idaho-directories.com

In the meantime, it’s Wenger’s brilliance against Fergie’s riches in the Premiership. Looks like intelligence can go a long way.

Arsenal is more known for being vulnerable to aerial attack (on corners and other set pieces) than dangerous in the air, but today Arsenal showed the Americans (Fulham) that it has more than one trick up its sleeve. In the midst of a windy game that Fulham almost looked like it could turn to its advantage, Arsenal found the net three times, and twice in the air off a header, to keep pace with Manchester United.

Rosicky!

commentary

Even so, I worry about the team without Van Persie, who is out for a few more weeks. It’s amazing we’ve come so far without him (and given my lack of enthusiasm for Adebayor, amazing that Adebayor has done so well this season), but I’d sure like to have him back.

After a woeful five to six weeks where Arsenal gave up a solid lead to fall just behind Manchester United (and allow Chelsea to regroup and keep pressure on from below), Arsenal finally found its groove again. Eduardo, though he didn’t score, set up the third goal and continues to impress. He was an intelligent purchase by Wenger.

Another service that has been doing this with a little more finesse (and a business plan) is Songza, which we took a look at back in November. It’ll tell you where to buy the music, and where they got it from–which can be pretty helpful if you’re trying to make it a part of your permanent collection.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Got a song stuck in your head? Get a quick fix with Songerize, a super simple Google-esque search engine for popular audio tracks. Just type in the song name and artist, and within seconds it’ll start playing right under the results. It’s powered by SeeqPod, which offers a more robust feature set, but without as much simplicity. Songerize doesn’t tell you where the tracks are from or where to get them, but in testing it managed to pick up nearly every mainstream artist and popular hit I stuck in.

Just plug in the song name (or artist name if you have it) and Songerize does the rest. You'll be listening to slurped-up music in no time.

If they’re already doing that, they might want to consider seeking additional guidance. Because as the Sony rootkit scandal and other DRM PR nightmares have shown, users do not want to be controlled in this way. And they vote with their wallets.

Then, it seems, if the key cannot be verified, SecuROM will attempt to do so for 10 more days. If, after that period, it still cannot be verified, Techdirt writes, the game will be locked down.

The gamers are upset, according to a post in the Mass Effect forums, because EA is apparently implementing a new Internet-based digital rights management system, known as SecuROM, that they find onerous, intrusive, and inconvenient.

Over on Techdirt Thursday morning, there’s a report about some angry PC users of Electronic Arts games.

Systems like this are never going to be winners for companies like EA. For every copy of one of its games that it successfully keeps from being illegally copied, it’s going to lose a good customer who’s beyond annoyed at the way the system works and the way they feel they’re being treated.

To be sure, software companies feel they have to fight tooth and nail to avoid being robbed due to the ease with which many programs can be copied. But it seems they would do well to run their antipiracy/DRM systems by their PR departments–or, if they’re doing that already, then some outside consultants–to make sure that the systems aren’t going to alienate their user bases.

Techdirt writes that a new version of SecuROM being employed by EA “is causing controversy due to an online verification system connected to its CD key. The system requires a connection to the Internet during installation to check (that) the CD key is valid, and then registers the key with the users’ computer. After this the game will try to re-check the CD key every 5-10 days to ensure it hasn’t since been found posted on a forum, or used in some form of piracy.”

Further, SecuROM seems to limit the number of times a game can be installed to three.

What’s a surprise to Shuttleworth, though, is that the desktop Linux is financially more significant than the version for servers.

Correction 8 p.m. PT: I included the wrong duration for regular Ubuntu releases. It’s 18 months.

Canonical plans to release Hardy Heron, its newest version of Ubuntu Linux on Thursday, and Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth isn’t being shy and retiring about it.

“The desktop contributes more to Canonical’s bottom line than the server,” he said. The server business is still Canonical’s primary focus for support revenue. But the company has been getting paid for desktop and consumer-electronics work, he said.

The reason so much weight rests on the skinny legs of Hardy Heron is because it’s only the second Linux product from the company to come with long-term support. The first LTS version of Ubuntu, Dapper Drake, arrived when the company was still comparatively immature and unknown.

“On the desktop, we see strong demand for custom engineering and assurance programs as people look to Canonical to indemnify them against potential copyright or patent issues,” Shuttleworth said.

Ordinarily I avoid publishing such marketing superlatives, but Shuttleworth is right. Hardy Heron, also called version 8.04 for its April 2008 launch date, is Canonical’s proof-in-the-pudding moment that will show whether the company can grow beyond its subsidized roots into a self-sustaining business. Ubuntu has a strong following among Linux enthusiasts, but it’s Red Hat and Novell that still dominate the commercial Linux market.

Still not profitable
Shuttleworth, who funded Ubuntu with wealth from his sale of an earlier start-up to VeriSign, cares about business success, but he’s also willing to continue spending to help Canonical grow into new areas–such as the mobile version that’s beginning in earnest with Hardy Heron.

“Ubuntu will require continuing investment from me and from others. We are on a trajectory that will make the company sustainable,” Shuttleworth said. But he wouldn’t say when he envisions profitability: “I’d rather not be on the hook…I keep finding additional areas to invest in.”

Long-term support means the company releases bug fixes, security patches, and other updates for five years on the server version and three years on the desktop version, time frames more palatable to businesses than the 18-month life spans of other Ubuntu versions.

On the desktop, Hardy Heron now can be installed directly into the Windows file system so people can try it without having to reformat their hard drives. The software also deals better with online music and photo sites such as Flickr, he added. However, because of an upgrade timing disconnect, fans of the KDE user interface software will have to make do with only 18-month support for the older KDE 3.5 or an unsupported developer version based on the new KDE 4.0.

Regarding engineering work, he added that Canonical has a tight partnership with Intel, an “extensive on-site engineering relationship where we integrate support for latest platforms.”

Canonical also works on unbranded Linux for consumer-electronics companies, though Shuttleworth expects they’ll eventually opt for something like Ubuntu. “The hardware vendors are leaping at the ability to do their own operating system. I believe over time they’ll tire of the costs and risks of doing that,” he said.

On the server, the new version has support for KVM virtualization built in and comes in a stripped-down version called JEOS (Just Enough Operating System) for software “appliances” that run on KVM or VMware. The company has been working on better hardware support–though it no longer supports Sun Microsystems’ Sparc processors, Shuttleworth said. Also included are better integration with Windows’ Active Directory for corporate users and a certified, downloadable version of Java software.

“This is our most significant release ever,” he said in an interview.

But it’s hard to tell. Facebook’s general membership freaked out about the News Feed, now considered a valuable and useful part of the site, and despite cacophonous Valley chatter it didn’t really care about the potential intrusiveness of Beacon advertisements. So you never really can gauge how a social network’s user base will react.

The new 'wall' tab on Facebook's profiles.

(Credit:
Facebook)

Facebook first announced last year that it was working on a redesign of members’ profiles; now, the social-networking site has unveiled previews of its upcoming new look. The Facebook profile redesigns will start rolling out in the next few weeks.

(Credit:
Facebook)

A look at the new 'About' tab of a Facebook profile.

For interested users, Facebook has created a “fan page” for “Facebook Profiles Previews,” and is encouraging sign-ups.

This is a big change to the Facebook experience, and even though the site has said the updates were based on user feedback, there’s no way to ensure that this won’t result in mass complaints. Some Facebook members, as a theoretical example, have been loath to fill out the personal information fields and might complain that giving the “about me” section its own tab highlights them too much.

With the new updates, you won’t be able to see a member’s entire profile on one screen. Personal information about someone will be included on one “tab” of a profile, whereas the “wall”–public messages, developer-created applications, News Feed updates, and other activity-related information–will be on a separate tab. A third tab will link to the photos that the member has uploaded. Facebook has also said that members will be able to create separate tabs for their favorite applications.

Part of this is because of technical issues, Facebook has said, telling members that the changes will make the interface cleaner. “As more and more information is available on Facebook–more photo albums, more applications, and more history–we’ve realized that Profiles have become cluttered and slow as a result,” a release from the site read. “We’re trying to make profiles more simple and relevant, while still giving you control over your profile and how you express yourself.”

Custom-designed modules with more of great content from select publishers (such as New York Times, People, Wall Street Journal, etc.) New and improved Yahoo! modules, including Top Picks from Your Page, Flickr, Note to Self, To Do List, Movie Showtimes, Scoreboard, Stock Portfolios, TV Listings, Calendar, Yahoo! Buzz, etc. New modules that provide access to third-party services (i.e., Netflix, Gmail, POP mail, Facebook) New header with easier customization tools for adding content and choosing options, as well as tabbed browsing for multiple pages More control, with additional page layout options, a less intrusive advertising approach, and easy drag-and-drop functionality

From the release:

On Monday, Yahoo will begin the weeklong roll out of the new My Yahoo to users in all markets. The start page service is graduating from the much-coveted beta status, and integrating improvements made over the last several months like new and third-party content modules, a streamlined header, and advertising that’s not as in-your-face as previous iterations. (See full list of updates below.)

The move paves the way for Yahoo’s open-platform strategy, which was announced in late April. It lets developers create widgets that work on other Yahoo properties and OpenSocial in the hopes of expanding how and where content can be used.

All My Yahoo users should have the new version of by July 14.

•  Recent
iPod shuffle price cuts are working and iPod unit sales are on the “upper-end” of 9.5 to 10 million units.

•  Thin is apparently in with MacBook Air sales picking up momentum. When I visit the local Apple stores, I keep finding crowds of goobers drooling over the units. This is all anecdotal and obviously may not be worth the price of tea. Still….

Can Apple pull it off? Count me as a skeptic, but Steve Jobs has proved me wrong so many times before, maybe here’s another one to add to the list.

Is Apple really recession-proof?

Wu’s as good a stock analyst as any in his segment but can any tech company be recession-proof–especially considering all the upset on Wall Street? That would be a first. When I speak with tech executives to find out how things are doing, caution is the byword du jour.

He also believes Apple is receiving favorable benefit on what the company now pays for NAND flash, DRAM, and HDDs compared with the previous quarter. That could help bump up profit margins a little, a development, which if true, would be received by the Wall Street crowd as manna from heaven.

In the short term, Apple’s fortunes still depend on the consumer. Here’s where it’s getting interesting. Wu claims the following:

“So far, our sense is that the
Mac business appears to be recession proof. We were already looking for robust Mac unit growth of 38 percent Y/Y, but now we think it may be closer to 42 percent.”

Jobs: What recession?

Back to Apple.

American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu upgraded Apple today, roughly two weeks’ shy of the end of the company’s first quarter. Nothing unusual there. But checking in with his supply chain, Wu came away so impressed that he wrote the following:

•  Despite a “pause” in advance of the June shipment of the iPhone 2.0, Apple’s on track to reach–and surpass–its 10 million unit target by the end of 2008

(Credit:
Dan Farber, CNET News.com)

The announcement of native Microsoft Exchange support for the
iPhone along with a software developers kit will ultimately open up more doors into Corporate America. But that’s in the long term.

That even extends to something like Business Intelligence (BI) software, an area you would normally think would qualify as close to being recession-proof. But even there, companies are being “very careful” about what they’re buying and want to “make sure they get the most from what they already have,” according to Bill Hewitt, the CEO of Kalido, a BI provider with a global customer list.

Driven in large part by the high-scale requirements of consumer services, the value of this utility computing model is most clearly evident in cloud-based internet services. By extension, cloud-based enterprise utility computing, infrastructure services, and enterprise applications are all becoming a reality, affording IT a range of new choices in how to deploy solutions across and between enterprises; within their own data center, in a partner’s hosting facility, or with the vendor itself in the cloud. Software built explicitly to provide a significant level of server/service symmetry will enable IT to balance factors such as cost and control, and to leverage the skills of its key personnel most effectively. It will afford choice and flexibility in developing, operating, migrating and managing such systems in highly varied enterprise deployment environments that are distributed and federated between the enterprise data center and the internet cloud.

“Over the past 10 years, the PC era has given way to an era in which the Web is at the center of our experiences–experiences delivered not just through the browser but also through many different devices including PCs, phones, media players, game consoles, set-top boxes and televisions,
cars, and more,” Ozzie said in a memo to be sent to employees on Wednesday (PDF).

CONNECTED BUSINESS - We will extend the benefits of high-scale cloud-based infrastructure and services to enterprises, in a way that gives them choice and flexibility in intermixing on-premises deployment, partner hosting, or cloud-based service delivery. Businesses large and small will benefit from services that make it easy to dynamically connect and collaborate with partners and customers, using the web to enable a business mesh. Business customers of all sizes will benefit from web-based business services. This vision is being realized today through the likes of Office Live Small Business. For enterprises, our new Microsoft Online Services provide managed, service-based infrastructure through offerings including SharePoint, Exchange, OCS, and Dynamics CRM. Our enterprise solution platform extends to the cloud through SQL Server Data Services, BizTalk Services, and many more services to come. At the lowest level within the enterprise data center, we-ve begun to deliver on our utility computing vision, with Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V, and through our Systems Center products including Virtual Machine Manager.

Content has changed at both the “head” and the “tail”. The line between editorialized portals and blogs has blurred, and all are consumed through feeds. Beyond news, movies and music and television have all expanded to embrace the web. And the interrelation of content and community has created a world of “social media”, where both head and tail content is intrinsically social by virtue of community linking, tagging, and ranking. Relationships and collective behavioral intelligence have changed how we stay informed, find and share media, and interact with one another.

Successful experiences on the web are those that are organically compelling, highly engaging, and viral across their intended audience. By applying our three principles consistently across all the markets we serve, we have an opportunity to reshape our offerings for individuals, businesses, and developers, and to deliver a broad range of compelling scenarios.

Office Live will bring Office to the web, and the web to Office. We will deliver new and expanded productivity experiences that build upon the device mesh vision to extend productivity scenarios seamlessly across the PC, the web, and mobile devices. Individuals will seamlessly enjoy the benefits of each - the rich, dynamic editing of the PC, the mobility of the phone, and the work-anywhere ubiquity of the web.

Ray Ozzie

Guiding Principles

CONNECTED DEVELOPMENT - As individuals embrace a world of devices and our device mesh vision, and as businesses embrace cloud-based services and server/service symmetry, developers will need platforms and tools that span seamlessly from cloud to server on the back-end, and from PC to browser to phone (and more) on the front-end. This vision is being realized today in our .NET family of runtimes including .NET Framework and Silverlight, supported by Expression Studio for designers and Visual Studio for developers, enabling developers to leverage their skills across all these environments. Our tools will be designed to support development of solutions that seamlessly incorporate multiple tiers, with some pieces on the PC, and others on the web or mobile; with some pieces on an enterprise server, and others running cloud-based utility computing infrastructure.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

It is our mission in this new era to create compelling, seamless experiences that combine the power of the internet, with the magic of software, across a world of devices.

But, he said, “since then, we’ve made tremendous progress in our expansion toward ’software+services’–from the long-term quests we’ve undertaken and customer scenarios we now envision, to the great services and service-enhanced software we’ve begun to bring to market, and the amazing projects at various stages within our development pipeline.”

(Credit:
Microsoft)

But while innovation in the “3 Cs”, search and ads is essential for success in services targeting consumers on the web, their impact barely scratches the surface of the much broader effect that internet services innovation will have on individuals, businesses, and developers.

Indeed Microsoft’s overall services strategy encompasses all of these areas: services for the individual, services for business, and services for developers. The intent of this memo is to map out that all-up strategy. I’ll outline three principles that guide our work, and describe how those principles are woven into our myriad software and services offerings.

There are three overarching principles guiding our services strategy - principles informing the design and development of products being implemented across all parts of Microsoft, for both individuals and business.

Over the past decade our lives, our businesses, and our society have been transformed by the web.

CONNECTED PRODUCTIVITY - Office Live will bring Office to the web, and the web to Office. We will deliver new and expanded productivity experiences that build upon the device mesh vision to extend productivity scenarios seamlessly across the PC, the web, and mobile devices. Individuals will seamlessly enjoy the benefits of each - the rich, dynamic editing of the PC, the mobility of the phone, and the work-anywhere ubiquity of the web. Office Live will also extend the PC-based Office into the social mesh, expanding the classic notion of “personal productivity” into the realm of the “inter-personal” through the linking, sharing and tagging of documents. Individuals will have a productivity centric web presence where they can work and productively interact with others. This broadly extended vision of Office is being realized today through Office Mobile and Office Live Workspace on the web, augmented by SharePoint, Exchange, and OCS for the connected enterprise.

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect

3. Small Pieces Loosely Joined for developers, within the cloud and across a world of devices.

1. The Web is the Hub of our social mesh and our device mesh.

In the memo, Ozzie outlines three principles to guide the company in this new era. Chief among those is the notion that “the Web is the hub of our social mesh and our device mesh.” The notion of a Mesh is one that Ozzie has been working on for some time and has culminated in the Live Mesh service that Microsoft detailed on Tuesday.

He notes that this transformation has been a challenging one for Microsoft to embrace.

Over the course of this year, and progressively over the next few years, you’ll see the principles and scenarios laid out in this document come to life through many new and service-enhanced products and services for individuals, businesses and developers. As you do, I hope you’ll share my excitement and optimism as you experience how we’re bringing together the power of the internet, with the magic of software, across a world of devices.

The web is first and foremost a mesh of people. Elements of this social mesh will be a first-class attribute of most all software and service experiences, as the “personal” of the PC meets the “inter-personal” of the web. Whether in work, play, or just life, the social element of software will continue to transform the ways that we interact with people with whom we have some affinity. All applications will grow to recognize and utilize the inherent group-forming aspects of their connection to the web, in ways that will become fundamental to our experiences. In scenarios ranging from productivity to media and entertainment, social mesh notions of linking, sharing, ranking and tagging will become as familiar as File, Edit and View.

Application design patterns at both the front- and back-end are transitioning toward being compositions and in some cases loose federations of cooperating systems, where standards and interoperability are essential. At the front-end, lightweight REST-based technologies have become ubiquitous, in some cases augmenting their WS-* counterparts, in integrating a broad variety of components combined seamlessly for the user at the surface of the browser. RSS and ATOM feeds have become lightweight channels and queues between software components. Declarative languages such as XAML have enabled rapid UI innovation and iteration.

Unified Application Management - Installation and management of “mesh-aware” applications on any or all devices, along with their application settings and data, will be simple and transparent for the user. Individuals will now enjoy the centralized cross-device purchase/deployment experience formerly available only within the enterprise environment.

Transformation of our Offerings

As the “3 Cs” have evolved, so has the significance of online advertising as the economic engine powering our world of services. With growth projected from $40B today to $80B in the next three years, online advertising will continue to be the primary monetization mechanism for consumer services on the web. As advertising transitions more and more to being digital, measurable, and competitively bid, the “ad platform” is key. The advertising ecosystem surrounding this platform is reliant upon the continuous innovation of publishers and developers, whose interesting and engaging properties capture users’ time and attention and ultimately serve to match advertisers with a relevant audience. Continuous innovation in such high-engagement products and services, in each area of the “3 Cs”, will continue to provide the fuel to drive the advertising-based economic model.

Since then, we’ve made tremendous progress in our expansion toward “software+services” - from the long-term quests we’ve undertaken and customer scenarios we now envision, to the great services and service-enhanced software we’ve begun to bring to market, and the amazing projects at various stages within our development pipeline.

Following is the full text of Ozzie’s memo:

In the memo Ozzie describes the software+services future as a merging of desktop, mobile and the Web data and devices, orchestrated through Live Mesh:

Ozzie indicates that the social graph–the relationships among people–will be part of what Live Mesh handles:

At the back-end, developers will need to contend with new programming models in the cloud. Whether running on an enterprise grid, or within the true utility computing environment of cloud-based infrastructure, the way a developer will write code, deploy it, debug it, and maintain it will be transformed. The cloud-based environment consists of vast arrays of commodity computers, with storage and the programs themselves being spread across those arrays for scale and redundancy, and loose coupling between the tiers. Independent developers and enterprises alike will move from “scale up” to “scale out” back-end design patterns, embracing this model for its cost, resiliency, flexible capacity, and geo-distribution.

CONNECTED ENTERTAINMENT - Building upon our device mesh vision, our aspiration is that individuals will only need to license media once, organize their subscriptions and collections once, and use any of their mesh-connected devices to access and enjoy their media - from the living room to the desktop to their pockets. And building upon our social mesh vision being interwoven into everything we do, each individual will be afforded a media-centric or gaming-centric web presence through which they can express their tastes/interests/affinities and interact with others through linking, sharing, ranking and tagging of music, video, photos, games, and more. This vision is being realized today through the Zune Social for media and
Xbox LIVE for gaming. Services such as the MSN.com home page, MSN Mobile, MSN Video, Zune Marketplace and software such as Windows Mobile, Microsoft Mediaroom and Windows Media Center will be progressively transformed by this connected entertainment vision.

The web is first and foremost a mesh of people. Elements of this social mesh will be a first-class attribute of most all software and service experiences, as the “personal” of the PC meets the “inter-personal” of the web.

Central to this strategy is our embrace of both a world of the web and a world of devices. Over the past ten years, the PC era has given way to an era in which the web is at the center of our experiences - experiences delivered not just through the browser but also through many different devices including PCs, phones, media players, game consoles, set-top boxes and televisions, cars, and more.

Transformation of our Company

We’re also living in a world where the number and diversity of devices is on the rise; not just PCs and phones, but TVs, game consoles, digital picture frames, DVRs, media players, cameras and camcorders, home servers, home automation systems, our car’s entertainment and navigation systems, and more. To individuals, the concept of “My Computer” will give way to the concept of a personal mesh of devices — a means by which all of your devices are brought together, managed through the web, as a seamless whole. After identifying a device as being “yours”, its configuration and personalization
settings, its applications and their own settings, and the data it carries will be seamlessly available and synchronized across your mesh of devices. Whether for media, control or access, scenarios ranging from productivity to media and entertainment will be unified and enhanced by the concept of a device mesh.

2. The Power of “Choice” as business moves to embrace the cloud.

For years, Microsoft has maintained that the PC is the center of the digital home and office.

At a higher level, myriad options exist for delivering applications to the user: The web browser, unique in its ubiquity; the PC, unique in how it brings together interactivity/experience, mobility and storage; the phone, unique in its extreme mobility. Developers will need to build applications that can be delivered seamlessly across a loosely coupled device mesh by utilizing a common set of tools, languages, runtimes and frameworks — a common toolset that spans from the service in the cloud to enterprise server, and from the PC to the browser to the phone.

But Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said Tuesday that it’s time for the company to acknowledge a new reality.

The question for me is not how far Ozzie’s thinking has evolved, but just how far his vision has spread within the company and where the pockets of resistance lie. In his latest memo he talks about this new world order affecting every area of the company, from Windows to developer tools to entertainment devices. That means he’s going to need a whole lot of people to buy in to his philosophy for the vision to be made real.

In its early days the web grew through the explosion of information portals as gateways to content, marketplaces for commerce, and communications tools such as email, IM and newsgroups that drove a sense of community on the internet. Over time, the significance of these “3
Cs” — content, commerce, and community — has expanded tremendously, growing in ways through which they’ve become intermixed and mutually reinforcing.

“More than two years ago when I wrote the memo entitled The Internet Services Disruption, much of the company was still focused on bringing our Office 2007 and Vista products to market,” Ozzie said. “Aside from MSN, IE/IIS and our tools groups, it was truly ’software’, not ’services’, that was top of mind.”

More than two years ago when I wrote the memo entitled The Internet Services Disruption, much of the company was still focused on bringing our Office 2007 and Vista products to market. Aside from MSN, IE/IIS and our tools groups, it was truly “software”, not “services”, that was top of mind.

Commerce on the web has moved well beyond the early online shopping cart. Nowadays, community is impacting commerce in dramatic ways. Head retailers such as Amazon utilize community extensively for recommendations, reviews, and wish lists. Tail commerce websites such as Craigslist utilize community extensively for conversation around local products. And Search has completely transformed online commerce. It’s an essential utility for how we research, how we shop, and how we buy on the web. It’s also become an essential mechanism for how we market on the web, and increasingly for how we sell on the web.

Community on the web once meant “group communications”, largely through rudimentary tools such as email, IM and IRC, message boards and newsgroups. Today, the action has shifted toward using composite communications tools and platforms that mash together content, applications and commerce, all within the context of group interaction. These social platforms are altering the way we connect and coordinate, establish identity and affinities, and build reputation. While this notion of composite communications is most prominently demonstrated in how we use profile-centric consumer social networking tools, such as Facebook, the social platform is also finding its way into the workplace in the form of increasingly rich workspaces, both real-time and asynchronous, that integrate communications and content relevant to a project or a team.

Most major enterprises are in the early stages of a significant infrastructural transition — from the use of dedicated and sometimes very expensive application servers, to the use of virtualization and commodity hardware to consolidate those enterprise applications on computing and storage grids constructed within their data center. This trend will accelerate as enterprise applications are progressively re-factored from a centralized “scale up” model to the horizontal “scale out” requirements of this new utility computing model.

He stops short of specifically hooking Silverlight–Microsoft’s cross-platform, cross-browser rich Internet application technology that competes with Adobe AIR– into the Live Mesh experience, but the combination of the two brings Microsoft beyond its Windows-centric heritage.

Unified Data Management - Folders and files (e.g. documents and media) will be automatically synchronized and made available across any or all devices, as well as through the web. Because every folder can now have an extended web presence, even PC-based documents and media can now have a social mesh element to them.

As our industry has evolved because of this web-catalyzed services transformation, so too has Microsoft.

Unified Device Management - Users will register their devices through a simple, web-based service. Once a part of a user’s device mesh, whenever they happen to connect to the internet the devices “report in” to the service — e.g. for status, health, location, and to exchange/synchronize information. Mesh-aware device configuration/personalization will be done through the web, and full remote control of a device (e.g. remote desktop) will be available from anywhere.

For consumers, advertisers and publishers, our investments in new forms of content, community, commerce, search and advertising are key. We’re investing significantly to ensure tremendous audience engagement, and to provide an attractive and well-targetable audience, ensuring that we continue to be an attractive partner for advertisers and publishers within a vibrant and competitive advertising ecosystem.

CONNECTED DEVICES - We aspire to bring together Windows, Windows Live, and Windows Mobile by creating seamless experiences that span these offerings. Windows Live, for example, enables seamless communications and media experiences across Windows, Windows Mobile, and the Web. Live Mesh, a new services platform technology that will also become part of Windows Live, further extends the Windows / Windows Mobile / Windows Live experience by bringing your devices together to work in concert with one another using the web as a hub, enabling:

In light of all the work that we’re doing, it’s important that we build a shared sense of what Microsoft’s path looks like in this transition toward software+services.

For customers and partners who use and who’ve invested in Microsoft’s myriad offerings, we feel there’s tremendous growth potential in moving toward a world that fully embraces software, services and the web. The device mesh, the social mesh, cloud- based infrastructure, and server/service symmetry represent great opportunities across all markets we serve.

Given this context, it’s strategic that we invest broadly in solutions and partnerships that advance our position in current and future generations of content, community, commerce, and search, and also in an advertising platform that’s attractive to advertisers, publishers and developers.

Interview with Kakul Srivastava on Flickr Video–the shorter version:

Flickr videos live along side photos

The 90-second limit on playing time and 150MB maximum file size for upload will encourage users to post their little moments, but it will also be a cause of frustration. For example, I did an interview with Srivastava with my Flip Video camera that was 156 seconds in length. To post it on Flickr I had to go through the pain of editing it, which I would rather avoid for shorter pieces. I expect that the Flickr team and community will think seriously about raising the limit on playing time.

She explained the difference between Yahoo Video (which is the underlying technology for Flickr Video) and Flickr Video as follows: “Yahoo Video is about the broadcast experience, while Flickr is more personal content that you want to share with friends and family…and the world, but it’s more personal and authentic.” Yahoo will be patrolling Flickr Video and relying on the community to eliminate inappropriate and copyrighted content, she said.

According to Kakul Srivastava, Flickr’s director of product management, Flickr Video is intended to capture the “little moments of life.” She told me that the goal was not to invent a new kind of video site or take on YouTube, but to focus on “authentic user-generated and personal content.”

Despite taking the gestation period of an elephant to appear, I like the Flickr Video experience, except for the limitation to 90 seconds of video. It’s the video analog of Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters. It’s a fine communications constraint, but it doesn’t apply as easily to video content.

Maintaining the differentiation will be difficult. Users are putting long and short videos on a variety of other sites, including new sites such as Seesmic and Qik. But, the Flickr experience has attracted 25 million active users, and they will appreciate the addition of video.

“It’s not our desire to be biggest site. We are not going after the hour-long wedding videos,” she said. “People are taking videos on still cameras and mobile devices, and they are not doing much in terms of sharing videos.”

If you compare the number of people posting more commercial videos on sites like YouTube and Yahoo Video, people capturing the little moments is a huge unmet need and taps into existing behaviors, Srivastava added. Users can directly upload videos from their phones. She expects that the addition of video will bring in a new audience, although uploading videos is limited today to paying Flickr users.

The addition of video content doesn’t disrupt the simplicity and utility of Flickr. It offers the same privacy controls, user interface, licensing options, and comments, captions, tags, APIs, etc.

“If it means being more conservative out of the gate, that’s fine,” Srivastava said. “We want to maintain consistency of the feel and experience on Flickr. We don’t want to be the biggest video site day one, but the most interesting.”

After a few years of waiting, Flickr videos have finally arrived. As a long-time Flickr user, I have been wondering what took so long to add videos (more on Techmeme) to the service. In the meantime, YouTube managed to sprint way ahead, leaving Yahoo Video and the nascent Flickr Video in the dust.

Interview with Kakul Srivastava on Yahoo Video–the longer version:

In addition to the anti-VoIP rules, Apple seems to have also set its sights on the Firefox Web browser. Deep in the legal agreement for developers, Apple states:

Just a couple weeks ago, Markey introduced the Wireless Consumer Protection and Community Broadband Empowerment Act of 2008, which would require wireless carriers to sell unlocked phones without contracts for reasonable prices. In introducing the bill, Markey clearly had the iPhone in mind.

Markey’s other well-publicized cause is Net neutrality. The congressman spoke at the Comcast/BitTorrent FCC hearing just a couple weeks ago. He has previously held hearings on the subject, and introduced legislation in February to stop ISP data favoritism.

Apple’s recent announcement of the
iPhone application software development kit is drawing criticism from Net neutrality activists. While the company has previously angered many for its practice of bricking unlocked phones, it is now being accused of anticompetitive behavior.

As a member of the Firefox development team has already noted, this is a big deal.

Apple’s sexy iPhone has attracted the attention of those in power before. Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) held up an iPhone during a congressional hearing last year, before he sharply criticized the practice of locking such devices to a specific carrier’s network.

Thursday, Apple released its eagerly awaited iPhone software development kit. Putting an end to hopes of user choice, Apple has declared that the only way for users to install applications will be through its App Store via the iPhone or iTunes. If the company doesn’t like an application, it will be removed from the store, with no other way for a user to install it.

Sun announced last week that it is readying a version of Java for the iPhone. Once the restrictive iPhone license was pointed out, Eric Klein, the vice president of Java marketing at Sun, backpedaled somewhat on his own personal blog, writing that “I’ll leave those (legal) questions to another forum, but we really do want to deliver a JVM if at all possible.” This alone should make for an interesting fight, as Sun is no stranger to filing antitrust complaints.

“No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)…An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise.”

Net neutrality complaints

Antitrust

If Apple doesn’t rapidly backtrack on its anti-Firefox and VoIP rules, I predict that it will soon be looking at investigations from multiple government agencies, both here in the U.S. and EU. The FCC and Congress will most likely look into the Net neutrality complaints, while the European antitrust regulators will probably take a keen interest in the Firefox issues. This would, of course, not be the first time that the Europeans have investigated Apple’s iTunes store for dirty tricks.

Apple is now engaging in a similar practice, blocking any VoIP application that competes with the voice services offered by AT&T–the company with which Apple signed an exclusive five-year contract.

Paging Congressman Markey

In a Q and A session with reporters, CEO Steve Jobs was asked if voice applications such as Skype will be permitted. Jobs replied by saying that VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) will be allowed when the iPhone is using a WiFi connection, but forbidden over AT&T’s cellular data network. How this will be enforced remains unclear. At the very least, Apple can blacklist from iTunes any application that doesn’t play nice over AT&T’s network.

The company will be unable to borrow Comcast’s line, and claim that the restriction is “reasonable network management.” After all, watching a couple YouTube videos eats up far more data than a VoIP call.

Apple is now engaged in an even more egregious practice. It bundles the Safari browser with its iPhone, it makes it impossible for consumers to remove the browser, and the company now forbids competing companies from making their browsers available to the millions of iPhone users. Firefox has over 40 percent market share in some European countries, but it forbidden from making a version for the iPhone platform.

Both the Firefox and Opera Web browsers, which compete with Apple’s pre-installed
Safari browser, are forbidden as they support hundreds of user-created add-ons. Furthermore, the Web browsers support Javascript, which is a key component of most Web 2.0 content. Javascript is an interpreted programming language, and thus forbidden as per Apple’s terms of service.

Control

With Apple’s recent adoption of Comcast-style filtering, Markey can combine two of his passions: wireless phones rules and Net neutrality regulation.

This is not the first time that a company has attempted to block VoIP traffic to protect its own business model. Madison River Communications, a North Carolina ISP was fined and forced to change its behavior by the FCC when it started blocking VoIP providers like Vonage in 2005.

Could Apple take Comcast’s place as the poster child for the Save The Internet movement? Furthermore, by blocking competing Web browser
Firefox, could Apple draw Microsoft-like antitrust lawsuits?

Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer back in the late ’90s led to major antitrust lawsuits brought by Department of Justice and 20 different states. While consumers were free to install Netscape and other competing browsers, it was the preferential treatment of its own browser that lead to legal problems for Microsoft.

Also banned from the iPhone: programming languages Ruby, Python, Perl, and Java. Quake, the video game engine ported to practically every platform (including Google’s Android), as well as Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and .NET are also persona non grata.

Apple’s blocking of Skype and other voice applications raises the same Net neutrality issues as Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent. Critics have argued that Comcast does this because the P2P video apps compete with the cable giant’s own video programming.

Disclosure: I worked for Apple as a summer intern in 2005. While I love Markey’s positions on Net Neutrality, he did publicly call for my arrest back in 2006. He changed his mind two days later.