October 9, 2008
By Elizabeth Montalbano

Just as the U.S. enters the last weeks of a heated presidential campaign, Microsoft's Live Labs group has launched a Web-based application that offers up what it considers to be the political articles and documents getting the most recent attention and discussion among Web users.

The Live Labs Political Streams application, according to Microsoft, "mines social media content in real time for political discussion," according to a site listing facts about the application. Political Streams gathers data from blogs, Usenet newsgroups and Freebase, an open, shared online database, to highlight news articles and documents that are getting the most attention from -- and generating the most discussion among -- Web users, according to Microsoft.

It also showcases information about people and places in those articles. "This related information gives a broader context, allowing the user to understand how both the mainstream and social media are discussing an issue, person or place," Microsoft said on the site. Political Streams is built on top of Social Streams, another Live Labs project that indexes social media from around the Web that is found on blogs, newsgroups, discussions and news sites.

Formed about two years ago, Live Labs is Microsoft's research arm for creating new Internet technologies. The company created it in response to Google and other Web 2.0 companies that, unencumbered by Microsoft's size and software legacy, are able to create and release new Web-based applications faster than Microsoft could otherwise do.

By Nick Farrell
10 October 2008, 9:20 AM

GOOGLE'S NEW satellite has sent its first picture back to Earth in a successful test of its camera. The high-resolution color image from GeoEye-1, which was launched on September 6, was of Kutztown University campus in Pennsylvania. We have no idea what was so special about the University but you can see the snap here.

It was taken while the satellite was in a 423-mile-high orbit over the East Coast of the United States. Apparently it is not as good as it gets as the satellite has yet to be calibrated. While the fact that the satellite is being used by Google is getting all the attention, GeoEye-1's main client is the US government's mapping arm, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

GeoEye-1's government client will receive higher resolution photos than commercial clients such as Google. Still, it will be of a higher resolution and better quality than what is currently available on Google Maps and Google Earth.

by Joe McKendrick
October 9th, 2008 @ 7:58 pm

At many organizations right now, SOA is a “technology predicated death march,” according to Jim “World Wide Webber, a speaker at this week’s International SOA Symposium in Amsterdam. A death march? That’s because organizations think they can move into SOA methodologies by buying technology.

He said there are two things money can’t buy: One is love, even when it involves Heather Mills McCartney. The other thing money can’t buy is SOA, he said. At this week’s , Jim “World Wide Webber” expounded on his view that SOA, pure and simple, will trump more expensive and complicated middleware every time. Jim doesn’t shy away from controversy.

The problem, Jim said, is that many organizations have purchased and installed Enterprise Service Buses, which looked like an appealing mechanism for straitening out middleware tangles. However, what eventually happens is ESBs – which he branded as “Erroneous Spaghetti Boxes” – become part of the middleware problem as well, he says.“ESBs are not SOA,” he said.

“They wrapped 1990s expensive proprietary stuff and sold it as a 21st Century solution.” Rather, SOA itself is the solution, he explained. “It forces us to think about the business processes we want to support.” Companies need to consider is tackling all the issues with security, reliable messaging, and transactions with standard Web services protocols, he said.

by Jonathan Skillings
October 9, 2008 9:08 PM PDT

Maybe it's advice he heard from a career counselor at Harvard and took to heart: Do what you love, and the money will follow. For now, what Mark Zuckerberg wants most for Facebook is to see it grow and grow and grow some more, without too much fretting over the bottom line.

In an interview with a blogger for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Facebook's co-founder and CEO minced no words on the matter: "Growth is primary, revenue is secondary." Of course, it could be less a philosophical matter than a practical one for a site that's still sketching out its plans for making money to match its popularity.

And bless his heart, even in a tanking global economy, Zuckerberg suggests there's plenty of time for that. He elaborates: But what every great Internet company has done is to figure out a way to make money that has to match to what they are doing on the site. I don't think social networks can be monetized in the same way that search did. But on both sites people find information valuable.

I'm pretty sure that we will find an analogous business model. But we are experimenting already. One group is very focused on targeting; another part is focused on social recommendation from your friends. In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is.

By David Chartier
October 09, 2008 - 08:45PM CT

Yahoo must have adopted a strange new policy of putting acquisitions to good use, exhibited in its latest form by the announcement of Yahoo Web Analytics.

Marketed as "an enterprise site analytics tool," the private beta of Yahoo Web Analytics reveals a clear initial focus on business and commercial web sites, and some unique features could give competitors like Google a run for their money. Yahoo Web Analytics is the result of Yahoo's April acquisition of IndexTools, a web analytics software provider geared toward online marketing.

With such a quick turnaround into a Yahoo product, albeit as a private beta for Yahoo's 150,000 small- to medium-size business web site customers, it's clear that Yahoo is gunning to gain share in a market it arguably should have been neck-deep in years ago. Yahoo's choice to acquire IndexTools and the upcoming features in Yahoo Web Analytics also speak loudly for how badly the company wants a piece of the market.

Specifically, Yahoo Web Analytics boasts "near real-time" data aggregation and visualization, which—if true—will be a significant leg up on Google Analytics' typical 8- to 12-hour turnaround time. In addition to faster data, Yahoo will also provide all analytics data in raw form, instead of a periodic aggregation of things like total visitors to a page.

By Jacqui Cheng
October 09, 2008 - 05:05PM CT

Hate on the kiddies and their SMS speak all you want, but text messaging is taking off among the masses. AT&T has released data from two studies it recently commissioned, showing that both families and romantic partners are using SMS more and more to communicate.

Parents think texting with their kids makes them cool, while lovestruck texters are finding themselves using SMS to flirt and send romantic notes. We'll start with the families. AT&T conducted 1,048 online interviews with parents and 1,022 online interviews with children and young adults to get a feel for their usage patterns.

They found that 76 percent of parents feel that their children are more likely to keep them abreast of their activities through text messaging than other methods. 73 percent said that their kids were more likely to respond to a text message than other methods of communication, and a full half of parents feel that texting with their kids makes them "cool." Kids, of course, love text messaging.

Large majorities feel that it's easier to communicate with friends this way and keep their parents up-to-date on their activities (84 percent and 82 percent, respectively). 48 percent of kids said that texting was a better use of their time than calling. I'll be honest: I wish my parents would text me too. "Texting is sometimes the easiest way to keep track of my kids," stated mother Janet Sturley.

By Nancy Gohring
October 9, 2008

Micron Technology Inc. and Intel Corp. plan to shut down their joint production of NAND flash memory from a plant in Boise, Idaho, and Micron plans to lay off about 15% of its workforce in another sign that the economic meltdown is taking its toll on some tech companies.

The moves are a result of a combination of lowered customer demand and product oversupply in the market, Micron said in a statement. Intel and Micron, through their IM Flash Technologies joint venture, were supplying NAND flash memory from Micron's Boise facility. The shutdown will reduce the joint venture's NAND flash production by about 35,000 wafers per month, in the factory using 200-millimeter manufacturing lines, per month.

IM Flash Technologies also has a facility in Lehi, Utah, which has 300-millimeter manufacturing lines. Micron's 15% workforce reduction will occur over the next two years and will primarily affect employees at the Boise facility. According to Micron's Web site, the company has 22,600 employees worldwide. Companies in the NAND flash market have struggled all year due to oversupply that has kept prices low.

Despite the oversupply, some vendors including Hynix and Samsung have continued to build new factories that make NAND flash products, further exacerbating the problem. Micron expects that expenses related to the restructuring will reach about $60 million. In a statement, the company's chairman and CEO Steve Appleton said that Micron is in a strong position relative to competitors but that it is not immune to the difficult global economic conditions affecting the market.

By Paul Taylor
09 October 2008, 8:48 AM

A NAS SERVER is a thing to behold, in particular when it does just about everything you can imagine for your network. Olin, over at Benchmark Reviews had a go at Synology’s DS408, a 4-drive SATA RAID with Gigabit Ethernet. It’ll serve up just about anything and, considering the 4x1.5GB units used, 53W in load seems pretty thrifty.

The $800 bill might not, but the only thing it doesn’t do, that comes to mind, is email serving. Get the skinny on the DS408, here. MSI’s HD 4670 gets a going-over at TweakTown. The card performs just like its other brand siblings – in other words ‘very well for the price’ and even gets to show its strength in Crossfire. Good silent cooling, but a lack of TV connectivity (no HDMI) knocks it out as an HTPC card candidate, tho’. Get the article, here.

Driverheaven found gold in Gainward’s HD 4870 1GB. That’s right, the Golden Samples are back – the cherry-picked, non-reference babies of the Gainward stable. Well as per the tradition, Gainward ripped off the reference cooler and put in a new one, overclocked the GPU and added a bit of RAM. You now get 1GB of GDDR5@1GHz, which really gives the card an edge at 2560x1600 resolutions.

It’s still a close race with the GTX 260 Core 216, though, but it handles itself brilliantly in hi-res, AA/AF scenarios. Good stuff. Bit-Tech is debuting its DDR3 reviews in grand style with some 2x2GB G.Skill - ‘standard’ and GT1s (with RAMOrb) – and Corsair’s own DDR3 (with DHX Cooling) kits. Some serious overclocking going on there, but G.Skill takes the cake in performance and Corsair in value. Everyone’s a winner here.

by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
October 9th, 2008 @ 6:29 am


The Inquisitr is reporting that Apple is getting ready to release its first sub-$1,000 computer - an $800 notebook.

According to the source, Apple retail stores have been given price sheets that list 12 price points for the new range, with prices between $800-$3100. Current lines only have 8 price points, 3 Macbooks starting at $1099, 3 Macbook Pros and 2 Macbook Airs. According to the source, retail outlets usually get the price lists 10 days before products hit the market. Technical specs for the new laptops were not included on the price sheet.

If this turns out to be true, then this is a clear sign that Apple is looking to broaden its customer base in an attempt to try to make itself more resistant to the effects of consumers tightening their belts. Quick word of caution though - the idea that an Apple store would get pricing information for a new product so far in advance seems fishy to me. This information, if real, is coming to Duncan Riley from a much higher level than a store drone.

by Brooke Crothers
October 9, 2008 6:00 AM PDT

The largest hard-disk drive maker is going solid-state. Slowly. Seagate will enter the market for solid-state drives in 2009, as it slowly embraces a technology that will, in some cases, replace its bread and butter: hard disks.

"Our history is based on rotating magnetic media. But as solid-state comes online, we're embracing this new media type," said Rich Vignes, senior manager of market development at the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company. Seagate's first target market will be large enterprise customers. Consumer SSDs from Seagate will come later. The challenge is to convince large enterprise customers that SSDs are safe.

Although hard-disk drives have endurance problems of their own, corporate customers must be convinced that a technology as new as solid-state storage is reliable. "There isn't really a clear way of describing endurance or life expectancy of a solid-state drive. So, we're working on that as an industry standard," through JEDEC, a large standard body, Vignes said. The presence of large players such as Seagate will allay fears, he believes.

"As companies like Seagate start to demonstrate field-proven reliability and endurance in enterprise applications, we'll overcome those (solid-state drive) endurance fears." Analysts are bullish that, with time, SSDs will catch on. "SSDs offer much better MTBFs (mean time between failures) than HDDs, although the endurance is an issue that has to be addressed," said Gregory Wong, an industry analyst at Forward Insights.

By David Chartier
October 09, 2008 - 01:22PM CT

Google Alerts will soon get a bit more flexible with the addition of RSS feeds for search results. The feature will be a nice addition to the search giant's lineup, but Google is also playing some major catchup to competitors in this space.

When RSS feeds for news search results go live, they will be incorporated as a feature of Google Alerts, the company's search-based filtering service built into Google News, according to Search Engine Land. Right now, Google Alerts can only notify users of news content via e-mail, so the addition of RSS feeds for general web searches opens up a lot of options for receiving more content in multiple formats.

RSS readers are pretty ubiquitous these days, and not every user wants to juggle news or search updates along with personal and work e-mail duties. These RSS feeds from the world's largest search engine can also be plugged into instant SMS notification services like Alerts.com and Web-Alerts.com, offering yet another layer of flexibility. Google is behind other major search outlets when it comes to convenient content notification.

Yahoo, Live Search, and plenty of others already offer RSS feeds for search results. Factor in the power of Yahoo Pipes, a service that can aggregate, manipulate, mashup, and filter content from one or multiple feeds, then publish it all as a new RSS feed or share via social services, and Google is even farther behind in search notification flexibility.

By Nick Farrell
09 October 2008, 9:07 AM

THE PEOPLE at YouTube have decided that it is not bad enough you have to read the moronic comments under each clip, it is now vital you hear the dulcet tones of the moron who spoke them. The video sharing site has added an Audio Preview button to the comment section.

It seems that the outfit was inspired by web comic xkcd, which is a strange way to come up with business ideas. Most of the comments on Youtube are gibberish, even in comparison to the ones we get here. Those commenting on the idea have wondered what is the advantage of hearing the voice of the banjo-picking, "squeal like a pig", "you sure are perdy," types who seem to post on the site.

Those whacky Youtubesters have stuck the "Audio Preview" button right where the "send post" button used to be so that those posting will discover it by accident. They will probably sit there for hours working out why when ever they try to send their posts they hear themselves speaking. Such types also sit by the microwave wondering why it is not sending them email.

By Gregg Keizer
October 8, 2008

Mozilla Corp. will use a several-week delay it recently added to the Firefox 3.1 schedule to build a private browsing mode and beef up the browser's address bar, the company said today.

Three weeks ago, the company said it would insert four to five more weeks into the timetable, part of a reaction to changes in the browser market, including the introduction by Google Inc. of its Chrome browser. Then, Mozilla said it would probably use the time to add a privacy mode and to punch up its TraceMonkey JavaScript engine performance.

A private browsing mode and fast JavaScript execution were touted by Google last month when it launched Chrome. In meeting notes published on its Web site today, Mozilla said it planned to add the privacy feature in Beta 2, which would likely be released in November according to Mozilla's current schedule.

Dubbed "porn mode" by some, privacy tools limit or entirely eliminate what the browser records as it travels the Internet. Typically, URLs are not recorded in the history, cookies are not saved and other evidence is purged from the computer at the end of the session. Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 8, Chrome, and Apple Inc.'s Safari all have private browsing built in.

I was at a conference Wednesday that covered an awful lot of ground. There were some good sandwiches, too, and the cookies were first-rate. One thing that stuck out in my mind, though, aside from the deserts, was one companies inability to hire good programmers domestically.

This company pays well, has a relaxed, yet highly-motivated corporate culture, and just happens to be in one of the educational hubs of the universe (they don’t call Boston the Hub for nothing). But they can’t hire any programmers. They’ve posted on Monster, CareerBuilder, the Boston Globe, gone to college job fairs…you name it.

Yet they have had programming openings for several months and were told at a recent recruiting session at Northeastern University that the 65 computer science students were basically already spoken for when they graduated. First of all, 65 students? At Northeastern? Secondly, as the really big names (Oracle, Microsoft, Google, etc.) snap up the cream of the crop from top universities, it does leave one wondering, where did all the programmers go?

Obviously a downturn in tech sectors and a move toward off-shoring wasn’t a terribly strong recruiting tool for university CS programs a few years back. However, the majority of the responses to this company’s ads have come from former Soviet republics and India. In fact, the company has decided to create a satellite office in Beijing because highly qualified programmers are not only plentiful but cheap in China.

by Stephen Shankland
October 9, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

MapQuest will begin showing business reviews from start-up Yelp on Thursday, part of a plan to expand from just a mapping site into a go-to hub of local information.

Through the deal with Yelp, MapQuest will get better locally specific content, and Yelp will get more Web site traffic from beyond tech-savvy places such as Silicon Valley that currently are familiar with the site, said Christian Dwyer, MapQuest's senior vice president and general manager.

In addition, the AOL site will add sports information to its MapQuest local site, said Mark Law, MapQuest's vice president of product development. The expansion fleshes out MapQuest's vision to reproduce what people can find in their Sunday newspaper, but in a dynamic online format. MapQuest also is seeking to plug into the booming mobile mapping business.

It's released BlackBerry-specific applications so far, and a version of its site tuned for the Safari Web browser on Apple's iPhone is due to be launched "in the next few days," Dwyer said. The efforts come as AOL seeks to improve its financial condition so Time Warner will get a better deal selling the asset--perhaps to Yahoo.