Saturday 30 October 2010

BBC News - Microsoft profits from record first-quarter sales

Microsoft has announced a 51% rise in first-quarter profit, thanks to higher sales of its flagship Windows and Office software.

Net profit for the three months to September came in at $5.4bn (£3.4bn).

Revenues increased by 25% to $16.2bn - a company record for the first quarter.

BBC News - Microsoft profits from record first-quarter sales

Microsoft has best first quarter in its history. Now if Windows Mobile phone can work they can get back to running the world.

Friday 29 October 2010

Obama 3.0, the Social Network game to get people to vote


http://www.barackobama.com

The Barack Obama web page has made an Social Network game where you play by inspiring people to vote. You seem to be able to advance levels by inspiring people to vote. Obama's teams use of Social Media and web 2.0 and even Web 3.0 technology is pretty awesome. There is also an IPad ad IPhone app. Pretty with it there.

I could not find a GOP or Tea Party app like it, though some people are selling stuff. It seems to me that GOP is depending upon the old media, control of Fox, radio networks, and phone calling and phone polls.

It is kind of an epic battle between different generations of media.

We may see a historic shift in the predominate media from TV, radio and the telephone in to the unified platform of the Web, and an explosion of channels that the community can be reached as.

It will be very interesting to see the outcome. For far early voting is going the way of the democrats. But the polls point to the GOP. But we have had a number of surprise elections where the polls were off recently. Telephone based models of judging voters and their motivation may be very outdated.

And then again the old ways might be right on.
Posted by Picasa

Wednesday 27 October 2010

BBC News - UK internet economy 'worth billions'


The internet is worth £100bn a year to the UK economy, a study has concluded.

The research, which was commissioned by Google, found that the internet accounts for 7.2% of the UK's gross domestic product (GDP).

If the internet was an economic sector it would be the UK's fifth largest, said the report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

This would make the sector larger than the construction, transport and utilities industries.

Central pillar

Some 60% of the £100bn a year figure is made up from internet consumption - the amount that users spend on online shopping and on the cost of their connections and devices to access the web.

The rest comes from investment in the UK's internet infrastructure, government IT spending and net exports.

The report, The Connected Kingdom: How the internet is transforming the UK, says that the internet's contribution to GDP is set to grow by about 10% annually, reaching 10% of GDP by 2015.

The UK, according to the report, is the world's leading nation for e-commerce. For every £1 spent online to import goods, £2.80 is exported.


BBC News - UK internet economy 'worth billions'

Point, provided the new government does not screw it up the UK could, as Tony Blair set out to do 10 years, become a world leader in Internet technology, perhaps at the level of the US or Korea, perhaps better than either. This is the promise that attracted me here 10 years ago and hearing of recent cuts in things like Nanotechnology research I have started to have my doubts. But in the end the UK has no choice, it is too expensive to make things on this Island and the banks are no sure source of long term economic growth. The UK must go the route of Information Technology.

IBM's Sametime Goes 3-D


IBM demonstrating bringing 3D Virtual Worlds on Open Sim with existing Collaboration technology.

Tuesday 26 October 2010

Dawn of a New Day « Ray Ozzie

In the realm of the service-centric ‘seamless OS’ we’re well on the path to having Windows Live serve as an optional yet natural services complement to the Windows and Office software. In the realm of ‘seamless productivity’, Office 365 and our 2010 Office, SharePoint and Live deliverables have shifted Office from being PC-centric toward now also robustly spanning the web and mobile. In ‘seamless entertainment’, Xbox Live has transformed Xbox into a real-time, social, media-rich TV experience.
Dawn of a New Day « Ray Ozzie

Ozzie makes an obvious point: that Microsoft must leave the PC behind and embrace a more "Cloud" based multi-device computing world. Duh. I actually doubt anyone at Microsoft really doubts this. The question is can they deliver.

Part of the question is a solid yes in SharePoint. SharePoint is quickly becoming the collaboration and social networking platform of organisation and Enterprises. In time with Open Standards a eco-system of SharePoint based collaboration systems could even pose a real threat to the likes of Google and Facebook.

But Microsoft has not yet proved itself beyond boxes. It can make servers and it has even proven it can still make software for PCs, hell it is even impressing me on the virtual front recently now that I am working with some Hyper-V systems, but until I get to test Windows 7 my experiences are still with Windows 6.5 mobile, the systems I dropped RIM to move to only to return to RIM a year later.

Also there is sort of the problem of Microsoft charging .NET prices in a IaaS world. Just to get a pretty good MSDN to start development in VS2010 is going to set you back over a thousand US dollars. The end result being that start up low on cash are going to be attracted to PHP as the innovation framework of the future. And as more and more innovation is done by start-ups with PHP and other Open Source systems, perhaps firms will start taking a second look at the Microsoft Stack. Considering you can roll-out a Ubuntu desktop transformation with Office, and back end Drupal CMS with Linux servers on Apache for total cost of software coming in around oh about NOTHING, a long deep recession will possibly harm Microsoft.

But the recession is over and a solid SharePoint Cloud is still going to cost a lot less than trying to find Linux experts.

BBC News - Ray Ozzie tells Microsoft to 'go beyond the PC'

Microsoft must think beyond the PC if it is to weather the changes due to hit in the next five years.

The warning was given by Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie in a memo penned soon after he announced he was leaving the company.

In it, Mr Ozzie said that the last five years had been "breathtaking" and expected the next five to be the same.

But, he said, the strengths that had helped Microsoft grow in the past now risked holding it back.

The memo, called "Dawn of a New Day" mirrors one Mr Ozzie wrote soon after taking over from Bill Gates as the man in charge of charting the development direction of Microsoft's portfolio of programs.



BBC News - Ray Ozzie tells Microsoft to 'go beyond the PC'

From 2006, how times change: "Report: Yahoo, Facebook Talk $1 Billion Sale - Mergers and Acquisitions | Merger - FOXNews.com"

News from 2006:

" Social-networking Web site Facebook.com is in serious talks to sell itself to Internet media company Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) for an amount that could approach $1 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Facebook, which has been at the center of takeover rumors for months, also held separate discussions with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), the world's largest software maker, and media conglomerate Viacom (VIA) over the past year, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

In March, BusinessWeek reported that the company had turned down a $750 million offer and hoped to fetch as much as $2 billion in a sale. It has been separately reported that Viacom held talks to buy Facebook.

Social networking sites typically allow users to create and share blogs, pictures and videos with friends and the wider public."

Report: Yahoo, Facebook Talk $1 Billion Sale - Mergers and Acquisitions | Merger - FOXNews.com

And now there is a movie about it. Things move fast close to the singularity.

Friday 22 October 2010

SharePoint is where the jobs are at, if you want to work in CMS learn SharePoint

Sharepoint is main source of CMS jobs
Open Source Skills: The Road to Riches?

Looking at this graph we can see SharePoint essentially running away with the jobs in CMS market. By July 2006 SharePoint pulled away from Documentum and while EMC has falter and systems like Wordpress and Drupal have shown growth, if you want to work in Content Management you had better learn SharePoint.

So if you are an HTML or Drupal developer and you have some bills to pay, you might want to get some SharePoint training. Now some of us started working with the system in 2004, when people mocked us for taking up such a flaky system Microsoft was pushing. Well this graph says it all.

Total Social Media

Total Social Media is a consulting firm that covers Social Media, SharePoint, and collaboration.

Saatchi Online : Gail Orenstein

Amazing how the web and collaboration is changing the world of culture. Here is a Saatchi art gallery. 9 years ago when I worked for Saatchi and Saatchi they were thinking Web 1.0 advertising web pages, they could not accept the fact that it would take time and effort to evolve their concepts. Maybe they are getting better now.

Saatchi Online : Gail Orenstein

Glimmers

Glimmers, an Erotic-Cyber-Fantasy  Inspired by Second Life
Glimmers, is a novella by Jaen Wirefly. It was inspired by massive social networking and PURE insanity.

First chapter of Glimmers, an Erotic-Cyber-Fantasy Inspired by Second Life can be read for free @Chapter One, the cover and the pitch.

My bad feeling about SharePoint 2010

I am starting to have a bad feeling about the SharePoint 2010. I am getting the same feeling I got with Vista. But in this case not because SharePoint 2010 is as bad as Vista, it is not, but because it is trying to fill a need that does not exist at a cost that can not be paid.


To quote Bill English, author of the Administrators Guide to 2007

Bill English, an MVP from Minnesota who is weathering the cold and snow, predicts that the uptake for SharePoint Server 2010 will be slow in 2010 due to deep investments in 2007 implementations that didn't occur until the 2008-2009 timeframe. "Many will "kick the 2010 tires" in 2010, but will put off adoption until 2011 or 2012. The economy will need to improve to help fund upgrade projects.

English goes on to point out that few firms have mature enough Knowledge Management requirements to see the benefit of 2010.

2010 is a vastly superior product, but what I see again and again is this. Hey we have 2007, we have Windows 2003 32bit servers, we have paid for all of this and we know how to install it. We are not using 2007 to its full potential, so why invest more in the latest version.

Working with a lot of public sector clients this argument is pretty overwhelming in the face of 20% cuts in overall UK government spending. With the banking bailout and long recession meaning the rich and the poor are getting massive payouts from the states in Europe and the US its hard to see any government taking up the later version.

This probably goes double so for private sector. Private sector usually is even worse with information management and governance than the public sector, and the Enterprise Content Management features of 2010 will be hard to sell against the extra costs of converting to 64 bit and migrating any existing 2007 solutions.

So until the economy picks up a bit, which might be a year or so, I see most people playing it safe and going with 2007. Always remember you are a Microsoft consultant, people buy your stuff because they wanted to go safe in the first place! User conservative stances are pretty strong, how many people do you see not only using XP but still buying small XP machines?

Microsoft can threaten end of support, but even that is unlikely to change many people's behaviour. IE 6 is still around in many Enterprises and taking forever to get rid of. SharePoint 2007 may be the same thing, something we kind of regret having pushed so hard in a few years.

Conference Agenda - UP 2010 Cloud Computing Conference 2010

Conference Agenda - UP 2010 Cloud Computing Conference 2010

This is a really amazing mix of Real and Virtual conferences, with different price levels depending on how much interactivity you want. Some really amazing discussions, probably the most advanced Cloud computing global conference this year. A must attend, even if you can't be their in the Real World.

Could a hard economy give Linux the edge? Is the Cloud hype?

Some of the other interesting findings in the survey were related to Cloud Computing - one of the buzzwords in enterprises these days. Enterprises are still quite skeptic about the Cloud model as only 26 per cent are interested in moving their apps and services to the cloud; 70 per cent of the users will use Linux as their primary cloud platform. Also, as the adoption grows companies are looking to hire more professionals with a Linux background - more than 38 per cent replied in the affirmative.

Linux To Outgrow Windows In Enterprises


Linux is amazing stuff. I have to admit to playing around with 3 Linux boxes. My own personal Laptop is an Ubuntu machine. Though I am pretty confident that the Cloud will take off, and the Cloud and Microsoft have a strong future together, I am also keenly aware that Linux would reduce cost and speed up innovation.

Most of my experience with IT tells me the business generally does not want IT innovation to fast. That is risky. But the license cost of Microsoft servers will be hard to rationalize for web servers when Apache and Linux boxes at lower price are available. Watch this space.

Thursday 21 October 2010

Windows Phone 7 - The new mobile OS contender - Inspect-a-Gadget

Windows Mobile 6.5 was a little better and enjoyed a very brief period of praise before getting pulverised once again due to Android 2.2 and iPhone iOS4.

So what has changed?? Absolutely everything. Don't make the mistake of thinking Windows Phone 7 is an update of Windows Mobile 6.5. It's a completely new operating system

Windows Phone 7 - The new mobile OS contender - Inspect-a-Gadget

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Office 365 brings all collaboration and comms to the Cloud

Office – WebApps much like Google Docs – for a preview see the current version of online Web Apps at Office Live.

Sharepoint – online collaboration and document sharing

Exchange – email and personal information management shared online and between multiple machines

Lync – enterprise networking and communication tool

BBC Says "SharePoint" in top tech story

Microsoft has ramped up its battle with Google in wooing business customers with its next generation cloud-based product.

While the software giant dominates the office space with a 94% market share it has been facing increased competition from Google.

At a San Francisco event, Microsoft unveiled Office 365.

The product brings together Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online.


BBC News - Microsoft bets to win in the cloud and rival Google

With Office 365 SharePoint has finally hit the mass consciousness. You think it has been a bandwagon the last 3 years, just wait now! In 24 hours I read the word SharePoint in both Mashable and BBC Technology. Normally I would have to Google for references to the term. This means SharePoint has gone for a technology platform to a common culture technology platform. Its not yet Windows or Office, but it is on its way.

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web | Video on TED.com

Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web | Video on TED.com

Microsoft Develops a Tool for Editing Wikipedia

Microsoft Research has launched the beta version of WikiBhasha, a multilingual content creation tool for Wikipedia. The WikiBhasha tool enables contributors to Wikipedia to find content from other Wikipedia articles, translate the content into other languages, and then either compose new articles or enhance existing articles in multilingual Wikipedias.

What SharePoint needs to be Web 3.0

web-2.0-concept
This graph is 4 years old. It nicely shows the concept of Web 2.0 back when the concept was still hot enough for people to write much about it.

The term is probably outdated but it is pretty key to understanding SharePoint, because even up to SharePoint 2010 you have really a classic Web 2.0 concept.

The greater Internet has moved on to Web 3.0. I would graph Web 3.0 showing a few billion global users and a trillion plus bits of information, no longer trapped in sites or even pages, with the cloud coming closer to the users and forming an Internet of things and places.

SharePoint is a far way away from Web 3.0 capacity.

As I see it SharePoint needs the following additions to become a Web 3.0 tool:

  1. Good integration with either RIM, Windows 7 mobile or an app, anything that gets it in to the mobile information.
  2. Geo-position metadata.
  3. Extend the concepts of composites to include the entire experience of SharePoint.
  4. Effective management of RFID tagged Real World resources.
  5. Built in mass up tools.
  6. Built in mapping tool to express and manage Geo-Tag data.
Lucky for SharePoint developers is that business lags consumer usage by about five years, and their is enough time for a future SharePoint to include the lessons of foursquare. But in time what we used to call Field Force Management and now just call Web 3.0 will be a major part of SharePoint tool set.

A graph on Web 1 to Web M

Web-line. From web 1.0 to web 2.0, web 3.0 and a head!

I got this off Flickr by F. Magagnino. I think it excludes a lot but a good overview of the trend.

This relates to SharePoint composites, which are a major move towards moving IM from IT to the end users.

Friday 15 October 2010

Small firms: "Social media is useless" - Telegraph

A survey conducted by the Forum of Private Business (FPB) found that 52pc of respondents who use social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, regard them as ‘not useful’ or ‘useless’ to their businesses.
Small firms: "Social media is useless" - Telegraph

Well they are wrong. Social media is more important for small companies than anyone. The main problem with business is that business people are not always that bright. Business depends on massive failure for learning.

Thursday 14 October 2010

SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning (white paper)

SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning (white paper)




Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 provides a large number of capabilities that empower business users. For example, SharePoint Server 2010 enables users to collaborate with one another, tag and rate content, self-publish, and even develop their own solutions. With this amount of power in hand, users (and the organizations they work for) can benefit greatly from having clear guidance. In short, they can benefit from having a Governance Plan.

This white paper focuses on what we call the “front end” of the SharePoint environment – the business aspect of governance - the areas that effect business users. This white paper uses a fictitious company named Contoso to provide guidance for the necessary governance planning and implementation of SharePoint Server 2010.

Microsoft Bing integrates Facebook Social Network in Search Results


Microsoft's Bing search engine has begun showing US users which sites and products their Facebook friends like.

The move is an attempt to make web search results more personal.

It is part of a four-year alliance between the two companies and marks another step in Microsoft's attempt to displace market leader Google.

The function is optional and only works when users are logged into Facebook or have "cookies" on their PC that store Facebook data.

"This is just the beginning; there is going to be a whole lot more to come over time," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said at the launch.


BBC News - Microsoft's Bing deepens ties with Facebook

Tuesday 12 October 2010

Creating a new form - SharePoint Workspace - Microsoft Office

Creating a new form - SharePoint Workspace - Microsoft Office

Lists tool designers create all new form templates in Microsoft Office InfoPath, and then import these templates, saved in InfoPath as form template solution (.xsn) files, into the Lists tool.

To start a new form:

  1. In the Lists tool, enter the Designer.
  2. Click New Form to launch the InfoPath form template designer.

Although designers can start new form templates directly in InfoPath, we strongly recommend starting new form templates from the Lists tool designer. Form templates started from the Lists tool designer are initially set up with all features required for importing the Lists tool, plus additional features common to most custom Lists tools.

Microsoft (SharePoint), IBM and Oracle make Gartner’s Portal Magic Quadrant

Microsoft (SharePoint), IBM and Oracle make Gartner’s Portal Magic Quadrant

What new can be said about SharePoint? SharePoint has a large and expanding range of capabilities across portal, collaboration, content management, enterprise search, business process management and business intelligence disciplines.

SharePoint 2010 promises numerous improvements that better equip it as an enterprise portal framework and as an environment for creating and delivering composite applications.

Strengths

Built on a unified and consistent architecture, it has found its way into enterprises through a wide range of business and IT initiatives, not all of which are identified as portals.

It is the only large portal vendor with a multitenant, elastic cloud portal with a focus onoffice productivity and collaboration.

Cautions

Using SharePoint as a portal framework means a long-term commitment to Microsoft's (news, site) agenda, with organizations employing SharePoint forced to invest in the .NET platform and the skills needed to support it.

It has also grown in many enterprises outside the scope of the reasons for its original deployment so there are also often governance concerns.





A pretty good summary of the strengths and weaknesses of SharePoint. In conclusion I would say if you are going Microsoft go SharePoint, otherwise try something else. Pretty simple decision as so many Enterprises are going Microsoft.

Web Science Challenge, some good questions that need to be answered in web sciecne

I was thinking of some questions that really need to be answered in Web Sciences. Maybe someone has an answer. These are some of them:

1. Is there a good model of open source collaborative free working?
Giving it away seems to be the new selling it. What are the economics of this? Are participants in open source projects like Debian, Linux, Wikipedia, and other pursuing alternative revenue or is a post money economic required?

2. Why do social networks always follow power laws?
Look at friends, posts, links, anything you can count on a social network you will always get a power law with a few nodes owning most of what you are measuring and the rest in a long tail. Why?

3. Why do people blog?
Why did this formate take the world of self publishing over? Everyone seems to have a blog, why not a wiki, why not a Flickr site, why not a Flash animation? What made the world of web users in to a world of bloggers.

4. Does the 140 Character Limit add anything to Twitter?
I suspect that Twitter only works because of the limit and it alone has made Twitter the marketplace of links on the Internet, but am I right?

5. Why did Second Life flop?
It seemed that Second Life was the web of Snow Crash and the Matrix. So why did it flop? Clearly Sci Fi and films are not driving the web formation, so what is?

6. How much is Christmas worth?
I know this is a silly question, but the point is Christmas is open sourced. If Jesus was to return next week and take out a trademark on his image and name it would make him a lot of money. But having to pay Jesus say $10 to have a Christmas party would cost the overall economy how much? The key question is how the commons (say the World Wide Web) can be counted as a contribution to the economy?

Defining some basic concepts in SharePoint, a cheat sheet for anyone trying to use SharePoint Out of the Box.

SharePoint has some basic concepts that are used over and over again in designing a Information Architecture (IA). This is an intended cheat sheet for anyone trying to come to terms with what is in SharePoint.

Web Site, Site Collection

SharePoint enables you, as the administrator, to create a new web site with its own URL. Let the technical people deal with getting the URL set. You need to know that your site will be hosted on a specific web address. Technical people call this a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). Something like https://yourcompany.sharePoint/site.


SharePoint allows a lot of different kind of sites, but key features are used again and again.

SharePoint lists

SharePoint provides the ability to define lists of content. These lists can be shared through the entire SharePoint solution. So you can make a list defining departments in a company, then use that list to define properties of documents.

Content Types

A content type is a reusable collection of metadata (columns), workflow, and other settings for a category of items or documents. Content types can manage the settings for a category or object of information in a centralized, reusable way.

Content Types are key to good Information Architecture in SharePoint. You should define the kinds of business documents you are going to manage, like expense reports, design documents, incident reports, what every you business needs. Then define a Content Type in SharePoint for that. As a BA you should be defining the re-used structures of documents. The thing about SharePoint is that you can learn to make Content Types without having to learn how to code.

Document Libraries

Document libraries are collections of files that can be shared with other users. Document Libraries are key to SharePoint Document Management (DM) features. Think of the places you will need to share documents. Maybe HR, or a specific project, or a team. Document Libraries give you a place to share documents in a structured way.

Team Site

Finally the most popular SharePoint feature is the Team Site. A team site is a basic web page which contains lists and document libraries. Generally you create a team site in SharePoint any time you have a requirement to make a "small web page" for a specific purpose. Don't use Team Sites for resent you companies entire strategy. Think of them as small web pages with set purposes.

Once the IT guys have given you a Team Site define the Document Libraries, lists, columns and content types you will need to meet the business objectives. SharePoint builds on simply tools to give you the power to quickly implement the Information Architecture you want, without having to write code or go through long testing processes.


Friday 8 October 2010

Microsoft, Adobe Teaming Up To Beat Apple: REPORT

Microsoft, Adobe Teaming Up To Beat Apple: REPORT


Microsoft and Adobe

The meeting of Adobe and Microsoft, long hostile to each other, shows the extent to which Apple's grab of the iPad has changed the game of computer usage.

Let me be honest. I am a SharePoint consultant, and I love Flash. Personally I see the conflict between the two companies as idiotic. Why is Microsoft wasting time on Silverlight when Flash did it all 10 years ago? Why can't I save a Word document as a PDF without having to pay for something? Why is there not a Dreamweaver to SharePoint link?

The two companies have wasted a great deal of code fighting each other, creating what had been for a long time 2 sides of the web. Google and Apple have disturbed these two giants. Apple's iPad is the most radical device in 20 years, and has put the entire PC at risk. I am finding more and more the iPad is not just for beds and coaches. I find the iPad is better at meetings, better at conferences, better on flights, better in lectures, better almost everywhere and its just going to get better.

Microsoft blew this, and Windows 7 is in danger. But Adobe's very existence is in danger. These two companies need to come together, for Microsoft its a matter of not just becoming a Office stack, a replacement for Oracle. For Adobe it is survival.

SharePoint 2010: Composites




Composites are a major new feature in SharePoint 2010. The one new user feature one needs to learn. They allow collaborative code free solutions.

Monday 4 October 2010

SharePoint dominates Web 2.0 inside the Enterprise

SharePoint dominates Web 2.0 inside the Enterprise
  • 53% of organizations use SharePoint
  • 18% of organizations use WordPress
  • 15% of organizations use Facebook
  • 13% of organizations use Confluence
  • 13% of organizations use Google Sites


Enterprise Social Media Becomes a Necessity

SharePoint Security Advisory Issued by Microsoft -- Visual Studio Magazine

Microsoft issued a security advisory on Thursday for a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The vulnerability affecting those applications has elevation-of-privilege implications for organizations. An attacker can use a cross-site scripting (XSS) technique to "run arbitrary script" that may lead to the attacker gaining access rights on a Web site running SharePoint, according to the advisory.

SharePoint Security Advisory Issued by Microsoft -- Visual Studio Magazine

Microsoft names veteran insider as Office head | Reuters

(Reuters) - Microsoft Corp named company veteran Kurt DelBene as head of its lucrative Office business on Friday, taking over from Stephen Elop, who left the world's largest software company to become chief executive officer of Nokia Corp last month.

Microsoft's Office suite of business applications -- including well-known programs such as Word, Outlook, SharePoint and Excel -- is a huge money-maker for the company and central to its move toward providing software online.

Office provided almost all of the $11.8 billion in profit reported by the Microsoft Business Division last fiscal year, just less than half of the company's total operating earnings.


Microsoft names veteran insider as Office head | Reuters

Sunday 3 October 2010

Yahoo Losing 3 More Top Execs, Raising Worries


Yahoo's stock price also has fallen by about 15 percent so far this year, leaving it even further below the $33 per share that Microsoft was prepared to pay to buy the entire company in May 2008. Yang balked at the offer, prompting Microsoft to withdraw the bid.

Yahoo shares fell 17 cents Thursday to close at $14.17.


Yahoo Losing 3 More Top Execs, Raising Worries

That is less than half what they could have gotten for the stock 2 years ago. If Yang starts a new start-up, would it make a sound? Because there would be no one there to hear it.

I was a huge supporter of the Microsoft Yahoo merger. I recall going against the trend on Flickr posting pro-Microsoft and welcome poster when it seemed obvious the take over would happen. I didn't understand how poor a business man Yang was at that time. The merger made perfect sense as far as I could see, extending Microsoft's web services to such an extend that over night Google would lose its essential monopoly on many web features, and offering the ability to ultimately bring in Facebook (which is very close to Microsoft) to exploit synergies in mail, social networks, photography, and search while reducing redundancies. As mergers went that one may perfect sense.

But the ship sailed away and if Microsoft is still interested in buying out Yahoo, it would probably be wise to wait until it can pick it up for a excellent price, like say $1 and all outstanding debt.

IBM Virtual Onboarding with Second Life

Microsoft’s Secret Acquisition Spree | paidContent

It’s not clear why Microsoft bought Vivaty and McCurdy wouldn’t say. But Microsoft seems to have a specific interest in gaming companies. ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reported this week that Microsoft was making “overtures” to various social gaming companies, including possibly Second Life parent Linden Lab. (A commenter on her post mentioned that Microsoft had quietly purchased Vivaty, prompting me to check.)
Microsoft’s Secret Acquisition Spree | paidContent

Saturday 2 October 2010

Facebook upgrades photos -- look out, Flickr - CNN.com


"With its 500 million users around the world, Facebook is now poised to take over the photo-sharing market."

Facebook upgrades photos -- look out, Flickr - CNN.com

Facebook has long ago taken the steam out of Flickr, its just a matter of going in for the kill

Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products - Vedant Kulshreshtha - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

"When compared to SharePoint 2007, one more search technology option - FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePointhas been added to SharePoint 2010 product family. Options now available are:
  1. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 search
  2. Microsoft Search Server 2010 Express
  3. Microsoft Search Server 2010
  4. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
  5. FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint"

This is a excellent blog post on seeing the strength of Fast search, a must read.


BBC News - Change to 'Bios' will make for PCs that boot in seconds

BBC News - Change to 'Bios' will make for PCs that boot in seconds

New PCs could start in just seconds, thanks to an update to one of the oldest parts of desktop computers.

The upgrade will spell the end for the 25-year-old PC start-up software known as Bios that initialises a machine so its operating system can get going.

The code was not intended to live nearly this long, and adapting it to modern PCs is one reason they take as long as they do to warm up.