Apple today announced the highly anticipated new iphone. Nah, its not new its just an upgrade. A 16GB iphone was just announced. Oh plus a 32GB ipod touch.
iphone + GPS + mms + Outlook exchange = Blogger's wet dream
Zimbra 5 was released today. The yahoo! owned company released the latest version of its open-source alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server. The company which was acquired this past September, has finally added support BlackBerry and several improvements made to Zimbra’s browser-based email client. Zimbra has passed the 20,000 customers and 11M+ mailboxes marks, and is considered the best alternative to MS exchange. It is also going to be the first product to be axed by Microsoft if they acquire Yahoo!
All of the sudden zimbra hurried out the release of its client, i wonder why?
Note To Jerry Yang: You should start emailing photos of S. Ballmer to your employees, make them really scared, and they'll work more. They really will work harder, look at Zimbra...
Australia is in a dire situation today as it is been invaded by the green goblin of computing aka the XO laptops as Zdnet Australia is reporting today
The first hints of the Australian launch surfaced at linux.conf.au in Melbourne, with the organisation hoping to build support for the project amongst the open source community.
"We announced the OLPC Australia organisation at the open source conference because it is both an educational and open source project and because we wanted to build up the technical community around its launch," project organiser Pia Waugh told ZDNet.com.au.
Seventy XO laptops were also given out at the Linux conference last week but Waugh said the giveaway was a linux.conf.au initiative independent of OLPC Australia, meant to create interest around the project.
Some poor bastard just uploaded a bunch of photos from Apples HQ in Cuppertino. He'll be dead within the hour. May god rest his soul. In the meantime if you 're not scared you can go check the story here.
Taken from officesnapshots.com
Chinese ISPs and search engines have been sued by IFPI today according to bbc
The trade body representing the global record industry has launched piracy lawsuits against China's biggest internet companies.Firms targeted in the legal action include Baidu, China's largest internet business, and Yahoo China, in which US giant Yahoo has a 44% stake.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry says the firms offer direct links to pirated music.
It estimates that 99% of all music files in China are pirated.
As a result, the trade body says the annual legal music market in China accounts for just $76m (£38m).
Great PR move by IFPI but...it is just that, a PR move, and a desperate one if i may say so.
Yahoo Inc would consider a business alliance with Google Inc as one way to rebuff a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft, a source familiar with Yahoo's strategy said on Sunday. Or this could just be another way to force MS cough up more money. I'm just saying....
read more | digg story
I've just found one of the funniest blogposts using digg. No really its hillarious. Hey Matt, may i suggest a couple of things to add on that list too?
- Spend hours trying to install the damn thing
- Become an expert in command line or software programming just to install an Ethernet driver
- End up like Richard Stallman.
- Have Fake Steve Jobs call you a freetard.
Hours after google cried wolf in microsoft's attempt to takeover yahoo!, comes this statement from Brad Smith, Microsoft's General Counsel:
REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 3, 2008 – The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising. The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet.What's interesting, beyond Microsoft's swift reaction, is how Microsoft tries to portray itself as the little guy fighting the dragon in the ad revenue business. BUT what is more interesting is that both microsoft and google statements come from the companies legal teams (Brad Smith is Microsoft's General Counsel, and Google's and not their PR departments.Today, Google is the dominant search engine and advertising company on the Web. Google has amassed about 75 percent of paid search revenues worldwide and its share continues to grow. According to published reports, Google currently has more than 65 percent search query share in the U.S. and more than 85 percent in Europe. Microsoft and Yahoo! on the other hand have roughly 30 percent combined in the U.S. and approximately 10 percent combined in Europe.
Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation, and the protection of privacy on the Internet. We believe that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will advance these goals.
Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation, and the protection of privacy on the Internet. We believe that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will advance these goals.
Google's "The openness of the Internet is what made Google -- and Yahoo! -- possible. A good idea that users find useful spreads quickly. Businesses can be created around the idea. Users benefit from constant innovation. It's what makes the Internet such an exciting place.
So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.
Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.
Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers.
This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first -- and should come first -- as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored."
You draw your own conclusions [googleblog]
Check this pcworld article which claims RealPlayer 11 is badware because it "does not disclose the fact that it installs Rhapsody Player Engine software, and fails to remove this software when RealPlayer is uninstalled.
Apparently loads of people were shocked and appalled by this and almost 3000 people digged the article. My question however is this: First of all why are people shocked to discover that a piece of software leaves garbage on their PC, or tries to install some useless app? But what i really want to know is who the fu*k is still using Real player? I mean really? Who is still out-there using Real Player? Please don't be shy raise your hands...
$44.6 Billion. This is the cost of love, and MS loves yahoo. But is this a match made in heaven? (or should i say a match made in desperation?). In any case Microsoft's love for Yahoo! certainly made the news worldwide. On Feb. 1, the software giant took its most bold step yet, announcing an unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for online rival Yahoo!.
This declaration of love however should not come as a surprise. Microsoft was circling yahoo since 2006. In mid-2007 rumors of a merger started to appear on the horizon. arstechnica.com had raported back in May: "Microsoft and Yahoo have seen their search market share fail while watching Google's continue to climb. Google also continues to flex its advertising muscles, kicking sand in the faces of its competitors with the recent acquisition of DoubleClick. Adding insult to injury, DoubleClick may have turned down a more lucrative offer from Microsoft before being purchased by Google. From a strategic standpoint, then, some sort of Microsoft-Yahoo alliance makes sense. An outright acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft is almost certainly out of the question, however. Yahoo has a market cap of $44.98 billion and Microsoft has never come remotely close to spending that much on an acquisition. Some sort of stock-cash combination is plausible, but also unlikely."
So Microsoft has popped the question, should Yahoo! say yes?
Both companies are in a difficult position. Microsoft has spent more than $10 billion trying to build its Web business. But despite its best efforts, Google's grasp on the web ad business became even tighter; Google accounted for 56.3% of all Web searches in December, compared with a combined 31.5% for Microsoft and Yahoo, according to Nielsen Online. For Microsoft, this is a desperate attempt to catch Google while it still can, as Steve Ballmer admits: "We're in this game, and we're going to be in this game. But the market leader is getting stronger."
Yahoo! is in a even worse position. On Jan. 29, Yahoo issued another disappointing quarterly report and an even more troubling outlook, anouncing 1,000 job cuts and sending the stock price down the drain at its lowest level in four years.
So the answer to this marriage proposal should be yes, especially when it is accompanied by such a shiny ring ($44.6 Billion). But this marriage wont be an easy process. If Microsoft can smoothly mesh Yahoo into its MSN and Windows Live Internet businesses, it could create a network that approaches Google's size. But that's a big IF. Ballmer and Co will need to sort out the brands and the websites, which by itself is no easy task and will probably take years. The biggest challenge this marriage will face is cultural. Yahoo's 14,300 employees come largely from the Silicon Valley world that loves to hate Microsoft.
What remains to be seen is whether Yahoo! will say "I do!" or will it play hard to get by getting in bed with a cable TV company like Comcast or a media company like News Corp, or even seeking an alliance with Google in which its rival would run its search and ad businesses, a strategy some analysts had suggested even before the Microsoft bid (BusinessWeek.com).
