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September 2006 Archives

September 29, 2006

Superstar VCs and YouTube; IWantMedia; Free domains? PhishTank is coming; $70 PCs; SCNR in Boston

. . . What do superstar VCs watch on YouTube
From my friends over at Beet.tv:

I thought you might enjoy this one. Andy and I saw Roger McNamee yesterday at MIT. We taped his thoughts on the proliferation of video. He also says he enjoys Keith Olbermann clips, and ones of baby pandas in China:

http://www.beet.tv/2006/09/superstar_vc_ro.html

. . . From the excellent I Want Media Daily e-newsletter, Patrick Phillips and team at NYU . . . :-)

Google, Yahoo 'Don't Have to Pay for Journalism'
A change in media business models has been created by the simple fact that it is more effective to sell products and services next to a search box than next to journalism, writes Tom Foremski, a Financial Times reporter-turned-blogger. "How will we pay for professional journalism?"

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/09/two_years_ago_i_1.php

http://iwantmedia.com/

. . . Also from I Want Media:

U.S. Media 'in Decline Worldwide'
American media are experiencing a decline in world audience market share, according to British media expert Jeremy Tunstall, author of the forthcoming book "The Media Were American." India, China and Japan now have media exports that equal, or exceed, their media imports.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5967_1808511,001600060016.htm

I wonder how soon US online media companies such as Google, Yahoo, etc will face a similar decline in market audience?

http://iwantmedia.com/

. . . Is OpenDomain.org altruistic or business savvy?

OpenDomain offers free use of domain names to open source software communities.

Ric Johnson, president of OpenDomain.Org. "We don't sell domains nor do we transfer them. Instead, we buy domains so organizations that share our view of responsible open sourcing can use them for free in promoting these open technologies.

However, OpenDomain keeps ownership, which could be a big problem in the future. It should give them away not keep them, so that open source communities can keep control over the future of their own online address.

http://www.opendomain.org/

. . . OpenDNS is launching PhishTank on Monday

PhishTank is a collaborative clearing house for data and information about phishing and malware on the Internet.

http://www.phishtank.com/comingsoon/

. . . We don't need no stinkin' $100 MIT laptops

Especially since we can get a $70 PC. That's what South Korean firm nComputing showed at DEMO.

http://www.ncomputing.com/ncomputing/index.php

. . . Coming up the Society of New Communications Research conference

Inaugural Society for New Communications Research Symposium & Awards Gala, November 1 - 2 at the Colonnade Hotel in Boston, Mass. Be the first to hear the results of our 2006 research initiatives and winning case studies from around the globe. Receive a copy of the first Journal of New Communications Research. Help us determine our 2007 research agenda and hear about developing standards for social media initiatives.

View the entire program and session descriptions here.

HP: When lawyers play spies

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

HP's leak investigations look outright ridiculous in an internal report released by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce yesterday. Investigators focused on the language in a CNet story to help finger George Keyworth as the source of the leak, the Times reports today.

The scrutiny included intricately parsing the language of a Jan. 23 CNet article in which Dawn Kawamoto, a reporter for the service, described a board meeting that month. The article quoted an anonymous source as saying, “By the time the lectures were done at 10 p.m., we were pooped and went to bed.”
Like Kremlinologists (or maybe Encyclopedia Brown), the investigators for Hewlett-Packard drilled in on the use of the word “pooped.”
“This is also an unusual term,” the report reads. “A number of key witnesses interviewed indicated that contrary to a number of members of the board, Keyworth often uses casual, colloquial terms in conversation, so this is a term he may use.”
The investigators also focused — in that same CNet quote — on the use of the word “lectures.”
“This is an academic term, rarely used in the business environment. Keyworth is the only board member with an academic background.”

This is the report that Hunsaker delivered to Mark Hurd, Ann Baskins and the board. <

Interestingly, it was Carly Fiorina who initially encouraged Keyworth to strike up a relationship with CNet's Dawn Kawamoto to promote HP's aggressive moves.

Further clues were available in the story. Kawamoto cited only a single "source," in the singular.

One of the first things the investigation team noted is that Kawamoto always cites just one ‘source’ rather than citing ‘sources’ or ‘people familiar with the situation,’ like other reporters who more frequently cover H.P. do,” the report theorized.

And pretexting revealed that Kawamoto called Keyworth at home at 5:25 pm on the day before the story ran. Investigators with Kawamoto's records knew she hadn't called 411 and thus knew Keyworth's number.

The investigators also received reports about Perkins' and Keyworth's arguments during a break in the heated March board meeting.

“The arguments were mainly one-sided, with Keyworth intently speaking and even pointing his finger at Perkins’ chest several times. At the very end of the second argument/heated discussion, Keyworth was overhead saying: ‘They don’t have enough to go there.’ ”

Germany loves LG15; Podshow funding shows a bubble; Women-led startups

. . . LonelyGirl15 wrap up

Uncovering the identity of LonelyGirl15 vidstar "Bree" was a great scoop for SVW, (closely followed by an SVW scoop on EMC acquiring Network Intelligence.) Google found 27,400 pages mentioning the LG15 scoop.Scoops always attract traffic and some of it continues to return, which is why scoops are very important for any news publication.

Looking at my server logs was interesting. Even though SVW made it to the front page of the New York Times, three times more traffic came from another news publication, Germany's prestigious Spiegel.

- http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzkultur/0,1518,436783,00.html

. . . Jason Calacanis on Podshow raising another $15m.

Lest there be no question, we are now in a full-blown bubble. What on earth Podshow is going to do with almost $25M in funding is anyone's guess, but it's not going to end well I can tell you that. To raise this money they must have had a $35-60M pre-money valuation. That means the VCs are going to look for a $300-500M exit at the very least, and that means they need to get to $30-50M in revenue. Not sure I see that happening.

Link to OK folks... now it's a bubble - The Jason Calacanis Weblog

. . . Women tech entrepreneurs conference Oct 5

The Women's Technology Cluster's Entrepreneur Venture Conference (EVC) is a showcase for women-led startups.

Women's Technology Cluster - San Francisco

Also SVW interview: Telle Whitney, head of the Anita Borg Institute

September 28, 2006

Morning questioning of Dunn and Sonsini

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

A rough transcript of the morning questioning of Dunn and Sonsini.

Rep. Ed Whitfield:

Q: Mr. Sonsini, did you understand that pretexting was occurring?

A: At that particular time, I didn't understand pretexting. I turned to Baskins and Hunsaker and said we should respond to Perkins. Hunsaker sent me a report, Baskins sent confirming email, and I took that and went to Perkins and said, It appears it was done within legal limits.

Q: Ms. Dunn, did you receive opinion about the legality?

A: I didn't get a legal opinion. Hunsaker reported to me that every method was legal.

Q: We've determined the only legal opinion ever given was by John Kiernan, the lawyer for Delia, and the opinion was actually written by a law clerk. It would appear that HP at the highest level relied on opinion by the law clerk of an attorney who worked for a private investigator.

A: There was a memo with a second opinion that said it was legal.

Q: What was that?

A: It was not produced by the company.

Q: Mr. Sonsini: The California penal code prohibits fraudulently obtaining information from a public utility by false pretenses.

A: We concluded methods may have been used that implicated that statute.

Diana DeGette, (D-CO)

Q: Mr. Sonsini, as outside counsel, is this standard business practice in the industry to investigate leaks in this way?

A: I have never dealt with an investigation of this kind from a board.

Q: Pretexting?

A: No

Q: Going through trash?

A: Not to my knowledge

Q: Creating fake employee to sting a reporter?

A: No

Q: As counsel to HP, were you consulted about the scope and methods?

A: No.

Q: You received a memo that discusses the procedures, including "obtained ... 3rd party phone records ... including reporters phone records." And there's a footnote asserting the methodologies were all legal.

A: I focused on that footnote. I was concerned by scope of the investigation

Q: What did you do?

A: Nothing further. I asked Baskins about legality.

Q: Did you research it?

I was assured it was legal.

Q: Ms. Dunn says she didn't supervise the investigation. So Baskins gets opinion saying its OK and you rely on that opinion. It all seems very circular.

A: The investigation was done by HP legal. It wasn't until it was over that I was asked about it.

Q: Ms. Dunn: This fictitious Jacob character ... is it common practice to make up fake characters at HP?

A: I do not know. I would not come to my attention if it were. I really can't answer your question.

Q: You ordered the investigation.

A: I initiated it at the request of board. I was nonexecutive chairman.

Q: Look at Tab 21, Hunsaker says to Gentilucci. We need to get approval of Mark, Ann and Pattie. Tab 60 (2/26//06) Hunsaker email: "Here is the email we sent to Dawn Kawamoto. You knew this operation was going on.

A: Yes

Q: Did you think there was a problem with this?

A: At no time was I responsible for designing its methods ... This did raise a concern. I didnt' want to be the person who authorized it.

Q: What did you do about it

A: I sent the team to management for approval.

Q: Who was that?

A: Mr. Hurd.

Q: What did you say to Hurd?

A: I dont remember a conversation. I told the team to talk to Hurd.

Q: You didnt mention it to anyone?

A: I asked Hurd to look into it. I understand they gained the approval they were seeking.

Q: Mr. Sonsini, you saw a report that talks about Jacob. Were you familiar with it? Did you have concerns?

A: That was not my focus I was retained to do.

Chairman Barton:

Q: Ms. Dunn: You claim your position is unique in that you dont have direct staff. Who reports to you?

A: No one.

Q: You're an administrative adjunct to the board

A: Its a coordinator role.

Q: There were leaks from board meetings

A: Yes.

Q: Was the board divided or unified? Were there schisms?

A: After I became chairman, I became highly cognizant of deep schisms on the board.

Q: What steps did the board take before you resorted to these sordid methods?

A: The first inquiry began under Carly. She asked Sonsini to talk to every director one on one and seek confession of the leaker and to reassert their commitment to confidentiality. The reason the board was so concerned was that no one had come forward to admit leaking.

Q: How were you directed?

A: Next to finding the new ceo, my top priority was to identify the leaks. Seven of the nine directors came to me and asked me to investigate the leaks.

Q: There was never a vote?

A: No.

Q: Kona 1 used pretexting?

A: I believe it did. I'm sorry I've just been corrected. ... I dont know.

Q: When did you learn pretexting was being used?

A: In the sense of the word we're using it today - fraudulently - this was not something I understood until July 2006 as a possible component of either investigation.

Q: Did you clear this with Hurd?

A: He wasn't with HP in the period when i was first named chairman.

Q: Who did you call?

A: Bob Wayman, the longserving CFO of HP.

Q: You had no management responsibility.

A: He was a fellow director.

Q: He was one of the directors who wanted to investigate

A: Yes. He directed me to Huska, who directed me to Delia.

Q: Was this personal? Was this do whatever takes?

A: There was never any question the board expected the investigation to be done legally and ethically.

Q: Well if seven of nine wanted it, I would start with the two who didnt

Q: I provided informatin to investigators about who wanted it and who didnt it. I was

Q: If I called you up and asked for your phone records, would you give me that?

A: If I understand ...

Q: No. I just called you up?

A: In your position, I would.

Q: Well, praise the Lord. I wouldn't give you mine

A: I hope that doesn't mean you have something to hide.

Q: If I want your records as a congressman, I can get them via subpoena. But as an individual I can't just peruse your records without permission. And i shouldn't be able to. This committee is concerned because use of pretexting ignores what most people understand as right and wrong.

Opening statements of Dunn, Sonsini, Adler

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Opening statements from Dunn, Sonsini and Adler.

Patricia Dunn:

All corporate directors have a solemn duty of confidentiality. Leaks create unfair advantages to some stockholders over others. When HP board asked me to become chairman, I expected challenges but I never imagined these circumstances could ever occur.

I took the mandate to stop leaks seriously. As detailed in written testimony, she sought out Bob Wayman, acting CEO and CFO. He referred her to Kevin Huska, global security, who led her to Delia. In talking to Delia, she learned that checking phone records was SOP and were drawn from public sources.

In Jan. 06, there were leaks about CSC acquisition. Baksins felt strongly that Hunsaker should run the investigation. He brought in the same team for Kona II as Kona I. His draft report was given to Dunn and Hurd. I requested and received assurances that investigation was legal and proper.

In June Sonsini told her Perkins raised concerns. Sonsini concluded "the process well done and within legal limits." He later told the board the methods were not generally unlawful.

I deeply regret that so many people - including me - by were deeply let down this reliance. I hope that Congress enacts legislation to protect themselves from leakers.

Larry Sonsini:

Wilson Sonsini was not involved in the design or conduct of Kona 1 or 2. I was not even aware of them when they were being conducted. HP asked WS to provide legal advice.

In my opinion, pretexting is plainly wrong. They should not be used by businesses or anyone. When we were asked by board, although generally pretexting was not specifically unlawful, we could not confirm the methods used in the investigation were legal.

Although pretexting is clearly wrong, the law is not as clear as it could be. As the chairman said, it is probably illegally. It needs to be clearly illegal.

A board cannot function effectively if its most sensitive deliberations are leaked to outsiders. Boards are greatly weakened without confidentiality. HP remains a company we can all be proud of.

Fred Adler, HP IT security investigations

I became uncomfortable when I learned of the investigatory techniques. One must understand legal issues around obtaining records. HP employees sign agreement to give company records from computers, email, phone records. Information we use to make inquiries must comply with law.

When we grew concerned, a coworker and I brought matter to attention of managers. We raised concerns with counsel. We were advised by counsel that investigation was legal. Those opinions have since been questioned.

Baskins, Hunsaker, contractors all take the Fifth

By Richard Koman

All of the witnesses on the first panel are pleading the Fifth as I write this. The witnesses are Ann Baskins, Kevin Hunsaker, Anthony Gentilucci, Ron DeLia, and owners and subcontractors to Action Research.

The committee is seething that the entire panel pled the Fifth, since only two witnesses previously said they would do so. One representative called the hearing a "waste of the committee's time, a waste of witness's time."

The second panel is Dunn and Sonsini. They're being sworn in now.

Rep. Ed Markey on the HP scandal

Ed Markey addresses the subcommittee:

What has happened to our corporate culture? We used to ask who does your PR? Now will we have to ask, so who does your spying? That is what this whole area has opened up. HP's website says 'the company respects your privacy."
What were they thinking? I am concerned officials are suffering from Sgt. Shulz syndrome. Some are saying I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I know nothing. That is not believable. Where were the lawyers? Some are suggesting that ambiguities in existing law made it difficult for lawyers to determine legality. This is absolutely absurd. What happened is already illegal. Section 5 of FTC Act makes pretexting illegal. The Telecom Act of 1996, section 222 clearly states customers phone records can only be revealed to customer or someone with permission. Wire fraud laws also prohibit pretextiing. Congress must act to ensure this never happens again.
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HP Hearings: Barton focuses on Sonsini, others point to violation of public trust

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Rep. Joe Barton points out that Larry Sonsini signed off on the pretexting ops back in April, and demands to know how he didn't wave a red flag, rather than saying "such operations are not generally illegal." He and other reps have asked, why are so many principles refusing to testify today if the actions were so legal?
A common thread in the opening statements is that the public will expect HP's actions are common throughout the Valley and the whole corporate world and that public will fear that their own private records may be searched. "Is corporate America the next big brother, Rep. Tammy Baldwin said in her opening statements.
Most members of the subcommittee are pointing to an anti-pretexting bill the committee reported out this summer, which died in a "black hole" on the Hill. lt's pretty obvious that another bill will be passed and that House leadership will be hard-pressed to sit on it after all this.
September 28, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: HP [HPQ]
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HP Hearings: Barton focuses on Sonsini, others point to violation of public trust

By Richard Komanfor SiliconValleyWatcher

Rep. Joe Barton points out that Larry Sonsini signed off on the pretexting ops back in April, and demands to know how he didn't wave a red flag, rather than saying "such operations are not generally illegal." He and other reps have asked, why are so many principles refusing to testify today if the actions were so legal?
A common thread in the opening statements is that the public will expect HP's actions are common throughout the Valley and the whole corporate world and that public will fear that their own private records may be searched. "Is corporate America the next big brother, Rep. Tammy Baldwin said in her opening statements.
Most members of the subcommittee are pointing to an anti-pretexting bill the committee reported out this summer, which died in a "black hole" on the Hill. lt's pretty obvious that another bill will be passed and that House leadership will be hard-pressed to sit on it after all this.
September 28, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: HP [HPQ]
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Dunn: I thought it was legal

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

UPDATE: Dunn will take the Fifth. What about Hurd?

How did Pattie Dunn come to work directly with Ron DeLia for HP's anti-spying probe? In her written testimony (PDF) today, she says she was pointed by Bob Wayman, then the acting CEO, to Kevin Huska, HP's global security chief. Huska referred her to DeLia, whom, she says, worked almost exclusively for HP. Thus, "I did not hird the private investigators who were involved in the Kona ... investigations. They were already under contract to HP when the leak investigation was initiated."
She relied on DeLia to understand the legality of the operation:
As a matter of course I asked Mr. Delia at every point of contact for his representation that everything being done was proper, legal and fully in compliance with HP's normal practices. ... At some point during the late spring of 2005, I became aware from Mr. Delia that phone records were accessed as a standard component of such investigations from HP. The clear impression I had from Mr. Delia was that such records could be obtained from publicly available sources in a legal and appropriate manner ... I now believe that not only I, but all of the executives upon whom I relied at HP ... were similarly confident that these records were accessed under fully legal circumstances.

To that point, Rep. Ed Whitfield said in his intro minutes ago: "If there are legitimate ways to get access to someone's personal phone records without their consent, short of a subpoena, I'd like to know about it."
September 28, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: HP [HPQ]
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HP's Baskins quits, won't testify today

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

HP general counsel Ann O. Baskins has resigned from HP and will not testify at today's congressional hearings, her lawyer said, The Times reports. Hearing start at 10 am EST.
Baskins was intimately involved in the HP's anti-leak probes. She assigned Kevin Hunsaker, HP's senior counsel for ethics, to run the investigation. Hunsaker clearly received warnings from security officials that the pretexting operations were probably illegal, and Baskins would have been apprised of that information as well.
The Washington Post recounts several emails that show that Hunsaker - and thus, presumably, Baskins - knew about the illegality.
In February, HP global security investigator Vince Nye told a Boston colleague working with him on the leak probe that he had "serious reservations" about how they were obtaining phone-record information in an internal probe to ferret out the source of media leaks.
He said he thought the method, impersonating someone else to trick the phone company into providing call data, "is very unethical at the least and probably illegal."
"I am requesting that we cease this phone number gathering method immediately and discount any of its information," Nye wrote in a Feb. 7 e-mail to Gentilucci, one of four members of the internal investigative team reporting to HP's legal department. Nye sent a copy of the e-mail to Hunsaker, then HP's chief ethics director and superviser of the probe.

Baskins' actions are also very suspicious in that she asked for legal opinion on the legality of the program not from Wilson Sonsini but from Ron DeLia's lawyer. DeLia was the investigator that former chairman Pattie Dunn initially worked with. That smacks, IMO, of CYA legal advice, not of an inquiry genuinely interested in knowing the answer.
Dunn will say in her testimony today that she relied on DeLia's assurances that it was legal. Again, the question remains, if she or Baskins were so interested in the actual answer, why would they rely on private eye DeLia rather than Larry Sonsini or any other top-line law firm in the country?
Baskins may also be implicated in charges of lying to the SEC for filing 8-Ks that at first neglected to give a reason for Tom Perkins' resignation, and then misrepresented that he didn't give a reason for his resignation.
The resignation suggests that Baskins is facing criminal charges in the case and that her lawyer advised her not to speak publicly, for fear of incriminating herself.
HP press release:
“I want to thank Ann for 24 years of outstanding service and devotion to HP,” said Mark Hurd, HP chairman and chief executive officer. “She began her career here shortly after law school and worked her way up to serve as the company’s top lawyer, earning along the way a reputation for hard work and integrity. She has admirably supported our business needs across the globe and will be missed. Stepping down was a very hard decision for her, but by doing so she has put the interests of HP above her own and that is to be commended.”

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September 27, 2006

San Francisco Summer Music Conference(at the end of September!)

[diggrz: an SVW tag for arts, culture, trends, and events in and around Silicon Valley- new from SVW] -
By Maria Mouk for Silicon Valley Watcher

Tommorow, Thursday 28th- 2006, marks the beginning of San Francisco's Summer Music Conference ,including two days of panels followed my innumerable performances the entire weekend, featuring leading industry developers, pioneers, trendsetters, world dj's, artists, and producers.
Those musically driven, should grab an All Access Pass which provides entry into all conference panels & presentations, Technology Expo, the InGrooves A&R Contest, 6 Months FREE subscription to Remix Magazine, discounts to all SMC Events, and a Backstage Pass for the SMC Festival on Saturday September 30th, 2006 with FREE drinks from 1pm to 6pm.
Highlights this weekend include:
Thursday evenings' SMC Industry Party @ 1015 Folsom with the one and only Dj QBert.
Friday panels covering technology - industry standards, tools of the trade, branding and earning potential, and new marketing distribution concepts with speakers ranging from ProTools, IODA, Ingrooves, Om Records, RealNetworks, to name a few.
Friday night brings too many music options to name, but I suggest you stop over to Crystal Method@ Ruby Skye, Tipper @ Mighty, Ministry of Sound@ Temple, or check out the NiteVibe SMC Guide to decide for yourself.
SMCFestival , with proceeds going to the Music Education 4 Children's Fund.

Tag: diggrz

[diggrz refers to the nomadic lifestyle offered by mobile digital technologies and gadgets - creating a "nomadig" culture. The diggrz name is also a tip-of-the-hat to some of the ideas of the Diggers, a democratic group that arose in 1649, out of the English revolution .

The Diggers were a radical group that cultivated and protected common lands, and sought to create egalitarian, self-sustaining communities. The Diggers would have found kindred spirits in today's software engineer culture,  and the focus on creating commonly owned technologies through egalitarian open source community projects. - Tom Foremski]

Tag: diggrz

September 27, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: diggrz
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Gary Bloom speaks; Seagate's $1m charity challenge; Silicon Valley goes to Oxford; Citizen Journalism defined; Tips on dealing with journalists; Telcos getting into news

. . . Lunch with Gary Bloom, former CEO of Veritas, former exec vp at Oracle, and hear him talk about Silicon Valley and its recent headlines, among other things. - Oct. 12 at Ristorante Don Giovanni organized by the IABC.

CEO Perspective: Communicating during challenging times.

. . . Seagate CEO Bill Watkins issues personal challenge to raise $1m for the Bay Area Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and will buy lunch for the team that out-raises Seagate, in addition to matching $25,000 donated by his employees.

Corporate Cup Challenge - Light The Night

. . . Silicon Valley pioneers are heading to the Oxford Saïd Business school in November for "Mass Collaboration."

Oxford Saïd Business School Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford

. . . Mark Glaser over at PBS' MediaShift has a long post on citizen journalism, its history, and tons of links to online resources.

Your guide to citizen journalism

. . . Want to know how to communicate with journalists? Here is some good advice on what not to do!

The Care and Feeding of the Press

. . . Telcos are getting into the news business, Amy Gahran says this is scary considering the net neutrality context.

Poynter Online - Telcos in the News Biz? Great and Scary

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Two years ago I became a journalist blogger . . . and discovered a terrible thing

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher
It was about two years ago that I started "blogging." I had left the Financial Times in early June and took the summer off, I spent most of it chatting to people about my plans.
It was a good exercise, to try to explain to others what I was doing. I wasn't sure myself.
It took me most of the summer to boil down a 30 minute explanation to one sentence: I am publishing an online news site reporting on the business of Silicon Valley.
Two years ago I knew in my gut that we were at a crucial point in a rapidly changing media sector; and that taking this risk (two kids and an ex-wife to support) would be worthwhile.
I knew that business would not be getting better for my employer because: technology advertising wasn't coming back due to the dotbomb fallout; M&A taking away large advertisers; and financial services advertising wasn't coming back either because the IPO market was a bust.
In addition, advertising was rapidly moving online...
I didn't realize at the time that I would become the first mainstream journalist to leave to become a professional "journalist blogger."
Other journalist that also blogged, Dan Gillmor, Om Malik had day jobs. It would be another seven months before Dan Gillmor left the San Jose Mercury, and two years before Om Malik left Business 2.0 to become fulltime journalist bloggers.
I also didn't realize the effect this would have on my surroundings. One of my contacts at a large Silicon Valley company told me, "Suddenly, we realized that because you had left the Financial Times to become a blogger, we needed to take blogging seriously." It was a comment I heard at other companies too.
But when I left the Financial Times I had never blogged. And I'm ready to admit, I didn't even read blogs.
However, I knew that the blogging platform was incredibly robust and that I could produce a column of Tom Foremski for a lot less than it cost the Financial Times. And that my journalism wouldn't be shut away behind a subscription barrier.
My posts, if they were good enough, would be distributed by my readers and shared among their peers. This is a far better model than trying to limit distribution of content to paid subscribers.
True, I didn't have a business model at the time, but I knew a business model for online publishers would be inevitable.
I also knew that the costs for a newspaper business are much higher than online business models can support. That means that "you can't get there from here" a wonderful American expression that sums up the huge challenge media businesses have in downsizing/rightsizing for online revenue models.
My costs are very modest compared with any traditional newspaper business, with its large legacy infrastructure, pensions, its legions of editors, layers of administrators, office buildings, distribution systems, printing presses, janitors...
The change in media business models has been created by the simple fact that it is more effective to sell products/services next to a search box than next to journalism.
The reason online companies such as Google, Yahoo, or Craigslist can provide advertising at such low costs is that they don't have to pay for the journalism.
Over the past two years I've taken up this point time and again because it is very important that our society find an alternate way to pay for journalism.
But how will we pay for professional journalism if the bulk of advertising moves to search marketing?
If we don't have high quality trusted media sources we will face a future filled with a confusion of many mini-media sources of dubious quality and trust. In such an environment misinformation will be common and will be commonly encouraged by third parties serving their needs.
Software engineers have a term for this: garbage in, garbage out. We need high quality trusted media sources so that we can make important decisions.
And we have some very important decisions to make, about global warming, energy sources, bird flu, politics, war. Yet the financial structure to support our professional media is being taken away by low cost online services.
I've been trying to raise the alarm on this issue since I started being a "journalist blogger." I do know that we will solve this issue, that we will figure out a business model for professional media, but we don't have it yet.

In the meantime, our society will face a troublesome period of muddled information that will likely lead to bad decisions.
. . .

I will write more about my adventures in the blogosphere in the two years since I left the Financial Times. I had no idea that something as simple as blogging could be so interesting and lead me to so many insights and discoveries... :-)

September 27, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: About SVW
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AMD loses big chunk of case against Intel

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

AMD just lost a big chunk of their suit against Intel. AMD had charged that Intel strong-armed computer makers into buying Intel chips, but Intel responded that many of the charges were in fact international antitrust claims not domestic ones.
Intel had responded that many of AMD's charges were for lost sales of German-made, Asian-assembled microprocessors to foreign customers. It called such damages "a foreign antitrust injury (if it is one at all) for which the U.S. courts cannot provide relief," Reuters related.
Late yesterday, federal judge Joseph J. Farnan Jr. agreed.
"AMD has not demonstrated that the alleged foreign conduct of Intel has direct, substantial and foreseeable effects in the United States which gives rise to its claim," Farnan wrote in an 18-page opinion.
At best, he said AMD's allegations described activity that might have had "ripple effects" in the United States, but not enough to give rise to an antitrust claim.

September 27, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag:
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September 26, 2006

diggrz: Symbosis Gathering

[diggrz: an SVW tag for arts, culture, trends, and events in and around Silicon Valley- new from SVW] -
By Maria Mouk for Silicon Valley Watcher
Look up symbiosis in the dictionary and you're unlikely to find photos of this past weekend's Symbosis Gathering at Angels Camp in the Sierra Nevadas. Yet "A close, prolonged association between two or more different organisms of different species" is quite an accurate description of the experience this past weekend.

Second year in the making, and growing to twice its original size, Symbiosis brought together a variety of creative and curious minds.

From the tree tops and city skylines and from all over the west coast corridor, heads of all sub-cultures gathered to hear over 90 acts. Musical artists representing live bands, breaks, hiphop, psy, and experimental genres, with world names such as Shpongle, Germany's X-Dream , Spoonbill of Australia, Tipper, EdIT, Skream, and Zilla, played continuos music for over three days.
Personally impressive, was my discovery of Abstract Rude, stemming from the LA hiphop underground, with lyrical flow so conscious and smooth, that I was inspired enough to hike uphill to camp just to jot down some of my own.
Looking out into the night; cascading lights- radiant art pieces, altars mimicking dragons from afar, and tapestries waving in the trees with projections of dream states-- it reminded me of a civilization untapped by pop media, yet impressive enough to be a full blown LA stage production.
Besides the music, live painting, guest speakers(like Erik Davis), raw food, and starry nights, there were also workshops, films, and the possibility to exchange ideas with rappers, vegans, or enlightened newbies.

As summer fades to fall, recall- that the ability to maximize cooperation with other species is what most directly contributes to an organism's ablility to endure in nature. We take example and converge.

Tag: diggrz

[diggrz refers to the nomadic lifestyle offered by mobile digital technologies and gadgets - creating a "nomadig" culture. The diggrz name is also a tip-of-the-hat to some of the ideas of the Diggers, a democratic group that arose in 1649, out of the English revolution .

The Diggers were a radical group that cultivated and protected common lands, and sought to create egalitarian, self-sustaining communities. The Diggers would have found kindred spirits in today's software engineer culture,  and the focus on creating commonly owned technologies through egalitarian open source community projects. - Tom Foremski]

Tag: diggrz

September 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: diggrz
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Intel announces 80-core microprocessors and offers $1m in PC design competition

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Intel (a SVW sponsor) Tuesday announced an advanced chip design that has 80 cores and can perform at a trillion floating point operations per second.

This would make possible inexpensive supercomputers that could model complex events such as global warming, designing safer cars, and be used in drug discovery.

Prototypes of the chip were shown by Paul Otellini during his keynote speech that opened the Intel Developer Forum conference in San Francisco. The chips are about five years away from commercial introduction.

Intel also said that a quad-core server microprocessor would be introduced in November and followed by a desktop PC version early next year.

The announcements reflect Intel's bid to regain some lost ground to rival Advanced Micro Devices. Intel has focused strongly on its chip design and manufacturing prowess to produce chips that use much less electric power.

Large computer data centers are running out of electric power. In order to expand computing facilities, computer systems that use less electric power are in high demand.

To boost sales of PCs in the home Intel announced it would pay up to $1m in prizes to designers and manufacturers of "sexy" PCs. The Intel Core Processor Challenge aims to encourage PC makers to go beyond the "beige box."

Intel is trying to establish its Viiv PC platform in the living room as the heart of a digital entertainment system for the entire home. And a stylish format would help sales.

Eric Kim, vice president and general manager, Intel’s Digital Home Group said:

Consumers today make home PC purchase decisions based on more than just price and features; they also consider the size, shape and style. Ultimately we want to see more stylish and smaller PCs that have the performance and power efficiency thanks to Intel Core 2 Duo processors, as well as the essential multimedia capabilities that Intel Viiv technology delivers. . .

Related links:

Intel To Pay Up To $1 Million Bounty For Sexy, Small, Stylish PCs

Intel Develops Tera-Scale Research Chips ›

Intel CEO: Silicon Advances Usher in New Era of Energy Efficient Performance ›
Intel, DIRECTV Poised to Connect PCs and TVs in U.S.

Intel, Omnicom Media Group Announce Collaboration to Bring Internet-Delivered Ads to TVs Through Intel® Viiv™ Technology

SVW stories:

SVW Top Chat: Henri Richard sales chief at Advanced Micro Devices

The Empire Strikes Back - Sean Maloney leads Intel's push to win back markets

September 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Intel [INTC]
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diggrz: Hypervideo, CG reality, Metroproper: On the Radar

[diggrz: an SVW tag for arts, culture, trends, and events in and around Silicon Valley- new from SVW] -
By lucaso for Silicon Valley Watcher
As hypertext transformed the written web, so too may hypervideo transform the multimedia web.
Imagine watching a video piece on the web. Up pops an image of Hunter S. Thompson. You click on the image and the video you're watching stops and takes you to a video interview with the Gonzo journalist and Johnny Depp. You click on the image of Johnny Depp and you're brought to a clip of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." You complete the clip of "Fear and Loathing..." and you're brought back to the original clip where you first saw Thompson. This is hypervideo: a non-linear approach to web video viewing that is now in the early stages of development. Thanks to Crazy Wanda for pointing this one out to me.

CG reality

Is this photo real or CG? Spirit Monkey posted this on his tribe blog today and I was definitely blown away. Check out the CG society for more info on CG developments.

Metroproper: On the radar
My friend Phil Tadros has been working hard on this project for over a year. He tells me they're very close to launch date. Metroproper is a social network for business or personal profiles with citizen journalism in 400 cities around the world. I like the design a lot and I had sneak peak at the interface, which looks hot. Sign up to be notified when they go live at Metroproper.
September 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: diggrz
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House subpoenas DeLia, Hunsaker, Gentilucci

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Mark Hurd, Patricia Dunn and Ann Baskins have already said they would appear Thursday at a congressional hearing into HP's spying practices. But Ron DeLia, the security outsourcing specialist who did the pretexting, has said he would not. And Hurd's lawyers' investigations have made it clear that Kevin Hunsaker, senior counsel for ethics, and Anthony Gentilucci, manger of global security, were intimately involved in probably illegal activities.

Yesterday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said it wants to see DeLia, Hunsaker and Gentilucci in Washington on Thursday and it issued subpoenas to back up that desire.
Gentilucci said through his lawyer that he would take the Fifth on Thursday, while Hunsaker hasn't yet said what he will do. DeLia will refuse to answer questions. Gentilucci has already lost his HP job and Hunsaker is on the way out, although he is still employed by HP today.
Calif. Attorney General Bill Lockyer is concerned that subpoenas could mean Congress offers immunity to get testimony, the Times reports.
“In light of today’s developments, the attorney general will again be contacting the committee to express his concern,” Mr. Dresslar said. “We’re not trying to issue a red alert here, but this is an important case and it’s only prudent for this office to take all appropriate steps to protect the integrity of our investigation.”
He said the attorney general had been told by Congressional officials that they had not granted immunity to any of those subpoenaed and that it was rare to do so. Congress does not have the power to grant immunity from state prosecution, only from federal prosecution, Mr. Dresslar noted.

It's not just the congressmen that will be looking to Hurd for a full and complete reckoning of the affair on Thursday. HP's stock recovered somewhat yesterday from its beating last week but major pension funds are making demands for more control of HP's board, MarketWatch reports.
e New York State Common Retirement Fund, the Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, the North Carolina Retirement Systems and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Pension Funds together filed a proposal that seeks access to H-P's proxy in order to allow shareholders groups more say in who gets on the H-P board.
The proposal asks H-P to changes it bylaws to allow groups that hold 3% or more of the company's stock for at least one year to be able to post nominations for H-P board members. The four funds own a combined 30 million H-P shares worth about $676 million.

September 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag:
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Cisco develops video blogging systems for businesses

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Cisco Systems introduced several appliances in its Digital Media Systems, an emerging markets technology business group, that will make it easier for companies to produce and distribute video presentations.

The technology was developed internally rather than by acquisition--Cisco's traditional form of business development. The digital media system has been in use by the news@Cisco group, which publishes press releases and features.

It is the first in a series of planned product announcements. Cisco believes that the enterprise video market could become a $1bn business opportunity.

From Cisco:

"While the digital media explosion has taken off in the consumer world, businesses are just beginning to realize the potential of video. The Cisco Digital Media System, combined with the power of the IP network as the platform, allows organizations to move to a business environment where compelling interactions and experiences are created and shared," said Marthin De Beer, vice president of Cisco's Emerging Markets Technology Group.

A basic setup which includes a portable digital video encoder, the digital media manager, and video portal costs about $133,000.

The components:

Cisco Digital Media Encoders: The Cisco Digital Media Encoder 2000 is a studio-level appliance with multiple channel support. The Cisco Digital Media Encoder 1000 is a portable encoder that can be used wirelessly for single-channel encoding. Both encoders support live and on-demand encoding in many formats.
Cisco Digital Media Manager: The Cisco Digital Media Manager manages and publishes digital media and provides tools for users to add and archive media; assign metadata and keywords; preview content and manage workflow; and schedule instant and future deployments. Cisco Digital Media Manager integrates with Cisco Application Networking Services technologies, including Cisco's Application and Content Networking System and wide-area content engines, for business-class digital media deployment across the network.
Cisco Video Portal: The portal allows users to browse, search and view digital media content. It features a customizable program guide and search functions; personalized playlists and featured lineups; advanced player controls, full-screen playback; and a usage reporting system. It is also fully integrated with the Cisco Digital Media Manager and supports Windows Media, RealPlayer and Flash file formats initially, with QuickTime and MPEG4 following later this year.

Related Links

Cisco Introduces Integrated Digital Media System for Business, Government and Education
Cisco Introduces Comprehensive Digital Media System

September 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag:
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SVW Journal: Out and about at WebEx and SaaScon . . .

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

It is a busy week in San Francisco with the Intel Developer Forum (Intel is a sponsor of SVW), the Clean Tech California Awards, the software as a service conference, and in San Diego DEMO is happening.

I stayed close to home this week. Monday, I managed to miss a lunch time media roundtable about software on demand because I was trying to catch up with tons of stories, and trying to tweek my CSS style sheet on SVW.

. . . Cisco rolls its own instead of buying

I did speak with Cisco about their Digital Media Systems business, which they say could become a $1bn business group. It is being launched by an internal venture group.

This is a sharp departure from Cisco's normal way of growing business, which is to seek out companies for acquisition once the market horizon reaches that magic $1bn level. Internal development versus acquisitions? Does this mean acquisitions of private companies are getting a bit too richly valued for Cisco?

. . . enterprise software is turning into one big mashup

In the evening I ran over to the WebEx event at the W Hotel and spoke with David Knight, VP pf product Management at WebEx. This was the launch of the WebEx collaborative application platform.

I said to Mr Knight that every enterprise application seems to be turning into the same thing: collaborative apps linked into CRM, ERP and legacy systems. In a year or two, how will I tell the difference in features and capabilities between services from WebEx, Salesforce, RightNow Technologies, Siebel, SAP, Microsoft, and many other enterprise applications; all vying to be enterprise platforms built around collaboration tools.

Mr Knight said there will be a difference and I agree. The winner will be the one that can capture the most vital segment within a company and I think that segment is the salesforce. And do it with a killer user interface. WebEx has 2m users, that's a significant base to sell into.

. . . hunting stories from Greg Gianforte RightNow Technologies

I ran into Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies, one of my favorite executives in the enterprise software sector. I asked Mr Gianforte how his book "Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money" was doing.

He said it was doing well and he was enjoying letters and emails from readers who had taken his advice to heart, which is to raise money from your customers and not from VCs. [I'm republishing Mr Gianforte's column from last summer in SVW at the end of this post--it is worth reading many times.]

Go out and sell something encapsulates a lot of Mr Gianforte's advice, and it is true, many people find it hard to sell. But if you have a service or a product that can make someone's life better, then you have a responsibility to offer it to that person or company.

Mr Gianforte lives in Montana and he always has some good hunting stories to tell, and as he likes to remind me, he always eats what he kills. He is down in Silicon Valley a lot, but his Montana HQ provides a fresh perspective on our localized thinking.

Silicon Valley is a great place to be, it exposes everyone to cutting edge conversations and concepts. But sometimes we get too intoxicated by our own hot air, and get a bit ahead of ourselves. So it is always good to hear a fresh perspective from outside of the local echo chamber, and that's what a conversation with Mr Gianforte often provides.

. . . Soonr is better than later

I ran into the Soonr management team, also their very able representative Anastasia Marin from Connecting Point Communications.

I had a very interesting chat with Cindy Gordon, CEO of Helix, an e-commerce consultancy group based in Toronto, Canada. She introduced me to Mark Organ. CEO of Eloqua, also in Toronto. And Raghu Raghavan, CEO of Act On Software, based in Portland, Oregon.

. . . Back stabbing or back scratching?

I chatted with a lot of other people too, a lot of WebEx partners. And there are many of these platform + partner roll out events these days.

Everyone supports everyone's platform and turns up for each other's events but it seems there is little love lost between the partners and the platform providers. It may look like scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, but that's just on the surface ... :-)

. . .

Here is the excellent advice column from Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies. You should print it out and stick it on your bathroom mirror:

Reasons not to take venture capital

- If you start by selling your concept to potential prospects (rather than stock to VCs), you will either end up with initial customers or a conviction that your idea won't work. Why raise money and then find out which one it will be?

- Raising money takes time away from understanding your market and potential customers. Often more time than it would take to just go sell something to a customer. Let your customers fund your business through product orders.

- Adding VCs to the mix early gives you an additional set of masters you must serve in addition to your customers. It is always hard to serve two masters, especially in a startup.

-With no money you can't make a fatal mistake. This is a blessing. Without VC money, you are forced to figure out how to extract funds from your customers for value you deliver. Ultimately that is the only thing that really matters.

-Money removes spending discipline. If you have the money you will spend it - whether you have figured out your business model and market or not.

-Raising VC money determines your exit strategy. You will either sell the business or take it public. What if you end up with a very profitable, modest sized business that you want to just run? That is no longer an option once you raise VC money.

-You sell your precious equity very dearly before you have a proven business model. This is the worst time to raise money from a valuation perspective.

Don't forget Dell, HP, Microsoft all originally started without VC funding; you can build a big business with bootstrapping and without VC money.

At RightNow, we doubled our revenue and employees every 90 days for two years before we took any outside money, and even then the employees retained more than 75% ownership after raising $32m.

- - - Greg Gianforte : "Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money."

SVW affiliate link:

And he welcomes questions from SiliconValleyWatcher readers.

September 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Silicon Valley
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September 25, 2006

Buzzlogic aims to untangle "Social Media"

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher
Buzzlogic introduces on-demand software service to help companies identify key online influencers.

From Buzzlogic:

. . . BuzzLogic calculates and surfaces the influencers who are shaping and driving specific conversations in social media with algorithms that analyze relationships, such as who connects to whom, about what is happening and who is listening.
. . . A key feature of the service is the ability to draw social maps of influencers in a conversation, essentially a critical path of the relationships between key influencers.

BuzzLogic also enables marketers to engage with key influencers through the service, and to monitor and track the results of their actions.

SVW take: It is an interesting service to find influential bloggers and others. However, shouldn't every company already know who is influential in their space?

I'd be interested to find out if mainstream media journalists are as influential as PR companies think they are. Quite often a lot of work goes into influencing a publication such as BusinessWeek to write about a company or product, yet that effort can produce small returns in terms of influence and sales. Yet some journalist bloggers can weave a much more influential network.

Once the key influencers are identified what is the course of action? To smother them with love and presents?

In another context, a repressive government could use this technology to smother dissidents . . .

- - -

Please see SVW: The metrics of influence - The mania for measuring and identifying top bloggers

September 25, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Mediasphere
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5 Clean Tech winners in SF will receive $500,000

Tuesday morning at a special event hosted by Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, the five winners of the California Clean Tech Open will be announced.

The winner in each category—energy efficiency, smart power, renewable energy, transportation and water management—will receive a $50,000 cash infusion plus office space and legal, accounting and public relations services worth another $50,000. In short, winners get the means to get their enterprise off the ground.

Finalists include:

"SoCool" has developed a solar-powered air-conditioning unit for automobiles.
"Hive Power" aims to become a utility that uses only renewable energy sources.
"Crystal Clear" reduces the cost of purifying water to 1.5 cents per gallon.
"Reclaim Electric" regenerates wasted heat from computers, HVAC and other sources as usable electricity.
"Meridian Design" has designed a $20 retail water purification system that  uses ultraviolet light to eliminate all water-borne pathogens.

Clean Tech has become a fast growing sector in Silicon Valley.

Link to CNN: Silicon Valley goes solar

September 25, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Clean Tech
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Techmeme tries out new sponsorship model

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Gabe Rivera's Techmeme is experimenting with an interesting approach to sponsorship by selling space on its front page to three other companies.

How it works: A sponsor's blog occupies a permanent place in the "Techmeme Sponsor Post" area of the site for the duration of the sponsorship. The technology is simple: a sponsor's blog feed is polled every few minutes, the latest post of which appears in its assigned slot (first, second, or third) along with a logo image that links to the sponsor's site. See also this post for more on this sponsorship model.

Link to Sponsor Techmeme

I see a few wrinkles in this approach:

-There is no editorial control over what the posts say.

-The sponsors' blogs will be skewed towards the Techmeme audience and thus they will not be representative of their daily output. This could put off regular readers of those blogs.

-Readers of Techmeme come to see what the in-crowd (the select group of blogs that Techmeme polls) is talking about.  They have little interest in single blog posts from sponsors who are talking to their communities.

-The sponsors are trying to sell products and services. Blog posts generally are not selling products and services.

-Blog posts in the "sponsor" area are taken out of their context, and placed on a page that puts them out of context with surrounding content.

I would tweak this model a bit.

I would offer up the three positions as window onto the Techmeme community and let the sponsors put whatever marketing message they want (with editorial yank control from Techmeme if it should be needed).

Techmeme could poll every few minutes to see if the marketing message has changed at all.

September 25, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Media Watch
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diggrz: Podcast and Portable Media Expo, "Freestyle Soundkit" at Conflux, Summer Music Conference, and The Vloggies

[diggrz: an SVW tag for arts, culture, trends, and events in and around Silicon Valley- new from SVW] -
By lucaso for Silicon Valley Watcher
Podcast and Portable Media Expo.
Word from my network is that PPE is where new media problems are solved. Begins this Friday with open registration for free exhibits and keynote passes (full conference is $299) From PPE: "The 2nd Annual Podcast & Portable Media Expo is the only industry event that brings together influential podcasters, media, corporate executives and device makers to cover the complete range of business objectives for podcasting and portable media."

"Freestyle Soundkit" at Conflux
We sampled the Soundbike installation during our ZeroOne coverage last month. Last week at Conflux in Brooklyn, NYC, artist Jessica Thompson showed another one of her sound projects, Freestyle Soundkit. From Conflux: "Freestyle SoundKit is a wearable sound piece that generates and broadcasts electronic beats as users move through the urban environment." Maybe she should hook up with the Dvinsk Clan?(flickr photo credit: rabbitsliketrumpets')

Summer Music Conference
The Summer Music Conference begins this Wednesday, September 27th and runs through October 1st, featuring a TON of music. From SMC: "SUMMER MUSIC CONFERENCE BRINGS TOGETHER PROFESSIONALS IN MUSIC, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY TO GENERATE NEW OPPORTUNITIES, CREATE SYNERGIES AND IDENTIFY TRENDS FOR THE FUTURE." Don't miss the free outdoor festival on Saturday, September 30th, 12pm-7pm at 81 Natoma St in Downtown San Francisco.
The Vloggies
And don't forget to submit your favorite vlogs for The Vloggies, happening Nov. 4th at the Swedish American Music Hall in San Francisco.
Tag: diggrz

[diggrz refers to the nomadic lifestyle offered by mobile digital technologies and gadgets - creating a "nomadig" culture. The diggrz name is also a tip-of-the-hat to some of the ideas of the Diggers, a democratic group that arose in 1649, out of the English revolution .

The Diggers were a radical group that cultivated and protected common lands, and sought to create egalitarian, self-sustaining communities. The Diggers would have found kindred spirits in today's software engineer culture,  and the focus on creating commonly owned technologies through egalitarian open source community projects. - Tom Foremski]

Tag: diggrz

September 25, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: diggrz
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diggrz: "bullet-riddled '65 mustang", cyberpunk lecture, "dah-ling, we simply MUST stop by the new Westfield", and "Oh, my Mighty!"

[diggrz: an SVW tag for arts, culture, trends, and events in and around Silicon Valley- new from SVW] -
By lucaso for Silicon Valley Watcher
"bullet-riddled '65 mustang"
Gallery16(3rd and Byrant St., SOMA) hosts Charles Linder and his found object art exhibit, Crazy Horse: new dreams and wishes come true.(running now through October 14th) From Gallery 16: "The centerpiece of the show is a totally, bullet-riddled 1965 mustang which has been transformed from abandoned desert target to gleaming gallery stallion."

cyberpunk lecture
Bruce Sterling, cyberpunk author extrodinaire, is giving a lecture Tuesday night at the California College of the Arts, 7pm. Who doesn't love cyberpunk?
"dah-ling, we simply MUST stop by the new Westfield"
The grand opening of the new Westfield San Francisco Centre(with the second largest Bloomingdales next to NY) opens this Thursday, September 28th. Check out the dome, sample the food, or grab a SF inspired Bloomingdales shopping bag. Plenty of opening events to keep you busy... or delay your commute through downtown!

"Oh, my Mighty!"
Mighty is hosting a couple of hot acts this week. First, Thursday night rent some skates at the door(or bring your own) and enjoy the 7th heaven Roller Disco. Then, Friday catch the Tribal Summit 5 featuring (one of my favorite DJs) Tipper.

Tag: diggrz

[diggrz refers to the nomadic lifestyle offered by mobile digital technologies and gadgets - creating a "nomadig" culture. The diggrz name is also a tip-of-the-hat to some of the ideas of the Diggers, a democratic group that arose in 1649, out of the English revolution .

The Diggers were a radical group that cultivated and protected common lands, and sought to create egalitarian, self-sustaining communities. The Diggers would have found kindred spirits in today's software engineer culture,  and the focus on creating commonly owned technologies through egalitarian open source community projects. - Tom Foremski]

Tag: diggrz

September 25, 2006 | Permalink | Tag: diggrz
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September 24, 2006

diggrz: SF JAZZ festival gets underway with a BANG!

[diggrz: an SVW tag for arts, culture, trends, and events in and around Silicon Valley- new from SVW] -
By Sara Kremer for Silicon Valley Watcher

Kicking off the SFJazz Fall Festival Season with a bang, Planet Drum played a pre-festival concert at the Nob Hill Masonic Center Saturday night.

Planet Drum, made up of the world's most accomplished percussionists representing five continents, has been a successful world music fusion project of Mickey Hart (best known as the innovative drummer for the Grateful Dead) and became the first world music group to ever win a grammy in 1991. Fifteen years later, featuring far-flung percussion virtuosos like Indian tabla phenomenon Zakir Hussain, conga maestro Giovanni Hidalgo, talking drum master Sikiru Adepoju, Brazillian drummer/impromptu singer Airto Moreira, and electronic musician/drummer Mickey Hart, this latest incarnation of Planet Drum is still at the forefront of the world's top percussionists.
Upon entering the theater, I was awe struck by the five elaborate percussion setups that impressively filled the stage. Quickly into the show, I realized that the drums, representing the sounds and heartbeats of indigenous cultures, were giving me visions of the world's jungles and far off natural environments. The rhythms transported me from an African Safari to the beaches of Brazil within one measure of body shaking beats. The flow of the show spanned from melodic floaty jams to hard hitting solos and call-and response sessions that made the audience laugh out loud in delight.
I was especially impressed by the interplay between Hidalgo, the conga player (whose fingers moved faster than my eyes could focus) and Hussein, the tabla player. Each banged out rhythms and matched each other in a way that inspired shouts and cries from the audience.
Mickey hart has been experimenting with electronic sounds over the years, and between his synth and electronic samples, live percussion, congas, talking drum, tabla, and vocals, the sound was fresh and exciting. In tibute to Grateful Dead philosophy, both recording devices and audience interaction were both allowed and encouraged. It was difficult to keep still, and the crowd was brimming with people grooving in their seats and even some in the aisles.
This is just the beginning of SFJazz's Fall season, and there are a slew of great shows to come. Here is the schedule for the fall season. Tickets for shows can be bought here. Be sure to get tickets early as shows are bound to fill up quickly.

Tag: diggrz

[diggrz refers to the nomadic lifestyle offered by mobile digital technologies and gadgets - creating a "nomadig" culture. The diggrz name is also a tip-of-the-hat to some of the ideas of the Diggers, a democratic group that arose in 1649, out of the English revolution .

The Diggers were a radical group that cultivated and protected common lands, and sought to create egalitarian, self-sustaining communities. The Diggers would have found kindred spirits in today's software engineer culture,  and the focus on creating commonly owned technologies through egalitarian open source community projects. - Tom Foremski]

Tag: diggrz

September 24, 2006 | Permalink | Tag: diggrz
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Will Hurd dodge the bullet or fall through the ice?

By Richard Koman for Silicon Valley Watcher

Mark Hurd didn't get very good grades for his performance Friday. The Washington Post ran a story on Saturday quoting disapproving corporate government types.
Charles M. Elson, leader of the corporate governance center at the University of Delaware, said HP's culture "needs to be seriously reexamined and completely reworked." "It is inconceivable to me that top management could have been aware of this kind of activity and not taken steps to separate the company from it," Elson said. "Large organizations are based on ethics and integrity, and the tone comes right from the top."

Given that Hurd admitted to approving the sting operation on Dawn Kawamoto, and that he managed to avoid exposing himself to a report that would have apprised him of a range of unacceptable behavior, will Hurd be able to maintain leadership of the company that was once the definition of integrity in Silicon Valley?
For some perspective on that, I contacted Michael S. Malone, longtime Valley reporter, and the author of an upcoming book on HP, "Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Created the Greatest Company in the World," to be released this spring. Malone thinks Hurd will "dodge the bullet."
There's no paper trail showing that he signed off on the pretexting. And his behavior -- getting a verbal summary of the investigation at a meeting, but not reading the final report -- is consistent with the behavior of a CEO. He got the executive summary of things, Dunn was running the show, and he waited to hear the results.

Setting up a sting on a board member is stupid, but not illegal. So, unless there is something with his signature on it, or a witness who was in the room saying that he was informed of illegal activities, it'll be hard to make a case. No resignation; but the reputation of HP has been severely damaged on his watch. So, even if he's not out the door, he is on thin ice.

I'm not so sure. While it would be stupid for HP officials like Hunsaker and Gentilucci to fail to protect Hurd from knowledge about their illegal activities, they did an awful lot of stupid things and emails clearly show that they sought a meeting with Hurd. Indeed, Hunsaker emailed Dunn that Hurd had approved the sting operation. So while Hurd should have been protected, it's entirely within the realm of possibility that Hurd was clued into the pretexting, and that HP was skating on thin ice in its investigation.
There is still plenty more dirt to come out before this is all said and done and plenty of work for crystal balls. Malone's says Dunn will get some kind of fine, Sonsini a slap on the wrist from the Bar, and Hurd walks away, wounded but clean.
Mine says: Hurd goes down, Dunn, Baskins, Hunsaker, Gentilucci, DeLia and the smaller guys all face criminal charges, HP faces years of shareholder lawsuits and government investigations.
When the corruption starts at the top, you have to clean house with a firehose. HP needs a fiercely independent board who share a vision of returning HP to its proper place at the pinnacle of both integrity and performance. Because the connection to its storied past is so important, Walter Hewlett should return to the board, and no board member who countenanced Dunn's covert operations should remain. Perkins should return. Whether Hurd should remain is, I suppose, an open question; but to my mind his approval of a sting operation on a reporter makes him deeply suspect, no matter how nifty his turnaround of the company over the last five quarters.
September 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: HP [HPQ]
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New York Times on HP spy scandal

Following Mark Hurd's Friday press conference and the testimony of his personal lawyer Michael Holston....The New York Times adds to the story ...
From NYT: Chairwoman Leaves Hewlett in Spying Furor

By DAMON DARLIN and MATT RICHTEL
. . . His voice shaking, Mr. Hurd said a review of the means used to trace leaks from the company’s board had produced “very disturbing” findings. He also conceded that “I could have, and I should have,” read a report prepared for him while the operation was under way.
. . .Two executives who supervised the effort were also reported to be leaving.
. . . Mr. Hurd took no questions, with the company saying he did not want to pre-empt his testimony next week to a House subcommittee looking into the Hewlett-Packard affair.
. . . Ms. Dunn said she had resigned at the request of the board. But she said that while she had the responsibility to identify the source of leaks, “I did not propose the specific methods,” and those who performed the investigation “let me and the company down.”
According to people briefed on Mr. Hurd’s plans, Kevin T. Hunsaker, its senior counsel and director of ethics, and Anthony R. Gentilucci, its Boston-based manager of global investigations, will leave the company. Mr. Hurd did not speak to this issue, and the company declined to comment.
. . . The moves by Hewlett-Packard on Friday were an attempt to get ahead of the torrent of daily disclosures about the spying operation and an acknowledgment of the irresponsibility, if not illegality, of the methods.
. . . Mr. Hunsaker, the lawyer and ethics officer, directed the 2006 phase of the investigation. Mr. Gentilucci, the Boston-based investigations officer, was involved in both the 2005 and 2006 phases of the investigation.
. . .Michael J. Holston, a partner in the firm, laid out some evidence to reporters Friday after Mr. Hurd’s comments. While noting that the firm’s review was not complete, he said Ms. Dunn had personally contacted and engaged Security Outsourcing Solutions, a tiny Boston-area investigative firm operated by Ronald R. DeLia, in the 2005 phase.
“For the first month or so of the investigation, Ms. Dunn worked directly with Ron DeLia from S.O.S.,” Mr. Holston said, and it was only two months later that the company’s own detectives were brought in.
. . . Ms. Dunn’s lawyer, James J. Brosnahan, reiterated that claim Friday. “She went to the right people, and she was assured that what they were doing was legal,” he said.
. . . A crucial document was a March 2006 report prepared by the company’s investigators and Mr. DeLia under the supervision of Mr. Hunsaker, a senior company lawyer. Mr. Hurd was given a copy of that report, but he said he did not read it. “I could have, and I should have,” he said.
. . . It was also sent to the company’s outside counsel, the powerful Silicon Valley firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, for review and comment, Mr. Holston said.
. . . Mr. Hunsaker never obtained a written legal opinion, according to people briefed on the company’s review of its investigation.
. . . Neither Mr. Hurd nor Mr. Holston indicated why the chief executive did not raise questions about the way the scheme was to be carried out.
Link to Chairwoman Leaves Hewlett in Spying Furor - New York Times

Mark Hurd transcript.

Michael Holston transcript.

September 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: HP [HPQ]
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September 23, 2006

Anita Borg on why there should be more women technologists

The late Anita Borg did a tremendous amount of work in highlighting the need for more women in technology. With the upcoming Grace Hopper Celebration of Women In Computing conference in San Diego Oct. 4 to 7, an event she co-founded in 1994 with Telle Whitney, I'd like to publish part of Anita Borg's Heinz Award acceptance speech. It raises awareness about why there should be more women in technology fields.

3/12/2002:

I would like to thank the Heinz Foundation for recognizing with this award that the development of the technology for the future must have positive social and human impacts. In the near future, technology will affect everything: our economic, political, social and personal lives.

Will technology be used to help solve problems of energy, food, water and clean air? Control disease? Nurture our children? Care for our elderly and disability? Will technology be used to increase literacy, particularly among women? Will it enable a fair global economy? Will we live in peace? Will it be used to solve the problems or create the futures that women want?

. . . Around the world, women are not full partners in driving the creation of the new technology that will define their lives. This is not good for women and not good for the world.
The involvement of women can bring important perspectives and directions to the technology of the future. Women must have dramatically higher representation in technical fields.

But bringing women into the existing system as technologists is not sufficient. All sorts of women—technical and non-technical, rich and poor, from the developed, developing, and underdeveloped worlds, must define the technology of the future.

The system that creates the technology of the future must change to include all of these women, as women, not just as faceless technologists.

. . . I want to take a few words to honor all of the women who are now working in computer science and technology as programmers or researchers or systems developers, building the future in the way that they think it should be built. It is often difficult to continue in spite of the fact that their environments may not be supportive. To any women who has stuck with her ideas, believing that there are different ways to do it, thank you for sticking with it!

Finally, thank you to the people, women and men, who share and support the passion and vision at the Institute for Women and Technology. We can change the world!

- - -

SVW: Interview with Telle Whitney, head of the Anita Borg Institute

September 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Thoughtleaders
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September 22, 2006

HP: Mark Hurd apologises to journalists targeted in spy probe; immediate resignation of Dunn

Transcript of remarks made by Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard at a press conference on September 22 2006.

· Thanks Bob, and thanks for joining us today.
· I felt it was important to meet with you … there’s been an extensive amount written about us in the media and we’ve not really been in a position to respond with a higher certainty of the facts until now · And I know you have been clamoring for details.
· My goal from the beginning has been to be as transparent as possible but also as accurate as possible.
· I wanted the opportunity to share the facts, outline our actions and next steps within the constraints of the ongoing investigation.
· Before I begin, I want to reiterate that this has nothing to do with the strategy or operations of Hewlett-Packard or frankly the vast majority of the people of HP.
· The company has made tremendous progress in our business operations and this is a testament to the hard work and contributions of everyone at Hewlett-Packard.

Let me tell you why I haven’t communicated earlier and why I am speaking with you now.

· First, this is a complicated situation, and the more I look into it, the more complicated it becomes.
· As of today, we still do not have all the facts.
· I also cannot guarantee that we will ever be able to obtain all of the information regarding this investigation.
· This is due to its complexity and number of people involved, with many of them being outside the company.
· Having said that, I think we have a sufficient understanding of what has transpired around the investigations and I want to share that with you.

· Now turning to the facts – what happened and when they happened and my knowledge of certain events.
· As many of you know, unfortunately, there has been a history of company information leaking from within the HP board.
· This is clearly in violation of HP’s Standards of Business Conduct, our ethics policy that apply to all employees and all board members.
· I feel very strongly that leaks hurt the company’s reputation and its ability to operate effectively.
· It was the responsibility of the HP Chairman to pursue the leak situation.

· This was taken very seriously and this was an appropriate course of action.

· I want to be clear that there were two phases to the investigation.

· The first phase yielded inconclusive results.

· In the 2nd phase, while many of the right processes in were place, they unfortunately broke down and no-one in the management chain including me, caught them.

· Now let me address my knowledge of the events.

· I understood there was an investigation into leaks from the board.
· And in July 2005, I attended a brief portion of a meeting at which the results of the first phase of the investigation were discussed.
· In January 2006 the HP Chairman asked to use HP resources to investigate the leaks.
· In, I believe, February 2006, I was informed by the investigation team that they intended to send an email containing false information in an effort to identify the source of the leaks.
· I was asked to, and did approve the naming convention that was used in the content of that email.
· I do not recall seeing nor do I recall approving the use of tracer technology

· In March 2006, I attended a meeting at which a verbal summary of the 2nd phase of the investigation was provided.

· Specifically that the investigative team had identified the source of the leaks.
· I understand there is also written report of the investigation addressed to me and others but I did not read it.
· I could have, and I should have.
· These events culminated in a discussion at the May board meeting about the results of the investigation.
· The trigger for me was in the form of an email I received in several weeks after the May board meeting.
· As a result it was escalated to the board which appointed outside Counsel to do an investigation.
· This indicated there were some issues with the processes that required yet further investigation

· On September 8, I retained the outside law firm of Morgan, Lewis to conduct a more comprehensive examination.
· Morgan Lewis reports to me, not to the HP Board.
· I take this responsibility very seriously and I commit to get to the bottom of this.
· I believe we now have a number of the substantial facts, and although there may be others, I am confident that we have a good understanding of what has transpired around the investigations.

· I will say that some of the findings that Morgan Lewis has uncovered are very disturbing to me.

· On behalf of HP I extend my sincere apologies to those journalists who were investigated and everyone who was impacted.
· HP has a distinguished history of conducting business with uncompromising integrity.
· We believe that these were isolated instances of impropriety and not indicative of how we conduct business at HP.

· As we have said from the start, the intent of the investigation was absolutely proper and appropriate.
· The fact that we had leaks on board had to be resolved.
· But the inappropriate techniques that were applied do not reflect the values of Hewlett-Packard.
· These have no place in the company.
· Integrity is core to everything we stand for both within HP and in our dealings with our customers.

Today we announced the following, effective immediately:
· We have accepted the resignation of our Chairman and Director Patricia Dunn.

· I want to take this opportunity to thank Pattie for her 8 years of service on HP’s board. She has contributed greatly to our company during a period of unprecedented growth and development.

· I have been appointed to the additional role of HP Chairman.

· Richard Hackborn has been named lead independent director of the company.
· The company also appointed Bart M. Schwartz, a former U.S. prosecutor, as counsel, to perform a forward looking and independent review of investigative methods and the company’s Standards of Business Conduct processes.
· This will ensure we have the appropriate level of rigor and discipline so we can be assured that this type of situation can never occur again.

· In summary, what began as an investigation with the best intentions has ended up turning in a direction we could not have possibly anticipated.
· The people of HP don’t deserve this nor do any of the people who were impacted.
· Now we know the depth of what has transpired, I take full accountability to drive the actions to set it right.
· HP is a remarkable company with tremendous assets in its talented employees, loyal customers and innovative products and solutions.
· But it has always been our deep values and beliefs that have set us apart from our competitors and made HP a place where people want to work and customers want to buy from.
· Our job is to fix this and get back to the job of running a business, serving customers and delivering on our commitments.
· I feel so strongly about this that I volunteered to share what I know with the Committee on Energy and Commerce next week in Washington.
· I’m going to leave my comments there for now and hand the floor over to Mike Holston from Morgan Lewis. Mike’s going to provide more detail into the scope, methods and details of Morgan Lewis’ analysis.

Please see SVW: Transcript of Mike Holston remrks.

September 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: HP [HPQ]
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HP: Mark Hurd's legal counsel Michael Holston details spying on journalists

Press conference transcript of remarks made at a September 22 press conference by Michael Holston, partner with law firm Morgan Lewis, legal counsel to Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard:

· Thanks Mark. Good afternoon.
· I’ve been asked by Mark to discuss the work that Morgan Lewis has done to date.
· Specifically I’ve been asked to explain the process that Morgan Lewis has used to uncover the facts behind the leak investigation and to present those facts to you, with a particular focus on the facts related to the issues that have been addressed in the media in the past few weeks.

· Before getting into the specifics, let me say that our investigation is not complete. There is still more work to be done.

· I was first retained by HP with regard to these issues on Sept. 8th.
· As I mentioned, the Firm has been asked to do an in-depth review of all the facts surrounding the investigation of the board leaks.
· The objective of the investigation is to get a comprehensive picture of what happened, when it happened and how it happened.
· In addition to this investigation, Morgan Lewis is also now handling all federal and state inquiries and investigations related to this matter.

III. Process:

· First, let me talk about the process. During the past two weeks:
o Morgan Lewis has collected more than a million pages of documents.
o We have reviewed many of those pages.
o We are committed to reviewing the remaining documents as fast we are able.
· The documents include internal HP documents and, to the extent we have been able to obtain them, documents from third parties who worked with HP in the leak investigation.

IV. High Level Overview:

· The investigation conducted by HP into the Board room leaks encompassed two phases: the first in early 2005 called Kona I; and the second in early 2006, which was called Kona II.

· Documents reviewed by Morgan Lewis show that certain HP executives and employees assisted in or were knowledgeable about the investigation.
· I will address the roles of various HP executives and employees in more detail in a few minutes.
· It is now clear that the investigation included tactics that ranged from the review of HP’s internal emails and instant messages, to the physical surveillance of an HP Board member and at least one journalist, to the "pretexting" of telephone call information of board members, HP employees and journalists.

Kona I – a high level snap shot

· Let me start with the first phase of the investigation, called Kona I.
· The investigation was started in early 2005 in response to a series of leaks of confidential company information. HP’s then Chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, contacted Security Outsourcing Solutions, Inc. (“SOS”) to perform investigative work.
· HP had a longstanding contractual relationship with SOS.
· For the first month or so of the investigation, Ms. Dunn worked directly with Ron DeLia from SOS.
o The investigation focused on attempting to find the source of the leaks to various Business Week, Wall Street Journal and New York Times journalists.
· Two months into Kona I, HP Global Security was brought in to assist with the investigation.
· At a July 22, 2005 meeting, SOS reported on the findings of the investigation. We believe that meeting was attended by Ms. Dunn, Ann Baskins, Jim Fairbaugh, Tony Gentilucci, Ron DeLia and Kevin Huska. Mark Hurd also briefly attended a portion of the meeting.
· Kona I concluded in the late summer of 2005 without uncovering the source of the leaks.

VI. Kona II – A high level snapshot

· Now let me discuss Kona II.
· In late January of 2006, there were leaks of confidential information from a January 2006 Board meeting that appeared in a CNET story on January 23, 2006.
· After these further leaks, the investigation resumed.

· The core investigative team behind Kona II was:
o Ron DeLia – SOS
o Tony Gentilucci – HP Global Security
o Vincent Nye – HP Global Security
o Fred Adler – HP IT Security Team
o Kevin Hunsaker – HP Senior Counsel
· Kevin Hunsaker directed the Kona II investigation for HP.

· Ms. Dunn, Mark Hurd, Ann Baskins, and Jim Fairbaugh were made aware that the Kona II team was assembled and was beginning to identify the source of the leaks.
· Over the next three months, regular updates were provided by members of the investigation team to Ms. Dunn and, to a lesser extent, to Ann Baskins. · During the course of Kona II, certain members of the investigation team provided assurances that the techniques being used in the investigation were legal.
· Those assurances came from, among others, Kevin Hunsaker, SOS and SOS’s outside legal counsel in Massachusetts.
· In March 2006, the Kona II team prepared a draft report of the investigation that was addressed to Ms. Dunn, Mark Hurd and Ann Baskins. The Report identified the source of the leaking and outlined the investigative techniques employed – including pretexting – with assurances that those techniques were lawful.
· In April 2006, HP provided a copy of the draft report to its outside corporate counsel for review and comment.
· The results of the investigation were reported on at the May 18, 2006 Board
meeting.
· On May 24th, Kevin Hunsaker produced a final report of the investigation.
· We are not currently aware of any investigation into leaks continuing after May18, 2006.

VII. Investigative techniques used

· Now that I have given you an overview of the leak investigation I want to address certain techniques that were used in the leak investigation and which have been largely reported on by the media during the past several weeks
· In particular, I want to focus principally on four methods that were used:
o Obtaining telephone and facsimile call information through "pretexting";
o The use of social security numbers to obtain phone call information through “pretexting”;
o Sending an email that had a tracing mechanism as an attachment to the email, and;
o The surveillance of individuals.
· These techniques were used in addition to traditional investigatory techniques, such as the review of other articles written by the journalists with access to the source of the leak and a search of HP internal records.
· Let me walk you through how and what was done in each of the four areas based on what we currently know.

1. Telephone call information through pretexting
· We are trying to respect the privacy of the individuals involved and thus we will not be disclosing the identity of the individuals investigated. HP fully intends to provide each person with detailed information about the information obtained about them, and the methods used for obtaining such information.
· Information regarding hundreds of telephone calls was obtained through “pretexting.”
· At this point in our investigation, there is evidence that SOS, directly or indirectly, obtained telephone (landline or cell) or facsimile call information through “pretexting” for:
o Two (2) current HP employees
o Seven (7) former or current HP Board members (or their family members)
o Nine (9) journalists (or their family members of some journalists)
· I want to stress that to the best of our knowledge, this activity was conducted by an outside investigator. As a result, it has been difficult for us to obtain all of the relevant documentation so far.

2.Use of Social Security Numbers in order to obtain records and HP employees involvement in the “pretexting”

· Morgan Lewis has uncovered one instance where, in January 2006, a member of the core investigation team – Tony Gentilucci – provided an HP employee’s social security number to SOS. We believe this was done for the purpose of obtaining telephone call information through “pretexting.”
· In addition, in January 2006, SOS obtained and transmitted social security numbers to Action Research Group (“ARG”) – the subcontractor SOS used to assist it the investigation. Again, we believe this was done for the purpose of obtaining telephone call information through “pretexting.” It is unclear at this stage what involvement, if any, HP employees had in obtaining and/or
transmitting these social security numbers to SOS. At this point in our investigation, we have information that social security numbers were used for the following:
o Three journalists
o Three current or former HP board members
o One HP employee
· In March of 2006, we believe that SOS obtained and transmitted the social security numbers for one other journalist, expressly for the purpose of obtaining telephone call information. It is unclear what involvement, if any, HP employees had in obtaining and/or transmitting this information to SOS.

3. Tracer

· Recent media stories have discussed the use of an email message, with what has been referred to as a tracer.
· A tracer is frequently used in businesses by individuals or companies which run websites to understand the behavior of their customers, and can be used to obtain information, such as the IP address of the person who downloads the tracer.
· In January 2006, the Investigation Team created an email account with a fictitious name and used that email account to send an email containing a tracer to a journalist. The objective of Investigation Team was to determine whether the journalist would forward the email to her source, and to determine the source of the leaks of HP confidential information.
· The Investigation Team prepared the email account and message so that the message appeared to be coming from a disgruntled senior executive, who was willing to share information with the journalist. The email to the journalist would provide what appeared to be confidential information.
· At this stage, the evidence suggests that the Investigation Team never received any confirmation that the tracer was activated, even though it received email messages from the journalist.
· The concept of sending the misinformation to the reporter and the content of the misinformation to be contained in the message of the email was approved by Mark Hurd. We have found no evidence that he was asked to approve the use of the tracer.

4.Surveillance

· Members of SOS engaged in physical surveillance. At this point in our investigation, we have the following information:
o In January 2006, SOS had an investigator surveil a Board meeting to determine if any journalists were seen at or around the site of the Board meeting.
o In late January into early February of 2006, SOS had an investigator surveil a HP Board member. The surveillance efforts included:
Surveilling him during a trip to Boulder, CO where he was a keynote speaker at an event. . SOS also surveilled him, his spouse and potentially other family members who were at the Board member’s residence in California at the time.
o In February 2006, SOS had an investigator surveil a journalist and her residence.
· We also have evidence that in February 2006, third party investigators may have conducted a search of individuals’ trash. However, at this time, we do not know who the targets of these efforts were.

VIII. In conclusion

· Finally, I want to address what we have not seen so far in our investigation. At this point in Morgan Lewis’ investigation:
· We have seen no evidence that any employee authorized or had knowledge of any use of online accounts being created or used to obtain telephone call information;
· We have not seen evidence that any wiretapping of any telephones occurred;
· We have not seen evidence that any computer keystrokes were tracked; and
· While a PowerPoint presentation discussing potential investigative techniques suggested studying the feasibility of “undercover operations” at the San Francisco offices of the Wall Street Journal and CNET, we do not have information to support the contention that any such operations actually occurred.
· I appreciate the cooperation of HP and its employees during the course of our investigation.
· Thank you for your time today.

- - -

From Betnews: HP CEO: Board Leak Was the Crime

The conference even included the unfortunate selection of "How Far is Heaven" by the Los Lonely Boys as journalists took their seats, which includes these ironic lyrics, especially considering the circumstances: "Save me from this prison, Lord, help me get away ...'cause only you can save me now from this misery."

September 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: HP [HPQ]
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Thoughtleaders: Where are the women in technology? Anita Borg Institute aims to shake things up

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher
In about two weeks, more than 1200 women plus a handful of men will meet in San Diego for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. It is organized by the Anita Borg Institute, the leading advocate for women in technology leadership roles, and the Association of Computing Machinery.

Anita Borg, founder of the institute.

I recently I met with Telle Whitney, the energetic and passionate head of the Anita Borg Institute,  housed within HP Labs in the heart of Silicon Valley. Also at the meeting was Alan Eustace VP of engineering at Google. Both Mr Eustace and Ms Whitney had once worked with Anita Borg, one of the world's top women computer scientists.
The topic of why are there so few women in computer engineering and technology research is one that has been around for many years. Have we made any progress?
"Some days it feels like we haven't moved much; but other days it really does feel that we have made a lot of progress. We just have to remember that culture changes slowly," said Ms. Whitney.
The forthcoming Grace Hopper celebration and conference, is a highpoint at the Anita Borg Institute, and this year it becomes an annual even--from being held once every two years.
"It is very exciting to see women connecting with each other," said Ms Whitney. "Suddenly, they are not in the minority anymore: they are with hundreds of other women. That makes a big difference."
Ms Whitney said that when she worked in tech research she sometimes felt isolated as a woman. And that isolation sometimes leads to women leaving their company, or their profession, to go and do other things. The Anita Borg Institute wants to reverse that trend and raise the numbers of women in tech research.
Alan Eustace will be one of the 80 or so men in the minority at the "Hoppers." The reason he is going is because this is the place to find the brightest women engineers and researchers.
"At Google, we want to recruit the smartest people, and that means we cannot ignore 50 per cent of the population."
Other big sponsors include IBM, Yahoo, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, and HP. All will be seeking to recruit women and increase the diversity of their workforce.
So, is this a "jobs fair" I asked? They laughed and said no; but there is intense competition to recruit the top women candidates.
"These are very difficult people to recruit because they have many options," said Mr Eustace. "Universities want them, other corporations want them, and we want them."
But with so few women in science and engineering, if Google and the others snap up the best and the brightest, won't that mean that Universities will lose out? Teachers are often cited as being the most influential on women's choice of careers.
"I think people generally know if they want to teach, or to work in the commercial sector. It doesn't have anything to do with us," said Mr Eustace. "We would be eating the seed corn if we were to pull women away from teaching."
To tempt the women at the Hopper celebration to the recruitment tables of the tech giants--goodie bags have been prepared.
Microsoft's goodie bag includes lipstick, while Google's contains chapstick [does this indicate something about the two companies...? Indoorsy (Seattle+rain) or Outdoorsy (SF Bay area sunny)?]
Mr Eustace said he is looking forward to the conference. "When you see so many women in one place, so excited, and so enjoying being there, it is an amazing thing. I get goosebumbs."
Men are welcome at the conference, and within the Anita Borg Institute. It's an attitude that makes sense, since they can help put things right.
But tracking changes in company employment data is difficult. Company human resource departments will not release employment data to protect themselves from legal actions.
For example, when I asked about the number of women engineers at Google, or the percentage of women to men engineers, Mr Eustace declined to answer. Yet he is a board member of the institute and a passionate supporter of this cause. Without such metrics, the work of the institute cannot be assessed.
"We've asked the HR departments at many large companies and they won't give us the information," said Ms Whitney. "We have plans to produce an aggregate number, which would not identify an individual company, but would still provide useful trend data."
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Thanks to Jane Evans-Ryan from MCA Communications and Eric Mason, communications director at the Anita Borg Institute, for setting up this meeting.]
Additional information about Anita Borg:
Anita Borg was a winner of the prestigious Heinz Award. This is from the Heinz Award web site:

Anita Borg, who received the eighth annual Heinz Award in the category of Technology, the Economy and Employment, died April 6, 2003. Her tireless and inspirational role in attracting women to the computer industry paved the way for countless numbers of women of all ages to embrace technology instead of fearing or ignoring it. We will miss her vision and tenacious spirit.

Anita Borg didn’t find her way to a computer keyboard until she was in her mid-20s — and even then it was the result of boredom with a dead-end job and pure happenstance. Still, she turned out to be a natural.

After receiving a Ph.D. in computer science from New York University in 1981, she embarked on what was to become a brilliant research career for some of the new industry’s commercial giants.

During the 1970s and early ’80s, the situation for women in technology was grim. There were only a handful of female professors and graduate students, and few undergraduates were entering the ranks. And, as bad as the academic situation was, industry was much worse.

Dr. Borg’s brilliant success in breaking through the “silicon ceiling” was an exception that proved the rule.

One day, attending a major industry seminar, she looked around and realized that there were only a handful of women in the room. She pulled that small group together and started Systers, an e-mail list and information-sharing network that now provides mentors, support, encouragement, contacts and ideas via the Internet to more than 2,500 women in 38 states and foreign countries.

In 1994, Dr. Borg co-convened the first Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Named in honor of a World War II computer pioneer, that first conference was attended by almost every notable woman in the field from all over the world — admittedly a small group.The fourth Grace Hopper Celebration will be held in October in Vancouver, with several hundred women attending.

Dr. Borg feels that, by presenting the major purpose of computer technology as solving straightforward technical challenges, we have lost the interest of many brilliant technical minds — often female — because their interest lies more in solving real problems than in creating technology for technology’s sake.

In 1997, Dr. Borg left the industry to found and lead the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT). In addition to assuming responsibility for a number of existing programs — including Systers and the Grace Hopper Celebrations — IWT is an experimental research and development organization focused on increasing the impact of women on technology, as well as enhancing the positive impact of technology on women around the world.

Link to The Heinz Awards

Anita Borg profile on Wikipedia

Subject: Article about Systers, a women only organization founded by Anita Borg ...

Women Who Inspire Us, Anita Borg - from GirlGeeks.com

The Google 2007 Anita Borg Scholarship

September 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Thoughtleaders
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September 21, 2006

A BILLION dollars for Facebook?

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo is in talks to buy Facebook for ONE BILLION DOLLARS. A billion dollars? Are you kidding? News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million and they seem to be very happy. But really.

Still it's good to know that some 22-year-olds act their age. Bloggers are zip-zipping about Facebookie Mark Zuckerberg's behavior during the negotiations. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch quotes from the Journal article:
During one series of talks with Microsoft, Facebook executives told their Microsoft peers they couldn’t do an 8 a.m. conference call because the company’s 22-year-old founder and chief executive, Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg, wouldn’t be awake, says a person familiar with the talks. Microsoft executives were incredulous.

At one point in the Yahoo negotiations, the talks extended into the weekend, says a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Zuckerberg, this account continues, said he couldn’t take part because his girlfriend was in town. Others pointed out they were closing in on a billion-dollar deal. Mr. Zuckerberg said it didn’t matter: his cellphone would be off, this person says.

Jason Drohn likes this. Very much.

The situation is truly priceless. First of all, the money will be there on Monday morning. And who knows, it may have gone up by then. He might get $1.5 billion! People are bashing him for being arrogant and not taking the cash and running like a fool, but what does he truly have to lose? He is making enough to pay for anything that he could ever want from a social networking site!? He takes the weekends off to spend with his girlfriend! Hell, he turns his phone off in the process! How many CEO’s can say that they do that? I sure can’t..
Zuckerberg is in a brilliant position to negotiate, which he has already demonstrated. He turned down a deal for $750 million and they came back with $1 billion. So he responds by blowing everyone off for a weekend. Good for him. I am glad to see that he has the values which everyone else in corporate America is looking for, taking time off to spend it with people he cares about..

My fave post on TechCrunch's comments belong to Mark Seremet:
Wait, I have to hit my crack bowl before I finish this post…ahhh…that’s better.

One billion? Based on *any* financial metric this is just insane. It’s irresponsible not to take it if it is, in fact, legit.

Speaking of irresponsible…it’s very dangerous to act with such hubris. Zuckerberg has a responsibility to his shareholders which includes having m&a discussions at inconvenient times if it will benefit the stakeholders.

September 21, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag:
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Hurd to Dunn: The plan is eggggcellent. Mwhahaha ...

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

HP CEO and soon-to-be chairman Mark Hurd was in the loop and approved spying operations on Cnet reporter Dawn Kawamoto, as well as five HP directors, the Washington Post and New York Times are reporting today. Both papers obtained internal emails showing that Hurd and Patricia Dunn jointly approved spying ops. While there's no direct email from Hurd, emails to and from Dunn show that the plan only went through with Hurd's approval.
The Times story shows that Hurd, as well as Patricia Dunn, OK'd spying on HP directors. Robert Sherbin, HP's director of communications, a key henchman in the project, emailed Dunn on Jan. 20 that "there's been another leak around the board." The same day he emailed Jim Fairbaugh, chief of global security, that "Mark believes the names worth looking at are (Richard) Hackborn, (Lawrence) Babbio, (Lucille) Salhany, (George) Keyworth and (Tom) Perkins."

Clearly, then, Dunn talked to Hurd and passed the message back to Sherbin. But that's nothing. Just when you thought your jaw couldn't drop any further on this story, today's Post report will knock your socks off.

The story details HP's attempts to infect Cnet reporter Dawn Kawamoto's computer with software that would track who she sends a planted email to. Dunn and Hurd enthusiastically approved the plan, according to emails obtained by the Post. Here's the timeline:
Jan. 26 - Kawamoto is sent an email from a fake HP employee named "Jabob," saying he wanted to pass her information about a fictional handheld device.
Jan. 28 - Lawyer Kevin Hunsaker, who was in charge of the investigation, and Anthony Gentilucci, global investigations manager, discuss Jacob's personality and the tone the email will take. They hatch a plan to establish Jacob's bona fides before springing the spyware on her.
Feb. 2 - Hunsaker briefs Dunn by PowerPoint presentation, including the email to Kawamoto.
Feb. 5 - Dunn emails Hunsaker: "This sounds promising. I will be in contact with Mark and come back to you with an indication of joint approval as soon as we connect."
Feb. 8 - Ronald DeLia, the outside contractor working with private investigators suggests bugging calls between Keyworth and Kawamoto.
Feb. 9 - Dunn emails Hunsaker and general counsel Ann O. Baskins: "I spoke with Mark and he is on board with the plan to use the info on new handheld. ... He also agrees that we should consider doing something with" a tip on a supposed HP data farm.
Feb. 16 - Kawamoto emails "Jacob" that she would be on vacation the next week. DeLia forwards her email, showing that her calls were actively tracked: "She has made numerous calls to a hotel in Disneyland."
Feb. 22 - Hunsaker emails Dunn and Baskins with a slide of the handheld device sent to Kawamoto. Dunn replies: "Kevin, I think this is very clever. As a matter of course anything that is going to potentially be seen outside HP should have Mark's approval as well."
Feb. 23 - Hunsaker emails Dunn. "FYI, I spoke to Mark a few minutes ago, and he is fine with both the concept and the content."
September 21, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: HP [HPQ]
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Monitor 110 brings blog intelligence to Wall Street

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Blog watching meets Wall Street with Monitor110, an aggregator and filter for some 40 million information sources, due to launch early next year, the FT reports. It's aimed exclusively at hedge funds currently, and is currently being tested by 10 funds. Its' being run by Roger Ehrenberg, former head of Deutsche Bank's hedge funds operations.
The platform is similar to the data portals that investors are used to, but the difference is that it tickers the unstructured universe.

Mr Ehrenberg said the platform in time could lend itself to trading strategies dependent on computer-driven models feeding off measures of online activity. However, analysts expressed fears that these strategies could be vulnerable to spammers.

At TechCrunch, Marshall Kirkpatrick is going ga-ga over Monitor 110:

Monitor110 gathers information from 40 million sources of various types (100 million by the end of next year they say), ranked by financial market knowledge through a proprietary algorithm that takes 50 factors into account - inbound links being just one reputation metric. Users can chose between top sources preselected for their market sector, and subscribe to sources of their own. Static sites can be monitored for changes with good granularity. Premium subscription and other deep web sources, blogs, forums, news and regulatory filings are among the sources included. The end results will be delivered through the company’s RSS reader with email, IM and SMS alerts as appropriate.

While the initial offering is focused on financial markets - Kirkpatrick notes these huge aggregation systems probably only work right now for people dealing in "pure money" - Kirkpatrick is thrilled to imagine the broader possibilities.

The company’s primary strength is their domain knowledge around financial markets. If the same infrastructure could be built into other verticals, I don’t know how much demand there would be today, but I’m willing to bet there will be a whole lot in the future. In fact, now that research suites like Monitor110 are coming to market, those of us who have been piecing together several different services to gain a competitive advantage in our fields are going to have to move to the next level. Services like this will give many more people the tools to get high-quality information at very early stages after it emerges.

diggrz: palate pleasing Decibel Festival 2006

[diggrz: an SVW tag for arts, culture, trends, and events in and around Silicon Valley- new from SVW] -

By Sara Kremer for Silicon Valley Watcher

At the Decibel festival in Seattle last weekend a more musically sophisticated crowd sat to a gamut of electronic beats. The mood was academic, partial to experimental, ambient, and techno sub-genres, and featured the most cutting edge producers.

This festival was like a wine tasting party for the finest of wine makers.

Decibel brought out a host of international talent, made up largely of artists performing original live sets (as opposed to pre-recorded DJ sets) with live video projections as a visual accompaniment. Musical producers, artists, and avid electronic music aficionados formed an appreciative crowd for over 100 performances and showcases, including mind-numbing sets by Apparat, Deru, Murcof,Ryoichi Kurokawa, and the long-time techno legend Speedy J

I was insanely impressed by the amount of innovative sonic explorations I experienced featuring new audio interfaces, sounds, and performance techniques. Creatively and musically inspired, I was ready to rush home to SF and start creating fresh laptop music of my own.

This unique and visionary festival is in its third year, draws over 6,000 attendees, and was well worth the treck from the Bay Area. Decibel promises to pump out more amazing lineups in the years to come.

diggrz: electric biorhytms, tribal tourism, and hands-free-photoblogging

[diggrz: an SVW tag for arts, culture, trends, and events in and around Silicon Valley- new from SVW] -

By Lucaso for Silicon Valley Watcher

Biorhythms are hot.

Ever since I witnessed Pimp My Heart at Zero One, I've been fascinated by technology that reacts to the body.

Phillips Designs is exploring how technology can be woven into our clothes to react to our personalities and emotions.

And artist Suzi Weber is creating electricskin.

Tribal Tourism

If you've ever wished you could chuck your laptop in the bay and move to a tech-free, REAL tribal community on a tropical Fijian island of Vorovor, then this is your chance to join a tribe. And, yes, there are still quite a few openings on Vorovoro.

Hands-free PhotoBlogging

Tired of pushing the shutter button on the camera?

Waymarkr documents your life continuously and effortlessly by taking random photos from your phone and sending them to a remote server so your phone never runs out of space.

Of course, it helps if you wear the phone around your neck. But then again (if you have a flash), it might be more interesting to see what's in your pocket!

[diggrz refers to a nomadic lifestyle made possible by mobile digital technologies and gadgets - a "nomadig" culture. The diggrz name also salutes some of the ideas of the Diggers, a democratic group that arose in 1649, out of the English revolution .

The Diggers were a radical group that cultivated and protected common lands, and sought to create egalitarian, self-sustaining communities. The Diggers would have found kindred spirits in today's software engineer culture and its focus on commonly owned technologies created through egalitarian open source community projects. - Tom Foremski]

September 20, 2006

Google.org seeks profits from charity work

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

The New York Times has an article describing Google's charity: Google.org funded with $1bn. What makes this interesting is that its legal status is the same as that of a corporation--it is a for-profit entity rather than a non-profit.

This means that Google.org is not subject to the 501(c)(3) IRS code that restricts what a non-profit can do. A drawback is that it would pay taxes on revenues that would be exempt if it were a non-profit.

Another drawback is the general perception of for-profit versus non-profit organizations. Non-profit status carries a "saintly" aura in our society, while a "for-profit charity" sounds distasteful, it smacks of trying to make money from social causes.

Larry Brilliant, the head of Google.org said this for-profit issue was a problem for him when he was first offered the job.

. . . At first, Dr. Brilliant said, he was thrilled. But then he turned skeptical, largely because of the for-profit structure of the organization.
“I got weak knees,” he said. “It was weird. It was precedent setting.” After several lengthy conversations with executives at Google, Dr. Brilliant changed his mind.

Source: Philanthropy Google’s Way: Not the Usual - New York Times

What Google is trying to do is important because it tackles an important issue I've spoken about: why should a company or organization, whose charter is to develop useful social projects, be tied down by the restrictions of a non-profit?

A for-profit designation does not mean it has to make a profit. A for-profit corporation with a mission statement that is similar to that of a non-profit charity could gain many of the same tax benefits as a non-profit by simply controlling how much profit it makes.

But the public perception of a "for-profit charity" and the associated negative connotations are difficult to overcome.

A far better designation than "non-profit" would be: "not-for-loss." A not-for-loss company could execute on its social causes and be self-funded because its profits are reinvested.

Also, there would be no need to use up time and resources in raising money from donors, as is the case with many non-profit organizations.

A good example of a not-for-loss organization with a strong social charter is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. has been very successful in pulling tens of millions of people out of poverty through micro-loans.

The interest rate it charges is higher than from other banks; but this allows it to be self-financing, and to grow its social mission. It doesn't need to go cap-in-hand to the Bill Gates Foundation, or anywhere else, to ask for grants to continue its work.

Another important aspect of the Grameen Bank structure is that its customers are also shareholders.

This is something that Google.org should look into, because its funds and projects could be yanked in the future by Google management or shareholders. If Google.org partners/customers were also shareholders, it would protect it from potential problems.

One of the first projects that Google.org could fund would be to establish the legal structure that others could use to create not-for-loss organizations, in which customers are also shareholders.

The importance of such legal structures should not be underestimated.

We would not have open source software if it weren't for a very powerful legal document, the GPL. This is the license that protects open source software; and it has never been challenged in the courts.

The GPL provides a legal structure that makes it possible for communities of developers to create commonly-owned open source technologies--and be protected from costly intellectual property lawsuits.

Google.org could help create not-for-loss legal structure for organizations with a social mission, the equivalent of a GPL, available in the public domain. That would create a tremendous amount of social value, IMHO.

HP emails show Dunn & Baskins intimately involved

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

The Wall Street Journal has internal HP emails that show that chairman Pattie Dunn and general counsel Ann Baskins were intimately involved in the leak-plugging investigations - known internally as KONA and KONA II - and that they may well have known that pretexting was involved. The emails also detail some of the HP personnel involved in the probe.

On Aug. 6, 2005, HP's manager of global investigations, Tony Gentilucci (who contracted with Security Outsourcing Services' Ron DeLia, who hired the firms who did the actual pretexting) sent an email to Dunn, Baskins, Jim Fairbaugh and DeLia.

In the memo, Mr. Gentilucci updated Ms. Dunn and the others on several facets of the probe, including "intelligence gathering" on "interested parties" through "internal and external sources."
Mr. Gentilucci's memo described an intensive investigation in 2005, code-named Project KONA, in which H-P's security officials cultivated confidential "informants" to develop leads on which directors may have met with which journalists.

The memo says that Gentilucci intends to follow up on some leads provided by VP of media relations Robert Sherbin, including a sighting of George Keyworth, who was in fact the leaker, meeting with a Journal reporter in a San Francisco hotel a year prior.

In another section of the 2005 memo labeled "Update," Mr. Gentilucci wrote that a "tentative management briefing" on the investigation was scheduled for Aug. 31. It is unclear if this meeting took place. If it did, it raises the question of who else in H-P's management, including CEO Mark Hurd, knew about the extent of the leak probe in summer 2005. H-P has said Mr. Hurd was given a summary of the leak investigation's results in March of this year, but didn't focus on the evidence for those conclusions.

The key question for law enforcement officials is what did they know, and when did they know it. An email from HP security official Fred Adler to Kevin Hunsaker, an ethics attorney at HP and apparently the one guy at the center of the KONA operations, offers an internal opinion that HP couldn't get cellphone or text-messaging records legally "unless we either pay the bill or get consent."

Apparently Hunsaker wanted to get copies of Perkins' text messages because he rarely used his cellphone. He asked Adler if HP could "lawfully get text-message content, or is it the same as the cellphone records?" This question suggests that Adler had already answered that obtaining cellphone records would be illegal.

So in January, Hunsaker knew that obtaining cellphone records was likely illegal. Hunsaker reports to Baskins. Both Baskins and Dunn had been very much in the loop in the earlier investigation. Now in April, just before confronting Keyworth, Hunsaker sends an email to Gentilucci and DeLia, saying at Baskins' request he wants to "confirm the legality" of the operation.

Mr. Hunsaker's email described how personal phone records had been gathered through outside parties, noting that he was the only H-P employee who saw the fully compiled records. His email said H-P provided the names and phone numbers of the people it was targeting to Mr. DeLia, and he passed on the information to a "third party" and "they make the pretext calls." He said his own legal research, as well as that of an outside attorney, confirmed that pretexting was legal.

Outside attorney? Would that be Joe Kiernan, DeLia's attorney? The Times' reported over the weekend that Baskins relied on Kiernan for legal opinion about the legality of the operation. Now with all of the legal expertise at HP's disposal, including Wilson Sonsini, there's only one reason to have your henchman ask his spy for legal advice. Not an authentic interest in the correct answer but CYA.

HP pretexted Sonsini, was warned of possible illegallity

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

The HP spying program is looking more and more like an out of control operation, especially after the revelation in the Wall Street Journal that HP pretexted Larry Sonsini himself.

There is precious little information about this. Buried on the jump page of a larger story, the Journal simply reports that a "person familiar with the matter" said Sonsini was pretexted.

Law blogger Alex Simpson writes:

Think about it -- Larry Sonsini advises many other companies and their boards -- he may have been conducting secret merger negotiations, and HP's investigators now know who he was talking to and when. That's a massive violation of Sonsini's clients' trust (through no fault of his own, of course).

It's a slippery slope from trying to identify the source of the leak to doing a little corporate espionage on your competitors. Surely Pattie Dunn is not the only person at HP with an interest in who besides Cnet reporters Larry Sonsini and Tom Perkins are talking to. Increasingly, the whole thing smells like a Palo Alto version of Watergate, where top leaders decide to investigate more and more people and engage in more and more outrageous behavior.

This should all make for some nice airplane chatter as Dunn, general counsel Ann O. Baskins and Sonsini make the trip to Washington to testify before a House subcommittee on the matter. Surprisingly, all three said they would testify at a hearing on Sept. 28. And today, HP delivered reams of documents the House committee requested.

All of this amid revelations in the Journal's larger story that Fred Adler, an HP global security officer in Roseville, CA, alerted higher ups that the pretexting operation might be illegal. We don't know who received the memo but Adler works for Jim Fairbaugh, who worked on the probe.

In another story, the Journal reports that Dunn and Baskins were intimately involved in running the program and Dunn was kept up to date on potential suspects, investigatory techniques and other details. Dunn has maintained that she wasn't involved because she considered herself a potential leaker. (Huh?) More to come.

Day 20: MSFT's PR agency doesn't get blogging, at least in Europe

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

It is Day 20 and still no word from Paul Abrahams, the head of European operations for PR powerhouse Waggener Edstrom, following his public announcement that he doesn't "get blogs."

Mr Abrahams slammed the BlogoSphere in an article for PR Week in the UK, and then took off for a long vacation.

I wrote about whether it was a smart move for one of the PR industry's top executives to admit to such a blind spot. After all, PR agencies are busy creating "new media practices" to show off to clients that they really, really, do understand blogs and blogging. Apparently not all of them do and I respect Mr Abrahams' honesty.

From PR Week (Subscription required.)

Blogs: Smokey and the Bandit Part 4?

Paul Abrahams - 31 Aug 2006

Is blogging the 21st-century equivalent of citizen band radio, the personal radio technology that became so popular in the late 1970s that it was included in a Coronation Street plotline and spawned a generation of bad Burt Reynolds 'Good Ol' Boy' movies?

Source: Microsoft's PR agency admits it doesn't "get" blogs!

Just a couple of hours after I wrote my post, his colleague, Frank Shaw, one of the earliest PR bloggers, did the right thing and jumped right into the discussion by posting comments and posts to try to quell any negative publicity.

Mr Shaw did this while in the middle of moving his family and home to Seattle. I'm sure he'd rather be doing something else.

Mr Shaw expected Mr Abrahams to jump into the conversation. Especially since this subject was picked up by a lot of people in Silicon Valley and in the UK. Robert Scoble, a former Microsoft blogger and one of the top names in the blogosphere wrote about it, and so did many others in Silicon Valley and in the UK.

There were many offline, private conversations on this subject--yet there is still no word from Mr Abrahams nearly three weeks after his provocative column. Maybe I just assumed he wanted a debate? Or maybe he is still on vacation, (European vacations typically run to at least six weeks per year and sometimes more for senior executives.)

I'm keen to get this discussion moving forward. This is a perfect opportunity to help those that don't "get it."

There are two ways to respond to negative publicity events: one is to move right away, as Frank Shaw aptly demonstrated (he "gets" blogging because he blogs) by jumping into the online conversations as soon as you can. The second way is the keep your head down and "wait-for-it-to-blow-over" strategy.

We have here the potential for a classic case study that offers both approaches from within the same PR firm. Which one do you think will work best?

[Will Frank get here first before Paul . . . :-) ]

September 19, 2006

HP Update: Intel's Grove on two-title Hurd

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I was wondering how long it would be before Andy Grove, employee #3 at Intel (an SVW sponsor) would speak on the topic of Mark Hurd's consolidation of power at Hewlett-Packard. Intel, through the efforts of Mr Grove, has worked very hard to become an example of good corporate governance.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Andy Grove, management guru and former head of Intel Corp., said Tuesday that he is dismayed by the recent combination of the chairman and CEO positions at Hewlett-Packard Co.

"Every time I see that a company that has departed from the ... combined chairman-chief executive role go back" to combining the roles, Grove said, "I'm sorry to see that."

. . . HP had split the roles of chairwoman and chief executive in February 2005, when Carly Fiorina was ousted by the board.

. . . Grove was in New York to speak at the Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York. The school was named after Grove, following his $26 million donation to the school last year, the largest ever to the school.
. . . Grove, 70, retired as chairman of Intel last year, but retains the title of senior adviser.

Link to Intel's Grove 'Sorry to See' HP Shuffle: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Here is John Gapper from FT.com on this subject:

Combining the jobs of chairman and chief executive is still the American way: only 7 per cent of S&P 500 companies split the roles, according to Institutional Shareholder Services. Even when the jobs are split – as has occurred at Ford between Bill Ford and Alan Mulally – it is often done dysfunctionally. A chief executive ascends to the chairmanship, but still insists on keeping at least one hand on the strategy tiller.
The implication of one person holding both jobs, or of two vying for executive control, is that the role of chairman of the board is insufficient in itself to keep an alpha male (or female) fully occupied. Founders of technology companies, such as Bill Gates of Microsoft or Michael Dell, often become chairmen but carry on opining on strategy. In Mr Gates' case, he took the additional title of chief software architect.
That kind of thing is dying out on the other side of the Atlantic. Most British companies split the roles of chief executive and non-executive chairman.

Source: FT.com - The trouble with the two-title guys

Here is a view from the inside: Tom Hayes from TomBomb.com:

I was among the dozen or so executives in the room who welcomed Mark Hurd to HP the day he got his badge and met the media beast. My colleagues there were (and are) good people, talented people, dedicated people.
But in the days and weeks following Carly Fiorina’s ousting, a siege mentality had set in. The paranoia was palpable.
In a large company (150,000 employees) with HP’s peculiar culture (everyone is permitted a vocal opinion on everything) leaks are inevitable. Closing down the leaks was more than the work of control freaks, it was seen as a corporate duty under the restrictions on “selective disclosure” set by Congress.
Leaks equal a sloppy company. Leaks hurt shareholders. Therefore, leaks must be plugged. At HP as elsewhere under Regulation FD, closing the holes became a moral pursuit. And a Fool’s Errand.
In the Age of Information Ubiquity, expecting total information control is addled thinking. With blogs, vlogs, message boards, and a plethora of email choices, all companies are sieves. . .

Some latest links on HP:
HP Execs to Testify Before House Panel - AP (8:56 pm)

Looking For Leaks In All The Wrong Places
at Forbes.com (Tue 2:20pm)

NYT editor to laud HP's Dunn; Yahoo auto weakness; Sun PR in Second Life; Safe shopping in Tel Aviv

Bill Keller editor of the New York Times keynotes celebration of Patricia Dunn, the (former) chairman of Hewlett-Packard, and her induction into the Bay Area Business Hall of Fame. Wednesday evening in San Francisco.

That is going to be one very awkward evening....

(Hat-tip to Sid Hudgens)

Link to Annual Dinner 2006 Bay Area Council

Yahoo warned of weakness in auto and financial services advertising, its two largest ad buyers. But is this a Yahoo or industry-wide problem?

Mitch Lowe, CEO of Automotive Media, the largest automotive advertising network said:

“The market for auto ad inventory is robust, with some seasonality. Auto ad spending is always lumpy as it heavies up during new model launch periods. The first two months of Q3 were lighter on launches but Q4 and 2007 are heavy for launches. Online 2007 ad inventory is already being committed to at volume and rate both higher than anticipated.”

(Source: George Simpson)

Sun Microsystems to host virtual press conference

Sun Microsystems is planning a press event featuring John Gage, its chief researcher, but to attend you will have to create a digital avatar. That's because Sun is hosting the event on Second Life, the virtual world with a virtually real economy.

Over at Tech Chronicles at San Francisco Chronicle.

Here's a good example of a virtual street: Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv. Don't let missiles or bombers keep you away from shopping. Designed by Michael Simkin, CEO of C-DO Networks, a 31 yr old Brit from Liverpool.

Sheinkin Street can be compared with Covent Garden in London, parts of Greenwich Village in New York, St. Catherine Street in Montreal, Oscar Freire Street in Sao Paulo, and Oxford street in Sydney... It includes a magazine which deals with local culture, leisure, fashion and life style as well as giving historical, and local information about Sheinkin Street...
The site also includes short videos, which show interviews with fashion designers, people who have contributed to the development of the street, and local events...

Link to Sheinkin Street

diggrz: Beat museum Gala opening; Beethoven in bondage and Liszt in leather

[diggrz: an SVW tag for arts, culture, trends, and events in and around Silicon Valley- new from SVW] -

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

There is a similarity between the Beat and Blogging cultures . . . each celebrates a raw, passionate literary expression. The Beat Generation and Beatniks are strongly associated with the San Francisco/Bay area-- and so is the Blogging movement.

A great place to find out more about the Beats is in San Francisco's North Beach district. The newly created Beat Museum is having its Gala Grand Opening party on Wednesday September 27th 7pm. A host of VIPs include:

- Michael McClure - Beat Poet of Six at Six Gallery fame.
- Al Hinkle - childhood friend of Neal Cassady from Denver and Kerouac character "Big Ed Dunkle" in On The Road.
- John Allen Cassady - Raconteur
- Magda Cregg - Life Companion to Lew Welch
- Wavy Gravy - Beat Poet & Merry Prankster (aka Hugh Romney)
- Stanley Mouse - famed sixties Poster Artist
- Jack Hirschman - Current San Francisco Poet Laureate

The Beat Museum 540 Broadway (at Columbus)

http://www.thebeatmuseum.org/pressrelease.html

1960's UNREST PHOTO EXHIBIT - THE WHOLE WORLD'S WATCHING
Harold Adler, whose terrific series of photos of Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure and Lawrence Ferlinghetti are currently on exhibit at The Beat Museum, is curating a show at the Berkeley Art Center called "The Whole World's Watching" from September 24th - November 10th. This show features hundreds of photos of 1960's unrest by dozens of photographers including both Harold Adler and Larry Keenan.
http://www.berkeleyartcenter.org/pages/exhibitions.html#current

SVW on the Beat culture:

Let it roll: A celebration of beat and blog literature; shoot-from-the-hip-one-take-journalism

The Beats: celebrating the obscenity of literature

You have to read this!!! Evelyn Rodriguez on Salons and the Beat writers....

The new and old Beatniks celebrate Neal Cassady's birthday

Beethoven in bondage + Liszt in leather . . .

It's a provocative title but it is probably an island of sanity that Saturday because of the Folsom Street fair and the Love Parade happening that same day.

Winners of the San Francisco Concerto Orchestra Competition play Beethoven and Liszt Saturday, September 23 5 pm
St John's Episcopal Church 1661 15th st (near Valencia) $25

Pianists Allison Lovejoy and Stephen Bailey will be performing Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto.

Ann Dimedio and Seth Montfort perform Liszt concertos
Some cabaret selections will also be featured...

Upcoming diggrz events

More of diggrz's events

Tag: diggrz

[diggrz refers to the nomadic lifestyle offered by mobile digital technologies and gadgets - creating a "nomadig" culture. The diggrz name is also a tip-of-the-hat to some of the ideas of the Diggers, a democratic group that arose in 1649, out of the English revolution .

The Diggers were a radical group that cultivated and protected common lands, and sought to create egalitarian, self-sustaining communities. The Diggers would have found kindred spirits in today's software engineer culture, and the focus on creating commonly owned technologies through egalitarian open source community projects. - Tom Foremski]

Tag: diggrz

diggrz: DJs spin not speak; Musical dating; Bake a cake for Amanda she's coming this way . . .

[diggrz: a tag for arts and culture trends and events - in and around Silicon Valley - a new feature from Silicon Valley Watcher]

By Lucaso for Silicon Valley Watcher
Lately, I've been deleting music podcasts because I'm tired of hearing a DJ's voice, even for the track listing.

If I wanted to know the track info, I'd look it up on the chapter list in iTunes or read the playlist. Save the chatter for the new Skype wi-fi cellie and let the music of the podcast speak for itself, dig?

If a picture is worth a thousand words than a song is worth at least 999. So, with that in mind . . . here are two of my new favorite podcasts: BetterPropoganda and Memekast.

BetterPropoganda is an established digital music portal and Memekast features guest DJs doing live mixes. Both are electronic/breakbeat/dance focused, and even if you're only dancing in your chair, they're still hot.These two podcasts have taken over my iPod by giving me 30-40 minute sessions that are mixed live and uninterrupted... perfect for repeat play.

Music to meet people by . . . Similar to Last.fm, Mog lets you discover "people through music and music through people."

Not enough video sharing sites . . . Dabble lets you search, collect and organize your favorite web videos. What's different about Dabble and other video sharing sites? Hmmm ... the UI?

Dave.tv, another video sharing beta. The difference with Dave.tv is that you can create an entire broadcasting channel to put it anywhere on the web.

Amanda is heading this way. . . Yes, old Rocketboom anchor and videoblog actress Amanda Congdon is headed west. You can check out her trip across the states at Amanda Across America.

. . .

Come back to Silicon Valley Watcher for more diggrz: arts and culture and events posts throughout the week.

The Diggers were a radical group that cultivated and protected common lands, and sought to create egalitarian, self-sustaining communities. The Diggers would have found kindred spirits in today's software engineer culture, and the focus on creating commonly owned technologies through egalitarian open source community projects. - Tom Foremski]

Tag: diggrz

September 18, 2006

Microsoft says its building a YouTube

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Continuing its strategy of copying fantastically successful online services (see Microsoft's iZunes strategy), Redmond is getting ready to launch Soapbox as a challenger to YouTube, Reuters reports.

"We're definitely not blind to the fact that YouTube has a big lead right now," said Rob Bennett, general manager of MSN's entertainment and video services. "It's really early days in online video. This is still act one."

Microsoft Video was a traditional online video site with news clips and featured product (movies and music) videos from partners. They were completely blindsided by the user-created revolution and Soapbox is an attempt to embrace and extend.

"Microsoft is jumping on this bandwagon with some uncertainty with where it's going, but the company believes it needs to be on board," said Joe Wilcox, an analyst at JupiterResearch.

But MS will control the site with a stern eye towards copyrighted material (they could do no less, given their outrage over software piracy), but the solution to copyright infringement is cut deals with labels that allow sampling and mashups of copyright material. Given how weakly MS seems to get the user-creation piece of this, Soapbox strikes as a beta project that is unlikely to steal YouTube's magic. Both Apple and Google should be better aligned on that score.

Warner content moves to YouTube

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Warner Bros cut a deal with YouTube to distribute and license copyrighted videos and music on the site. The companies are negotiating to strike a distribution deal, too, AP reports.

The deal includes the ability for YouTube users to include WB content in their own home-made videos. That's a pretty major deal for mashup culture.

"The Warner deal is one more piece of evidence that the record labels are comprehending the value of free music distribution," [industry market researcher Phil] Leigh said. "Instead of insisting on being paid every time, they're realizing they can use the Internet to popularize music and stimulate demand for both CD and digital downloads."

It's all in the context of copyright. But with Warner taking the lead on being proactive about online distribution, the rest of the industry may fall into line. Analyst Steve Lidberg:

The labels still want to be paid each time. What's changed is that they've found new monetization models where they can get paid. It's a new revenue source for Warner that they weren't getting paid from before. ... I'd expect this to be the foundation by which YouTube could have other discussions with the major labels in the marketplace.

September 17, 2006

We badly need a way to verify sources of online content - we need a "trust trackback"

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

The LonelyGirl15 story was fascinating because it is a glimpse into our future: a world where we aren't sure of the source of the information, or it's truth.

LonelyGirl15 was found out to be a fake video blogger--scripted by a Hollywood production team--because many millions had watched it, and many thousands tried to find out who was behind it.

What happens in a future world where phishing is applied to news sources rather than spoofing banking sites? And where there aren't enough watchdogs to spot the fakes?

A little while ago, Google News was carrying a hacked headline that was anti-US and anti-Israel. That was easy to spot; but what if Google News, or some other large news aggregator, were carrying a Reuters story that might have been more subtlety altered?

Google News, does not use humans to spot problems, it compiles the news stories using algorithms. But can those algorithms spot fakes? Clearly not in this case.

In the future, or even now, how can we know if a Microsoft press release really came from Microsoft? And the same goes for nearly every other piece of information we find on the internet. Tampered news stories might not be noticed for days or weeks.

Validating trusted sources of information is going to be very important. And part of that trust will be provided by going to web sites of long established media brands such as the New York Times, and through anti-phishing technologies such as OpenDNS, to make sure your browser is reading a valid site.

This ability to know that a news source --an individual, a company, an organisation, a community, or a government-- really said what it is said to have said in a news story, an online post, email, or any other distribution channel, is incredibly important. Otherwise there will be others who will sow misinformation in very sophisticated ways, for commercial gain.

There will be many opportunities for such misinformation in the online world. With so many sources of information, and more coming our way, there won't be enough online sleuths to flag the fakesters as there were with LonelyGirl15.

This means we need to have a way to verify the source of specific chunks of content as originating from an individual, a company, an organisation, a community, a government.

A reader should be able to click a "trust" button and have the content verified.

For example, in reading a news story: it consists of content from the journalist/news organization; there is content from the company (the ceo said..., our customers said..., the analyst said....,); and there is information from other sources, (the company stock price..., related announcements from other companies..., related stories..., etc). An online reader has to have the means of validating each of those sources of information.

This issue of sourcing also applies to the new media release project I've been working on with corporations and PR agencies. The new media release project is focused on ways of releasing company information onto the internet in many forms, such as vidcasts, podcasts, text press releases, etc.

Those companies/organisations have a duty to release their information in such a way that its origin can be verified, and that others cannot change the content surreptitiously.

For this next phase of the Internet, we badly need a mechanism to verify the source of information that we read online.

This is about creating a type of "trust trackback" that is part of the secure core infrastructure of the internet. Who is up to this task?

- - -

Coming up:

A report on my Sunday meeting with a delegation of Spanish technologists from the remote region of Asturias in northern Spain. This is a fascinating group of researchers, academics and business representatives, that are thinking in terms of community rather than technology. They are in town visiting with Silicon Valley's leading companies and research organisations.

NYT: Spying was dirtier, earlier, broader than HP has admitted

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

New revelations in the HP scandal from the Times:

The hunt for the leaker started in January 2005, when word of Carly Fiorina's ouster hit the press.
HP relied in part for its evaluation of the program's legality on a law firm that shares a phone number with Security Outsourcing Solutions, the Boston firm that supplied many of the detectives working on the project.
News.com's Dawn Kawamoto may have been physically followed.
HP spied on its director of corporate media relations, Michael Moeller.
Detectives tried to track News.com reporters actions by sending a bogus document that included a program that would report back to detectives whom the reporters forwarded the document to. It didn't work.

The Times is starting to put things in a timeline:

Within 60 days [of stories about Fiorina's ouster], the investigation into the leaks was up and running, according to those briefed on the company review. Responsibility for the investigation was delegated to the company’s global investigations unit, based in the Boston area. Those company officials turned the effort over to Security Outsourcing Solutions, a two-person agency that hires specialists for investigations.

That firm hired Action Research Group, an investigative firm in Melbourne, Fla. The actual work of obtaining the phone records was given to other subcontractors, one of which is said to have worked in or near Omaha. The methods were said to have included the use of subterfuge, a practice known as pretexting, in which investigators pose as those whose records they are seeking.

Previous accounts of the Hewlett-Packard operation have focused on the use of such methods in the 2006 phase of the investigation, but not in its earlier phase.

Revelations that HP legal went to SOS's law firm really suggest that HP general counsel Ann O. Baskins was aware the program was on shaky ground and didn't want to hear otherwise.

At at least one point, the company’s lawyers sought a legal opinion. But it did not come from Hewlett-Packard’s own outside counsel, Larry W. Sonsini of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, an eminent Silicon Valley law firm.

Instead, the company asked one of its contractors, Security Outsourcing Solutions, which turned to a Boston lawyer, John Kiernan of Bonner Kiernan Trebach & Crociata, for the opinion. Mr. Kiernan’s office shares a Boston address and phone number with Security Outsourcing Solutions.

Recall Larry Sonsini's statements that:

"I was not involved involved in the design or conduct of the investigation. The investigation was run by the HP legal department with outside experts. I reviewed the report after the investigation for Board process. Pattie was not involved in the design or conduct of the investigation either, to my knowledge. I am sure that Ann Baskins looked into the legality of every step of the inquiry and was satisfied that it was conducted properly."

The Times report suggests that the "outside experts" was John Kiernan and that Baskins' research into the legality consisted of talking to Kiernan.

There are many more shoes to drop in the sordid affair. California AG Bill Lockyer has said he expects to file charges. The SEC is investigating violations of reporting duties. A lawsuit has been filed against the officers. Dunn, Baskins and Sonsini have been called to the Hill Sept. 28. While it's unlikely they will say anything at that hearing, the House also subpoenaed many documents, which were due today. Presumably HP's lawyers aren't anxious to add contempt of Congress to their potential rap sheets.

Josh Wolf likely headed to jail

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

The Justice Department wants to put Josh Wolf back behind bars, the freelance videographer reported on his blog last week. Wolf - who was sentenced to jail by a US District Court for refusing to release video of a protest that involved the burning of a San Francisco police car - was released on bail at the beginning of September by a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

A separate panel - a more conservative panel than the one who released him, notes the Huffington Post's Steven Kraus - rejected his appeal from the District Court's contempt order.

Based on that order, the US Attorney now warns that the clock is ticking on the grand jury investigating the car burning and that Wolf should be returned to jail to compel him to turn over his material.

In their Motion to Revoke Bail (PDF), government lawyers argue:

The clock is ticking on this grand jury's term of service and thus the coercive intent behind the recalcitrant witness statute is lessened with each passing day. ... Wolf's interest has lessened because each of his claims was rejected on appeal. In fact, this Court's opinion brings the total number of [courts] to unequivocally reject Wolf's claims to six

Having reviewed the Court's decisions, it seems to me exceedingly likely that Wolf is headed back to jail. As the government notes, the point of the contempt order is to get him to turn over the goods. There's not much coercion if he's in jail for the duration of the grand jury.

The panel that released Wolf on bail did so pursuant to the recalcitrant witness statute (28 USC § 1826). Under that statute, bail may be granted pending appeal. The bail order said that the bail would be in effect until the appeal is decided by the "next motions panel," which rejected Wolf's appeal on Sept. 8. So the govenment's motion isn't at all surprising; it's the appropriate next step after the appeal decision.

Wolf's next step then is to appeal to the full Ninth Circuit Court sitting en banc - that is, all the judges, not just a three-judge panel. The question is whether the Court will consider this nothing more than frivolous delay. If so, they may well revoke the bail during that appeal. Another alternative would be to appeal to the US Supreme Court.

The government notes:

[I]f bail is not revoked, Wolf will have - and no doubt take - 45 days to file a petition for rehearing of this Court's opinion after the mandate issues. (Citation omitted.) Further litigation in form of a petition for certiorari are [sic] certain to prolong Wolf's release for an undeterminable time. .... Revoking bail is ... consistent with the purpose of the recalcitrant witness statute, which is to coerce a witness who has unlawfully refused to comply with a lawful grand jury subpoena to comply.

The interesting issue - one that the Supreme Court could conceivably, though unlikely, be interested in - is whether the feds were trying to do an end-run around California's Reporter's Shield law. When we first reported about Wolf (Josh Wolf is in jail), we noted:

[I]sn't the burning of a SF cop car a local matter? It is - and it's one that apparently the SF DA didn't bother to investigate. So how did Josh Wolf wind up in federal court?
The government's argument is that the SFPD receives federal terrorism dollars from Washington, therefore crimes against the police are crimes against the United States
That's a very shaky argument. It essentially says that the Justice Dept. can step in at any time and say that any crime against any local agency that receives any federal funds - and the Dept. of Homeland Security has been littering the country with antiterrorism funds (there are, for instance, over 8,000 target sites in Indiana, 40% more than in New York).

But the Ninth Circuit disagreed, saying it would not consider whether the grand jury's investigations were proper. The Supreme Court is unlikely to feel differently. Indeed, according to the appeals court, the high court has already spoken. "The Supreme Court specifically cautioned against the courts making such determinations. Branzburg 408 US at 705-6."

So, Josh Wolf's options are running out. It's a federal case; there is no reporter's shield. It's unclear if he would even qualify under the California Shield. It's also unclear that anyone would be hurt by his turning over of the material. No confidential sources are counting on his silence. He's made his point and been rebuffed. It would be great if the Supreme Court took it up. But is he willing to spend some nine months in jail (the grand jury expires in June) to find out whether the Court will grant cert? It's extremely unlikely they will.

It's time to move on. Turn over the video and take a pass on another trip to Dublin.

September 15, 2006

'Underwhelming' Zune will be on shelves for holidays

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Microsoft confirmed plans to deliver its iPod-knockoff Zune music player for the holiday season, Red Herring reported.

What's cool: Wi-Fi capability, a built-in FM receiver, a screen that tilts for letterbox-like viewing, and an all-you-can-eat option.

What not: A control that appears to copy iPod's early controls, a brown option, a 30GB hard drive, and according to analyst Shawn Wu, it's a retread of the Toshiba Gigabeat.

Microsoft Zune appears underwhelming. Microsoft had hinted of an all-new design from the ground up, but from our analysis, it appears that the Zune is essentially a repackaged Toshiba Gigabeat that has seen limited success.

The other Apple-like aspect is a music store called Zune Marketplace, but really, why not just call it iZunes? I do like the all-you-can-eat Zune Pass option, which, according to Red Herring, offers "unlimited downloads for a flat feet." [sic] (Not that we are typo-free here at SVW, but that's a cute one.)

Write your own job post; PCForum is gone; Tell about Tellfriends.com; DSL distress; Hubub launches

. . . Trevor Jonas from Bite brought attention to this write your own job post. Maybe it's a trend?:

As you recently launched a job site, I thought you might get a kick out of this one. Wikia is hiring and has posted an edit-able job description on its site (see:
http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Careers).

The page has the following message at the top "Job seekers: If you don't like the job description below, feel free to change it." Think anyone will add a salary section? :)

. . . Tom Abate at the San Francisco Chronicle Technology Chronicles blog says PC Forum is dead...

Call it a sign of the times, but what is arguably the longest running elite high-tech conference became a thing of the past. Technology guru Esther Dyson has quietly put out the word that the 2006 PC Forum, held in March in Carlsbad, California, would be the last. Wrote Dyson in a note that found its way to Tech Chronicles:
"It had a great run, from 1977 to 2006, and we decided to end it before anyone asked us to."

Link to The Technology Chronicles : PC Forum's demise marks the end of an era

. . . TellFriends.com will be coming into beta very soon.

Tellfriends. Help friends. They'll help you. It's infokarma!

. . . Lynne Jolitz tries to get DSL on a DSL line .

The ISP is told by Verizon that they cannot install DSL at this location because the line is 12,224 feet from the box and "load coils" are used. Hmm, first problem is I can see the box, and it isn't 12,224 feet. Second problem is that I know it's an up-to-date switch that doesn't need load coils. And third problem is that I already have DSL running on one of their wires . . .

Posted by lynne : "DSL Debacles and Competitor Cheats" at 14:20 | link to entry | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

<< Fun Friday - Men Expect Success, Women Work for Success | Main |

. . . Giovanni Rodriguez ex-Eastwick Communications has co-founded Hubub, a great name for a new media communications agency . . .

EMC shops for security

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

. . . EMC is out shopping again, this time in the security software space. I'm hearing about $170m for Network Intelligence, the deal to be wrapped up with a pretty bow by the end of next week .

Don't mention LonelyGirl15 . . .

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

My son Matt is exhausted from telling the story of LonelyGirl15 to the media so many times.

He did well, I'm not sure I could have handled that kind of attention at 18 years old. Right now, he doesn't want to to talk to anybody about anything LG15 related. He just wants to go away somewhere and be anonymous.

Matt bore the brunt of these interviews, nearly three days of talking about the LG15 media story. I always find it strange to be interviewed by the media while being in the media.

But I love talking about the media, to the media, while being a part of the media--and writing about the media. It is an Alice-in-Wonderland-inside-out feeling at times, but one that is part of this changing media landscape.

This front page New York Times article on Tuesday sparked enormous worldwide interest:

Here is some related coverage in other publications:

Lonelygirl: a Rose by any other name
Sydney Morning Herald - Sydney,New South Wales,Australia
Her true identity was flushed out by Matt Foremski, the son of Tom, a former Financial Times journalist who now writes a blog called Silicon Valley Watcher. ...

Now, the Sequel to Lonelygirl15
TIME - USA
... than the portions of our personalities that we choose to show (or hide) when we interact with the people around us.'" - The SiliconValleyWatcher, Sept. 12. ...

LonelyGirl Revealed
Red Herring - CA,USA
... The father-and-son team behind SiliconValleyWatcher, Matt and Tom Foremski, revealed Tuesday that they’d tracked down Ms. Rose’s identity. ...

September 14, 2006

Yahoo launching "Marketplaces" division

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Yahoo has hired Hilary Schneider from Knight-Ridder to run the company's new Marketplaces division, encompassing Yahoo's various classifieds ads sites like jobs, autos and personals - as well as the travel and shopping sites, Bloomberg reports.

She knows something of the online classifieds business from her work at K-R, especially competing with Craigslist. Interestingly, PaidContent.org ran an interview with her as " one of the most visionary newspaper industry executives on the subject of newspapers in the digital age." No doubt she is top-notch talent; but does it say something that Yahoo is reaching to newspapers instead of to the online world? It certainly says something about K-R's future that it is losing one of its top executives who understands the rapidly shifting economic models.

Here's some good stuff from that interview:

Q: But wouldn't you concede that Craigslist has been a rude wake-up call for newspapers?

A: Craigslist is a fascinating phenomenon, and one of the things it has done is expand the market for person-to-person listings. We did some quantitative research, which showed that 40% of those looking to conduct person-to-person transactions primarily use non-traditional advertising methods, such as word-of-mouth, e-mail, fliers, etc.

In response to this trend, we improved our classified product in November 2004. We upgraded our search and navigation capabilities and added new, cool features like photos, RSS feeds and others. The pricing is very inexpensive, and, in some cases, it's actually free, with the idea being that consumers will pay for advanced features and enhanced placement of their ads.

And, via Susan Mernit, from an E&P interview:

As newspaper companies, we have to ask ourselves: what does it mean to allow a reporter to publish under the media brand directly to the Web -- without any editing? This is different than traditional editorial workflow, which has multiple levels of editorial checks and balances. To provide transparency to users, blogs should be clearly labeled: what is edited by us, what is written by us but published in real-time, and what is self-published by other users. The business model to sustain this kind of publishing is still to be determined, but to reference Tribe.net, we think user-generated content, powered by social networking, has potential to drive traffic, revenue, and listings in our local markets.

HP used small Boston firm to find investigator

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

A Massachusetts company called Security Outsourcing Solutions was involved in HP's investigations, the SF Chronicle reports.

According to the Chronicle's Ben Pimentel, one individual at SOS has been identified as being involved - Ronald DeLia, managing director for SOS's Due Diligence practice. According to the company's Due Diligence.com site, DeLia's group offers such services as:

An investigative tool that provides a business profile of a company, its Officers & Directors and meets standard investigative Due-Diligence background requirements.

An in-depth background inquiry into a company, its Officers, Directors, subsidiaries, corporate affiliations, finances, and reputation.

The Chron story notes that it's not known whether the company was hired directly by HP or was a subcontractor. But the company's site makes clear that it is an outsourcing broker for security services.

When it is determined that specialized services are required we select a firm from our network of affiliated companies to provide the services. Our in-depth knowledge of the security industry insures that our clients receive the most favorable rates from our affiliates. It is important to note that Security Outsourcing Solutions, Inc., does not accept any form of compensation or gratuities from its affiliated firms. Affiliated firms are selected solely on the basis of their expertise, reputation and quality of work product. We work closely with our client in managing the activities of the affiliated company providing the specialized services. We continue to do so until a suitable resolution to the security issue is obtained. Our unique business model incorporates long distance support through technology, our network of affiliates and personalized service. Our ability to access our world wide network of affiliated firms is one of Security Outsourcing Solutions most valued assets.

The New York Times' story notes that the investigations biz has many layers and that SOS is a tiny firm operating from a "small yellow house" in suburban Boston. So there must have been other companies between HP and SOS.

“I’d be dumfounded if you could find a corporation the size of H.P. that turned directly to the pretexter,” said Rob Douglas, an information security consultant who has testified to Congress about illicit tactics used to obtain telephone records. He added that these investigations “have middlemen and are layered.”

Mr. Douglas said it was not clear whether the layering in this case was intended as a way to shield company executives, or was just the way the process worked, with one step leading to another until a specialist in obtaining phone records was needed.

The LG15 back story . . .

Wednesday was a whirlwind. I hadn't realized how much interest there would be in our part in the LonelyGirl15 (LG15) story.

My 18 year old son Matt Foremski became a prime focus for this part of the story: the unmasking of "Bree" a teenage actress from New Zealand called Jessica Rose--by another teenager.

It was a hectic day dealing with interviews from TV, radio, news organizations. Matt was mortified by the attention, the last thing he wanted was to become part of the story, he wanted to be "faceless."

When Silicon Valley Watcher broke the story of the identity of LG15, it made its way up the media chain, showing how such things propagate. And it showed which news sources are the most influential.

The first parts of the story were published in online sites, then came the major newspapers: New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times with their coverage. Their stories then helped spark the interest of TV and radio news crews.

The LG15 story is not an important story in itself, but it is an important news story. This is not a contradiction, it is a description of its place in our culture.

The LG15 story shows how the media functions, how they influence each other. It shows how the media networks: blogger, citizen, mainstream, and anything in-between -- push/pull news stories up into the broader mediasphere.

To get into the broader mediasphere, it seems news stories often have to make it into flagship publications of journalist rigor, such as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Times (London.)

September 13, 2006

Media hunger for LonelyGirl15

Today's New York Times article on LonelyGirl15 mentioned my son Matt Foremski and SVW. It's a very good article by Virginia Heffernan and Tom Zeller that takes the story much further. It identifies LG15 as Jessica Rose, a graduate of the New York Film Academy.

Please take a look, lots of fresh information.

Link to The Lonelygirl That Really Wasn’t - New York Times

The article has ignited interest from all the major TV stations and from international press. Matt is very embarrassed by all the attention, he would rather be faceless but I told him it will all be over by tomorrow, the attention span of the national media is mercifully short :-)

Lessons from the saga of LonelyGirl15: Mainstream media + blogosphere = mediasphere on steroids

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

At SVW we're lucky to break the story of the identity of LonelyGirl15 before others. We were fortunate, thanks to the work of my son, Matt Foremski, to connect the dots ahead of others--maybe by just a few hours.

There are many that worked on this story from the beginning when it was discovered that LG15 was a fake. Some were "citizen journalists"; some were mainstream media professionals. SVW straddled the two; and there is still more to be discovered about this story.

There are many who deserve credit for figuring out that LG15 was a manufactured product, especially those who tracked the IP address of emails to a Hollywood talent agency.

But this is not a story about an actress acting out a script. This is a story with a larger message: it shows how a partnership between mainstream media and blogger media can produce real results, real fast.

Both groups took the story further, building off each other's work.

This was in no way the blogosphere versus the mainstream media. It was a great example of how the two groups can work together, to uncover information that others tried to hide.

Yes, the subject matter of this story was not about anything that matters that much. But imagine this same type of cooperation on really important stories--that's what excites me.

There is always intense competition to be first with a story--but that is good. And it is complimentary competition rather than adversarial. There is no such thing as bloggers versus mainstream media.

This is the media model for the future: a mediasphere that uses the best qualities of professional media combined with relentless pursuit of information by citizen journalists. That's a potent formula that bodes well for our society, IMHO.

. . .

Please see:

Mark Glaser at MediaShift: Matt Foremski’s Sleuthing Leads to Jessica Rose

How the secret identity of LonelyGirl15 was found

The Hunt for LonelyGirl15- Life in a blogger household

SVW Exclusive: The identity of LonelyGirl15

LonelyGirl15 faked . . .

September 12, 2006

Jeff Nolan leaving SAP

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Jeff Nolan is announcing Wednesday that he is leaving SAP. The former high-profile VC was hired by SAP last year to run its business strategy unit Apollo, informally known as "kill Oracle" within the company.

Mr Nolan will be heading a startup company, he has promised me the details, stay tuned to SVW.

Jeff Nolan's blog Venture Chronicles.

Please see SVW:

Exclusive: Jeff Nolan--SAP's top strategist speaks to SVW

Part 2: SAP Jeff Nolan's strategy to disrupt Oracle. . .

Ray Lane buys dinner - Who buys ArcSight?

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I'm a big fan of Ray Lane, the former president of Oracle and one of Kleiner Perkins' top VCs. So whenever there's an opportunity to be around the same table I always take it.

Mr Lane is one of the industry's veterans and one of the savviest in the enterprise software industry. And his presence is large, he doesn't need to check himself for commentary, which is great if you are a journalist.

Tuesday evening Mr Lane and executives from security firm ArcSight, plus a couple of c ustomers, plus a bunch of A-list journalists, from WSJ, News.com, etc met for a roundtable discussion on matters of security. The timing was perfect to chat about security with all the talk of 9-11, and the term 9-11 came up many times during dinner.

ArcSight specializes in spotting aberrant behaviors among staff and flagging potential insider criminal activities. Some of those activities could be accidental, such as "forgetting" a laptop filled with sensitive company data in an airport lounge.

Other incidents are part of sophisticated criminal gang activities that could include extortion of corporate executives.

Interestingly, the people that are most watched are those that ArcSight describes as senior level people that hold "the keys to the kingdom." It is these types of insider threats that ArcSight's technology is designed to prevent.

They said repeatedly, that the insider threat is a huge, massive problem--but one that is unmeasurable. So how do we know it is a huge problem if we cannot quantify it?

I was told by one ArcSight customer that it is a "gut feeling" that insiders, some of them disgruntled staff, are up to various nefarious activities. ArcSight software will spot that activity, flag it, and alert company security personnel that there is a potential problem associated with a specific employee.

It is very Big Brother-like but how else can you spot such criminal activities?

The security software market is interesting because it is very balkanized. There are way too many point product companies. Enterprises want to buy one solution for one big problem. In the security software space, there still a tremendous amount of consolidation to be done to aggregate many dozens of security companies into one.

Ray Lane is very good at selling companies, last year he sold Virsa, the fastest growing private software company to SAP. Is ArcSight on the table?

It could be. One of ArcSight's board members told me the company is hitting close to the $75m revenue number, that's getting close to the magic $80m to $100m level that could initiate an IPO--except that the IPO market is in the doldrums.

Maybe ArcSight is being dressed up for sale to a larger security company. Maybe John Thompson over at Symantec is interested?

I think the tech IPO market will make a comeback because capital needs a new focus now that the real estate market is tanking. Tech IPO's will make a comeback, I'm not sure how soon, or how soon enougth for Kleiner, which has had a stake in ArcSight for more than 5 years. It could be time to pull some money out.

ArcSight has an interesting security story, but it is one fragment of a larger security issue. And with such a large problem, corporations will want want to outsource that problem.

This is where IT services companies such as IBM, EDS, HP, Symantec and others, are positioned to take on this IT security burden for a service fee. That's why smaller security software companies will have a tough time growing revenues with point products--no matter how good they are.

Please see SVW:

Ray Lane sells Virsa to SAP: M&A continues in enterprise software markets

I told IBM they should buy SAP-- Kleiner's Ray Lane says...

Peoplesoft and Siebel considered merging but leadership issue blocked the deal says Ray Lane former Oracle president

Clarifications from a representative of ArcSight:

- While the dinner was focused on insider threats, ArcSight does enterprise security management, which historically has been all about external threats and compliance. ArcSight’s enterprise and government customers (we’re talking FBI, DHS, FAA, Army, Marines, etc.) have also been using the technology to address insider threats.

- I wouldn’t really consider ArcSight a point vendor. ArcSight is the antidote to point security solutions. It takes data from hundreds of point systems (firewalls, anti-virus, data leak prevention systems) and makes sense of it all to find real threats and patterns you wouldn’t otherwise see. I suppose they’re “point” compared to the large security vendors. Convenience of a suite doesn’t necessarily win when it comes to security. ArcSight competes with Symantec, Cisco, CA, IBM and wins approximately 90% of deals that go into a side by side trial.

- As for companies outsourcing security, while it makes sense for some, you can bet that government agencies and large enterprises aren’t going to risk it. Also, 15 different managed security services providers use ArcSight’s technology to run their systems.

Background:

The roundtable was organized by the Horn Group and included:

Sandra Bergeron, security expert, formerly of McAfee

Sandra is one of the best known and highly respected women of technology in Silicon Valley. James Christiansen, CISO, Experian

James is currently the CISO of Experian.

Brian Contos, CSO, ArcSight

His latest book, Enemy at the Water Cooler, is currently available.

Morian Eberhard, Vice President, Enterprise Security, Union Bank of California

Hugh Njemanze, CTO and EVP of Research & Development, ArcSight

Hugh founded ArcSight and is now leading product development, information technology deployment, product research, and support.

Ray Lane, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Ted Schlein, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Robert Shaw, Chairman and CEO, ArcSight.

Memo to IMDB.com: Aliens

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Amazon is advertising for editors for iMdbPro.com, with the following quiz:

Extra points for the person who can identify the source of the following quote:
Gorman: All we know is that there is still is no contact with the colony, and that a xenomorph may be involved.
Frost: Excuse me sir, a what?
Gorman: A xenomorph.
Hicks: It's a bughunt.

That would be Aliens. If I'm not mistaken.

- Richard Koman

Did Angelides hack CA server?

By Richard Koman for Silicon Valley Watcher

Democratic candidate for CA governor Phil Angelides' campaign workers grabbed audio files from a State of California server and provided them to LA Times reporters, who broke the hugely embarrassing story that Arnold called a Latina assemblywoman "hot," and characterized blacks and Cubans as "hot blooded." The recording also captures Arnold and staff calling Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy "Bakersfield boy" and Assemblyman George Plescia a startled deer. (Listen to the MP3 .)

Monday, the administration claimed that their servers had been cracked and the California Highway Patrol said they were launching an investigation.

Yesterday, Angelides' campaign said they did nothing wrong, that the files were publicly available from a public website. The LA Times reports:

Angelides campaign manager Cathy Calfo said her camp came by the audiotape easily. She said an Angelides campaign researcher who downloads documents daily from government websites got the material by backtracking from a link sent out Aug. 29 by Schwarzenegger's press office.

She said the researcher used the link in the Schwarzenegger press release to download four hours of recordings, including six minutes of Schwarzenegger bantering last spring with his chief of staff, a speechwriter and a speech coach.

According to News.com, the files were available on speeches.gov.ca.gov/dir, available simply by trimming the end of a URL provided by the administration.

The most basic web security is to make directory contents unavailable. Apparently that much was not even done.

"We believe that these audio files--accessed through a public Web site, requiring no password, and not marked confidential--are a matter of public record and should be made available to the media and the public," said Cathy Calfo, Angelides' campaign manager.

Schwarzenegger campaign manager Steve Schmidt denied the file had been on a public site, insisting that the site had been password-protected, but he offered no proof Tuesday, just pointing to a statement by Arnold's legal affair secretary that the site was private, the Times said. Schmidt said law enforcement officials would determine whether the downloading was illegal.

"This was an attempted political dirty trick and they've been found out," Schmidt said.

So once again, it seems, Arnold has turned what looks like a black eye for him into hot water for his opponents. If Calfo's version holds up, the only crime was laughable security on the part of the administration. But there seems no doubt this looks far worse for Angelides than Schwarzenegger.

How the secret identity of LonelyGirl15 was found

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

When we broke the news of the identity of LonelyGirl15 late Monday evening, we knew it would be a big story.

I purposely did not send alert emails to my colleagues in the mainstream media or the blogosphere, because I wanted to see its natural progression through the entire mediasphere.

When I woke Tuesday morning, I checked Technorati and Google, and it seemed that very few people had spotted and linked to our story: SVW Exclusive- The identity of LonelyGirl15.

But by mid-day several large newspapers had picked up our story and were adding to it, a great demonstration of how such things work. I spoke with Steve Johnson from the Chicago Tribune, Virginia Heffernan from the New York Times. Mark Glaser from PBS' MediaShift also contacted me, and I spoke with Tom Abate at the San Francisco Chronicle.

My 18-year old son Matthew Foremski had done the online sleuthing. I'm very proud of his diligence and his nose for a great story. He had been working on the investigation all weekend, following up on various leads and sifting through online discussions, looking for clues.

He was fascinated by the fact that millions of people had watched LonelyGirl15 videos yet none of her friends, family, school friends had come forward to reveal her identity.

There were lots of other people also trying to uncover her identity. Matt's break came when he was following up on a posting about a discontinued MySpace page that might be linked to LonelyGirl15. By searching through online caches of web pages, and Google's index of images, he was able to pull together the identity of LonelyGirl15.

Monday evening he called me with the information. I was at my first US football game, the Oakland Raiders game in Oakland. [I was enjoying it immensely, a truly pure American experience, I loved it.]

I was excited that we had the story; but I wanted to make sure we had everything we needed before posting. I couldn't get back to my computer for a couple of hours, which was frustrating; but I didn't want to publish the story until I had checked Matt's links and images.

Everything looked good and we published the story. What was interesting was the scuffle the next day over who wanted to claim the scoop.

There were some who didn't link back to our story, making it seem as if they had the scoop.

There were others who didn't believe that Jessica Rose, a 19 year old from New Zealand, was the actress who played LonelyGirl15. They believed that this was all part of the overall plot.

I'm sure that the creators of LonelyGirl15 were not sophisticated enough to cover the online tracks of Jessica Rose before she became "Bree." That would have meant diligently hunting down and requesting the removal of cached copies of web pages. And there are a lot of sources for such cached content.

They were smart enougth to bring her in from New Zealand, probably figuring that with a smaller population, there would be less chance of friends or family revealing her identity.

Next: Lessons from the LonelyGirl15 saga...

Please see:

Mark Glaser at MediaShift: Matt Foremski’s Sleuthing Leads to Jessica Rose

SVW Exclusive- The identity of LonelyGirl15

LonelyGirl15 faked

LG15.com for more info and a discussion board. Tag: LonelyGirl15

The Hunt for LonelyGirl15: Life in a blogger household . . .

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

"Hey Dad, it looks like LonelyGirl15 is a fake," said Matthew, as I'm still bleary eyed from just having woken up. It is 9.30am on a Friday and I'm at the computer moderating comments and checking links for Silicon Valley Watcher, so I'm only half hearing what he has to say.

Matthew is 18; and he just spent the entire summer hanging out with me, the poor guy. My summer held no romps in the woods or lazy days on the beach; it was all about reporting and publishing.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree; and Matt spent the summer involved in his own media enterprises: buying and selling domain names, setting up forums to build online communities, and spotting arbitrage opportunities in online advertising networks.

"Who is LonelyGirl15?" I asked. Matt told me she is a 16 year-old vidblogger on YouTube called Bree who talks about her home-schooled life, her parents, her friends, her boy interests, etc. He told me to log onto YouTube and take a look.

I took a look; and Bree is picture-perfect in her looks, in a picture-perfect bedroom, from where her vid posts are cast.

I was so into my little corner of the world this summer that I hadn't realized what a huge following she had built up. She became the top vidstar of the summer, attracting a diverse following, and growing media attention, with articles in The New York Times, LA Times, and The Times (London).

I took a look at some of Bree's videos; and to my eye, I saw a highly professionally executed product. But then again, Matt had already told me it was a fake, so I cannot claim any special talent in spotting fakes.

Many others didn't have my hindsight and had gotten sucked into Bree's dramas, and story line, and believed it was a real person. That has to hurt, to be suckered in so publicly.

I saw a lot of anger and resentment in comments and vidblogs when it became clear that there was a group of people, professional Hollywood types no less, who had helped to create the fiction of LonelyGirl15.

The jig was up when some online sleuths had tracked the IP address of one of Bree's emails to Hollywood's huge Creative Arts Agency. The producers of LonelyGirl15 quickly took down her web site and discussion forum, leaving a post that called it a "new art form" but did not name any names.

Here is an excerpt:

To Our Incredible Fans,
Thank you so much for enjoying our show so far. We are amazed by the overwhelmingly positive response to our videos; it has exceeded our wildest expectations. With your help we believe we are witnessing the birth of a new art form. Our intention from the outset has been to tell a story “ a story that could only be told using the medium of video blogs and the distribution power of the internet. A story that is interactive and constantly evolving with the audience.

Then it goes on to say:

So, sit tight. You are the only reason for our success, and we appreciate your devotion. We want you to know that we aren’t a big corporation. We are just like you. A few people who love good stories. We hope that you will join us in the continuing story of Lonelygirl15, and help us usher in an era of interactive storytelling where the line between “fan” and “star” has been removed, and dedicated fans like yourselves are paid for their efforts.

The part about sharing in the money and the creation had a jarring effect on me, and also on others, which was expressed in some of the forums. I could not see how people could participate in the same way as they had when Bree was "real" and get paid for doing it?!

Matt and I both agreed that this media experiment could not continue, because it had been revealed to be a fake. People do not like being lied to, it is as simple as that.

Matt wanted to explore the phenomenon of LonelyGirl15 further. Earlier in the summer he had bought the domain name LG15.com. He had already suspected that LonelyGirl15 was a faked blog and bought the name as a potentially useful site that could be the basis for an online community.

Now that she was ousted as a fake, he decided to set up a discussion board under a pseudonym, to see what additional information he could flush out, and to see how the online community reacted to the news.

Within a couple of hours he had the discussion board up and running and registrations started within minutes. This was just from people typing in LG15.com, with LG15 being one of the shorthand terms people were using. This was all good but the trouble was that the sign ups were growing at an exponential rate.

Matt was worried about the Dreamhost web service we were using, if it could stand a big spike in traffic. He wanted to put the LG15.com discussion board on Silicon Valley Watcher's TotalChoice Hosting server.

Initially I said yes; but quickly recanted, because I was worried about reader access to Silicon Valley Watcher getting bumped if LG15.com took off.

What was interesting was that Matt's pseudonym was rumbled very quickly. Online sleuths suspecting another turn in the LonelyGirl15 saga had searched through online caches and turned up the registration information of the site. Even though Matt had made the domain name information private, online caches held by Google or others, had revealed all.

Coming next: How Matt discovered the identity of LonelyGirl15

LG15.com for more info and a discussion board.
Tag: LonelyGirl15

- - -

Please see:

SVW Exclusive- The identity of LonelyGirl15

LonelyGirl15 faked

Dunn steps down, to be replaced by Hurd

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Patricia Dunn has resigned her position at Chairman of HP but will not step down until January 18, 2007, HP announced today. She will continue as a director.

Dunn had initiated secret spying on board directors in an attempt to root out who leaked information about board discussions to the press. The primary leaker - George Keyworth II, who had refused to resign - also agreed to step down.

CEO Mark Hurd will become the new Chairman in January. Former chairman Richard Hackborn will become lead independent director.

Dunn's official comment:

The recent events that have taken place follow an important investigation that was required after the board sought to resolve the persistent disclosure of confidential information from within its ranks. These leaks had the potential to affect not only the stock price of HP but also that of other publicly traded companies. Unfortunately, the investigation, which was conducted with third parties, included certain inappropriate techniques. These went beyond what we understood them to be, and I apologize that they were employed.
“I am very proud of the progress HP has made over the past 18 months. During the remainder of my tenure as chairman, I look forward to completing the transition that is underway, including expanding the board, continuing to improve our corporate governance standards and bringing the current issues to resolution.”

Keyworth defended his leaks to News.com:

The invasion of my privacy and that of others was ill-conceived and inconsistent with HP's values. I acknowledge that I was a source for a CNET article that appeared in January 2006. I was frequently asked by HP corporate communications officials to speak with reporters - both on the record and on background - in an effort to provide the perspective of a longstanding board member with continuity over much of the company's history. My comments were always praised by senior company officials as helpful to the company - which has always been my intention. The comments I made to the CNET reporter were, I believed, in the best interest of the company and also did not involve the disclosure of confidential or damaging information. There is but one issue that matters now and that is that Mark Hurd and the company have every opportunity to move beyond and above the current morass. While I intend to remain a member of the HP family, and to advise Mark where I can help, it is best for the company that every aspect of this unfortunate matter be put in the past."

Hurd apologized to Tom Perkins, who resigned in protest over the spying incident, but didn't include Keyworth in the apology:

On behalf of HP, I apologize to Tom Perkins for the intrusion into his privacy. I thank Tom for his contributions, his principles and his help in getting HP past this episode toward its rightful place as the envy of corporate America.
Jay is an important member of the HP family. He has served admirably for more than two decades and has provided great expertise, especially on matters relating to technology policy. We wish him well. I appreciate his long and distinguished service to HP. He leaves the HP board with our best wishes and gratitude. I have personally valued his experienced counsel and hope that he will continue to provide me with his advice in the future,

SVW Exclusive: The identity of LonelyGirl15

By Matt Foremski and Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

One of the most interesting questions in the online world is who is LonelyGirl15? We think we know who she is.

Late last week it was revealed that LonelyGirl15, aka "Bree" was not a real 16 year old videoblogger, and her appearances on YouTube were scripted and produced by a professional team.

The creators of LonelyGirl15 published a letter "To Our Incredible Fans." In it they say:

We are amazed by the overwhelmingly positive response to our videos; it has exceeded our wildest expectations. With your help we believe we are witnessing the birth of a new art form.

It goes on to say:

Right now, the biggest mystery of Lonelygirl15 is “who is she?” We think this is an oversimplification. Lonelygirl15 is a reflection of everyone. She is no more real or fictitious than the portions of our personalities that we choose to show (or hide) when we interact with the people around us.

While we know she is a fake, who the actress is has stayed a secret.

However, after some online searching and thanks to Google's cache of online sites, Silicon Valley Watcher believes it has found the identity of the actress that played "Bree."

She is Jessica Rose, a 19-year old actress from Mount Maunganui, New Zealand. She recently moved to Los Angeles/Hollywood area to find work.

You be the judge:

Here is LonelyGirl15 from her vidblogs:

Here are a few images of Jessica Rose:

lonelygirl15

LG15.com for more info and a discussion board.
Tag: LonelyGirl15

September 11, 2006

Pre-mashed online suites knock the "P" out of PC

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I've noticed lately that I feel more "personal" about my cell phone PDA and its data, than I do about my "personal computer."

I'm quite comfortable to have my email and basic applications such as wordprocessing and publishing reside on my web host's server somewhere out there, or on someone else's server. But I want to keep my cell phone/PDA close to hand, which is not the way I used to feel about my PC and my cell phone--two of the most useful technologies ever created.

Both have added a tremendous amount of value to my life--yet my cell phone PDA (Treo) increasingly feels closer, and more important to me, than my computer (Thinkpad X31).

And I think that personal connection with my cell phone will increase as Google and others, pull together online suites of applications and services. With the recent launch of the beta of Google Calendar (CL2) Google and Yahoo are accumulating many of the key components to build very good online suites. And Microsoft also wants to move its Office suite users online--as soon as it figures out the ad-support business model.

For example, Google will soon be able to offer integrated email, calendar, web publishing, news sources, wordprocessor, maps, search. . . with other services in the pipeline. That's a compelling mix because it will be all pre-mashed, and drag-and-drop/share-or-not (DAD/SON).

And it all lives out in the cloud, and I can access it all from any computer--which makes any PC less of a "personal" computer. But my cell phone/PDA increasingly feels more personal--it is with me 24/7--and I can't simply use someone else's cell phone/PDA and access my phone's data.

As I move more and more of my digital activities out onto the web, my cell phone/PDA grows more personal--but not my computer.

- - -

There is more on this subject on my ZDNet blog.

What's behind the curtain for Apple's big show?

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Can there be any doubt that Steve Jobs will unveil Disney movies on iTunes this morning? No. Not with Apple's invite to the media event announcing "It's Showtime!" and spotlights criss-crossing over a gray background. It's well-known Steve has been commuting between Cupertino and LA trying to do a deal.

We related Business Week's intelligence on the matter a week or so ago:

Apple will start selling feature-length movies on iTunes in mid-September, sources tell BusinessWeek. But only from one studio - Disney - where Steve Jobs just happens to be the largest shareholder after Disney's purchase of Pixar. Apple will charge $14.99 a flick, up from the $9.99 he wanted to charge.

But what else will Steve say today? The rumor mill has it as a serious "blockbuster" event. AppleInsider cites insiders who say the event will show Apple pushing the envelope in a big, home entertainment kind of way. Besides the video download deal, will there be new video iPods and even a solution to stream movies from your computer to TV?

Last week, AppleInsider claimed:

Jobs many months ago commissioned an elite group of Apple engineers to get the ball rolling on an intuitive hardware solution that would more closely tie the company's digital media strategy to the living-room. And so AppleInsider has been told, Apple has been quietly developing a video streaming device that will interface with an updated version of its iTunes jukebox software.

Hmm, that would be cool. But the details are extremely sketchy. Still, it's a rumor with some legs. Dave Caola at the The Unofficial Apple Weblog says the grand finale will be ...

One More Thing....TubePort. A $99 2-piece set that includes a dongle that connects via USB to your mac, and another dongle that connects via included HD cables or regular Component cables to your TV. The movie is accessed on your Mac via an iDisk-like storage component hosted by Apple.

Dave notes that TubePort is a really lame name, and Jason O'Grady says votes for AirShow but in any case, think AirPort Express.

Think of it as Airport Express (APX) with an HDMI port on it. Just like AirTunes allows you to stream iTunes to any speakers in your house the APXV will allow you to stream video from your Mac to any television in your house. Short-range wireless HDMI transmitters using ultra-wide bandwidth (UWB) signals are coming in November, so this is very feasible. My favorite name: AirShow.
HDMI was chosen because it supports HDCP encryption. This was a concession to the Hollywood movie studios to get them to license the content and to the MPAA. The Airport Express Video will be the first device to allow the output of digital video.

Stay tuned. Steve's show is expected to be streamed from the Apple site later in the day.

SVW Top Chat: Henri Richard sales chief at Advanced Micro Devices

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I've been a little harsh on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) lately, mainly because I've been writing about a revitalized Intel (an SVW sponsor) and its bid to win back market share with its Core 2 Duo chips and an ambitious roadmap.

My view has been that AMD has had the party all to itself with its low-power consuming high-performance Opteron server chips--and now the Empire Strikes Back, as was said by Nathan Brookwood, analyst at Insight64 and a top Intel watcher. Intel is now dressed to the nines and ready to crash the party (and drink all the beer :-).

AMD has done very well over the past four years in driving a truck through gaps in Intel's product roadmap, making systems with AMD's Opteron server microprocessor a favorite in many data centers. And it has won some large customers for its PC microprocessors, notably Dell, which had been an stalwart Intel loyalist.

Here is a Google Finance chart of AMD and Intel's relative stock movement over the past year:

The Opteron chips have been AMD's spearhead and it has managed to capture as much as 26 per cent of the sever market. Computer data centers often cannot get more electric power. By using low-power consuming hardware, data centers can boost their computing power.

Now with Intel's multicore Core 2 Duo microprocessors coming onto the market, AMD faces the full competitive brunt of a massive competitor that is almost 10 times its size in market cap ($12.5bn versus $112bn).

Intel's chips are fast and low power consuming and packed with other goodies. And Intel has state-of-the-art fabs all over the world capable of pumping out millions of microprocessors with a low cost of manufacture. It just seems obvious that times are going to get tough very quickly for AMD, it is going to be difficult to hang onto market share-- let alone increase it to 40 per cent, as AMD has said.

AMD also has the tough task of integrating its $5.4 bn merger with ATI Technologies, the Canadian graphics chip maker. And it has to migrate chip production to the 65nm chip process, a very challenging task and one that is vital to its ability to compete against an Intel already at 65nm.

Chip fabs are the most complex industrial facilities of our times, they are filled with hundreds of very expensive and very finely tuned machines. Every time a chip maker switches production to a smaller geometry, or to larger wafers, much of the machinery changes and everything has to be recalibrated and tuned up again for maximum yield.

This is always a risky endeavor because if you cannot get high enough production yields fast enough, that chip fab becomes a massive expense.

Henri Richard AMD Chief of Sales and Marketing Can AMD continue to give its giant competitor a run for its money? I recently visited Henri Richard, AMD's chief of sales and marketing, at AMD headquarters in Sunnyvale.

Mr Richard joined AMD in 2002, is an ex-IBM VP, among his many senior positions in the tech industry.

The dapper Mr Richard greeted me warmly and we sat down in leather armchairs in his sunlit office. He's read my articles and is keen to give AMD's position.

"There is a side to this story that no one has written yet," he says. "There is a belief that history will repeat itself, that Intel will recover its markets, and things will go back to being the way they were. But that is not true."

"Things won't go back the way they were because there has been a fundamental shift in markets. Four years ago we were not in the commercial market and we were not in the server market, or the mobile market. Now we are, and that is something that is not going to change."

Fair point. AMD couldn't get a toe or a pinky into the server market, a very lucrative microprocessor market dominated by Intel's Xeon family. And US businesses did not buy AMD PCs or laptops--the commercial PC market was Intel's.

AMD was largely confined to the consumer PC business, a tough business with manufacturers struggling with razor thin margins and always pressing hard for price concessions from suppliers.

Now, four years after Mr Richard joined AMD, it is firmly in three very significant markets. That won't go away, especially the server and commercial markets.

Once those conservative, risk-averse buyers are comfortable buying non-Intel gear, they will buy more. And they like buying from two competing suppliers when they can--to keep both on their toes.

What about the manufacturing challenges, with Intel's prowess and its pioneering 65nm production process already pumping out chips? At 65nm, Intel potentially can produce more chips per wafer than AMD and that means lower production costs.

Mr Richard said that AMD is currently getting better yields and producing chips at a lower cost than Intel despite not yet being at 65nm.

What about AMD's move to 65nm, it will face the same challenges as Intel, that Intel has already faced and figured out?

Mr Richard said he is confident AMD will manage the change to 65nm, because the challenges are better understood if you wait awhile. He confessed he was not a chip manufacturing expert however, I could talk with one.

What about the ATI integration challenges? Mergers are always risky, and a huge distraction to management. This is a distraction that AMD doesn't need right now, especially with Intel pulling out all the stops to stop AMD.

Mr Richard said that AMD and ATI know each other very well. "Our businesses do not overlap by very much at all. It is mostly in my group that the integration has to take place. Culture is always the stumbling block but we know ATI, we have been working together for four years and we meet with them regularly. In terms of sales and marketing, this means that I now have more resources."

He pointed out that with ATI, AMD is a company that has its own fabs, and also is one of the largest fabless companies--using fab services from TSMC, the world's largest chip foundry.

He said that no change in ATI's relationship with TSMC is planned. However, I could see how it could be advantageous for AMD in the future to be able to mix and match production.

This could keep its own fabs running at full steam, should it have a drop in demand. Keeping hugely expensive fab production lines filled is essential in the chip business.

The ATI deal also brings very strategic customer accounts to AMD. Mr Henry pointed out that ATI brings Microsoft and the Xbox, and it also brings Nokia.

"We believe that most people in the world will access the Internet from non-traditional computers. Whether it is a thin client or a fat cell-phone, I don't know but companies like Nokia will be important. The PC was designed by engineers to solve equations, but companies such as understand consumers and they know how to make the user interface easy to use."

Margins in the consumer business are not that good, and the average price of the silicon in cell phones is a lot less than in PCs. Plus the cell phone business won't allow itself to be PC-ized in the way that Microsoft and Intel managed to commoditise the PC business and aggregate much of the value-add within their products--leaving thin margins for the PC makers.

Mr Henry agreed, saying "We know very well where the margins are and that is in server and commercial markets. That is our focus"

I asked about AMD's antitrust suit against Intel filed more than a year ago, which has already revealed some salacious tidbits of how the PC industry does business. It shows how PC makers sometimes say they will buy from AMD to get price concessions from Intel.

"The discovery process is going to expose some very unethical behavior by Intel." He said there would be some embarrassing information revealed.

I'm not sure what AMD has to gain by continuing with the suit. Antitrust legal actions are long and very expensive, especially the discovery process.

AMD had prepared the suit to try to gain entrance into key markets. Now that it has through other means, the suit has lost its original purpose, yet it remains a big distraction for management, and a drain on profits.

As we wound up the interview, Mr Richard took an opportunity to repeat the message that there has been a fundamental change in AMD's business, that the markets have changed.

"This time, the chess board is different, it is larger and we have more powerful pieces in the game," he said.

What if AMD is being used as a pawn against Intel by other companies?

"That could be," he said. "But this time we are like the pawn that got to the other side of the chess board and has been converted to a Queen."

- - - - -- --

Please also see related:

The Empire Strikes Back - Sean Maloney leads Intel's push to win back markets

AMD/ATI merger: Two companies facing the same problem

AMD Tech Day: Forecasts continued gains against Intel

Intel says it will win back server market share from AMD

Interview with Intel's Global Sales and Marketing Chief

September 10, 2006

Is HP chairwoman Dunn done for? The board meets to decide...

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

UPDATE: HP said U.S. federal prosecuters have asked it for information about its investigation into leaked boardroom discussions.

Saturday, Tom Perkins called on Patricia Dunn to resign as HP's chairman, saying in a statement:

"I acted not from any ill will toward Ms. Dunn but to protect the best interests of HP, I think the past months and days have shown that those interests are best served if Ms. Dunn would resign from the board."

And he's not the only one. The business press is now lining up on Perkins' side.

Fortune: :

Even if there might be some argument that Dunn could reasonably have thought the company was acting legally in obtaining the records, she behaved improperly in not insisting that she know for sure of their origin.
HP is a leading vendor of personal computers to consumers in the United States, and the second largest producer of all PCs worldwide. It cannot afford to suffer even for one more day the perception that it does not put the highest priority on protecting personal information. That is the perception one cannot avoid having at this moment.

There's plenty more like that.

The board met Sunday and is meeting today, but no surprise, there have been no leaks so far. Dunn suggested last week that no resignation is in the cards, telling the press that she'll resign if asked but doesn't expect to be so asked. The sands are shifting, though, as the opinion pieces indicate. And the Times reports: "A person with knowledge of some portions of yesterday’s board meeting said that there was a strong chance that Ms. Dunn — who recused herself from some of yesterday’s discussions — would have to step down."

Dunn is taking a page from President Bush's playbook, saying that "pretexting is wrong" and that she was "appalled" to learn that the independent contractor used pretexting. It smacks of Bush's disavowal of the Swift Boat ads even as he benefited from them or Claude Rains' being "shocked, shocked!" to discover gambling at Rick's Cafe.

The version doesn't comport with Perkins' view of the affair. He wrote an email on June 20 to Larry Sonsini, the Wall Street Journal revealed, saying:

"Larry, the investigation was a Pattie Dunn program, 100 percent conceived of and managed by her, and unknown to the board, except perhaps in the most vague and imprecise terms, with the possible exception of Mark [Hurd], who she may have briefed."

And Dunn had an apology for the reporters who were spied on too: ""The information that has recently come to light about the involvement of reporters and the way they're involved in this investigation is highly regrettable, and I want to apologize individually on behalf of this board," she told News.com. "Nobody had that in mind when this investigation was undertaken."

The complete list of journalists now includes News.com's Dawn Kawamoto, Tom Krazit and Stephen Shankland, The Wall Street Journal's Pui-Wing Tam and George Anders, The New York Times' John Markoff, and BusinessWeek's Peter Burrows, Ben Elgin, and Roger Crockett. While it's disquieting to have thugs snooping through your phone records, that's gotta be some sort of badge of honor for hacks.

By all accounts Dunn previously had a reputation for high ethics. What happened? Perhaps it's just a sign of the fear-mongering, leak-plugging, law-bending times set by Washington. "This is a sign of the times,'' outplacement consultant John Challenger told the Chronicle's Tom Abate. "Think of how Bush has been handling the leaks in his administration."

September 8, 2006

Mark Hurd letter to HP staff

This just in:

Mark Hurd Message to Employees
September 8, 2006
Hi, before I begin, I want to be clear that I am speaking to you today as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, not on behalf of the HP board.
I know that many of you have read the media coverage and speculation regarding the recent actions of the HP Board. My belief is that this has nothing to do with the strategy or operations of Hewlett-Packard.
Unfortunately there has been a long history of leaking company information within the HP board that clearly needs to be resolved, and it will be resolved.
The HP Standards of Business Conduct are our foundation of ethical leadership, and encompass the basic principles that govern our ethical and legal obligations to HP.
The leaking of company confidential information violates our Standards of Business conduct which applies to all employees and Board members.
Clearly things have happened here that are unacceptable. But we will not react to speculation. Instead, we will continue to gather and review all the relevant facts. I can assure you we will get to the bottom of this and take appropriate action.
HP’s values are at the core of this company. These have not changed and will not change. HP’s shared values are a set of deeply held beliefs that govern and guide our behavior.
• We are passionate about customers
• We have trust and respect for individuals
• We perform at a high level of achievement and contribution
• We act with speed and agility
• We deliver meaningful innovation
• We achieve our results through teamwork and
• We conduct our business with uncompromising integrity.
The company has made tremendous progress and I thank you again for that I have told you several times that building a successful company means we will have our ups and downs, and issues will come up. We are dealing with an issue now. I am resolved that we will work through this and take the necessary action.
I compliment you for focusing on our business priorities and serving our customers. I intend to do the same. I ask for your confidence that we will do what is needed and continue to move forward on our path to build the world’s leading technology company.
We have the right strategy, our performance is improving and I believe that’s due to the great performance of our people. We want to stay focused as a group as we continue to pursue our objectives.
Thank you

LonelyGirl15 faked . . .

Lots of upset fans of Bree a 16 year old girl known on YouTube as LonelyGirl15. It turns out the teenage drama queen video is a fake, written by a production team.

I took a look and it is obviously professionally produced.

And check out her quote to The Times newspaper in the UK Aug 19:

“I was usually stuck studying the Treaty of Versailles or Occam’s razor — making videos was much more fun,” Bree said when she was contacted by The Times this week.

That should have tipped off the hacks...

Mystery Fuels Huge Popularity of Web's Lonelygirl15
Los Angeles Times, CA ... Lonelygirl15 appears to be an innocent, home-schooled 16-year-old, pouring her heart out for her video camera in the privacy of her bedroom. ...

Tag: LonelyGirl15

HP pretexted Times in 2005, others in 2006

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

HP spied on nine journalists, including The New York Times' John Markoff, News.com's Dawn Kawamoto and Tom Krazit, and the Wall Street Journal's Pui Wing Tam. The company gave the reporters' names to the California Attorney General's Office, who informed the reporters.

AT&T said Markoff's records were a "target of pretexting" in 2005, the Times reported. HP has to date only admitted to pretexting in the aftermath of a Jan. 23 News.com article. The Times revelations indicate that pretexting investigations were happening as news about the board's ouster of Carly Fiorina was coming out in the press.

Viet D. Dinh, Mr. Perkins’s lawyer, said Thursday, “If it is true that the pretexting started before January 2006 and dated back to 2005, it would suggest a deeper and more troubling chain of events than the hiring of third-party pretexters and would reach much higher to persons responsible at H.P.”

The Times says that by Tom Perkins' account, the only investigations were interviews conducted by the law firm of Wilson Sonsini, which according to a spokeswoman “absolutely, definitely did not” use pretexting.

That would mean HP ran a separate investigation into the leaker, presumably using the same technique of entering a social security number onto AT&T's website, which Sonsini may or may not have been privy to.

An HP person backpedaled on the news, saying HP's statement about pretexting never confined the events to 2006. An HP spokesperson also said the company was "absolutely horrified that the records of journalists were accessed without their authorization,” the FT reported.

News.com reported on Kawamoto's case that:

AT&T said that on Jan. 30, someone used the last four digits of her husband's Social Security number to establish an online account, and provided the e-mail address red@yahoo.com.
"As was the case with the Perkins account," AT&T general attorney Travis Dodd wrote in an e-mail to the attorney general's office, "the IP address associated with the browser of the person who established the account was 68.99.17.80. As was also the case with the Perkins account, this appears to have been the only date of access to the account."

AT&T told former HP Director Tom Perkins: ``The person registering the online account did so through the Internet and provided your telephone number and the last four digits of your Social Security number to identify himself/herself as the authorized account holder.''

SVW in India ; A blog that Lark likes; SundayReader Web 0.5; SVW Pubby award nomination

SVW in India . . .

I'm excited to be heading out to India in late October with Vivek Ranadive, CEO of Tibco, the first SVW sponsor. Mr Ranadive is launching his book, "The Predictive Enterprise" in India and has a book tour that includes meetings with some of the country's top business leaders.

It will be my first visit to India which makes it doubly interesting.

(One of my favorite quotes comes from Vivek Ranadive: "India is the killer application for broadband.")

Is SundayReader too 0.5?

A reader writes...

Hi Tom -
Love your site ......
A question: Is there any room on the net for a Retro Web 0.5 site like www.sundayreader.com ....

Let's ask SVW readers :-)

It's a bit barebones but that's a positive. I like the way it mashes up mainstream media and blog sites: it is all mediasphere. I would certainly click on a few things and explore.

Link to SundayReader

Andy Lark likes Tesla Motors blog . . .

Andy Lark, the former comms chief at Sun Microsystems always has good insights into corporate blogging. I noticed that he really likes the Tesla blog (Tesla is the hot electric sports car).

Link to Andy Lark's blog

SVW nomination for a Pubby award . . .

I'm proud to say that SVW has been nominated for a 2006 Pubby award celebrating excellence in media.

Also nominated in this section: the fun SFist, DaveyD.com, splendora.com, and travelblog.org.

I love the Pubby awards because the Bay Area membership of PR/comms professionals nominate and vote for the winners.

Most awards, such as the Webbies, require hopeful winners to nominate themselves, and pay an entry fee. It's a nice business when you tot up all the numbers...

Link to the Pubby awards

PR Week names top journalists you should know

I'm always happy to keep this kind of company :-) I hadn't noticed it until Eric DeRitis at AMD pointed it out to me.

It's a short list of eight reporters and includes stellar names such as Walt Mossberg of the WSJ, Ken Auletta of The New Yorker, the extremely talented Geeta Anand from the WSJ. Plus Harvey Levin of the top celeb gossip site TMZ.com (Mel Gibson scoop), Washington D.C watcher Charlie Cook of the Cook Report, and the dynamic team of New York Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen.

Link to - Today's media relations rules article PR Week

Hamilton Nolan PR Week USA Sep 5 2006 12:55

By the way, I appreciate the fact that PR Week calls me a journalist rather than a blogger because that is what I do. I work as a professional journalist and I publish a news magazine about the business and culture of Silicon Valley. There is no need for a "B" word :-) . . . Some other PR Week stories (subscription site) and Silicon Valley Watcher:

Interview: Tom Foremski

by Dec-12-05

Working with the top echelon of bloggers

by Christie Casalino Oct-31-05

September 7, 2006

Nomadig or Bedouin? Life in the cloud . . .

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

My good buddy Om Malik has launched a new blog called WebWorkerDaily to chronicle the virtual nature of work and its always-on effect:

Connectivity is only part of the equation, for the virtual nature of work brings up lifestyle issues. It brings up questions about how to work, and when not to work.

Link to Introducing WebWorkerDaily.

Om cites a post called "Going Bedouin" by Greg Olsen in February 2006.

By focusing almost exclusively on service-based infrastructure options, a business could operate as a sort of neo-Bedouin clan - with workers as a roaming nomadic tribe carrying laptops & cell phones and able to set up shop wherever there is an Internet connection, chairs, tables, and sources of caffeine. "Going Bedouin" is an interesting concept . . .

This is an interesting concept and something I explored in an essay in October of 2005. I chose the word "nomadig" to describe the lifestyle made possible by our mobile technologies:

We seem to be going back to our roots and becoming nomadic peoples again--or rather "nomadig" people: living in digitally-enabled groups but not necessarily *technology* focused ...
And this time around, we are no longer tied to a particular geography, and nor is our thinking. Much of the culture of innovation is no longer tied to Silicon Valley, there are centers of innovation all over the planet.

We are mobile and seemingly in constant motion, travelling thousands of miles in a day, in a week, in a month, yet we remain rooted within our online worlds as if we hadn't budged an inch. Our physical address changes more often than our online address.

And our digital technology is disappearing into our surroundings, becoming embedded and almost invisible; as the word "digital" is embedded and almost invisible in the word "nomadig."

The essay is here.

Nomadig is the basis for SVW's future arts and culture magazine that we spoke about late last year, and mentioned in early August.

It was to be called diggrz but that name will probably be changed to avoid association with Digg - the news aggregator. I wanted to make the connection with the Diggers, the 17th century English revolutionary group that advocated a defense of the commons, and despised wealth and privilege; sentiments often expressed in today's software engineer culture.

HP admits pretexting, CA subpoenas, SEC awaits explanations

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Earlier this week it came out that HP Director Thomas J. Perkins had resigned over an internal leak investigation organized by Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and conducted by an outside investigator. In its SEC filing yesterday, HP confirmed all of the developments that had been reported in the press:

Perkins resigned over the investigation.
Director George Keyworth was fingered as the leaker and was asked to resign, which he refused to do.
Keyworth will not be renominated to the Board.
The investigation involved pretexting, in which investigators lied to phone companies about their identity in order to get access to directors' records, including Perkins'.
The California Attorney General is investigating the legality of the investigation.
The SEC is inquiring into why HP originally reported that Perkins did not give a reason for his resignation.

SEC inquiry. By law, a company must supply the SEC with information whenever there is a change in its Board. On May 22, HP reported Perkins' resignation but didn't provide any reason for it, saying he hadn't given a reason. But in today's filing, the company tells a different story:

The Chairman of the Board, and ultimately an internal group within HP, working with a licensed outside firm specializing in investigations, conducted investigations into possible sources of the leaks of confidential information at HP. Those investigations resulted in a finding that Dr. George A. Keyworth II, one of HP’s dire