Microsoft and RIM? I Don't Think So.

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

There's speculation of a possible Microsoft-RIM marriage. It sounds appealing, but highly unlikely. Steven Hodson points out Microsoft has never been in hardware. I agree hardware is a factor but the bigger question is: can a MSFT-RIM team compete in the Mobile Market?


(Pie chart via jkOnTheRun. Thank You!)
In 2007, the mobile world was heavily Symbian dominated at 57.1% of the share. WinMo was 2nd with 11.5%, followed by RIM at 8.9%. Currently, the leader board is Symbian = 57.1%, RIM = 17.4%, and WinMo = 12%. In just one year, RIM shot past Microsoft with a 126.4% growth rate.

Phenomenal.

If MSFT and RIM merged, they would take 29.6% of the market, and still be only half of Symbian - with two separate platforms. RIM's number one selling point is its push mail and server. As Electronista points out, server integration would be a potential nightmare. With iPhone's increasing momentum, would Microsoft and RIM risk potential loss while the integration takes place? Not to mention, RIM's co-CEOs are heavily involved. I highly doubt they would agree to Microsoft taking over the solid system they built. And even if the merger isn't hostile, would it make sense for Microsoft to obtain two different platforms?

Then, there's the issue of software. Android is Open Source. Linux is Open Source. Max OS X is Open Platform. Symbian-Nokia announced in June they will go Open Source. I'm guessing Microsoft will eventually go Open Source. (Perhaps sooner than we all think, since Gates departed in June.)

BUT

If Microsoft joins the Open Source game too late, RIM and WinMo would most likely be left behind. Why would anyone choose devices that aren't as flexible as Open Source / Platform ones? Would it make sense for RIM to join forces with anti-Open Source Microsoft? Especially since we're seeing tremendous growth rates?

I don't think so.

What I do know is this. The mobile market is changing, and this is only the beginning. Exciting times for us geeks! So what's your current phone? Are you waiting for a particular handset?

Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits.

Google at 10 - a Decade of Innovation - But Challenges Ahead

By Charlie Anzman of SEO and Tech Daily (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Yesterday, Google posted a fascinating timeline of the past ten years.

For those of us that have been around since the days when Yahoo! dominated search (and Google wasn't 'here' yet), the timeline brings back a lot of memories, and also causes some pondering about the future.

Google's juice has always been their corporate culture. I've written about it before. A few weeks ago, Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, commented that they try not to buy a lot of companies because it's easier to innovate from within, rather than to try and change the way a company does things. (Paraphrased).

Others are complaining about Google's stock price. A careful look at insider trading over two years showed many (current) employees cashing out in the 300's per share. Was 700+ in 2008 ever really in the cards? Did Wall Street expect a little too much?

Now we see Google literally firing on all cylinders. A new Web browser (Chrome), a significant upgrade to Picasa (and Picasaweb), and lots of other upgrades, APIs, additions and announcements made over the past two months.

There's little disputing the fact that Google (and the Internet) have literally created and/or eliminated exisiting business models (or significantly changed them). Not just Internet models but brick and mortar businesses as well. They've also created opportunity for those who continued to read, learn and took advantage of it.

Now, people don't Yahoo-it, or MSN-it (even though they do), the vernacular is Google-it ... and that alone is HUGE.

Interestingly, for you advertising buffs, Google has no tag line. There is no 'what we are' or 'what we do'. Obviously, someone recognized very early on, that the Internet (and the world) was changing so fast, it was difficult to predict exactly where Google's strengths would emerge. That continues to be the case.

I find I now have the same reaction to Google's success that I did to Microsoft's many years ago. Both serve as an example of how just a few people can create something BIG in just a few short years and set an example for those thinking about doing just that.

Like Microsoft, and many others, Google is a role model of sorts for entrepreneurs everywhere.

As they grow and mature, it will be difficult for Google to maintain their corporate culture, but not impossible. The perks of working at the Googleplex make complete and total sense. Help people forget about their mundane day-to-day worries so they can think, be creative, and work.

So …. Happy Birthday Google! One can only imagine (or better yet vision) what the next ten years will bring.

Read more by Charlie Anzman at SEO and Tech Daily.

The New World of Browser Choices is All About the Hooks

In a perfect technology world, every Web site and every Web application would perform the same way across all Web browsers, operating systems and mobile devices. But we're not in a perfect world, and Web surfers' experiences are being increasingly determined by browser-specific plug-ins, third party applications and tie-ins with the host operating system. The result makes it less likely that one Web browser user can make a switch, after having invested in one specific application to get a tailored user experience.

Today's big news/rumor is that Google is preparing their own Web browser, called Chrome, which is based on WebKit, the same foundation underlying Apple's Safari browser. While the news hasn't been confirmed by Google outright, all indications make it appear to be true.

(Update: Google has now made it official)

There Are A Lot of Questions About Chrome

With news of Chrome, Web enthusiasts are already asking questions - will it support the GreaseMonkey scripts designed for FireFox? Will it be released for Mac OS X on the same day it's released for Linux and Windows? And, as it's so early, at least the latter question can't be answered. But assuming they are using WebKit, it's unlikely GreaseMonkey scripts could be used out of the box.

Today's Web Browsing Experience Comes Down To:

1. Speed
2. Reliability
3. Compatibility
4. Data Portability
5. Extensibility

It is no longer enough to load the fastest. The time when you could put Internet Explorer and Netscape or Safari and Firefox side by side and show me how quickly they loaded HTML pages or performed JavaScript renders is gone. People just expect the browsers to work. And if they crash even once a day, users are unhappy. So Speed and Reliability are assumed.

Compatibility, for the most part, is a small issue at this point. It's a rare site that says "Please Use Internet Explorer" or "Your Operating System is Not Yet Supported", although that does happen. That's why initial response to Internet Explorer 8, beta 2, was so tepid, as it really did fail the basic expectations. (See Steven Hodson's critique)

That leaves what I see as the most important points going forward: Data portability and extensibility, and the biggest trojan horse I see going forward to impact the browser marketplace is the iPhone.

If Google Announces Chrome, Does Apple Put it In the iTunes App Store?

Apple made a custom, light-weight, version of Safari for the iPhone, which makes their Web browser the default browsing experience for what's the world's most talked-about cell phone. Using Safari on the iPhone makes it more likely that you will use Safari on your Mac or your PC because it can synchronize your bookmarks, and unify your browsing experience. Changing bookmarks on your desktop means they are changed on the iPhone.

Today, there are no alternative Web browsers for the iPhone. No Firefox, no Opera, and definitely, no Internet Explorer. While Google and Apple appear to be friends, and Google makes applications for the iTunes Application Store, and therefore, the iPhone, can you see Apple opening up the option for users to browse in Chrome instead? And even if they did, the likelihood of Chrome's behavior being mirrored to the desktop, via iTunes, is slim.

Apple playing the role of gatekeeper to the iTunes Store will be a bigger deal as the iPhone increases in market share.

Could Mozilla/Firefox Apps Be Re-written for WebKit?

There are scads of great GreaseMonkey scripts designed for some of the social networks I use, including FriendFeed. In addition, the Google Reader overlay, Feedly, only works in Firefox, so as long as I stay in Safari, I don't use the product at all. To date, Safari has badly trailed Firefox and IE in terms of getting add-ons, like browser toolbars and plug-ins, but if Google were to enter the market with another WebKit-based browser, that could shake things up.

So What About the Hooks?

As a Mac user and a MobileMe customer, my e-mail, Web browser bookmarks, and address book are synchronized across my devices, both laptop and iPhone, and the data is available online from any computer, in the cloud. Because of these hooks, I'm not a good candidate to move away from Safari any time soon, and I'm more tied into Apple's infrastructure of E-mail, Address Book, and iCal than ever before.

For others, it's Google who has the hooks. From their Google Calendar to GMail and Picasa, they've trusted Google with their personal data. For these folks, Google will undoubtedly tailor Chrome to their interests, and it would be hard for competitors like Apple and Microsoft to make the interoperability any better. But this, of course, leaves out the iPhone scenario, which leads us to Android, Google's approach to make a next-generation phone operating system, distributed through multiple handset partners.

Now, instead of seeing that a browser is faster, or more pretty, or has more features, it's more important that we can move our data around between devices and that the applications don't hiccup. We may not have seen it at first, but as the major browser vendors start to tie in to the applications you use every day, they're getting more of a hook into you as a customer, and reducing your potential to use an alternative product. Even before we see Google's Chrome in action, I know it will take being lighter, faster, and as reliable, to start, plus featuring the type of hooks that Safari does today, on the iPhone, to make me consider it anything more than a hobby and as a primary browser alternative.

We've come a long way since Microsoft embedded Internet Explorer in the Windows operating system and was deemed a monopolist, but that won't stop the big players from playing favorites with their own applications and giving you reasons to stick around.

The Even Geekier Approach to Fantasy Football

You would think with trying to keep the blog regular, working a full-time job, keeping active on all kinds of social networks, and raising two month old twins, I wouldn't need yet another time sink. But, clearly not knowing my own limits, I agreed to return to the world of Fantasy Football after taking a two-year hiatus, re-joining the league where I was active from 2001-2005, even though I haven't been paying attention to the NFL at all, and couldn't tell you the starters on just about any squad. So, why do I think I have a chance taking on a group of couch potatoes who have bye weeks and depth charts memorized? The answer: Because I'll be the biggest nerd in the room.

Here's what I do to keep myself challenging for the league title each year:
(I've won the 12-team league twice in five years and finished second once):

1. I don't pick favorite teams or favorite players.

When I was growing up, the San Francisco 49ers were the team of the decade. They won four Super Bowls, and Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott and Roger Craig were superstars. But in the last decade or so, the team might as well have fallen into the Bay, and I don't really care. As a result, I'm not drafting them too highly or unfairly promoting my hatred of their rival.

2. I only bring a laptop to draft day, not a pile of magazines and highlighters.

While some guys show up with their dog-eared copies of ESPN the Magazine and Sports Illustrated or Football Weekly, and six colored markers, as well as the year's bye week schedule and an up to the minute injury report, I just bring my laptop and have Microsoft Excel ready to go. While they shuffle papers around and debate how their home mock drafts differ from the real deal, I'm ready to sort and click between tabs to find my data.

3. I believe past performance is the best indicator of future performance.

I don't need to see teams play or practice to believe a quarterback and a wide receiver have "chemistry", or need to see if a guy has had a good off-season regimen. Instead, the most important data is how well they performed relative to their peers at the position in previous years, according to the rules of the league you are playing.


My 2004 Data Set With 2003 Results
That said, I use the tools that are available to get the data I want, and it all goes into Excel, including:

• A worksheet that shows the previous years' league results, sortable by position, name, team, total points, overall points ranking, and average points per week.
• A worksheet that shows the bye weeks
• A worksheet that shows the most recent injury report, by team
• One or more worksheet with the proposed draft order from ESPN or USA Today

I then create two net new tabs, including:

• A worksheet that will display the team I have drafted.
• A worksheet that tracks the entire league's draft for the season

Once all the data is in there, I'm ready to go to work, as soon as the draft starts. As picks are made by each other team, I quickly highlight those who are off the board in multiple places - on the tab showing last year's statistics, and on the mock draft boards from ESPN and USA Today. At this point, the draft isn't that much different in Excel as it is on paper, but as time progresses, and the all too typical first few rounds get chewed up by running backs, quarterbacks and the occasional wide receiver, my preparedness has an advantage.

If your fantasy football league was online last year, all you usually have to do is go to last season's end of year report, and do a copy/paste into Excel, which will recognize all the columns and set you up for sorting nirvana. If at first you don't succeed... keep trying until you do. Worst case, save the pages as HTML and you can bring them to the draft day on the laptop.


The 2004 Draft, A Down Year for Me
Where others are deciding whether to take a team defense or their third running back, I can go and use Excel's Sort option to its fullest. I can take the highest players available based on their points per game average from the previous season, or do the same to fill a position I need. I can know whether taking a good quarterback will mean all that much relative to the next highly rated option, or if I should keep filling the backfield.


My 2004 Roster, For Example
And the latest rounds are where I make a killing. At this point, especially as most drafts are on Saturday mornings, and guys are joking around about taking players who are injured, or complaining about how the guy just before them snaked Fred Taylor or Torry Holt, I can sneak in and find players that were rated highly last year or by the major sports publications, yet haven't been drafted.

In 2004, my 10th round pick ended up being Willis McGahee of the Bills. In 2005, I got Larry Johnson of the Chiefs in round 12, who ended up being excellent injury protection for Priest Holmes, scoring 17 touchdowns on 1,549 yards rushing. As the rest of the teams use all the allotted time, often accidentally drafting players that have already been taken, my turn comes around every 12th pick, and I look to my Excel sheets for the answer. Yes, they overlooked my secret weapon, and I'll be setting myself up for the win, again.

This year's draft time is 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, and I've made it a little more fun by getting Drew Olanoff of ReadBurner and Strands to be part of the festivities, as well as two friends from work, all of whom are joining the league for the first time. We'll see who wins the battle of Fantasy Football geeks.

On the Web, If You're Not Growing, You're Dying

Often, perception of a site or service's momentum can be self-fulfilling.

Even over the last two years of my writing on this blog, the companies I cover have changed, as what used to be relevant has become less so, and new hotshots have come to take their place. But while some niche services are on their way to becoming household names, others that could have done so are fading, when compared to their peaks of 1, 2 or even 5 years ago.

One tool showing the decline of brands relative to one another is Google Trends, which measures how frequently a keyword is searched for as a percentage of the total searches on the Web.

Using Google Trends, you can see the near-death of older Web 1.0 brands, like Netscape, Lycos and Alta Vista, the plateauing of early Web 2.0 brands, like MySpace, and the deflating balloon of weakened brands, such as Technorati, Digg and Microsoft.


Netscape's Downfall... In Graph Form.

And Lycos Follows Suit.
A little more than a week ago, Google Trends made news by introducing the ability to track data on Web sites, but the service's core element helps shed some light on the fact that the interest level in Technorati has been slashed in half in just the last 12 months, that MySpace peaked a year ago, as did Digg.


The Technorati Monster Is Starving.

And Digg Is In a Rut.

MySpace Is Floating in Space.
Meanwhile, as both Google and Yahoo! have continued an upward trajectory of world interest, Microsoft has seen steady decline every year, starting in 2004, when the data was first tracked.


The Only Thing More Depressing is MSFT Stock.
At one time, it was fun to point out that the Technorati monster had escaped, that Technorati wasn't up to challenging Google Blog Search, or to debate whether Digg's relevance was going to decrease with its move away from solely having a tech focus. But Google Trends lays out on the table the tougher news - nobody cares, and the number of people actively looking for news on Digg or Technorati is going down, while many, many other services are rapidly growing.

While the entire market of Web measurements is questionable, from Alexa to Compete.com and all sorts of competitors in between, it'd be interesting to see Google get even more aggressive with their trends, showing the velocity of a term's decline or ascension. Maybe that'd get the point across a little better for those saying their damaged brands aren't in trouble.

And lest you think Google Trends is all bad news, it's not. Take a look at hotter stories, like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook or Google itself to see what an up and to the right arrow looks like. But if these brands aren't careful, like some of those listed above, they too could stagnate and fall. And once you slow, you're really just preparing for the inevitable drop.

LinkedIn Company Detail Shows Silicon Valley Carousel

How Select Tech Titans Stack Up (Click for larger image)

Last night, LinkedIn rolled out a major upgrade to the professionally-oriented social network and career/recruiting database, adding new company profiles, giving corporations the same kind of dedicated page to their background as their individual employees have had for roughly five years. (Here's mine.) While corporate profiles have been around forever, LinkedIn adds "special sauce" through its large user database, determining where employees come from and leave to, what other companies they are connected to, and who may recently have changed positions or joined the company. Good stuff.

The new company profiles on LinkedIn are a gold mine for reporters who want to get data beyond what the PR guys may want to dish out. (See: LinkedIn Is a Paradise for Smart Reporters)

Want the average age of an employee? A good estimate is on LinkedIn. Want to know if there is a high level of turnover, and people don't stay long? LinkedIn has that too. It also can provide hints as to whether a company is so strong that folks aren't leaving at all, or if they are leaving in exodus. And if you peer closely enough, you can see the Silicon Valley carousel, as employees move from company to company in search for the next big thing.

You can see employees move from PayPal to Google, Yahoo! or LinkedIn. You can see Friendster employees went to Yahoo! and Zazzle, or from Napster to Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google. And if you think Google is getting all the good employees out there, there's no question they get their share, but so far, it looks like Facebook is getting a lot of new hires, and nobody's leaving - a boomtime for the social networking giant.

Interestingly, due to Apple's tenure, and the company's rising from the ashes with the return of Steve Jobs, you can see employees that once left the company have returned, having never lost the Mac religion. You can also see longer median tenures at the more established companies, like Microsoft and Intel, who also feature an older employee base.

Gender-wise, men dominate LinkedIn data for the tech industry, with between 60% and 70% of all employees at the companies I selected. Could that be the case, or is there an overweighting of men who use LinkedIn, compared to the true employee base? Maybe it's both?

LinkedIn opening up this data will keep company marketeers and PR on the alert to see how their data is being portrayed, just as they should be watching their coverage on Wikipedia, for in this case, it's their employees' collective data that is pushing the details, without a filter, and just maybe, the truth will reveal more than they had ever imagined. I know I'll be spending a lot more time poking around LinkedIn now myself.

Yahoo! Calls Microsoft Cheap, Will Reject Offer

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Yahoo!'s board will rightfully tell Microsoft to go pound sand on their offer, unless the total value of that offer is increased, more than 30 percent ahead of their initial approach, making the value of the deal not $44.6 billion, as originally planned, but now, nearly $60 billion.

As I mentioned last week, Microsoft came after Yahoo! at a time when the company's stock was depressed, and tried to "get the company on the cheap", offering, instead of a massive cash outlay, exchange for fractions of Microsoft shares, which at the time amounted to $31 apiece. But in the ensuing market downturn, the offer became less and less substantial, as Microsoft stock eroded, as repeatedly noted by Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider.

Typical in things of this nature, the conflict isn't over technology leadership or how the products and people would overlap, but instead, simply dollars. As Jason Calacanis tweeted this morning, "(translation: $5 bucks more please!)"

I believe that in the face of innovation by Google, Apple, Facebook and many others, Microsoft and Yahoo! don't represent technology leadership and forward-thinking the way they once did. Regardless of the price, Yahoo! should say no to Redmond, and take a new approach to their business to make themselves relevant once again.

Microsoft and Yahoo! Yesterday's News on Yesterday's Companies

In case you were concerned about me, I didn't miss yesterday's news about the proposed Microsoft takeover of my Sunnyvale neighbor, Yahoo!. I just felt that with everyone on the planet, and some in other planets, for sure, talking about it, I'd not only be lost in the noise, but seen as a me-too blogger, which I'm trying to avoid. But we saw it. And we think it'd be a mess.

(Peek at TechMeme for yesterday's million headlines)

Microsoft's goals with a Yahoo! acquisition are clear - try to become relevant in the Web space, including search and social networking. The company saw Yahoo!'s recent dysfunction and hoped to get the company on the cheap, while taking on Google in a more aggressive way. But this won't help their position against the competition, and may actually make the situation worse.

But, if you're Google, a Microsoft-Yahoo! alliance is just about the best thing that ever happened to you. It would combine two of the most confused and unfocused competitors you have, guarantees months to years of integration issues and slowed product development, concern about layoffs and jockeying for position amid increased political infighting. It wouldn't promise improved innovation and technology that would threaten your leadership, but instead take two companies with varying cultures and ask them to beat you together, where individually, they have failed.

If you're Apple, you see Microsoft aligning with Yahoo!, making Google more likely to align with you, which can only be good. You see the company who designed the Zune hook up with the company whose Yahoo! Music offerings went absolutely nowhere. You hope the company keeps making Mac Office, but you've got two backup plans, with your iWork suite, and Google Office.

While Yahoo! once had the leadership position on the Web, and still leads in a few areas, including population on Yahoo! Mail, and a good portion of the portal space, they've fallen behind everywhere else, the exceptions being their smart acquisitions of Web companies like Flickr, MyBlogLog and Del.icio.us. Microsoft never could get there, and while they still own the world's most popular and most hated browser, in Internet Explorer, they've had very little success anywhere else. Even their massive acquisition of Hotmail has turned out to be an unrespected joke.

A Microsoft and Yahoo! combo would have the world's most popular operating system, and the world's most popular office application suite. You could presumably layer on top of that Yahoo!'s widgets, acquired from Konfabulator. You could then integrate Outlook with Yahoo! Mail, and combine MSN search and portal efforts with those of Yahoo!, but just look at what's happened with all the other search acquisitions on Yahoo!'s side: Alta Vista, Inktomi, and Overture, for starters.... have they made Yahoo! better and more popular than Google? No.

A Microsoft/Yahoo! merger would take two tech titans, remove one, and make the combined offering less successful and less innovative than the combined efforts of the original. It'd give Google a free pass and extend their head start. It'd eliminate thousands of overlapping jobs, and send many smart folks out on the street or off to new start-ups. But if Yahoo! knows what's good for it, it'll reject the underpowered Microsoft offer outright, tell Ballmer to pound sand, and take a renewed effort toward integrating its own services and competing aggressively in the market. I just hope they're smart enough to say "No Deal".

10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech

1) Google Will Trump Both TechMeme and FeedHeads

Amid the discussion of Google's sneaking in a social network, little has been said about Google Reader potentially tabulating and reporting the most commonly-shared items and most popular feeds. I believe that in 2008, Google Reader will start reporting the most popular feeds, clicked items and shared items. By the end of 2008, it will become equally important for bloggers, if not more so, to be atop this list, instead of on TechMeme. Google will also integrate this information for both Facebook and iPhone, competing head to head with Mario Romero's excellent Feedheads application.

2) Facebook Will Buy Digg in an All-Stock Transaction

With the company being valued at $15 billion, Facebook can offer around 5 percent of the company to Kevin Rose and team at Digg and net them pre-IPO shares of what's sure to be a white-hot 2009 offering. The all-stock transaction would value Digg above $500 million, the highest possible exit for the company. Public companies, including Microsoft, will counter with $300 million of real money and be rebuffed.

3) eBay Will Sell StumbleUpon to Yahoo! or News Corporation

eBay has done absolutely nothing with StumbleUpon since the service's $75 million acquisition. Unlike PayPal, which was a natural fit, StumbleUpon has no fit within the ecosystem of eBay. A more acquisition-savvy businesses, like Yahoo! or News Corp, will end up with the property by the end of the year. Expect this to accelerate alongside management changes at eBay and continued fallout after the Skype disaster. What it will do is pocket eBay some serious cash. This time, StumbleUpon goes for north of $200M.

4) Twitter Will Add Video, Photography Support

Moving outside of its 140-character niche, Twitter will enable bored microbloggers to show exactly what they are doing with still photos and 15 second video clips. Despite the novelty wearing off, many will continue to do so, gaining us precious photos of the window over their computer desk, overexposed facial closeups and pictures of their breakfast. The service will be integrated with Picasa, Flickr and Photobucket.

5) Apple Boot Camp Will Morph to Be Like Parallels, VMWare Fusion

Some time in 2008, Apple's Boot Camp application will no longer require a restart to run Windows applications. Users will be able to natively run Microsoft Outlook, Project, Access and all other Windows-only applications alongside their Mac OS X applications on any new Mac. While developers may decry the competition to Parallels and VMWare Fusion, Apple will remain quiet, and slowly take over the market.

6) At Least One Major Browser Will Embed Ad-Blocking

By the end of 2008, either Firefox, Safari or Opera will natively ship with the ability to block all ad banners and Google AdSense. Publishers and bloggers will make a lot of noise about it, while secretly avoiding ads themselves. A significant percentage of early adopters will change browsers solely for this feature.

7) Assetbar and FriendFeed Will Gain Early Adopter Audiences

Early adopters always looking for an edge will move away from Bloglines and Google Reader in search for something more cutting-edge. Many will turn to FriendFeed and Assetbar, following the latter's launch, to find a rich feed reader with social networking features. However, neither service will enjoy a significant market share prior to the end of 2008, and neither will be acquired by the end of 2008.

8) Video Blogging Will Remain Unpopular, Unprofitable

Despite advances in video capture and broadband speeds, Web users will not gravitate toward long-form video blogs, choosing instead to stick with text and photography. Only the rare extreme niche businesses will find any success with utilizing video for blogging.

9) iTunes Video Rentals Will Decimate Netflix, Blockbuster, Hurt Box Office

The introduction of video rentals on iTunes will not only force a dramatic subscriber exit for Netflix and reduced rentals at Blockbuster, but will also further slow attendance at movie theaters nationwide, as consumers find the service good enough, and much less inexpensive than a night out.

10) Fast Company Will be a Fast Stay for Robert Scoble

After joining FastCompany in early 2008, Robert Scoble will be at first jubilant, have initial success, and then plateau. While he will remain tremendously popular, there will already be discussions by the end of 2008 as to where he will end up in 2009, giving ValleyWag and Uncov, among others, plenty to gossip about.

Other 2008 predictions:
Jeremy Toeman: Technology Predictions for 2008
Paris Lemon: The Year Ahead 2008: 17 Predictions
The Economist: Technology in 2008
Mahalo: 2008 Technology Predictions
Center Networks: 2008 Predictions from CenterNetworks

TechCrunch Reports AOL Completes Netscape's Demise

It's silly how one can get nostalgic over a software application, but Netscape Navigator, in its original incarnation represented to many, including myself, the first days of massive Web adoption. Netscape was the first huge Internet IPO, and the first real solid challenge to Microsoft's monopoly, after Apple had made its share of missteps. Now, as TechCrunch reports, the browser is officially left to die.

While I had used Mosaic prior to Navigator, I dutifully downloaded all the beta versions of Netscape on my Mac my freshman year of college. My roommates didn't understand why I kept Navigator 0.93, 1.1 and 1.12 on my hard drive. Some part of me wanted them for history, I guess. But as we all know, it was Netscape who became history. Internet Explorer dealt them a body blow, and Microsoft squeezed their life from them. Then AOL's acquisition of Netscape made things unbearable.

The browser stagnated, and Apple had grown closer to Microsoft, as Steve Jobs told an annoyed Macworld crowd that Internet Explorer would be the Mac's default browser. Mac IE 5 was actually pretty good too! Meanwhile, Navigator skipped version 5 altogether, and rolled out a clunker, moving from Netscape 4 to Netscape 6, but it was too late. And by then, we'd all moved on - to IE, to FireFox, and eventually, to Safari. Now, Netscape is but a blip in Silicon Valley history, one that helped kick off the first Web bubble, preparing the way for future tech giants like Yahoo! and Google, and reinvigorating the economy.

A quick search of my Mail archives shows the importance of Netscape.

As I wrote in February of 1996 in a letter home, my freshman year, called "Bad tech day":

"About dinnertime, my computer went totally nuts. To make a long story short, my entire sytem folder was thrown away, including all extensions, preferences, and the like.The final result may still not be final, but there are some key things missing. ALL mail from Eudora which I had saved since October is GONE. All mailboxes. All adresses. All nicknames. All Bookmarks for Netscape, which I was proud of. Gone."

Later, from March of 1996 in another letter home, called "Checks and balances":

"Here's something annoying. I have a Macintosh. Non-Power PC, with a 68030 processor... This means I don't have a Java-supporting Netscape browser, to view live sports scores, and I can't download RealAudio 2.0, which I also need. Ahh. The life of the underprivileged."

Later in March, I sent home a "Top Ten Anagrams for Netscape Communications". I have no idea where I first got it, so apologies to whomever I ripped off:

Top Ten Anagrams for "Netscape Communications"

10.Companies can't consume it
9.I cannot compute sans mice
8.Can't access 'net... I'm on opium
7.Um, options scam can entice
6.Net's uncommon capacities
5.Connect communities, ASAP
4.Mosaic IPO, etc., can stun men
3.Optimum 'net access: An icon
2.Connect it up; amass income

And the number one anagram for "Netscape Communications":
1.Mosaic, minus neat concept

Just think, those e-mails home were from 11 years ago, and we're still talking about Netscape today. While AOL and Microsoft can take away the company and its browser, they can't take away its legacy. Long live Netscape.

Even Virtual Windows Can Drive You Nuts

I've been a very happy VMWare Fusion customer for a few months now. Getting into the world of dual operating systems on my MacBook Pro has been almost universally rewarding from day one - starting with ditching my old Dell laptop, and being able to use Microsoft Outlook, use Internet Explorer 7 and other applications unavailable to us Mac folks - but in a single virtual window, letting me use the Mac the other 95% of the time.

Yet, the other day, while working on e-mail or catching up on RSS feeds, I heard the familiar "Windows is shutting down" chimes, and confirmed it by looking at my VMWare Fusion application. In full text, Windows was informing me my settings were being saved, and indeed, the operating system was shutting down. And no, I didn't tell it to, and no, I don't have any idea why. I told a friend at work, who laughed and said, "Windows needs a reason to shut down?"


I caught Windows in the act of bailing on me this morning...
It happened again yesterday morning. Going to my VMWare Fusion application, I sent the Ctrl-Alt-Del command to the Windows virtual machine, and it didn't come up. I closed Fusion and reopened it. Still no dice. I went to my virtual machine library, selected Windows XP and hit "Run". Nothing. It actually took rebooting the Mac for the Windows virtual machine to launch correctly again!

So guess what... 10 minutes ago, I heard the chimes again. Windows is shutting down. Again. Without rhyme or reason. Again. Now, I have to see if I can trick it into relaunching without making me reboot my Mac. Again.

I'm happy I'm not using Windows as my primary operating system, but even this is annoying. How do people live with themselves day to day in this type of OS hell? Ridiculous.

Importing PST Files: GMail's Would Be Secret Weapon

If you listen the rumbles in Silicon Valley, you would think Google's office suite and Apple's Mac OS X operating system were taking over the world. But the further you get outside the Valley, and often within the Valley itself, you see that Microsoft Windows is still the dominant operating system, as are its application counterparts, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office. If you're a real enterprise, it's basically assumed you're running Outlook.

But the biggest drag on using Outlook has got to be the stupid .PST files. With any kind of serious e-mail archiving, they top out at 2 Gigabytes apiece. Keep the same e-mail address for any kind of time, and you're left not only with multiple .PST files, each being 2 Gigs or so, but it's a new job just to keep track of what .PST files correspond with what amount of time.

Running desktop search software, like Google Desktop, helps to find the old e-mails, but often, clicking a link saying to "Reveal in Outlook" leads to a dead end. Sometimes the archives don't open well. Sometimes Outlook chooses to archive to your local desktop instead of to the network, and any kind of bug could leave you with huge gaps.

Meanwhile, with this playing out in companies everywhere, Google is offering about 5 gigabytes of storage space to consumers everywhere through GMail. Just this evening I was told I'm using "221 MB (4%) of your 5123 MB." For business customers, this number is upped to 25 gigabytes of storage. While that's fantastic for new businesses, anybody already using Outlook has to honor the old .PSTs if they want to get to old messages.

But what if you could import old PST files into GMail, honoring the folder hierarchies you had set up, and had the ability to search through all your e-mail, through all its history? While there's no doubt the import of a single 2 Gigabyte PST file would take a good amount of time, the end result - a single, searchable, Web-based e-mail archive for all your messages would be the holy grail. I believe that with all the issues surrounding Microsoft Outlook - including licensing, viruses, and... the PST files, the prospect of moving to GMail would be quite inviting. But until GMail can help migrate away from Microsoft altogether, real growth will be stunted.

Other comments: PST Files to Gmail, Anyone know of a PST to gmail or mbox converter?

So... I Deleted Excel

Sometime in the last week, I removed Microsoft Excel from my computer. You might think I went on some weird, Mac OS X Leopard-inspired anti-Redmond bent, but that's not the case. I honestly have absolutely no idea how it happened, or when I did it, but one day it was there, and the next, it wasn't. And while it's certainly annoying, it's forced me to check out Apple's Numbers application, and while it's a "passing" spreadsheet app, it would certainly take some getting used to for any spreadsheet junkie, myself included.

I found out my Excel was missing after downloading an .xls Excel file, double-clicking and surprisingly finding it opening in Numbers. At first, I thought that Leopard had made Numbers the default application for .xls files, but then, when I clicked on the Excel icon in my dock, I got a transparent question mark over the icon, the universal symbol for "This application doesn't live here any more".

Oops.

Nowhere near my Microsoft Office CD, nor near an older laptop where I could copy over my Excel, I had to give Numbers a twirl. The first task? Taking that .xls document, making changes, and then saving it as a comma separated value file, or .csv. So, like any good Excel pro, I hit "Save As", and added .csv to the extension, but Numbers wanted no part of it. In fact, Apple wanted me to instead use the extension ".numbers", which makes absolutely no sense, even if I weren't raised in a DOS-like "8.3" world.



Instead, I had to go to File and choose "Export", and decide if I wanted a PDF, Excel document, or a CSV file. Not very intuitive. Later, when I went to sort the columns alphabetically by "First Name" and found myself looking for the "A-Z" option so common in Excel, instead, I found a "Sort & Filter" button which was okay enough, but didn't have a way to indicate it had a header row. Annoying.



The OpenOffice crowd has learned that the best way to have users learn their office applications quickly is to closely mimic the market leader. And while I'm not suggesting Apple copy Microsoft's every move, even a computer-savvy geek like me has so far been left wanting more from the company's would-be Excel replacement. Over the last week, my occasional interactions with Numbers have had me looking forward to getting Excel back. While if forced to live only with Numbers, I now know I could do it, I have yet to see the one killer feature from Numbers that would make me switch, and the little glitches now and again that run contrary to my expectations make me, for once, ready to crawl back and feast from the Redmond table.

Is Microsoft Irrevocably Broken?

Microsoft is still number one in some major elements of the computer industry, without a doubt. It's number one in consumer operating systems and number one in enterprise operating systems. The company sells the number one office suite, has the number one position in Web browser software, just saw the XBox 360 beat Nintendo's Wii in the most recent month, thanks to the release of Halo 3, and undoubtedly is a major force in many other areas I haven't mentioned.

But over the last ten years, especially over the last five, the company's momentum has been overshadowed by some extremely nimble, innovative, companies, like Apple and Google. The company hasn't made much headway outside of its core businesses, with public failures of MSN, Live Search, and Vista, to name a few. The old status quo where every startup in the Valley was afraid to compete with Microsoft has been eclipsed with a new realization that not only can you beat Microsoft, but instead, it's Google that might end up being the 800 pound gorilla who could be your greatest partner or your greatest enemy.

Some of the very best blogging on Microsoft comes from two sources who have grown increasingly frustrated with the company's direction, and have seen their skepticism grow as the company continues to just tread water, quarter after quarter, watching as the latest buzz comes from Cupertino, Mountain View, or a gaggle of startups that have Microsoft begging just to be associated with - like Facebook, or prior to the acquisition, YouTube.

The first, Mini-Microsoft, plainly says the company has grown too large to lead in this new economy, asking for the Redmond monolith to scale down and simplify. The second, MSFTextrememakeover, looks at the situation from that of a shareholder, and the answer is not pretty.

Putting one's money in Microsoft stock for the last year, five years or ten years has been as close to a dead end as you can find. While it hasn't evaporated, the aforementioned Apple and Google have seen their stocks skyrocket.


All stock detail sourced: Google Finance | (Table: Apple's Keynote)

The difference is dramatic. That's why MSFTextrememakeover is asking this week: What If Microsoft wasn't a screwup? I think it's more than just screwing up. Microsoft once had a culture of aggressive tooth and nail competition and winning at all costs. Many antitrust suits later, with much of the old blood having moved on to newer, shinier things, the company has lost the competitive edge it once had. It's one thing to be huge, and quite another to be good.

Additionally, in order to be taken seriously as a stock or as a company, investors have to believe in the management and its direction. Bill Gates has lessened his influence on the company, working more on non-profits than for-profits. And Steve Ballmer doesn't have the credibility and the ability to inspire employees and customers the way Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page have. It could be time for a change there, as Microsoft looks more and more like yesterday's IBM than tomorrow's Google. The question is, is the company broken, and can it be saved?

Recently, Ballmer was seen saying the company would buy upwards of 20 startups a year with the company's cash horde. But truth is, smart startups don't want to be part of Microsoft. That's yesterday's story. Now, they want to be part of Apple or Google, or part of Facebook, if there's a match. There have been stories of Microsoft's richer offers being refused. And it runs contrary to Mini-Microsoft's hope for the company to focus and slim down before getting even larger.

If I wanted to stop using Microsoft software altogether, I could do it. I wrote this post on Google's Blogger, running on Apple's Safari browser, on Mac OS X. I edited the above graphic in Adobe Photoshop, after making it in Apple Keynote. The need to run Microsoft software is now gone, as companies move to the Web, and open source alternatives become a very real reality. Innovative companies win through having an edge and differentiation, and I strongly believe Microsoft's edge has dulled. Without significant change in leadership and focus, things are going to get a lot worse for the company before they get a lot better.

Windows XP Machine Infiltrates Apple Computer!

With Apple's relatively recent move to Intel processors, it seems everything in Cupertino is up for grabs. Just yesterday, I received a visitor to this blog from "APPLE COMPUTER", one of the few thousand checking in on last week's surprisingly popular post on the growing practice of internal linking. While that in itself isn't all that newsworthy, the visitor's configuration caught my eye.

The APPLE COMPUTER visitor was running not Mac OS X, but Windows. And not Vista, but Windows XP. And their browser? Not the new Safari for Windows, but Firefox. Do you think Apple knows that a "Firefox" has gotten into the henhouse?


Above: The Win XP/Firefox user caught red-handed.

Update: The prior version of this post said the visitor was running NT. That was due to a combination of sleep deprivation, carelessness, and the NT 5.1 designation next to the Firefox detail. Mark, in the comments, noted my mistake.

Microsoft PowerPoint Chews Through My Hard Drive

Anybody who has used Microsoft Office products for a significant period has likely perfected the keyboard shortcut to auto-save repeatedly through the creation of critical documents - whether in Word, PowerPoint or Excel. It's quite possible every single one of us knows the pain of seeing the application crash, taking our critical data with it. To avoid complete data loss, over the years, Microsoft has instilled "AutoSave" and "AutoRecovery" features, so if your Office app inevitably does crash, you don't lose all that much.

While I appreciate that "feature", I was amused late tonight when I looked in the folder of a PowerPoint document I was updating earlier today, only to find Microsoft went out of its way to save my hide, archiving no fewer than 17 different temp files, with snapshots taken anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes apart. All told, these 17 backups absorbed 99.2 MB of my precious hard disk space, while the original document is a comparatively slim 5.9 MB. (See below)



Thanks Microsoft for going the extra mile to keep my data safe!

New TAB Posts on Classic and Microsoft Office Mac

5 or 6 years can be a long time when it comes to software and operating systems. Back in 2001, Apple debuted Mac OS X, and by the next year, told us all that Mac OS 9 (Classic) was dead. But some have hung on to the old OS. In parallel, as Apple has made that shift, Microsoft continues to update the company's Office suite, but at a seeming snail's pace. That's likely due to the suite's near-monopoly position, and no real driver for users to upgrade, in my opinion.

So, with those things in mind, out of curiosity, I asked The Apple Blog readers: 1) Is Classic really dead? and 2) If you were the product manager for the next generation of Mac Office, what would you do?

That's the background behind my most recent contributions to The Apple Blog, titled Is Classic Really, Seriously, Dead? and Design Your Next Microsoft Office. Per agreement with them, I will not be cross-posting the piece, but instead, have provided links. Enjoy.

Google Is 95% Of My Search Traffic

My SiteMeter stats have made one thing clear over the last several months - my traffic from Google and Google Images is growing rapidly, and no other search engine, including Yahoo!, MSN, Live.com or AOL, are even making a dent.

There's really no second place. Instead, there's Google, and then there's everybody else.


Google traffic to louisgray.com dwarfs all competitors.

In the last few months, referrals from Google Images have largely taken over the #1 position from Google's standard searches. Over time, the ANtics comics have drawn a tremendous amount of traffic from curious baseball fans, and the occasional odd post on The Simpsons and adult material have delivered the lion's share of the rest.

Using the Summary Web logs analysis application, I reviewed the site logs from January 1 forward, and saw the massive gap between Google and everyone else to be more than I had ever anticipated. It turns out that thanks to Google's unique combination of Google search, Google Blog Search, Google Image Search and Google Reader, the company is delivering almost 96% of all referrals from search engines to my blog. AOL, MSN, Live.com and Yahoo! don't even crack one percent apiece.

A lot of people are concerned that Google's position is a bad thing for consumers and for competition, and it's clear the competition isn't making a good show in this race. But if the other players even had serviceable offerings, this would be a different story. The sad truth is that they don't. If they want to stick around, they should either dramatically enh