Cisco boosts bandwidth with 'virtualized' switches
By Victoria Ho
November 12, 2007, 4:38 AM PST

Cisco Systems has rolled out two new products designed to help enterprises increase their network capacity without overhauling their existing infrastructure. The networking vendor's new line of switches--the Catalyst 6500 Series VSS (virtual switching system) 1440--is paired with a software engine that enables the "virtualization" of the switching hardware, by combining multiple switches to act as one node on the network.

According to Cisco, combining the switches multiplies the bandwidth on the network--which can reach 1.44Tbps (terabits per second)--because those that are virtualized are seen as a single node with one IP address. The management of multiple switches is also simplified.

"Traditional networks have duplicate switches and boxes for redundancy--when one active connection fails, the passive duplicate picks up the work," Richard Hsieh, director of product marketing for Cisco's gigabit systems business unit, explained during a briefing last week. "And this still takes between 30 to 40 minutes for the whole network to stabilize after a failure."

"But if you can combine the physical active and passive boxes, you can multiply the network's bandwidth without having to change much of the infrastructure. And failover is a matter of milliseconds," added Hsieh. Cisco's second product is the Catalyst 4500 E-Series, targeted at small and midsize businesses.

CNET News
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Will success, or all that money from Google, spoil Firefox?
By Noam Cohen
November 11, 2007, 9:30 PM

Only a couple of years ago, Firefox was the little browser that could--an open-source program created by thousands of contributors around the world without the benefit of a giant company like Microsoft to finance it.

Since then, Firefox, which has prospered under the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, has grown to be the largest rival to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, with 15 percent to 20 percent of the browser market worldwide and higher percentages in Europe and among technology devotees. It is the most popular alternative browser since Netscape, with about three times as many users as Apple's Safari.

Part of Firefox's appeal was its origins as a nonprofit venture, a people-powered revolution involving the most basic Internet technology, the Web browser. Also, because the core code was open, Firefox could tap into developers' creativity; they are encouraged to soup up the browser, whether by blocking ads from commercial Web sites, a popular add-on, or by creating "skins" to customize the browser's appearance.

But in trying to build on this success, the Mozilla Foundation has come to resemble an investor-backed Silicon Valley start-up more than a scrappy collaborative underdog. Siobhan O'Mahony, an assistant professor at the School of Management of the University of California, Davis, calls Mozilla "the first corporate open-source project."

CNET News / The New York Times
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OpenSocial Launched by Google
By Graham Massey
November 10, 2007

Google has launched OpenSocial, an Application Programming Interface (API) to help and make it easy for software developers to write applications to run on websites that support the application development format. It is essentially a set of programming tools based on JavaScript and HTML and is being developed by Google in collaboration with other online web application developers.

It is anticipated that Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING will implement OpenSocial.

Orkut.com is hosting a "limited sandbox" that can be used by developers to start building applications using the OpenSocial APIs.

OpenSocial is an extension of Google Gadget technology. Using the Google Gadget Editor and basic key/value API, it is possible to develop a complete social application.

As pointed out by Joe Kraus, Director of Product Management at Google, the real value of OpenSocial is that it makes it possible for common tools to be used by multiple social networking sites. He says, "A tremendous amount of activity is occurring on social networks these days. Hundreds of millions of people share photos, rate movies, and throw virtual sheep at one another. All these social networks are looking to give their communities more and more things to do -- and they realize they can't do it on their own. They need to open up and become platforms for developers to extend. So, many social networks have looked at, or launched, their own APIs that typically do the same kinds of things: give access to user profiles and friend networks, and allow an application to post activities so that everyone's circle of friends knows what the others are doing. All of this has been good news, because developers could get their applications onto a social network.

But there's a problem: it wasn't one or two social networks doing this, but ten or fifteen. Now, to get on all the social networks a developer has had to customize their application for each one. When your 'development team' is just one or two people, the proliferation of APIs forces you to make tough choices, because you can't do that much one-off work. Not only is this situation bad for developers, it's bad for consumers too: When developers can't afford to do the work to make their applications work on a certain social network, the people using those networks lose out."

OpenSocial steps in here and allows a software developer to write an application that will run on any social website where it is supported. Multiple rewrites to adapt the application to different "environments" is no longer necessary.

One cannot but admire the innovation of Google and the almost uncanny frequency with which they are able to not only identify needs but also come up with a workable and widely accepted solution.

In-House

Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher Program Helps Extend the Life of PCs
Nov. 9, 2007

As consumers and companies of all sizes buy new computers, they are facing a growing and sometimes perplexing problem: what to do with their old machines. In response to concerns about the safety of intellectual property and potential harm to the environment, many enterprises and consumers outsource management of their old PCs to companies which wipe away the data and applications, refurbish and re-sell the computers to new customers.

The Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher (MAR) program will help simplify volume licensing of refurbished computers and provide refurbishers with the tools they need to grow their business. The program, which was announced today, builds on the success of a similar currently available Microsoft program called Community MAR, which is designed for charities, educational institutions and nonprofits. This new program broadens Microsoft’s offerings to include commercial enterprises.

PressPass spoke with Hani Shakeel, senior product manager of the Genuine Windows Product Marketing team, to get more details about the program and how customers and refurbishers will benefit.

PressPass: How big is the market for refurbished PCs?

Shakeel: Refurbished PCs are part of is what is referred to as the secondary PC market. This market consists of computers that are currently out of use. Large companies, small businesses, even homes may have used them and have replaced them with a newer model. Eventually these PCs go to a number of destinations, either to be refurbished, recycled or disassembled and sold for parts. In some cases -- and this is a big problem -- they often just sit in storage. Companies don't know what to do with their old PCs, so they collect dust in the company cafeteria or stack up in the hallways. This is a very common fate for PCs these days, especially with the increased environmental regulations around the disposal of computers.

In 2004 Microsoft conducted a joint study with Gartner that focused on the secondary market. What they found was 150 million PCs entered the secondary market, and of those, approximately 20 million were refurbished and resold. Today we project that this number is closer to 28 million PCs, making refurbished PCs over 10 percent of the worldwide PC market.

Microsoft Press Release
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New 3D benchmark appears
By Theo Valich
November 10, 2007 - 2:16 PM

LIGHTING OF a 3D scene is extremely important, but so far there haven't been many benchmarks in that area. But at the end of October, Stepan Hrbek from Czech, more known as Dee.cz published his free new benchmark, Lightmark. Unlike 3DMark and other complex benchmarks, this one offers quite good looks and performance to lower and more affordable segment of 3D market.

Thanks to efficiency of OpenGL 2.0, a flyby scene featuring global illumination and penumbra shadows can run on mid-class hardware. Bear in mind that Global illumination is a feature that AMD will heavily promote with its HD3800 series of graphics cards, so don't be surprised if this benchmark starts to pop on every decent hardware website.

When it comes to Daamit, the original version of Lightmark (1.1.1) had a bug with Radeon HD 2000/3000 cards, but now Stepan has issued a new version (1.2), featuring a workaround for owners of HD 2000/3000 cards. Also, the author improved compatibility with 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and included source code with the benchmark.

The Inquirer
Lightsmark Home

Ballmer talks a big game against Google
By Jacqui Cheng
November 09, 2007 - 03:30PM CT

Google ain't no thang, according to the confrontational stylings of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The leading search-turned-services giant poses no real threat to Microsoft, Ballmer said, which is doing fabulously, thankyouverymuch.

Ballmer is clearly tired of the big G's shadow, so he turned up the "what, me worry?" attitude in Tokyo this week during the launch of Windows Live Services-Microsoft's suite of IM, e-mail, photo sharing, and every other service imaginable-and made a serious effort to play down Google's level of competition. Ballmer's comments are misdirection: Microsoft isn't doing as well online as it would like us to think.

Live Search has long taken a distant third to Yahoo and Google in the search realm, although it recently got revamped to better compete with the big boys. But Ballmer knows this: "In the area of search specifically, Google would lead," he was quoted saying by the Sydney Morning Herald. Ballmer's message is simple: sure, Google owns search right now, but the pie is much, much bigger.

If not search, then what else is Microsoft trouncing Google with? Microsoft's sacred cash cows are its financial strength: the client OS and Microsoft Office. The latter, however, is under attack from online offerings, and Microsoft has been playing catch-up.

Ars Technica
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Parsing the Google announcement that wasn't
By Charles Cooper
November 9, 2007 - 4:00 AM PST

The Eric-Sergey-Larry troika had to be much amused by the stock market's over-the-top reaction on Monday over the public unveiling of Android. (Less so, I'm sure, about the subsequent spectacular tech stock rout on Thursday.)

As newsworthy as it was, the announcement of an open development platform for mobile devices featured no mention of the Google phone. That disappointment didn't stop Think Equity from painting an $850 target on the stock. Maybe some bright bulb will finally slap a $1,000 price and we'll be done with it already (and no, Henry Blodget doesn't count).

But if Google bulls really want to party, they should consider the announcement that still wasn't. Or may or may never be. Let me explain. In a couple of months, the government will begin a long-awaited auction of 700MHz wireless spectrum. This could go down one as of the biggest events in the history of the mobile and broadband markets.

The spectrum is considered especially choice because it can travel long distances and penetrate walls. And everyone's dying to know what Google will do. So far, Google's only hinting that it might place a bid--either alone or with a partner.

Hard drive prices drop
By Nick Farrell
November 9, 2007 - 9:42 AM

HARD-DRIVE prices are dropping thanks to competition from flash memory and tough competition. According to a survey released by iSuppli the average pricing of notebook hard drives fell to $53 in the third quarter of 2007, from $86 in the same period during the previous year. Desktop hard drive prices fell to $51 in the third quarter of 2007, compared to $52.75 the previous year.

There were 21 per cent more hard drives shipped in the third quarter of 2007. iSuppli thinks that there is now such strong competition between the six hard drive vendors Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Toshiba and Samsung Electronics that prices were coming down fast. The outfit is predicting that prices for hard drives may also drop further as flash memory evolves.

The Inquirer

Asus to launch desktop Eee PC next year
By Tony Smith
November 9, 2007 11:42 GMT

Asustek is developing a desktop version of its ultra-compact Linux-based laptop, the Eee PC, the company's marketing chief has said. It wants to get the mini machine into shops sometime next year. Jonathan Tseng, Asus' President of Marketing, told Taiwanese site Digitimes that the desktop will not incorporate a display.

So anyone anticipating an even smaller iMac-alike than ones we've seen to date will be disappointed. Instead, it's not hard to imagine a compact block hooked up to a standard monitor - the Eee PC laptop already has a VGA port - and USB-connected keyboard and mouse.

While there's no doubt desktops are far less fashionable than they once were, not least thanks to falling laptop prices and the way notebook industrial design has eclipsed its desktop counterpart, small systems like Shuttle's XPC M200 - reviewed here - Apple's Mac Mini and AOpen's Mini PC are winning support from consumers who want a desktop machine but don't need the expansion capacity of a tower unit.

All these machines are essentially laptops compressed into tiny desktop units, so it's not hard to envisage Asus doing the same thing with the Eee PC's internals.

The Register Hardware

Blu-ray Heads For The Gulag
By Andrew Thomas
November 9, 2007 - 11:11 AM

SONY BOSS Howard Stringer, reckons that the Blu-ray disc format the company has developed as the successor to the DVD is losing ground to the Toshiba and Microsoft-backed HD DVD. Players for HD DVD are currently selling for half the price of Blu-ray ones in the US.

Back in August, HD DVD got a vote of confidence from Paramount when the movie giant announced it would not be releasing its high definition catalogue on Blu-ray. "We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount changed sides," Stringer told AP. In a rather unconvincing statement, the Sony CEO maintains that it doesn't really matter if Blu-ray follows Betamax on the train to the gulag:

"It doesn't mean as much as all that," he sobbed, adding that he believed there had once been a chance of bringing the two rival technologies together in a single format before he became CEO and he 'wishes he could travel back in time to make that happen'.

The Inquirer

Microsoft to launch test build of Internet Explorer refresh in December
By Mary Jo Foley
November 8th, 2007

Following its August settlement of a long-standing patent dispute with Eolas, Microsoft is readying a refresh of its Internet Explorer (IE) browser that will remove an interim “Click to Activate” control setting. Microsoft is planning to make available for download in December to interested customers an optional “preview” test version of IE browser - called the Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation Preview.

This version will eliminate the “Click to Activate” control that Microsoft instigated in April 2006 in order to alleviate potential infringement on Eolas’ patents. Users will be able to get the preview via a standalone download from the Microsoft Download Center. It also will be built into the next “pre-release” versions of Windows Vista Service Pack (SP) 1 and Windows XP SP3, Microsoft officials said, via a posting on November 8 to the IE Team Blog.

Microsoft is planning to deliver to all customers who install the update the final version of the refreshed IE release in April 2008 as part of an IE Cumulative Update. Microsoft is emphasizing that the refresh "will require no modifications to existing webpages, and no new actions for developers creating new pages." "We are simply reverting to the old behavior. Once Internet Explorer is updated, all pages that currently require ‘click to activate' will no longer require the control to be activated.

They’ll just work," explained Senior Product Manager Pete LePage on the IE Team Blog. When Microsoft initially changed IE’s ActiveX control behavior, it warned partners and customers the changes, though relatively minor, potentially could be disruptive. The IE refresh is not the next major version of Microsoft’s browser.

ZDNET Blogs
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Adobe: Online Photoshop coming this year
by Stephen Shankland
November 8, 2007 12:05 PM PST

MONTEREY, Calif.--Adobe Systems has committed to shipping a beta version of its online image-editing tool, Photoshop Express, this year, and said it will be complete in 2008. "By late this year, we anticipate having a beta version," said John Loiacono, senior vice president for Adobe Creative Solutions, speaking at the 6sight digital imaging conference here.

And next year, the online service will be "available to anyone," he said. Loiacono showed Photoshop Express running on an Adobe server connected over the Internet, he said. But when the average person experiences the software, it likely will be through partners such as Shutterfly or Photobucket, he said. Unsurprisingly, Loiacono left unmentioned Flickr, which said in October it will use Picnik's online photo-editing tools.

Photoshop Express is a profoundly important project, and Adobe's schedule indicates that its repercussions are near-term and not academic. For Adobe, the project is the spearhead of a transformation from a seller of boxed software to a provider of services in an increasingly rich Internet experience. And for the industry overall, it signals that Internet technology is maturing enough that companies are willing risk extending the brand of respected PC software to the network.

Photoshop Express, as its name suggests, isn't a full-fledged version of Photoshop proper or even of its hobbyist-oriented sibling, Photoshop Elements. The intent is to reach a much larger audience than the company currently reaches with its higher-end boxed software products.

CNET Blogs
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WordPress Founder Looks Into Blogging's Future
by Stefanie Olsen
November 8, 2007 12:42 PM PST

LAS VEGAS, Nev.--If you type "Matt" into the Google search bar, you won't immediately get results for the actor Matt Damon or the political site owner Matt Drudge, as you might expect. Instead, the No. 1 listing points to the site of Matt Mullenweg, the 23-year-old founder of WordPress, the widely used open-source software for blogging.

Befitting his Google ranking, Mullenweg could be considered a superstar here at the BlogWorld conference, where he spoke to hundreds of attendees Thursday about how he started WordPress and the future of blogging. To be sure, when people in the audience were asked if they use WordPress for their personal blogs, a unanimous show of hands went up.

Everyone from politics to bowling bloggers seemed eager to get Mullenweg's advice on the art of the craft--and how to make money from it. Mullenweg offered simple pearls of wisdom about what makes a blog compelling. "One universal about blogging is a lot like music: you have to be unique and you have to absolutely love what you're doing," he said.

Mullenweg started developing WordPress while he was still in college; and he worked on it over several years, including while at CNET Networks, publisher of News.com. Once he left CNET in late 2005, he started the business behind WordPress, called Automattic, which sells blog hosting services and an antispam application.

CNET Blogs
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Bumps on the road to Microsoft's Surface
By Ina Fried
November 8, 2007, 2:53 PM PST

Although Microsoft is still getting plenty of "oohs" and "aahs" when it demos its Surface computer, the company is finding the task of bringing the tabletop computer to market is a little rougher than it anticipated. The software maker's initial plan was to get partners with the touchscreen machines up and running as early as this month.

Now it estimates it will take until spring before the devices start showing up in locations like Sheraton hotels, Harrah's casinos and T-Mobile retail locations. Part of the holdup has been in developing the custom software each of those partners needs, as well as making sure the hardware is suited to their locations. "What we have found out is this is not a one-size-fits-all solution," said Mark Bolger, a senior director in Microsoft's surface computing unit.

Microsoft had already spent four years developing the product before going public this May. The product, originally codenamed Milan, looks a bit like a 1980s sit-down Ms. Pac Man machine, but uses infrared cameras and a projector to create a touch screen that can respond to multiple users' hand gestures, as well as interacting with other objects.

Even as the short-term work proves a bit thorny, the company is growing more enthusiastic about the eventual market for its devices, Bolger said. Since the Surface's May unveiling, Microsoft has gotten more than 2,000 inquiries from companies in 50 countries and 25 different industries.

CNET News
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MS-Novell: What A Long, Strange Year It’s Been
November 8th, 2007
By Mary Jo Foley

In what’s been a controversial (to say the least) partnership, the Microsoft-Novell technology partnership and patent-protection arrangement has reached its one-year anniversary. Microsoft issued on November 7 a press release to mark the occasion, citing “30 new customers” that have signed up for certificates for three-year priority support subscriptions for SuSE Linux Enterprsie Server from Novell.

The new customers include Costco, Southwest Airlines and the City of Los Angeles, according to Microsoft. Not surprisingly, Microsoft isn’t saying much about the part of its collaboration with Novell which has generated the most publicly outcry: The patent-protection component. The press release simply states that the 30 new customers are “join(ing) the ranks of all other Microsoft and Novell customers currently benefiting from the companies’ collaboration to enable interoperability and IP peace of mind in mixed environments.”

As those who’ve followed in greater depth the twists and turns of Microsoft’s attempts to pressure Linux distribution vendors to pay for alleged infringement on Microsoft patents know, the Microsoft-Novell partnership has not been all smooth sailing. In the past year, here are a few of the related milestones in the Novell-Microsoft relationship that Microsoft isn’t celebrating in today’s press release:

Late November 2006: Novell’s leadership is so upset over CEO Steve Ballmer’s continued claims that Novell was in violation of Microsoft patents that they issued a statement repudiating that contention. Microsoft issues a public statement of its own, which does nothing to back Novell’s claim: “Microsoft and Novell have agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents.

ZDNET Blogs
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