Sometimes Steve Ballmer Just Takes Your Breath Away
In a USA Today interview Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is asked if he wishes consumers would get as passionate about Microsoft as they do when Apple comes out with something new. "It's sort of a funny question," he answers. "Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? I want to have products that appeal to everybody." Steve, I've got one word for you: iPod.
Transparency Defined: A Look Inside VMware's IPO
VMware's IPO-related filings include a discussion of the competitive threat posed by Microsoft in the virtualization space, a breakout of VMware license revenue versus professional services revenue (guess which is growing more rapidly?), the hiring of a CFO from Amazon, and a decision by many customers to run all of their new apps on VMware software. While the SEC-mandated documents are a tad dry in places, they also provide an unpreceden
Parting Shots: Q&A With Former Gartner BPM Analyst Jim Sinur
Last week, Gartner's preeminent business process management analyst Jim Sinur announced he would join Global 360 (http://www.global360.com/ ) as Chief Strategy Officer. In this broad-ranging interview, Sinur explains the move, offers an update on the BPM market and explores the evolving convergence of BI, data, events, modeling, business process management and business rules.
Google To Launch iGoogle
At a brunch for journalists (where I am typing this), Google today rolled out new personalization applications and features that are scheduled to go live first thing Tuesday morning.
First, the Google Personalized Home Page, previously known as IG because those two characters are at the end of the Personalized Home Page URL (www.google.com/ig), has formally become iGoogle. If you thought Froogle was a poor product name, be thankful Google rejected Yougle, Fusion, and Mockingbird for the rename
Microsoft Blog Takes On .ANI Bug Post-Mortem
How did the animated cursor flaw, which plagued Microsoft users with wave after wave of exploits this spring, get through Vista's security? A Microsoft security guru takes on the question in a blog.
Intel Hopes The UMPC Will Kill The Smartphone
The PC industry seems confused about the future of mobile computing. Notebooks are a mature device category but other new form factors haven't fared so well. Smartphones represent a strong growing market, but this sector is controlled by the wireless industry, i.e. carriers and handset makers, not traditional PC companies. PC companies have yet to really win in the smartphone arena -- though the iPhone promises to change that. Regardless, Intel is trying to push a new mobile form factor that it
Mobile And Wireless Prominent In IBM's Top Five Technology Innovations
Wireless and mobility figure prominently in IBM's "Next Five in Five," a list of the top five technologies that will impact people's lives in the next five years. The results of this study come from IBM's interal research labs and think tank, as well as input from 150,000 people in 104 countries. So what are the top five technologies to look out for?
Has An Inappropriate Ringtone Ever Embarrassed You?
Raise your hand if you have a specialized ringtone set on your phone. Now raise your hand if you haven't bothered to switch your mobile phone's ringer from the default ringer it came with out of the box. Lastly, raise your hand if you keep your phone on vibrate or silent most of the time. According to the
Mobile Blogging Plug-In Available For Wordpress Users
To continue fellow blogger Mitch Wagner's discussion on blogging tools, I thought I'd share a bit of news from Wordpress. A new plug-in from Andy Moore, creator of Web2Txt, allows bloggers to create versions of their blogs that will be viewable on mobile phones. It will also allow bloggers to create posts
Ballmer Takes Another Swipe At Google Apps And The iPhone
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer just can't resist taking shots at the iPhone. Who can blame him, the iPhone has the potential to redefine the entire handset business -- as well as position OS X as a competitor in the mobile OS market.
Carnival Of Mobilists #70
Break out the balloons and clown shoes, it's carnival time. The Carnival of Mobilists #70 is live at Mobile Opportunity. This edition's topics include RIM's BlackBerry service outage, the future of MVNOs, how to make feature phones better, dumb convergence solutions, and a new wireless carrier in Spain. Check it out.
Dear Microsoft: Enough With The Interactive TV
Dear Microsoft,
Thank you for your concern about the lack of interactivity in my television. I realize that your researchers have only my best interests at heart, but please tell them that interactivity isn't necessary. TV is passive entertainment and I'm fine with that. If I want to interact, I'll do so using the computer in my home office, or maybe, if I'm feeling decadent, from my laptop while watching TV.
Businesses Should Ditch Mobile E-mail And Use SMS Instead
That's what Alan Moore, CEO of SMLXL, recommends. His reasoning isn't all that outlandish, either. Turns out, most users of expensive mobile e-mail systems rarely type out messages that are longer than the 160-character limit with SMS. Why are enterprises paying for all that fancy technology if simple
Europeans Highly Skeptical About The iPhone
In the very unscientific poll I took while attending the S60 Summit in Madrid this week, most Europeans I spoke with said the iPhone is "worthless without 3G." They are also unconvinced that the touchscreen interface will allo
NOAA Sets Up Shop In Second Life
The Meteora island offers hurricane, submarine, and weather balloon rides, a tsunami-training beach, a planetarium, and other educational experiences.
Report From A Weary Mobile Traveler
Well, my trip to Madrid and back to cover the Nokia Applications Summit and S60 Summit was met with good success from a technology standpoint. My mobile phone had no problems adjusting to the European flavors of GSM, though I
FCC Fiddles, Broadband Opportunity Burns
"The most important step we can take to provide affordable broadband to all Americans is to facilitate the deployment of a third pipe into the home,'' FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said yesterday in announcing that the Commission would put off, once again, finalizing the structure of the 700MHz spectrum auction scheduled for later this year. "The upcoming auction represents the single most important opportunity f
The Two Most Useful Search Tricks I Know
I use these all day and every day. One of these tricks allows you to do a search quickly in Firefox. The other trick allows you to narrow searches down to a particular site.
Does A Job Ad Signal The Return Of The Google Phone?
Just when you thought it was safe to deny the existence of a Google Phone, more rumors stir the blogosphere. Late last week Dan Jones at Unstrung pointed out that Google posted a job ad for hardware product manager. So much for Google not getting into the hardware business. Oh, it gets better.
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