsoft can acquire a huge name right here.

6. The People - Microsoft has tons of stale old people who do not understand this new industry. They are starting to just now contribute to rival open source projects like Zend and Mysql. Acquiring Yahoo people like Jeremy Zawodny (who wrote a book on Mysql and also contributed tools to the project). Microsoft realizes that they are not only losing ground in the search industry fast but they also lost market share in server technology to Zend (PHP) and other open source products. If they want to keep their market share with Windows Server I think bringing in a lot of these brilliant Yahoo developers would keep them on the right track in making sure they integrate well with the open source items.

7. Video - Between Yahoo Video and Microsoft’s Soapbox They might be able to combine for a decent share of the video market. Why is the video market important - 2 words - video advertising. I took part in the beta test when Google did a trial run of video ads and then 2 months later they buy out youtube… ya… video advertising. Ad Volume ++

8. Community properties - Yahoo has yahoo groups whose numbers rival Myspace. Never heard of groups.yahoo.com ? Ohh yea you forgot about that huh? Instantly you have millions of people to show more ads to! Ad Volume++

9. Business Directory - Microsoft Just gave up there Business Directory efforts. Yahoo has always rocked it with their paid inclusion directory. Its by far the most respected business directory on the internet. Even at 300$ per year fee webmasters line up all day to submit there websites. Mean while Google’s Business directory is a laughing stock being powered by the corrupt DMOZ.

10. Yahoo Just cleaned house. It seems to me this makes a merger that much easier with less chiefs to merge.

Will it happen? To me it seems like a no brainer… If Microsoft hopes to compete in this new internet economy (contextual ads) they need a bigger chunk of the search market. Yahoo is the only option IMO. Any betting men out there? As they say, put your money where your mouth is

http://www.shoemoney.com/

Bogus, bogus, bogus! Apple faked files on Jobs’ options

What’s that funny smell? Steve "Jerkoff" Jobs, Apple Computer CEO, was handed 7.5m stock options in 2001 without the required authorisation from the company’s board of directors, according to people familiar with the matter.

Records that purported to show a full board meeting had taken place to approve Mr Jobs’ remuneration, as required by Apple’s procedures, were later faked. These are now among the pieces of evidence being weighed by the SEC as it decides whether to pursue a case against the company or any individuals over the affair, according to these people.

News of the irregularities, which is expected to be revealed in a regulatory filing by Apple before the end of this week, will add to pressure that has been growing on one of Silicon Valley’s most highly-regarded companies since the middle of 2005.

In early trade in New York on Thursday, Apple shares were down 2 per cent to $79.83, but regained lost ground to stand at $80.45, a fall of 1.3 per cent.

Apple is among more than 160 companies that have owned up to stock option backdating – handing options to executives and other employees at exercise prices that were set in hindsight at favourable levels – a scandal which has led to the departure of a number of chief executives.

The latest revelation is likely to add to questions about Apple’s disclosures about its internal investigation into the backdating issue. In October, the company largely exonerated Mr Jobs over the matter, saying that while he had been “aware” of the backdating “in a few instances”, he “did not receive or otherwise benefit from these grants and was unaware of the accounting implications”.

Well, now it’s time for yet another tall tale. According to an Apple filing in 2002, the options under review were handed to Mr Jobs in October 2001, at an exercise price of $18.30 a share. However, the purported board authorisation was dated near the end of the year, suggesting that the benefits were both not properly authorised and were backdated. Mr Jobs later surrendered his options before they were exercised, implying that he did not gain any direct benefit from them. He was later given a grant of restricted stock by the company instead.

Apple’s lawyers have briefed people involved in the case on the findings of the company’s internal review of the matter, though it remains unclear how much detail will be included in the filing.

Under Apple’s rules, the chief executive’s remuneration must be set by a compensation committee of independent directors and later authorised by the full board.

An Apple spokesman refused to comment on the matter on Wednesday, but said the company had handed the findings of its internal enquiry to the SEC. The company said in October that it had found “no misconduct by any member of Apple’s current management team” but that its investigation “raised serious concerns regarding the actions of two former officers”. At the same time, it also announced the resignation from its board of Fred Andersen, a former CFO.

Hmmm. Stay tuned sportsfans......

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/801e1b82-9605-11db-9976-0000779e2340.html

Who’s Wii-nning the gaming wars?

The chips are down and the bets have been placed, the numbers tallied and the verdict is rolling in: Wii is winning. Surprised? We thought not.

With analysts placing early sales figures at between double and triple those of Sony's PlayStation 3, Nintendo's Wii, with its innovative motion-sensitive handheld controller, proved itself to be one of the most popular gifts under the tree this holiday season.

"Wii was definitely the most popular by far," said Paul Webber, manager of EB Games near Victoria Park and Danforth Aves. "It was 10 to 1. Twenty to 40 people were lined up every morning in front of the store. A PS3 would take a whole day to sell while a Wii was gone in 20 minutes."

While holiday sales totals are the subject of much speculation on the web, the research firm NDP Group estimated that Wii's sales figures for November were more than double those of its technologically beefier competition. According to the firm, Wii sold 476,000 units, while the PS3's figures were put at 197,000.

In fact, those numbers may be low. In late November, Nintendo said it had sold 600,000 consoles in just the first eight days after its Nov. 19 launch across the Americas.

Sony has not released any sales totals for the PS3 and there's been no word yet on how robust Christmas sales have been – except to say, disappointments were rife: Finding a console before Christmas Day was difficult.

"Both products have been severely stock challenged," said Lori DeCou, spokeswoman for electronics retailer Best Buy. "As soon as they came, we were sold out."

While both consoles started out strong, demand for the PS3 may have begun to peter out due to the console's cost of up to $659.

"Anecdotally, the Wii certainly has beaten the PS3 over the holiday," says Brian Crecente, editor of Kotaku.com, a gaming website. "The people purchasing the Wii seem to be more happy with their purchase than the people who purchased the PS3."

And if the demand for Sony's gem has slumped, retailers and resellers online have noticed. Several advertisements on Craigslist, a website devoted to classified ads, are either selling Wii's at an inflated price, or asking for a trade.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/165735

Report: Apple officials may have forged documents; will Jerkoff Jobs leave?

Shares of Apple Computer fell as much as 6% today after a legal publication reported that federal prosecutors are probing whether former company executives forged documents to maximize executives' stock option profits.

The Recorder, a San Francisco-based publication owned by American Lawyer Media, reported late Tuesday that federal prosecutors are looking into forged documents at Apple related to administering stock options. The report cited people with knowledge of the case who requested anonymity because the case is the subject of criminal and civil government investigations.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said the company is providing the SEC with the results of its internal investigation into stock options practices, but had no further comment.

"Any time you get the stock options probe mentioned, especially with rumors of falsifying documents, the hot money tends to shoot first and ask questions later," said Tim Biggam, options strategist at Man Securities, an options brokerage firm in Chicago.\

The publication also reported that CEO Steve Jobs has hired his own outside counsel separate from the company's legal team.

Analysts have downplayed the effect that the probe could have on Apple's business.

But they have said that their biggest concern is that the investigation could lead to the departure of Jobs, a company founder who has been lauded for turning around Apple by launching blockbuster iPod digital media players and revamping its line of Mac computers.
In October, Apple's board said that in some cases Jobs had been aware that stock options had been backdated. It cleared him of any misconduct, saying that he did not benefit from the grants and had been unaware of the accounting implications.

"People have sort of ignored the possibility that Steve Jobs could be in trouble and might have to leave the company given the options problem. I think the news today confirms that is a risk," said Benjamin Halliburton, managing director at Tradition Capital Management. He and his firm do not own Apple shares.

"But the flip side of that is Apple's core business is doing extremely well," he added.

Apple is one of nearly 200 companies that have disclosed SEC, DOJ or internal investigations for potential backdating of stock options. Backdating refers to retroactively pegging the strike price of an option to a day when the stock traded cheaply. Options with low strike prices are more valuable to their owner because they are less expensive to exercise.

In the October statement, Apple said the internal investigation raised concerns about how two former officers recorded and accounted for stock options. Citing people with knowledge of the investigation, The Recorder also reported those two former officers were General Counsel Nancy Heinen and Chief Financial Officer Fred Anderson.

On Dec. 15, Apple said it was delaying filing its annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission due to its ongoing investigation into stock option grants. In a filing with the SEC, the company said it needs to restate historical financial statements to record charges for compensation related to past grants. As a result, Apple was unable to file its 10-K Form for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 by the required filing date of Dec. 14.

Apple expects to file its annual report and its quarterly report for the period ending July 1 by Dec. 29.

HOW BACKDATING WORKS

A stock option allows the option holder to buy shares at some point in the future for a fixed price. The option price is almost always based on the stock's price the day the option is granted. Backdating involves manipulating the issue date, often after a run-up in the price of the stock, so the option becomes more valuable for the holder. In some cases, executives have been awarded options backdated to the day the stock hit a low for the quarter.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2006-12-27-apple-options_x.htm?csp=26

Windows DRM: the 'longest suicide note in history'?

Copy-protection features in Windows Vista make the operating system more bloated while giving few benefits to end users, according to a new security paper.

Peter Gutmann, a medical imaging specialist, argues in the paper that Microsoft's cumbersome approach to DRM is doomed to fail and will only succeed in pushing users towards buying faster hardware to cope with degraded performance, effectively imposing collateral damage on the rest of the industry.

VMware Server is a free virtualization product for Windows and Linux servers with enterprise-class support. It enables companies to partition a physical server into multiple virtual machines and to start experiencing the benefits of virtualization.

Many of the criticisms Gutmann makes will be familiar to those who have followed the development of Vista's copyright protection features however his hard-hitting prose style and warning that the Vista Content Protection specs could "very well constitute the longest suicide note in history" has reinvigorated the debate.

Gutmann argues, for example, that in order lock down High Definition content, Vista limits the number of connectivity options to users. 'Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server)," Gutmann writes in an abstract to his paper here.

Microsoft is risking annoying its customer base and users in a bid to corner the market for home distribution of premium content.

Gutmann argues that hackers will find it just as easy to bypass the content protection mechanisms of Vista as they have with other versions of the OS.

These ultimately doomed efforts will lead to a more expensive and less functional operating system for users, he argues.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2006/12/27/windows_drm_monstered/

Go figure….Vista is Not Secure!

Way to go, M’soft! Five long years in the making and still there are major snafus. According to reports, computer security researchers and hackers have begun spotting potentially serious flaws in Microsoft's Windows Vista system that was released to corporate customers late last month.

A Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw on Dec 15, which enables increasing users' privileges on all of Microsoft's recent operating systems, including Vista.

During the Christmas weekend, a Silicon Valley-based security firm said it notified Microsoft about another flaw it found, plus five other vulnerabilities, including one serious bug in the software code underlying the IE 7 browser. The firm said the browser flaw could result in Web users getting infected with malicious software simply by visiting booby-trapped Web sites.

California-based Determina, a vendor of anti-vulnerability software, added that the browser flaw could make it possible for attackers to inject rogue software into Vista-based computers.

Microsoft said on its Web site that the company is closely monitoring the vulnerability described by the Russian programmer. In a statement, Microsoft said that as of now, they have not observed any public exploitation or attack activity based on this flaw.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company is also investigating the browser flaw, and that as of now, they are not aware of any attacks attempting to use this flaw.

According to sources at Determina, the browser flaw, by itself, can permit damage such as information theft, etc,

But, the 'sandbox' software in IE 7 would control damage even if a malicious program were to subvert the operation of the browser.

However, according to Determina, when coupled with the ability of the first flaw, it might be possible to circumvent the 'sandbox' controls and alter files, and potentially permanently infect a target computer.

All in all, Determina warns people not to get complacent as the company expects a rash of Vista bugs to pop up in the next six months to one year.

Ironically, Microsoft has spent hundreds of millions in branding Vista as the most secure product they've ever produced, and is depending on Vista to help turn the tide against a wave of software attacks now plaguing Windows-based computers.

http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Microsoft_Vista_is_Not_So_Secure/551-78101-582.html

M'Soft's Vista: A Dinosaur surviving the crunch?

Vista beckons buyers with translucent Aero Glass 3-D window displays, the promise of faster boot ups, more reliability, and stouter protection against viruses and spam. But is the new Windows Vista operating system (OS), a great leap forward or the last big splash as computing migrates to the Internet and away from PC-based software? Either way, one study predicts the software will be installed on as many as 90 million computers worldwide by the end of 2007.

Five years in the planning, Vista promises to turn older PCs (if they can handle the heavy technical specs) and new ones into sleek, slick user-friendly environments. Versions for business use are now on the market. Basic and premium versions for consumers will be available at the end of January.

Realizing that they would miss the lucrative Christmas selling season this year, Microsoft and computermakers are offering holiday buyers coupons giving them a free upgrade to Vista when it hits the market. But retailers seem to have put selling "Vista ready" machines and the coupon program on a back burner and are concentrating on slashing PC prices to rack up December sales.

With Vista almost certain to become the dominant OS inside the world's PCs well into the next decade, missing the Christmas sales season this year is an "almost insignificant" part of its overall impact, says Michael Gartenberg, a senior analyst at JupiterResearch in New York, which follows consumer technology trends.

"This is a major, major upgrade," Gartenberg says, "Microsoft's best work to date in terms of an operating system." Users will find that in the Vista environment, "Things flow much more naturally," he says. "It feels like a much more holistic and polished experience."

Early sales are expected to come mostly from consumers. Businesses are notoriously slow to adopt a new OS. A Forrester survey of more than 450 North American enterprises earlier this year found 11 percent said they would switch to Vista within six months of its release and 29 percent within a year. But 60 percent said they either would wait longer than that or had no plans to switch at all.

PC owners will be able to buy a copy of Vista to install on their current computer. But the computer will have to be "Vista ready" - most likely a fairly new machine with plenty of memory and other robust technical specifications. To add to the confusion, four versions will be available - Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate - each with its own set of features and requirements. Microsoft's Vista website offers advice (microsoft.com/windowsvista /getready) that can help determine which version, if any, an existing computer will be able to run.

More than half of the PCs in use by businesses today can't run any version of Vista, and 94 percent can't run Vista Premium, says a report from Softchoice Corp. Though Vista Basic should operate with 512 megabytes of system memory, for example, 1 or 2 gigabytes is recommended for Vista Premium, the version that displays the most innovative aspects of the new operating system.

Earlier this month, Gartner Inc. predicted that Vista would be the last big release of a new Windows operating system by Microsoft. "The next generation of operating environments will be more modular and will be updated incrementally," the research firm said in a forecast for 2007. "The era of monolithic deployments of software releases is nearing an end. Microsoft will be a visible player in this movement, and the result will be more flexible updates to Windows and a new focus on quality overall."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1221/p17s01-stct.html

U.S. Tech Leadership is so over....or is it?

Every three or four years, the world’s telecommunications industry converges in an extravaganza organised by its global coordinator, the International Telecommunication Union. These gatherings help identify the state of the industry at the time – unbridled exuberance in 1999; doom and gloom in 2003; and now, wireless and broadband expansion that is pulling the industry out of the doldrums, though much of it is run by the same large incumbent network firms which seemed passé just a few years ago.

In the cornucopia it is just as important to identify absences. And one such absence was US leadership. In the past, the direction of technology was strongly influenced by US firms - telecom networks were more advanced in US, policy discussions were shaped by US models, and US government officials offered visions of the future for countries both rich and poor. Not anymore.

On the governmental and policy level, the US has ceased to be the place to find new policy directions. True, much of what is happening around the world has been inspired by FCC policies of five or more years ago, but the next generation of ideas is coming more from London, Seoul, and Brussels than from Washington or the federal states, which were often the laboratory for US policy innovations.

America has been coasting on past glories. And given the long lead times of development and investment, all this will have negative long tem impacts. Already, a recent report by the National Research Council, entitled “Renewing US Telecommunications Research” documents the declining US role - both relatively and absolutely - in telecom R&D, and the void that has not been filled after the gradual demise of Bell Labs.

Leadership must come from the FCC in Washington, the de facto governmental policy setter in this field. But this agency has become highly politicised and divided on important issues. While technology progresses at the breakneck speed of Moore’s Law, the policy process has crawled to an even slower pace as the tone of the public debates has grown nastier on most important issues. Chairman Martin is politically capable and well-connected but also cautious and given to top-down management, and the agency spends some of its capital in stamping out four-letter words on broadcast television. The experimental role of the states has declined. And on top of it, Members of Congress have discovered that to engage in the micro-management of the industry can enhance their own importance.

This is the time to sow new seeds. Television is spreading to the internet. Users are rapidly adding their own content to the media mix. Smart wireless technologies are challenging the established system of exclusive spectrum licenses. Wireless and internet voice services are leapfrogging traditional telephony. Content access and geographic spread issues abound. Any of these trends generate issues, which, if unresolved, will slow and block development. Cellular mobile technology was originally substantially conceived in the US over 25 years ago, but American policy making choked on how to treat it. As a result, Europeans and Japanese forged ahead and the US still has not quite caught up.

The question now is who will set the tone, pace, and business models for the vital infrastructure of the information age. Four years from now, it will likely be set even less by America. This will be costly for its economy and for its “soft power” over global digital culture and politics. While one would wish otherwise, it seems unlikely that Congressional and regulatory leadership will emerge that is willing or capable to change a system that falls each year further behind the pace of technological change.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9b48fa26-8f7f-11db-9ba3-0000779e2340.html

How Apple Stores Beat Tiffany (Go figure!)

Readers of this blog know we’re not big fans of Jobs and Co, but heck, even we have to give credit where credit is due. Apple Computer has shown people will gladly part with money at its candy stores for geeks. But here’s a little-known fact: Apple’s chic stores don’t just sell more per square foot than even Best Buy, they beat some of the best in the luxury retail world silly, according to a report released Tuesday by Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi.

Apple’s stores have hauled in annual sales per square foot of $4,032, compared with Best Buy’s $930, Neiman Marcus’ $611, and luxury store Tiffany & Co.’s $2,666, according to Bernstein. It’s a wild contrast to the failure of Apple rivals such as Gateway to break into the retail market.

Apple’s recipe works like crack. Apple gives customers instant gratification by keeping inventory in stores, unlike its rivals. Apple has opened its stores slowly, building up anticipation for its stores. Finally, those stores are some of the toniest in retail—encouraging customers to drop far more money than they might in a dusty computer shop or utilitarian web site.

“This may be as much an indicator that Apple’s store placement is better than Tiffany’s,” Enderle Group analyst Rob Enderle said.

Apple’s success comes despite Gateway’s retail disaster. When Apple pushed into retail in 2001 Gateway had just shut down 10 percent of its Gateway Country Stores. Gateway closed the last of its stores in 2004. By contrast, Apple, known for its premium products, has successfully pushed a higher-margin business while other computer makers have duked it out over razor-thin margins. Apple stores, on average under 6,000 square feet, each bring in more than $23 million in annual sales, according to the Bernstein report. That compares with annual sales per store of $38 million at Best Buy, which has stores about seven times larger.

“If you’re measuring a store in terms of production per store, that’s pretty impressive,” Mr. Enderle said. “That should be a wakeup for Best Buy.”

Apple’s stellar store sales are also in sharp contrast to Circuit City Stores, which reported a loss Tuesday, and Best Buy, which last week reported profit weaker than expected. It might not come as much of a surprise that Best Buy’s sales team of blue shirts is moving significantly lower sales per square foot than Apple’s salespeople. Plus, it certainly can’t hurt to have stores such as its Fifth Avenue Gallery store in New York City look more like a small museum designed in the form of a glass box. That attracts people alone.

Indeed, Mr. Sacconaghi said that Apple’s retail stores have played a significant part in Apple’s success over the past five years. The analyst said Apple retail stores also had an influence on brand awareness. That brand awareness is equivalent to $60 million spent on advertising, he noted.

Apple has 170 retail locations in four countries. The Mac maker has about 150 U.S. locations. In fiscal 2006, Apple’s retail operations kicked in $200 million in operating profit, as well as $663 million in manufacturing product linked to Apple products sold.

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=20332&hed=How+Apple+Stores+Beat+Tiffany

Bang! Zoom! Google Goes to the Moon and Mars

The NASA Ames Research Center and Google announced Monday that they had signed a formal agreement to collaborate on a broad set of projects that could include virtual flyovers of the Moon and Mars, and other initiatives that will make NASA’s vast trove of space and weather data widely available on the Internet.

“This is going to bring the excitement of space travel” to a wider audience, said S. Pete Worden, director of the Ames Research Center, near Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Mr. Worden said that as the space agency pursued new manned space missions, the technology-sharing agreement might enable people everywhere to feel the crunch of an astronaut’s step as he walked on the surface of the Moon or even Mars.

The collaboration may also allow the public to track space shuttle flights or the International Space Station in real time. The signing of a Space Act Agreement formalizes a planned collaboration announced in September 2005. Still, Google and NASA spoke of possible joint projects only in broad outlines.

Among them was the possibility that, using data from NASA, Google will develop products that work like Google Earth for the Moon and other planets. Google Earth is a software program allowing users to view a three-dimensional image of the world and then zoom in to specific areas for close-up views.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/technology/19google.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

Gates gets a grip! Admits flaws with digital music copy protection

M'soft founder Bill Gates told a group of technology bloggers that copy protection for digital music is too complex for consumers. Doh!

Gates admitted Digital Rights Management is not where it should be, according to Steve Rubel, one of a group of bloggers invited to speak with Gates at Microsoft's Seattle headquarters on Thursday.

DRM technology is designed to prevent people from duplicating music or video and burning it to disc or uploading it to the internet. It's a controversial tool for people who feel it limits what they can do with legally purchased files. It's also a key technology on Microsoft's Zune media player, which makes Gates's comments all the more peculiar.

Techcrunch.com blogger Michael Arrington said Gates's short-term advice for people wishing to transfer songs from one system to another was to "buy a CD and rip it."

Neither Arrington nor Rubel's blogs claimed to quote Gates exactly, though a number of other bloggers from the engagement reported similar information.

Arrington said Gates was candid in admitting no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which causes pain to consumers in its effort to distinguish between legal and illegal uses of audio and video files.

But Gates defended the idea behind DRM, saying incentive systems make a difference.

Gates's comments come in the same week online music retailer eMusic announced its 100 millionth digital music download roughly three years after the service launched. The sales total is well behind the one billion tracks sold by industry leader iTunes over the same time period.
But unlike iTunes, which sells its tracks with DRM technology, eMusic sells tracks in MP3 format without playback restrictions.

"Except for iTunes, the only store that is doing well online with downloads is eMusic, and the reason is because they do sell it without [playback restrictions]," said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/12/15/gates-drm.html

Is iTunes Over?

You mean, has it peaked and are we all eventually going to stop buying music online, if current trends continue? Maybe.

Despite the release of a study by Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research which suggests that the number of purchases per iPod sold of songs from Apple's iTunes Store (for it's no longer only music; there are films, TV episodes and music videos there too) are not accelerating, there are some indicators that there's still room at the top for digital music.

After analysing thousands of credit and debit card transactions of 4,000 people (a statistically valid sample) over 27 months, Bernoff concluded that people do not, over time, accelerate their purchase of online music. Instead, the number of songs sold per iPod (which might be a good approximation - although you don't need an iPod to buy from the iTunes Store) has held steady, averaging about 20 per player.

"The iPod is not necessarily a machine for generating revenue for the music industry," Bernoff noted in his report. "If iPod owners continued to purchase music tracks throughout the lifetime of their ownership, one would expect to see iTunes sales growing at a faster rate than iPods," he concluded.

The problem with his negative conclusion is that accelerating growth in downloads does seem to be what's happening. Says who? Says Michael Constantinos, a graduate at Johns Hopkins university, who has graphed the growth of music downloads from the iTunes Store using publicly-available data from Apple. It shows a remarkable exponential trend (see http://cmichae.acm.jhu.edu). His estimates, made in February, suggest that Apple will pass the 2bn songs mark some time next February, and that the announcement of 1.5bn downloads, made in September, was "pretty much on schedule".

But Bernoff says sales from the store have slowed since January. Can both be right? Perhaps. January is traditionally a time when downloads from the store leap, because everyone is taking advantage of the iTunes gift vouchers that they got for Christmas. Thus downloads (from all music sites) first exceeded physical singles sales in the last week of 2004 - the end of the first year that the iTunes Music Store (as it was) was open in the UK. Expect more of the same this year; for 2006 also saw the first song to reach No.1 purely through digital downloads (Gnarls Barkley's Crazy).

But Bernoff's analysis couldn't spot voucher purchases, which bump up the January downloads volume. That makes the rest of the year look quieter, followed by a leap at the end as more people get broadband and vouchers, and download songs. Recorded music is a seasonal business, as the rash of TV adverts for dire "Best Of" CDs indicates.

No, the iTunes Store isn't going away, and nor are its customers. But Bernoff's research does indicate consumer reluctance to commit to downloads. Perhaps that's because one can often buy the physical CD for the same, or even less, on Amazon than the iTunes Store. In which case the problem is simply one of price. But that's not a problem for Apple - it's one for the record labels. Will they ease their pricing to encourage us online? The signs sure ain't encouraging.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1971024,00.html

We interrupt this blog to mention……

Arctic ice may be history by 2040: study

Caramba! Global warming could melt the Arctic's ice during the summer as early as 2040, raising serious environmental as well as commercial and strategic issues, experts said on Monday.

"The effects of greenhouse warming are starting to rear their ugly head," said Mark Serreze, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Marika Holland, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, projects a slow, steady decline of Arctic ice as global warming continues, with a dramatic "tipping point" in about two decades.

The research, to be published by the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters on Tuesday, found that the extent of sea ice each September could be reduced so abruptly that, within about 20 years, it may begin retreating four times faster than at any time in the observed record.

"The ice is actually quite stable until 2025 and then boom, it goes," Holland told the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. That means that the famous white spot at the top of the globe could be ice-free in summer as early as 2040, according to modeling done on supercomputers.

In one simulation, the September ice shrinks from about 2.3 million square miles (6 million square km) to 770,000 square miles (2 million square km) in a 10-year period. By 2040, only a small amount of perennial sea ice would remain along the north coasts of Greenland and Canada, while most of the Arctic basin would be ice-free in September.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11233481.htm

M’soft’s Vista: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread!

Step right up, step right up! Yes siree, Bob, as Microsoft revs up the Windows Vista marketing engine, it's touting the economic boon the software is expected to bring to the rest of the technology industry.

Microsoft commissioned an economic-impact study, released Sunday night, that suggests Vista will help generate $70 billion in revenue and 157,000 new information-technology jobs in 2007.

The 14-page study by IDC draws on the research firm's published data and forecasts covering all segments of the IT industry, including hardware producers, third-party software vendors and service providers.

IDC estimated the portion of the industry tied to Windows Vista to determine what amount of incremental growth it might produce.

"There is economic activity that's going to happen anyway, but we think Vista will have a bump effect in 2007," said John Gantz, IDC's chief research officer.

Vista, the first new version of Microsoft's flagship operating system in five years, was launched last month for business customers and will be available to consumers late next month.

The 157,000-job gain IDC attributes to Vista is in addition to normal employment growth in the industry. Gantz acknowledged that those workers may not work on Vista exclusively.

"It's the share of employment that's driven by Windows or that touches Windows," he said.

IDC forecasts that for every dollar of revenue Microsoft brings in directly from Vista in 2007, the rest of the industry will see $18 in revenue.

IDC expects Microsoft to ship 35 million copies of Vista in the United States, generating nearly $4 billion in revenue in 2007. (That works out to about $114 in revenue per copy of Vista sold.) Using IDC's multiplier, Vista could be worth $70 billion in revenue to the IT industry in the U.S. next year.

See, Microsoft doesn’t just care about its balance sheet, it cares about you and you. And yes, all of us!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003471536_btvistaimpact11.html

Microsoft lays an egg with Zune

We’re doing our “told you so, told you so” dance! Microsoft Corp. gave its first sales forecast for its Zune music player Wednesday and said results so far have met its expectations, despite data showing the device slipping in the industry rankings since its debut.

The company said sales of Zune should exceed 1 million units for the current fiscal year, ending June 30. That would put Microsoft far behind Apple Computer, which sold 31 million iPods in the same period in 2005 and 2006. Sales of the iPod have grown steadily.

But Bryan Lee, a Microsoft vice president, said Zune sales so far are "pretty much spot on" with what the company expected internally prior to the Nov. 14 launch. He declined to give specific numbers.

Microsoft executives said previously that their intent wasn't to topple the iPod this holiday season but rather to start an initiative that could be competitive long term. The disclosure of the forecast follows a report Monday from the market-research firm NPD Group indicating that sales of Zune fell to fifth place among portable music players in its second week.

"It's great to have all these iPod killer conversations, (but) we didn't expect to beat them in terms of any sales this holiday," Microsoft's Lee said. "Our goal was to get out, get in the market that really they've defined, to their credit, and become relevant, and then go from there." (Yeah,, sure you didn’t expect to beat Apple. Sure.)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/294973_msftzune07.html

Wow! Google, BSkyB become friemds, with benefits!

In the first global team-up of its kind Satellite broadcaster BSkyB said Wednesday it would tie up with Google Inc. to deploy the leading Internet search company's suite of search, advertising and video functions on its broadband service.

BSkyB CEO James Murdoch told reporters the British firm would launch an online, user-generated video-sharing site, its own e-mail service and a search portal. He said the company planned to have the first of the new offerings up and online by spring and then look to move things ahead "pretty fast."

Can YouTube stay on top?

Revenue generated by click-throughs on sponsored advertising links would be shared between the two. Other financial terms of the agreements have not been disclosed.

BSkyB added that it was also looking at launching a product that would enable users to make calls over the Internet - similar to service offered by Skype..

"I've been waiting for this for a while," Eric Schmidt, Google Chair said at a meeting in London, adding that the significance was boosted as it marked the first time Google had sold the use of the back-end technology of YouTube and GMail.

He said that Google was planning similar deals with other large media firms and content providers. "If we can get this structure right over the next few months and it rolls out, then it becomes the index case for every other country and every other operator."

http://money.cnn.com/2006/12/06/news/international/bc.sky.google.broadband.reut/

Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On at Yahoo

So what do you do when you are looking lamer than usual? Go out and find some fresh blood? Nah. You get rid of a few bodies and then start a round of Musical Chairs. Yahoo said yesterday that it was restructuring its operations and shuffling its management ranks amid growing criticism in and outside the company that it had become too bureaucratic to compete effectively against nimbler rivals.

The moves include the departure of Daniel L. Rosensweig, the chief operating officer since April 2002, and the resignation of Lloyd Braun, the former ABC executive who has run Yahoo’s media group.

Under the plan, Yahoo will reorganize itself into three operating units, including one focused on its audience and one on its advertisers and publishers. A third unit, focused on technology, will develop products serving the entire organization.

The reorganization appears to signal the ascendancy of Susan L. Decker, the chief financial officer, a well-regarded executive whose responsibilities were recently expanded to include autos, classifieds, HotJobs, shopping, travel and other Yahoo products. She will now head the advertiser and publisher group.

Ms. Decker joined Yahoo in 2000 from Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, where she served as global director of equity research and before that, a newspaper company analyst. Ms. Decker, known for her tight hold on Yahoo’s purse strings, is seen as a possible candidate to succeed Mr. Semel, now that Mr. Rosensweig is hitting the road.

Nevermind that it's the leading Internet destination, Yahoo has suffered many setbacks in recent months, including the delay of a major overhaul of its advertising system. Its problems include the growing lead that Google enjoys in searches and advertising, and an inability to compete effectively in social networking media, where companies like MySpace and YouTube have been acquired by rivals. There have been increasing reports of departures, low morale and internal complaints of a growing bureaucracy.

Does anyone think that the reorg will change anything? Seriously?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/technology/06yahoo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Mac Users are Shit Out of Luck

MSoft has officially launched Office 2007, but that's bad news for Mac users. Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 now all use different file formats: docx, xlsx and pptx.

Microsoft is calling these "Microsoft Office Open XML Formats", but Office for Mac users will find them far from "open". In fact, they can't read them. Take Word 2007, for example. By default it saves documents in the new *.docx format. Trying to open one of these in Word for Mac 2004 yields the following garbled mess:

Office 2003 for Windows users can download a compatibility pack which makes it possible to open Office 2007 documents. However, while the Mac Business Unit has promised converters, it is providing no certainty on when they will be available.

A spokesperson for the MBU reminded APC of its promise at WWDC that "free downloadable converters would be available" following the release of Office 2007 for Windows, but was unable to tell us when.

"Unfortunately it is still to early for us to say when the converters will be available", she said.

Hopefully, I asked two developers who produce alternative word processors that currently import and export Word documents (Mellel, Nisus Writer Express) if they were planning to have converters for their apps available before MBU gets around to releasing theirs. Sadly, not.

Dave Larsen of Nisus said that resourcing is the big issue for small developers: "At the moment, we don't have any plans to do it. However, once the new Office gets released, I suppose we will seriously look into it."

Of course, Office 2007 applications can save their documents in "backward compatible" formats, but that be a pain for co-workers and Mac users alike.

But there is a silver lining to this cloud, the only good news to come out of the announcement is the reluctance of businesses to upgrade. According to some sources, businesses will wait up to two years to make the switch.

http://apcmag.com/node/4755

Microsoft’s new design tools: Who really believes them?

Get a grip, people. Microsoft is sending out mixed messages, in terms of its Web-design-tool strategy.

First, there's the positioning. Redmond's "we plan to complement, not compete with Adobe" rhetoric — which I'm doubtful anyone who knows Microsoft will buy for a second.

And then there's the partitioning. Microsoft's decision not to make available its new design products available via its traditional developer channels, like Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN). Already, that move has got some Microsoft customers up-in-arms.

On December 4, Microsoft shared more specifics on its somewhat murky strategy for its Expression design tools and Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/e) Web- presentation software. Microsoft is making available for download and/or purchase on Monday the following products:

• The first public beta of Expression Blend (the product formerly code-named "Sparkle," and, later "Expression Interactive Designer");

• A new Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of Expression Design (the product formerly code-named "Acrylic," and, later, "Expression Graphic Designer");

• The final version of Expression Web (the product formerly code-named "Quartz," and later "Expression Web Designer") and

• The first public CTP test build of WPF/e.

Microsoft is planning to release the final versions of its Expression tools either as standalone entities, or as a complete suite. If you buy the Expression Studio suite — which is set to ship in Q2 of 2007 — you get Blend, Design, Web, a new digital-asset-management tool called "Media" (based on the iView Media Pro technology Microsoft bought in June); and a copy of Visual Studio. Microsoft is pricing that bundle at $599 (estimated retail price) — which is considerably less than Adobe Systems charges for Creative Suite 2. (CS2 Standard costs roughly $899; Premium, $1,199.)

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=128

Has M’Soft become IBM?

If you had to ask, you haven’t been coming around here much. But seriously folks, Microsoft Corp. has put a mountain of money behind its Xbox 360 videogame system and is making another big bet on its Zune digital music player. And after years of research, the company Thursday set in motion one of its most important product launches with the release of its Windows Vista operating system to corporate customers.

But despite the company's marketing muscle, army of engineers and $7.5 billion annual budget for research and development, the software titan finds itself facing real competition on more fronts than ever before. Some threats, like Google Inc.'s ad-based Internet services, are new. Others, like the resurgence of Apple Computer Inc., are not.
As the computing landscape continues to evolve, is the world's largest technology company driving innovation or racing to catch up? The Wall Street Journal Online invited a tech blogger, longtime Microsoft critic Dave Winer, to give his opinion via email, which is below.

Mr. Winer: Microsoft isn't an innovator, and never was. They are always playing catch-up, by design. That's their M.O. They describe their development approach as "chasing tail lights." They aren't interested in markets until they're worth billions, so they let others develop the markets, and have been content to catch-up. This worked well for them in the 80s and through the mid-90s, when they were a more nimble company with stock options that were attractive to bright young people, when Bill G had something to prove, and was current on the latest technology. Maybe it still does work (obviously I have doubts), but it sure isn't innovation, in any usual sense of the word.

(BTW: Dave Winer, 51, is a software developer and author of the Scripting News blog, which he has written since 1997. Mr. Winer has helped create several standards related to Web publishing, including Really Simple Syndication or RSS. He was the founder and chief executive of UserLand Software Inc., and a founder of Symantec Corp.)

Microsoft is troubled. They've grown to the size of IBM when they ran circles around them, and they behave like IBM, they even talk about themselves like IBM used to talk about themselves, showing a dangerous confidence that is very un-Microsoft. Their strength, even charm, was their lack of hubris. Gates could always see their demise, vividly and clearly, this was a picture he drew for the people of Microsoft so they would always be looking for the angle that would save them from their demise. Today they seem to believe they're as permanent as IBM thought they were in the 80s, when the conventional wisdom said that no one got fired for buying IBM. That didn't save them when the PC industry changed the rules on them, much the way the rules are being changed on Microsoft.

Further, the one thing they used to do better than most tech companies, empathize with the user, is now a weak spot. I was an exclusive Windows user myself until mid-last year, when I switched to the Macintosh, because the malware situation had become so awful on Windows. I feel Microsoft could have done something about this before it became so bad, but they didn't.

Their usual excuse for making difficult systems is their reliance on hardware [original equipment manufacturers], that's why Windows is so hard to install and manage, they say. But who can they blame for the security problems of Windows?

No one wants to change operating systems, so this has given Microsoft many years to address the problem. They boast that they have solved them in Vista. I kind of doubt they have, but I we'll have to see.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116490323676636989-HnHPKLzkyy9xKy2wnokbd2bc_bE_20071130.html