States not so United over Microsoft’s Consent Decree’s Effectiveness

Recently, the department of justice concluded that the 2002 antitrust settlement between the US government and Microsoft has pretty much accomplished what it set out to do: Stop Microsoft from using its OS monopoly to gain monopoly status in other arenas. An 11 page report takes credit for other technology companies doing well namely:

1. The increased competition Microsoft’s Internet Explorer faces from web browsers such as Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera, and Apple’s Safari;
2. The popularity of Apple’s iTunes and Adobe’s Flash for handling multimedia content;
3. The increasing use of web-based services for e-mail and other applications that historically would have been handled by local applications; and
4. The decisions by Dell and Lenovo to offer the option of computers pre-loaded with a Linux operating system rather than Windows

Obviously, Microsoft feels that the consent decree has had a positive consumer oriented effect.  "The judgment "defined clear rules for how Microsoft competes without preordaining winners in the technology marketplace," said Microsoft’s Senior VP Brad Smith.

New  York, Louisiana, Maryland, Ohio and Wisconsin all felt Microsoft has lived up to its goals and in some cases surpassed. But in California, D.C., Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Massachusetts all set that Microsoft’s grip on the industry is as strong as ever.

Meanwhile, across the pond Microsoft is a half a month away from its EU case verdict. A half a billion dollars hangs in the balance, and one of the judges in the case has announced his retirement on the day the decision is made public.

My Thoughts

Clearly, in both cases big brother is doing a terrible job making me believe they are what’s best for the technology sector. The United States is guilty of poor regulation of tax payers dollars leaving hundreds of millions with an inadequate infrastructure for the future of the Internet. More aggravating to the situation is California’s clear conflict of interest. With Apple being Located in California, the state would stand to gain considerable wealth should Apple’s OS market share topple that of Redmond’s.

While I believe that any company found guilty of extending it’s monopoly by means of owning one should be punished, the United States government does a horrible job of regulating the technology sector, and I don’t believe the EU will do any better. I believe that the EU has so far shown poor judgement and lack of professionalism in the case verses Microsoft, and setting a record shattering fine against Microsoft as well as taking away from them the ability to compete would establish a framework of protectionism in Europe that could do damage in the long run depending on what happens.

I  think the Antitrust officials would better serve the public by dealing with companies like Ticketmaster who continue to be the only way to get tickets, and the NFL who’s exclusive deals have seen the likes of horrible TV services like Direct TV stay alive, and lesser football Game franchise like Madden Prosper.

What we need in the technology sector are a set of principles in which all companies must abide by. By establishing a framework of competition, we must look to see the core ingredients of such a thing. Openness, Collaboration, Standards, idiotic software patent abolition (I believe that in some cases a software patent is fine, as long as it accomplishes an idea that is novel, and not just an approach) and other issues, which directly foster competition moving forward.

 

Technorati tags: Monopoly, Microsoft, DOJ, 2002 Consent Decree, U.S. Department of Justice, Technology Regulation

Google is driving home its GPS-advertising campaign

In the quest to win Advertising 4.0 (Print,TV,Internet,GPS+WLAN) Google is making moves on the chess board like a Russian champ. Their longtime work with BMW is now making progress, with Google and "BMW ConnectedDrive" announcing today their Google Maps Send to Car feature expanding to all customers. The service was previously available only to customers in Germany.  

Google’s BMW Connected Drive is only part of the experience users will get from Google. Look for Google to partner with more car manufacturers while Microsoft has been quietly trying to work out the details of it’s Windows Automotive strategy. I seriously don’t know how long either Google and/or Microsoft have been hip to the idea of advertising with GPS, but I assume at least Google has been on top of it for a while, which would explain the reportedly heavy spending going on with the Google Phone.

As a long time Carputer hobbyist and enthusiast, I’d love to see Google quickly release some form of API. Even more interesting would be an API that took advantage of a car’s data port.

Technorati tags: google, google lat Long Blog, Google Local Search, Google In-car, Carputer, Carputers, Google Earth, Google maps, BMW

 

 

How the GPhone Could Burst the Bubble 2.0

I was the first to post on "Pay per visit advertising", and shortly after (the day after), I described how I think Google’s business plan will look in detail, including how it will make them a major enterprise player one that could even perhaps rival Microsoft (in fact think Microsoft is in major trouble if they don’t force Google out of the 700Mhz bidding), and since that time an amazing amount of things have occurred which not only make the GPhone look like a reality, but also make pay per visit advertising look like a reality. These revaluations that have all occurred in less than a month are both exciting and frightening; because the Internet might the worst hit, and might suffer the most casualties.

Since I first posted on details about this form of advertising in which I have been working on for over a year, there have been patents applied for (most likely not worth the paper written on but who knows) at the USPTO as well as many new "Confirmed-rumors" which paint the GPhone as a cheap but useful Internet device, which is less focused on high end features, but more so cost effective usability seems to be the focus, and as the person who is confirming the rumor says, "Google is aiming GPhone at the 100 dollar laptop."

It’s my opinion that Google was largely responsible for the return of advertising dollars to the Internet. Before Google, an advertiser had a better way of targeting and measuring return on investment via TV than they did on the Internet. Google worked like an angel of perfection to bring us the Internet that was free from all of the nasty things that were out there, and at the same time, gave advertisers a platform in which they could execute a huge return on their investment. "They giveth, and they taketh away."

Enter the GPhone. The Internet could be a major looser should the Pay per search advertising model die. There are only so many advertising dollars so I guess this means that the quality of TV will go even more, and less entrepreneurs will risk startups, less VC’s will fund them. Advertising dollars will leave TV and internet alike if the GPhone were to catch on, as much  more money is spent in the car, than in front of a computer. Hopefully, this will just create more of a market, and bring new advertisers on, like companies that sell heavy items that don’t ship cheaply.

GPS advertising has the ability to do everything the Internet can but better. You can charge not only by business model of pay per visit, you can also use it to charge by banner views, but in a very precise GPS enabled fashion. You can store GPS cookies, then deliver those cookies to the folks you call, the people you call the most, most likely have the most in common with you. Will America give away it’s privacy for 100 dollars a month? I think they will.

Taking on Corporate America with the GPhone. I believe Google is building a massive communications platform which will directly attack and possibly very badly wound Microsoft in the OS market, Office Market, as well as communications server market. Once Google is considered a real enterprise player, just about anything can happen from there. Google if you need a good thinker just let me know! I’m always looking for a company that facilitates and provokes future creating thought.

Technorati Tags: gphone, google, phone rumor, pay per visit advertising, 700mhz

Yahoo! ups the multimodal-com goods ante, sans new messenger client

When I saw all of the hoopla surrounding Yahoo!’s latest foray into unified communications, I was hoping to see that this fantastic upgrade would get us the new Vista only client which looked much nicer than just about any communications client I’ve seen in the past.

This isn’t a post meant to complain though, what I’m reading the features I’m seeing are great, in fact, it’s hard to complain with much of anything Yahoo! has done lately with its email client, and its hard to complain considering that I’m under an umbrella overlooking the many mountain painted Caribbean Sea with only the finest music, but I doubt it.

The Unified communications multimodal communications evolution is on fire; it’s taking place on two fronts. One area is the enterprise, Microsoft and Cisco and many other players, with promises of email mashing up with voice, and one in the consumer place with the likes of Yahoo! Email, Google Email, but more so with clients like Meebo, Orgoo, and many others out there that mash communications. The reason why I point out my disappointment with the Yahoo! WPF messenger is that you have to take the software + services strategy seriously, at least in the long run. You can have all of the most fantastic services on the cloud but you simply have to take advantage of the richness that takes place only inside the computer.

The companies I’ve listed all have a strong strategy to work with, I’m waiting to learn more about the new Yahoo offering, and I need to start keeping track and recording which players are opening up their communication nodes to let others extend the functionality via other services like twitter.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, Yahoo! Messenger, Multimodal communications, multimodal, Messenger, WPF, WPF Messenger, Unified Communications, vista, twitter

Headed to Puerto Rico

Will be back Thursday. I might have time for a blog or two while I’m getting sun but I’ll be happy if I can just keep up on things. I’ll post some pictures on the flip side.

Hasta La Windows Vista

-GS

Technorati tags: Vacation, Honeymoon, Peurto Rico, Blogging

openSUSE 10.3 Beta 2 on the loose

 I wasn’t too happy with the last beta, but that’s only because one of my favorite distributions wasn’t playing nice with the hardware I through at it. Namely Sax2 has it’s old bug from 10.1 where changing the resolution doesn’t change the resolution. Not exactly what you expect from a modern operating system. I guess that’s because I put it on a GFX Intel card. (Bug #270846)

They say the problem will be fixed in beta 3, so I am anxiously awaiting it. For those of you who are planning on putting this distribution on other hardware, just check out the latest release notes, especially the technical challenges and the Most annoying bugs over at openSUSE News. For those brave souls out there, to the torrents!

• 1 DVD containing OSS and NonOSS software (torrents for: i386, x86_64, ppc)
• 1 CD with a default KDE installation (i386, x86_64, not for ppc)
• 1 CD with a default GNOME installation (i386, x86_64, not for ppc)
• 1 AddOn CD with only NonOSS packages on it (i386 or x86_64, ppc)
• 1 AddOn CD with language packages that are used for extra languages (the DVD contains support for english, french, italian, spanish, german, chinese, japanese, czech, danish, norwegian, khmer, hungarian, polish; the DVD has support for installation in all languages, just extra packages are only on this extra media) (i386, x86_64, ppc)
• DVD/CDs containing the sources corresponding to the media

Let me know what you think. openSUSE remains one of the most advanced Workstation Linux Distos out there, and I love it as much as Ubuntu and maybe I have a little old time loyalty to it that Microsoft can’t even touch.

Technorati tags: openSUSE, openSUSE 10.3 Beta 2, Novel, lizard loving fun, Linux, GNU/Linux, 10.3 Beta 2

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Facebook is a threat to Google

Facebook–the most talked about social networking site around–is working on it’s own advertising bits which will scan each site to learn more about the person and then use that information to deliver relevant advertising. This has the ability to be as effective as targeted as search advertising I think. I’ve heard a lot lately about how more and more eyeballs are on content sites and less time is spent on search engines as people get more proficient at finding information, they rely less on tools like Google to get them the information they need. Also, by using Facebook (and other social networking sites) users are able to look for things in a viral fashion without using Google’s systems. If there is an IPO to watch, this could be the one, I just hope they do it Google style where most of the wealth doesn’t go to rich investment bankers.

Technorati tags: Facebook, Facebook Advertising, Dent in Google’s advertising armor, Social Targeted Advertising

The vision of Jim Gray realized: Google Sky

When Jim Gray was in the middle of solving the problem of what he called E-science, or the process of taking science and putting it on the Internet, he said: "E-science is gathering steam, it may be time to step back and let the smart people do it. "years later Google Sky certainly wasn’t the first project to exist with the goal of archiving the sky, but perhaps the project is the finest.  

In a paper written by Jim Gray and his colleges published named "Designing and Mining Multi-Terabyte Astronomy Archives: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey" work began in the late 90’s on what was then considered a next generation astronomy digital archive.

Astronomy is a unique science in that there is active collaboration between professional and amateur astronomers. Often, amateur astronomers are the first to see some phenomenon. Most of the tools are designed for professional astronomers, but a public Internet server will provide public access to all the published data.

Jim believed that computer science was at the center of all of the intellectual disciplines, and so he felt most at home there because it gave him the ability to help solve any of the worlds real problems. Jim’s professor once said that "There are so many talents in the computing field, Jim has the ability to understand it all, and be good at everything, he can pick a good problem and then invent around it to advance that area of science. It’s what was made Jim a novelty among men, he was such a great visionary, a pragmatist, and programmer. There are few that can do all, said his professor.

The researchers at Microsoft Research, John Hopkins University and the Department of Astronomy, California Institute of Technology collaborated on what would be the foundation for creating a massive index of the stars above via a three dimensional representation as seen with the new Google Sky. Jim Gray was perhaps one of the most influential people in modern science, his understanding of databases led to great transactional systems that led to great software like Microsoft Exchange, as well as building the foundations that made Virtual Earth possible and of course he played an integral part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).

<Figure 3>The hierarchical subdivision of spherical triangles, represented as a quad tree. The tree starts out from the triangles defined by an octahedron. The archive will enable astronomers to explore the data interactively. Data access will be aided by multidimensional spatial and attribute indices.

 

 

 

 

From Designing and Mining Multi-Terabyte Astronomy Archives

Astronomy is about to undergo a major paradigm shift. Data gathering technology is riding Moore’s law: data volumes are doubling every 20 months. Data sets are becoming larger, and more homogeneous. For the first time data acquisition and archiving is being designed for online interactive analysis. In a few years it will be much easier to download a detailed sky map or object class catalog, than wait several months to access a telescope. In addition, the online data detail and quality is likely to rival that generated by the typical telescopes.

The purpose of the Archive would be to allow astronomers to explore the data interactively. It would also have the following attributes:

1. Would be multidimensional and spatial
2. Would have the data split among multiple servers allowing parallel, scalable input and output, and parallel data analysis.
3. Hashing techniques allowing efficient clustering
4. Contain pair-wise comparison algorithms

 

Google Sky (Google Earth)

Many years later, Google unveils a wonder of usability that started with a man who was trying to solve a problem. After using Google Sky for quite some time today, I am simply  amazed at the wonders of modern science. I am so amazed that I’m starting to feel numb to just about any new technology that I witness. To the people at Google who have taken the heavens and put them on my desktop, thanks, Jim would appreciate this much more than I would but you all did a fantastic job.

Technorati tags: Google Sky, Google Earth, Lat Long Blog, Google Lat Long Blog, Google, Microsoft, Jim Gray, Microsoft Research, John Hopkins University, California Institute of Technology, The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Nasa, Designing and mining the multi-terabyte astronomy

Microsoft Flexes the Power of Silverlight with tafiti

I was thinking Microsoft would respond to Adobe’s Flash HD hoopla with a reminder that if they have their way, Silverlight will not be taken lightly. Tafiti does two great things for Microsoft actually, it also shows that Microsoft hasn’t given up on search and is constantly thinking about new ways to offer search.

The best way to describe tafiti is just calling it a cross between Microsoft OneNote, and a web 2.0 search engine. What it begins to show is that by combining online functionality with robust client side data storage and flexibility, you can create a networked application that is built entirely to facilitate online research. I’ll use this for a while, and see how I like it. Microsoft must release their "index 2.0" soon or it won’t matter how nice the front ends are, their backend is still very far being Google in every area except perhaps images, and that possibly because it’s so very difficult to scan images and video effectively even today.

I sent in plenty of suggestions to Microsoft, more than anything because it gave me hope that search might still get more exciting than the plain interfaces we are seeing today. I think I’ll run through a few of them here. (keep in mind I’ve only used the application for about 15 minutes, but first impressions are often the ones you want to keep)

1. Make the application themeable. We need a white professional looking theme.

2. Add more options

3. Make the application more responsive, and less resource hungry.

4. Add Endless scroll please!

5. Integrate with Skydrive so that I can mobilize my research.

6. Refine the design, make a couple more videos showing off the strengths of the tool.

7. Don’t stop there, start using some available research tools out there, what can you learn from them?

8. How else can we visualize bookmarking? Bust some 3d goodness in her.

9. Did I mention endless scroll?

 

 Image Search for Chicago in tafiti

 

Technorati tags: tafiti, Microsoft, Silverlight, Microsoft tafiti, live.com, Silverlight app, live.com integration

Real, MTV, & Verizon to improve the “already best” music experience around

Real Networks has announced that MTV and Verizon will all join forces to bring the us combined content and connectivity that only they could offer whether we are on the road, in the car, or in our home. If you want the honest to geek truth, Apple’s iTunes + iPod hasn’t been the best combination in quite some time.

For owners of Sonos Digital Music Distribution Systems who also subscribe to Rhapsody, the combination of Real Networks + MTV + Verizon will improve the best experience already around. With an iPod and iTunes, I can only control one zone of music, and I can only listen to music I purchase. The iPod is the best experience for people who don’t like music that much.

If Verizon and MTV add to this software+service+Hardware ecosystem instead of trying to replicate it, then I can only tell you what a growing number of other people are finding out, iTunes and iPod are not the best combination around anymore, Sonos is where it’s at. When people come over to my house and see my Sonos system, their jaws drop and they have no idea how I can control the sound coming out of rock speakers by my pool, by a small overgrown looking wireless iPod inspired device. I have access to 3.5 millions songs laid out in a fashion like no other on my Sonos handheld wireless controller and in case you didn’t hear, you can get a Sonos system via a growing number of Best Buy stores, although the rumor is that Sonos will keep the professional CE market happy with a pro line and might announce it at this years CEDIA. Recently, Sonos added the ability to stream Sirius Radio to all zones in the home, all controlled via the same very cool handheld player. Did I forget that owners of Sonos can control Pandora accounts right from the palm of their hands? This isn’t some glued on software either it’s all written from the ground up to run on Sonos. Fans of music are starting to expect more from their device than the vision that creative had in the mid-90’s and that Apple perfected.

With MTV joining forces with Rhapsody and Verizon, I’m starting to wonder whether Sonos will add Video distribution to it’s already super cool device lineup. (Not that I really care for MTV but millions of young users do)

For those people who are saying that Microsoft abandoned MTV, it’s only a half truth. Microsoft accomplished what it set out to do, get these other stores using their DRM by making them think of Microsoft as a partner, so that they would only have to concentrate on one competitor. It’s unfortunate that they didn’t help blossom the scenario based approach to a digital lifestyle solutions that so many professional audio startup have had, because now their ecosystem is starting to grow real wings.

Prediction: Apple will have Digital Music Distribution baked into it’s iPod+Apple TV within 5 years or it will be obsolete.

Technorati tags: Real Networks, MTV, Verizon, The Network that doesn’t spy on you, The Uncensored Network that’s only quazi evil, Sonos, Microsoft, Apple, Digital Music Distrubution Systems, DMDS, 3.5 Million Songs