Silicon Valley Watcher--reporting on the business and culture of innovation

« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »

June 2006 Archives

June 30, 2006

Chris Heuer is the project lead: Signups for the new media press release (really!)

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I've been working with the PR industry to figure out a better way to create press/news releases that are more useful to reporters and others, in this multi-media channel world we live in. Why limit press releases to the standard text only format and with only one link, or none?

We need a vehicle that can easily integrate podcasts, vidcasts, text, and company information that is labelled and tagged so that the right information can quickly be pulled together. We have the technologies to do that, to partly preassemble the information needed in preparing a news story.

The key, however, is to have all the PR agencies and media/comms departments in corporations to agree to a baseline standard new media press release format. We need to make sure that everyone uses the same labels/tags for things like "company founded date" or "CEO today said" etc. And agrees on other aspects of the format.

To help things along I've agreed to offer a neutral third party platform. The PR companies are very competitive and won't take the lead from each other and so we will end up with a tower of babel of different labels/tags and different formats, and we won't be much better off than before.

I've found someone with the ideal abilities to coordinate this new media press release project, Chris Heuer. Chris knows the business world, he knows the marcoms world and he knows the geek world. He's a new media renaissance man and he has agreed to coordinate this project.

I have already received many requests from people to join me in this project, and I will pass those onto Chris but please sign up again just in case. And anyone else that wants to be involved please join this discussion newsgroup.

Chris will choose the collaborative technologies we'll use to take this project further. By the way there was a nice write up about the new press release in BusinessWeek and Shift Communications' efforts, Julie Crabill and Todd Defren in pushing things forward.

Richard Edelman, head of the largest independent PR agency in the world is a strong supporter of the new media press release. Winning the support of global giants such as Edelman is key because it validates this new approach to communications. Edelman and the other giants such as Ogilvyetc have the muscle, and the influence to educate companies and individuals on how best to communicate in a multiplicity of media worlds and communities.

What will be interesting is how the PR companies and others, use the new media press release format to differentiate themselves; how they make the content compelling and available in a multiplicity of media; and how successful they are in explaining to their clients the need for new ways of communicating. Here is Chris Heuer to explain more.

June 28, 2006

US is losing its lead warns chip industry -- but business is good

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Tuesday late afternoon I walked into the Businesswire offices on top of a highrise in downtown San Francisco for a briefing with George Scalise, head of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and a team of top communications execs from the largest chipmakers Chuck Malloy from Intel, Dan Larson from Texas Instruments, Vineeta Durani from IBM and others from Advanced Micro Devices, Analog Devices and the research institutes SRC and Sematech.

I meet with the SIA every year and it was good to see a lot of familiar faces. And the briefing was interesting, a good news/bad news type of situation.

The good news Mr Scalise said is that the chip industry is doing well, forecasts have been raised for this year and the SIA is expecting revenues of about $250bn. And in all chip markets demand is good and growing at a steady rate. "There is nothing that we can see that is a problem, even the high fuel prices haven't hurt consumer demand."

Consumer markets now account for more than 50 percent of global chip revenues, so consumer spending and sentiment is closely watched by the SIA. And since consumer spending accounts for more than 60 per cent of the overall economy, there is room for chip revenues to continue to climb just on the dynamics of that sector alone.

Inventories of chips are low, and utilization levels of the chip fabs are very good, about 92 per cent, which means there is room to expand without causing shortages but high enough that price pressure remains low.

The bad news is that US is likely to lose its lead in chip manufacturing expertise and that could be catastrophic to the US economy. The SIA and the chipmakers and other groups are lobbying hard in Washington D.C. to make sure that the US funds more basic research, invests in education so it has a highly skilled workforce, and can provide new ways to finance multi-billion dollar fabs.

"There is no other industry like the chip industry that has created so many jobs, and has contributed so much to the GDP of this country," said Mr Scalise. So far so good, I said. Why should we be so concerned about the future when the US chip industry is doing so well?

Mr Scalise and the others, pointed out that it is becoming more difficult to manufacture in the US because of fewer science and math students, and the economic incentives are much less than those offered in other countries. Yet each chip fab provides significant economic value to the host country because of the infrastructure that grows around it. Many other countries recognize that benefit and are offering significant incentives for chipmakers.

One worrying trend is China. Mr Scalise and his team recently returned from a fact finding trip to China. He said that the country's largest chip maker, SMIC, is able to take advantage of sweetheart financing deals. The government of a large province in China is building billion dollar fabs and it will lease them to SMIC. This means SMIC doesn't have to raise billions in capital markets to finance its expansion. This is a significant competitive advantage for SMIC.

I asked if this is a World Trade Organization issue, but subsidies of various kinds are allowed. The US chip industry enjoys subsidies on a smaller scale from US regional governments, tax holidays, etc.

How will US state governments compete against deals of the SMIC-type? I can't imagine Arizona or New York state governments raising money to build billion dollar fabs and leasing them out. "Well, we can be creative in other ways, and we'll have to be," says Mr Scalise.

China is also training masses of engineers, narrowing the skills gap with the US. The SIA wants the government to make it easier for foreign-born student engineers to obtain green cards so that they can stay here in the US instead of returning home after completing their studies.

The problem is to convince US politicians to make the legislative changes that improve education, fund more basic research, and provide for ways of accessing cheaper capital. Dan Larson, director of government and media relations for Texas Instruments said, "We have had a good response to our message but getting the legislation passed is a long process and can be derailed by other factors."

I was glad to hear that the SIA and the chipmakers are doing a lot to try and raise educational standards in their communities. It's one thing to lobby in Washington, but its another to work locally and walk the talk where you live and work. The chip industry spends nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on educational ventures. Texas Instruments and IBM for example, encourage thousands of their engineers to get involved in local schools and colleges.

But it is a tough situation for the US chip industry to say the sky is falling when its business is pretty good . . . and getting better.

June 27, 2006

Green Border: The need to rebuild confidence in consumer online shopping

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I recently met with GreenBorder Technologies, a security software company that offers an easy solution to virus, spyware, and trojan threats by isolating each Internet session from the rest of the PC and earlier Internet sessions.

The beauty of the Green Border Pro software is it doesn't need to be updated to guard against new virus signatures or new types of malware. It creates a secluded, virtual Internet session and when you are done, it flushes everything away, in your cache and in temporary files, etc. Once installed it does its work transparently--except for a green border around the page to indicate it is a safe Internet session.

For the past year it has been an enterprise product but it is now being rolled out to consumers, which is a good idea because it is one of those install-and-forget applications. Most of us are fed up of running tech support for our families, guarding home networks against infection and dealing with all the other support problems related to viruses and spyware. If Green Border does its job, that would free up a lot of family time.

I spoke with Bernard Harguindeguy, CEO, he said that he hopes that banks, ISPs and other online companies will help evangelize the product because it helps stop identity theft, stop trojans attacking web sites, and makes security easier.

"With most consumer security software the user is often asked to make security decisions during installation or during use. And that means they can make inappropriate choices. With our product it works in the background and the user is safe from any malicious software," says Mr Harguindeguy.

Jim Fulton, vp of marketing says that the year the product spent in enterprise environments has helped improve the software. "The consumer version doesn't require the same levels of control as the enterprise version making it simple to install and use."

Green Border is offering 10,000 free downloads then it intends to charge an annual license fee. It hasn't decided on pricing but it is considering a $40 per PC annual fee. That seems a bit steep to me, especially when households typically have many PCs sitting around on home networks, that can be a $200 annual bill for just one utility. Even if it is as good as advertised that's a chunk of change that most households won't be able to afford.

Green Border could provide a lot more value if it became part of a say a Yahoo, Google, or an Amazon toolbar. It could protect e-commerce transactions and guard against identity theft on a far larger scale than selling individual consumer licenses. And the big online sites would be able to encourage safe e-commerce before more and more people get burned and stay away from online shopping altogether.

Green Border won't protect from things like phishing, and the Nigerian scams, which are based on social engineering to con money out of people. The social engineering threats are best tackled by educating computer users, and Green Border has materials that show users how to identify and avoid scams and other nefarious activities.

About GreenBorder Technologies
Headquarters: Mountain View, California
Founded: 2001
Funding: Private
Investors: Texas Pacific Group (TPG) Ventures,
Sevin Rosen Funds,
Labrador Ventures
Management: Bernard Harguindeguy, Pres. & CEO
Joanne Syben, VP Engineering
Jim Fulton, VP Marketing
Babak Salimi, VP Bus. Dev.

Download Green Border here.

Press release is here: GreenBorder Launches Web Security Software.

The PC-ization of the comms industry - Intel changes tack with chip group sale

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Intel's (Intel is an SVW sponsor] sale of its cell phone and handheld computer chip business to Marvell Technology Group for $600M, announced earlier today, represents a change in its strategy to apply the economics of the PC industry to cell phones, smart phones, and communications equipment markets.

In the mid to late 1990s, Craig Barrett, the former CEO of Intel, led efforts to expand the company's business into the fast growing cell phone and communications equipment markets. Through a series of large acquisitions totaling more than $11bn Intel built one of the world's largest communications chip businesses to become the leading provider of Internet infrastructure components.

Mr Barrett and his team saw that PC markets were maturing, and that server markets would become part of a global interconnected communications infrastructure. Intel's strategy was to extend its pole position--to providing silicon for the entire global digital communications infrastructure; and everything connected to it.

Intel wanted to provide silicon for every type of edge device, such as pocket computers, cell phones, PDAs, cameras, notebooks, PCs. And also provide the essential chips for servers and communications equipment that create the connecting foundation of the Internet.

Intel knows that investing during downturns is a wise strategy--that's what it does during the boom and bust cycles of the chip industry. And despite the dotcom crash, growth of the dotcom economy would return, and along with it the massive infrastructure investments by the telcos and others. Intel knows we are still at the beginning stages of the Internet and that the real growth is still to come.

But timing is everything in the tech industry where being too early can be the same as being wrong. Nobody would argue with Intel's long-term view of the future and its strategy, but managing a huge company on Wall Street expectations based on quarterly performance makes it doubly difficult to tune strategy to short-term market changes.

Also, Intel's comms business strategy was based on the assumption that it could apply the same economics that worked well in the PC industry. If it could produce powerful, off-the-shelf components that could be easily adapted to many different types of communications products, it would quickly win customers.

Intel expected that comms companies would ditch their custom chip efforts because they would be able to get to market faster using off-the-shelf Intel components, as the PC industry had done.

But Intel had trouble gaining traction in its comms groups. It reorganized them several times and sent in its best trouble-shooter, senior vp Sean Maloney.

For a while Mr Maloney's efforts seemed to be working and Intel was able to start publicizing some important design wins. But momentum was difficult to build, and the comms industry seemed to slow to adapt and adopt, the economics of the PC industry.

Intel thought that cell phone and comms equipment makers would quickly embrace the standard components practice that helped the PC industry grow at phenomenal rates in the 1980s and 1990s.

Microsoft, Intel's longtime partner in the PC business also expected to establish its operating systems in cell phones, PDAs and other comms gear such as set top boxes.

The barrier to adoption of standard platform was partly due to the specialized nature of comms gear but also due to the cell phone makers and comms equipment companies taking a look at the PC industry. It was easy for anyone to see that that profit margins for the PC makers were very low.

Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other leading PC makers were battling to eke out profit margins in the low single digits. Consolidation was rife in the PC industry as PC makers struggled to remain in business, and then IBM, the developer of industry standard PC platform exited the market.

Most of the value in the PC industry was captured by Intel and Microsoft. Intel's profit margins were in the 60% and above range. Microsoft's profit margins were in the 80% and above range on its PC operating systems and applications. While PC makers competed for slivers of the pie.

Could this happen to the cell phone and communications companies too? Probably, if they adopted a similar approach to the PC industry and used standard components and software.

The reason why Intel and Microsoft were not been able to "PC-ize" the comms industry is easy to understand if you looked at the PC makers as proxies for the future of the comms companies.

And that is why the industry standard PC platform that built the massive PC industry will likely be viewed by historians as an aberration that was caused by IBM's rush into the PC market in 1981, forcing it to use off-the-shelf components and operating systems. IBM didn't have the time to pursue its normal proprietary strategy of developing its own chips and operating systems.

Although the sale of the cell phone chips group is a bitter pill for Intel, it still remains deeply embedded in the comms business as a leading supplier of chips, and has key Wi-Fi and WiMAX wireless technologies.

Also, CEO Paul Otellini, in his second year, has demonstrated that he can make tough decisions. Sometimes large companies will drive themselves into the ground because they cannot overcome long established layers of legacy thinking and execution.

Mr Otellini can always draw on the advice of 40 years of Intel leadership; Craig Barrett is chairman, former CEO and chairman Andy Grove is senior advisor, and Gordon Moore is chairman emeritus.

Even though its comms business has been restructured yet again, Intel has managed to return return a huge amount of value to its shareholders since 1968, it is still an incredible cash machine, and it still manages to execute on many billions of dollars in bets in building cutting edge chip manufacturing facilities--the most complex manufacturing systems of our industrial age.

Plus, Intel still retains the ability to attack client and infrastructure comms markets in many different ways because of its ability to integrate masses of IP into ever smaller slivers of silicon.

- - -
Q1 2006 Investor Fact Sheet

Marvell to Purchase Intel’s Communications and Application Processor Business For $600 Million

Rivlin tries again to return to Manhattan; Volgelstein's fortune is at Wired; Rafat Ali's fortune is coming; Warren outsources his philanthropy; Om My God! plus: a summer evening escape to SF MOMA

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

...Take the man from Manhattan but he usually returns

Gary Rivlin reporter for the New York Times is giving up the Silicon Valley beat for a dream job as a feature writer for the business section of the New York Times. Saturday night I joined him and his elite group of buddies (Markoff etc ;-) at his penthouse apartment in the heart of San Francisco's trendy Mission Street.

I, and some other volunteers, helped Gary in a valiant attempt to empty his drinks cabinet, so's he would have less to pack. It's fortunate people here are so caring, not like in New York . . .

I couldn't tell if Gary was lamenting or boasting that he might never be back in these parts again. He told me he has spent 14 years in the San Francisco area and this will be his third attempt at a return to New York city, and it feels like it will be his last.

He said the job is a dream job and the offer came just days after his return from about ten months on the New Orleans beat--one of the most challenging stories around. Good luck to Gary, I know he'll be back, but with a return ticket in his pocket, as he researches many features about the new golden age emerging in Silicon Valley :-)

...Fred Volgelstein gets Wired

Fred on TV I hadn't noticed that Fred Volgelstein, former Fortune senior writer is now at Wired magazine. He did flirt with the idea of leaving the tree-killing business. But a salary in the hand is better than two birds in the bush because you get to keep 50 percent of it.
[Mashup metaphor #27 :-) ]

...VCs buy a piece of PaidContent.org

The excellent PaidContent.org publication raised an undisclosed sum of funding from VC firm Greycroft Partners. I'm a huge fan of PaidContent and founder Rafat Ali has done an excellent job in reporting on the business of the media industry with scoops and exclusive interviews.

Some call PaidContent a blog, I call it a news organization covering the media industry produced by media professionals. Just as SVW is not really a blog...

But why raise money this way Rafat? There are less risky ways to do it that don't require term sheets, large lawyer fees, and someone that is not a founder owning a piece of you...

I hope you ticked the box and opted for some cashback out of the deal Rafat, it's time for a couple of weeks of languid and liquid pleasures in some exotic place after all the hard work you and the team have put into the venture.

From Journalism.co.uk

ContentNext Media, owner of new media news websites PaidContent and MocoNews, has won expansion funding.
The company has received first round investment, of an undisclosed sum, from Greycroft Partners.

Alan Patricof, a founder of Apax Partners and managing director of Greycroft, has previously financed Apple, AOL, and NTL, when those companies were in their infancy.

Backing from Greycroft could prove to be validation of blog-style news sites as a primary source of revenue.

Writing on PaidContent founder Rafat Ali said:

"Our opportunity is to take some money, organise and solidify, choose the right partners, and expand/accelerate what we're doing.

"In the end, keep our heads down and keep doing what we do best: write, report, bring the industry together to discuss and help them do business… in other words, keeping it real."

As well as hiring more backroom staff, ContentNext plans to recruit a New York-based reporter, redesign all its sites and later in the year launch a UK wing.

Also, my good buddy Andy Plesser over on Beet.tv has a vidcast interview with Rafat.

...Nice work by Warren Buffet on outsourcing his philanthropy

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Warren Buffett on Monday signed over much of his $44 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, uniting the world's two richest people in a bid to fight disease, reduce poverty and improve education.
The roughly $30.7 billion donation doubles the Gates Foundation's size to $60 billion, five times larger than any other U.S. charitable group and bigger than the gross domestic product of Kuwait.

"Uniting the world's two richest people..." does the writer mean Bill and Melinda? Surely Melinda must be one of the richest people in the world and she is already united. Otherwise uniting Mr Gates and Mr Buffett provides for an uncomfortable image. And where is Bono in all of this? I bet he had a hand in it... [Did you see the Time "man (person) of the year 2005" cover? If not, here it is...]

...Good luck to his Omness!

Elizabeth Safran, the PR maven of the security software industry, points me to this article from Private Equity Week:

Om Malik has made a name for himself as a chronicler of Silicon Valley. This summer, however, he joins the legions of entrepreneurs about which he has written about, having raised “several hundred thousand dollars” from the partners at six-month-old True Ventures to turn his highly popular blog, GigaOm, into a full-fledged online media property of the same name.
In an interview last week, Malik told Private Equity Week that he was leaving his current full-time job at the Time Inc. monthly Business 2.0, effective June 30. He expects to finalize his deal with True on June 28.

Robert Scoble is another high profile writer recently leaving his employer, Microsoft, to do a startup.

(Hey, I left the mothership two years ago to do a startup... what's the big deal ;-)

... A summer breeze at SFMOMA

I popped into Antenna Group's very interesting clean tech salon last Wednesday.

It was a perfect summer evening in San Francisco and my meetings and events were perfectly spaced in time and geography. Melody Haller's salons are always worth a visit and the location at the Varnish Gallery was the perfect staging ground for the Matthew Barney opening reception at SFMOMA.

I managed to persuade Darcy Provo, senior exec at the Antenna Group, to join me in breaking away from anything IT or business related for an hour or so.

The Matthew Barney exhibition is challenging, provocative and defies description but these types of opening events are not about the exhibits, they are about those that exhibit themselves at such events...

The mood and the energy of the place was great and it became very enjoyable very quickly. We were soon bumping into other refugees from the Silicon Valley business/IT scene.

Michael Tchong, the noted trendwatcher, of UberCool and other ventures, was there. He told me he is soon launching a new site, trendwatching.com. I told him watching is a growing trend...I like to watch Silicon Valley.

there were encounters and conversations with others too, as we stepped around white piles of plastic forms. And before too long, Darcy had acquired a large following :-). And before too long, I was next door in the St Regis bantering away with a bunch of people I barely knew 20 minutes earlier... A perfect evening to finish a long day.

June 26, 2006

Intel says it will win back server market share from AMD

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Intel (an SVW sponsor) got a good turn out from the media Monday morning when it presented a roadmap on how it would stay ahead of rival Advanced Micro Devices in low power consuming high-performance server chips.

The chips are strategic to Intel (INTC) keeping its dominance in server chips as data centers turn to computing systems that use less electric power--the single most limiting factor to expanding computing facilities. AMD's Opteron has managed to win support because it use less electric power and offers good performance.

Monday also marked the first day that Intel is shipping its first Opteron-killer product, the 5100 Series Xeon microprocessor.

Tom Kilroy, Intel vice president presented a broad message that Intel is going to maintain a power and performance lead over Opteron because it can make the chips smaller; it has fast buses and other system technologies such as virtualization; and it has long established relationships with thousands of vendors, developers, customers, etc.

There was lots of discussion about Intel's lead in 25 key benchmarks, lots of technical discussion about buses, memory controllers and shared caches etc. There were also a lot of questions on the subject of benchmarks, making apples to apples comparisons, etc.

One important point was that the socket for the new 5100 Xeon chips would remain the same through to the end of 2009. This means faster chips can be inserted without having to swap out all the other components or buy completely new systems.

The new Xeons use 40 per cent less power yet offer about a 3 times performance increase compared with one-year ago Xeons. But it is not just the microprocessor it is other system components and technologies that are also important in reducing power consumption. Intel said it is working with many other third-party companies to help reduce overall power consumption.

SVW Take: AMD will have trouble maintaining its share of the server markets simply because of Intel's massive manufacturing prowess which is a full generation and more, ahead of AMD. Intel can also leverage long established business relationships in enterprise vendor markets while AMD is still very new to this space. Intel also has a large ecosystem of software tools and support that it offers customers.

The subject of benchmarks and making a fair comparison against Opteron chips is a subject that many journalists have focused on lately. Nathan Brookwood, head analyst at Insight64 was advocating a type of cook-off between Intel and AMD with both optimizing their systems to their fullest degree.

Benchmarks however, are not the way data center managers typically make purchasing decisions. They usually run their own tests because of the different designs,implementations, and application loads that servers carry.

Greg Brandeau, VP at Pixar, the computer animation studio said he preferred plugging a system into the wall and using a commonly found wattage meter to measure electric power consumption. He said that Pixar uses Opteron systems and he would continue using them alongside the latest Xeon servers as an easy comparison. He praised Intel's software development tools which he said helped optimize Pixar's graphics software.

Enterprises are traditionally conservative and Intel offers a safe bet that it will be able to deliver on its multi-year roadmap and leverage its long standing industry relationships to continue to produce highly competitive server systems.

AMD is a newcomer to enterprise hardware markets and it will have to work hard to build the relationships and trust that it needs to do compete against Intel. AMD could try to cut prices to gain market share but it is a dangerous game to play against Intel, which can pump out more chips per wafer. And since chip manufacturing costs are constant, more chips per wafer means a lower manufacturing cost for Intel. Plus, AMD has to expand its chip manufacturing fabs, and move production from 90nm to 65nm - a tricky process but one that Intel has already achieved.

AMD will maintain a position in server markets because IT customers like choice and they know it will keep Intel on its toes. But the question becomes will AMD's slice of the server markets be large enough to pay for the design and manufacturing that goes with it.

_ _ _

Intel's benchmark site: http://www.intelstartyourengines.com/

AMD Opteron site

From SVW:
Intel + HP 's data center push - saving power and saving labor

AMD Tech Day: Forecasts continued gains against Intel

June 25, 2006

Intel intros its Opteron killers

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Intel (an SVW sponsor) today will introduce its Opteron-killer Dual Core Xeon server chips which use less electric power and provide more performance in key benchmarks.

Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron servers have become popular because they use less electric power than equivalent competing microprocessors. This allows computer companies to pack more computing power into the same amount of space.

The low-power data center is a top goal of enterprise vendors and that's why Advanced Micro Device's Opteron has done well. Data centers are being limited by the amount of electric power their local utility can offer, and many are operating at their top limits. Some cannot install more computing power because they don't have the electric power to run the extra equipment.

To expand computing capacity, data centers are turning to low power consuming servers, the fastest growing segment of the server market. More computing power can be installed per kilowatt of energy, or customers can choose cooler systems that need less cooling and create substantial savings on electric power. Large data centers can spend tens of millions of dollars on annual electric power costs.

Intel (INTC) will discuss details about its Core Xeon server chips at a press event in San Francisco Monday morning. They represent the first of a family of new chip designs that are optimized for low-power consumption. They are also built in smaller geometries which further cuts power consumption.

Intel estimates its new chips use 35 per cent less electric power and provide as 80 per cent performance boost against comparable prior chips.

I recently met with Lisa Graff, general manager of server platforms at Intel. She said that the benchmarks of the new chips will be much better than for Opteron. There is an Intel site offering performance benchmarks at http://www.intelstartyourengines.com/

It can be difficult to directly compare AMD and Intel server chips because of different server designs and the application loads on the servers. But it is the overall power savings of such systems, rather than small differences between the two competing brands, that will drive sales. The vendors that have low power servers on the market first will benefit the most.

Intel and AMD are rapidly expanding production of their server chips. The competition between the two will become about which company can meet market demand. Making the chips is difficult and requires high yields per wafer in order to to be profitable. Intel has the edge in manufacturing technologies but AMD has made big progress in raising production yields per wafer over the past five years.

Google, the search engine company, is among the customers for such servers. It operates some of the largest data centers in the world and it is very concerned with electric power costs. It is building a huge data center in Oregon in an area where there is cheap hydroelectric power. Places where there are aluminum smelters--which require larges quantities of electric power to refine the metal--are sites that are becoming increasingly attractive to Google and others because they indicate places where there are cheap local electric power resources.

June 22, 2006

Sabrina Horn: Celebrating 15 years of the Horn Group

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I recently interviewed Sabrina Horn, the head of the Horn Group, one of Silicon Valley's largest independent PR companies. The Horn Group this month is celebrating fifteen years in business and Ms Horn has seen many of Silicon Valley's business cycles.

Over the past three years she has been working from the company's Manhattan office. She has returned to the East coast where she was raised. She has two young girls, five years and eight years old.

Ms Horn spent 20 years on the West Coast but she says that after the dotcom bubble burst she wanted to "get back to my roots, I needed a new challenge, even though managing a company through the downturn has been very challenging."

I asked her about some of the cultural differences between the East and West coasts. "East coast has more of an attitude of being no nonsense, direct, get the job done. But the Web 2.0 companies out here are very much like their counterparts in Silicon Valley, they have very similar cultures and you wouldn't be able to distinguish the from each other."

One of her goals was to diversify the company away from enterprise software and towards other industries and services. For example, in New York she created a business group that helps companies with web site design, and related services. Now that group brings in about 25 per cent of total revenues and she expects it to bring in 50 per cent within five years.

This is all part of a future for PR/communications that helps companies get their stories out and also publish them. "The Internet is such a visual medium that it makes sense to help companies improve their online presence."

Ms Horn is very much aware of the power of blogging and the new media/social communications technologies that are pouring out of Silicon Valley. Podcasts, vidcasts, new media oriented press releases, and the many different ways companies can communicate are readily apparent from her vantage point. But she admits that it is often difficult to convince clients on best strategy and good practices because they are often stuck in the old way of doing things.

She also recognizes that for PR companies to be more effective at what they do, they have to be recognized as strategic consultants and important partners, rather than subservient to the whims of the current marketing director.

[I've always considered it strange and unhealthy that marketing departments run the communications. Corporate comms should have it's own seat in the C-level suite. That's true in very few companies. There should be a chief Conversations/Cultural Officer or something like that because businesses exist in a society and they need to have the appropriate understanding of the conversations, the culture of that society. That's why SVW reports on the business and culture of Silicon Valley.]

Ms Horn also understands that in today's world PR firms have lost their ability to control the message, and that's a very important realization. Because it means readjusting and accepting the fact that we live in a very different media world today.

[For example, I tell companies that they cannot control their message because the world will tag/label them in anyway it wants, and in all sorts of ways. The new control comes from having the discipline to repeat a message a hundred times and more, making sure that everyone in an organisation understands and articulates a consistent message, time and again. (You'd be surprised at how rare this is!)]

Remaining an independent PR firm is tough in today's world where clients want global reach and representation. But it could be argued that smaller, independent PR companies provide more value, attention and can leverage existing partnerships in other regions to provide comparable services to the mega-agencies.

Ms Horn says that she receives offers to buy her company on a regular basis but she says she is having too much fun to take those offers seriously. "If you are passionate and involved in something, you cannot just walk away from it. I love coming to work everyday," she says.

She shared with me three rules she has learned from running her business:
-The day you think you know it all is the day you need to quit the job.

-There is always far more that you don't know you didn't know.

-Always make sure that the check clears the bank.

We need competition not net neutrality otherwise Web 2.0 dies on the vine

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Wednesday I managed to catch up with Sean Garrett, one of the co-founders of 463 Communications, an agency that represents tech firms in Washington D.C on tech policy issues. Obviously, net neutrality was a topic we discussed, and Mr Garrett mentioned that the telcos were out spending everyone by enormous amounts on the net neutrality issue.

But this issue is a red herring because there is no way that legislation can force a pipe owner to carry all packets, including its own, on an equal basis. As Mr Garrett pointed out, the real issue is competition, "If we had real competition then the whole net neutrality debate would go away."

That is very true, it's because our access as consumers to the Internet is controlled by the telephone or cable TV companies and we don't have any choice. Efforts by municipalities to provide WiFi for local residents have often been blocked by the telcos yet this is clearly blocking competition.

If we had a broad range of competitors we could choose, and choice is good for consumers, it's also good for the vendors of the infrastructure, Intel, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems etc.

Choice would be great news for the many hundreds/thousands of startups, the so called Web 2.0 companies that are based on the premise of equal access and equal performance on the Internet. Without this capability they will die on the vine--it will wipe out the promise of this next wave of innovation.

The net neutrality debate is bogus because there is no way to mandate/regulate that the communications network owners provide equal access and performance. Because the telcos and cable TV companies want to pump torrents of bits through their pipes in the form of their own services but more importantly, in the form of high definition (HD) TV/video.

HD will squeeze everyone else to the margins and marginalize the entire Web 2.0 generation. That means thousands of small startups, plus the many thousands of VCs and other investors in those companies, will be drastically affected by this net neutrality issue. But Mr Garrett says it is difficult to get the startups interested in political issues that affect their future, that has to change.

So how do we break the local duopoly? And it is a federally regulated duopoly which means the government is part of the barrier to competition.

WiMAX, the Wi-Fi technology on steroids that has a range that can be measured in tens of miles could vault over the walled gardens of local Internet providers. But that technology is not yet ready for commercial use and it might be couple/several more years before it is ready.

In the meantime, HD will kill the Web 2.0 generation by pushing them out of the pipes, IMHO.

- - -
Please also see:

Tom Abate at The San Francisco Chronicle just finished the first in a series on net neutrality, over 200 hours of investigative work: Speed Bumps on the Information Highway

The 463 Blog: Inside Tech Policy which is also a good resource pointing to other good sources on tech policy issues.

Horn Group's salon on top of the Clift

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

We live in an AlwaysOn world, Tony Perkins was right. I just wish he had named it AlwaysOn- except- Friday- afternoons- and- most- of- the- weekend- until- Sunday- evening.

This week has been very interesting and very always-on, especially Wednesday. Here's a 24-hour slice, published in parts between running around SF/Silicon Valley and trying to be a dad too.

Missed Voce

Tuesday evening I was hoping to get down to the Voce Communications summer event in Palo Alto but I just couldn't get away from the demands of my blogs. I like the Voce people: Mike Manuel is one of the few top PR bloggers not [yet] working for Edelman; co-founder Rich Cline and Matthew Podboy plus colleagues Dave Black, Janet Martin and many others I've worked with on stories.

I like the Voce people because they cottoned onto this new/social media stuff early on. Mike Manuel and Matthew Podboy and myself, are also part of the think tank: Society for New Communications Research, co-founded by Jen McClure, the Executive Director. The think tank group consists of some of really interesting and diverse people that have been involved in the early roots of this new media evolution.

Over at the Clift

I couldn't get to Voce but I did manage to get to the Horn Group's salon Tuesday evening at the top of the Clift hotel because it was only about about a mile or so from where I live. The Horn Group is celebrating 15 years in business and Sabrina Horn, the founder was there. She's been based in New York the last three years so it is interesting to hear her talk about some coastal differences and similarities. [I have an interview ready to roll with Ms Horn from last week.]

I caught up with some of my contacts from RightNow Technologies, which is one of the top CRM firms and run by one of my favorite CEOs Greg Gianforte.

I also came across Transera, which provides a virtual call center in the cloud - VOIP powered of course. I met Trensera's Prem Uppaluru CEO and co-founder who told me that selling his service to telcos is easy because they don't have to make any capital investments. It's a performance based business model.

However, working with telcos must be a bit tricky, because if you are successful, they will try to reverse engineer your business or change the revenue split. And they have plenty of IP laying around, plus lawyers, plus deep political contacts on the Hill, that they can use in various ways to their benefit.

I also ran into Jamie Lerner, CEO of CITTIO, an any-type-of-network-monitoring software company. Jamie was beaming because he is a recent dad, and just celebrated his first Father's Day--congratulations! It's always good to chat with Jamie, his HQ in San Francisco is truly a unique space, more "old western" than newdot[com]. And it has a working bar or two too(!)

Sabrina Horn spoke a for a few minutes and she talked about the changes happening in the PR industry and the challenge of change, which was refreshing because too many times agencies nod their heads about new media yet continue doing business as usual.

I spoke for a few moments about the challenges in the professional media sector and also pointed out that these are good times to be in the media and communications business.

At no other point in our professional lives will we experience the media/comms industry in such disruption. So this is a chance to do new things, try new things, and help create the rules, the formats, and the definitions of the new media/comms sector that will hold for the next decade and maybe beyond. That's very exciting, IMHO.

After the Horn Group event I managed to spend some time with a friend who knows nothing of my industry, the people, or about SVW. It's always good to add some balance to the company we keep and I'd love to add more of it.

[Part 2 follows on Wednesday.]

June 21, 2006

Intel + HP 's data center push - saving power and saving labor

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I met with Hewlett-Packard and Intel (Intel is a sponsor of SVW) recently to talk about the new blade servers coming from HP including Itanium based servers. Scott Stallard, senior vp and GM for the enterprise group says the company has a lot of pent up demand for its Itanium systems which is good news for the Intel/HP designed 64-bit microprocessor.

Itanium has had a long and rocky road from development to production systems and now the more advanced generations of Itanium based systems. That's to be expected in creating the large ecosystem that's needed for a new microprocessor architecture. You need the compilers, the development tools, and the system design is more challenging than for PC clients. And the road has been longer than some industry analysts expected, and a lot harder to travel than Intel and HP expected.

The new Itanium systems will be up against the best POWER and SPARC based systems so it will be interesting to see how they perform in the market for heavy-duty scientific number crunching. Itanium is designed to process big computational problems such as predicting global warming effects, protein folding, drug discovery and many other grand challenges. We are going to need all the help we can get to deal with some very challenging environmental and healthcare problems.

Lisa Graff, general manager of server platforms at Intel says that Itanium's prior problems with speed and power usage have been solved and the latest systems provide benchmarks that exceed IBM's POWER and Sun's SPARC based systems.

Benchmarking such large systems is notoriously difficult because of the different types of applications that this type of "big iron" runs, but Intel has stayed the course with Itanium to make it into a competitive product against long established architectures and it now this seems to be paying off. However, it will be a considerable while longer before Intel will have its ROI.

Mr Stallard gave the familiar data center pitch that Sun, IBM and others give: data center constraints are electric power, therefore to pack in more computing power you have to have low power consuming systems that are built as blades--easily slipped into data center racks. Then you need good management technologies to automate as much of the admin as possible; also you need virtualization technologies so that you can improve server efficiency from abut 30 per cent to as much as 70 per cent.

It's a familar pitch but HP does have some interesting data center technologies that could set it apart in the market. One of these is its Virtual Connect Architecture which automates the many different connections between blade servers and all the other equipment that they communicate with. This means equipment can be deployed more quickly and redeployed according to different business requirements.

All this greater efficiency in server utilization could lead to customers buying/needing fewer servers. But Ms Graff points out that there is no such thing as needing less computing, organizations will find plenty of uses for the freed up computing cycles, and that will drive more sales. She also said that the new Intel server microprocessors coming out this summer will exceed the performance, and have lower power consumption than Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron server chips.

Intel has been late coming into this market and challenging Opteron. This opened up an opportunity for AMD to get into the lucrative data center server business, where it previously had no presence. But Intel is like a very large supertanker and course corrections take time , and once they happen Intel can bring its massive manufacturing prowess to bear and win back market share. Its ability to be among the first to integrate leading edge chip technologies and quickly ramp up chip production in its fabs is formidable. AMD knows this and is rapidly expanding its chip fabs in Dresden, Germany - it will be an interesting race to follow.

June 20, 2006

UPDATE: Gmail outage... GOOG's sagging infrastructure breaks down

Is anybody else having problems today with Gmail today? I can't seem to get in at all, and there have been other errors popping up the last couple of days, at least in my account. Is Google's infrastructure groaning at the load of all of its services, including unlimited video storage?

UPDATE: I still cannot get into Gmail. It has been four hours since I posted on this problem and others are reporting it too (please see comments section.) I use Gmail exclusively and my business depends on it. I don't mind a five or ten minute outage, occasionally, but this is ridiculous.

Google risks losing me and plenty of others as users.

Gmail is still in beta does that mean Google thinks it can get away with a less-than-reliable email service?

Why hasn't it taken the steps and the investments, to make sure this doesn't happen? Does GOOG think that because Gmail is a beta product we will cut the company some slack? Hours of slack for a mission critical component of most people's lives?!

What's strange is that my son can access his Gmail but when I tried to log in through his machine I got the same server error. Then when he tried to log back into his account he got the same server error. He had to delete his cookies to get back in...

And why is there nothing posted by Google about this problem? At least, I couldn't find it...

Sun layoffs announcement coming this Thursday

Sun Microsystems (SUNW) will on Thursday announce a large round of layoffs in a bid to cut about one-half billion dollars in annual costs as it transforms itself into a broad based computer software and services company.
Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun will make the announcement to staff and investors on Thursday, said a Sun source. The cuts are expected but the timing was not known.

From my post on ZDNet: IMHO

June 19, 2006

Craigslist founder responds on Cox/Craigslist block

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist responds on the problems caused by security company Authentium in blocking Craigslist on Cox networks:

"First, I want to thank members of the Cox abuse team, I've worked with some myself to go after bad guys. I honestly have no idea as to the role of Cox management in this.

"I guess I'm real disappointed in Authentium, it's taking an extraordinary amount of time to fix this. As you see, it'll take at least six months to just start to deploy the fix."

Here is the full post: An update on the Authentium/Cox craigslist blocking situation

Also, here is Craig Newmark's email exchange on this problem.

June 15, 2006

Leaving Microsoft: First Robert Scoble then Bill Gates...what's going on!?

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Bill Gates' gradual departure from Microsoft over the next two years comes at a time when the company is facing its largest challenges. It is way behind Google and other companies in transitioning to the online era, and it faces large problems with staff morale.

Just a few days ago, Robert Scoble, a hugely important and popular Microsoft evangelist left the company. And it has lost other key people. This makes it doubly hard for it to recruit its next generation of leaders.

Mr Gates' departure might be a way to bow out before the company's problems come home to roost. A company of MSFT's size has plenty of business to carry it through the next few years. And it can remain very profitable if it cuts its losing business groups. But its long term future is anything but bright, as Mr Gates claimed at the press conference today: "The road ahead for Microsoft is as bright as ever."

Microsoft must make some very hard decisions and reinvent itself as a company. The power of the founder to make such changes within an organization can be very significant.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, returned to the company when it was facing huge challenges and he managed to remake the company he co-founded. Bill Gates could also bring that type of capability to Microsoft during a time of huge challenges.

Clearly, Mr Gates is no Steve Jobs.

- - -
From Cnet: Gates stepping down from full-time Microsoft role

Bill Gates announced that over the next two years he will gradually step away from his daily responsibilities, handing the reins to CTOs Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie.
Bottom line:
Analysts are speculating on how critical the loss of Microsoft's chief architect will be as it fights to stay competitive in the changing software-industry landscape.

Why is there no British Google? A top British politician asks...

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

A reader (www.elleeseymour.blogsite.com) writes:

Belated congratulations from over the pond. Bloggers in the UK do not have sponsors but advertisers, what advice would you give to them about this? I would like to write a post about it tomorrow, so a response would be appreciated.
Also, what are your views about this story in The Times about why the UK cannot develop the Yahoos and Googles cyberspace company. I think you will find this of interest.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2222386,00.html

Thank you Ellee. Let me address the article in the Times, written by George Osborne, a British [politician and shadow chancellor, which means he is in the Conservative party and part of the "shadow cabinet" of senior Tory politicians.

Here is the intro:

We may have invented the internet but it's the Americans who have colonised it. It's time to stake our claim WHY IS THERE no British Yahoo! or Google? Why are we not home to fast-growing community websites such as MySpace, the fifth most visited site on the world wide web? The internet may have been invented by a Briton, but it is a sad truth that not one of the leading internet companies is British. I am in Silicon Valley to find out why, meeting not just the people who run these internet giants, but also the venture capitalists who turn their bright ideas into great businesses. I want to know what we can do to make sure Britain has a slice of the future.
There was nothing pre-ordained about America dominating the online world. Many of my contemporaries at university packed in traditional jobs in the 1990s to launch start-up companies and claim their stake in the internet boom. Now almost all have gone back to careers they left behind.

To broadly summarize, Mr Osborne asks why are there no British Internet companies on the scale of a Yahoo or Google? He talks about a recent visit to Silicon Valley and the vibrant, supportive infrastructure here. And he says Britain must do something similar otherwise it will fall ever further behind. He identifies it as a key economic/ competitive issue.

SVW's take:
The reason there are no British Googles or Yahoos or EBays is the same reason there are no British Apple Computers, Intels or Seagates. Silicon Valley is not something that can be copied, Israel's Silicon Wadi is the closest copy, and then everything else around the world could be described as being variations on: a business park built next to a university.

What's different is that here is different.

It's different because this is a place that tolerates massive amounts of failure. One in 20 startups make it beyond five years, venture capitalists want that ten-bagger, that massive return on investment. But they are prepared to fund ten or twenty startups that fail.

In Britain, Mr Osborne does not have that culture of tolerance of failure. And the rest of Europe is pretty much the same. If you fail once you are a failure evermore.

Here, in Silicon Valley, they let you back into the game, time and time again. I know plenty of people who "made it" but they failed six or seven times before that. This is the only place in the world that has such high tolerance of failure.

---

And as for sponsorships versus advertising? Sponsorship is more akin to being a patron, having the wealth and the interest to promote new things because it creates a mutual, a community benefit. This is in stark contrast to trying to sell advertising.

Sponsorship doesn't come with the same type of controls that an advertiser might be tempted to exert over a media company. My sponsorships are usually for a 12 month term. Advertising contracts are for much shorter periods and thus there are many opportunities for advertisers to influence their media partners. I've seen it many times during my 25 years in the media industry.

That's why a sponsorship is a more ethical model for a new media publisher - and a more efficient model. I can direct the resources of Silicon Valley Watcher to building a team and producing great content instead of having to build a large sales team. I can focus on the journalism rather than advertising.

And my sponsors will learn about the new media, they will work with me and my teams and their teams, on figuring out some of the many questions about the best practices in this emerging, fragmented, two-way media world. And we will be involved in trying out new media formats, and applications of these fascinating media technologies that are bursting out of Silicon Valley. It is an exciting time to be in the media/communications industry.

Sponsorships will work as a business model for Silicon Valley Watcher but I know it is not something that can be applied widely. We still need to develop a type of Google AdSense on steroids that fairly rewards content producers rather than aggregators. And I'm not sure if Google et al, the aggregators are on our (the content producers side).

We need that a content-reward technology to make a success of this emerging Internet 2.0 world. By content-reward technology I mean that organizations producing compelling, truthfull content will be rewarded by lots of money. To enable them to continue to provide great content. Unless we can figure out what is one of the most challenging computer/online problems of our time--we will be toast. And....tens of thousands of startups will fail. We wil not have an Internet 2.0.

Maybe Britain could help? I hope Mr Osborne is reading this post and he can galvanize Britain's elite researchers and its smartest bus/dev teams and create a content-reward technology for content producers that pays back more than the pennies Google's AdSense ad network, (and the other online ad networks...) pay. And the money will be invested back into yet more great content... producing a virtuous cycle.

Something like that would be bigger than Google and Yahoo and WalMart combined, IMHO.

June 14, 2006

SVW crypto-scoops and the New York Times...

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Take a look at my crypto-scoop published December 1 2005 and today's story in the New York Times by John Markoff. (I had to publish it cryptically because I wasn't allowed to publish it directly :-)

From Silicon Valley Watcher:

-Cryptoscoop: The GOOG is prophetic, rather than superstitious, about its interest in the power in the places associated with the 13th fundamental building block of the Original Design.

It refers to Google's interest in building large data centers in places where there is abundant cheap electricity and those places are where aluminum is made. Alumininum is the 13th element of the periodic table (which lists the elements which make up our physical world). It takes enormous quantities of electricity to make aluminum.

From New York Times article: Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power

THE DALLES, Ore., June 8 — On the banks of the windswept Columbia River, Google is working on a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the next generation of Internet computing. But it is hard to keep a secret when it is a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky.

... Local residents are at once enthusiastic and puzzled about their affluent but secretive new neighbor, a successor to the aluminum manufacturers that once came seeking the cheap power that flows from the dams holding back the powerful Columbia. The project has created hundreds of construction jobs, caused local real estate prices to jump 40 percent and is expected to create 60 to 200 permanent jobs in a town of 12,000 people when the center opens later this year.

Hot new vidstars mix with hipsters and geeks at vidblogging fest

By Lucaso for Silicon Valley Watcher

All right, so Vloggercon in San Francisco this past weekend was hot... and not just 'cause RocketBoom's Amanda Congdon was there, dig? Either the geeks are getting hip or the hipsters are going geek... either way, a new era of media is taking Hollywood and traditional video media by storm.

And why not? You've got a camera... you've got a story to tell... you're a superstar! And, now, the tools to distribute your video are here, such as YouTube and a hundred more free vidhosts.

New media superstars, like Congdon, are well on their way to becoming international celebrities (Rocketboom's audience is as large as some small cable channels after only a year and a half) while Hollywood scrapes to understand what's going on.

We've seen the blogging phenomenon put a dent in traditional print media. Now, imagine that same dent in traditional television media. That's what's happenin', dig?

Lucaso in the balcony at Vloggercon. Photo by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.

Ok, so back to Vloggercon...

Hot 'cause we're now seeing some cultural integration, as evident by the crook in every geek's neck when 88slide's host Rachel walked into the conference hall (look out Amanda!). A new age of diversity is coming to geekland and we'll be seeing more young, new-media superstars popping up on the radar over the next year as well as some old school geeks stepping into celebrity roles.

I overheard Stowe Boyd chatting with a friend as he left the conference: "... one of the weird things is having all these people I don't know come up to me and talk to me like they know me."

Hot 'cause vloggers are working together as a community, sharing media and ideas for the good of the whole. Despite the integration of Hollywood energy, the overall vibe of Vloggercon was one of collaboration, passion, and love (yes, there was a hug fest in the closing session).

And one of the main concerns of this community is how to balance the incoming Hollywood energy with the grassroots nature of videoblogging. A token capitalist in the room asked how we're going to make money through video blogging, while the token socialist asked how videoblogging would help non-profits reach larger audiences.

At any rate, the money is coming. Rocket Boom's recent Ebay advertising success is a testament to sustainable new media ventures. Look for new video blogs, and new media superstars, to have a huge impact in the year to come.

Here's a few folks from the conference I dig:

- Noah and the 88slide crew are doing a great job with their daily quiz show.

- Jumpcut is making headway by allowing users to re-edit the trailer of the new Linklater film, "A Scanner Darkly."

- And for a little sex, drugs, peace, n rock n roll(and yes, you can swear on video blogs), check out RocknRolltv.

(Note: I also chatted with Amanda Congdon at Vloggercon... look for the interview coming soon.)

Lucaso is Silicon Valley Watcher's roving culture editor - reporting on the culture of the emerging communities.

June 13, 2006

Baynote - community driven enterprise search

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Baynote came out of stealth mode today with a software as a service product it calls "content guidance." It helps users find what they want on web sites with thousands of documents by studying the behavior of prior visitors.

Type in a search term and up pops a selection of relevant documents that are "useranked" according to how others found what they wanted.

"Our technology works as a silent observer and we can tell by a user's behavior if they found what they were looking for. When you consider the fact that studies show only 17 per cent of web site visitors find what they were looking for, that means you are wasting 83 per cent of your money spent on online marketing campaigns to drive users to your site," says Jack Jia, CEO of Baynote.

Typically, it can take six clicks to find relevant content and today's visitors are increasingly less patient and more likely to give up. Mr Jia claims Baynote's technology provides a 20 times increase in users finding the content they want, usually in just one click.

Mr Jia is a former CTO of Interwoven, so he has a good understanding of web site design and content plus his team makes use of the latest discoveries in artificial intelligence. The Baynote technology tracks 12 key behavioral characteristics displayed by web site visitors in order to determine whether they found what they wanted or left frustrated.

The service also offers a variety of usage reports and is available for $995 per month for large businesses and $95 per month for small businesses.

SVW's take: The price seems a bit steep for small businesses but for large web sites serving many different types of user groups, Baynote potentially provides a way to avoid leaving lots of frustrated visitors.

The service is also a good way to test web site designs to make sure the most popular content is easily accessible and where to tweak navigational elements.

One problem is that search on large web sites is notoriously bad because you can't apply the traditional page rank methods to determine the importance of a specific web page or document. And so people's bad experiences with site search on large corporate sites means that they will often avoid the search box and thus might skip the little icon that signifies Baynote's search technology is being used.

Baynote does offer other ways of connecting users with relevant content by clever use of AJAX and mouse-over techniques that popup pages in a Browster-like way without requiring users to commit to a click. The background loading of pages into cache however, will skew resident analytical software. But Baynote provides an analytics component as part of the service, which provides detailed usage reports.

Interestingly, Baynote does not use its technology on its own web site - there is no search box!!!!

Dinner with GigaOm - a transition

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I had dinner with Om Malik tonight, Om has been a close friend and advisor in my blogospheric adventures and I'm glad to see that he is finally free of his former life at Business 2.0.

(Yes, Nick Douglas did get the scoop. Well done Nick, hey, come work with me, I can beat anything that skinflint Nick Denton pays you. Seriously, you've demonstrated a hunger for a scoop and that is key to this job. Call me 336 7547.)

Here, you can read Om's tearful farewell to the magazine (Business 2.O) that he continues to love and will continue to contribute a column. But, it is great that now he can unleash the GigaOm to its full potential.

As we talked tonight, I remarked that as media professionals we are in a truly unique point in the timesphere. At no other time in our lives will we be witness to such disruption in our media industry and such opportunities to carve out a media niche.

I sometimes tease my colleagues in the media that we will become the Venetian princes of the new age (I have the dotcom!). But they don't believe me yet and I might very well be a little ahead of myself :-)

Whether that is true or not, it doesn't matter because we are all at a major transition that will affect our society, our way of life for many years to come. Media is how our society thinks things through and that is changing dramatically...

In the meantime, Om says that he has some seed funding. He will invest that money in creating editorial media platforms. And I can't tell you about the rest, I'm on embargo :-)

Om is heading off to London for a week, finishing up a piece for Business 2.0, then he has book projects, GigaOm and ...

Here is Om's: It's Time to Transition

"I have written about start-ups for so long, and have always wanted to see if I had the chops to build something from scratch. With well wishes and support of my community, I hope I can."

Please read the rest here:

June 12, 2006

MingleNow - social networking that mingles online and offline

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I just got an early briefing on an interesting idea for social networking coming out of BlueLithium, the online advertising agency headquartered in San Jose, CA. It's an idea developed in Blue Lithium Labs, the R&D component of the business, to solve some social networking problems of their own.

"We've earned a reputation for hosting some great parties and we wanted to put some of that experience to work in this venture," says Dakota Sullivan, chief marketing officer at BlueLithium.

This is the overview: people register with MingleNow and say where they hang out, which bars, restaurants, clubs, etc. The site will have a very large national database of nearly every social place. Users will also be able to create their own places such as a corner of a college campus, or a camp at Burningman.

"There will be a page for every place that exists in the real world and you'll be able to see pictures of the people that go to that place," says Mr Sullivan.

One of the goals/solutions is to figure out where your friends are going to be hanging out, which clubs, parties etc; it will show which places they have committed to going. "That makes it easier to decide where to go when you are planning your weekend," says Mr Sullivan.

Another aspect of this venture is the belief that the places where people hang out says a lot about their personalities and the things that they like. This makes it easier for people to "mingle" online and offline with like-minded others.

Also, restaurants and bars and clubs would be able to get feedback on menu changes, for example. And to build communities around their businesses.

Users would be able to rate those places and also rate each other for flakiness (not turning up at an event when you said you would). And users could compete for "VIP" status by inviting friends and being active in the online/offline community.

The public beta of MingleNow will be rolled out later in August, nationwide, you can preregister now. And after the US roll out, the United Kingdom is the next target.

MingleNow already has some investors interested in the venture, which will become a standalone entity. For now, BlueLithium will incubate the project.

Krishna Subramanian, is the lead developer of MingleNow, he was a former club promoter so has a lot of experience in these social areas. "We will also add a dodgeball type function to mobile platforms so that people can tell their friends where they are located," says Mr Subramanian.

He adds that there will be RSS feeds available for nearly every data point in MingleNow, allowing users to aggregate the information in many ways.

SVW's take: It's an interesting approach to social networks and Blue Lithium is taking the right approach by overlaying the online and offline worlds. There are several issues to deal with, such as the private versus pubic nature of the information, the trust aspect of the users with each other, and the gaming that will inevitably occur in the competitive restaurant/bar/club business.

It is an idea that could be extended to other businesses such as dental offices, even schools, any physical location. It will be interesting to see how groups of users will interact with MingleNow and the direction it takes might not always be the most obvious one.

Different uses might appear in different geographies. If the MingleNow platform is versatile enough, it will be able to accommodate many different groups of users. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

At Vloggercon to welcome Robert Scoble to Silicon Valley...

Photo by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.
By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

. . .I usually try to keep my weekends geek-free but Sunday afternoon I popped into VLoggerCon, the conference for video bloggers. As soon as I walked in Robert Scoble almost walked right into me, which was handy because I was instrumental in breaking the news that the top blogger in the tech community was leaving Microsoft after Andy Plesser from Beet.tv called me with the news and published it on Beet.tv..

He looked very happy. We walked outside and talked for a few minutes. I welcomed him back to Silicon Valley and congratulated him on his move to PodTech.net, the leading podcasting network.

Robert was buzzing, he had a grin as wide as the Golden Gate bridge. I told him the move was very good for his media brand, but this is stuff that he knows very well. There are some things bloggers understand very well and the key one is they know they are building a media brand and they know the ultimate value of such brands.

Robert said he officially starts at PodTech.net on July 5th. I think he'll be very happy here in Silicon Valley. Here is where the conversations are, and there are many conversations.

. . . I know that MSFT is full of really smart people but the isolation of the Redmond campus can't be good for Microsoft. Here in Silicon Valley there are far more people that will challenge your ideas and that makes for better ideas.

Every time I see Robert in Silicon Valley he is surrounded by people he already knows very well from his long time tirelessly travelling and advocating the power of blogging. He has been one of our best evangelists so it is great to see him back in Silicon Valley because the valley is coming back, and it will come back in a very big way (although not where most of the VC money thinks it is...).

Robert's wife Maryam will also be working at PodTech.net, a savvy move for John Furrier, the CEO of PodTech.net.

. . . I congratulated John Furrier on the hire of such a hot media property.

I said you've just acquired millions of dollars in publicity by hiring Robert Scoble. He just grinned and said that a top story in the Wall Street Journal was not bad.

Not bad at all. Yes, we had the story up by 5.45pm on Saturday and it took the Wall Street Journal until the following mid-afternoon to follow it up, but that demonstrates the difference between most newspapers--which take the weekend off and leave a skeleton staff to monitor blogs and news wires--and the journalist bloggers, such as myself, who are on call all the time.

The main stream media journalists are going to have to work a lot harder because no journalist likes to be scooped, and then to have to credit bloggers--that really smarts :-)

I asked Robert Scoble how the news got out. "I was mouthing off about it, but I thought people wouldn't write it about it until Monday..." Tell a bunch of bloggers something and expect them to keep quiet about it is expecting far too much. Many of them don't know what an embargo is anyway.

. . . Andy Plesser and I had a very nice dinner at the Zuni Cafe after the conference and caught up on our families and work. Andy works in PR in New York city and is new to the video blogging sector but he has already attracted a lot of attention for his interviews.

We talked about how the new media is disrupting markets and allowing the fast and the adaptable to quickly establish new media brands, such as Rocketboom.

BTW, Silicon Valley Watcher has an interview with the delightful Amanda Congdon from Rocketboom, which is bringing in $85k per week for five weekly five minute videos. (I'd keep quiet about the money Amanda :-)

. . .It was funny being at the video blogger conference because everybody had video cameras and everybody was interviewing each other! Or comparing their video cameras. (I'm on a Beet.tv interview.)

Everywhere I looked, outside of the conference sessions (just down the street from me at the Swedish-American Hall in San Francisco), people were video interviewing other people and then changing partners.

Me on Beet.tv. Photo by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.

And there were tons of people I knew, such as Chris Heuer of BrainJams, and it felt like I imagined the Homebrew Club might have felt in the early days of the microcomputer revolution, when there were just a few hundred early enthusiasts.

Dave Winer, the original blogger, of course was there, and on the microphone. He was talking about community and that he hoped we would be able to keep this community.

And I understood what he was saying because right now, it is a very cool, fun, small community all happening on our doorsteps. But as these technologies move into the mainstream and out of this small, geek engineering community it will change. And I'm not sure we can do much about that except to appreciate what we have today.

But, I know that those that start building their media brands sooner than later will do well in the new media world. You can already see it in the superstar status, and the increasing salaries of the top bloggers such as Robert Scoble, and Steve Rubel and the many other bloggers that have made a name for themselves in just a year or so.

These, and others, will become the Venetian princes of the new world :-)

. . .

Vloggercon San Francisco: Robert Scoble Speaks About Moving from Microsoft to PodTech.net

Press Release: Microsoft Robert Scoble Joins PodTech.net

June 10, 2006

Microsoft's top blogger Robert Scoble is leaving....

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher
Filed: 2006-06-10 17:27:26

Andy Plesser from Plesser Holland and the videoblog Beet.tv just called and told me Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft and will join PodTech.net, the podcasting network. He will be moving from Seattle to Silicon Valley.

Mr Scoble has sometimes expressed frustration working at Microsoft and he has also been unhappy with his compensation. He has created a tremendous amount of positive publicity for Microsoft but there have been many within the organisation that have resented his very public position. The company has not been able to control his views or his travels to various conferences and blogger meetings.

It is only within the past year that MSFT has tried to use his position as one of the most popular bloggers to its advantage, in public speaking engagements and other events. Before that, Mr Scoble had no travel buget and often would have to share hotel rooms and use his personal vacation days when speaking at various blogger conferences.

Mr Scoble might not be as interesting to some readers now that he is not at Microsoft but he is certain to retain his rock-star status within the blogging community. PodTech.net recently raised $5m in venture capital and this is a coup for the company. For the price of a salary and stock options, PodTech.net has a high profile evangelist that can create a tremendous amount of buzz for the company.

It is interesting that Microsoft did not move heaven and hell to keep him at the company given the many millions of dollars of positive publicity that the company has reaped from his efforts. He put a human face on the company during a time when many in the tech community were still upset with the company for its illegal business activities in regard to Netscape.

June 8, 2006

Readers and Cox speak out on Craigslist block by Cox Interactive

A response from Cox, and lots of great commentary from SVW readers on the issue of net neutrality and the blocking of Craigslist.org by Cox Interactive. A security suite offered by Cox, and developed for Cox by Authentium, a security software company is the culprit.

Craigslist says it has spent months trying to resolve the issue. It's the type of issue that might become more common if there are no network neutrality laws.

Here are a selection of comments in chronological order :

Sixster writes:

I live in Santa Barbara, CA. My ISP is Cox. I just tried to access craigslist.org, it did not go through. I tried again with santabarbara.craigslist.org and it went right through. I tried again with plain craigslist.org and it went through fine. Meh...

originalgeek writes:

Lyle, it doesn't matter which end of the pipe the ISP employs measures to quash traffic. My money says Authentium does this because they're getting a little payola backscratch from Cox. Follow the money.

Florian writes:

A law about net neutrality shouldn't specify which filters ISPs can use. It would only have to specify the following:

1. A service/access provider is not allowed to be a content provider, both functions must be separated.

2. A service provider must allow unrestricted access to all parts of the internet, filtering may only happen with the following aspects:
- bandwidth
- clientside but not with software provided by the ISP

3. Websites/Companies have a right to sue ISPs or for lost business, their damages may be calculated by income generated from users with other ISPs.

SWE writes:

This article doesn't touch on the fact that Cox has an even greater horse in the game than newspaper classifieds. They are part owners of Trader publishing, i.e. Auto Trader, Truck Trader, Boat Trader, etc. Probably the biggest publisher of classified ads out there.

trixare4kids writes:

It's not just Cox, though. I use COVAD and can't get in. They say it's not them. Craigslist says it's not them. I've tried everything suggested on the various forums to no avail. I've given up and taken to using an anon proxy server when I want to access craigslist from home.

Cox writes:

Cox does not block access to any legal website and Craig's List is no exception. The problem lies with how the Security Suite software interprets Craig’s List’s initial packet connections, which results in an extremely slow connection.

Authentium — the company that designed Cox's security software — is aware of the problem and their engineers have modified the firewall driver by creating a beta version that resolves the issue. This version will be part of the next release of Cox High Speed Internet Security Suite and will be available to all Cox High Speed Internet users later this summer.

AceDeuce12 writes:

Cox blocks Skype (dropping 48% of the packets) making it unusable.

I've called them and they've denied it, but when I changed out cable modems, they gave me a different IP for about 10 minutes during which time I was getting 0% packet loss and Skype was working fine. After my regular IP was reassigned back to me, it went back to 48% packet loss again.

When I pointed this out to them, they said Skype was an unreliable and second rate service and I should not expect it work. (Of course Cox sells phone service here and is a direct Skype competitor)

There is absolutely no alternative to Cox in Scottsdale, Arizona. No DSL by any provider. I have been told that Cox does not block Skype on their 'commercial services' which Cox will sell me for a mere $289/month!

John Earnhardt writes:

The rhetoric on this issue has been amazing. What Google, Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo and others are pushing for is actually MORE REGULATION of the Internet.

The internet was founded on light or no regulation and many of these companies wouldn't even exist if more regulations were put on the Internet in its infancy.

Know how many times a service provider has abused its power of access? Exactly once. And the FCC quickly acted. These companies are BILLION dollar companies and want to the government to REGULATE in order to give them an advantage. The service providers are simply saying "let the market decide." Isn't the market a better place for the Internet to flourish than Capitol Hill?

I would commend Cisco's Charlie Giancarlo's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to everyone - this is where this issue should come out. (IMHO)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114973113198074497.html

See more comments here.

Wyse tolls the bell for the corporate PC...the move to thin computing

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I recently spoke with John Kish, CEO of Wyse, a leader in thin client/thin computing systems. Wyse is also one of the companies relaunched by Garnett & Helfrich Capital, a private equity firm specializing in venture buyouts.

Wyse is in the sweet spot of the move away from fat, loaded PCs, towards very thin, high performance clients running Windows applications on a server.

With Wyse's technology combined with those from partners Citrix and VMware, users feel they are working on a high performance Windows XP PC. John Kish, CEO of Wyse, notes that this type of thin computing system offers many traditional customers of PCs significant advantages.

For example, in the corporate world the PC is a large problem. It is a target for spyware and viruses, it often contains sensisitive data about customers, and it is expensive to buy and maintain.

"The beauty of thin computing is that the client offers the same functionality as a PC but if you disconnect it from its network, it is useless, it contains no data, it becomes as useful as a doorstop," says Mr Kish.

A key difference with Wyse's solution is that it produces a client that has no flash memory, and doesn't require an X86 microprocessor. And later this summer, Wyse will announce a single-chip thin client solution along with an as yet unnamed chip maker.

With a single chip solution it can be embedded into a monitor, a keyboard, anything electronic with a network connection. Just add some DRAM and connect to a thin computing system and you have a centrally managed, high performance system that is secure from outside threats.

Mr Kish says that corporations are very interested in such solutions, especially in Japan where there are new laws that threaten company executives with jail time if sensitive customer data is exposed. "With our thin computing systems, there is no data on the local client, there is nothing to expose," he says.

With regulations such as Europe's data privacy laws, which control the use of customer data outside of Europe, a solution such as this means overseas operators can work with customer data because only the "picture" of the screen is transmitted.

The Wyse single chip solution is very inexpensive. It will use a low power consuming microprocessor design from the British company ARM, using six cores and optimized to render video, sound and graphics. Wyse has demonstrated a prototype version running 32 video streams simultaneously.

Corporations like the security of thin computing but they love the lower cost of managing thousands of PCs. With Wyse's software maintaining thousands of PC users is easily done from a single location, says Mr Kish.

Educational uses are also very attractive. Instead of having PCs in the classroom, and setting up each one for different applications, thin computing means lesson plans and applications can be loaded from one central location in minutes. And users cannot install or download potentially dangerous software.

In developing countries, thin computing solutions offer lower costs. And even in the home, thin computing is a better solution than having multiple PCs networked around the house.

Mr Kish says that Dell, HP, and others are moving towards thin computing solutions, realizing the growing demand. The potential losers in this shift of computing architectures are the white box manufacturers. These are small, local businesses that assemble PCs from off-the-shelf components.

Wyse, might seem like a hardware company, but under Mr Kish, it is rapidly moving towards being a software company. "We have technologies that we are developing that we will license to others," he says. That includes the single-chip solution which will be available to other manufacturers.

Mr Kish is no stranger to the ideas of thin computing. He worked with Terry Garnett, of Garnett & Helfrich Capital at Oracle in the early 1990s on early thin client systems. In those days, the technologies weren't there to provide a full featured PC user experience. Thin client systems developed a reputation for poor performance

But much has changed over the past ten years, we now have inexpensive high speed networks and a host of software and hardware technologies that easily enable a high quality user experience, says Mr Kish.

Getting Wyse to this point was not easy for Garnett & Helfrich Capital, which has an 80 percent stake in the company. Wyse, founded in 1981, was publicly traded in Taiwan, which meant taking it private and then carving out the part of the company that concentrated on thin computing, then recruiting the new management teams, and setting up the technology licensing pacts with partners.

Mr Kish says the most immediate business opportunities are in Asia, followed by Europe and then North America. Tiis is mainly to do with the lack of large legacy infrastructures in Asia, and European demand for lower cost computing.

- - -

Please also see: Exclusive SVW interview: Terry Garnett explains his firm's VC buyout strategy...

June 7, 2006

The new media press release - sign up!

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I've had a tremendous amount of interest in my proposal to change the press/news release into something more useful. Yes, there was a tremendous amount of pushback on my Die! Press Release Die! Die! Die! moderate proposal, but there was also a tremendous amount of support.

Yes, I should have used a less inflammatory headline. However, I wanted to make the point that the press/news release is antiquated and a tremendous waste of valuable human labor. Why not put that work towards something that I can use?

Newsrooms around the world are decimated, there are ever fewer journalists because journalism needs to find a new source of revenues. It is cheaper and more effective to sell products next to a search box than next to journalism.

Or, as I sometimes stress my point, you can sell shampoo next to a search box but not next to a news story about beheadings in Iraq.

This is an extreme example, but the fact is that journalism is not the best way to sell products and services compared with online marketing around a search box. It is cheaper to advertise next to a search box because you don't have to pay for the journalism.

When I worked for a newspaper, the Financial Times, my employer sold products and services to pay for the journalism. The reason Google et al can sell advertising cheaper than newspapers is that they don't have to pay for the journalism. Yet journalism provides a social benefit that Google et al, do not...

So who will pay for the journalism? That is what is decimating newsrooms and that is what is making it difficult to report on the news and to provide that independent analysis/comment that independent media provide society.

This is the reason why I'm advocating change. The future is about professional media and professional communicators (PR firms, corporate communications groups) becoming partners in telling truthful, honest stories.

The future for journalism and PR is about helping communities, companies, people, tell their stories. And the best stories are compelling stories. And the most compelling stories are truthful stories.

And that means no spin. That doesn't mean that you cannot comb your hair, put on some pleasant clothes and put your best side forward, as we all do when we leave the house. But it means no spin, no falsehoods, no lying.

The future calls for honest, truthful representation. Marketing, as a term will go away. Representing, being an advocate for someone, will be more meaningful than our current marketing, PR, sales terms...

And that is where the fundamental unit of company communication, the press/news release plays an important role.

In my 25 years in the business of being a news reporter the press release has not changed one iota. Yet our media world is unrecognizable today from when I started in this business. We have podcasts, vidcasts, a multitude of media at our disposal yet press/news releases rarely have more than one link in them!

My proposal:

Put a lot of links in the press/news release so that I don't have to spend time adding links. But don't put links behind everything, be judicious, do it to add value, to help readers find more information.

- Deconstruct the press release so I can have a page of analyst quotes, a page of customer quotes, a page of company executive quotes, a page of relevant articles...again, all with lots of links connecting me, or my readers with relevant information.

- Deconstruct the press/news release in such a way that things are labelled/tagged. This is the label/tag for: "Company founded date" for "today's stock price" and this is "First quarter revenues." As a publisher, I can pre-assemble the information I need to complete my news story.

As a magazine or news site, maybe I can publish my "API" so that I can receive the news information in exactly the way I want it, so I can quickly integrate it into my news flow. As a reporter, I'm still in control of my spin, my angle on a news story. But there is no reason for me to rewrite things that are facts about a company, an individual, a community.

The journalist puts the spin/angle on a news story in the first two to three paragraphs. The rest is: what the CEO said today, what the company announced that day, what it announced last week, what is stock price that day, when it was founded. It is all factual, unspinable information.

There is no reason why I should have to rewrite it. Why not quote it directly: "The company said: . . ." And text could even have a pastel colored background to tell readers: this part of the news story is from the journalist, this part of the story is from the company. It is all transparent.

So, over the next few weeks, I will be working with representatives from Edelman, Shift Communications, Eastwick, and many others that want to create a standard format, standard labels/tags for the New Media Press Release.

I've no idea what the final product will look like, but that is the good part because we can all work on figuring out these things.

Ross Mayfield, CEO of SocialText, the corporate wiki company, has put together an online collaborative space that we can use to figure out the format for the new media press release. Please drop me an email with "new media press release" in the subject title if you'd like to work on this project.

I can't claim that I know how this will work out, but it will be worth your while, I promise :-)

June 6, 2006

Intel sneak peaks sub 1 watt microprocessor plus new livingroom technologies....

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Intel (an SVW sponsor) today provided a sneak peak of its forthcoming ultra-low power Core Duo notebook microprocessor which consumes 0.75 watts of power, which would make it the lowest median average in the industry. Dell and HP will use it in a family of slim notebook computers coming out later this summer.

It was part of a series of announcements made by Intel (INTC) at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan by Intel's top sales chief Anand Chandrasekher. It also included a number of Intel technologies that are focused on home/living room applications. Excerpts from Intel's press release:

. . . Chandrasekher officially introduced the Intel® P965 Express Chipset, formerly code-named "Broadwater," and said future versions, including one with graphics built in, will ship over the next two months.
To significantly increase PC performance, the chipset incorporates Intel® Fast Memory Access, an updated Memory Controller Hub backbone architecture that optimizes the system's memory bandwidth. It also supports DDR2 or double-data rate computer memory with data transfer speeds up to 800 MHz, enabling speedy access to files and a highly responsive PC.

Chandrasekher also discussed a future integrated graphics chipset, called the G965 Express Chipset. This product will include a new feature called Intel® Clear Video Technology, which enhances high-definition video playback including those from personal video recorders and digital camcorders for sharper image viewing quality.

All of the 965 Express chipsets enable users to add a second external drive to a PC for extra data protection, Intel® High Definition Audio for theater-like sound quality and Intel® Quiet System Technology to reduce system noise and heat for a much quieter, yet higher-performing PC.

These chipsets will form the basis of systems supporting the Intel® Viiv(TM) Technology and Intel vPRO(TM) Technology platforms that will be increasingly powered by Intel Core 2 Duo processors.

Chandrasekher also disclosed that Intel will introduce the Intel® Core(TM) 2 Extreme processor at speeds of 2.93 Gigahertz in July, and a faster 3.2 Gigahertz version later in the year.

. . .Chandrasekher said that devices that pass the verification program will begin to be available later this year and will carry an "Enjoy with Intel Viiv technology" logo to make them easy for people to find.

For small to medium businesses, Intel today also introduced the Intel® 600SM PCI Phone Adapter that allows businesses to make VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls easily and seamlessly from desktop PCs using existing telephones.

The full release can be seen here: Intel Sales Chief Readies Industry With New Products, Technologies Ahead Of Widely Anticipated Processor Introductions

Dressing and driving right, to make the right deals...

Lucaso pointed this out, a great article from the San Jose Mercury about Silicon Valley and Hollywood:

When he's in the Bay Area, Tom McInerney, the 33-year-old co-founder of San Francisco online video site Guba, zips around in his ``low-end'' 325i BMW, the 2003 version. In Hollywood, he powers up a Porsche 911, the 40th anniversary model. His home in San Francisco is a Victorian. His L.A. digs are a bit splashier: a Beverly Hills penthouse perched across the street from the William Morris Agency.

From: To win deals, tech firms go Hollywood
By John Boudreau

Craigslist is being blocked by Cox Interactive - is this a net neutrality issue?

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher
Is this what the loss of net neutrality will bring?

An SVW reader left this tip:

I use Cox cable internet, Cox's media empire printed classifieds is one of their big revenue drivers. Guess what? If you try to access Craigslist over Cox Cable internet... its nearly impossible! It appears that they throttle access to craigslist - as a matter of fact there have been a zillion complaints but hey, who can blame Cox? They're trying to stop the opening cap in their money dam! Maybe you should investigate this tip further. Cheers

I did investigate further, I walked out of my apartment and across Alamo Square and popped in on Jim Buckmaster, the CEO of Craigslist. Jim was just getting back from work and I spoke with Susan Best, publicist for Craigslist. Susan said they have known about the problem with Cox.

Jim soon arrived and said the problem of access had been going on since late February. It had something to do with the security software that Cox isusing from a company called Authentium.

Cox has been collaborating with Authentium since April 2005 to develop the security software suite.

Back on February 23rd Authentium acknowledged that their software is blocking Craigslist but it still hasn't fixed the problem, more than three months later. That's a heck of long time to delete some text from their blacklist. [UPDATE: I assumed there was a blacklist-I have no idea how Craigslist is being blocked but Authentium admits its software has blocked Craigslist.] And this company also supplies security software to other large ISPs.

Craigslist has approached Authentium several times to get it to stop blocking access by Cox internet users but it has been unresponsive. Jim wasn't aware that Cox had its own classified ads service. "That changes things, " he said.

This situation does not look good in the context of the net neutrality debate. This is exactly the kind of scenario that many people are concerned about, that the cable companies and the telcos will make it difficult for their internet users to access competing services.

Here are Craigslists' system reports: If you scroll down you can see the Cox problem, and there are quite a few problems with others too: email with SBC, and also with Yahoo and BT Internet. Are those problems also related to the telcos using software that discriminates against Craigslist?

Some more related links:
From Newspapers and Technology: Cox papers adding interactive features to classifieds Sept 2005

Take a look at this story about Cox refusing to run AP video. Is it fighting for open standards are is it fighting off a competitor with a poor revenue split?
From Mark Glaser's MediaShift: Cox Newspapers Says No to AP Video

Are the telcos funding an online campaign against net neutrality? Take a look at this recent post from Mark Glaser's MediaShift: Bloggers Must Be Vigilant Against Astroturf Comments

Here is the Cox Communications site, it's called Safe is Beautiful(!)

Here is a video sent to me by writer/director Stefano Boscutti:
SAVE THE INTERNET

June 5, 2006

Transmeta's secret Microsoft project

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Transmeta today revealed a secret Microsoft (MSFT) project it has been working on for the past 18 months - a special microprocessor equipped with pay-as-you-go security technology called FlexGo.

Microsoft wants to bring cheap PC computing to billions of people who cannot afford PCs and it is promoting FlexGo as a variation on the cell phone pre-paid minutes programs. Customers pay for part of the cost of a PC up front and then pay per minute of use, along with paying off the balance of the PC cost.

Transmeta has produced a special version of its Efficeon low-power consuming microprocessor. Arthur Swift, CEO of Transmeta, told SVW: "We managed to add the FlexGo capability quickly because of the software design of our microprocessors. It would take a lot longer if you were to do it in hardware."

Advanced Micro Devices will rebrand the chip under its own name and use its distribution channels in emerging markets to deliver the chip to manufacturers.

An additional advantage is that the Efficeon microprocessor uses less electric power than regular X86 compatible microprocessors because it relies on software to emulate X86 functions. PC systems using the chip don't need a fan and can run on 12V sources of power.

SVW Take:
Bridging the digital divide could be accelerated if Microsoft were to dramatically cut the cost of its operating system and applications in emerging markets.

I'm not sure FlexGo PC buyers will like to be nickel-and-dimed for switching on their PCs and then wasting hours to figure out why they cannot print a document and being charged for it...

Also, what happens to the FlexGo component after the PC has been paid for? Will it still be checking for legitimate Windows software? Will it act as a trojan horse digital rights management component? Questions like that might make FlexGo PCs less attractive. Why not offer PCs on a rent-to-own basis, which is quite common in emerging markets and doesn't require a heavy-duty security component.

The press release is here: Transmeta Delivers Specialized Processor to Support Microsoft's Pay-as-you-go Computing With FlexGo for Emerging Markets
From Cnet's News.com:
Microsoft pitches pay-as-you-go PCs

Happy 15 year anniversary to the Horn Group!

The Horn Group is one of Silicon Valley's largest independent PR firms. It has been cropping up on my radar screen a lot more in the past two years as it has added people and has collected a solid enterprise software client list.

I've been promised an interview with Sabrina Horn, the founder, and we'll find out what trends she and her collegues are watching, and where the company is heading.

IT Reporters Rank Horn Group Best Mid-Sized Firm

Please see SVW : The time Sabrina almost danced on a table...

Stop the MediaNews "media monopoly"?

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Thursday evening my buddy Tom Abate, senior business reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle invited me to join him at a Media Alliance event at the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center (why no heterosexual?) in San Francisco: The Coming Media Monopoly: Concentration of Press Ownership and Its Effects.
[I tried to get in for free and save $5 by saying I was with the media :-) ]

MediaNews, the new owner of the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, will soon control nearly two-thirds of local daily newspaper circulation; the two largest weekly newspaper chains, Village Voice and New Times, merged; and there's been an escalating scramble by several large media companies to control the expanding market for ethnic and foreign-language readers. Can journalism survive in an era of Wall Street mergers and acquisitions?

Panelists included: Linda Foley, president of the Newspaper Guild, Tim Redmond, editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Sandy Close founder of New America Media, Stephen Buel, editor of the East Bay Express and others. Moderated by Erna Smith professor of journalism at San Francisco State University.

There were no bloggers represented, no online media at all, no radio, no TV. It was all from the point of view of the newspaper industry as if there were no other media worth discussing.

Tim Redmond pushed the tired line that corporate owned newspapers don't want competition and independent alternative newspapers are better. And that MediaNews has a monopoly on local news and that's a bad thing.

Stephen Buel made some very astute observations, pointing out that corporate versus independent ownership of alternative newspapers was not necessarily a bad thing, it often meant professional standards and professional management improved the journalism.

Sandy Close spoke about community, and the lack of diversity in the media, and how will communities have their voices heard in this fractured media world.

Linda Foley was very interesting. She clearly sees the writing on the wall in regards to the problems facing the newspaper industry and realises that things have to change drastically so that local communities can support their local newspapers. She and her union are against the MediaNews acquisition of the San Jose Mercury News and the deal with the San Francisco Chronicle that makes partners out of former competitors.

Ms Foley made some great observations, such as about adopting a code of ethics for journalists. She said that means that those in other professions and in other businesses also have to adopt ethical codes.

She also said that her union is still working with bankers trying to set up a management buyout of several Knight-Ridder newspapers. She was told that bankers/investors like it when workers own their own companies and she liked the scenario of workers owning their newspapers.

It was a long evening because the many panelists promised brevity but each ended up speaking for a very long time. As Tom Abate pointed out, journalists like the sound of their own voices.

Finally, it was question time and I stood up and pointed out that professional journalism is under attack. There is less professional journalism now than ever before and that is because it is more effective to sell products next to a search box than next to journalism.

You can sell shampoo next to a search box but you can't sell shampoo next to a news story about beheadings in Iraq.

And the reason Google and the others can sell advertising cheaper than the newspapers is that they don't have to pay for the journalism. My former employer at the Financial Times sold advertising to pay for the journalism.

Google, Craigslist and all the other fine internet service companies can sell advertising very cheaply because they don't have to pay for the journalism.

But journalism is a social good. Yes, it varies in quality, but media is how society thinks things through, it is how it tackles serious problems. And we need a professional media to make sure the information we have is of high quality yet the professional media is being decimated. Citizen media is great but it is amateur and produces mostly amateur results, it isn't able to fill the information gap.

I also advised that the workers not buy their own newspapers (just yet) because this is a way to squeeze even more concessions out of them. The management of the newspapers is still way behind in understanding what is happening to the economics of their business and in many cases, stuck in the headlights like a deer.

IMHO, it is much better to have the workers walk across the street and start with a clean slate and not have the crusty legacy culture and processes of their current employer. They can buy their former brand once the rest of it crumbles away...

I went on and on in this manner for quite a while, taking my lead from the panel, before being forced to ask my question: what will be the new economic model for journalism?

The panel wasn't able to answer that question because there is no answer yet. But, I know parts of the answer. And I know the panel knows part of the answer.

And the answer is not in opposing the MediaNews ownership of the local newspaper chains--that is a product of the poor economics of that business and the need for even more cost cutting.

In part 2 - I'll share with you my thinking about the emerging new economics of media and how society will pay for professional media.

Please see Tom Abate at MiniMediaGuy.org: Media monopoly or oversupply?
- - -
Congratulations to Media Alliance, which celebrates its 30th anniversary! The celebration is coming up:

Keynote speech by Lakshmi Chaudhry, Senior Editor, In These Times magazine:
"Blogs in the Real World"

When: Wednesday, June 14 2006 @ 06:30 PM PDT - 09:00PM

Where: Mission Cultural Center
2868 Mission Street, at 25th Street
1 block from 24th Street BART

June 2, 2006

First Fridays with Foremski: Today at the new de Young 6 to 8

It is the first Friday of the month - come join me at the new de Young museum in Golden Gate Park from 6 to 8. The museum is open until 8.45pm, there is music, food and cocktails (ask Ray to make you a Green Fairy :-).

Stop by and say hi, I'll be wandering around, in the gardens and inside the building. This is not a business or tech event, there is no free food or drinks. It is about connecting rather than networking...

AMD Tech Day: Forecasts continued gains against Intel

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I caught part of Advanced Micro Devices' Tech Day in Sunnyvale on Thursday. AMD has managed to do well with its Opteron server microprocessor by concentrating on extending the 32-bit X86 platform to 64 bits without having to jump to a new architecture, as Intel (Intel is a sponsor of SVW) did with Itanium.

And its focus on lower electric power consumption with Opteron servers was timed almost perfectly, as the price of oil skyrocketed over the past couple of years.

I keep hearing of data centers that would love to add more computing power but they cannot get any more electric power. Opteron servers are one way to pack more computing power into the same electric power grid.

Intel has made some bets that did not work out as well as it expected. The Itanium 64 microprocessor line has been a very tough road for the company, and Opteron has been a thorn in its side.

But once Intel readjusts its course and goes after a market it is very difficult to compete against its ability to crank out millions of chips from very high yields in its chip fabs. This manufacturing prowess is Intel's core strength and it can ramp up the production of large, complex chips more quickly than anyone else.

Since January 2000, AMD, under CEO Hector Ruiz, has beefed up its manufacturing and has improved its yields over the past few years. But low manufacturing yields used to plague the company for many years.

Wall Street analysts will be watching AMD like hawks to see if it can execute on its manufacturing plans and obtain high yields. With a large fixed cost asset such as a $3bn chip fab, it is imperative to obtain large numbers of working chips from each wafer, otherwise the losses can quickly mount.

The pressure is on for AMD to execute extremely well on the manufacturing side, any slip up would benefit Intel and erase any market gains.

The market gains for AMD have been significant--especially in the server market where it has about a quarter of the market. [See BusinessWeek: AMD: Chipping Away At Intel's Lead] But hanging onto those gains won't be easy as Intel makes use of its leading chip manufacturing technologies to shrink the size of its server chips, which also shrinks power consumption, and reduces prices.

AMD also spoke about thin clients/thin computing and understands that there is a trend emerging within corporations, and to some degree in the home, towards a fat server-thin client based systems where the user experience is the same as a full featured fat PC client. However, it talks about offering a family of X86 based microprocessors designed for a wide variety of thin client/thin computing applications.

The X86 architecture is unnecessary in such applications because less expensive, low-power consuming, high performance architectures are available, such as the British ARM microprocessor. There is no need to run applications locally in a thin computing environment therefore no advantage to using a general purpose X86 microprocessor. You just need something which can quickly render video and audio bits.

Intel has a special developer license for ARM that enables it to develop specialized versions. I could easily imagine a rival Intel family of chips based on multi-core ARM designs optimized for thin computing applications. This would be a more potent combination than X86 architectures similarly optimized.

It would be ironic if Intel were to pitch ARM designs against AMD's X86 based designs in the thin computing market. But stranger things have happened.

Next week I'll bring you the perspective of thin computing leader Wyse Technology and my interview with its savvy CEO John Kish. Wyse, BTW, along with its chip partner, Wyse will be launching a six-core ARM based single chip solution for thin computing applications in a couple of months. It will have graphics and audio capabilities and is designed for Flash-less systems. Wyse has demonstrated this single chip solution running 32 video streams.

A single chip solution means thin computing capabilities can be easily embedded into monitors, keyboards, cell phones - anything electronic with a network connection. And you'll get the same performance as a fully configured Windows XP desktop computer thanks to streaming technologies from Wyse, and strategic partners Citrix and VMware. More details next week...

- - -

Dirk Meyer, president and COO presentation:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/Dirk_Meyer_6-10-05.pdf

June 1, 2006

My two-year anniversary as a blogger . . . and two new sponsors!

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

It was two years ago today that I left the comfort of the Financial Times San Francisco bureau, the six-figure salary/benefits package, the six-weeks of vacation, and the generous sabbaticals every four years, to become a journalist blogger. I didn't realize at the time that I was the first mainstream media journalist to leave one of the world's top newspapers to try to become a professional journalist blogger.

I did not know what I was getting myself into, but I had a gut feeling that it was the right time. I had no idea of what the business model would be but I knew a few things. I knew that things would get better for me, but for newspapers the writing was on the wall (or at least online :-)

Two companies soon offered to sponsor my venture, Tibco and Infineon Technologies. I didn't ask for the money but I was glad to have it, even though I spent it very quickly and was forced to dig deep into my savings and cash out much of my IRA account.

I wanted to make sure that I had a good editorial product before I pitched for additional sponsors. Getting to that point has been incredibly challenging and incredibly rewarding.

The money constraints meant that I couldn't keep my editorial teams. It also meant that my electric power was cut off for several days not too long ago. And in the last month, I had run out of money to pay my rent, and I had zero money for my family support payments. The support from my sponsors came in the nick of time, otherwise I'd now be blogging from a friend's couch and sneaking bandwidth from tolerant neighbors, and maybe even pocketing food from press events for my kids...

I might be poorer but I am incredibly richer for the experience of the last two years. I have met and connected with an amazing number of fascinating people and I feel part of a community. I'm incredibly happy to be involved in the emergence of this new media, and in the innovation that is happening within a rapidly transforming media sector.

And I'm very happy on this anniversary to announce that Tibco continues into its second year as sponsor of Silicon Valley Watcher. And to also announce that Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, and Edelman the world's largest independent PR firm join as Leader Sponsors. And I will announce other Leader Sponsors as soon as I get the clearance.

The sponsorship support will go towards building an editorial team and expanding Silicon Valley Watcher into a top class news organisation focused on the business and culture of Silicon Valley. This region is the world's engine of innovation, it is where the future is being created every day.

I'd like to thank my current and soon-to-be-announced sponsors for their support and their partnership. Sponsorship means that SVW doesn't have to sell advertising campaigns and it can focus on producing high quality journalism, exclusive content, and have a stable monthly revenue base.

Our Leader Sponsors will be able to showcase their thought leadership in SVW through special columns, and also experiment with new approaches to publishing their expertise. In this way we will all help birth the new media, its new formats, and hopefully collect a series of best practices that many others can share.

And I thank my readers for their support. Wherever I go in Silicon Valley, from the trenches to the boardrooms, people tell me: I read you and I share you with my teams. I couldn't ask for anything better than that. Thank you.

Vivisimo: the search engine company from Pittsburgh

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I recently met with Raul Valdes-Perez, the CEO and co-founder of search engine company Vivisimo. It is not a well known company but it is one that is doing very well, and doing it very profitably--all without any venture capital money.

I first met Mr Valdes-Perez nearly two years ago. At the time, this Pittsburgh, PA based company was ready to take on Google and the others with its unique technology that can index information into subject groups or clusters, by automatically detecting the underlying taxonomy within a set of information, on-the-fly.

Founded in June 20002 by Carnegie Mellon University researchers, Vivisimo offered an new approach to search. I became intrigued by the promises of Vivisimo's technology. I wondered if it could be used in other ways too; if it might reveal emerging social trends before they become visible in traditional ways.

And the clustering approach always seemed much more useful for researching various topics. For example, by seeing the various groupings of a term, i.e.. "bond" which could be James Bond, or a chemical bond, or a family bond--you could find unexpected, serendipitous connections to a term without requiring serendipity to reveal them.

I would sometimes fantasize about using Vivisimo's technology for local search sites. I own the domain names SearchSiliconValley.com and SearchBayArea.com, and the same "searchxyz.com" format for the San Francisco Bay Area counties and towns. Vivisimo's spider is not designed to crawl the entire web, but it is very good at crawling thousands of web sites, perfect for specialized applications, such as indexing a specific region. Clustering the results would be a great way to quickly find all the local Mexican restaurants, or public libraries, and many other uses.

One of these days I might get to try out Vivisimo's technology for such an application, but in the meantime the company has been doing very well in the enterprise search market, especially in government applications. Earlier this year it won a prestigious contract, following stiff competition, to provide the search technology for FirstGov.gov, the official portal for the US government.

Search results are from government web sites and also from related web sites outside of the government, and Vivisimo has been winning considerable praise for a much improved search experience.

I was glad to hear that Vivisimo was doing well. And Mr Valdes-Perez was kind enough to remind me of some advice I gave him a while ago, when Vivisimo was launching Clusty.com, the consumer version of its technology, and dreaming of taking on and winning against Google and the others.

The advice I gave was that the noise level in the consumer search space would soon become very intense and would require massive amounts of money to stay visible. For a small company such as Vivisimo, it would not be a game it could play without having to raise considerable capital. For Vivisimo, the opportunities would be in more specialized approaches where it could offer unique advantages, and fly under the radar while the big companies battled for the prized consumer markets.

And that's what the company has been doing. Apart from its FirstGov and other government related business, it is also doing well in the Life Sciences arena, where finding clusters of information is exceedingly important. And there are other such opportunities in other industries.

Clusty.com did not usurp Google, but it is a very good business for Vivisimo. "Clusty gave us experience in creating simple user interfaces. Too often, our competitors in the enterprise search space pay very little attention to the user interface, which makes their products difficult to use." says Mr Valdes-Perez.

Specialized search applications such as the FirstGov contract require specialized approaches unique to each implementation. FirstGov for example, requires at least 58 boolean terms for each search query. And the algorithm has to distinguish between different parts of the web page--not all dot-gov web pages are created or formatted in the same way.

The Google, Yahoo, Microsoft approach to search is far more general than the tuned, specialized approach taken by Vivisimo. And that means the search giants won't find it that easy to expand into the enterprise search markets.

Mr Valdes-Perez is also a critic of the behavioral technologies that the large search engine companies use to try and improve the search experience by collecting personal data. Clusty.com does not collect any user data which means that there can be no privacy breaches, accidental or subpoenaed.

"Users search based on their whims at the time, and not on past behavior. It is much better to provide a user with several options on what they are searching for and allow them to choose," he says.

That certainly makes sense to me. I hardly ever run the same search twice (except for ego surfing :-) so why collect my personalized search data?

June 2006 Archives

June 30, 2006

Chris Heuer is the project lead: Signups for the new media press release (really!)

June 28, 2006

US is losing its lead warns chip industry -- but business is good

June 27, 2006

Green Border: The need to rebuild confidence in consumer online shopping

The PC-ization of the comms industry - Intel changes tack with chip group sale

Rivlin tries again to return to Manhattan; Volgelstein's fortune is at Wired; Rafat Ali's fortune is coming; Warren outsources his philanthropy; Om My God! plus: a summer evening escape to SF MOMA

June 26, 2006

Intel says it will win back server market share from AMD

June 25, 2006

Intel intros its Opteron killers

June 22, 2006

Sabrina Horn: Celebrating 15 years of the Horn Group

We need competition not net neutrality otherwise Web 2.0 dies on the vine

Horn Group's salon on top of the Clift

June 21, 2006

Intel + HP 's data center push - saving power and saving labor

June 20, 2006

UPDATE: Gmail outage... GOOG's sagging infrastructure breaks down

Sun layoffs announcement coming this Thursday

June 19, 2006

Craigslist founder responds on Cox/Craigslist block

June 15, 2006

Leaving Microsoft: First Robert Scoble then Bill Gates...what's going on!?

Why is there no British Google? A top British politician asks...

June 14, 2006

SVW crypto-scoops and the New York Times...

Hot new vidstars mix with hipsters and geeks at vidblogging fest

June 13, 2006

Baynote - community driven enterprise search

Dinner with GigaOm - a transition

June 12, 2006

MingleNow - social networking that mingles online and offline

At Vloggercon to welcome Robert Scoble to Silicon Valley...

June 10, 2006

Microsoft's top blogger Robert Scoble is leaving....

June 8, 2006

Readers and Cox speak out on Craigslist block by Cox Interactive

Wyse tolls the bell for the corporate PC...the move to thin computing

June 7, 2006

The new media press release - sign up!

June 6, 2006

Intel sneak peaks sub 1 watt microprocessor plus new livingroom technologies....

Dressing and driving right, to make the right deals...

Craigslist is being blocked by Cox Interactive - is this a net neutrality issue?

June 5, 2006

Transmeta's secret Microsoft project

Happy 15 year anniversary to the Horn Group!

Stop the MediaNews "media monopoly"?

June 2, 2006

First Fridays with Foremski: Today at the new de Young 6 to 8

AMD Tech Day: Forecasts continued gains against Intel

June 1, 2006

My two-year anniversary as a blogger . . . and two new sponsors!

Vivisimo: the search engine company from Pittsburgh

- The Less talked about feature in New Xeons.

Comments

GirishLaikhra on Dimdim: Avoiding 'SOS' - sick office syndrome

Gerry Corbett on Tech Awards For Humanity: "Cash Prizes" Galore And Al Gore's Meaningless Speech . . . And Amazing Laureates!

Tom Foremski on The Death Of The Search Algorithm? Techmeme Has Six Editors

Atul Arora on The Death Of The Search Algorithm? Techmeme Has Six Editors

Joseph Kingsbury, Text 100 on SNCR Research: Social Media IS Influencing Business Decisions

Tom Foremski on The Death Of The Search Algorithm? Techmeme Has Six Editors

Tom Foremski on The Death Of The Search Algorithm? Techmeme Has Six Editors

Atul Arora on The Death Of The Search Algorithm? Techmeme Has Six Editors

Marshall Clark on The Death Of The Search Algorithm? Techmeme Has Six Editors

Tom Foremski on The Death Of The Search Algorithm? Techmeme Has Six Editors

Ian Lamont on The Death Of The Search Algorithm? Techmeme Has Six Editors

Tom Foremski on SNCR Research: Social Media IS Influencing Business Decisions

Joseph Kingsbury, Text 100 on SNCR Research: Social Media IS Influencing Business Decisions

Greg Golebiewski on MediaWatch Analysis: Murdoch Will Negotiate Payment For Access To Basket Of Content With GOOG et al

Tom Foremski on MediaWatch Analysis: Murdoch Will Negotiate Payment For Access To Basket Of Content With GOOG et al

Tom Foremski on A Saturday Post: The Internet Devalues Everything It Touches, Anything That Can Be Digitized

Greg Golebiewski on MediaWatch Analysis: Murdoch Will Negotiate Payment For Access To Basket Of Content With GOOG et al

Mr. Reality Check on A Saturday Post: The Internet Devalues Everything It Touches, Anything That Can Be Digitized

Mr. Reality Check on A Saturday Post: The Internet Devalues Everything It Touches, Anything That Can Be Digitized

Peter Holsgrove on Analysis On Murdoch And Switching Off GOOG: The Dirty Little Secret About Search Engine Traffic...