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Apple to Unveil Faster IPhone

Apple Inc. will introduce a version of the iPhone next year that can download from the Internet at a faster rate, AT&T Inc. Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson said.

The device will operate on third-generation wireless networks, Stephenson said today at a meeting of the Churchill Club in Santa Clara, California. San Antonio-based AT&T is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S.

``You'll have it next year,'' Stephenson said in response to a question about when the 3G iPhone would debut. He said he didn't know how much more the new version will cost than the existing model, which sells for $399. Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs ``will dictate what the price of the phone is,'' he said.

Jobs plans to sell 10 million iPhones worldwide in 2008, which would give Cupertino, California-based Apple 1 percent of the mobile-phone market. Apple had sold 1.4 million handsets through the end of September.

The prospect of a new handset may make some shoppers put off buying an iPhone this year, Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis, said in an e-mail. The number of shoppers who delay a purchase won't be ``enough to make a difference,'' he said. Munster has advised buying Apple shares since June 2004.

The device, which combines features of an iPod music player with a mobile handset, can download videos from Google Inc.'s YouTube and find driving directions over a wireless connection. Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined to comment.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aAoHevYzQJgw

Cyber cold wars fears grow

Forget run of the mill cybercrooks, international cyber spying will pose the single biggest information security threat in 2008.

That's according to security giant McAfee, which also predicts increased attacks against e-banking services and the growth of an increasingly sophisticated market for malware next year.

McAfee's annual Virtual Criminology report looked at global cyber security trends, with input from NATO, the FBI, and universities.

The report noted the growing use of the internet for cyber spying and attacks by government and allied groups. Targets include critical national infrastructure network systems such as electricity, air traffic control, financial markets, and government computer networks.

As many as 120 countries are using the internet for espionage. The most high profile cyber-attack this year was thrown against the national infrastructure of Estonia. Cyber assaults in general have become more sophisticated over recent months, featuring techniques designed to slip under the radar of government cyber defences.

Western governments have pointed the finger of blame for targeted Trojan attacks towards China, which has denied any involvement in the assaults.

According to NATO insiders, cited by McAfee, many governments are ill-prepared to fend off cyber-attacks. These insiders believe the attack on Estonia, which disrupted government, news, and bank servers for several weeks, is just the tip of the iceberg in cyber warfare.

"Traditional protective measures were not enough to protect against the attacks on Estonia's critical national infrastructure. Botnets, unsurprisingly, were used but the complexity and coordination seen was new. There were a series of attacks with careful timing using different techniques and specific targets. The attackers stopped deliberately rather than being shut down," a NATO informant told McAfee.

McAfee reckons attacks have progressed from "curiosity probes to well-funded and well organised operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage".

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/29/cyber_cold_war/

Jerkoff Jobs tops list of business power people

What bong have they been hitting?

Five of Fortune magazine's top four most powerful businesspeople in the world are very familiar to the tech world--and one of the names you might have expected to crack the top five isn't there.

Apple co-founder Jobs came in at the top of the list, which was posted to the magazine's Web site Tuesday. The magazine noted that Apple's chairman and CEO "twice altered the direction of the computer industry"--with the introduction of the graphical user interface and the conception of "desktop publishing" (the quote marks around desktop publishing are courtesy of the magazine). Also noted prominently were Jobs' forays into the entertainment industry with the introduction of iPod and iTunes, as well as his success with animation powerhouse Pixar.

No. 2 on the list is publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch. The News Corp. chairman and CEO caused quite a ripple on the Internet with his recent purchase of The Wall Street Journal, but nothing close to the splash created by MySpace, which he acquired for $580 million in 2005. MySpace, the world's largest social-networking site, has some 100 million users worldwide. In light of a recent deal with Microsoft that valued competitor Facebook at a cool $15 billion, Murdoch got one of the better deals in tech history.

Next on the tech list is where Fortune's accounting gets a little out of whack. But, hey, we are talking about the guys from Google. If you could count as high as their checking account balances, you could make up your own rules too. Coming in at No. 4 are Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergei Brin. What started out as the company that powered Yahoo's search engine in 2000 is now one of the biggest companies in the world. In addition to "massively" disrupting the advertising industry, the magazine notes that the ambitions of Google's CEO and co-founders are "boundless," with new focuses on the wireless industry and renewable energy.

At No. 5 is Warren Buffett, and while not being a major tech player, he is quite a card player who has been known to move markets as well as athletes to action. He also moved his famous friend and fellow contract bridge enthusiast Bill Gates out of the top five shuffle.

Yeah. Not in the top five. Not No. 6 either (that would be ExxonMobil's Rex Tillerson). You have to go to the next stop on Fortune's list to find Microsoft's co-founder and chairman, or the seventh most powerful person in business (or No. 9 not applying Fortune accounting). The magazine notes that he "invented the software industry, (and) masterminded the rise of the PC," but is it giving him lower ranking due to his impending part-time status at the software giant?

The other power player keeping Gates out of the top five was Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs (No. 3).

A couple of other names not on the list were Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who once upon a time tried to buy Apple but decided against it, and Gil Amelio, who resigned as CEO before Jobs returned to the company's helm and engineered its long string of successes.

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9824636-7.html?tag=nefd.blgs

Google Earth Heading Towards Extinction?

Google has announced two new features for Google Maps that mimic features in Google Earth, begging the question: is Google Earth on borrowed time?

The first new feature is the additional of terrain in Google Maps. The terrain fly over feature has long been available in Google Earth, but now you can fly over a map and see the contours of the land, all without the need to download Google Earth.

The second new feature mimics the community contribution feature of Google Earth. “Our Maps” brings wiki-style collaboration to Google Maps, with users able to annotate places and share those notes with friends or the greater public.

Google acquired Keyhole in October 2004 and it was immediately obvious as to why: Google wanted the satellite imagery to support their move into serious mapping. Keyhole provided Google Earth, a downloadable program that gave a then unprecedented view of the earth through the use of satellite imagery, but Google isn’t a software company, Picasa and a few small efforts aside. Google has integrated many of the functions from Keyhole into Google Maps whilst continuing to sustain Google Earth, but for how much longer? As Google Maps takes on more and more of the functionality of Google Earth the appeal of Earth must diminish. It also makes sense that Google would rather grow and sustain a web product over a software download. Google Earth will still be with us for some time to come, but how long is now up to Google, and I’m betting that Google is already looking at ending support sometime in the next year or two as Google Maps becomes everything Google Earth now is, but online and without the download.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/28/google-earth-heading-towards-extinction/

Brits Aren’t Feeling The iPhone iLove

Brits Aren't Feeling The iPhone iLoveDespite the explosion of hype that surrounded the UK launch of Apple’s iPhones, the Great British Public have failed to match the gusset-moistening levels of excitement that followed the US launch, with moderate sales and punters distinctly cool about the price.

A recent report in the Register based on ‘reliable sources’ found that the UK’s sole carrier O2 had activated just 26,500 iPhones since its launch two weeks ago, a figure way short of the 100,000 units anticipated by some pundits.

Although the Register observes that the number of activations may not actually match the number of iPhones sold (some may have been sold as gifts or have not yet been activated), they calculated that, “the gross is unlikely to be significantly higher.”

A new survey by research firm GfK NOP won’t generate much iCheer at Apple UK either, with its findings saying that just two per cent of UK consumers had put the phone on their Christmas lists.

The hefty expense of owning an iPhone was seen as a major reason for the lack of wallet-opening amongst punters, despite a general enthusiasm for the way the thing looked and operated (indeed, our well-heeled reviewer was very positive about the phone in our in-depth review).

GfK NOP (try saying that with a mouthful of Weetabix) found that three-quarters of the 500 people surveyed knew about the iPhone, with over a quarter of that figure digging its looks.

Apple’s hype-balloon had also managed to successfully convey the iPhone’s star features to consumers, with more than three quarters associating it with music, and just under two thirds linking the device with internet use and email.

“Apple’s history proves that it has the magic touch when it comes to product development and marketing, but the iPhone has yet to capture the imagination of the UK public,” said Richard Jameson, top dog at GfK NOP Technology.

Jameson added that, “Apple needs more than cutting-edge design to penetrate this market and will have to work much harder in the UK than it did in the US to make iPhone a mass-market proposition.”

http://digital-lifestyles.info/2007/11/27/brits-arent-feeling-the-iphone-ilove/

Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test

Toldja! New tests have revealed that Windows XP with the beta Service Pack 3 has twice the performance of Vista, even with its long-awaited Service Pack 1.

Vista's first service pack, to be released early next year, is intended to boost the operating system's performance. However, when Vista with the Service Pack 1 (SP1) beta was put through benchmark testing by researchers at Florida-based software development company Devil Mountain Software, the improvement was not overwhelming, leaving the latest Windows iteration outshined by its predecessor.

Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP's 35 seconds.

Vista's performance with the service pack increased less than 2 percent compared to performance without SP1--much lower than XP's SP3 improvement of 10 percent. The tests, run on a Dell XPS M1710 test bed with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM, put Microsoft Office 2007 through a set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentation materials.

In response to the test, a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement that although the company understood the interest in the service packs, they are "still in development" and will continue to evolve before their release. "It has always been our goal to deliver service packs that meet the full spectrum of customer needs," the spokesperson said.

If SP1 does not evolve sufficiently, it could be another setback for Vista, with many businesses waiting to adopt the operating system until the service pack is released.

Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test Black Friday's hottest gadget buys Extra: Greenpeace slams Microsoft, Nintendo over toxic consoles

A year after its launch, only 13 percent of businesses have adopted Vista, according to a survey of IT professionals.

Microsoft admits that the launch has not gone as well as the company would have liked. "Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista," corporate vice president Mike Sievert said in a recent interview at Microsoft's partner conference in Denver.

http://www.news.com/2100-1016_3-6220201.html

Universal Music CEO Doug Morris Speaks, Recording Industry in Even Deeper Shit Than We Thought

Does the music biz have even six months to live?

In the December issue of Wired, Seth Mnookin sits down with Universal Music Group CEO/supervillain Doug Morris for a pretty excellent profile (which is, tragically, not yet online). In it, Mnookin paints the 68-year old Morris as a crotchety executive who's upset that he can't focus more on simple product and artist development because he's too busy worrying about iPods, MP3s, and his company's digital strategy (which was never really supposed to be part of his job description when he took the gig in 1995). In a way, he almost comes off as cute, like if your grandfather were accidentally hired to run Google (at one point, Morris hilariously compares his embattled industry to a character in "Li'l Abner," a comic strip that stopped running in 1977).

As for his actual digital strategy, it's pretty much what we expected — Morris's singular goal these days is to limit the power of Steve Jobs and iTunes. He puts most of his energy into designing Universal's own Internet music store (Total Music, which is definitely doomed to fail), cutting deals with Apple competitor Microsoft for a piece of those massive Zune profits, and heroically doing all he can to make it even more difficult for consumers to justify paying for music online. But then he says something so ridiculous it sort of blows our minds.

When Morris is asked why the music business didn't work harder, in the early days of file-sharing, to build its own (legal) online presence, there's this exchange:

"There's no one in the record industry that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"

Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn't an option. "We didn't know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me."

Even though we shouldn't be, we're actually a little shocked. We'd always assumed the labels had met with a team of technology experts in the late nineties and ignored their advice, but it turns out they never even got that far — they didn't even try! Understanding the Internet certainly isn't easy — especially for an industry run by a bunch of technology-averse sexagenarians — but it's definitely not impossible. The original Napster hit its peak in 1999 — kids born since then have hacked into CIA computers. Surely it wouldn't have taken someone at Universal more than a month or two to learn enough about the Internet to know who to call to answer a few questions. They didn't even have any geeky interns? We give this industry six months to live.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/11/universal_music_ceo_doug_morris.html

The Word is out: Microsoft will face online fight on core software

The co-founder of Hotmail, the web-based e-mail service bought by Microsoft for $400 million a decade ago, is challenging the American software giant’s core $20 billion (£9.7 billion) office desktop business.

Yesterday Sabeer Bhatia released a free online rival to the bestselling Office suite of applications that will allow users to view, share and edit documents from any computer.

The Indian-born Stanford graduate said that Live Documents would pose a “significant” challenge to Microsoft’s propriety software business, which eventually would be made redundant by the evolving internet applications industry. Office, bundling the Word word-processing, Excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation tools, accounted for a third of Microsoft’s total revenues last year. It is forecast to top $20 billion this year.

“We are just a few years away from the end of the shrink-wrapped software business. By 2010, people will not be buying software,” Mr Bhatia said. “This is a significant challenge to a proportion of Microsoft’s revenues.”

The latest rival product was developed by InstaColl, a Bangalore-based company that is chaired by Mr Bhatia and backed by SoftBank’s Bodhi Fund. He admitted that “a few million bucks” of Microsoft’s payment from the sale of Hotmail went into its creation.

Live Documents is similar to Google Apps, launched in February and used by companies including Proctor & Gamble, General Electric and Capgemini as a cheaper alternative to Microsoft. However, Mr Bhatia claims that his product is superior to Google’s in its range and quality, most crucially because it mimics Office 2007. Most of Office’s estimated 500 million customers have yet to upgrade from the 2003 version, while it is not available for Apple computers.

He said. “This will do for documents what Hotmail did for e-mail. Why spend $400 on an upgrade when you can get it for free?”

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology
/article2917414.ece

Apple pays $10m to end iTunes patent clash

Apple has agreed to pay Burst.com $10m to settle the patent infringement challenge the smaller US company launched against it in April 2006.

Back then, Burst.com claimed Apple's iTunes Music Store, QuickTime streaming software and the iPod all incorporate without permission technology detailed in four patents held by Burst.com: 4,963,995; 5,995,705; 5,057,932 and 5,164,839. The IP covers the transmission of compressed audio and video files over the net.

Apple was clearly aware of the patents: earlier in 2006, before Burst.com's lawsuit, Apple asked the US court to declare Burst.com's patents to be invalid and Apple's products not to infringe them.

The Apple case followed Burst.com's win against Microsoft on similar grounds. It sued the software giant in June 2002. By 2005, however, the two companies had reached an out-of-court settlement that saw Microsoft pay Burst.com $60m for the right to use the latter's technology.

Apple's got off lightly then, paying a sixth of what MS did - less if you take the past two year's inflation into account - for essentially the same rights: to use Burst.com's current technology portfolio with the exception of some digital video recorder IP and other patents that are pending. However, Burst.com promised not to sue Apple in relation to these exceptions and it will pick up both parties' costs.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/22/apple_pays_10m_to_burst_com/

Firefox version 3 makes beta

New features for the brave, or foolhardy

Version 3 of Firefox, the alternative web browser of choice, is now available to download for its first beta test.

After 27 months of hard work the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine has been integrated, and the development team is feeling ready to share its project with the world.

Version 3 has improved security features to combat phishing and communicate with anti-virus software, as well as respecting parental-control settings such as those used by Windows Vista. Better zooming and tab controls, and tweaks such as offering to save tabs on closing and use of the Mac OS X spellchecker, are also included.

More than two million lines of code have been changed and 11,000 issues fixed, which should bring faster rendering and better memory management (apparently more than 300 memory leaks have been fixed in this version).

The Beta 1 is clearly marked for testing purposes only, but when installed will overwrite any existing Firefox installation (unless you're doing something clever with virtualisation or similar). But testers are needed so the final bugs can be tracked down and fixed, before the rest of us follow suit once it's safe to do so.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/20/firefox_beta_1/

Facebook Slapped with UK data probe

Why can't we delete accounts?

Facebook is facing investigation by UK data protection watchdogs after a complaint from a British user who tried, and failed, to delete his account.

Facebook accounts can be "deactivated" but not actually deleted. Your profile remains in the Facebook servers but cannot be accessed by anyone else.

The Information Commissioner confirmed to the Register that it has received a complaint and will investigate the firm.

The ICO sent us the following statement: "Many people are posting content on social networking sites without thinking about the electronic footprint they leave behind. It is important that individuals consider this when putting information online. However, it is equally important that websites also take some responsibility.

"In particular, they should ensure that personal information is not retained for longer than necessary especially when the information relates to a person who no longer uses the site. Organisations can ensure personal information is effectively protected by complying with the principles of the Data Protection Act. We will be publishing research on the need for people to protect information of a personal nature online later in November."

Facebook's terms and conditions make it clear that you give up just about any rights to anything you post on the site.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/20/facebook_uk_data_protection/

German Court Clobbers iPhone; Must Be Offered Without Contract Restrictions

70% of the profit goes down the drain

Last month, French law forced Jobs to promise that consumers could buy a version of its iPhone in this country without having to be locked into a long-term contract with Orange, the only mobile phone operator offering the new device.

Now, the same issue is tripping up Job’s scheme to sell the music-playing cellphone in Germany, the largest European telephone market. Last week, the Vodafone Group won the first round of a legal case against T-Mobile over its exclusive deal to sell the iPhone there.

A German court ruled that T-Mobile must offer the iPhone to everyone, even without the 24-month contract that it had required for buyers of the phone, which went on sale in Germany for 399 euros ($591) on Nov. 9. T-Mobile is appealing the ruling.

Vodafone of Britain had tried to secure its own pan-European exclusive deal with Jobs for the iPhone. A spokesman, Simon Gordon, said the company was not trying to block the sale of the device but rather trying to level the playing field in Germany. Vodafone operates Vodafone Germany, the No. 2 German carrier. T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, is the industry leader there, with 34 million customers.

Various European countries have laws that protect consumers from being forced to buy something else as a condition of buying a product. Britain does not have the same kind of restrictions, allowing O2, a mobile network operator owned by Telefónica of Spain, to sell the iPhone there with an 18-month exclusive contract.

Although Apple has announced sales plans for only the three largest European markets, restrictions on whether carriers can tie or subsidize phones also exist in several other Continental countries, including Belgium, Italy and Finland.

T-Mobile’s position is that tying a mobile phone to a contract with one provider is rare but not new in Germany, while Vodafone argues that all mobile phones sold there should be available for use with any provider. T-Mobile insisted that iPhone sales would continue uninterrupted, but warned that it reserved the right to seek damages from Vodafone.

The iPhone is scheduled to go on sale next week in France. The exclusive French carrier, Orange, a subsidiary of France Télécom, has not disclosed any details of the purchase, like the minimum length of the contract for locked models, or the cost of the unlocked model. An Orange spokeswoman, Béatrice Mandine, did not return phone calls seeking comment on Tuesday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/technology/21iphone.html?_r=1&ref=
technology&oref=slogin

Suit on Job’s Options Is So Over

Apple won dismissal yesterday of a lawsuit claiming that company directors and managers, including the chief exec, Jobs (aka The Jerk) , lied to shareholders about the backdating of option awards.

Judge Jeremy D. Fogel of Federal District Court in San Jose, Calif., said in his ruling that he dismissed the suit because it was based on statements made more than three years before the case was filed.

Apple, maker of the iPod and iPhone music and video players, said last year that it backdated 6,428 stock-option grants issued from 1997 to 2002, according to the order. Changing the date on a grant can provide added gains.

Apple argued that the suit was “time barred” because it was not filed within the required three years after the statements the case cites were issued. Judge Fogel said in his order that he would allow shareholders to file the suit again if they could show Apple filed false statements about the option awards on or after July 30, 2003.

The lawsuit was filed June 30, 2006.

Judge Fogel dismissed a similar suit last Wednesday, suggesting shareholders could pursue their case by joining the suit he dismissed yesterday, a derivative lawsuit by Apple investors on behalf of the company, accusing directors and officers of breaching corporate duties.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/technology/20apple.html?ref=technology

Internet will brown out in two years

ISPs and telcos have no backbone

The World Wide Web will slow to a crawl in two years unless ISPs and telcos start investing in infrastructure, someone reckons.

Macworld quotes a study by the Nemertes Research Group, which reckons that a flood of video and other web content is going to flood the Interweb by 2010.

Unless telcos invest about $137 billion in new capacity then everything will go brown and your broadband will slow to modem speed, the report warned.

The telcos are planning investments in infrastructure, but the report says that they only want to spend about half of what they need.

In the US backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed, Nemertes said.

Nemertes came up with its figures by applying something that is a bit like Moore's Law to the pace of internet software development and dividing by its shoe size.

Although core fibre and switching/routing resources scale nicely, Internet access infrastructure, especially in America, is pretty wobbly.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/20/internet-brown-outs-two-years

Everything fine and dandy with HP in Q4

On the up and up and up

Ongoing cost-cutting measures at Hewlett-Packard continue to make their quarterly earnings a cheerful affair for stockholders — although probably not for the 15,000 former employees sacrificed since 2005 to buoy profits.

The largest PC vendor's fourth quarter results beat analyst expectations today, and the company offered a solid outlook for the next quarter.

"We are effectively balancing our growth, investments and cost reduction initiatives" said CEO Mark Hurd during an investor conference call today. "While our fourth quarter results showed marked improvement, we still have work to do and investments to make."

Net revenue for the quarter was $28.3bn, up 15 per cent from $24.6bn a year earlier. Analysts were expecting revenue to land around $27.5bn.

Meanwhile, the Q4 operating profit was up 38 per cent year-over-year to $2.6bn.

"Strong performance across our businesses was highlighted by sharp improvements in our software segment," elaborated Hurd.

HP software revenue doubled over the prior-year period to $698m. The company said growth was led by the businesses acquired in their purchase of Mercury Interactive last year.

Notebook revenue grew 49 per cent year-over year to $5.16bn. Desktop revenue made a smaller jump of 15 per cent from last year to $4.2bn.

HP's server biz grew 10 per cent year-over-year to $5.2bn. Sales of x86 systems increased 14 per cent, while x86 blade revenue leaped 78 per cent. Storage revenue grew 7 per cent.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/19/hp_q4_07_earnings/

Jobs May Get a Raise

In its annual 10-K report, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple says that "because Mr. Jobs's continued leadership is critical to Apple, the compensation committee is considering additional compensation arrangements for him."

The man better known on these pages as the Jerkoff has taken only a token annual salary of $1 since returning to Apple in 1996, for which he is recognized as the world's lowest-paid CEO by Guinness World Records. He is well-compensated by other means, however, being the frequent recipient of gifts from Apple's board of directors, such as a Gulfstream Jet and tens of millions of shares in restricted stock, which have contributed to Jobs's estimated net worth of $5.7 billion. (One incentive for this form of compensation: Capital gains tax on stock market profits is less exacting than federal income tax on earnings.)

The "low-paid but highly-compensated" approach at Apple isn't limited to Jobs. Board Director Al Gore is the lowest-paid director apart from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, but accepted $15,245 in hardware. It's a safe bet that he's one Dude who isn't getting Dells. And some 21,600 Apple staffers received free iPhones (and they didn't even have to wait in line).

Stock options have caused difficulties for Jobs recently. Options conferred to Jobs in 2001 -- 7.5 million of them -- were granted at an unusually low exercise price. Investigators examined the possibility these options were back-dated, but no charges have been filed, and an internal investigation at Apple found that Jobs was unaware of how stock options were issued. A judge threw out a lawsuit related to the options affair on Wednesday.

That $1-a-year salary might not be enough any more for Apple's control freak.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/11/steve-jobs-may.html

Google's Huge, Risky Wireless Plan Could Crush Cash Flow

How much Google has spent on capital expenditures in recent years? ($3.9 billion in the last eight quarters). You ain't seen nothing yet.

According to the WSJ, Google is indeed preparing to bid in January's wireless spectrum auction, with the spectrum expected to go for $4.6 billion or more. If Google wins the auction and builds its own national wireless network (presumably the idea), the network itself could cost an additional $3 billion. So, in total, that's about $8 billion.

On the positive side, Google is so fantastically wealthy that $8 billion is equivalent to only about two years of current cash flow. The WSJ also says Google is exploring financing options, which could presumably include equity or debt partners, as well as the creation of a separate Google Wireless company. The latter structure would preserve the current company's profit margins and cash flow. But no matter how you look at it, it's still a big bet...

Google's stock has been hammered over the past two weeks, falling 15% from a high close of $742 on November 6th to $629 yesterday. Part of this drop is probably the usual post-earnings sell-off. Part of it is probably the cratering economy. And part of it has probably been word about Google's wireless spectrum plans leaking out. Investors hate reductions in free cash flow, and Google's wireless spectrum plans could obliterate it.

Consumers should cheer: Google's wireless plans can only be good for them. Google purists should also cheer: The company is staying true to its IPO mission statement, in which it said it would not shy away from making big bets in order to preserve pristine quarterly earnings reports (which it has managed to do most of the time anyway). But investors are right to worry: Bidding on spectrum and constructing and operating national wireless networks are miles beyond Google's core competencies. This doesn't mean they'll fail. It does mean they'll be taking a major, expensive risk.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/11/googles-huge-ri.html

Is Microsoft Still Hallucinating About Online Ad Future?

Redmond should lay off the bongwater. Reuters reports that Microsoft div. president Kevin Johnson added more detail to Microsoft's online ad ambitions at a UBS conference yesterday. Specifically, he said that within 3-5 years, Microsoft's goal is to become the No. 2 player in online advertising with a "10, 20, 30, 40" plan:

* 10: Grow share of online pageviews from 6% now to 10%.

* 20: Boost share of minutes spent from 17% to 20%.

* 30: Grow share of search from 10% to 30% (dollars or queries? Not clear)

* 40: Grow share of advertising dollars from 6% to 40%

The first two goals are achievable. The second two are a pipe-dream--unless Microsoft buys Yahoo...

Based on Johnson's comments, Microsoft still appears to think that search share is about technology (Johnson cited the age-old "relevance" pablum). It isn't. Consumers aren't going to switch search engines because of claims of better relevance.

Search share is about brand and habit. Unless Google falls asleep at the switch, there is no way that Microsoft will ever claw back 30% search share. It could have it tomorrow if it bought Yahoo, however.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/11/microsoft-msft-1.html

From Our Dept, of Shock and Awe: Microsoft exec calls XP hack 'frightening

In just a matter of minutes, e-crime experts hack into a Windows XP computer that is unprotected and connected to an unsecured wireless network.

A Microsoft exec calls the ease with which two British e-crime specialists managed to hack into a Windows XP computer as both "enlightening and frightening."

The demonstration took place Monday at an event sponsored by Get Safe Online--a joint initiative of the U.K. government and industry. At the event, which was aimed at heightening security awareness among small businesses, two members of the U.K. government intelligence group Serious Organized Crime Agency connected a machine running Windows XP with Service Pack 1 to an unsecured wireless network. The machine was running no antivirus, firewall, or anti-spyware software and contained a sample target file of passwords to be stolen.

The SOCA officials wished to remain anonymous. One of them, "Mick," remained behind a screen while carrying out the hack into the unpatched computer of a fellow officer, "Andy."

"It's easy to connect to an unsecured wireless network," said Mick. "You could equate Andy with being in his bedroom, while I'm scanning for networks outside in my car. If I ordered or viewed illegal materials, it would come back to Andy."

Mick used a common, open-source exploit-finding tool he had downloaded from the Internet. SOCA asked ZDNet UK not to divulge the name of the tool.

"You can download attack tools from the Internet, and even script kiddies can use this one," said Mick.

Mick found the IP address of his own computer by using the XP Wireless Network Connection Status dialog box. He deduced the IP address of Andy's computer by typing different numerically adjacent addresses in that IP range into the attack tool, then scanning the addresses to see if they belonged to a vulnerable machine.

Using a different attack tool, he produced a security report detailing the vulnerabilities found on the system. Mick decided to exploit one of them. Using the attack tool, Mick built a piece of malware in MS-DOS, giving it a payload that would exploit the flaw within a couple of minutes.

Getting onto the unsecured wireless network, pinging possible IP addresses of other computers on the network, finding Andy's unpatched computer, scanning open ports for vulnerabilities, using the attack tool to build an exploit, and using the malware to get into the XP command shell took six minutes

"If you were in (a cafe with Wi-Fi access), your coffee wouldn't even have cooled down yet," said Sharon Lemon, deputy director of SOCA's e-crime unit.

Mick then went into the My Documents folder and, using a trivial transfer protocol, transferred the document containing passwords to his own computer. The whole process took 11 minutes.

A SOCA representative said that the demonstration was "purely to point out that, if a system hasn't had patches, it's a relatively simple matter to hack into it." SOCA stopped short of recommending small businesses move to Vista; a SOCA representative said that applying Service Pack 2 to XP, with all the patches applied, and running a secured wireless network is "perfectly sensible way to do it."

Nick McGrath, head of platform strategy for Microsoft U.K., was surprised by the incident.

"In the demonstration we saw, it was both enlightening and frightening to witness the seeming ease of the attack on the (Windows) computer," said McGrath. "But the computer was new, not updated, and not patched."

http://www.news.com/Microsoft-exec-calls-XP-hack-frightening/2100-7349_3-6218238.html?tag=nefd.pop

Spitzer Ditches Amazon Tax

In a second major policy reversal in less than a day, Governor Spitzer is backing down from a plan to require Amazon.com and other online retailers to charge state and local sales taxes on all purchases from New York.

Yesterday, just hours after The New York Sun reported on the new revenue collection scheme, the Spitzer administration announced that it was burying it for the time being — at least until after the Christmas shopping season. The move saved New York City shoppers from having to pay an additional 8.375% on many Amazon.com goods.

"Governor Spitzer believes that now is not the right time to be increasing sales taxes on New Yorkers," Mr. Spitzer's budget director, Paul Francis, said in a statement. "He has directed the Department of Tax and Finance to pull back its interpretation that would require some Internet retailers that do not collect sales tax to do so."

The turnabout came just hours after Mr. Spitzer said he was dropping his plan to allow illegal immigrants in New York to obtain driver's licenses.

In this latest instance, Mr. Spitzer wasted little time before pulling the plug on another controversial policy, aborting it before it threatened to snowball into a distraction for his administration.

Before Mr. Spitzer announced his retreat, Albany Republicans, who turned the license issue into a potent rallying cry against the governor, were drawing up plans for a fresh wave of attacks. Lawmakers said they were planning to seize on the tax policy as evidence that the governor had reneged on his pledges not to raise taxes.

Some were comparing the so-called Amazon Tax to the controversy that erupted in 1992 when New York tax agents staked out parking lots at New Jersey malls and scribbled down the license plates of New York customers taking advantage of the Garden State's lower taxes.

The Spitzer administration, which is facing a $4.3 billion deficit next year, was attempting to collect tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue from unreported use taxes from New Yorkers who shop at out-of-state online retailers, such as Amazon.com.

The policy would have forced Amazon.com to collect sales taxes by redefining what constitutes having a sufficient physical presence in New York.

The administration's new tax strategy was also bound to face legal challenges by online retailers challenging the state's interpretation of its sales tax nexus laws that define whether retailers have enough of a business presence in state that its liable for collecting local taxes.

http://www.nysun.com/article/66465

Holy pancake appears on eBay

Joins divine aubergine

An American eBayer has auctioned off a week-old pancake for $338, claiming it contains images of Jesus and Mary. Or maybe Moses and Elijah.

As her mother cooked up a few flapjacks last Monday morning, Dana O'Kane looked down at one of them and saw a pair of "religious figures dressed in the early desert garb that would have been worn at that time in Jerusalem." At least, that's how she explains it on eBay.

Then her mother looked down and agreed with her. "I saw what looked like, possibly, what people may imagine Jesus would look like, or Moses," the mum told a TV station in her hometown of Port St. Lucie, Florida.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/14/holy_pancake_appears_on_ebay/

Bad Idea 2.0: Yahoo and Google to Turn E-Mail Into a Social Network

Ignore Orkut, OpenSocial, Yahoo Mash and Yahoo 360. Google and Yahoo have come up with new and very similar plans to respond to the challenge from MySpace and Facebook: They hope to turn their e-mail systems and personalized home page services (iGoogle and MyYahoo) into social networks.

Web-based e-mail systems already contain much of what Facebook calls the social graph — the connections between people. That’s why the social networks offer to import the e-mail address books of new users to jump-start their list of friends. Yahoo and Google realize that they have this information and can use it to build their own services that connect people to their contacts.

I don’t have a lot of detail from Google, but I’ve heard from several executives that this is their plan. When I talked recently with Joe Kraus, who runs Google’s OpenSocial project, he said: “We believe there are opportunities with iGoogle to make it more social.” And when I pressed him about the relationship between the social aspects of iGoogle and Gmail versus Orkut or some other social network, he said, “It is much easier to extend an existing habit than to create a brand.”

Brad Garlinghouse, who runs the communication and community products for Yahoo, was a lot more forthcoming. He didn’t-have dates or specific product details either. But he did say that Yahoo was working on what he called “Inbox 2.0.”

This has several features. First, the e-mail service is made more personal because it displays messages more prominently from people who are more important to you. Yahoo is testing a method that can automatically determine the strength of your relationship to someone by how often you exchange e-mail and instant messages with him or her.

“The inbox you have today is based on what people send you, not what you want to see,” Mr. Garlinghouse said. “We can say, here are the messages from the people you care about most.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/inbox-20-yahoo-and-google-
to-turn-e-mail-into-a-social-network/

Music honcho: We were morons to wage war on consumers

Apple iTunes"Speaking at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, Edgar Bronfman told mobile operators that they must not make the same mistake that the music industry made," Simon Aughton reports for MacUser.

"'We used to fool ourselves,' he said. 'We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won,'" Aughton reports.

"Bronfman suggested that mobile companies have much to learn from Apple, despite being critical of and iTunes in the past," Aughton reports. Bronfman also praised Apple's iTunes Store, iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, and iPhone/iPod touch.

Aughton reports, "Bronfman appears to be experiencing an epiphany when it comes to digital music. From threatening to withdraw from iTunes and suggesting that to drop DRM would be 'without logic or merit,' he is now heaping praising on Apple and recently opened a DRM-free section on Warner's own Classics and Jazz music store."

http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/middlebronfman
_praises_apples_itunes_store_iphone_ipod_touch/

Super-Portable Mac Notebook (minus optical drive) rumoured For MacWorld

I like a good Steve Jobs (a.k.a. Jerkoff) rumour as much as the next man and as that next man is Gordon, I expect you can guess what that entails. Hot today are rumblings that Apple is planning to unveil a new ultra-portable notebook at next January's MacWorld conference. So say ‘people familiar with the situation' anyway.

Reportedly the notebooks will be a 13in design much like the current MacBooks, but will have several space and weight reducing components to, well, reduce the size and weight. Interestingly one of these changes is the supposed omission of an optical drive, Asus U1F style. Other components would include an LED backlit screen as now seen in the MacBook Pro.

The new Mac will also purportedly boast an SSD drive, although it would more likely be an option than a base spec because of the insane pricing. Personally I doubt that Sony's Vaio TZ has anything to worry about for a while yet, but Apple fans would doubtless lap up a Cupertino-inspired alternative. Fingers crossed for the next eight weeks if you're interested.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/apple/news/2007/11/13/Ultra-Portable-Mac-Notebook-Rumoured-For-MacWorld/p1

Windows Server 2008 to come in 8 flavors

Viridian gets a name and a $28 price tag

Microsoft is hashing out the finalized details today on the oft-delayed Windows Server 2008. Most notably, Microsoft will release eight SKUs of the platform when it ships in late February 2008. Only some will include the Viridian hypervisor — which has been renamed Hyper-V. Users can choose to go with or without the hypervisor in the software gamut, which runs from Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter editions in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Windows Server 2008 Standard is $999 with Hyper-V and five Client Access Licenses. It retails for $971 without Hyper-V. Enterprise Edition is $3,999 with Hyper-V and 25 CALs. Enterprise is $3,971 without Hyper-V. Datacenter edition retails for $2,999 per processor with Hyper-V, and $2971 without. The Web Server edition, designed for a single-purpose web server costs $469 and comes without Hyper-V. Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based systems costs $2,999 per processor and also comes without the hypervisor. Itanium Edition, of course, only comes in a 64-bit version.

In a nice move, Microsoft will also vend Hyper-V server, a standalone hypervisor-based virtualization product, which they say will complement Hyper-V within Windows Server 2008. The software will let customers consolidate workloads onto a single physical server. It will retail for $28.

This cheap code is an obvious jab at VMware, which gives away a base version of its server virtualization code.

You have to wonder, however, why Microsoft even bothered to put a price on the hypervisor layer. $28 just seems like a nuisance.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/12/microsoft_server_2008_8_skus/

I'm a walking billboard .... bitch

Don't be bluffed by Facebook's B.S.

On Wednesday, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg boasted that the "next 100 years" of advertising began here. We wonder exactly what he's been smoking.

On the face of it, it looked like Web 2.0 had found its "Long Boom" moment. Facebook has yet to turn a profit, so Zuckerberg hardly seems in a position to advise other people how to make money - let alone place himself in a pantheon of historic business greats. In Web 2.0-land, merely "being there" is a substitute for having "made it".

But then Zuckerberg is no stranger to bluster. This, notoriously, was the 22 year-old who had "I'm CEO...bitch" on his business card.

Behind the calculated bluster were a collection of ideas perhaps equally designed to distract the attention (no pun intended).

Of the three ideas Zuckerberg outlined, one in particular provoked horror and ridicule. It was to turn Facebook users, accustomed to its clean and spare UI, into human billboards. Advertisers could build presences in Facebook - at the moment, you must be a person - giving users the opportunity to "affiliate" with them.

"Users can become a fan of a business and can share information about that business with their friends and act as a trusted referral," is how the company described it.

"What do the users get in return?" asked the IT commentator Nick Carr. "An animated Sprite Sips character to interact with."

But Nick is forgetting that this cuts both ways - it isn't a static picture at all.

Take the example of Stella Artois, which was once a "premium" lager brand owned by brewing giant InBev. In recent years this has acquired the notorious nickname "wife-beater". This is now so pervasive, that lawyers defending their clients on assault charges refer to the "Stella" defence. Sales fell 10 per cent last year - and it isn't quite so "premium" any more.

An affiliation is not an endorsement - yet Facebook coins it either way. Would Stella's fall have been accelerated by Facebook affiliation? Almost certainly, for on the web, jeering is the background noise. Only the most delusional marketing person thinks that their brand is in any way enhanced by proximity to the mob - brand advertising is all about keeping a distance. A corporate reputation is like a party frock - it crumples easily.

So shrewder advertising spenders will quickly realize the dangers in such 2.0-style "interactive" engagement and how phoney "conversations" with customers really are - and wisely gravitate towards traditional methods, such as plain ol' display ads.

Nevertheless, and here's the rub, they still want to have better, more targeted advertising. And even the slightest improvement helps.

Facebook's future is much more down to who it lets into the club, rather than anything we heard this week.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/09/facebook_analysis/

Mass. firm sues Google over 1997 patent

Off to Eastern District of Texas - again

Google is the latest tech firm to book a flight to the Eastern District of Texas, after a Boston-based firm launched a patent infringement suit at the search giant.

Jarg Corp has filed papers accusing Google of violating its 1997 patent number 5,694,593 for "Distributed Computer Database System and Method".

The patent credits Kenneth Baclawski as the inventor, and Northeastern University, where he is a professor, as the assignee. Baclawski is also a co-founder and chief technical architect of Jarg.

Key phrases from the abstract of the patent are: "A query from a user is transmitted to the front end computer which forwards the query to one of the computer nodes, termed the home node, of the search engine. The home node fragments the query and hashes the fragments of query to create an index by which the hashed query fragments are transmitted to one or more nodes on the network."

Thrillingly, it continues: "Each node on the network which receives a hashed fragment uses the fragment of the query to perform a search on its respective database. The results of the searches of the local databases are then gathered by the home node."

Jarg CEO Michael Belanger said the firm is "just interested in a normal royalty if the case determines that... Google is using the technology we developed".

Reuters reports that Baclawski filed his patent in 1997, a year before Google was formed, and he first described it in 1994. Of course, some of our older readers might dimly remember other search engines in the first half of the 1990s, and even beyond. We're pretty sure they didn't all rely on someone quickly thumbing through an encyclopaedia.

Google told Reuters it had not been served with papers, but "believe it to be without merit based on our initial investigation".

Jarg has filed its suit in the Eastern District of Texas, which is famous for its apparently indulgent attitude towards patent holders.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/12/google_sued/

Senior execs take big bites out of Apple

The rule seems to be that if you want the talent, you pay the going rate, and then some.

Apple, maker of Macintosh computers, iPods and iTunes, recently poached an in-house lawyer, general counsel Daniel Cooperman, from software giant Oracle.

What is seen as the inducement for Mr Cooperman to make the change was a grant of 133,000 Apple shares, now worth $US25 million ($A27 million) and rising.

By contrast, Apple's co-founder, visionary and chief executive, Steve Jobs, receives $1 a year in salary, but is a billionaire through his share holdings and his ownership of a large chunk of the Disney Corporation. Mr Jobs, having sold his Pixar computer animation company to Disney, is now the largest shareholder in the House of Mouse.

Apple shares, having sold for about $US12 before the advent of the iPod, are now approaching $US200 and the company, once considered to be near death, is now valued above IBM in market capitalisation. The shares have more than doubled this year.

Mr Cooperman succeeds Donald Rosenberg, who has gone to microchip and mobile-phone handset maker Qualcomm, taking with him restricted Apple stock worth about $US30 million. His welcoming handshake at Qualcomm gave him 500,000 options at $US40, about $US1 under the market price.

Mr Cooperman cashed in nearly $US7 million worth of Oracle shares just before taking the Apple post.

Mr Cooperman's salary package is so far undisclosed but Tom LaWer, of Compensia, executive remuneration consultants in San Francisco, said the share issue to Mr Rosenberg was "not out of line with other senior executives".

http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/senior-execs-take-big-bite-of-apple/
2007/11/11/1194766506358.html

How Google staff got the massage … and turned into multimillionaires

Bonnie Brown was fresh from a nasty divorce in 1999, living with her sister and uncertain of her future. On a lark, she answered an ad for an in-house masseuse at a Silicon Valley start-up with 40 employees.

She was offered the part-time job at $US450 ($A494) a week, along with a pile of stock options that she figured might never be worth a penny.

The company was Google and, after five years of kneading engineers' backs, Ms Brown retired, cashing in most of her stock options, worth millions of dollars. To her delight, the shares she held onto have continued to balloon in value.

Ms Brown, 52, now gets her own massages at least once a week and has a private Pilates instructor.

She has travelled the world to oversee a charitable foundation she started with her Google wealth and has written a book, still unpublished, Giigle: How I Got Lucky Massaging Google.When Google's stock topped $US700 a share last week, it was not just outside shareholders who were smiling.

According to Securities and Exchange Commission documents, Google workers and former employees are holding options worth about $US2.1 billion. In addition, employees are sitting on stock and unvested options together worth $US4.1 billion.

Although no one keeps an official count of Google millionaires, it is estimated that 1000 people each have more than $US5 million worth of Google shares from stock grants and stock options.

One founder, Larry Page, has stock worth $US20 billion. The other, Sergey Brin, has slightly less, $US19.6 billion, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm in Redwood Shores, California. Three Google senior vice-presidents together hold $US160 million worth of Google stock and options.

"This is a very rare phenomenon, when one company so quickly becomes worth so much money," said Peter Hero, senior adviser to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Google exists in its own microclimate, with its shares climbing even as other technology stocks have been buffeted by investor skittishness.

The days are long gone when people like Ms Brown were handed thousands of Google options with the exercise price, or the predetermined price that employees would pay to buy the stock, set in pennies.

Nearly half of the 16,000 employees at Google have been there for a year or less, and their options have an average exercise price of more than $US500.

Those who started at the company a year ago, or even three months ago, are seeing their options soar in value.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/how-google-staff-got-the-massage-
8230-and-turned-intomultimillionaires/2007/11/12/1194766587426.html

Apple hit with another class action (Oh, the agony of being The Jerk)

Apple is facing yet another class action suit, this one from a man in Florida who alleges Apple is trying to create a monopoly in digital music by illegally tying iPods to its iTunes music service.

The case is brought on behalf of all Florida residents who have bought an iPod or music from iTunes. The case will now be heard by a California court, which is already hearing a similar complaint.

Frederick Black is asking for $15,000 in damages and costs, according to AppleInsider.

Apple is already facing investigation by the European Union, which in April issued a Statement of Objections to Apple and four music labels.

Competition regulators in Norway have given Apple until 1 March to come up with a solution to make its DRM technology legal under Norwegian law.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/09/apple_another_class_action/

Ballmer: Google? Big Whoop; Only Ahead Of Microsoft In Search

Whilst spruiking the release of Windows Live in Tokyo Thursday, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer told reporters that Google wasn't ahead of Microsoft in any way online except with search.

"Google is not ahead of us" said Ballmer, "In the area of search specifically, Google would lead."

Whilst the Windows Live platform is a positive step forward in Microsoft's long pubescent attempts to become a leader in online services, it doesn't come close to Google.

Where for example is the Microsoft equivalent of Google Docs? Oh right, there isn't one, although you can upload documents to a Windows Live server if you buy Microsoft Office.

Advertising: well there's Microsoft AdCenter, that allows you to buy advertising on Microsoft sites and not many other places, vs Google Adsense and Adwords, the market leaders by a country mile.

Social networking: well Microsoft does serve ads on Facebook, but pretty soon it will only be the secondary ones. Google has the biggest social network in Brazil and is leading the industry with OpenSocial.

Live Spaces: nice tie in with the MSN chat platform, but still a poor cousin to Blogger as a blogging platform.

Video: did someone say YouTube?

The list could go on and on and on and on…. but I'll stop there. Certainly Google hasn't dominated every market it has taken on, but to say that Google runs second to Microsoft online in everything but search says a lot more about Steve Ballmer than it being a true reflection on today's online marketplace. Perhaps there's a reason Ballmer photographs so badly

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2214202,00.asp

Fans queue but iPhone fails to grip Germany

Hundreds of German Apple fans braved rain and wind before dawn to be among the first in Europe to get their hands on an iPhone but the arrival of the year's hottest consumer gadget passed most Germans by.

A few hundred people lined up at a Deutsche Telekom shop in Cologne, where T-Mobile let customers buy the music-playing and Web-browsing device at midnight before the phone went on sale across the country later in the day. Sales staff cheered and applauded when the first dozen customers entered the store in the downtown shopping district of Cologne across from a Vodafone store.

British telecoms group Vodafone lost out to T-Mobile and Telefonica's O2 and France Telecom to sell the iPhone in Europe but will start selling a similar multimedia handset from Samsung Electronics on Friday.

T-Mobile representatives handed out blankets, umbrellas as well as hot tea, coffee and pretzels for those waiting outside.

"All of us are Mac (Apple Macintosh computer) fans," said a man who works in a MP3 store and was waiting with two of his friends. "The iPhone is the best phone in the world," he said.

Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Rene Obermann has pinned high hopes on the iPhone, which he said will attract new customers in Germany, where the firm faces tough competition.

Europe's biggest telecoms group by sales declined to give a sales expectation and did not say how many phones it had in stock. A T-Mobile spokesman merely said: "We have plenty."

The iPhone melds a phone, Web browser and media player and costs 399 euros ($584). Customers must agree to a two-year contract with T-Mobile for monthly fees between 49 and 89 euros.

Almost all the people lining up to buy the phone were men.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071109/tc_nm/deutschetelekom_iphone_dc

:

Why isn’t the Googlephone dude rich?

You'll learn many things from the New York Times profile of Andy Rubin, the Google employee in charge of its secretive wireless project. That he has a retinal scanner on his front door, for example. Or that he almost struck a deal with telecom pioneer Craig McCaw before Google bought his latest startup, Android. What you won't learn? That Rubin actually has a Googlephone coming to the market. That, of course, is because there is no Googlephone

Sad, really. Even gadget-obsessed blogs like Gizmodo have made their peace with the idea that Google's project has gone from full-on hardware to a mere operating system. And I bet Times tech scribe John Markoff gets that Rubin's ambitions have been scaled back. But if he sent his editors a memo, they appear to have ignored it, working Googlephone mentions into the headline, text of the article, and sidebar. They apparently haven't actually read the article. Here's a key paragraph:

"Instead of making money on software, you have someone who is saying they're trying to make their money on services," said Michael Kleeman, a technology strategist at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology at the University of California at San Diego. "The interesting question is whether the carriers will authorize the Google handsets on their networks."

Markoff's article, of course, doesn't actually answer that question. So is there a Googlephone? According to this story, despite the promises of its headline: No.

http://valleywag.com/

Is Jobs planning a Tablet Mac? Does a bear sh*t in the woods?

The word's on the street that we could soon find ourselves in the Apple Store slavering over a Mac version of a tablet computer.

According to rumours circulating the internet (and there always seems to be rumours about new Mac products) that those people in black roll-neck sweaters are busy designing what is in effect a very large version of an iPod Touch, but running a full working version of OS X. (Or to put it another way, a Tablet PC but done properly!)

Over at Crave, the guys there reckon they know someone who knows someone else who's building some prototypes for Jobs and his mates. Crave also reckons that its contacts within Asus confirmed that the tablet PC will not be based on is own R1 design. Odds are currently on it being based on designs patented by Apple in May 2005.

Like we always say, most of these things never see the light of day, mainly because the rumours all made up, but we suspect if enough people start bothering Apple about it we may well see these in the shop. A kind of self-fulfilling prophesy!

http://www.absolutegadget.com/20071108908/news/personal-computing/
is-apple-planning-a-tablet-mac.html

US banks fear catching Cisco's cooties

Sub-prime sinkhole takes the shine from quarter

Cisco System profit rose 37 per cent in its first quarter '08, with growth in the networking equipment maker's international segments offsetting a "lumpy" US enterprise market.

On conference call today CEO John Chambers attributed the lumpiness US enterprise spending to a "dramatic" fall in orders from US banks in the quarter. We guess they are too busy firefighting the sub-prime lending crisis to worry too much about replacing the routers.

Investors may have been worried about a wider slowdown, and sent shares tumbling $2.75 or about eight per cent in after hours trading. Cisco stock finished down $1.33 at $32.75 at the end of the regular trading session.

Q1 net income was $2.2bn, a jump from $1.6bn reported a year ago. Net sales advanced 16 per cent to $9.6bn from $8.2bn year-over-year.

Operating income was $2.3bn, up from $1.9bn last year. Revenue was stabilized, at least, by expansion into emerging markets and new products, he said. Cisco recently has aggressively invested overseas in growth markets such as India and China.

"The dependancy on the US is not what it was before," said Chambers. "It used to be when the US caught a cold, the rest of the world got pneumonia. That's not the case now." He is optimistic about continued growth in emerging markets, but said Cisco's growth will remain at 16 per cent year-on-year for the quarter, with full-year growth at 13 to 16 per cent.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/11/08/cisco_q1_report_2008/

Google's Frenzy Hides Mobile's Dirty Little Secret

According to Alex Wolf, there's one important point that's been lost amid all the chatter surrounding Google's non-announcement the other day of its vaporous GPhone, and its actual disclosure that it'll soon be releasing a phone-software development platform. It's this: mobile apps aren't the issue. It's the (slow) networks, stupid.

Despite the fact that Steve Jobs is tightly controlling all the apps which run on the iPhone, apps aren't hard to get. Not for the tightly wound iPhone, nor for open platforms like Nokia's Symbian-based phones. (Indeed, Nokia is openly touting its openness as an antidote to Apple's closed (figuratively and literally) approach.

Sure, in some cases there are apps which aren't as widely available, or for which options aren't as broad, as users would like (As a happy Blackberry user, I'm thinking here of instant messaging on these devices, which in some cases is available for the phone but not supported by the mobile service provider.)

Think about it: if you're a smartphone user, the biggest problem isn't you model's feature set, it's the fact that you probably avoid opening your browser unless it's absolutely necessary because mobile browsing is not a fun experience.

Moreover, the reason mobile browsing isn't because you can't search Google properly. (Indeed, Google is one of the few sites which works nicely when accessed from a smartphone.) It's that the browser is so crushingly slow to load. This lag stems from the puny data speeds supported by most service providers.

Consider the widely used EDGE network. It can support a theoretical maximum of 473.6 kbit/s, when it's running full-tilt on eight timeslots. More common is a max of 236.8 kbit/s (in four time-slot mode).

EDGE is considered "2.75 G"; that is, it's faster than a "2.5 G" data-rate technical such as GPRS, but not as fast as 3G. (Interestingly, EDGE's maximum is faster than the 3G's specification's data rate of 384 kbps, so I'm guessing that, in practice, 3G tends to run faster than EDGE. That is, most EDGE communications occur via four or fewer timeslots.)

Since all the domestic carriers are building out or have built 3G networks, the salient question seems to be: Will browsing on 3G be a better experience than today's experiences on EDGE. (I know there are other options, like EV-DO, but I've already gotten more technical than I intended to in this post.)

More likely, faster networks aren't the answer (since mobile service will never be fast enough to support deskbound-like browsing.

Instead, someone will have to come up with a lighter, smarter mobile browser, and every site of consequence will have to field mobile-optimized pages, which users will actually have to use. Then maybe surfing the Web from one's smartphone won't, er, suck.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/11/googles_android_2.html

Facebook turns fleshpeddler; decides to auction off its community

Think of a madam at a house of ill repute. Facebook on Tuesday yesterday its new advertising offerings. They seem pretty cool from a marketing perspective but have an underlying creepiness that should make users feel uncomfortable.

As CNET New.com's Caroline McCarthy writes:

Called Facebook Ads, the new program is threefold: Advertisers can create branded pages, run targeted advertisements, and have access to intelligence and analytics pertaining to the site's more than 50 million users. Partners can participate in all three components of Facebook Ads, or a combination of them.

Sounds good right? Who wouldn't want to target that active, young user base?

Additionally, Facebook has unveiled targeted advertisements that will allow marketers to target by any information inside Facebook profiles, from relationship status to favorite television shows.

Yikes, this is the part that freaks me out. Wasn't it just last month that we all enjoyed the Facebook privacy scandal? Kinda makes you wonder how it was able to develop algorithms for advertising that sound so detailed, doesn't it?

I already feel paranoid and exposed as a blogger, but the idea that my casual and personal details and conversations can end up as advertising dollars is freaky and unnerving. I also don't want to know if some kid I went to middle school with is buying a boat or adult diapers on Amazon.

One thing we've learned in open source is that you must grow a community of users that support your product and sustain themselves. To maintain that community you have to avoid hyper-aggressive marketing. In fact, if you look at the forums or mailing lists of the majority of open-source companies, it's difficult to find anyone marketing (at least not overtly) to their user base.

You can't bastardize your community or the community will disappear. This is something that I would have expected a site that relies on user-generated content to know.

Facebook has been fortunate to develop a huge user base and it's still early enough to introduce this new advertising without major impact. On the other hand, users are extremely fickle and there are a wide variety of alternative social networks.

http://www.cnet.com/8301-13846_1-9812062-62.html

Yahoo Slammed in Jailed Dissident Case

Not that you'd think they'd admit to doing anything wrong, but two top Yahoo officials on Tuesday defended their company’s role in the jailing of a Chinese journalist but ran into withering criticism from United States lawmakers who accused them of complicity with an oppressive Communist regime.

“While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” Tom Lantos, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said angrily after hearing from the two executives, Jerry Yang, the chief executive, and Michael J. Callahan, the general counsel.

The journalist Shi Tao was sent to jail for 10 years for engaging in pro-democracy efforts deemed subversive after Yahoo turned over information about his online activities as requested by Chinese authorities.

Mr. Lantos angrily urged the two men to apologize to the journalist’s mother, who was sitting directly behind them.

Mr. Yang and Mr. Callahan turned around from the witness table and bowed from their seats to Mr. Shi’s mother, Gao Qinsheng, who bowed in return and then began to weep.

The committee is investigating statements Mr. Callahan made at a Congressional hearing early last year. He said then that Yahoo had no information about the nature of the Chinese government’s investigation of Mr. Shi when the company turned over information about him in 2004.

Mr. Callahan has since acknowledged that Yahoo officials had received a subpoenalike document that referred to suspected “illegal provision of state secrets” — a common charge against political dissidents.

Last week Mr. Callahan issued a statement saying that he had learned the details of the document months after his testimony in February 2006 and that he regretted not alerting the committee to it once he knew about it.

He reiterated that regret Tuesday and contended that Yahoo employees in China had little choice but to comply with the government’s demands.

“I cannot ask our local employees to resist lawful demands and put their own freedom at risk, even if, in my personal view, the local laws are overbroad,” Mr. Callahan said.

Mr. Callahan could not say whether there were outstanding demands from the Chinese government for information from Yahoo, or whether Yahoo would react the same today to a demand for information from the Chinese government.

He did say that in going into future markets, like Vietnam, Yahoo would aim to find a way to avoid turning over to the government information on citizens’ online activities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/technology/07yahoo.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

Jobs gnashes his teeth, swears revenge: Nokia perfects the clicky tactile touchscreen phone

Jobs, you control freak, eat your heart out. It’s taken them 10 years but Nokia boffins have finally perfected a ‘touch feedback’ touchscreen. Don’t be fooled by simple vibrational imitations folks, this is the real McCoy – you press a key on the screen, and it clicks under your finger with exactly the same sort of fingertip feedback as if you’d pressed a conventional keyboard key. Roope Takala, Senior Program Manager at Nokia’s research labs gave me a demo of the technology in Finland the other day on a hacked N770 Internet tablet.

“The basic technology is not that difficult,” he explained, “We inserted two small piezo sensor pads under the screen and engineered in a 0.1mm movement in the screen itself. What’s taken the time has been fine tuning the movement and response to mimic exactly the sensation of pressing a real key.”

The problem in perfecting the tech – codenamed Haptikos, meaning ‘to touch’ – lies in how our fingers experience a key press. We actually feel two movements, in and out, and these movements and the associated audio have to be perfectly attuned to the speed and responsiveness of a real keyboard. In use, the touch feedback on the demo device was near on perfect. Each press of a key returned a clunky click and tactile snap on the touchscreen, which made typing feel incredibly responsive and very usable on the smooth screen surface. In fact it was hard to remember that you were using a touchscreen keyboard.

“Funnily enough, although you think you’re typing faster than normal because of the feedback, in actual fact you’re not,” said Takala, “There’s just some sort of mental satisfaction that comes from typing with a tactile response.”

Haptikos

The new Haptikos technology will apparently be shipped with the upcoming Nokia S60 Touch phone that has been shown off at recent demos, and the team is busy working on the next challenge, which is to provide exact tactile replicas for scrolling and draw/paint programs. The problem is that while we expect and need ultra fast responses for keyboard use, navigation and things like drag scrolling require a different, slower response map, which is another hurdle for the engineers to overcome.

http://www.redferret.net/?p=9533

Microsoft Mystery: Redmond CIO axed for 'violation' of policy

Talk about lack of transparency......

Microsoft has fired its chief information officer (CIO) barely two years after he was appointed to the post. Stuart Scott was cut loose following an investigation into a "violation of company policies". Microsoft is not saying anything more on the matter.

Scott joined Microsoft in July 2005, reporting to chief operating officer Kevin Turner, having spent 17 years in various roles at General Electric, culminating in CIO of different divisions.

CIO Magazine recognized Scott as one of the industry's top 100 CIOs in 2003.

Scott assumed his current role in October 2006 having shared the post with Ron Marktezich who moved on to run Microsoft's fledgling managed services business. As co-CIO, Scott had run Microsoft's internal business applications.

Scott is the second high-profile Redmond executive whose departure has raised questions. Martin Taylor, Steve Ballmer's advisor and author of Microsoft's "Get the facts" campaign against Linux, left abruptly in summer 2006 after 13 years' services for "personal matters".

Shahla Aly, Microsoft general manager and Alain Crozier, corporate vice president, will share responsibilities for the CIO's role until a replacement is found.

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/11/07/microsoft_cio_fired/