Yahoo! cuddles Google's bastard grid-child

Gets 'butt kicking' from Microsoft

Stuffed Elephant Summit Sometime after the New Year, Yahoo! flipped the switch on what it calls the world’s largest Hadoop application, using the much-hyped open-source grid computing platform to tackle a task no smaller than the web itself.

Known as Yahoo! Search Webmap, this Hadoopified mega-app provides the world’s second most popular search engine with a database of all known web pages – complete with all the metadata needed to understand those pages. Yes, Yahoo! has crunched such data for years now, but thanks to Hadoop - an Apache project that mimics the GFS and MapReduce grid technologies developed at Google – Webmap can deliver the goods significantly faster than the company’s old school setup.

"When building our web index, one of the things we do is build a graph of all the links on the web. We start with all the web pages we know of. We extract links and other metadata. And then we aggregate up a big system-wide view of the Web," Yahoo! Grid Computing Pooh-Bah Eric Baldeschwieler told The Reg at the Yahoo!-sponsored Hadoop developer’s summit in Santa Clara, California. "With Webmap, we can do this 33 per cent faster on the same hardware."

According to Baldeschwieler, this far exceeded expectations. "The previous system – which we built in 2000 – was all C++. And with the new system we moved to Java," he explained. "The belief was that moving to Java would slow everything and that we would pay a penalty in moving to the new framework.

"When it’s running perfectly, the old system does outperform the new one. But of course hardware fails and there are all sorts of scenarios under which the old system doesn’t perform perfectly. Hadoop gives us much more flexibility. It’s built around the idea of running commodity hardware that runs all the time."

Hadoop is the bastard brainchild of Google and a man named Doug Cutting. Back in 2004, while developing Nutch, an open source search engine, Cutting realized that his engine wouldn't purr unless it was juiced with some sort of distributing computing platform. And for reasons unknown, Google had just published a pair of research papers that detailed GFS, its distributed file system, and MapReduce, a means of pooling processing power.

So Cutting and his open-source pals went to work on a project that would duplicate Google’s technologies – and maybe even (cough) improve them. He dubbed the project Hadoop after his son’s yellow stuffed elephant.

By early 2006, Yahoo! was flirting with the project, and the company soon gave Cutting a job. At the time, Hadoop and Nutch ran on just 20 nodes, indexing about 100m web pages. Two years later, Hadoop and Yahoo! Search Webmap run on 10,000 processor cores, indexing, um, many more web pages. "I can’t say exactly how many," Cutting told the Stuffed Elephant Summit. "Let’s just say it’s far in excess of 100 million."

But Yahoo! isn’t the only one that’s fallen for Hadoop. IBM Research turned up at the summit to show off JAQL, a language suited to building JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) apps atop Hadoop. Amazon, a summit co-sponsor, discussed the benefits of running Hadoop on its EC2 web services. And more than 350 developers turned up to listen – though Yahoo! had originally expected fewer than 100.

Baldeschwieler also pointed out that 28 separate developers have trumpeted their Hadoop clusters on the official Hadoop wiki. "And that’s just a small fraction of the people using it," he said. "I would guess 100s of organizations have adopted the platform. There’s definitely a lot of interest - and a lot of discussion."

Microsoft is not one of those organizations. Redmond’s research arm is building its own grid-computing platform, Dryad. And Dryad is not open source. But that didn’t stop the company from attending a conference dedicated to all things Hadoop.

Microsoft’s Michael Isard used his half hour to trumpet DryadLINQ, a programming language that mirrors IBM’s JAQL and a Yahoo!-led open source initiative called Pig. Except that it doesn’t run on Hadoop. It runs on Dryad.

At least one developer was mighty impressed with the presentation. But he still wondered whether DryadLINQ was already irrelevant. "I think you’re kicking everyone’s butt. You’re already working on a higher level of abstraction than anyone else," he told Isard. "But since you’re proprietary technology, we’ll have to wait and see how effective you’ll be."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/26/yahoo_hadoop_summit/

Adobe Unveils Webtop Version of Photoshop. Picnik Is Not Scared.

Erick Schonfeld

As I alluded to in an earlier post, online photo-editing applications keep getting better as the competition heats up between startups like Picnik and FotoFlexer. Today, a very large competitor, Adobe, is entering the market by releasing a Web-based version of Photoshop for editing pictures called Photoshop Express. It is in public beta and anyone can sign up.

Photoshop Express is by no means just Photoshop ported onto the web. It would even be a stretch to say it’s a stripped down version of the desktop software, since it’s intended for mainstream consumers, not professionals.

This distinction shows in both what it lacks and what it offers. There are only 17 editing features in Photoshop Express: a tiny fraction of those available with the $650 desktop software. And all of these 17 features are filters intended for tuning and effects - you won’t find any tools for drawing lines, adding text, or creating shapes. What you can do is easily take out red eye, touch up undesirable areas, change saturation, pop color, and crop (among other things).

One of the most innovative features in Photoshop Express is the ability to revert any filter you apply to a photograph. You can do this to a particular filter regardless of whether you’ve made other changes to the photo since applying it. All you have to do is uncheck the particular filter and it will be subtracted from your changes, which are represented in a historical filmstrip with all versions of the photo you have gone through. This undo functionality for particular changes partly makes up for the unfortunate absence of layers, which are so vitally important in the desktop version of Photoshop.

Photoshop Express also differs from its desktop cousin by serving as an online storage and photo sharing service. You can upload up to 2GB of photos to the web app (or pull them in directly from Facebook, Photobucket, or Picassa). They are arranged in a collection that can be made available to others or kept private. Embedding and slideshow functionality is also available.

Adobe has other motivations behind this launch: Doug Mack, the vice president in charge of Photoshop Express, says:

It is a showcase of what is the best that can be done with Flex and Flash. Hopefully, it will inspire other developers. We are also setting up a hosted services platform that we can expand to other products.

So this is just the beginning for Adobe. Should smaller fry like Picnik be scared now that Adobe is, uh, flexing its muscles online? Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato isn’t too worried. He gives me the classic Innovator’s Dilemma argument:

We don’t envy the challenge Adobe is facing—they have to deal with not cannibalizing a highly successful finished-goods business. Adobe has a business to protect, while Picnik has a business to build.

Okay, but what about Adobe’s massive distribution through its existing products (Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.). Sposato’s got an answer for that one as well:

Sure, I think their distribution is a great strength for them. And there’s definitely a Windows vs. Mac analogy here. But i think today’s internet is so incredibly efficient that traditional models of distribution may matter less and less. The cost of switching apps for most users is just so easy. They can find new things really fast and try them out.

Hopefully, I am not smoking crack but I do think the marketplace is so efficient that we can compete based ultimately on quality and ‘winsomeness’ of the product (to use a very old fashion word).

No Jonathan, you’re not smoking crack. May the most winsome product win.

http://www.techcrunch.com/

Researchers' push: reinvent computing

UC-BERKELEY 1 OF 2 UNIVERSITIES TO RECEIVE GRANT

Intel and Microsoft said last week that they planned to finance two groups of university researchers to start over and design a new generation of computing systems intended to break the industry out of a technological cul-de-sac that threatens to end decades of performance increases in computers.

If the research efforts succeed, this would enable the development of new kinds of portable computers and would help computer engineers tackle areas as diverse as speech recognition, image processing, health care systems and music. For example, a music professor at the University of California-Berkeley, David L. Wessel, envisions a new era of digital musical instruments that would begin to match the rich versatility of acoustic instruments like violins and pianos.

The research grant, worth $20 million over five years, will create independent laboratories at Berkeley and at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, that will be charting a way to reinvent computing. Each will work on hardware, software and a new generation of applications powered by computer chips containing multiple processors. The University of Illinois plans to contribute an additional $8 million to the project and the Berkeley project is applying for an additional $7 million from a state-supported program to match the industry grants.

The computer industry has generally stopped relying on regular increases in the processing speed of chips. In recent years, it has bet instead that future advances in speed and energy efficiency will come from putting multiple processors on a single silicon chip. A number of computer functions can then be done in parallel rather than sequentially.

The new research agenda was motivated in part by an increasing sense that the industry is in a crisis of a sort because advanced parallel software has failed to emerge quickly. Most programmers today still write programs that solve problems in a serial fashion.

The most advanced consumer-oriented microprocessors have up to eight processors, or cores, on a chip, but the industry is moving toward chips with 100 or more. The problem, according to academic researchers and industry executives, is that the software to keep dozens of processors busy simultaneously for all kinds of computing problems does not exist.

Although the amounts of the grant are modest, both universities have a reputation for early-stage research that has had notable impacts on the computer industry. The director of the new Universal Parallel Computing Research Center at Berkeley, the computer scientist David Patterson, has been associated with significant breakthroughs both in microprocessor and computer storage system design. The University of Illinois laboratory will be led by Marc Snir, a professor of computer science, and Wen-mei Hwu, professor of electrical and computer engineering. The laboratory will include the participation of David Kuck, a University of Illinois researcher who was a pioneer in the field of parallel computing and who is presently an Intel Fellow.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_8676027

Yahoo! tries to whip investors into line

Promises moon on a stick

Yahoo! increased the pressure on Microsoft to up its offer for the internet firm yesterday by telling investors it expects to double cash flow over the next three years.

Jerry Yang gave the presentation to institutional shareholders in order to persuade them that the company is worth more than the $44bn Microsoft has offered for it. Some observers also interpreted the presentation as evidence that Yahoo! had failed to find alternative suitors.

Yahoo! expects to double operating cash flow from $1.9bn to $3.7bn and bring in $8.8bn in revenue excluding traffic aquisition costs (TAC) in 2010.

The statement said Yahoo! is still looking for alternatives to the Microsoft offer.

Yahoo! said it expected to bring in $1.9bn in extra revenue over three years from display and video advertising - faster growth than the market generally. It also predicts $1.4bn in extra search revenue - in line with expected growth.

The company talked up its "Starting Points" strategy of concentrating on websites which users return to several times a day.

The company claims 305 million unique monthly users of its homepage and 262 million unique monthly users of its email service.

In other news, Chinese business ecommerce site Alibaba is looking for investors to fund a buyback of the 39 per cent stake in the company owned by Yahoo!, according to Reuters.

Alibaba clearly thinks the takeover will go ahead and wishes to stay out of Microsoft's grip. The 2005 agreement with Yahoo! gives Alibaba right of first refusal should Yahoo! wish to sell its stake.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/19/yahoo_alibaba/

Apple may bundle unlimited iTunes with iPods

It's about time! A report by the Financial Times (registration required) cites unnamed executives who say that Apple is in talks with record labels to offer access to the entire iTunes music library for a lump sum price. The fee would be added as a premium option on an iPod or iPhone, or it could come as a monthly charge. It would allow downloading of any song at any time so long as the purchaser still owns the device, and the songs would be yours to keep.

This latest concept is similar to Nokia's "Comes With Music" program set to launch later this year. Nokia is reportedly rolling an $80 fee into the price of compatible phones for one year of access to Nokia's music store, which includes music from labels like Universal.

Apple's plan is different in several respects. Since the average iPod owner buys about 20 tracks from the iTunes, Apple wants to make the premium about $20, arguing that it should cover the average consumer's downloads. Then the owner can make unlimited music downloads from the iTunes Store for the life of the device. Once downloaded, the tracks are yours to keep, even if you get rid of the original iPod or iPhone. And since iPod and phone owners tend to replace devices fairly regularly, the record labels would be getting the fee whether or not the consumer makes any further downloads. Silicon Alley Insider did the math and thinks it's a good deal all around. But according to the Financial Times' sources, the labels are looking for numbers closer to the $80 Nokia is reported to be paying.

There's still the question of DRM, however. Even though the tracks are yours, any non-iTunes Plus tracks will still be beholden to FairPlay restrictions, so this could also be a good way to lock consumers into repeat Apple purchases (unless they're willing to have their music tethered to their computers). The Nokia plan use Plays For Sure, which won't play for sure on iPods or even Zunes, and Comes With Music doesn't allow you to keep listening to tracks once your subscription period has expired

While Apple's program certainly sounds like it could go over well with consumers, the negotiations are not over. Apple will need to get all the labels on board for the plan to work. If we've learned anything from recent music licensing debates, it's that they are contentious. How much do the songwriters deserve? What should be the labels' share? In addition, the labels are sure to want a plan that increases their revenue, rather than a plan that simply compensates them for what the average iPod owner already pays.

While the labels remain leery of finding themselves under Jobs' thumb once more, their embrace of DRM-free formats that can play on the iPod has negated one of Apple's longtime advantages in these licensing negotiations, and could well make the labels more likely to deal. They are also in the position to offer Apple a carrot of their own: access to MP3 files for regular, pay-per-track downloads (iTunes currently has only EMI on board with DRM-free music).

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080319-apple-may-bundle-unlimited-
itunes-with-ipods.html

Google says well positioned for economic downturn

You’ve been so worried, you haven’t gotten a good night sleep in weeks, right? Of course, right! Google, the world's leading Internet search engine, said on Tuesday it was well positioned to weather any economic downturn as its advertisers were broad based.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged sliding share values and a shortage of credit in financial markets was "a very serious issue" and that many people were expecting a global economic slowdown.

"It's too early to say if there's (already) been any specific impact but if there were I don't think it would be much," Schmidt told reporters at a briefing during a visit to Sydney.

"We believe that if there were (a U.S. recession), we'll be well positioned. We're not particularly dependent on any particular one market. There's not a lot of advertising for any one market over another," he said.

Direct marketing, a successor to online marketing, had historically performed well in times of economic recession, Schmidt said.

"There tends to be a flight in a global slowdown to higher quality advertising and higher quality advertising is determined by what sells," he said.

Google, which earned $4.827 billion (2.4 billion pounds) in revenue in the fourth quarter, makes around 98 percent of its income from text ads but was exploring new formats, such as advertising on You Tube videos.

Google has a $900 million, three-year deal to sell advertising to News Corp's MySpace customers under which it must pay MySpace whether or not it makes money selling ads on the site.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKSYD17339220080318

They’re coming to take you away, ha ha!

According to the Ottawa Citizen, obsessive e-mailing and text messaging could soon be classed as an official mental disorder. The notion stems from a soon to be published editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry which makes the case that Internet addiction is a common compulsive-impulsive disorder which should be classed by physicians as a brain illness.

Apparently, Internet addiction can include "excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging". If you find that all of the above apply to you on a daily basis, please check yourself into your nearest mental health clinic immediately.

A psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Dr Jerald Block, reckons that, like alcohol and drug addicts, Internet junkies get cravings, urges, withdrawal symptoms, and are always looking for bigger and better quality hardware and software to feed their appetites and increase their buzz. The doc says that about 86 per cent of Internet junkies have a form of mental sickness, characterised by users losing track of time spent online and neglect of "basic drives," like eating or sleeping.

Not all psychiatrists agree with Doc Block though. Last year, British psychiatrists writing in the Advances in Psychiatric Treatment journal, reckoned that only between five and ten per cent of Internet users were actually addicted, with the majority of hardcore addicts being middle aged desperate housewives.

Block also notes that the problems are at their most severe in Asia, namely in China and South Korea. He claims that there have already been several Internet gaming related deaths in cyber cafes caused by heart and lung failures [lung failure? - Ed] and that the Korean government has trained over 1,000 counsellors to help people deal with their addictions.

Beating an Internet addiction is apparently not something to be taken lightly though. People often relapse into their old Web habits and some could even require medication or hospitalisation.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/03/18/addiction-internet-mental

Online advertiser to settle spam charges for record $2.9 million

There is a God after all! An online advertising company accused of luring customers with deceptive offers of "free" iPhones, laptop computers, plasma televisions, and other goods has agreed to pay a record $2.9 million fine as part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.

According to a federal court filing (PDF) released Monday, since at least early 2005, Westlake Village, Calif.-based ValueClick and its subsidiary Hi-Speed Media have been attempting to lure consumers to their Web sites through e-mails and Web-based ads bearing slogans like "Free PS3 for survey" or "let us buy you a 42 inch plasma tv! Just type in your zip code." The purpose of those operations was "lead generation"--that is, connecting consumers with advertisers trying to sell certain goods or services, the FTC complaint said.

Trouble is, the companies didn't disclose "clearly and conspicuously" that, in reality, the offers weren't exactly free, the FTC charged. Instead, consumers were required to fulfill certain obligations or incur various other expenses--for instance, applying for car loans or credit cards--in order to qualify for those goods. In addition to allegedly running afoul of a broader law prohibiting unfair and deceptive practices, the FTC said that misleading subject lines in those e-mails violated the 2003 Can-Spam Act, which regulates distribution of bulk e-mail.

The alleged violations didn't stop there: The companies also gathered sensitive credit card and financial information but did not encrypt that data in a way that's consistent with industry standards or take other steps to protect it from hackers--even though they claimed to do otherwise, the FTC said.

The charges resulted in the largest settlement amount the FTC has reached under Can-Spam, the agency said in a statement. Until Monday's announcement, the FTC's highest settlement under Can-Spam occurred in March 2006, when a company called Jumpstart, which allegedly sent misleading e-mails offering free movie tickets, agreed to pay $900,000 in civil penalties.

It was also the FTC's third case targeting "deceptive promises of free merchandise" by Internet lead generation enterprises. In a case last November, a company called Adteractive, which allegedly lured customers to its Web sites with promises of "free gifts," agreed to pay $650,000 in civil penalties as part of an FTC settlement.

In addition to the monetary payout, ValueClick is required to make clear disclosures about what its customers must do in exchange for the free products. It also must establish and maintain a "comprehensive security program" for protecting personal information, subject to mandatory "independent third-party" reviews, for 20 years.

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9895699-7.html

Report: Yahoo, Microsoft execs in talks

Surprise, surprise. Execs from Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. met to talk about the possibility of a deal for the first time since Microsoft's $44.6 billion offer was rejected, according to reports Friday.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said the meeting was mainly so Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft could outline its plan for the combined company.

No bankers were present, the Journal reported.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo shares rose on the news, going up to $27.96 in morning trading after closing at $26.79.In February Yahoo was hit with seven shareholder lawsuits claiming that the Internet company mishandled its response to the takeover bid.

Four suits were filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court and three in Delaware by pension funds that own Yahoo stock.

Yahoo said earlier that the offer undervalues the company.

Microsoft, in response, began readying a proxy fight that could unseat the 10-member board, including Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief executive.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2008/03/10/daily78.html?jst=b_ln_hl

Why Microsoft should be eating their heart out about new NPD sales figures

The console sales numbers for February are here, and sales have yet to slow down appreciably from the phenomenal year we had in 2007. But Microsoft has cause for concern about Sony's performance. The Xbox 360 maker told us to expect this a slow month due to supply constraints, but many observers won't concern themselves with the whys of a second consecutive disappointing month. Instead, the story will be that Sony has smoked Microsoft two months running. Sony now has some strong momentum that it can ride into the launch of industry juggernauts like Metal Gear Solid 4—which Sony will exploit with a new system bundle to draw in first-time PS3 buyers—and Gran Turismo 5: Prologue.

Add in the fact that Sony is now sitting on the de-facto high-definition standard in Blu-ray and the PlayStation 3 is by far the most future proof—and affordable—Blu-ray player, it has a distinct advantage for consumers who want more than just games out of their consoles. According to another study by the NPD Group, gamers are a very media-hungry bunch, and the PlayStation 3 simply gives them more choices in that area than the Xbox 360.

"Consumers are recognizing the tremendous value of PS3 and we believe that Blu-ray becoming the high-def format of choice was the tipping point for many consumers," SCEA president Jack Tretton said in a comment about the February numbers.

Sony wants to focus on the strength of the entire PlayStation brand, noting that it generated the most US retail dollars in the industry for the second consecutive month with $511 million in sales—52 percent and 6 percent higher than Microsoft and Nintendo, respectively. This month's PlayStation 2 sales prove that Sony has three viable systems filling living rooms with hardware

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080314-why-microsoft-should-be-worried
-about-new-npd-sales-figures.html

iPod Scare Leads to Inquiry in Japan

It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep — but there’s an iPod in the house, and it’s recharging …

The government of a technology-obsessed nation has officially raised the specter of the unsafe iPod, a little gadget you see just about everywhere (100 million of them have been sold in 5 years, or 1 for every 67 people on Earth):

Japan is investigating a possible defect in Apple Inc.’s iPod after one of the popular digital music players reportedly shot out sparks while recharging, a government official said Wednesday.

The rare bout of bad publicity for the lovable device was prompted by a single reported case, though several others have turned up in other countries.

The leading explanation would be a familiar one to Apple and other computer manufacturers: lithium ion batteries have been known to overheat and explode in laptops occasionally. But the tiny batteries in the iPod have so far managed to steer clear of that pitfall. (They have attracted many more complaints for being impossible to remove.)

The risk of overheating and fire was why the Federal Aviation Administration banned spare lithium-ion batteries from checked airline baggage and restricted them in carry-on bags at the beginning of the year. But rest assured, those crying babies and high-pitched yammerers will continue to be shut out (somewhat) by your favorite playlists for the foreseeable future.

Smaller batteries installed in cellphones, music players and most laptops are not affected by the ban, only larger ones for audio/visual equipment. Besides, if there turns out to be a problem with the model under investigation in Japan (iPod Nano, model number MA099J/A), it would seem to be limited to the times when it is plugged in for recharging.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/ipod-scare-leads-to-inquiry-in-japan/index.html?ref=technology

Winning One for the Google

Google may not be able to stop Microsoft from swallowing up Yahoo, but it has bolstered its arsenal with the acquisition of DoubleClick.

That $3.1 billion deal has been cleared by European regulators, the last hurdle after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved it in December.

Some internet and advertising companies said after the deal was first announced in April that a combination of Google—which dominates search and has become extremely profitable from placing text ads by search results—and the biggest internet advertising company would limit competition in online advertising.

But the European Commission found that the merger would not impede competition, noting that advertisers and other customers had options with Microsoft, AOL, and, yes, Yahoo.

"The commission's in-depth market investigation found that Google and DoubleClick were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other's activities and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors at the moment," the regulator said.

"The market investigation also found that the merged entity would not have the incentive to close off access for competitors in the ad-serving market, mainly because such strategies would be unlikely to be profitable."

DoubleClick places and tracks online ads, acting as a broker between portals like Google and advertisers. The acquisition of DoubleClick is expected to help Google expand beyond paid search ads and do more with banner ads and videos.

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/03/11/Googles-Deal-Cleared/?TID=dealpartnerbadge

One trouble with Steve Jobs

Jobs likes to make his own rules, whether the topic is computers, stock options, or even pancreatic cancer. The same traits that make him a great CEO drive him to put his company, and his investors, at risk.

In October 2003, as the computer world buzzed about what cool new gadget he would introduce next, Apple CEO Steve Jobs - then presiding over the most dramatic corporate turnaround in the history of Silicon Valley - found himself confronting a life-and-death decision.

During a routine abdominal scan, doctors had discovered a tumor growing in his pancreas. While a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is often tantamount to a swiftly executed death sentence, a biopsy revealed that Jobs had a rare - and treatable - form of the disease. If the tumor were surgically removed, Jobs' prognosis would be promising: The vast majority of those who underwent the operation survived at least ten years.

Yet to the horror of the tiny circle of intimates in whom he'd confided, Jobs was considering not having the surgery at all. A Buddhist and vegetarian, the Apple CEO was skeptical of mainstream medicine. Jobs decided to employ alternative methods to treat his pancreatic cancer, hoping to avoid the operation through a special diet - a course of action that hasn't been disclosed until now.

For nine months Jobs pursued this approach, as Apple's board of directors and executive team secretly agonized over the situation - and whether the company needed to disclose anything about its CEO's health to investors. Jobs, after all, was widely viewed as Apple's irreplaceable leader, personally responsible for everything from the creation of the iPod to the selection of the chef in the company cafeteria. News of his illness, especially with an uncertain outcome, would surely send the company's stock reeling. The board decided to say nothing, after seeking advice on its obligations from two outside lawyers, who agreed it could remain silent.

In the end, Jobs had the surgery, on Saturday, July 31, 2004, at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, near his home. The revelation of his brush with death remained - like everything involving Jobs and Apple - a tightly controlled affair. In fact, nary a word got out until Jobs' tumor had been removed. The next day, in an upbeat e-mail to employees later released to the press, he announced that he had faced a life-threatening illness and was "cured." Jobs assured everyone that he'd be back on the job in September. When trading resumed a day after the announcement, Apple shares fell just 2.4%.

Apple entertained no further questions about Jobs' health, citing the CEO's need for privacy. No one learned just how long Jobs had been sick - or that he had contemplated not having the surgery at all. "It was very traumatic for all of us," recalls one of those in whom Jobs confided, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the topic's sensitivity. "We all really care about Steve, and it was a serious risk for the company as well. It was a very emotional and very difficult time. This was one page in the adventure."

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.fortune/index.htm

Jobs unveils plans to dominate RIM BlackBerry, Life, the Universe, and Everything

'We will build 12 Amazons. Or 4 Googles' Resistance is futile

Apple will rejigger the iPhone in a sweeping effort to satisfy email-addicted business people, video game junkies, and third-party software developers who don't mind getting Apple's approval for their applications.

Today, during a press fest at its Cupertino, California headquarters that did needless to say not include The Reg, Jerkoff Jobs and company announced a Microsoft Exchange-friendly version of their handheld status symbol, before unveiling the long-awaited iPhone SDK and an "App Store" where you can purchase the fruits of this software developer's kit.

Due in June, the next version of the iPhone will make like BlackBerry, connecting directly to Microsoft's biz-centric server platform. This means Exchange will have the power to push emails, calendar items, and contacts onto the phone. And that will make the folks at RIM very nervous.

Yes, Apple has licensed the ActiveSync protocol from its Redmond arch-rival.

But in opening up the iPhone to third-party developers, the company has stopped short of the Microsoft way. Apple reserves the right to approve every application built for its beloved handheld, funneling each and every one through its new App Store.

At the press fest, Electronic Arts and Sega trumpeted new games for phone. Salesforce.com showed off a less frivolous app (or more frivolous, depending on you point of view). And venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers announced a $100m "iFund" that will do nothing but iFund other iPhone iApps.

"That should be enough to start about a dozen Amazons or even four Googles," the firm said. "And if we're running out of money, we'll run around and look for more

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/07/iphone_sdk_debuts/

Wikipedia boss slammed for expense claims

Former employee says boss owed $30,000 in receipts

It's not been a good week for Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Not only has his break-up with his girlfriend been splashed all over the papers, but now a former member of his staff has hit out at its spending habits.

Danny Wool has gone to the press telling not only of massive expense bills for the Wikipedia Foundation, which relies on public contributions and grants to fund its operations, but also of in-fighting prompted by Wales' spending.

He said: "At one point, [Wales] owed the Foundation some $30,000 in receipts, and this while we were preparing for the audit."

"His credit card was taken away from him, and he was told he had to pay that back."

But Wool says $7,000 worth of receipts were returned but the rest went unaccounted for.

In an IM conversation with The Associated Press, Wales denied that his Foundation credit card was taken away, saying it was his decision to stop submitting receipts for reimbursement.

Wikimedia executive director Sue Gardner posted a reply to Wool, on his blog stating: "Jimmy [Wales] has never used Wikimedia money to subsidise his personal expenditures. Indeed, he has consistently put the Foundation's interests ahead of his own, and has erred on the side of personally paying for his own Wikimedia-related expenditures, rather than the reverse."

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/13285/14309/Wiki-boss-slammed-for-expenses.phtml

Bill Gates loses richest man crown

Bill Gates is no longer the richest man on the planet. Investment guru Warren Buffett has knocked him off the number one spot for the first time in over a decade.

Gates has been at the top of the annual Forbes rich list for the past 13 years.

Buffett now has a personal fortune of about $62bn - ahead of Gates' cash pile of $58bn.

Gates was pushed into third place on the preposterously prosperous list because Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim Helú has also jumped ahead of the Microsoft co-founder, with total wealth estimated at $60bn.

Despite his relegation to third place, Gates, who steps down as Redmond head honcho in June, still pulled in an eye-popping $2bn in the past 12 months alone.

Meanwhile, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire on the list.

He's already put an estimated $1.5bn into his piggy bank, even though the 23-year-old is yet to poke a profit out of his social networking website.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/03/06/bill_gates_forbes_rich_list/

Jobs to investors: Get Stuffed. This is my ship and I’ll run my way

Apple Inc has no plans to declare a dividend or buy back its stock, CEO Jobs told the annual meeting of shareholders on Tuesday, adding that iPhone sales were on track.

Jobs said he was confident that Apple would hit its 2008 sales target of 10 million iPhones, a figure which some analysts have questioned in the face of a weaker U.S. economy, and executives said the communications device would reach Asian markets this year.

But COO Tim Cook was elusive on timing for selling into the key market of China, which has more cellphone users than any other country.

"We will enter Asia with the iPhone in 2008 ... We will one day enter China, we're not saying when, and we will one day enter India," Cook said.

Jobs was asked if the company planned to start paying a dividend or initiate a stock buyback program. "At this time, we have no plans to do either," he told shareholders.

The company's stockpile of cash and short-term investments topped $18 billion at the end of last year, leading to speculation about how the maker of iPods, iPhones and Macintosh computers might spend some of its cash reserves.

Shares of Apple closed up $2.89, or 2.4 percent, at $124.62 on Nasdaq.

The stock is nearly 46 percent higher than it was a year ago, but shed 37 percent so far this year amid concerns that a faltering economy will dampen demand for its products.

One shareholder asked why Jobs hadn't sought to reassure investors about the share price.

"We don't think it's our job to manage our shareholders," Jobs said. "It's our job as the management team to manage the company, to manage it through when the stock price is going up and to manage it when the stock price is going down."

Christine Russo, who drove from Los Angeles to attend the meeting, said she was impressed with Apple's product lineup and saw dips in the stock price as a chance to buy shares cheaply.

"I like to buy and sell. When it was at $200 I sold and took profit and then when it came down I came to buy it back and double up," Russo told Reuters.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-apple.html?_r=1&ref
=technology&oref=slogin

Desperate Yahoo Hunts for Options

Looking for love in all the wrong places, Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc. have stepped up talks over creating an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited offer for Yahoo, according to those good folks at the Wall Street Journal.

The talks center on a deal that would fold Time Warner's AOL Internet unit into Yahoo, these people said, though they still consider a Yahoo purchase by Microsoft as the most likely outcome.

• The News: Yahoo and Time Warner have stepped up talks to create an alternative to Microsoft's unsolicited offer for Yahoo, people familiar with the matter said.

• Background: Yahoo and Time Warner had an earlier round of discussions, but talks intensified recently after Yahoo asked for a proposal it could take to Yahoo directors.

• Next Step: If a March 14 deadline holds, any Yahoo and Microsoft talks would likely occur over this weekend.

The Time Warner talks have stepped up as Yahoo tries to nail down its alternatives to Microsoft's Feb. 1 offer, which Yahoo rejected as undervaluing it. The scenario under discussion would involve folding AOL into Yahoo with Time Warner taking a sizable minority stake in the combined entity, say the people familiar with the matter.

They say that Yahoo and Time Warner had an earlier round of discussions, but talks intensified recently after Yahoo went back to Time Warner to ask for a proposal that it could take to Yahoo directors. Time Warner is putting the finishing touches on that proposal now. The people familiar with the matter say that the companies estimate about $1 billion in cost savings annually.

The discussions, which have included contact between Time Warner Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, are driven at least partly by the idea that uniting Yahoo and AOL, including its Advertising.com business, would create an online advertising powerhouse. Outsourcing Yahoo's search advertising to Google Inc., which handles some of AOL's search advertising and has a minority AOL stake, is not currently part of the discussions, the people familiar with the matter say.

News Corp. and Yahoo, which have been discussing a deal whereby News Corp. would gain a stake in Yahoo in exchange for selling it MySpace and some other Web sites, separately continue to talk about a possible deal, according to people familiar with the matter. These people say such discussions are already advanced, but still considered less likely than a Microsoft purchase of Yahoo. (News Corp. owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120468830515212763.html

Wikipedia Weepie: Fury of a woman scorned – on eBay

Has no one heard of the classic bitch-slap? To get on with our story; it was a boy meets girl story for the web 2.0 generation. But when it all turned sour the recriminations resounded through the blogosphere while the dirty laundry was put up for sale on eBay.

She was Rachel Marsden, 33, the Canadian right-wing political pundit used to airing the tangles of her personal life online. He was Jimmy Wales, 41, the co-founder of Wikipedia, the web encyclopaedia that aims to provide up-to-date “user-generated” information.

On Saturday Ms Marsden logged on to discover that her own particular affair had also been updated. She had been dumped on Wikipedia.

Mr Wales posted a statement on the site noting that: “I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden.”

In response Ms Marsden did what any self-respecting scorned cyber-pundit would do. She dug out the shirt and jumper that her former lover had worn during what was apparently their only night together and put them up for sale on eBay. “Hi, my name is Rachel and my (now ex) boyfriend, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, just broke up with me via an announcement on Wikipedia,” she wrote.

By last night bidding on the T-shirt, complete with stubborn stains, had reached more than £150 while bids on the jumper had climbed past £200.

She also sent a transcript of their passionate conversations on an instant messenger service to a California technology blog, fuelling a debate on whether Mr Wales had broken his own website’s principles. Among them is the policy that all of Wikipedia’s “user-facing” content “should be written from a neutral point of view” and may not contain any unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas . . . that, in the words of Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimbo Wales, would amount to a “novel narrative or historical interpretation”.

There was some uncertainty as to whether Mr Wales could write about his past romance from a “neutral point of view”; equally, it was unclear whether his statement that the affair was ended constituted a “novel narrative or historical interpretation”.

What Mr Wales acknowledged was a “far more important” issue was the allegation that, as he became involved with Ms Marsden, he intervened to redraft her Wikipedia biography.

“Rachel Marsden first approached me via e-mail two years ago with complaints about her bio,” he wrote. It already contained plenty of points of controversy. In the late 1990s, as a college swimming star, she had accused the team coach of sexual harassment. The coach, who was fired and then reinstated, claimed that she had harassed him. In 2004 she had been given a conditional discharge for harassing a radio host.

What concerned Ms Marsden, however, was an account of her entanglement with a Canadian counter-terrorism officer with whom she had a two-year affair. On her blog she accused him of passing her secret documents; he accused her of harassment.

Mr Wales said that he reviewed the entry on Ms Marsden and discovered it was not up to standard. “We had never met,” he added. They did meet in February. An apparent transcript of their conversations before that meeting suggests that, although Mr Wales had withdrawn from the editing process, he was still influencing the editors.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3475722.ece

Microsoft top brass 'burned' by Vista problems

Surprise, surprise. Private Microsoft emails unearthed during a US court case have revealed that even the software giant's own executives struggled to get Windows Vista running smoothly.

Early adopters of the operating system, which launched last year, battled with widespread hardware and software compatibility issues. Many PCs initially sold as "Vista Capable" were unable to run some of Vista's core features, sparking a class action lawsuit against Microsoft.

Many computer components and peripherals required updated drivers in order to work with Vista. In numerous cases these were not available until long after the operating system launched.

But the emails show that it wasn't just end-users who were incensed by Vista's teething issues. In fact, Microsoft's top brass were fully aware of them from the outset.

One exec, Mike Nash, complained he was "burned" so badly by compatibility issues he was left with "a $2100 email machine".

Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft exec in charge of Windows, struggled to even get his home printer working with Vista. In an email to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in February last year, Sinofsky outlined reasons why Vista struggled at launch.

He said hardware and software vendors never "really believed we would ever ship [Vista] so they didn't start the work [on updated drivers] until very late in 2006".

"People who rely on using all the features of their hardware (like Jon's Nikon scanner) will not see availability for some time, if ever, depending on the [manufacturer]," Sinofsky wrote.

Ballmer responded with a terse "Righto".

The "Jon" referred to is Microsoft board member and its former chief operating officer Jon Shirley, who experienced compatibility problems with his Epson printer and scanner and his Nikon film scanner.

He could not even get some of Microsoft's own MSN software products to work on Vista and refused to upgrade his other computer to the operating system.

"I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is such a shortage of drivers," Shirley wrote to Ballmer.

Other emails from various Microsoft executives show that even they struggled to work out what "Vista Capable" and "Vista Ready" meant when buying a new PC.

"Is it true that Vista Ready doesn't necessarily mean Aero capable? I got a Dell Latitude that is Vista Ready but doesn't have enough graphics [hardware]," Sinofsky wrote.

Aero, one of Vista's most heavily marketed features, is the operating system's new graphical interface. It resembles MacOS X but can only be enabled when running on a PC with the latest graphics hardware.

In a statement regarding the release of the emails, Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said employees had raised concerns with Vista in order to make the program better for customers.

"That's the sort of exchange we want to encourage. And in the end, we believe we succeeded in achieving both objectives," Evans said.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/microsoft-top-brass-burned-
by-vista-problems/2008/02/29/1204226975087.html

Woz finds flaws in Apple's latest

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak heaped less than lavish praise on the company's iPhone, MacBook Air and Apple TV products when visiting Sydney this morning.

Wozniak, who created the Apple I and Apple II computers in the mid-1970s but ended his full-time employment with the company in the late '80s, said he was puzzled by the lack of 3G support on the iPhone and that he didn't believe the MacBook Air would be a hit.

"To tell you the truth I was really disappointed when the iPhone was introduced ... half the phones in the AT&T store at the time were 3G phones," Mr Wozniak said during a press conference following his keynote speech at the Broadband and Beyond Conference this morning.

"I was shocked because Apple is bringing the full internet [to mobiles] - full web pages with pictures and everything - and it's not 3G and I knew that would be a speed detriment."

Wozniak, who has moved on to new ventures since Apple but is still an employee and shareholder, said he did not know when a faster 3G iPhone would be released, although it had "sort of been known since day one that it would be here [eventually]".

The current iPhone model supports fast EDGE networks operated by Telstra and regular 2G networks, but both aren't as fast as 3G. At the UK launch of the iPhone, CEO Steve Jobs said Apple left out 3G support because it would have a detrimental effect on battery life.

"I never heard that it was a battery issue," said Wozniak.

"I don't understand why it would be a battery issue - I get as much life on my 3G phones as I get on my non-3G phones."

He said he still used the iPhone and praised its internet capabilities but he also carried a Motorola Razr for taking calls and browsing the web.

The iPhone is due to launch in Australia this year but thousands have already imported the device from overseas and unlocked it for use on local mobile networks.

When the MacBook Air was launched in January, Apple was criticised by reviewers for trading off too many essential features in favour of a lightweight, streamlined design.

The criticisms centred on the lack of a DVD drive, missing Ethernet networking port, relatively small 80GB hard drive and the inability to swap the battery.

Wozniak agreed with those criticisms, saying: "I don't think it's going to be a hit." He said he liked to burn a lot of DVDs for friends and watched movies on planes, and so needed the ability to swap batteries mid-flight

http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/woz-finds-flaws-in-apples-
latest-offerings/2008/03/03/1204402340251.html