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Google, Clearwire team up on Google Apps

Posted in Web Technology, Google (January 16, 2008 at 6:30 pm)

Clearwire will migrate its customers to Google Apps including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk.
Clearwire’s move, announced Tuesday, isn’t a big deal since the WiMax carrier only had 348,000 total subscribers as of Sept. 30, but does represent a nice proof of concept win for Google Apps.
In a statement, Clearwire noted that it will migrate […]

Cowen: Debating SaaS slowdown; Google Apps and AMD market share

Posted in General, Web Technology, Google, Software Infrastructure (January 14, 2008 at 7:01 pm)

Cowen & Co. outlined its top 10 potential technology surprises for 2008 and a slowdown in software as a services is front and center on the list. There are also a few wild-cards such as Google Apps adoption and AMD giving up on the market share war.
Cowen ranked its surprises based on events most likely […]

Google doubles down on the iPhone; officially rolls out its app lineup

Google confirmed Monday what most watchers of the search giant have known for weeks if not months–the company is doubling down on the iPhone.
Garett Rogers has been keeping tabs on Google’s iPhone efforts with the most recent item being the addition of iGoogle. In addition in recent weeks Google has tied together Search, Gmail, Calendar […]

Will Zuckerberg have a Roger Clemens-esqe 60 Minutes appearance?

Posted in General, Web Technology, Facebook (January 12, 2008 at 7:24 pm)

Facebook Mark Zuckerberg will appear on “60 Minutes” and talk the Beacon advertising scheme and how it’s a great idea that just needs a little work.
Every once in a while a “60 Minutes” appearance goes well for the subject. Other times you get an appearance like Roger Clemens’ stint last week where he’s shifting […]

Why Google, Yahoo and Microsoft should worry about Countrywide’s takeover

Posted in General, Web Technology, Google ( at 7:24 pm)

Update: Countrywide Financial is being acquired by Bank of America and when the deal closes the second largest Web advertiser will disappear. It’s highly unlikely that Bank of America will spend so lavishly on online advertising.
Most folks know that mortgage giant was on the ropes. Bankruptcy rumors and persistent worries about the company’s health never […]

Mozilla names Lilly CEO; A look at his early priorities

Posted in General, Web Technology, Software Infrastructure (January 8, 2008 at 8:50 pm)

Mozilla Corp., the for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, has named chief operating officer John Lilly as CEO. Former CEO Mitchell Baker will remain chairman.
The duo outlined the move in separate blogs. For her part, Baker said on her blog that she will focus on issues like standards, interoperability and data management. Specifically, she wants […]

Jerry Yang offers sneak peak of Yahoo’s future: Life!

Posted in Web Technology ( at 8:49 pm)

Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang made his inaugural CES appearance, outlining how he plans to evolve his company ahead of the curve and to become an indispensable starting point for consumers’ Web experience, which has become richer and more complex over the last decade. “We call this Life with an exclamation point,” Yang said. […]

Are so-called anywhere applications getting somewhere?

Customer relationship management software, particularly from Salesforce.com, has come the closest to being an “anywhere application,” but other enterprise tools still need work, according to a report by the Yankee Group.
Even though anywhere enterprise applications need work, technology managers need to prepare for them even though most executives don’t deem this software “absolutely critical” for […]

Enterprise Web 2.0 ready for 2008

Dion Hinchcliffe offers 12 predictions for enterprise Web 2.0 in 2008, citing the following as a foundation for reshaping corporate IT:
The driving forces for change this year will be the aging of existing IT systems, the rise of up-and-coming new approaches such as highly capable new Web-based applications, mashups, collective intelligence powered business software, Web-oriented […]

Should Mozilla go public? In a word: No.

Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, should go public, cash in on its browser success and grab more resources to fight Microsoft. At least that’s Henry Blodget’s theory.
Blodget argues that Mozilla could be worth a lot on the public market and may go public this year or next. While acknowledging the perils of going public– primarily […]

Which part of “share” didn’t you understand?

Posted in Security, Web Technology, Google (December 27, 2007 at 11:38 pm)

It seems like everyone is just dying to add social features to their online tools these days. One example: Google recent move to expose your “shared” items from Google Reader to your Gmail contacts. Actually, I don’t think that this is such a bad idea, but there are other opinions about that. […]

Mozilla floats Weave as Web platform

Posted in Web Technology (December 23, 2007 at 4:42 am)

Mozilla is expanding its browser platform into new realms, creating APIs and a portable storehouse for bookmarks, customizations, passwords, histories, preferences and other metadata. Just like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and others, Mozilla wants its platform, called Weave, to serve as a kind of a Web operating system, managing basic services for users (more on Techmeme). […]

FTC: Google-DoubleClick deal a go; One dissenter; Privacy principles floated

Posted in General, Web Technology, Google (December 20, 2007 at 11:15 pm)

The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that it won’t block Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. The vote was 4 to 1 to close the 8 month investigation.
According to the FTC’s statement: “After carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition.”
In a nutshell, the […]

Web 2.0 in the enterprise: Are you prepared?

One of the big takeaways from IBM’s powwow over collaboration tools was that Web 2.0 technology is easing its way into the enterprise.
First, companies like IBM and Cisco will adopt mashups that combine enterprise applications with external applications. Then CIOs will slowly adopt Web 2.0 approaches. These executives will experiment from the inside out. First, […]

Adobe contributes virtual machine to Mozilla’s Tamarin project

Adobe has contributed its virtual machine to Mozilla’s Tamarin project.
Under the arrangement, Adobe will contribute source code from its ActionScript Virtual Machine, which uses the scripting language engine in FlashPlayer 9.
The virtual machine, now known as Tamarin, will be hosted by Mozilla, which said it will use the code in its “next-generation of […]

Watch these FTC privacy principles and expect a skirmish

Along with its approval of Google’s DoubleClick acquisition Thursday the Federal Trade Commission outlined some core privacy principles that may have a bigger impact than the merger over time.
While Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick is getting all of the attention (Techmeme, blog post and news story) these privacy proposals–and the debate that ensues–are likely […]

Podcast: A look back at 2007

This is our last Dan & David Show for 2007, and we look back at some of the major stories and trends of the year. We discuss the impact of the iPhone, cloud-based applications, social networking, software-as-a-service, green IT, industry consolidation and Web 2.0.
You can download the podcast directly to your desktop or MP3 player […]

SNS Top Ten Predictions for 2008

Posted in Hardware Infrastructure, Web Technology (December 19, 2007 at 11:36 pm)

Forecaster Mark Anderson of the Strategic News Service (SNS) has published his top ten predictions for next year. As a context for his predictions, Mark noted that IT spending outside the U.S. will help bolster companies with the U.S. economic growth slowing:
“Most large IT corporations now make more than half of their revenues outside the […]

Microsoft lands Viacom as ad partner

Posted in General, Web Technology ( at 11:36 pm)

Microsoft has landed Viacom as an exclusive advertising partner. With the deal, announced Wednesday, Microsoft gets another customer for its Atlas ad platform and splits revenue on remnant inventory.
The deal is wide ranging, but he most notable part of the deal is that Microsoft’s Atlas platform becomes the exclusive ad serving tool for Viacom’s brands […]

ePlatform launches Techmeme competitor and application platform

ePlatform has developed an on demand platform for building Web applications platform, and its first example app is a set of meme trackers, similar to Gabe Rivera’s popular sites, Techmeme, WeSmirch, memeorandum and Ballbug.
ePlatform launched Technology, Politics and Entertainment trackers, based on its RSS, Search and REST frameworks. ePlatform’s trackers, in “alpha,” include a […]

ZDNet 2007: What the tag cloud tells us

Our engineering team put ZDNet blogs through a cloud tag blender to render a weighted list of top topics for 2008. In an age when the consumer and enterprise worlds are colliding (but no exploding), Google, iPhone, Apple and Microsoft captured the big buzz of the year in our blogs. It was also a year […]

IBM demos ‘On Demand Workplace’; Will Web 2.0 deliver productivity gains?

IBM demoed its enterprise 2.0 experiments Tuesday including its On Demand Workplace–an application that’s part intranet, part Facebook and part Web service that becomes an interface to legacy systems.
IBM executives held court with a handful of bloggers, writers and analysts at its New York offices. The presentations, currently underway, are led by CIO Mark Hennessy […]

IBM cooks up internal virtual world for confidentiality, security

Posted in General, Web Technology ( at 12:25 am)

IBM has created its own internal virtual world called Metaverse for corporate meetings and collaboration. Why not use Second Life? “If you really want to make most of these (virtual world) meetings it has to be confidential,” said IBM CIO Mark Hennessey.
Those comments could indicate the beginning of a trend: Corporate specific virtual worlds designed […]

WordPress vs. an army of clunky content management systems

Updated below: There’s a good discussion on the line between journalism and blogging, but it’s also worth noting the technology gulf between media companies and their content minions.
In Scott Karp’s overall discussion asking whether blogs can do journalism–I think it’s all the same and chances are techies don’t care anyway–he touches on blogs partially […]

Those Gmail ads are a hoot

Does anyone seriously look at the ads in Google’s Gmail? In theory, Google scans my email and serves up relevant advertising.
The reality is a bit different.
To wit:
In a Mozilla email update (I’m subscribed to the Mozilla Google Group) I get the following:

Now I’m interested in most of the ads here. I have no clue what […]

Economics that are impossible to stop

Posted in Datacenter, Web Technology, virtualization (December 16, 2007 at 7:08 am)

A few days ago, Jeff Barr, Amazon’s Web services (AWS) evangelist visited my class and got a report of what we’d built over the course of the last semester on top of AWS. Each student had built part of a project that eventually used 25-30 independent machines. One weak spot was data storage. […]

Amazon rolls out beta of its cloud database

Amazon has announced the limited beta of its SimpleDB, a database Web service designed to ride shotgun with Amazon’s S3 storage service and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Amazon’s Simple DB provides real-time lookup and querying of structured data, which will presumably be stored on the S3 service. According to Amazon customers will save money because they […]

The peril of panels: Can Web traffic stats be trusted?

Posted in General, Web Technology ( at 11:16 pm)

ComScore repeatedly warns in its Securities and Exchange Commission filings that if its statistics can’t be trusted its business model is in jeopardy.
I’m calling jeopardy. I’m calling a bit of BS too.
Why? There’s no way that ComScore traffic metrics and what I see internally can be off by–oh let’s round it off–10 million or so […]

Google Knol: Wikipedia killer or knowledge management app?

Google has launched a tool called Knol, which is a service that aggregates knowledge from individuals.
Google says:

The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organized to make it easily […]

Analyst: E-tailers may get coal in their stockings

A Bear Stearns analyst argues that e-tailers will be under pressure as consumers slow spending.
Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck said in a research note Friday that e-commerce warning signals abound. “The season is clearly being impacted by the general consumer pullback, with concerns on oil, housing, and the stock market. Many consumers are actively pursuing […]

Opera files complaint against Microsoft in the EU over IE, Windows bundle; CTO makes Web standards case

Posted in General, Web Technology ( at 2:18 am)

Updated with Opera CTO, Microsoft comments: Opera Software said Thursday it is filing a complaint against Microsoft in the European Union alleging the software giant is abusing its power and tying Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system. Opera also has a beef about Microsoft’s support for Web standards.
In its complaint, Opera argues that:

“Microsoft is […]

Podcast: Opera vs. Microsoft; Bebo’s big move; AMD’s future

This week on the Dan and David Show, which is actually the David and Larry show since Dan is on vacation, we discuss Opera’s complaint in the EU against Microsoft over the IE-Windows bundle and Web standards. David thinks that Opera is in trouble and that’s why it’s reaching for the complaint. I argue that […]

Adobe takes data access technology open source; Will the enterprise bite?

Adobe on Thursday said it will open source a data access technology called BlazeDS. The goal: Speed up the adoption of enterprise rich Internet applications.
BlazeDS connects data, which can be housed in the enterprise or pushed out, to Adobe Flex and AIR applications. Adobe says the data access technologies were previously available as part of […]

Google’s big TV plan: Android on set-top boxes?

Posted in General, Web Technology, Google (November 26, 2007 at 12:58 am)

Following Credit Suisse’s $900 price target for Google one nagging question remains: Where–and how–is Google going to generate large TV advertising revenue?
If you recall Credit Suisse analyst Heath Terry slapped a big price target on Google and made some assumptions for 2010. One of them was a base case that Google would have TV advertising […]

Live Documents enters the Office suite ring

Posted in General, Web Technology ( at 12:58 am)

Sabeer Bhatia was the co-founder of Hotmail, the Web email service Microsoft acquired for $400 million in 1998. Now, Bhatia wants to bite the hand that fed him. He formed a new company, InstaColl, and is joining Zoho, ThinkFree, Google, Yahoo (Zimbra), Adobe and lesser know others in the effort to squish […]

Tim Berners-Lee: From World Wide Web to Giant Global Graph

Posted in General, Web Technology ( at 12:58 am)

Updated: On this Thanksgiving morning in the U.S., the Facebook Beacon storm continues to rage (Techmeme). It’s simply growing pains for the social graph. In fact, the social graph (which Mark Zuckerberg defines as the network of connections between people) reached a new stage of legitimacy or recognition today with a post by Tim Berners-Lee, […]

Where in the world is Ray Ozzie?

Posted in General, Web Technology ( at 12:58 am)

Ray Ozzie is Microsoft’s chief software architect–that’s Bill Gates’ old job. He is charged with building a bidirectional bridge between Microsoft’s lucrative rich-client past and its cloud-computing future.
Ozzie, who joined Microsoft in March of 2005, is keeping a low profile lately.
The last time he gave a major public address was at the MIX 07 conference […]

Podcast: Amazon’s Kindle, AMD’s Spider, the Hackintosh and more…

This week on the Dan & David Show we discuss the debut of Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader. The reviews so far peg Kindle as a work in progress (a version 1.0 device) that won’t immediately light the fires of the book or newspaper industry, but it is a step up from Sony’s Reader.
I speculate about […]

Revisting Firefox retention rates

Posted in General, Web Technology (August 5, 2007 at 7:32 am)

Apparently a few Mozilla folks have a problem with my characterization of Firefox’s retention statistics.
The main beef: What was I comparing Firefox’s retention stats to? It’s a good point. And Adrian Kingsley-Hughes addresses it well. In fact, I approached the issue the same way he did.
Here’s what Asa Dotzler, Director of Community Development at Mozilla […]

Notable nuggets from Google’s 10Q

Posted in General, Web Technology, Google, Search (July 20, 2007 at 12:49 pm)

Google filed its second quarter regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company’s filing matched what it reported a few weeks ago.
Nevertheless, Google did have a few notable passages. Among the Google nuggets you may not have heard before:
The company is up to its eyeballs in lawsuits–that’s not a surprise, but some of […]

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