: Two Silicon Valley VC firms -- Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures -- are banking $110 million on online matchmaker eHarmony's future in one of the four largest VC deals of the year. (TCV was involved in the TechTarget funding we reported on yesterday.) This is a real head scratcher. As Jupiter Research analyst Nate Elliott told the Mercury News, "That's a shocking amount of money to give to this company. ... They're doing well by all accounts, but they don't own the market by any stretch." In context, the entire online personals category is estimated to be about $450 million a year.
That market has been showing signs of slowing -- online personals spending had a growth rate of 4 percent for 2Q04 second quarter, compared to 60 percent in 2Q03 and 376 percent in 2Q04, the Merc reports using data from the Online Publishers Association and ComScore Networks.
But eHarmony claims to be profitable with almost 5.8 million registered users with sales in November up 264 percent from lastr year same time.
Related -- TechTarget's Acquisition Piggy Bank Just Got Fatter
HUBO, the first humanoid robot developed by a Korean research team, on display during a demonstration at a KAIST research lab in Daejeon on Sunday. HUBO is expected to have capabilities equal to that of Japan's ASIMO, the world's most advanced robot, within the year.
Xeni Jardin:
Mark Pesce rants about the recent shutdowns of BitTorrent supersites Suprnova.org and TorrentBits.com.
Hey, Hollywood! Can you feel the future slipping through your fingers? Do you understand how badly you've screwed up? You took a perfectly serviceable situation - a nice, centralized system for the distribution of media, and, through your own greed and shortsightedness, are giving birth to a system of digital distribution that you'll never, ever be able to defeat. In your avarice and arrogance you ignored the obvious: you should have cut a deal with SuprNova.org. In partnership you could have found a way to manage the disruptive change that's already well underway. Instead, you have repeated the mistakes made by the recording industry, chapter and verse. And thus you have spelled your own doom.Link (via waxy)It's said that the best sequels are just like the original, only bigger and louder. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves for one hell of a crash. This baby is now fully out of control.
Xeni Jardin:
This site offers a similar service to the recently-killed Suprnova.org and Torrentbits -- except this one's 100% Bollywood. Movies, music, stage dramas, TV shows. Link. And if you dig that, you may also like desitorrents.com: Link. (Thanks, Anil Kandangath)
Problems installing e-mail authentication?. The grumblings continue from Verizon customers who can't seem to get mail from overseas senders, with Verizon so far not offering much of an explanation. It appears Verizon did recently tighten up their acceptance of mail from open relays; one user,..
No, it's not Google. In fact, as on Friday, Google was 10th on the list. Barron's writes: "The year's best-performing IPO by far (among companies that raised at least $50 million) was Shanda Interactive, one of the largest online-gaming operators in China. With the help of Goldman Sachs, the company issued American depositary shares in mid-May for $11 apiece (each ADS represents two Chinese shares), and the stock quadrupled before retreating to 39. Although Shanda has been growing rapidly, its $2.6 billion market value is twice as large as current estimates of China's total online-gaming market in 2008."
Walter Moddberg writes about the most important development in US wireless communications:
This new Verizon network, which the company calls "BroadbandAccess," promises users in 18 cities so far that they can get on the Internet at typical speeds of between 300 and 500 kilobits a second. That's the equivalent of what many wired home DSL modems do, and much faster than prior American cellphone data networks. But in my first tests of the new network last spring I was able to do even better, averaging nearly 600 kilobits a second.And, unlike Wi-Fi, another form of wireless broadband, the new Verizon network doesn't require the user to be near a "hot spot," usually found in coffee shops or hotels. Verizon hopes to have most major metro areas covered by EV-DO by the end of 2005, and Sprint is also planning to roll out an EV-DO network next year.
But so far, this capability has been available only via a special modem card inserted into a laptop computer, and it has carried a whopping monthly price tag of $80. Now Verizon is introducing two hand-held devices, a combination PDA/phone and a standard flip phone, that can tap the EV-DO network. And it is charging lower monthly fees to use the network with these devices than it does for laptop use.
In my tests, Verizon's new Pocket PC was never slower than 349 kilobits a second, and it averaged between 450 and 550 kilobits.
Armed with those speeds, I was able to confidently set the e-mail program on the device to get the full text of messages and even attachments. It downloaded hundreds of e-mails daily, at speeds that, while not as fast as my office and home PCs, were close enough that I felt almost as if I was at the computer. On the Internet, Web pages rendered quickly, and I was able to play streaming audio and video, at good resolution, with no more stuttering than you'd get on a PC.
Bottom line: The new Verizon EV-DO network is a very good thing, and it's a great addition to a laptop or PDA. But until Verizon and other carriers allow regular phones to have more computerlike capabilities, wireless broadband won't matter much for average cellphone users.
Lot's of people are now on the search for torrent sites after several of the most popular and well publicized sites were shutdown. It is understandable why as the heat had been turned up by the MPAA. I find it sad that they did not stand up and fight though.
It's tough to stare down the end of a gun barrel that has a 100 lawyers behind it ready to litigate you into financial ruin. I am sure at some point we will get a site willing to fight and find out the legal standing of torrent sites.
The FAQ contains a list of alternative sites and information on the closure. [www.silentdragz.net]
Here are the numbers from SCO's press release. According to the conference call, they have $7 million in cash left to operate SCO after this quarter. They spent $4.3M in legal fees this quarter. They project $3M per quarter going forward. But take a look at their accounts payable. It seems to have taken quite a jump. Why? Not paying bills? The press release says they have placed $5M in escrow, in connection with their litigation. I remember from Dion Cornett's 11/8 OSWS that $5M in escrow is for the lawyers, travel expenses, witness fees, etc. Reuters: "Revenue declined to $10.08 million from $24.3 million."TheStreet.com's Ronna Abramson says SCO's 4Q loss "tripled on a sharp drop in sales": "Lindon, Utah-based SCO reported a loss of $6.5 million, or 37 cents a share, in the fourth quarter. That compared with a loss of $1.6 million, or 12 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier."The loss includes a $2.7 million restructuring charge."Revenue fell more than 50% to $10.1 million from $24.3 million a year earlier. . . . "Legal news has been the primary driver of the stock, which has fallen about 77% from a 52-week high of 19.31. The company has drawn its share of investors betting against it, with the short interest at 53% as of Nov. 8. Shares of SCO Group fell 33 cents, or 6.8%, to close Tuesday at $4.51."All in all, this isn't the moon.
: Ad maven Jack Myers predicts 30 percent growth for 2005, likening current online ad sales to "the late 1990s when the industry was emerging from a virtually non-existent base and was gaining legitimacy." (His forecasts are based on proprietary analysis of the Myers Advertising Confidence Index survey of ad executives.) In his final Jack Myers Reports of 2004, Myers writes:
"after several years of testing, most major national advertisers are now shifting budgets from website development, research & development, and IT infrastructure into marketing budgets targeted to online media, including search engine and behavioral targeting. Search engine growth will slow slightly to 25 to 30 percent, but even traditional banner and pop-up ads will experience 20 to 25 percent increases."
-- Popularly branded online content will generate the greatest share of online revenue growth in 2005.
-- the continued increase in broadband penetration will help provide up to a 40-percent boost in online video advertising and content sponsorships.
-- Yahoo, AOL and MSN will benefit from a significant share of these more targeted broadband revenues, but their "traditional" online advertising will be under 20 percent.
-- Advertisers will shift more funds to established media sites.
The numbers sound impressive but, as the detailed chart accompanying the report illustrates, the percentages are huge because online has so far to go. In 2004, Myers estimates that online advertising grew 25 percent but accounted for only 4.3 percent of the ad spending pie. For 2005, he projects 30 percent growth for 5.3 percent of the total.
By Robert Lemos CNET News.com December 21, 2004, 11:01 AM PT A Web worm that identifies potential victims by searching Google is spreading among online bulletin boards using a vulnerable version of the program phpBB, security professionals said on Tuesday. The Santy worm uses a flaw in the widely used community forum software known as the PHP Bulletin Board (phpBB) to spread, according to updated analyses. The worm searches Google for sites using a vulnerable…
Direct and Related Links for 'Net worm using Google to spread'
Google has responded to calls from antivirus companies to stop the advance of an Internet worm that was using the search engine’s technology to spread among online bulletin boards. Antivirus companies say the Santy worm, which searches Google for sites that use a vulnerable version of the phpBB bulletin board software, was spreading quickly and had already infected about 40,000 Web sites by Tuesday evening. Read more……
Direct and Related Links for 'Google squashes Santy worm'
Here we are again, the end of the year. Last year I did pretty well with my prognostications, mainly because I chose carefully. This time, I'm feeling a bit more reckless. A year from now, I am sure I'll be scratching my head - what was I thinking? - but then again, that's not such a bad place to be.
So in no particular order, here are some things that I believe have a reasonable chance of occurring in 2005 with regard to the intersection of media, technology, and search.
1. We will have a goat rodeo of sorts in the blogging/micropublishing/RSS world as commercial interests push into what many consider a "pure medium." I've seen this movie before, and it ends OK. But it's important that the debate be full throated, and so far it looks to be shaping up that way. I'm already seeing these forces at work over at Boing Boing, and I am sure they will continue. We'll all work on figuring out ways to stick to our principles and get paid at the same time, however, I expect that things might get more contentious before they get better, and 2005 may be a more fractious year in the blogosphere as we evolve through this process.
2. Along those lines, things will not go as swimmingly as we'd like with regard to "monetization." As the majors get into the space and start throwing around their weight and lucre, some folks will make bad decisions, and others will freeze and make no decisions at all. It will get harder to innovate before it gets easier. We'll all be surprised by the lack of what we consider "progress" in the RSS/Blogging world, and expectations of major publishing revenues will not materialize as quickly as perhaps we think they should. However, we'll in fact be making huge strides in understanding the path forward, it just won't seem like it. By the end of the year, the world will begin to realize that "blogs" are in fact an extraordinarily heterogeneous ecosystem comprised of scores, if not hundreds, of different "types" of sites.
3. There will be two to five major new sites that emerge from "nowhere" to become major cultural influencers along the lines of the political bloggers of 2004. One of them will be sold to a major publisher/aggregator for what seems like a large sum of money, driving the abovementioned #2 and #3.
4. Meanwhile, the long tail will become the talk of the "old line" media world. To capture some of that value, we'll see a slew of deals and new publishing projects from the established brands that seek to capture the idea of community journalism, affiliate commerce sales, and collaborative content creation.
5. Google will do something major with Blogger. I really have no idea what, but it's overdue. Six Apart will grow quickly but face a crisis in its implementation as its core users demand more features that are "unbloglike" like customer databases and robust publishing support tools. This (and other things) may drive Six Apart or one of its competitors into the arms of Yahoo or AOL or even - gasp - Quark or Adobe or Marcomedia.
6. Ask will continue to consolidate traffic by buying smaller search sites.
7. Yahoo and Google will both test systems that combine local merchant inventory information with search, so that merchants can use search as a direct sales channel. By the end of the year, there will be no question that the search companies are in direct competition with the ecommerce companies, but it won't matter - there's room for them all. Paul Ford will continue to get droves of readers to his related, and very prescient, three year old post on how Google takes over the world.
8. Microsoft will lose search share before they gain it back later in the year when the integration of MSN search starts to scale with new versions of Office and IE . Net net, however, MSFT will gain total in total search sessions from last year, and its technology will get much, much better.
9. Firefox will near 15% of total browser share. Firefox faithful will wonder why it's not much much higher. But MSFT will release a very good upgrade of IE, see #8.
10. A third party platform player with major economies of scale (ie eBay or Amazon) will release a search related innovation that blows everyone's mind, and has everyone buzzing about how it redefines what's possible in search.
11. The China question will become a critical issue to the search community. Defining the China question will in itself be a major task of 2005. How do search companies go in without being "evil"? Is the tradeoff worth it?
12. By the end of the year, there will be no question that search is a media business, and that the major players in search are major players in the content business.
13. Something major will finally happen at Tivo. We all hope that it's a sale to Apple, but if it is a sale, it will more likely be to Comcast or DirecTv.
14. All year, Apple will be rumored to launch a video iPod, but it won't - it's still too early. By the end of 2005, we will just be starting to see traction in the video over IP market and its connection to search. Google will introduce Video search at some point in 05, but it will stay in Labs.
15. Mobile will finally be plugged into the web in a way that makes sense for the average user and a major mobile innovation - the kind that makes us all say - Jeez that was obvious - will occur. At the core of this innovation will be the concept of search. The outlines of such an innovation: it'll be a way for mobile users to gather the unstructured data they leverage every day while talking on the phone and make it useful to their personal web (including email and RSS, in particular). And it will be a business that looks and feels like a Web 2.0 business - leveraging iterative web development practices, open APIs, and innovation in assembly - that makes the leap. (More on this when I start posting again).
16. Perhaps most recklessly...I will finish my book. The reviews will be mixed, as my attempt to satisfy both the exacting audience of Searchbloggers and the more general audience of a major trade hardcover may fall flat. Many will say I tried to do too much, others that I didn't do nearly enough (how's that for airing my deepest fears in public?!). However, I'll be happy with the effort, and the book will do OK, thanks mainly to the support of this community. So, ahead of time, thanks for your support this past year. I learned more from this process than I ever thought possible, and I owe it all to you, who grace my site with your time and input.
17. Lastly, I will be involved in starting a new business in the field of media and technology. It will start very slowly, and I'll screw up as much as I possibly can in the early stages, before imposing it on the rest of the world. Hopefully, you'll all be there to keep me honest as I try to figure out a few ideas I've been simmering for the past year or so.
Unless there's a major story which breaks in the next week or so, I'm signing off for the year, and look forward to resuming posting in 2005. Have a wonderful holiday, and a prosperous, healthy New Year. Oh, and please add your thoughts on 2005 below - I know I missed a lot....
Feng Qian received gifts worth 50,000 Yuan ($6,000) after beating 19 other finalists aged 17 to 62 in Beijing.
To prevent cheating, all contestants - who included one transsexual - had to provide a doctor's certificate to prove that they had indeed had surgery.
China's fast-growing cosmetic surgery is now worth $2.4bn a year...
Over on InsideGoogle, we learn that:
Celebrex, the keyword, has soared, as personal injury attorneys scramble to buy the keyword for big bucks at Overture and AdWords, MarketWatch is reporting. The Overture cost of Celebrex soared from 95 cents on Friday to $4.02 today, following news that the FDA was considering regulatory measures for the best-selling arthritis drug.
Celebrex the arthritis drug?
Wow!
I never really thought about how FDA action against particular drugs would affect keyword ad buys. Sure, I've seen how it affects the stock prices of drug companies, but this is a bit unexpected.
It's a brave new world, with new economies that are ripe for study.
Frontline's: Secret History of the Credit Card
Includes alot of useful and less than well known information like "universal default" clauses that allow your credit card company to raise your interest rate when you're late on a payment to another creditor and there's no limit to the late charges a credit company can lay on you as well as no limit on the interest rate they hit you with. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Of particular interest: credit scores explained and an examination of credit responsibility. There are also interviews with lawmakers (including the infamous Bill Janklow). Not sure how well versed you are on credit card info? Take the quiz and find out. (I did badly).
PC World: Boeing is planning to add live television to its Connexion by Boeing service during 2005. via its Connexion network, which allows 5 MBPS downloads and I MBPS uploads over the satellite-data network. Stan Deal, vice president of commercial airlines at Boeing’s Connexion unit tells PC World, “You’ll be able to view up to four channels of live TV over your laptop.”
The BBC report on an EU funded research projects findings that mobile phones do indeed alter human DNA - they're not clear whether this would have long term effects or not.
The scientists behind the study said more research was needed to determine the actual effect of the phones on health.
But they said, as a precaution, people should not use a mobile if there was a land-line available.
And there was me, just itching to go 3G next year...
The largest publishing house in the US, Random House has voiced plans to enter the retail market and sell books directly to the public online.
Barnes and Noble are not happy, and I shouldn't imagine Amazon are either. From the NYT story threadlinked above:
Last week, Peter W. Olson, the chief executive of Random House Inc., the nation's largest publisher, disclosed the company's tentative plans to sell books directly to consumers through its own Web site. On Friday, Stephen Riggio, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble Inc., the country's largest bookseller, said that he was "deeply concerned" by Random House's plans to enter into his business, raising the possibility of a growing rift between the publishing companies.
Could be quite a mess if B&N/Amazon dont bully them out of the idea...
Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung unveiled a gigantolicious plasma screen display today -- ">it measures 102 inches diagonally, making it the largest commercially-available display in the world.
Xeni Jardin:
BoingBoing reader Steve Portigal says,
It's probably not the first time that an IP address had led police to capture a criminal but this is certainly a high profile mention of such a technique - and it seems like they moved awfully fast given that it was a regular non-cyber crime.
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You’re sitting on a pile of stock that’s jumped in value through short-term response to announcements, and you owe a
pile of money to someone. Stock or cash? Stock or cash?
GM chose to use about 2/3rds of the XM stock it has on hand to fund its future health-care obligations for retiring
hourly workers. Commendable that GM is doing this in advance, but it’s an interesting development that they’re using a
run-up stock to do so. I can’t make any comments on the future stock price of XM nor the advisability of owning it; I’m
not a broker nor analyst, nor pretend to be one. But it’s a good trick on GM’s part because the transfer is valued at
XM’s current price.
GM’s remaining 5.6 million shares give it a 3.1 percent stake in XM, and they will retain a board seat.
Six Log: Movable Type 3.14 released - addressing server load/spam issues.
Skype continues to grow their termination agreements. What's interesting about this agreement is that C&W has for years been one of the most controling type of companies in the telephony world, expecially where they have near monopoly control in some countries.
Labor unrest is increasingly hitting the economy as migrant workers would rather stay at home and work in the booming agriculture. Especially southern China has been hit by a shortage of labor that has made it easier for disgruntled workers to get into action. Ten days ago the 12, 000 workers of a Wal-Mart supplier, a sino-Japanese joint venture walked out. Interesting detail of the story, writen by Howard French of the New York Times, was that the workers, banned from organizing themselves, used SMS-messages to stay in touch with each other.
Now also (...)
Entry continued...
eBay is "outraged" by the arrest of Avnish Bajaj, CEO of its Baazee.com subsidiary in India and it's hard not to agree or to wonder about the signal Indian authorities are sending to online operators. This time, it's about e-commerce but it might just as easily be about an editorial site that offers classifieds or allows comments.
In this case, which has gained a certain amount of noteriety in India, a Bazee.com user offered a pornographic video clip for sale. The clip wasn't posted; it was to be sent to buyers via email. As eBay explains it, the posting violated Baazee's policies and was removed from the site upon being discovered.
The attention to the case stems primarily from the clip's origin and the seller -- it's a video of the seller, a 17-year-old male student -- and a girl, also a minor, engaged in oral sex. It was transmitted by camera phone. He is in detention.
But Bajaj's arrest is unfathomable. According to eBay, the executive traveled to New Delhi voluntarily to help with inquiries and was then arrested and detained without bail until Dec. 24.
This just in. Poland refused to go along with the software patent rubber stamp: "The Software Patent Directive has been withdrawn from the Agenda of the Agricultural Council. Poland's minister Marcinski requested it firmly at the beginning of the meeting. The Commissioner expressed regret, but the A-item has been deleted and will not be decided this year." For some insight into the process, and some suggestions for going forward, you might enjoy reading Simon Phipps' commentary.
We had anti-wifi and frequency selective wallpapers, now Christos Mias at the University of Warwick (UK) has devised a method of producing tunable surfaces that can selectively block signals from wireless networks from spilling out of the office.
The grid could be embedded in any glass window and then tuned to block the selected frequency.
Tuning the circuit allows to block a different frequency if circumstances in the office change without having to remove the window or the embedded circuits. It allows for different window material variations and it can compensate for small FSS (frequency selective surface) fabrication errors.
Via pesco's Page - The Feature < University of Warwick.
802.11b Networking News: Verizon Wireless’s Broadband Access service is now available in Los Angeles and environs. Southern California is living the wireless lifestyle, with Los Angeles County, parts of Riverside County and San Bernadino County, and most of San Diego and Orange County. Overall, about 4400 square miles of coverage across populated SoCal. NorCal… well we are still waiting.
ExpressIndia lets us know that Yahoo will open a development centre in Chennai, India on December 24th....
by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com 2004--Search engines: This was certainly the year of the search engines, the big G and all the other little ones being funded and the old ones, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL finding search again. It will be interesting how the older media companies do in search. Google has a very good trusted brand, it doesn’t matter that other search engines are just...
apocal writes "How cool wouldn't it be to be able to burn the label on your cd using the same laser you used to burn the cd in the first place? Well, I guess this technology called LightScribe will be coming soon. 'Suppose you have just created a compilation CD of a dozen or so of your favorite songs. Now you want to make a label that contains the song titles, artists' names, and some personal information and design elements to make it special. First, burn your tracks onto the data side of the disc. Then open your favorite LightScribe-enabled label-making software and go to the CD template work area. Now you do all of your creative design workcompose pictures, copy, artwork whatever. When you are satisfied with what you have done, take the disc out of your drive, flip it over to the label side and put it back in the drive. Now go back to your label-making software, and simply click print.'"
LostCluster writes "Several reports out of Toyko are indicating that Sony intends on dropping out of the plasma TV business and ramping up productions of LCD TVs instead. Meanwhile rumors have it that Sharp is planning on investing US$1.9 billion on an LCD production plant."
Albert Libchaber and his team at Rockefeller University have made the first steps towards creating a form of artificial life.
These "vesicle bioreactors" are hybrid creations: the soft cell walls are made of fat molecules taken from egg white and the cell contents are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli, stripped of all its genetic material.
This cell contains much of the biological machinery needed to make proteins; the scientists also added an enzyme from a virus to allow the vesicle to translate DNA code and when they added genes, the cell fluid started to make proteins, just like a normal cell would.
The bioreactors are not alive - they're performing simple chemical reactions that can also happen in cell-free biological fluids.
But the result is groundbreaking for synthetic biology, where the aim is to re-design entire organisms, or recreate them from scratch.
Albert Libchaber's hope is to build up towards a minimal synthetic organism able to maintain itself like a living cell.
As these constructs become more lifelike, the rest of us will have to start rethinking the nature of life.
"For me, life is just like a machine - a machine with a computer program. There's no more to it than that. But not everyone shares this point of view," commented Dr Libchaber.
Via World Changing and PSFK < BBC News.
Heaven help us all, the rights to Elvis Presley's name and image have been sold to SFX Entertainment - Get ready for brand mayhem...
The Elvis estate, along with rights to his the rock legend's name and image, has been sold for $100 million to SFX Entertainment. Lisa Marie Presley agreed last Thursday to sell 85 percent of the estate's assets. Presley will receive $53 million cash, be absolved of $20 million indebt and get shares in the new company expected to be worth $25 million.
More details at the threadlink above and this ABC News Story
Not only is this going to happen, but the ground floor is already being built. Here's an excellent article from Editor and Publisher . Here's a taste:
Online editors at newspapers across the country are looking to add video clips, video reports, and even online TV newscasts to their sites, taking advantage of the recently exploding popularity of broadband Internet access.
Kinsey Wilson, editor in chief of USAToday.com, calls "continued, expanded use of video, and real experimentation around how video is best deployed on the Internet" the top trend to watch on newspaper Web sites in 2005.
Stuart has an excellent analysis of what the next generation of Skype, version 1.1, that is now in beta will be all about.
His disection of their approach to Voice Mail is quite interesting reading.
I honestly like the direction Skype is going because what they seem to be doing is solving problem. That's a good thing.
Media RSS extends enclosures to handle other media types, such as short films or TV, as well as provide additional metadata with the media.
"Media RSS" is a new RSS module that supplements the enclosure capabilties of RSS 2.0. RSS enclosures are already being used to syndicate audio files and images. Media RSS extends enclosures to handle other media types, such as short films or TV, as well as provide additional metadata with the media. Media RSS enables content publishers and bloggers to syndicate multimedia content such as TV and video clips, movies, images, and audio.
Glenn makes sense of this "Wi-Fi in the air" story. The FCC didn't just suddenly decide to allow Wi-Fi on planes. Two years ago, the FCC lobbied the ITU to allocate global satellite spectrum specifically for the purpose of providing...
Want to start making actual products, without a factory? We've mentioned eMachineShop.com before as a good personal-fab resource for the artist or the engineer doing a one-off prototype, but what if your needs are more sophisticated (you use your own CAD software, you need more than just machining, you want a few hundred units made, etc.)? Then the place to go is MFGquote.com, a sort of a Ebay for fabbing-- you post your drawings, fabbers bid on them, you choose who you like. Besides just machining, you can get layup, extrusions, casting, welding, electronics, textile, just about any method you could want to make something; and not just individual parts, but assembly of units. Everyhing you'd need to make a real product and sell it, without having your own factory. It even has an automatic setup for making NDA's between fabber and client, which is of obvious importance. And while it's aimed largely at companies who want to outsource short runs of product, an individual can use it just as well for one-off prototypes or art.
Time Warner Boosts Cable Speeds
Time Warner has unwrapped a holiday gift for its cable Internet subscribers: faster downloads. The company plans to roll out increased speeds of 5Mbits and 8Mbits per second, a 2Mbit boost for its standard and premium RoadRunner cable offerings. Customers in New York will see the improved download speeds starting next Tuesday, while the rest of the country will reap the benefits come January. Time Warner says it will not increase prices for its 3.7 million broadband users.
Makes you wonder what they were doing with all this bandwidth before now? Oh.. I guess we know.
Good discussion over on Brad DeLong's site of Movable Type's culpability in the nasty comment spam problem out there. After all, neglected & spam-ridden MT blogs are analogous to the broadband-connected zombie PCs that issue so much spam and so many...
The Power architecture doesn’t get the attention it deserves. With Power5 servers finally shipping, even non-Big Blue shops should take look again [InfoWorld]
'-- There are so many ways in which Power5’s influence reaches beyond IBM’s primary base of well-heeled customers. Although IBM also sells Itanium 2, Opteron, and Xeon servers, the company seems clearly intent on putting Power5 systems in the hands of Linux and Windows administrators. --'
...John
Last week I was talking with a small business IT consultant who switches clients' servers to Linux (and Samba) all day long without any problems, but finds few clients interested in moving their desktops to Linux. The reason? "QuickBooks," he said. While there are many small business accounting packages that happily run on Linux, including GnuCash, Quasar, SQL-Ledger, and AccPac, QuickBooks dominates this market. And its loyal users don't want to switch to another package even if it's just as good as -- or possibly better than -- QuickBooks.
With all the talk about fiber to the home, fiber to the curb and fiber everywhere, Holman W. Jenkins Jr. reminds us that copper is the cockroach of telecom industry - just when you think its dead, you find that the bells have found a new use for it. In the mid 1990s, when everyone started talking about broadband, copper got a chance to thrive as DSL. Subsequent generations of chips from companies like Texas Instruments and Broadcom made sending high-speed data down copper easier, cheaper and of course faster. Still, no one thought it would be one day used to send television signals down this aging pipe.
Now Bells think they can use the copper loops and fiber in combination to stream digital television down to your living room. The article, which appeared in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (talk about being caught up in merger frenzy), compares Verizon’s all fiber strategy with the copper-hybrid strategies of SBC and BellSouth. I think in the long run, Verizon might have a better game plan, but SBC and BellSouth have a more budget option.
SBC figures 5,000 feet is sufficient to deliver next-generation services. Both a speedier rollout and keeping a lid on costs are obvious considerations here, but also the fact that rapid improvements in DSL are turning the copper “last mile” into a more valuable and useful asset than even the FCC seems to understand. Happily, the fine print in the commission’s ruling suggests to SBC that its investment will still be safe from confiscation by state regulators, who might otherwise use it to subsidize the company’s would-be competitors.
Jenkins has an interesting article, but he also makes some points, I wish he had gone into more details. And was not that reliant on a single company project - like SBC LightSpeed.
SBC is also betting on Microsoft to deliver a non-buggy software product (dubbed IPTV) on the first try. Don’t doubt that this is a big deal for Bill Gates too.It would have been nice to see him write about the success or lack there off of IP-TV over copper in the US. We know its a hit in Korea and Japan and elsewhere in Asia.
I have taken a scorched earth philosophy to the big Sprint-Nextel merger and am trying to be as comprehensive as possible about this. I had some interesting email reactions to the merger, and there were others who sent me their thoughts. I have included some here, including a take that the merger could actually boost competition.
“Conventional wisdom on the Sprint-Nextel merger is that this will make the market less competitive,” says Nick Wray, Vice President of Strategic Sourcing for Control Point Solutions. “I believe this merger will actually make the enterprise market more competitive. This consolidation, particularly of the technologies, will create a true competitor for giants of the wireless industry like Verizon and Cingular. The resulting company would combine Sprint’s large corporate customer base and network and Nextel’s extremely loyal customer base.”Merrill Lynch, on the other hand believes that big winner here is Qualcomm since CDMA is the technology of choice for the combined company. Finally, the operators are planning to launch PTT (push-to-talk) capability on their CDMA EV-DO network in 2008. “We think this essentially means that the 14mn strong subscriber base of iDEN will join the CDMA community,” Merrill analysts write. On the flip side, the iDEN gravy train is coming to an end for Motorola.
“The near-term implications of the merger on Motorola’s handset business will be quite limited. Sprint and Nextel announced they would ask Motorola to develop dual mode handsets and, in addition, the operators are planning to keep the iDEN network fully operational at least until 2007, rendering Motorola’s iDEN handset business viable for at least another 3 years. In the long term Motorola’s handset division could lose 7-8c of its profits due to Nextel’s migration to a new technology, the impact on near term performance is quite limited. On the positive side, we note that while Sprint currently does not buy handsets from Motorola, the merger with Nextel and the development of dual mode handsets could open this market and create new opportunities.” iDEN sales account for approximately 20% of division revenues but 25% of profits, reflecting higher margins given Motorola’s sole-vendor status at Nextel.Other links.
sailforsingapore writes "Apparently, President Bush is drawing up plans to disable sections of the GPS network in the event of a terrorist attack. The rationale seems to be that it would prevent said terrorists from using the GPS system to direct some sort of attack. The plan would shut down access not only to the GPS satellite network, but projects like the EU's Galileo. Ironically, this comes alongside the President's plan to strengthen the GPS network against deliberate jamming."
NW writes "According to FOIA documents obtained by EPIC new Postal Service self-service postage machines take portrait-style photographs of customers and retain them for 30 days." IBM is the contractor behind the kiosks. Note that the kiosk is supposed to not complete the transaction if it determines the photograph has been compromised, so simply covering the camera is unlikely to work. As the cost of cameras and digital storage approaches zero, is it inevitable that every machine you interact with will take your photograph and store it?
Whilst I slept, Yahoo! announced their new Video Search on the Y! blog:
There were some rumors a few weeks back about Video Search products coming in 2005. Well, we're ready to show you what we've got today--and to ask for your feedback. An early Yahoo! Video Search Beta is now up on Yahoo! Next, our preview site for new technology and applications. I've spent a few hours with it in the last few weeks. Go try it out and let us know what you think. Remember that it's a beta product.
They go on to talk about the difficulty in finding video streams online and how they are leveraging existing relationships with media companies to pad out the vid database initially.
Vid Search and RSS
You can expose video streams to Y! vid search via RSS enclosures the same way as you would for podcasting.
Gary Price has more details as does John Battelle
Expect to hear more on this from the creators of Movable Type within the next couple of days...
We're in the process of identifying all the separate issues involved, coming up with some concise and effective recommendations, and then outlining our plan going forward. We're also going to be reaching out to the weblog community as a whole with information we've learned from both our experience with Movable Type and our background in running the TypePad service. There are a variety of ways to deal with spam, ranging from technical to legal to social methods, and we'll discuss them all.
While the whole world is obsessing over a new bubble of sorts, and the titanic tussle for wireless domination, the Securities and Exchange Commission is letting the architect of Global “Double” Crossing, Gary Winnick go scot free. SEC has decided Winnick should not be fined for his crimes even though SEC’s own enforcement division had disgustingly negotiated a fine of mere million dollars. This man, took out more than $700 million out of the company which he and his cronies ran into ground, and he is not guilty!
There was been nary a whisper in the mainstream media? David Isenberg sums it up best when he writes, “You might not have noticed. USA Today put it on page 3B. The Washington Post ran it on 2E. The Financial Times gave it three paragraphs.” Makes you wonder doesn’t it.
The SEC commissioners rationalized that Winnick was non-executive chairman. But he was the founder, the spokesman, and the largest shareholder. Want to build an air castle, sucker investors and get rich? Green light is on at the SEC.
SEC’s two Republican appointees — Paul Atkins and Cynthia Glassman — disagreed with the case against Winnick. They argued that the company did meet the SEC’s minimum disclosure requirements. The two Democratic appointees — Harvey Goldschmid and Roel Campos — supported the enforcement division’s recommendations.In the end, SEC Chairman William Donaldson, who has often aligned himself with the Democrats on rulemaking issues, ultimately voted with his fellow Republicans, scuttling the deal. Donaldson’s reasoning, according to two people in the meeting, was that as non-executive chairman, Winnick wasn’t obligated to sign off on disclosure decisions.
Winnick is pretty thrilled I assume. Washington Post adds.
Winnick’s lawyer, Gary P. Naftalis, said his client was “gratified” by the agency’s decision. “We always believed that the evidence demonstrated that Gary Winnick acted lawfully and properly in connection with Global Crossing,” Naftalis said in a prepared statement.You know what it tells me - Bernie won’t be needing his Cabana shirts because he won’t be going to Club Fed. Doesn’t matter - next time you want to run a scam, make sure you steal billions, hire the best attorneys and line the pockets of enough politicians, and SEC will take care of you. How quick everyone was to judge Martha Stewart, and throw her in jail.
Cory Doctorow:
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has hundreds of free MP3s of Sherlock Holmes radio plays from the 1930s -- amazing!
(via Ben Hammersley)
IT Observer: Skype - the most popular VoIP software in the world – is here. Already with 38 million downloads (around 5% of all Internet users), Skype is possibly the fastest growing free service ever offered on the web and it has just been bundled with the Kazaa Peer 2 Peer music swapping service that has 170 million users worldwide.
Reader ScrewTivo points to this Economist article on one of my favorite potential delivery means for high-speed Net access: stratosphere-dwelling airships. This version, from Sanswire Networks, is dubbed a "Stratellite," -- and one is scheduled to launch next month. As the submitter writes, "It's basically a blimp that thinks it's a geostationary satellite floating at 65K feet!"
abertoll writes "A federal judge decided that Google is able to sell ads under the GEICO trademark, claiming that this is fair use of the trademark. GEICO's contention was that competing insurance companies were using the name GEICO under which to buy Google Ads, so that when someone searches for GEICO, their ad would come up."
Dave Winer today points to an Scott Rosenberg's excellent take on Google's new library venture. Scott concludes:
The public has a big interest in making sure that no one business has a chokehold on the flow of human knowledge. As long as Google's amazing project puts more knowledge in more hands and heads, who could object? But in this area, taking the long view is not just smart -- it's ethically essential. So as details of Google's project emerge, it will be important not just to rely on Google's assurances but to keep an eye out for public guarantees of access, freedom of expression and limits to censorship. [Scott Rosenberg]
Symantec is close to buying Veritas - for more than $13 billion. According to the New York Times this morning, negotiations between security giant Symantec and backup/storage giant Veritas that have lasted for more than a month are almost complete. If successful, they would lead to “the announcement of a possible deal as early as this week,” says the paper. Read more……
Direct and Related Links for 'Symantec To Buy Veritas: May Announce Deal “As Early as This Week”'
Linux Bangalore/2004, India's biggest tech-fest for free and open source software was held in Bangalore, the country's IT hub, last week. Attendees from many countries got to see more than 80 presentations delivered by 62 speakers in a span of three days.
The New York Times: Veritas has been singled out by Lawrence J. Ellison, the founder and chief executive of the Oracle Corporation, as an example of the kind of independent software company that is unlikely to survive industry consolidation. Say what you may about Larry, he was right, he still has a job and his billions. Pity one can’t say the same about those who jeered him when he said, tech industry has matured.
For many Americans, the end of the year is charitable contribution time. (The reasons are tax-related.) While there is no shortage of worthy causes around the world, I would like to suggest contributing at least something to EPIC. Since its...
I received an email from a Chinese wholesaler offering this USB powered Eye Massager.
To me this USB gadget looks more like a USB powered eye poker than a eye massager, but what do I know. We recently reported about the USB Massage Ball. Looks like USB gadget go big time in the health and wellness market.
Charles Ferguson writes a lengthy and clearly considered piece on Google for Tech Review, focusing on the Microsoft angle and concluding that the only way Google can truly "win" is by controlling a new architecture of computing through the time honored approach of proprietary APIs. Ferguson argues that the search wars are about to enter a major battle for control of standards which simplify the increasingly heterogeneous world of search, and in such a battle, Microsoft is far better suited.
I enjoyed reading this piece, and I am sure I will read it again and again, to more fully consider its argument. But I find myself disagreeing with the premise - why, in this world of the web, do we need to be bound by this winner takes all approach to the world? It works in a resource constrained world of homogenous PCs - once a consumer has purchased his Windows box, he's not going to easily purchase an emerging competitor - but somehow, it really doesnt' strike me as the right metaphor for a Web 2.0 world. I do agree that Google would be well served to make its service more of a platform, and that APIs are the way to go. But I'd really be interested in what Tim O'Reilly has to say about this piece, or Tim Bray, or any number of other folks. I'll keep my eye out...meanwhile, do read the piece. It's a worthy provocation.
Other POVs on this piece: TechDirt, Linden, SEW, Silicon Beat
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com Larry Ellison got his way - and what self-respecting billionaire doesn't? - but what are the prospects for Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft? Not good, says Silicon Valley's leading newspaper....
Cpyder writes "ICANN has decided to go forward with the implementation of two new top level domains, namely .mobi (for mobile use, sponsored by Nokia and T-Mobile) and .jobs (for job sites). The ICANN Board meetings regarding the approval are available. It is not yet known when these domains will be available for registration, as this decision merely starts the technical and business negotiations for terms under which these domains will be registered. Normally the domains should become active somewhere next year. Several other new TLDs are still up for discussion. These include .asia, .mail, .tel and .xxx. Last October, ICANN approved .travel and .post. More on these new TLDs at PCWorld and Google News."
Interesting piece threadlinked above over at Tech Review by the former owner of Front Page, Charles Ferguson. Front Page being the dreadful, code choking joke of the web-dev world.
Charles sold FP to M$ and made a bomb rather than see his company die. He likens that to the decisions now facing Google:
Google now faces choices as fundamental as those Netscape faced in 1995. Google, whose headquarters in Mountain View, CA—familiarly called the Googleplex—is only five kilometers from Netscape’s former home, needn’t perish as Netscape did, but it could. Despite everything Google has—the swelling revenues, the cash from its initial public offering, the 300 million users, the brand recognition, the superbly elegant engineering—its position is in fact quite fragile. Google’s site is still the best Web search service, and Gmail, its new Web-based e-mail service, Google Desktop, its desktop search tool, and Google Deskbar, its toolbar, are very cool. But that’s all they are. As yet, nothing prevents the world from switching (painlessly, instantly) to Microsoft search services and software, particularly if they are integrated with the Microsoft products that people already use.
Thoughts on M$ vs Google anyone?
MIT scientists have cultured small pieces of heart tissue which beat in the same way as the organ.
The approach involves seeding cardiac cells from a rat onto a 3D polymer scaffold, which slowly biodegrades as the cells develop into a full tissue.
The cell/scaffold constructs were bathed in a medium that supplies nutrients and gases, then were stimulated with electrical signals.
The key might be this electrical stimulation that helps condition the cells so that they communicate with each other and contract in a synchronized form.
The next stage will be to try to create samples of tissue that are the right thickness for potential use in transplants.
The work could lead to new ways of repairing heart damage since heart muscle cells cannot regenerate after injury and heart cells are difficult to culture by conventional methods.
Video of the heart tissue beating.
Via BBC News.
Wouldn't it be great if someone made Skype interoperable with any or all of the Instant Messaging platforms?
I'm hearing reports that someone has. Care to guess who?
T-Mobile has its fingers on Delta, United, US Airways, and American, but Continental goes it alone and free: Continental will make free service available in its club lounge, Presidents Club, in 29 airports but not in Chicago. They may be bowing to O'Hare in terms of the upcoming Concourse Communications rollout in that airport, even though the FCC said that landlords can't control legal use of spectrum by tenants. Continental is the first airline of any scale to offer free Wi-Fi. JetBlue and AirTrans offer free Wi-Fi but only in a few of their national terminals, not everywhere they fly....
Remember just a few days ago when XM Satellite Radio was added to the NASDAQ-100 index of top capitalized non-financial firms? Now Sirius joins that club, too, showing the confidence that Wall Street places in the two companies. It’s a tricky proposition: if you add firms to an index that perform extremely poorly thereafter, you remove the utility of having an index that’s supposed to track the broader NASDAQ market. Thus, stocks that are added have to have the right capitalization—and the right moxy.
XM Satellite Radio’s stock is part of the
NASDAQ-100 Index starting Monday. This is a bit of a vote of confidence, because the stocks are supposed to represent a
range of the highest-capitalized non-financial stocks that reflects the stability not volatility of the NASDAQ market
as a whole. It also means that XM will likely have more institutional long-term holders.
XM CEO Hugh Panero believes satellite digital radio will become just another feature on a cellular telephone.
Panero said he believed portable a satellite radio player would eventually be combined
with a digital music player.
”Clearly, convergence will occur at some point. It will happen even without our effort because people are beginning to build MP3 capability into a lot of consumer electronic devices,” he said.
The RIM messging opinion is out from the Federal District Court -- RIM lost on 11 of 16 counts in its appeal of a prior ruling in favor of NTP's patents for wireless messaging -- and it makes for harrowing...
MobileTracker points to a Wall Street Journal story which says that Verizon has gotten a thumbs up from partner, Vodafone to make a hostile bid for Sprint. If it happens the deal could make combined Sprint-Verizon the largest mobile carrier in the US with 65 million customers. The two use the CDMA technology and have laid out aggressive paths for an EV-DO upgrade. The Journal says that the deal is not going to pass the regulatory muster. I have a feeling Verizon is trying to slow down the deal between Sprint and Nextel, more than anything. But as they say, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. If Sprint and Verizon hook-up, Nextel’s only partner would be T-Mobile, which means by doing nothing, T-Mobile might actually be in a good spot.
: The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) predicts that search engine ad revenue will hit just over $4 billion in 2004. The number's included in "The State of Search Engine Marketing 2004" released today in Chicago at the group's meeting. Conducted by Executive Summary Consulting, Inc., the report is based on an extensive survey of 288 search engine advertisers and marketing agencies via IntelliSurvey, and in-depth interviews with 30 industry experts. Some other findings:
-- The spending breaks down in to several areas: $3.058 billion, search media companies; $618 million, related in-house expenses within advertising corporations; $380 million, search engine marketing agencies; $30 million, technology licensing fees.
-- Broken out by tactic, that's $3.342 billion, paid placement campaigns; $492 million, organic search engine optimization; $182 million, paid inclusion; and $72 million, related technology services.
-- Advertisers say they could afford to pay on average 33 percent more for price of keywords and remain rofitable, while they say prices have gone up 26 percent on average in the last 12 months
-- it's poaching budget share from shopping directory listings, web advertising, email and print ads
-- advertisers plan to increase their search-engine marketing 41 percent on average in 2005
Only 41 percent of respondents said their funding for paid placement and paid inclusion programs came from newly created budgets
: No, it's not the latest craze in holiday toys or a new party game, although the ZigBee Alliance does sound like something out of the next Star Wars prequel. ZigBee, based on 802.15.4, is a low-power, low-cost wireless protocol you'll be hearing more about as the standard is set and products emerge. A major target is home automation based on devices using alkaline batteries that can last for years, unlike Bluetooth devices that require constant charging. ZigBee can support unlimited nodes and has a range of 100-plus feet but it's too slow to transmit large chunks of data. A wireless ZigBee phone that can control household actions debuted a few days ago.
I don't any immediate impact on content distribution within the home but I can see how a ZigBee network could mix in.
where you'll find all manner of ladies wearing all kinds of headphones. You might wonder why such a strange fetish has a huge website devoted to it, well the answer is simple - it has lots of really devoted fans, who scour the internet day and night to find awesome pictures for the site.
Mirkon writes "The Register and Reuters report that the Motion Picture Association of America is planning to begin a legal assault on websites that host BitTorrent trackers for copyrighted movie files. An announcement is supposed to be made by the MPAA President/CEO today, along with help from CEO of private P2P network developer Red Swoosh, and the CEO of BayTSP, 'which offers file-branding and -tracking applications.' Not that they have any vested interests in this of course. Though the articles take care to mention that this action is not against standard users, how long is it until BitTorrent itself is targeted?" Apropos of nothing, I saw a movie in the theaters a few days ago. At the official start time, the lights dimmed. Then there were 14 minutes of commercials (Pepsi, hair mousse, cologne, etc.) followed by 13 minutes of movie trailers (which are also advertising), followed by a few minutes of junk, followed by a 100-minute movie. I can't imagine why people would want to download movies when they have that great theater experience to compare against.
Aziphirael writes "The MMORPG Project Entropia has just announced that its first treasure island sale via Auction has gone for a grand total of US$26,500. Project Entropia's unique selling point is the ability to convert real money into ingame cash and vice versa. The owner is Zachurm "Deathifier" Emegen who intends to develop the island into a place for the community." From the article: "A large island off a newly discovered continent surrounded by deep creature infested waters. The island boasts beautiful beaches ripe for developing beachfront property, an old volcano with rumors of fierce creatures within, the outback is overrun with mutants, and an area with a high concentration of robotic miners guarded by heavily armed assault robots indicates interesting mining opportunities."
In what some are calling "the new prohibition," the US government continues their efforts to stomp out all online gambling. Business Week has a good overview of the fight against online gambling, which many think will be as effective as the original Prohibition. The article covers the stories concerning the WTO ruling against the US in their efforts to stop gambling operations in Antigua and the questionable legality of threatening companies who sell ads to online gambling operations, but offer no online gambling themselves. Where the issue may get even trickier, however, is that the UK may start to put pressure on the US to stop being such a prude when it comes to online gambling, and (as you might imagine), the UK has a bit more clout than Antigua. Either way, it's pretty clear that plenty of Americans are still taking part in online gambling, and by refusing to admit this exists, they're much more likely to be driven to questionable sites while having fewer resources to help them out, should any online gambling reach the "problem" stage.
MediaFrame is an Open Source streaming media platform in Java which provides a fast, easy to implement and extremely small applet that enables over 97% of web users to view audio/video content without having to rely on external player applications or bulky plug-ins. MediaFrame does not require special servers, software or programming knowledge.
MediaFrame for Mpeg-4 has been in development for several years and was released today for the first time as public preview. The preview provides a full version of the software along with sample video and implementation files.
Mpeg-4 compatibility brings a wealth of new feature to the fore such as time based tracking, which allows users to track playback through a fully integrated JavaScript API and video smoothing which acts to remove artefacts from the video stream.
The technologies video scaling algorithm is also much improved, allowing a user to increase the size of the viewable screen by up to 500% that of the original movie file without a significant loss in quality.
Like the Mpeg-1 version before it, MediaFrame for Mpeg-4 is extremely light weight at only 56kb making it faster to initialise than both Real player and Windows Media Player. And unlike its competitors, MediaFrame does not require a plugin on the client machine.
MediaFrame for Mpeg-4 is available now.
Kris Oser at AdAge.com (free, sub req.) looks at the rising cost of keywords in: Search Engine Ad Term Prices Skyrocket. Because the method has proven to be such an effective marketing tool and also because record numbers of consumers...
A beta version of the MSN Desktop Search app has just been released. It's part of the MSN Toolbar Suite Beta. Here's the news release. A few notes: + A 4.8MB download + Does not index cached web pages +...
Dr. Preecha Tiewtranon, a pioneer in gender re-assignment surgery, performed a sex change operation live before of an audience of 35 other sex re-assignment surgeons, watching on video monitors across the world.
The famed Dr. Preecha, of the Preecha Aesthetic Institute in Thailand performed the surgery on a 27 year-old patient code-named "Pae", a tour guide from Bangkok. Preecha hoped to prove that his facilities and techniques were modern and up-to-date in an increasingly competitive world of gender altering surgery.
Via Reuters and China Daily.
smooth wombat writes "Asia Times has a nice article about why China is becoming the spam capital of the world. Steve Linford, of Spamhaus fame, is quoted several times in the article and offers some insight into how the Chinese ISPs operate. Steves quote at the end of the article pretty much sums up why China isn't doing anything to curb the hosting of spam website servers in the country: "They simply don't want to know - China Telecom doesn't care because they're government-owned and there is no pressure coming from the government. Meanwhile, our statistics on spam volumes and the number of spammers setting up in China are going up and up and up.""
reek writes "An Australian newspaper has reported that the contentious Surveillance Devices Act has been passed. The act will (according to the article) allow Federal Police to obtain warrants to secretly install spyware onto users computers enabling them to "monitor email, online chats, word processor and spreadsheets entries and even bank personal identification numbers and passwords.""
Jonathan Schwartz of Sun writes:
How much did your cellphone cost you? What's the average price of a handset? What's the average operating margin for a carrier's handset business?The answers to those questions give you no clue whatever to the health of the handset industry. Why? Because the devices are sold to consumers as part of subscription calling plans, whose long term value is sufficient to drive some relatively crazy discounting in the carrier's retail outlets (go check them out, now that carrier's kiosks are popping up everywhere). The same handset from multiple carriers can range from free to $799. And as mobile data services increase in value (even if most folks over 30 don't even know what a ringtone or game download is), the insanity (or sanity) at the checkout counter will only quicken.
And as I was saying on Steve's G