Freddie McMahon

What ever happened to artificial intelligence? Microsoft spending 25% of its R&D on AI as a key enabler for the Cloud!

2008-06-23T16:09:00.003Z

The grand promise of intelligent machines underestimated the complexity of reproducing human cognition

By James E. Gaskin

Source: Network World

23rd June 2008

Artificial intelligence promised us great technology. But has it delivered?

Stanford University computer science professor John McCarthy coined the phrase in 1956 to mean "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines," In the early years of the artificial intelligence movement, enthusiasm ran high and artificial intelligence pioneers made some bold predictions.

In 1965, artificial intelligence innovator Herbert Simon said that "machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do."

Two years later, MIT researcher Marvin Minsky predicted, "Within a generation ... the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved."

Popular culture jumped onto the artificial intelligence bandwagon and gave us Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons, HAL from the movie 2001 and R2D2 from Star Wars.

Yet, here we are, decades later and what has artificial intelligence done for us lately? If you define artificial intelligence as self-aware, self-learning, mobile systems, then artificial intelligence has been a huge disappointment.

On the other hand, every time you search the Web, get a movie recommendation from NetFlix, or speak to a telephone voice recognition system, tools developed chasing the great promise of intelligent machines do the work. In other words, we may not have full-functioning robots that cater to our every need, but artificial intelligence is embedded in our everyday lives.

"Once tools get far enough out of the lab, they're no longer AI, just common computer science," says Professor George Luger of the University of New Mexico. "AI just went to work."

One of the biggest boosts to artificial intelligence is Moore's Law, because artificial intelligence needs CPU power. "It took 20 years to go from a 5MHz chip to a 500MHz chip, but only eight months after that to get to a 1GHz chip," says futurist Daniel Burrus, author of the best seller Technotrends: How to Use Technology to Go Beyond Your Competition and founder of Burrus Research.

"The new Sony Playstation came out a year ago," says Burrus, "but if it came out five years earlier it would be considered a supercomputer." Burrus likens the growth of processing power on a graph to a hockey stick. "In the 90s, the graph was still low. In 2000, the graph started up a little. In 2008, we're getting on the handle of the hockey stick."

Burrus listed off multiple uses of artificial intelligence and expert systems that work behind the scenes. "The first application of successful AI was in the financial services industry for loan qualifications. Loan qualification went from one to two weeks down to minutes." Other examples include systems that help Navy pilots land jets on aircraft carriers.

His personal favorite is the use of an expert system to manage room service orders at Marriott hotels. "AI tells them when to start cooking and when to deliver. Marriott tells me exactly when breakfast will be delivered while others give me a 15 minute window. That's a competitive advantage for Marriott."

While energy prices soar, Burrus noted the cost of intelligence keeps going down. "Maybe we can offset the energy trend as we make appliances more intelligent."

Access to tools

Part of offsetting that trend will be better software tools, the type favored by Luger in his book, Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving (Sixth Edition). "Modern languages have roots in AI research, including object oriented design, C++, C#, and Java," Luger says. "The coolest stuff we've done is build a set of exciting tools."

Yet tools and embedded intelligent systems don't answer the "grand challenges" of artificial intelligence, including robots and language processing. Very few projects have captured the public's imagination.

NASA got great public response with their Mars rovers, but little was made of the artificial intelligence components. Artificial intelligence techniques considered pure research 15 years earlier guided rovers Spirit and Opportunity around rocks a world away.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) provides money for "grand challenges" including Internet development in their earlier incarnation of ARPA. Now it sponsors a contest to build autonomous vehicles (see Urban Challenge). This forces teams to integrate separate discipline areas such as machine vision, learning systems and problem solving while moving through unfamiliar areas.

One of the most successful artificial intelligence products is literally underfoot. Roomba, the home vacuuming product from iRobot, has sold over 2 million units. One survey showed over half of the deployed Roombas have been given pet names by their owners.

Colin Angle, CEO and co-founder of iRobot, says, "When we started shipping Roomba in 2002, we asked focus groups if it was a robot. They said no, a robot was humanoid and this was an intelligent floor vacuum. Now people are definitely changing to accept robot appliances."

Hollywood again set the bar high. "Since the Jetsons in 1962, they created expectations we failed to meet for over 40 years. Big AI projects have largely gone by the wayside, but you can see effective behavior that solves real world problems," Angle says.

As you might expect from someone making work tools for the real world, Angle takes a practical look at artificial intelligence and robotics.

"In general, software is algorithms and code that can be reused across platforms.

The more low-level tasks used to handle different situations, such as obstruction avoidance, the more successful. We call it bottom-heavy cognition," he says.

See me, feel me, touch me

Seeing and avoiding obstacles remains tough. "Years ago, researchers had the idea that machine vision was a straightforward problem, and was given to a graduate student for a summer project. Turns out things are radically harder than what people in the field though," Angle says.

Many remember Phillipe Kahn from his high profile days running Borland, but now he's CEO of Fullpower Technologies.

The company provides an operating environment for sensors in camera phones and consumer electronic devices.

"What we do is all about sensors. Imaging sensors, proximity sensors, and touch sensors are all part of what needs to be put to work. Sensors produce piles of organized data. Great software turns that raw data into actionable information. Fullpower is working on such solutions," Kahn says.

Micro-controllers often only have 8KB of RAM, so Fullpower writes in C and Assembler. "In the real world of next-generation intelligent devices, small, lean and frugal rule," Kahn says. "I predict that most of the successful and useful advances will come from sensor-enabled devices and networks of such sensor-enabled devices."

The language barrier

If machine vision remains a barrier for robot movement and navigation through the environment, the language barrier still looms large but is shrinking. Workable systems are appearing, particularly when a voice-recognition system can be trained or remains limited to certain vocabulary word groupings.

Larry Harris founded Artificial Intelligence Corporation in 1975, then founded Linguistic Technology Corporation in 1994, which became EasyAsk Software. Now vice president and general manager for the EasyAsk division of Progress Software, Harris continues to help machines solve language problems.

"We translate over 60,000 natural language questions per month into queries," Harris says.

When people type more than two or three words into an e-commerce search field, the system has to understand enough to search the product database accurately.

"The base work for Ask Jeeves was at the AI Lab at MIT," Harris says. "They were at the top until Google came out." Google uses artificial intelligence techniques for word stemming (getting the word down to the root), language analysis, and applying the results to the index.

As an example of artificial intelligence tools becoming commonplace programming modules, Harris listed word stemmers. "You can now buy them off the shelf and plug them in. And you choose stemming rules for the language you need, since the rules for German are different than French and English."

Harris warns there are no silver bullets in artificial intelligence, just incremental advances.

"People don't want to claim their product is AI," Harris says. "They just focus on the voice recognition angle. There's no real advantage to calling it AI, and even some baggage. Once you have a high proficiency example, you don't mention AI."

University of New Mexico's Luger says "language processing is a big area. We're working with a small company to answer questions in the context of a knowledge base that knows the area of inquiry."

Asking machine language processing to understand all words and speech idioms still leads to failure, but building in a knowledge base of a topic area works.

"Go to the Next I.T. Web site and check Ask Jenn from Alaska Airlines and Ask SGT STAR from the U.S. Army, two natural-language bots we put together," Luger says. "We want to give the same answers to the same questions, which you don't always get with people.''

Research yields results

Eric Horvitz, manager of the Adaptive Systems group at Microsoft, says "about a quarter of all Microsoft research is focused on AI efforts." Microsoft Research includes close to 1,000 Ph.D level researchers spread across eight campuses around the world, and a completely open research and publication environment. "It's a think tank, but not a captive one. We have an open publication model."

"Microsoft Research's No. 1 goal is to push the state of the art forward without regard to Microsoft," Horvitz says. "Researchers do their best work, publish in journals, and then work with product teams to build the best software or service."

One project that started in Microsoft Research became the new SYNC voice recognition technology used by audio systems in Ford vehicles.

Horvitz and fellow researchers also have the ability to turn thousands of Microsoft employees into guinea pigs.

The kernel of the Vista operating system includes machine learning to predict, by user, the next application that will be opened, based on past use and the time of the day and week. "We looked at over 200 million application launches within the company," Horvitz says. "Vista fetches the two or three most likely applications into memory, and the probability accuracy is around 85 to 90%."

Desktop application traffic is one thing, but city traffic prediction is another. ClearFlow, a project born of the frustration of sitting in Seattle traffic, examined thousands of routes for people based on the inference of local street traffic flow reacting to highway accidents. Realizing side streets become clogged when drivers seek to escape highway congestion, Microsoft's maps.live.com site includes side street congestion history in rerouting suggestions. Microsoft rolled out this free service for 72 cities in early April.

The excessive hype over artificial intelligence promises in the 1950s, 1960, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s have made the public weary of unfulfilled promises. While almost every consumer electronic device includes some artificial intelligence tools inside, the box labels never include artificial intelligence in the parts list.

Artificial intelligence is not only still around, but in more places than ever. Rather than calling the tools artificial intelligence, manufacturers just call technologies developed by artificial intelligence research "tools." Just remember that the next time you perform a Web search, write an address on an envelope the Post Office sorts automatically, or ask Microsoft Word for a grammar check, artificial intelligence does the heavy lifting.

Gaskin writes books (16 so far), articles, and jokes about technology and real life from his home office in the Dallas area. Gaskin has been helping small and midsize businesses use technology intelligently since 1986. He can be reached at readers@gaskin.com.

Yahoo is doing more deals as it Cloud sourcing for online advertising now supports over 800 newspapers; Decker is a top dealmaker

2008-06-05T07:54:00.002Z

By Wendy Davis

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Source: MediaPost

Decker: Yahoo, Busy With Deals, Is Far From Down And Out Yahoo's future may be uncertain, but company president Sue Decker went out of her way today to send a message to Madison Avenue that it's still a major player in the online ad industry.

Even as rumors continued to swirl that Microsoft will revive buyout talks, that Google will start powering search ads, and that Jerry Yang's days as CEO may be numbered, Decker unveiled a host of ad and distribution deals.

Among other announcements, Yahoo said it has forged a deal with CBS to stream TV shows. With the move, Yahoo joins other Web companies including AOL, MSN, Google's YouTube, and Joost in distributing CBS content.

Yahoo also added 94 newspapers to its consortium, including the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and the Las Vegas Review Journal. With the new members, Yahoo is now powering at least some online ads for almost 800 newspapers, up from 176 at launch in November of 2006. Participating newspapers also can offer local advertisers online inventory on Yahoo.

In the announcement about this deal, the company boasts that members can "integrate Yahoo's paid search technology across their sites" -- which appears an odd selling point, given that Yahoo has said it's considering outsourcing paid search to Google.
The other big news from Yahoo was that the company will sell ads on Wal-Mart's Web site. Yahoo said in a statement that marketers who purchase ad inventory on Walmart.com will also be able "to take advantage of Yahoo and Walmart.com's partnership in the online retail category later this month."
Meanwhile, despite the flurry of deals, Decker also said the door is still open to a merger with Microsoft. Talks unraveled last month, with the companies unable to agree on a price. Microsoft initially offered $31 a share, which it later upped to around $33, but Yahoo reportedly was holding out for a figure closer to $37 a share.

Google Cloud offers websites the options to customise search to meet their customer needs – this is a brilliant move versus the other Clouds!

2008-06-05T07:49:00.001Z

Source: Financial News USA

Google Site Search Taps Power of the Cloud to Improve Search for Business Websites

City of Industry, CA --(www.FinancialNewsUSA.com)-- 06/03/2008 - Internet Information Provider industry news provided by Financial News USA (OTC: FNWU). . Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) recently announced Google Site Search™, a service that provides quality search to any website with the flexibility of cloud computing. The new service, hosted by Google, allows site owners to quickly implement search functionality that is familiar and useful to their visitors. At the same time, site owners can customize Google Site Search to account for the unique nature of their site and their content. "Cloud computing makes powerful search readily accessible to any business on the web," said Dave Girouard, president of Enterprise, Google.

The Yahoo Cloud gets stronger with CBS distribution deal

2008-06-05T07:44:00.000Z

CBS and Yahoo agree to Web video distribution deal, Yahoo to carry CBS shows with ads

The Associated PressPublished: June 4, 2008

NEW YORK: CBS says Internet company Yahoo will stream the network's television shows online.

New York-based CBS Corp., whose hits include the popular "CSI" franchise, says Yahoo TV will run advertisements before streaming the CBS shows at no cost to viewers.

Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo Inc. becomes the largest member of CBS's growing list of online distribution partners, known as the CBS Audience Network. That group includes Time Warner's AOL, Google's YouTube, and Microsoft's MSN network.

Yahoo TV also streams shows from News Corp.'s Fox network and General Electric Co.'s NBC unit.

Adobe adds Flash, video, and Web services to its Acrobat software that is attractive for both corporates and prosumers for Cloud Apps

2008-06-05T07:40:00.001Z

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Acrobat Gets Multimedia Makeover

Adobe adds Flash, video, and Web services to its venerable Acrobat software.

By John Borland

Source: MIT Technology Review

Adobe is reinventing its venerable Acrobat software for the multimedia-heavy Web 2.0 age.

Targeted primarily at business users, Acrobat's familiar PDF format has long allowed Net users to create and distribute forms, documents, and other publications that don't translate well into ordinary Web pages.

Acrobat 9.0, which is slated for public release in July, will offer far more, allowing users to distribute slickly formatted presentation packages, complete with Flash-based video and animation. A related set of online collaboration tools is aimed at giving Adobe a foothold in the growing market for hosted Web applications.

"One of the long-standing virtues of PDF was the ability to have a reliable presentation regardless of the platform," says Marion Melani, group marketing manager for Adobe's Acrobat team. "We're taking that history and extending it to include new mediums."

A 15-year-old product, Acrobat's transformation reflects the growing importance of multimedia, for businesses as well as for YouTube-savvy consumers. But it is also a nod to the burgeoning use of online document-sharing tools--a critical activity as work groups are spread increasingly across home offices and locations around the globe.

Acrobat's strength has always been in allowing documents that need precise formatting--whether tax forms or artful magazine layouts--to be displayed, distributed, and printed as intended, rather than risking distortion in a Web browser. The last version also added support for computer-aided design (CAD) features, opening the format to wider use by product manufacturers.

This new version, the first to include support for Flash, steps beyond this document model. It offers users the ability to create "portfolios" of multiple files that can include video, audio, Web pages, manipulable 3-D objects, and even Flash-based applications in a single compressed package, all viewable inside the new Acrobat Reader software.

With a simple interface, reminiscent of the way that Apple's iTunes displays album covers, portfolios will allow recipients to flip through each component, in an order determined by the author.

Adobe says that it expects the video and Flash-based features to resonate quickly with professionals who make complicated presentations, such as sales and marketing representatives, and even architects and attorneys creating multimedia legal briefs. Analysts note that video and Flash animations could also be helpful for demonstrating procedures in scientific journal articles, technical documentation, and financial reports.

"We're seeing video used everywhere, even in context of technical documents or product brochures, as a way of telling a story," says IDC analyst Melissa Webster. "These portfolios are a compelling way to integrate multiple files."

The new Acrobat.com site will allow users to store, share, and work together on these multimedia-heavy portfolios, without having to swap them by e-mail. But Adobe hopes that people will also use the service for broader document-collaboration efforts.

The site offers a minimally featured word processor called Buzzword, acquired when the company bought startup Virtual Ubiquity last year. Separate functions offer Web audio and video conferencing, including the ability to let participants remotely view activity on the main user's desktop. Users can store and share up to five gigabytes of files, allowing them to work on projects together.

Other companies have beat Adobe to these hosted collaboration services, with services such as Google Docs, Microsoft's recently unveiled Live Mesh, and a myriad of smaller offerings. But Adobe is betting that the simple, easy-to-use design of its new service, and the near ubiquity of its Acrobat software, will give it a leg up.

"This is never going to be a direct competitor to Microsoft Office, because it just doesn't have the productivity value," says Forrester Research analyst Sheri McLeish. "But it gets their foot in the door and is an opportunity to reach more users, who will be impressed by what Adobe has done."

Acrobat 9.0 will be available in several versions, costing $299 for the standard edition, $499 for Acrobat Pro, and $699 for the full-featured Pro Extended version. The beta version of Acrobat.com, accessible now, is free.

Adobe opens Flash for more devices to attract more Cloud developers to use Adobe tools as Microsoft and Sun competitive products flounder

2008-06-05T07:35:00.002Z

Adobe opens up Flash on mobiles

Source: BBC

Watching TV on a mobile can be a frustrating experience

Adobe has announced a plan to try to get its Flash player installed on more mobile devices and set-top boxes.

Dubbed Open Screen the initiative lifts restrictions on how its multimedia handling software can be used.

Adobe will stop charging licencing fees for mobile versions of Flash and plans to publish information about the inner workings of the code.

In taking this step Adobe hopes to repeat on mobiles the success its Flash technology has enjoyed on the web.

Video deal

Adobe estimates that its Flash player is installed on more than 98% of net-connected desktop computers.

The Open Screen plan will build on Flash Lite - Adobe's version of its multimedia player designed for mobile gadgets - that is already on millions of handhelds.

The ultimate aim of Open Screen is to make it much easier for TV and film makers to send their content to mobiles and on other devices such as set-top boxes.

It aims to do this by creating one flexible player technology that can run on any small-form device but only demands that developers write code once for it.

At the moment trying to get games or video on to different devices can be frustrating because of the plethora of hardware and software quirks on each gadget.

Adobe's four-step plan involves ending license fees; removing restrictions on the use of files in SWF and FLV format; publishing detailed information about the program interfaces for its Flash player and opening up information about its Flash streaming technology.

The move is the latest in a series that are aiming to open up Flash and get more devleopers working with it.

It is also part of the larger plan for Adobe Air - an overarching code development system that aims to bridge the gap between web and desktop applications.

Adobe said it was working with Arm, SonyEricsson, Nokia, LG and other gadget makers on the Open Screen initiative as well as content partners such as the BBC, MTV and NBC.

Adobe faces competition from Microsoft which is trying to get Silverlight - its answer to Air - on to mobiles too.

Cloud Players are likely to want to buy Skype to bolster their Unified Communications service. EBay needs to strategically position for Cloud!

2008-06-04T17:14:00.001Z

Will eBay Go Shopping?

June 4, 2008, 9:53 am

Who knows whether or not Microsoft and Yahoo will ever merge. In the meantime, investment bankers might consider cruising eBay for their next assignment. The online auction site has money in the bank, a unit it may want to sell and a track record of growing through acquisitions.

What’s more, many Internet stocks look cheap and appear ripe for the picking. According a recent report from Bernstein Research, price-to-earnings multiples for Internet companies are at their lowest level in the past five years. That could prod big Internet companies with lots of cash and little debt, such as eBay, to go bargain hunting.

But before eBay’s new chief executive, John Donahoe, hits the “Buy It Now” button, analysts at Bernstein are suggesting he should put one of eBay’s businesses on the block: Skype.

In a recent report on the state of the Internet industry — which weighs in at 310 pages — Berstein’s analysts declare that eBay’s acquisition of the Internet-based telephone service was “simply a mistake,” and that it failed to enhance eBay’s core auction business.

Skype is growing, but not fast or as profitably as eBay had hoped. The unit is expected to bring in $523 million for 2008, which adds just 3 percent to eBay’s operating margins, Bernstein’s report said.

The analysts argue that eBay should divest Skype and use the money either to increase its stakes in international online auction sites, such as Mercado Libre or QXL Ricardo, or buy back more of its stock.

The report is just the latest contribution to a cottage industry of speculation about who might buy Skype if it came up for sale.

Here’s one possibility: Another voice-over-Internet-protocol, or VoIP, provider, such as a United States-based cable operator, might try to integrate Skype’s 276 million customers with its own. Each user of Skype’s service — which is free between Skype users — brings in just $1.76 in annual revenue, the report said. A company that was able to concentrate on expanding that business might see a lot of upside if it can find away to get Skype customers to spend just a little bit more money each year.

So after chucking Skype out of the airlock, what else might eBay do?

One choice — not a big hit among bankers, to be sure — would be to do nothing. EBay already controls 90 percent of the online auction market in the United States and Europe, making it difficult to move the needle further and keep growing quickly. It could simply let its growth rate decline and enjoy its position as the de facto Web auction monopoly.

But that would be inconsistent with eBay’s “buy-growth” strategy, which has kept its revenue engine humming for the last several years. The company has a history of spending a large portion of its cash on buying things. Since 2002, it has spent two-thirds of its $7.4 billion in free cash flow on acquisitions, Bernstein calculated.

So how much can eBay spend? The company is expected to generate $4 billion in net cash flow this year. Factor out the $1.9 billion earmarked for share buybacks, along with the $600 million slated for capital expenditures, and that leaves Mr. Donahoe with $1.3 billion, plus whatever he gets for Skype.

That cash could be augmented with stock or debt, perhaps to buy a rival international online auction site. It could also buy a slew of small, private technology companies that could add nifty, cutting-edge features to keep its relatively mature auction site fresh.

EBay could even choose to make a “transformative merger” and get into the online advertising game. Unlike with voice-over-Internet calling, the advertising business could diversify eBay’s revenue stream, while also enhancing its core auction business by routing customers to its site.

Of course, that would put it in direct competition with online ad king, Google. But Google has already targeted eBay with its Google Checkout feature, which competes with eBay’s lucrative Paypal payment system. While it is doubtful that eBay could truly take on Google anytime soon in the online ad war, it could make it a bit uncomfortable by hooking up with one of its rivals. (Did someone say Yahoo?).

As he considers whether or not to go shopping, though, eBay’s new chief is likely to pay close attention to recent history. So soon after writing off much of Skype’s purchase price, Mr. Donahoe might think twice about another risky deal.

Semantic Search starts a beachhead to deliver meaningful search – there is no doubt that conventional search needs to be transformed

2008-05-29T10:46:00.001Z

The future is now: Semantic search

Trendwatch

By Christian Zibreg

Tuesday, May 27, 2008 01:00

Trendwatch - It's not every day that we are witnessing the birth of a new search engine. But every once in a while a new company comes along with an interesting idea to make one of the most important tools on the Internet much more efficient. Just like Google came virtually out of nowhere in the late 1990s, we are now seeing a new company that takes on the keyword-based searches we are used to today: Powerset’s secret weapon is semantic search. Is this the company that has the technology to challenge Google?

Back ten years ago, Google was a small start-up, but its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had an idea to make the confusing mess of Internet search results more relevant. It almost appeared that Page and Brin had found a way to make search engines much smarter than the Yahoos, Altavistas and Excites of the time. A decade later, this idea, keyword-based page-rank searches have become the accepted standard and although it may seem so at first sight, today’s search engines aren’t exactly what one would call smart.

They are still based on so-called robots, automated programs that scan web pages and store copies in a huge database called index. Data mining algorithms run through the index to create relations between web pages and calculate rankings of pages and use a complex way to connect those web pages to search terms. The better the intelligence, the more relevant ads can be displayed on a search results page. Despite the fact that Google improves its search tools and the backend of its massive index - such as the combination of different indexes (text, images, maps, videos, etc.) – the pace of the innovation in the search space appears to have stalled. Just like ten years ago, we still enter search term and end up with a list of web pages. Admitted, it is more likely today than ten years ago that you are finding what you are looking for on the first page of your search results, but - as the relevance decreases – you are confronted with lots of junk. That is why we often have to augment our searches with information from other online databases such as Wikipedia.

Powerset has a different idea. Its search engine does not simply index every page online; it tries to understand its content: Semantic searching is part of a broader semantic web initiative, described by some as Web 3.0. Semantic web is all about connecting information from various sources and creating a meaningful relation between different pieces of online information. As much as Web 2.0 was, and still is, about collaborating and sharing information online (such as in social networks), Web 3.0 (a term that is highly debated at this time) is commonly referred to as a way of transferring the Web into a huge database and bringing an understanding to the vast amount of information online.

Powerset is in an early beta phase and has limited scope, as its index consists only of information coming from Wikipedia and the Metaweb Technologies database. It uses these two sources, supported by proprietary algorithms and smart search technology licensed from Xerox's PARC subsidiary, to create a more useful collection of facts related to a search query. Instead of treating pages as a pile of indexed words without meaning, Powerset parses each sentence and extracts its possible meaning. This approach yields more efficient and smarter search results than what the existing search engines can provide. Of course, it is behind Google in several disciplines, as its index is tiny compared to what Google has accumulated over the years. But some Powerset searches deliver more useful information than the mess you sometimes get today. Try searching for a popular term such as 'iPhone' to see what I mean.

Powerset gained some initial praises already, for example from industry analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence who thinks that "Powerset created both a better search engine for Wikipedia and a massive 'proof of concept' for their algorithm and technology." But experts doubt Powerset will be able to extend its relationship with Wikipedia and Metaweb Technologies to thousands of premium content creators online.

It would take an enormous amount of time and manpower to convince content creators to sign up with Powerset and offer their copyrighted content for semantic searching. As a start-up, Powerset has limited cash and cash is really what it would need to refine its engine. Current investors claim they are committed to fund the growth of Powerset and scale the technology to index 20 billion pages. For now, Powerset does not display ads in search results. And while advertising is part of the company’s business plan as a source of revenue down the road, the company does not plan to use the usual keyword-based advertising. Instead, the company plans to match the “meaning” of a search query to display relevant ads.

Industry watchers are keeping a close eye on the company, since it may have a technology that could threaten Google's dominance by delivering the promise of semantic search. But taking on Google is a gargantuan task for any company, let alone a start-up. The latest ComScore numbers released last week highlight the cut-throat nature of the search business as Google remains seemingly unstoppable. In the US alone, Google's estimated search share in April jumped to 61.6%, up from 59.8% in March. Yahoo's search share dropped to 20.4%, Microsoft's Live Search share is down to 9.1% and AOL is down to 4.6%.

So, what if companies such as Microsoft or Yahoo can't stop Google, what are the chances of Powerset? The difference appears to be that Microsoft and Yahoo are trying to catch up with Google from behind. A young company with a new perspective and innovative approach may actually have a much better opportunity to change the rules of the game, if it can offer a superior search product that users will love. Keep in mind that existing search players still only talk about semantic search, while they are milking the keyword-based search business model. Powerset, on the other hand, plays its cards on semantic search exclusively. If it manages to build an infrastructure and a clever index before it runs out of cash or ends up being acquired, it may have a good shot at the search market.

Moving from monologue marketing to dialogue marketing

2008-05-29T10:41:00.001Z

Moving from monologue marketing to dialogue marketing

27-May-2008

Source: Mycustomer.com

There is a growing concern that direct marketing represents nothing more than 'monologue marketing', bombarding customers with push marketing messages. So how do brands change their current monologue mentality, whilst at the same time harnessing digital and other channels to their fullest potential?

By Nick Evans, Jaywing

Traditional direct marketing faces many hurdles, not least because of the external pressures like consumer apathy, cost and the growth in digital channels. But alongside these issues is the growing concern that direct marketing as it stands is nothing more than ‘monologue marketing’. The OED defines the word monologue as “a long, tedious speech by one person during a conversation” – a description which could easily be applied to much direct marketing in its current form. Whether the consumer deems the communication relevant or not, simply bombarding them with marketing messages isn’t indicative of forging a long-term, two-way relationship.

Perhaps what’s most disappointing is the way that many brands have invested in newly emerged digital channels. The potential of digital technology like the internet, SMS and email makes it well placed to be at the vanguard of a change in the way direct marketing is executed. It is disheartening then to see that so many brands are using the internet and digital channels in exactly the same way as they have the more traditional channels – embodying a low cost, high volume mentality with their digital marketing investments. Targeting tends to be nothing more complex than placing ads online based on simple stats about the type of users visiting a site, such as ‘75% of users are male’, and email especially has had its young reputation damaged by the rogue spammers who have flooded inboxes with unsolicited messages.

So how do brands change their current monologue mentality, whilst at the same time harnessing digital and other channels to their fullest potential?

We need to look at the antonym of a monologue – dialogue. Marketers have always used phrases like ‘two-way’ communication, but achieving a dialogue is much more than this. If traditional direct marketing was about pushing messages onto consumers, evolved ‘dialogue’ marketing needs to focus on making sure information is available to consumer, so they can ‘pull’ this information where they want, when they want, through the channels they want.

Tracking and analytics tools

The internet is the perfect tool for enabling this ‘pull’ to take place. Consumers can log on to a brand’s website, and view information on products and services whenever they want. They may pull information in a variety of other ways, and through other channels, when researching a potential purchase. The key to making this work is to provide the hooks to make it easier for visitors to find the information they’re most likely to be looking for, by predicting what they want based on their past and current behaviour.

"Linking consumers’ interactions across all channels with the entire marketing output is no mean feat. But it is essential that customers can be identified at any point in their interaction with a brand and to do this digital data needs to be made available throughout the company."The real opportunity for the brand comes at this point. How intelligently a brand interacts with the consumer and whether it makes the most of the opportunity is critical. As consumers pull information from a brand they are essentially putting their hand up and showing their interest; for brands this is a chance to convert their interest into a sale and hopefully a long-term relationship. But unless this interest is identified and acted upon the opportunity to form a connection will be lost.

Tracking and analytics tools should play a role in every marketing campaign. The greatest task is how to deal with the information and data that comes out of it. After all, vast numbers of brands already have this information – they’re just failing to use it.

First and foremost, businesses must use the data and act in a way which aims to build a dialogue with the consumer. For example, a blanket email that is sent to everyone who visits a website and provides their details will do little to move the relationship beyond the monologue. Instead, the available data should build a picture of each consumer, what information they decided to pull towards them and how they did it. Using this insight lets us tailor the response message, making the next interaction relevant, personal and targeted.

Most importantly digital channels, unlike traditional offline ones, generate data on consumer activity as it occurs. This gives brands a much more up-to-date view of consumers. When someone requests information through a website, the brand knows straight away and, as long as it has appropriate decisioning and analytical technology in place, can immediately set the wheels in motion for a relevant response. For both consumers and marketers the speed at which information is assimilated, analysed and acted upon has grown ever faster. With applied use of digital channels, brands can finally match the pace of consumers with their response and provide information as it is called for.

Although this forms the foundation of evolved marketing that talks ‘with’ consumers rather than ‘at’ them, a true dialogue needs a joined up view of how all channels work together. This means tracking consumers as they move from off to online, across media and into stores, whether virtual or high street. Consumers see a brand as a single unit, they do not differentiate between ‘company A online’ and ‘company A at the call centre’, it is one and the same. Therefore, the same relationship is expected wherever and whenever they interact with the brand.

Integrating channels

If brands are to achieve this utopia, integrating channels is essential. 'Integration' is a word that is too often thrown about without actually pinning down its meaning. For brands that wish to evolve their marketing and develop a dialogue with customers, what’s most critical is how channels and data are brought and used together. Linking consumers’ interactions across all channels with the entire marketing output is no mean feat. But it is essential that customers can be identified at any point in their interaction with a brand and to do this digital data needs to be made available throughout the company, allowing every contact point to make real-time decisions based on the customers’ data.

"In the digital age, consumers will not accept a brand whose use of technology does not match the sophistication of how they are shopping."The broad, varied preferences of consumers and how they use different media must also be accommodated. Shoppers may research their purchases online, sometimes using the call centre to gain further information, but make their final purchase in a store. Integrating online and offline data will build a picture for a brand of how consumers move between channels, but the challenge for the brand is how to use this insight to improve the customer experience and increase conversion.

An example of this is to take consumers’ purchasing behaviour offline and match it with data from their website searches. Bringing this information together allows a brand to develop offers that are entirely personal to the customer, which can be presented straight away. Hopefully prompting a customer to return to store or site, as well as developing a dialogue by demonstrating responsiveness to the consumer’s actions. In the digital age, consumers will not accept a brand whose use of technology does not match the sophistication of how they are shopping.

Digital channels offer a huge opportunity for direct marketers to establish meaningful and two-way relationships with consumers. But only if brands can change their way of thinking and move beyond one-way communications. If a brand is going to develop a dialogue with a consumer it must take a step back and allow the consumer to decide, albeit with well defined prompting, what information they want to have and when. The tipping point is when a consumer has expressed interest and pulled information towards them. Brands need to be able to identify this interest, act on it in real-time and do so in a way that is relevant and tailored to the consumer.

Dialogue marketing can be incredibly powerful, not only does it enable brands to develop personal conversations that are based specifically on consumers’ behaviour but it truly makes the most of digital channels. Most importantly, it will renew consumer trust in direct marketing and in turn re-establish its effectiveness.

Synchronic Insight 64: The AI gap between sensibility and insensibility

2008-05-29T08:19:00.000Z

At last reality shows that black-box artificial intelligence is not a human brain though some have the audaciousness to claim their AI has the IQ of a four year old! Black-box AI does not have the universal learning capability of a human brain but the algorithms say it must learn. No wonder the AI eventually becomes a blithering idiot. The real risk is during the period between when the AI is sensible and when it becomes a blithering idiot. During this transition period many humans think the AI is coherent and smart and therefore the human trusts the interaction. This is the risk.

Synchronic Insight 63: The move from dumb to personalised search

2008-05-29T08:06:00.001Z

Today’s search returns thousands of hits. This is as dumb as it gets! No one checks them all out! If a human delivered such an appalling service they would be sacked.

What we want is to match our needs and not a dump of everything!

The future has to be about personalised search so you can find quickly what you really want.

Synchronic Insight 62: All TouchPoints

2008-05-29T07:58:00.000Z

Multi-Channel is over influenced by Silo Mentality. The paradigm shift is towards interactions across ALL TouchPoints as customers demand a personalised holistic service.

Google states that Cloud Mobile will overtake Cloud PC within a few years – this will revolutionise web economics across ALL CHANNELS

2008-05-29T07:42:00.001Z

Google’s CEO on Mobile Web, Cloud Computing, Privacy...

Source: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-05-27-n21.html

Google boss Dr. Eric Schmidt talked to German FAZ. Here are some of the items Eric talked about (my emphasis; note from what it looked like, FAZ might have back-translated the interview from German, though I’m not sure):

The mobile web, in a discussion that circled around ads: “Yes, mobile will be a larger business than the [PC web]. But it will take a few years.”

Advertising in social networks: “MySpace did not monetize as well as we thought. We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we thought to get our ad network to work with social networks. When you are in social network, it is not likely that you’ll buy a washing machine. It is not a long term problem but it is taking us longer than we thought.”

The computing cloud: “Put it in the cloud! It is much cheaper! That is the new model. That transition is going to happen independent of Google. It is the time: The networks are fast enough, the computers are fast enough.”

Asked on whether Microsoft would move to the cloud: “I’m looking forward to that cloud.” Then asked whether he doesn’t think so: “I let you judge whether Microsoft will take [their] core applications and put them in the cloud.” Asked if it may be a threat for Microsoft: “I can’t speak for Microsoft. They have a large revenue stream for products that run in the old model. The question is: Which ones are they moving to the cloud.”

On the future of Google search: “I would like it to answer more hypothetical questions. The most extreme is: ’What should I do tomorrow?’ Or: ’I am in Berlin, which spots shall I go visit?’. And for artificial [intelligence] techniques it is possible over time to approximate that kind of understanding.”

On Yahoo and regulatory concerns over partnerships: “We may be the leader in text ads but we are not in the online ad market in general or in particular online ad markets, for instance display ads. Yahoo is the leader in display ads and one of my concerns about Microsoft buying Yahoo is that you have two strong companies in the display ad business.”

On data protection: “There is always room for improvement. At this stage from our perspective we think what we do is correct. But the industry is suffering from the fact that the people don’t necessarily do what they are saying they are doing.“

EMC Cloud comes out fighting as IBM and HP market moves into the Cloud becomes a serious threat to its core storage business

2008-05-29T07:40:00.001Z

EMC sees big future in the cloud

And it's more than just web-based storage, writes Tony Waltham in Las Vegas

EMC chairman, president and CEO Joe Tucci delivers his keynote address at EMC World last week and the Mandalay Bay convention centre, attended by over 9,000 customers and developers from 85 countries.

EMC Corporation plans to play aggressively in the information-centric "next wave of computing" by providing cloud computing infrastructure and services, according to president, chairman and CEO Joe Tucci at EMC World here last week.

He and other executives also highlighted EMC's initiatives around solid-state flash memory disks and explained how the storage leader was reaching out to small business and consumer markets as well as announcing new energy efficient and easier-to-use products.

Referring to the role of storage services over the Internet, Tucci explained that while most information today was trapped in a device or in an application and might be owned by several users, adding that tomorrow the world would demand the ability to use and manage this information across silos.

"Today, we very often have fragmented views of information. Tomorrow you're going to see consolidated views ... that are much easier to get to. Today, policies, if applied at all, are applied haphazardly, to some of the data, or some of the information, some of the time. Tomorrow, systems will be driven through a common policies and common safeguards that are followed everywhere," he said.

"These two worlds will blend and be very close relatives," he predicted. EMC now had a fifth business unit called cloud computing infrastructure and services which is headed by Paul Maritz, formerly founder and CEO of recent EMC acquisition Pi Corporation.

Tucci said that EMC had moved over elements of the software component of its cloud storage offering, code-named Maui, along with EMC's Mozy remote backup service and "a couple of other pieces" to this new division. Cloud computing would be "the next big growth area for the company," he pronounced.

Vance Checketts, the chief operating officer of Mozy which provides free online backup services to home users, small businesses and, since January offers an enterprise version, said: "if you think about the future for cloud, the competitors are very, very different... Google and Microsoft, companies like that.

"Some of those companies might also be customers of the infrastructure. They might want to buy that hardware, that software to operate their own cloud. So, there'll be some competition and some cooperation," he suggested.

Earlier, in a question and answer session, Tucci was pressed on the status of Maui and Hulk, which is the hardware component of its Web 2.0 strategy. This platform had been announced last November by EMC and projected then to be shipping in seven months.

Tucci said last week that it was now scheduled for release in Summer, but that there were no specific dates. "The hardware platform for this Web 2.0 storage and compute - it's got bunches of blades in there - is called Hulk internally. The software that would run on it... will be a platform called Maui," he said, noting that you could run Maui on other hardware platforms as well.

Indeed, EMC's cloud is more than just storage. Checketts said that while today EMC was offering back-up with Mozy, "tomorrow it will be much more ... it will be about mobile access, file sharing and synchronisation and lots of other value-adds."

I asked if EMC was thinking of offering Amazon-like computer services, and after a slight pause he said "absolutely, yes. Certainly, that's one of the things we envision doing in the near future.

"And we'll also take the infrastructure and say, by the way, if you just want raw storage, here's some online storage, and you can build your own applications and you can do what you want," he said in an interview.

It was now "very clear" to him that Mozy, acquired last October by EMC, was the first step in the cloud vision for EMC, he said.

Noting that "hindsight is 20-20," Checketts said that "at the time that we were acquired I thought the reason was that EMC could take Mozy technology and build Mozy Enterprise into their existing installed base, which we did, launching Mozy Enterprise in January."

He added: "But that was just the tip of the iceberg... the beginning of a strategy and the rest of it didn't become clear until just a couple of months ago with the acquisition of Pi, and the appointment of Paul Maritz as the president of the cloud computing division, that we're a part of.

"All of a sudden, it became very clear to me and to everyone else that the reason that Mozy existed was to be kind of the on-ramp from users and their data and their devices into the cloud. Getting all that data into a cloud infrastructure. It explodes," the Mozy COO said.

"Once the data and all those users are there, then you can continue to deliver cloud business solutions and software," Checketts said.

An EMC-sponsored IDC White Paper projects that the amount of information created and replicated is exploding by 60 percent a year and would soar from 173 billion gigabytes in 2006 to 1,773 billion gigabytes in 2011, and that while 70 percent will be created by individuals, organisations will have the responsibility to ensure 85 percent of this information's security, privacy, reliability and compliance.

Tucci cited these statistics, saying: "in the future, the individual consumer is going to be generating most of the information and I believe that information is going to live centrally." Central repositories were a great opportunity and EMC wanted to capitalise on it, he added.

EMC has also pioneered solid state flash storage for the enterprise, introducing them for the Symmetrix DMX4 platform in 73GB and 146GB sizes earlier this year.

President of EMC's storage division David Donatelli said that they weighed "tremendously less" and the performance that EMC was seeing in its DMX systems was "unbelievable" with 30 times improvements in IOPs.

He added while the response time for the fastest rotating disk drive today could be about six milliseconds - but that then, over time, that response time went up as the disk got busier - for the flash drive, no matter how busy EMC made it, the response time stayed at a millisecond or below, he said.

Asked how soon solid state disks might replace spinning drives, Donatelli said that the cost of flash technology was coming down at a much faster rate than rotating disk and "we think that when you get to the end of 2010, you'll start to see price parity with a lot of the high-speed rotating media." He conceded, however, that ATA drives will be around for a very long time and would continue to get very dense, would become cheaper and have lower power requirements. "I think you will see systems that will be mixed," he said.

Speaking separately, in answer to a question whether flash revenues would surpass spinning media, Tucci said that big ATA drives would "continue to be around for a long, long time," while Flash technology certainly had the capabilities to be the dominant force in the very high end.

Another advantage was energy efficiency with the flash drives, although the cost today is almost 30 times that of spinning disks.

While the flash disk technology that EMC was innovating was initially aimed the very high-end, compute-intense enterprise platforms, EMC has been expanding into the consumer small and medium businesses, where Tucci said it had been seeing the most activity in China.

He said that EMC would "in a way go down market," adding that it would play in the enterprise, in the medium-sized commercial type accounts businesses, in small and medium businesses, as well as in SOHO and consumer markets.

But it appears it will not rush into the consumer market. Asked specifically about its strategy there, Tucci said "we've got to walk into to it. This year, we're probably not going to spend tens of millions of dollars to do that, but you'll see us begin."

Asked about the Iomega acquisition, noting that it was not closed yet, Tucci said EMC had been working on a set of software for the SOHO market and small businesses to run on the Lifeline product, that would run on the Iomega platform.

He also noted that there were great expansion possibilities for the Iomega platform in parts of Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

HP brings high performance to the Cloud as it responds to IBM competition. Is HP looking for a Cloud partner to compete with IBM/Google Cloud?

2008-05-29T07:36:00.001Z

HP Weds Cloud and High-performance Computing

Stacey Higginbotham

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Powered by Sphere While it hasn’t yet decided to offer a cloud computing service, Hewlett-Packard today said it will combine its high-performance computing unit with it’s Web 2.0 and cloud computing infrastructure businesses to create the Scalability Computing Initiative, a name that will refer both to a business unit of HP and a set of hardware, software and services tied to scalable computing.

It also followed its competitors and introduced what HP believes will be the building block for the scalable data center, a new, two-in-one blade server. Like IBM’s iDataPlex, Sun’s Blackbox and Dell’s cloud computing efforts, HP is viewing the noise around cloud computing as a chance to sell more hardware — specialized, HP-built 10u racks of 32 blade servers containing 128 cores, to be exact.

I don’t know how important it is to build out scalable computing efforts with IBM’s iDataPlex or HP’s offerings rather than an array of commodity x86 boxes, but the merging of high-performance computing and cloud computing infrastructure is a triumph of the grid architecture running specialized software. It’s also the same trend that is leading Cray to work with Intel on designing the next generation of supercomputers.

HP’s blade servers are designed to save space in the data centers, but Paul Miller, a VP of marketing with HP, acknowledged that space was not at the premium that power is. Blade servers run pretty hot so it’s counterintuitive to think that cramming two of them in one blade makes much sense from an energy efficiency point of view. Miller said HP’s offering can be used with standard HP racks for water cooling or in conjunction with its Dynamic Smart Cooling technology. Without knowing how many watts are consumed, it’s hard to judge how energy efficient these blades are.

Update: HP has provided more information with regard to the server’s efficiency saying it ran in tests at 165 watts per server, and emphasizes that the servers are 60 % more efficient than stand alone boxes in part because they combine two servers into one shell, requiring one fan and power supply for double the compute power.

Fox Interactive Media is one of HP’s clients, so clearly there’s a market for HP’s brand of two-in-one blades, but HP will have to compete with existing hardware vendors such as Rackable and Silicon Metrics, who seem to be doing fine providing energy-efficient scalable hardware for Web 2.0 and cloud computing companies.

Microsoft directs its future operating system towards Cloud Devices that do not have key boards – this will apply to everything from robots to fridges

2008-05-29T07:25:00.001Z

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

New Microsoft operating system to have touch-screen feature

By Associated Press

Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that its next operating system will be made for touch-screen applications, an alternative to the computer mouse.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer unveiled the iPhone-like touch-screen feature at The Wall Street Journal's ''D: All Things Digital'' conference, calling it ''just the smallest snippet'' of the Windows 7 operating system slated for release in late 2009.

A Microsoft employee showed possible applications like enlarging and shrinking photos and navigating a map of San Diego by stroking the screen.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates framed the new feature as an evolution away from the mouse.

''Today almost all the interaction is keyboard-mouse,'' Gates said. ''Over years to come, the role of speech, vision, ink -- all of those -- will be huge.''

The software company's top two executives defended its last operating system, Vista, while acknowledging missteps. Gates said he has never been 100 percent satisfied with any Microsoft product, and that the company prides itself on fixing shortcomings in later versions.

''Vista has given more opportunity to exercise our culture than some products,'' he deadpanned.

The former Harvard University classmates fielded a range of questions for more than an hour, sharing the stage as Gates prepares to relinquish daily responsibilities at the company in July to focus more on philanthropic work.

Ballmer said Microsoft remained in discussions to team up with Yahoo Inc. after Microsoft's $47.5 billion (euro30.14 billion) bid for the company was spurned earlier this month. He said Microsoft was not planning to buy Yahoo but offered only the barest details of what he has in mind.

''We are not rebidding for the company. We reserve the right to do so. That's not on the docket,'' he said.

Microsoft said May 18 that it revived talks with Yahoo, without providing specifics. Ballmer declined to say much more, even when pressed.

''All I'll say is we're in ongoing discussions with them around a partnership,'' he said.

Gates let Ballmer take the questions about Yahoo. When asked for his thoughts, Gates said, ''I've been supportive of everything Steve has done. ... Totally supportive.''

The next generation of search is ‘semantic personalisation’ – this is a high priority with Microsoft claiming a major rethink of search is needed

2008-05-29T07:18:00.001Z

Ozzie hints at Microsoft's search future, downplays Yahoo

Says there's a need for innovation in search engines

By Elizabeth Montal

May 28, 2008 (IDG News Service) NEW YORK -- Microsoft Corp. chief software architect Ray Ozzie suggested today that Microsoft has its own ideas on the next direction it will take in Internet search, downplaying any deal the company might still make with Yahoo Inc.

Speaking via webcast at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions conference here, Ozzie called Yahoo an "accelerator" in Microsoft's plans to improve its search engine. In addition to having a strong search engine, Ozzie cited user engagement and a scalable ad platform as other requirements for having a successful and profitable Internet business.

"Yahoo was not a strategy unto itself," he said. Rather, Microsoft is mulling changes to its search engine to add features beyond the usual keyword-based technology most commonly used today by competitors such as Google Inc. and Yahoo, Ozzie said.

"It's hard to think of being in the early days of search, but we all have our habits; we type our words in the box based on what we're looking for," he said. "But there is room for improvement with how we structure our requests to find the information we want. ... We haven't seen any high-scale implementations for any good, innovative things that have come out."

Ozzie said Microsoft is considering how to solve possible search scenarios for "when you're trying to arrange a vacation, potentially with other people" or "information related to health because of a friend or relative who might have a health issue." Such comments hint that Microsoft may be following the lead of some smaller search companies and exploring new search-engine techniques, such as semantic search, to compete with Google.

Semantic search attempts to extract meaning from search queries rather than simply matching them up with relevant links based on keywords or previous or related searches. Google still primarily uses keywords to deliver search results.

San Francisco-based Powerset is one company pioneering semantic search. Powerset is testing a search engine that attempts to understand the meaning of Web pages, using technology licensed from Xerox's PARC subsidiary. That technology creates a semantic representation of Web pages by parsing each sentence and extracting its meaning.

Ozzie did not go into detail about Microsoft's plans for its search engine, but he also did not completely dismiss a Microsoft-Yahoo union in the future. He said Microsoft would "still love to discuss possibilities" with the Internet company, but said he had nothing to add beyond that. Both Microsoft and Yahoo said last week they were open to renegotiating a deal between them after initial negotiations following Microsoft's Feb. 1 bid for Yahoo officially broke down May 3.

Yahoo and Microsoft need to do some deal as their real threat is the Google / IBM Cloud combo which is increasing the competitive gap with all others

2008-05-29T07:11:00.001Z

May 28, 2008, 4:00 pm

The Revisionist History of Microsoft-Yahoo

Posted by Heidi N. Moore

Soure: Wall Street Journal

The question on many people’s minds about Microsoft’s troubled courtship with Yahoo is, “What is going to happen?” Deal Journal has a more pressing one: “What actually happened here?”

We are talking, of course, about the mysterious mixed signals that were the hallmark of the proposed deal and that have continued past its supposed end.

Take Steve Ballmer. At The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif., Tuesday night, the Microsoft CEO said his company continues to talk with Yahoo. No new bid for the entire Web search and ad company is on the table. And they might bid again.

But wait. Just last week, Ballmer turned up his nose at Yahoo, saying that Microsoft never considered Yahoo “strategic,” a statement perhaps belied by the length and intensity of Microsoft’s single-minded pursuit. He said Microsoft would look at “some acquisitions” and there were other ways to spend $50 billion. It all sounded like sour grapes–and then, a week later, Ballmer is back with his ex, courting Yahoo again.

Meanwhile, Jerry Yang seems to have the oracular power to tell the future about the company’s shareholder meeting. As a blatantly pro-Microsoft person points out to us, Yang told employees on May 15–just after Carl Icahn pointed his six-shooter at the Web search company–that the shareholder meeting would be “in a couple of months.” At that point, it was scheduled for July 3, which would have put Yang off by a couple of weeks.

(If you’ll remember, Yahoo dragged its feet on scheduling its shareholder meeting and then finally did so just after it rejected Microsoft’s bid, thus giving disgruntled shareholders only 10 days to nominate new directors.)

Perhaps Yang is as casual about calendars as he is about capital letters, you may point out. (And we did). But then, a week and a half later, Yahoo moved its shareholder meeting to “late July” — which would be just about exactly two months from the date of his communique to employees. (And this where the pro-Microsoft person suggested the evidence was in, a la Law & Order: dunh-DUNH.)

Either way, it seems these two crazy kids are still talking. But can they get their stories straight?

Nokia makes a move to deliver Cloud Services with a full frontal attack on Google Apps; mobile ad inventory is up for grabs!

2008-05-27T15:46:00.002Z

Nokia to Tackle Google, First in Mapping, Then Everywhere

By Dylan Tweney May 13, 2008 | 6:36:59 PM

Source: Wired

Nokia doesn't want you to think of its forthcoming mapping software for PCs as a Google Maps competitor. But press them, and Nokia executives will admit Google is the enemy. And with that particular enemy, there can be no compromise.

At the Where 2.0 conference in Burlingame, Calif. today, Nokia showed an early, alpha version of Maps on Ovi. Ovi is Nokia's still-wet-around-the-ears social media site, where Nokia phone users will be able to share photos, video, music and other content from their phones. Gadget Lab caught a demo last night while watching the San Francisco Giants lose to the Houston Astros.

The demo is impressive. Unlike most web-based mapping applications, the screen refreshes rapidly, enabling you to pan, tilt, and spin your view of the map while the screen refreshes almost instantaneously. We zoomed around a yellow-and-blue map of San Francisco with an aerial abandon that felt like flying over the city an F-16 in comparison with Google Maps' pokey dirigible. Nokia gets that speed by using vector-based maps and doing the redrawing computation on the user's computer, rather than the servers.

Nokia vice president Michael Halbherr said that pushing image processing down to the PC, instead of doing it on web servers, reflects Nokia's approach to "cloud computing." With this approach, Halbherr said, the company can scale to billions of users "without having to buy electric power plants" -- a reference to Google's energy-hungry server farms and its recent investment in eSolar, a company that makes solar power plants.

Maps on Ovi lets you look up points of interest and then calculates either driving or walking directions. (For the latter, the maps include pedestrian-only streets and alleys that other map services lack.) You can even select several points and create an itinerary that takes you to, say, all of the Irish pubs in downtown San Francisco, one after the other. We didn't test that particular route; any preplanned route would have been moot after the third pub anyway.

Once you've created a route you can access it via a Symbian Series 60 phone using the Nokia Maps application, which is already available.

The goal is to extend the Nokia Maps experience to the PC, Nokia executives said, not to replace Google Maps.

But when I pressed them on the application's ability to integrate with other web applications, the answers were telling.

Halbherr said the initial version of Maps on Ovi will not include links with other apps, but that the company is planning on publishing an API that will let web developers write applications that can interface with it, either on the PC or on Nokia handsets.

Those applications may include social-media services, reviews sites, mashups and more -- but not Google Maps.

That's because Google Maps has its own implementation of the map data from Navteq (the same service used by Nokia, by the way), and the routes it calculates won't be the same as Nokia's.

But more importantly, Google is Nokia's competitor in the game of controlling the next-generation computing platform. And Nokia clearly wants to own the platform upon which other people's applications will run.

"Yelp is just a mashup. Twitter is just a mashup. If they want to make their applications work with our APIs, great," said Halbherr. "But Google is our competitor."

In this vision, people don't create content on PCs (blogs, maps) and then access it on their handsets (via mobile-friendly sites). In Nokia's world, people create content on their phones (photos, videos, data about where in the world they are) and then access it on their PCs (via social media sites like Ovi).

The vision is compelling because it matches the way people actually use their phones, rather than the way engineers think about designing mobile apps. And if anyone can be a credible competitor to Google, Nokia certainly can, with its ability to deploy software and services to a vast army of Nokia phone users. After all, the company ships hundreds of millions of devices every year (and tens of millions of smartphones every quarter) and has an installed base that is probably well over a billion users.

But the claim also stretches the bounds of credulity, coming as it does from a company that so far has virtually no presence in the web world.

What do you think: Can Nokia deliver?

Vodafone acquires social networking service as it joins the Battle of the Clouds – the implications to other mobile service providers are huge

2008-05-27T15:42:00.001Z

Vodafone Acquires Social-Networking Platform Company

By MIKAEL RICKNÄS, IDG News Service\Stockholm bureau, IDG

Published: May 16, 2008

Vodafone is acquiring ZYB, a Danish company that has developed a social networking and online management tool for backing-up and sharing contact and calendar information online. Vodafone announced the €31.5 million (US$48.7 million) deal Friday.

ZYB's social-networking platform is set apart from others because it works on mobile phones. Vodafone sees the opportunity to make money from, for example, mobile advertising using ZYB's technology, according to a statement from the operator.

ZYB is currently working on a new service called Phonebook, which will launch this quarter. Users will be able to see the location of their friends (if the friends will allow that), see if a contact is available for a call (including the time zone, so no embarrassing wake-up calls) and share their calendars.

Phonebook also integrates with Web-based services for social networking, including Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, according to its Web site.

At the same time it will keep the features of the existing platform, so users will continue to receive auto-updates of friends' contact details as well as an online back-up of contacts, calendar events, photos and text messages.

Non-Vodafone customers need not be worried, according to ZYB's blog. "ZYB will stay open and free for all users all around the world, regardless of whether they are customers of Vodafone or any other network operator," said CEO Tommy Ahlers.

His company will remain based in Denmark, and upon acquisition will be incorporated into Vodafone's Internet Services Division.

SAP is the last major software player to move into Cloud Services – though late it has already converted all its applications into web-services

2008-05-27T15:38:00.001Z

SAP Is The Latest Convert To Software-Plus-Services Vision

It envisions selling "component" services to its big ERP customers beginning next year.

By Mary Hayes Weier

InformationWeek

May 10, 2008 12:01 AM (From the May 12, 2008 issue)

Software as a service made its name with bold claims that it would force on-premises software into extinction. But with SAP (NYSE: SAP) becoming the latest vendor to create a hybrid model, the real dinosaur is the idea that companies must choose one approach or the other.

By eary next year, SAP will offer what co-CEO Henning Kagermann calls "services by design," an extension of the Business ByDesign service SAP began offering last fall only to small businesses--to tepid response. Services by design, aimed at SAP's core customer base of large companies, will consist of online software components that integrate with a company's on-site SAP software.

Raising the Bar in Wide Area Data Services SAP calls them components since they're not likely standalone applications. The first offering, for example, will be an online tool for companies to select and manage suppliers, integrating with their on-site supply chain or ERP software. It's the same model Microsoft is pushing as software plus services, though, like SAP, most of Microsoft's product offerings are still in the planning stages.

Those components, to be hosted and managed by SAP, will run on the NetWeaver-based service-oriented architecture developed for Business ByDesign. SAP hasn't determined whether to sell the components as a subscription or license, or both.

Beyond supplier relationship management, SAP is looking at components for ERP, talent management, and analytics. Business intelligence vendor Business Objects, which SAP just acquired, already offers reporting tools and other apps on demand.

NOT EVERYTHING'S GOING TO THE CLOUD

The small-customer Business By Design hasn't been a big seller for SAP, and the company's slashing by half what it had planned to invest in the online-only ERP offering--a product Kagermann had called the "most important" of his career. SAP always has portrayed a pure SaaS approach as appealing to only a small sliver of its potential customer base, those with 100 to 500 employees.

Kagermann serves up services with software

The services by design approach, if it works, could let SAP protect its profitable licensed software business, get more services revenue from those customers, and address concerns large companies have with putting some of their most sensitive business data in the cloud. For mission-critical applications like accounting, "I don't think large companies will go on demand," Kagermann says.

He describes the integration of on-site and off-site software on the vendor's "loosely coupled, asynchronous" SOA platform. "The Business ByDesign architecture and investment must not be focused on midmarket only," Kagermann now says.

Robert Strickland, CIO of T-Mobile, which uses SAP and Business Objects applications and NetWeaver middleware, sees promise in the model. "If you can have a universal SOA layer that allows you to connect everyone to that common bus and defines how you expose those services, that may ultimately give us the best flexibility," Strickland says. "It would let us order things à la carte and connect them seamlessly." Such cloud computing efforts are becoming more practical as broadband speed and connectivity options improve, he says.

SAP must reassure big customers that they can retain control of their data in the hosted environment, and that they can set rules for what users can do and access, says Technology Business Research analyst Stuart Williams. If it can, SAP might just move this software-and-services model from concept to practical tool.

Oracle generates $174 million in revenue in the last quarter for its Cloud Services and accelerates investments to build Cloud Centres

2008-05-27T15:35:00.001Z

Oracle Plans Utah Data Center To Support SaaS Business

Oracle joins Microsoft, Google, and others building new centers to support growing online operations.

By Mary Hayes Weier
InformationWeek
May 19, 2008 05:30 PM

Oracle (NSDQ: ORCL) is joining the ranks of software vendors building new data centers to support cloud computing.
The company will open what it describes as a global information technology center in West Jordan, Utah, by 2010, partly to support the company's growing on-demand software business.

More Services InsightsWhite PapersConfiguration Best Practices for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array 4000 and HP Blade Servers White Paper Riverbed RiOS 4.0: Raising the Bar in Wide Area Data Services Oracle plans to break ground on the 200,000-square-foot facility this summer and tags its initial investment at $285 million. Oracle issued a prepared statement today from president Safra Catz, who said the center will help support its on-demand business, plus research and development and customer service operations. Oracle wouldn't disclose further details about the center's operations, but its plan is consistent with Microsoft, Google, and other tech vendors building new data centers, typically in low-cost areas, to support growing online operations.

Oracle's on-demand software operation grossed $174 million in revenue in its fiscal quarter ended March 26, up 23% from the same quarter last year. Based on fairly consistent quarter-to-quarter growth rates over the past few years, Oracle On Demand is on track to gross around $700 million in annual revenue for the company's fiscal year ending in June, and Oracle cites 3.6 million users of its on-demand apps.

The company's on-demand business, however, is different from the multitenant, software-as-a-service, subscription-based model popularized by Salesforce.com. It's a hosting service in which Oracle manages the licensed applications of a specific customer, rather than a system in which many customers share a single instance of software, and are all upgraded at the same time, to allow for an across-the-board monthly subscription fee. Oracle On Demand represents about 3% of its revenue. By comparison, software licenses, updates, and support represented about 80% of the company's $5.35 billion in revenue in the last quarter.

Oracle said Utah offered incentives to build the center in that state, but did not disclose details of the incentive deal. The site is expected to house around 100 employees, with wages exceeding 200% of the Salt Lake County average wage.

EMC unveils more of its Cloud strategy as it starts to increase brand awareness for consumer and business services – more acquisitions to follow!

2008-05-27T15:29:00.002Z

EMC details plans for cloud computing and consumer portfolio

By Mark Sutton in Las Vegas

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

EMC has revealed more of its plans for cloud computing and its move into consumer devices, alongside plans to integrate more high-end storage technologies throughout its product ranges.

During EMC World in Las Vegas this week, company executives discussed EMC's new Cloud Computing division, its plans for the pending acquisition of drive vendor Iomega, and highlighted some of the advanced technologies that it expects to introduced to its wider product range in the near future.

During his keynote address at the event, company president, chairman and CEO Joe Tucci, gave some details on the recently formed Cloud Computing Services and Infrastructure division, which will lead efforts to provide storage as a service and other online initiatives.

The division is headed by Paul Maritz, founder and CEO of recent acquisition Pi Corporation, and will include technology from Pi, another recent acquisition Mozy, and internal EMC developments.

"We are very much going to play in this cloud computing, infrastructure and services business," Tucci said. "We think the world is going to get transformed to information centric computing - today most information is trapped in a device or an application that might be owned by a set of users. Tomorrow the world is going to demand the ability to use and manage information across all these silos. Today we have fragmented views of information. Tomorrow you are going to see consolidated views of information that are much easier to get to. Today policies, if applied at all, are applied haphazardly, to some of the data, some of the information, some of the time. Tomorrow, the system will be driven through common policies and common safeguards that are followed everywhere."

The cloud computing division will include the Mozy service, which is already providing online backup services to enterprises, small businesses and end users, mainly in the US, and the company plans to expand the Mozy service to Europe and other regions in the near future.

Mozy will also likely play role in EMC's move into consumer hardware, which is being led by the pending acquisition of drive manufacturer Iomega. In March EMC launched an acquisition bid for Iomega, and if the deal goes through, EMC plans to inject more capital into Iomega to help build it both as a hardware proposition and as a consumer and SOHO play to offer both hardware and online storage services.

"I do believe that there is going to be a fair sized number of homes throughout the world over the next couple of years that will have a terabyte of storage in their house, and that's a market that is worth playing in. I also totally believe that that storage will also be connected to the cloud," Tucci said.

While EMC is keen to build a consumer brand, the company would not rush into it, said Tucci, stating: "We are planning to walk into it. This year we are probably not going to spend tens of millions of dollars to do that, but you will see us begin."

David Donatelli, executive vice president Storage Product Operations for EMC, highlighted some of the company's plans to extend enterprise level storage technologies to the rest of its product portfolio. The company expects flash drives to become increasingly common in the enterprise level, while it also believes its Avamar data de-duplication software will be able to offer much more efficiency at all levels of storage. EMC also intends to extend disc spin down technology, that shuts down idle discs to save power, and low power drives, across its portfolio.

Accenture claims that corporates should start to migrate towards the Cloud for non critical Cloud Apps

2008-05-27T15:24:00.001Z

Accenture: Time is ripe to test cloud computing

Victoria Ho ZDNet Asia

Published: 22 May 2008 11:54 BST

Source: Zdnet

"Cloud computing" is now mature enough for chief information officers to "experiment" with, according to Accenture's chief scientist.

Speaking at the 21st annual CIO Workshop on Wednesday, Kishore Swaminathan, the IT consulting firm's chief scientist, defined the "cloud" as "the sourcing of capability up there, from a place you don't know or need to know".

Pointing to developments in the space, such as Amazon's virtual storage service and Google and Salesforce.com's recent alliance, Swaminathan said the industry's progress in creating hardware, services and applications in the "cloud" is something CIOs should seriously look at.

The chief scientist suggested placing "non-strategic" applications and "non-sensitive" information in the "cloud", and using the process to test out performance and integration issues.

"Say the business unit wants to do something new. Suddenly, you're faced with the huge headache of trying to get equipment. If it isn't critical, why not test it on the cloud?" said Swaminathan.

While analysts have recently portrayed the cloud as "disruptive" and something to be "prepared" for, Swaminathan was decidedly more positive about the technology's advent.

"Cloud computing allows you to quickly scale up a project without risk, and, if the project fails, gracefully withdraw," he said.

Cloud computing allows you to quickly scale up a project without risk, and, if the project fails, gracefully withdraw

Kishore Swaminathan, Accenture

However, Swaminathan cautioned that "cloud computing" is not mature enough for CIOs to build a strategy upon just yet. "Issues like security and privacy still have to be addressed," he said, but the cloud is "more secure than companies think".

Swaminathan added that companies should try to embrace external applications such as those on social-networking sites: "It's a stupid idea to block out mashups and social-networking apps... A company's CIO cannot keep up with the innovation of these companies simply because that's their core business."

Platforms such as Facebook are becoming more organised by publishing their APIs and giving users privacy controls with which to define how their want their identities managed, he said, adding that integrating such platforms could go a long way in connecting employees with existing technology.

On virtual worlds such as Second Life, Swaminathan said: "I don't think, two years from now, there will be a Second Life... These worlds are 'closed' and have proprietary currencies. Perhaps open standards will make [virtual worlds] more attractive to companies."

Steve Ballmer says Yahoo would not have been a strategic acquisition – maybe Microsoft’s strategy will be Display Ads as new inventory is being sought

2008-05-27T13:56:00.001Z

Yahoo Was Not Strategic, Ballmer Says

By John C Abell

May 23, 2008 | 3:36:54 PM

Soirce: Wired

Steve Ballmer says Yahoo would not have been a strategic acquisition -- call it buying a car you don’t intend to ever drive, just to get the parts -- and Microsoft will do just fine thank you very much trying to spend $50 billion buying what it needs elsewhere.

Talk about dissing the date who spurned you.

"Yahoo was never the strategy we were pursuing, it was a way to accelerate our online advertising business," Ballmer told a Moscow technology conference, Reuters reports. "We will spend money on some acquisitions. You can do a whole lot of things with 50 billion dollars.”

Microsoft dropped its bid for Yahoo on May 3 but last Sunday disclosed that it had approached the company again on a more limited partnership. Speculation has been that the deal would be for Yahoo's search and ad business.

Google and Yahoo are also said to be talking about something similar. But with all that sweet talk from Microsoft we're more certain than ever we will be hearing wedding bells in Redmond.