Artificial Playmates for Autistic Children

By Elsa Youngsteadt
ScienceNOW Daily News
15 February 2008

BOSTON--Children with autism spectrum disorder are unable to sustain play, make-believe games, and fluid social interaction--at least with real people. But psychologist and linguist Justine Cassell of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, says that interaction with virtual peers releases hidden social skills in these children.

A virtual child is a cartoonish-looking, gender-neutral 8-year-old that appears on a TV or projection screen. When it interacts with a real child, half of the action takes place in the real world, and half in the virtual world. Thanks to sensors on the toys, the children can pass dolls back and forth between worlds, and the virtual child "watches" the real child as he or she plays. The virtual child can also speak in a recorded child's voice and even uses lifelike expressions and gestures.

At a press briefing yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (ScienceNOW's publisher), Cassell said that she and her colleagues originally developed virtual children 10 years ago, in part to study how literacy and conversation skills develop in normal children. But "every time I presented the work," she said, a parent of an autistic child would come to her and ask, 'Please, can I get a copy of this software for my child?' "

Indeed, the group's newest research, presented at a session this morning, demonstrates that interaction with virtual playmates may unlock social aptitude in autistic children. During unsupervised play with typical children, autistic children don't fill in pauses in conversation, nor do they ask or answer questions in a natural flow. But with a virtual playmate, autistic children begin to do all these things after as little as 20 minutes. In another experiment, the autistic children were given the opportunity to "become" the virtual child. When they hid behind a curtain and manipulated the digital child by means of a control panel, their virtual stand-ins interacted with typical children in socially sensitive ways.

Cassell says autistic children may be more at ease with virtual playmates because the virtual children are more predictable, which could make them seem less threatening. Preliminary brain scans show that typical people have to think harder to relate to a virtual human than to a real one, and Cassell speculates that the reverse may be true in autistic children. But will the autistic children's newfound social savvy translate to subsequent interactions with real children? "That's the million-dollar question," Cassell told Science.

Theoretical linguist Cynthia Zocca, a graduate student at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, who attended Cassell's presentation, enjoyed seeing the role of linguistics in creating virtual children capable of conversation. She says it's nice to see how the work is helping children in the real world.

Related sites

Cassell's Web site, with more on the research

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development on autism

Bidding Near End in FCC Spectrum Auction?

Bidding stalled on Tuesday in the closely watched auction of a piece of wireless airwaves that the U.S. government is selling, according to data released by the Federal Communications Commission. There were no new offers for the nationwide "C" block slice of wireless spectrum to top previous high bids totaling $4.74 billion. Tuesday's pause prompted speculation that bidding for the C block spectrum may have run its course, and that the most likely possible winner could be either Verizon Wireless or Internet search leader Google. Bidders' identities are kept secret until the entire auction ends, under FCC rules. The end won't come until bidding has stopped on all five blocks of spectrum up for sale in the auction, which will probably take at least another week or two. The $4.74 billion in bids for eight regional pieces of the C block on Monday surpassed a $4.71 billion offer made last Thursday for a nationwide package of the spectrum. Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast said there were several possible scenarios as to which companies had bid on the C block airwaves. The most likely of those, she said, is that Verizon Wireless pushed the C block bids up to $4.74 billion on Monday in order to top an earlier bid by Google. It was also possible that the earlier, $4.71 billion offer was made by Verizon Wireless, and that another competitor is aiming to force Verizon to up its bid, Arbogast said. Bidding on the C block had temporarily stalled on Friday after Thursday's $4.71 billion offer. That bid exceeded a $4.64 billion minimum price set by the FCC and triggered a condition sought by Google that would require the winner to make the spectrum accessible to any device or software application. Analysts have said Google may drop out of the bidding after hitting the minimum price, content to let Verizon acquire the C block spectrum as long as the open-access conditions are guaranteed. The C block is one of five groups of 700-megahertz spectrum being offered. The top bids on Tuesday totaled almost $18.94 billion for all five blocks, raising more money than any previous FCC auction. The 700-megahertz signals are valuable because they can go long distances and penetrate thick walls. The airwaves are being returned by television broadcasters as they move to digital from analog signals in early 2009. Other potential bidders in the auction that began January 24 range from entrenched carriers AT%26T and Verizon Wireless, to possible new competitors like Google, EchoStar Communications and Cablevision Systems. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group.

Cisco Sees Slowdown

Cisco told investors on Wednesday exactly what they didn't want to hear: that growth slowed dramatically in January and may not rebound for several months. The assessment from CEO John Chambers on the company's conference call sent Cisco's shares skidding by 7% in after-hours trading to a new 52-week low. Cisco's sales for the quarter that ended in January rose 16.5% to $9.83 billion, just ahead of Wall Street estimates, while pro forma earnings of 38 cents a share, or $2.4 billion, met the Thomson Financial consensus estimate. But Chambers said sales growth slowed to less than 10% last month, and while he said that may be an "aberration," he said it was prudent to assume that the "extremely challenging" environment "may continue for the next several months," so the company lowered its sales growth forecast to 10%. Wall Street analysts were looking for 15% growth in the current quarter. "We are seeing our U.S. and European customers being increasingly cautious," said Chambers, but he added that the company remains well positioned to meet its long-term growth target of 12-17%. The news followed other weak recent economic indicators %26#151; including an unexpected slump in the service sector last month that sent U.S. stocks plunging on Tuesday. Stocks lost ground again on Wednesday, as a Federal Reserve official's warning about inflation added to slowdown fears. JDS Uniphase was a bright spot, soaring 26% after beating estimates and raising guidance, and Multi-Fineline was up 37% on its results. Micron fell 10.8% on inventory concerns. FormFactor, CNET, Riverbed, Travelzoo, CommVault, Double-Take and Radisys fell on their results. The Nasdaq lost 30 to 2278, the S%26P fell 10 to 1326, and the Dow lost 65 to 12,200. Volume declined to 3.98 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.47 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 20-12 margin on the NYSE, and 19-10 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 69% on the NYSE, and 74% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 15-80 on the NYSE, and 41-129 on the Nasdaq.

Dell Support Offerings Get Customizable

The "Simplifying IT" beat goes on with Dell, as it announces another element in that initiative -- a less-complex array of support programs. The new Dell ProSupport program reduces its 10 previous service offerings down to two customizable packages. The packages -- ProSupport for IT and ProSupport for End-Users -- are for business/corporate customers. (Consumers will still have to stick with the India call centers for support.) While consolidating the number of support programs it offers, Dell offers some flexibility, allowing customers to configure their support program for their exact needs. "The standard model of break/fix for my computers no longer is working," Tim Mixon, senior marketing manager for Dell Global Services, told InternetNews.com. "We have people out there with varying levels of expertise and we need to take care of people based on how they use the technology." Ideally, this means immediate response in just a few hours or longer-term forensic support for nagging issues, depending on the options a customer selects. For example, imagine an IT professional, working in a mission-critical environment, knows a blown switch is causing a server to lag. In this case, a Dell customer who's purchased the "fast-track dispatch" option could get a switch sent out, pronto -- dispensing with the troubleshooting steps because problem is known. Support also now extends to commonly used applications, a first for the company. As a result, Dell offers a support option for customers likely to need help figuring out how to (for instance) add a pivot table in Excel. The new service options also include proactive support. In that case, if a customer finds that it repeatedly faces the same problems -- like crashing systems -- Dell support can dig into their environment to determine the underlying problem, Mixon said. The new contracts will not replace existing Dell service contracts, Mixon said. "The one thing we won't do is touch existing contracts, as most people have signaled they don't want to do that," he said. "Going forward, they can combine ProSupport. If they want to add new features like fast-track dispatch, they can add it." ProSupport is the latest idea to come from IdeaStorm, the Web site Dell set up to solicit customer feedback. "We got a lot of good ideas from IdeaStorm," Mixon said. In addition to revamping its support plans, Dell also said it is making its support more consistent globally. The company said it began finding that many customers had been receiving varying levels of assistance, depending on their location. The company said it's now working to ensure it offers customers a more consistent level of support across the globe.

Regulators Would Watch Any Google-Yahoo Tie-up

Google might be able to stymie Microsoft's bid to buy Yahoo by forging a deal to run Yahoo's Web search operations or buy a minority stake -- but even that risks the ire of antitrust regulators. Microsoft on Friday offered to pay $44.6 billion for Yahoo, an ailing Web star that has been under pressure from Wall Street to either cut jobs or make more money on advertising. To fend off Microsoft's overture, a Yahoo source said on Sunday the search company would consider a business alliance with Google. Google, which has 58.4 percent of the U.S. Web search market, would probably be prevented by U.S. antitrust enforcers from buying Yahoo, which holds 22.9 percent of the search market, according to ComScore, antitrust experts said. "The probability that (a Google-Yahoo deal) would pass antitrust muster is a lot lower than the Yahoo-Microsoft deal would pass muster," said Luke Froeb, a former director of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Economics. Aaron Edlin, who teaches law and economics at the University of California in Berkeley, said Google could help Yahoo stay out of Microsoft's grip with a carefully targeted buy like "an investment in stock, 10 or 20 percent, a noncontrolling interest." Google and Microsoft are bitter rivals. Microsoft staunchly opposed Google's offer to buy advertising company DoubleClick for $3.1 billion last year, but U.S. antitrust regulators approved the deal in December. One alternative that Yahoo and Google appear ready to consider is to revive an old arrangement where Yahoo relied on Google to power Web searches on its site. Yahoo was Google's highest profile customer from 1999 to early 2004. Regulators would still have the option to stop such a partnership, though it could prove lucrative to Yahoo. Google has a three-year, $900 million deal to run searches for MySpace, the world's largest social network site. "Google and Yahoo have a longer history of working together than Yahoo and Microsoft," said Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with Oppenheimer %26 Company in San Francisco. "Yahoo has to make a decision about how much upside they make from working with Google as a partner versus selling out to Microsoft." While any deal between Yahoo and Google would reflect a hard-nosed business decision, many cultural ties join the two Silicon Valley Internet giants. Aggarwal says one big appeal of Google's search advertising system is that it generates 45 percent more revenue per search than Yahoo's own search system and at least that percentage relative to Microsoft searches. David Lisi, a lawyer with Howry, said that even licensing searches from Google could draw regulatory concern -- though not necessarily an outright rejection. "Technology having moved on ... now they're competitors," he said. "It's the kind of thing that regulators would take a look at. I can't tell you what they'd decide." Lisi said that Yahoo might consider breaking itself up but called that possibility "very remote." He added, "I think Yahoo is looking for the third alternative. Nobody wants to get into a bidding war with Microsoft but Yahoo will offer licensing," he said, adding that Google may try to convince a media or other company to partner with Yahoo. In this hypothetical situation, Lisi said that Google might say, "'We will sweeten the pot and be a strategic partner with Yahoo.' That might be enough."

Apple Offers iPhone, iPod Touch With More Memory

Apple on Tuesday introduced models of its iPhone and iPod touch devices with double the memory available in previous versions. The products come on the heels of Apple's launch last month of a service that lets iPhone and iPod users rent and download movies to watch on their devices. "There are a lot of users out there for whom there is never enough memory," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's head of global marketing for iPod and iPhone. "We've given people more and more content that they can put on their iPhones," Joswiak said. Apple, which said in January that it had sold more than 4 million iPhones since sales began last June, will now offer an iPhone with 16 gigabytes of flash memory, the kind that stores data on microchips instead of a spinning disk drive. The iPod touch, a wireless touch-screen device that plays music and videos, adds a 32-gigabyte model. Both of the new devices will sell for $499, Apple said. Apple will continue to sell its iPhone with 8 gigabytes of memory for $399. A 16-gigabyte version of the iPod touch remains at $399 and an 8-gigabyte model, at $299. The updated models come amid a slump in Apple's stock, due to fears that a U.S. recession could make consumers less likely to buy its iPods, Mac computers or other products. Asked whether Apple expected the new models to boost sales, Joswiak said: "We always put our products out there and hope the market likes them. The higher-capacity models have always done well." Apple shares were up 30 cents at $131.95 in morning Nasdaq trade. The stock has fallen more than 33 percent so far this year.

Ballmer Fills in 'Software-Plus-Services' Plan

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer this week detailed perhaps the most complete high-level view of the company's emerging software-plus-services strategy that it has presented so far. Ballmer's talk came in a "Strategic Update" presentation given on Monday to Wall Street analysts, which reiterated in part how the company's bid to acquire Yahoo fits into its overall business. The annual meeting is a regular event planned long before the company's record-setting offer for Yahoo last Friday. As a result, Ballmer spent most of his time describing Microsoft's longer-term efforts -- including how its products fit into its emerging "software-plus-services" push, and how the company intends to monetize each product category. More than two years ago, Microsoft began espousing its own version of the industry's burgeoning software-as-a-service business model (SaaS) (define). Unlike some competitors, Microsoft's software-plus-services plan does not -- at least not immediately -- transition the company to a strictly Web-based business model. Instead, it has chosen a route that uses the Web to offer some services that are available to users through a simple browser interface %26#150; like competitors' offerings. At the same time, it is also offering services "in the cloud" that enhance the power of rich clients such as PCs running Windows and Office. "When we talk about the transformation of our business to a world of software-plus-services, we're talking about everything we do transforming over the next several years to a world of software-plus-services," Ballmer told analysts. "Each and every one of these businesses, on top of a consistent cloud platform, transitions to have additional revenue and profit opportunities, based upon this transformation to the cloud," he added. Several pieces of the software-plus-services puzzle have already begun to emerge. For instance, in the area of Windows, the company is well underway rolling out its Windows Live Services products, which are free to users and funded by advertising. For corporate desktop users, however, advertising is not appropriate, so the company will monetize its offerings in that category as part of its Microsoft-hosted Online Services for Business, providing functions on a subscription basis. Introduced last fall, Microsoft's Online Services for Business are available to large enterprises with 5,000 or more seats. The offering features hosted versions of Exchange e-mail, SharePoint document management and Office Communications. In terms of core server capabilities such as virtualization, security and management, high-performance computing, and Web serving, Ballmer said those functions will be offered "in the cloud" %26#150; that is, as part of the company's growing online infrastructure. Those, too, will be offered on a subscription basis. "One of the toughest things for most companies %26#133; is actually to do the deployment of their servers, their datacenters, the propagation of applications to those servers," Ballmer said. "As we productize the cloud platform that I talked about, that becomes a subscription-based service that we can offer small companies, startups, larger companies, and you'll hear more about this opportunity and this investment over the course of the next 12 months." The plan resonated with at least one industry-watcher. "That is more detail than they've given %26#91;previously%26#93;, but it makes sense," Matt Rosoff, lead analyst for consumer products and corporate news at researcher Directions on Microsoft told InternetNews.com in an e-mail. "I don't think larger businesses would be willing to accept advertising in hosted applications, and a lot of them are already on multiyear license agreements with Microsoft, so moving to a subscription basis wouldn't be too jarring," Rosoff said. For small and medium-sized businesses and consumers, Microsoft is introducing products such as Office Live Workspace, which is free but ad-supported. It's also offering Office Live Small Business, which is free for a basic version, but more feature-packed editions are subscription-based. Also targeting small and medium-sized businesses are Microsoft's plans for offering its own hosted versions of its Dynamics-branded business management products -- notably, Dynamics CRM Live, an upcoming version of CRM 4.0 hosted by the Redmond, Wash. software colossus itself. Normally, CRM 4.0, which just shipped, is available for customers to self-host or for partners who will provide the hosting. CRM Live is currently in beta test and is scheduled for general availability during the first half of 2008. It will be available on a subscription basis. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Live consumer-oriented offerings will tend to remain advertising-funded. These include Live Search, which competes with Google and Yahoo's search engines. Of course, Microsoft's MSN portal and its aQuantive acquisition also support the company's ad-driven offerings. Though Ballmer didn't mention Yahoo's products specifically, Yahoo's search engine and advertising technologies would likely fall under this category. Its other services, such as Yahoo Mail and the Flickr photo sharing service, also would appear to fit in the same bin as Microsoft's Live consumer services. The presentation also positioned the company's popular Xbox Live subscription-based online gaming service as a software-plus-service product, alongside subscription offerings for Microsoft's Zune music player and its Mediaroom IPTV set-top box technologies. It also includes advertising on Windows Live Mobile-based devices. Additionally, the company gains revenues, and plans to gain more, via transactions on its Xbox Live, Zune and Mediaroom offerings. "I want to make sure that you understand that in every one of these cases, we are investing in some software-plus-services-based opportunity to extend our value," Ballmer said. So what about the proposed Yahoo takeover? "What we're trying to do is take some momentum that we have and ask, 'How do we really increase that momentum even further? What else can we do?'" he added.

Teleworkers Feel Safe, Threaten Network Security

Business employees working remotely say they believe the Internet is getting safer. But they're actually one of the reasons it's so unsafe, according to a new study. The study, conducted by researcher Insight Express and sponsored by Cisco, polled 2,000 remote access workers in 10 countries. Most of the respondents (56 percent) said they felt the Internet was safe in 2007, as opposed to 48 percent in 2006. Ironically, as was the case in the earlier 2006 study, the results found a wide gap between teleworkers' perceptions about security and the reality. Worse, they themselves are evidently contributing to the problem, thanks to unsafe activities. The study found that remote workers regularly engage in risky behavior -- opening e-mails from unknown sources, using corporate PCs for personal activities and "hijacking" their neighbors' Wi-Fi connections. Forty-four percent of global respondents in 2007 said they felt it was acceptable to use their employer's PC for personal activities, down slightly from 45 percent in 2006. The U.S. trended in the opposite direction, however. Forty percent in 2007 admitted to misusing an employer-owned PC for their own purposes -- a sizable increase from the 29 percent reported in 2006. More specifically, 43 percent of respondents worldwide admitted to doing personal Internet shopping on their corporate PC, a small increase from 39 percent the previous year. In the U.S., that figure is again far larger. Respondents admitting to shopping online with their employer's PC rose to 62 percent in 2007, up from 46 percent the year before. Other unsafe behavior included allowing non-employees to share an employer-owned PC. On a global basis, 21 percent of respondents admitted to the practice -- up from 20 percent in 2006. Additionally, 12 percent worldwide said they helped themselves to a neighbor's Wi-Fi connection, a 1 percent increase from the previous year. The study also examined respondents' motivation for engaging in behavior that potentially undermined the security of their PC and corporate network. Twenty percent of the study's respondents reported using their corporate PC for personal online shopping because of a lack of time -- they'd never complete personal chores if they didn't do them while "at work." Respondents also had an answer for why they shared their employer-owned PC with friends and family: 32 percent of those polled said they simply didn't see anything wrong with the practice. When it came to reasons why they "borrowed" their neighbor's wireless Internet connectivity, some 22 percent of respondents claimed they couldn't tell whether they were using someone else's Wi-Fi or their own. With so many users engaging in risky activities, it seems odd that believe security is actually improving. What's behind such a disparity? Patrick Grey, senior security strategist at Cisco, sees a decreasing sense among remote workers, ensuring that they fail to remain diligent. "We haven't seen major worms in a few years -- things have changed with the bad guys going underground using more stealthy methods," Grey told InternetNews.com. "With this reduction of gross attacks, we have a false sense of security among the user population." The recent Storm worm has not proven a wake-up call because it's not of the same category as the Zotob, Blaster and Sasser worms of the past, Grey said. Those worms were harmful in that they shut down computers, so infection proved impossible to overlook. "Storm is insidious in the fact that people don't know they are being compromised," he added. Users also fail to understand the security implications of some of their behaviors, Grey said. For instance, remote workers may not know there are risks in just visiting a Web site, so they might not think much of using an employer's PC for shopping or other personal activities. In some cases, teleworkers will disconnect from their corporate VPN to shop online, then reconnecting afterward, Grey said. However, doing so could mean the user brings malware with them once they reconnect, endangering the corporate network. Workers may not be wholly at fault for failing to understand how their actions could threaten network security. Instead, their companies' IT administrators could bear some responsibility because they haven't done an adequate job explaining the problem, according to John Stewart, Cisco's chief security officer. In a Webcast discussing the study's findings, Stewart said IT professionals industry-wide still have a long way to go in explaining to employees why they should take caution in their activities, whether at home or in the office. "We still haven't done enough," Stewart said. "The whole concept of 'work versus home' is completely disappearing in front of our eyes. We've got to remember we're crossing the chasms of 'work versus play' and they're becoming the same thing."

Chip Market Thrived in '07, Sees Strong Demand in '08

Don't talk recession to the chip industry. Both the semiconductor and graphics processing unit (GPU) sectors showed great growth in 2007 and are thus far expected to hold their own in 2008. Average selling prices (ASPs), on the other hand, are a different story. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported that despite a 100 percent increase in the memory bits sold this year -- that is, the overall amount of gigabits sold -- the overall annual revenue for memory still fell because ASPs dropped so much. The reason is that capacity managed to somehow exceed demand, according to John Greenagel, a spokesman for the SIA. "In some of these countries, the expansion is subsidized by government. Whenever that happens and people invest without regard for what they got for capital, it does tend to drive overcapacity," he told InternetNews.com. It remains to be seen if this trend will continue into 2008. The SIA reported that worldwide sales of semiconductors grew 3.2 percent in 2007 to $255.6 billion. Worldwide sales in the fourth quarter of 2007 were $66.8 billion, an increase of 2.5 percent over 2006 fourth quarter sales, and worldwide sales in December were $22.3 billion, up 2.5 percent over December 2006. The 3.2 percent growth is quite a shortfall from the SIA's initial projection of 10 percent growth for the year back in November 2006. Greenagel said the problem wasn't demand but the collapse in prices. Between the glut of memory and the price war between AMD and Intel, it was a buyer's market. Even with the talk of an economic slowdown in the U.S., things look good for the chip market. "So far, we have not seen any collapse of demand. PC sales were strong last year, Greenagel said. "We're looking at slightly lower sales this year but that's with a larger base. He added, "Cell phone unit sales grew 20 percent last year, so they may taper off a bit but it's still growing, especially outside the U.S." The biggest market is consumer devices -- mobile phones, iPods and DVD players -- which account for 55 percent of sales. India and China are growing exponentially and have bypassed laying landlines and gone straight to cellular. China alone is said to have a middle-class population of more than 300 million people, more than the entire population of the United States. The result has been a decreased dependence on the U.S. to make a market. In 1998, the U.S. was 41 percent of the entire semiconductor market. By 2007, it was down to 23.4 percent, according to Greenagel. Personal computer sales account for approximately 40 percent of all semiconductor consumption, and mobile is continuing to drive sales. Mobile PC unit sales grew 32.2 percent while desktop unit sales grew by 4.1 percent. For 2008, the SIA predicts a growth rate of 7.7 percent, to $276.9 billion. "The demand drivers are still very strong despite the ominous things that have economists worried about the economy," Greenagel said. On the graphics front, the latest sales figures from Jon Peddie Associates shows graphics sales are charging forward with no sign of a slowdown. Sales topped 100 million for the first time ever in the fourth quarter of 2007, to 106.4 million. That's a 27 percent increase over the 83.5 million units. Most notable, said Peddie, president of the company, was the tremendous growth in discrete mobile chips. Most laptops use integrated graphics to offer basic 3D graphics. But with laptops becoming more popular as desktop alternatives, people are demanding more powerful graphics chips for tasks such as gaming and DVD playback. Of those 106.4 million graphics chips, 39.6 million went into laptops. That's 37 percent of the total market. Desktop graphics units gained only 8.3 percent in the same quarter. Peddie said AMD gained a good amount of ground in both desktop and laptop chips with its new graphics parts. AMD, through its ATI unit, had 18 percent of the market to Intel's 54 percent and nVidia's 26 percent in the first quarter of 2007. By Q4, AMD had 29.1 percent, Intel had fallen to 46.8 percent and nVidia slipped to 22.8 percent. AMD released a new part recently, and it has gotten great reviews, while nVidia has been tweaking its G90 processor, released in late 2006. ATI and nVidia used to keep crazy release schedules, releasing a whole new generation once per year, with a refresh six months later. Peddie said that simply can't be done any more. "These companies are increasing the time between releases because they have become so complicated. They simply couldn't keep up with that old release cycle," he said. Peddie expects discrete notebook parts to expand in 2008. "It's the smallest of the four but growing," he said. "More and more notebook manufacturers will offer discrete instead of integrated." It will be needed for the bigger monitors; next year, he said there will be laptops with a 19-inch monitor. He believes the overall year will come just under 10 percent for annualized growth with the usual seasonality. Q1 traditionally has a drop coming off the holiday season rush. It may be worse due to economic concerns but he added it's too soon to tell. Both nVidia and AMD have not given road maps for the year.

BlackBerry Blackouts Balance Life And Work

It may be wishful thinking, but a Canadian government ministry has sent out a directive to its employees urging them to relax and not to use their BlackBerry smartphones at night or on weekends and holidays. Trying to re-establish a proper balance between work and life, Citizenship and Immigration Canada is starting by trying to cut the chains to what some have called CrackBerries. The department's deputy minister, Richard Fadden, sent out a memo asking employees to implement a BlackBerry blackout between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. and on weekends and holidays. "Work/life quality is a priority for me and this organization because achieving it benefits us both as individuals and as a department," Fadden wrote. "When we can balance our work and personal responsibilities, we as a team stand to not only serve and perform more effectively but also to attract and keep employees to help us build a stronger Canada." BlackBerries, made by Canadian-based Research In Motion, are handheld communication devices used to send e-mails and make phone calls, thus allowing people to bring the office to their homes, vehicles or even the ski slopes. They have become an essential workplace tool in politics, business and the professions. Fadden also asked employees not to use BlackBerries during meetings and also not to schedule meetings over lunch. "I expect that some of you will consider the above a bit artificial. They may be a little, but I believe we have to start somewhere, and since reducing the quantity of work is unlikely to yield short-term results, we are 'attacking' some of the stresses around work," he said. He said he understood there might be times when implementing all his requests won't be possible, but people should do their best to respect the new rules. A spokeswoman for the department was unable to say what guidelines would be given for handling emergencies.

Mergers, Bailouts Outweigh Job Losses, Google

Traders had a lot of mixed signals to deal with on Friday, and in the end, they chose to side with the bullish ones. Stock futures were down overnight after Google missed Wall Street estimates, then up big in the early morning on Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo. They took another hit less than an hour later on news that the U.S. economy unexpectedly shed 17,000 jobs last month. And that was all by 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, an hour before the stock market opened for trading. The regular trading session went much the same way, with reports of pending bailouts of bond insurers eventually tipping the scale in favor of the bulls. The market has had a lot of cross-currents to digest in the last two weeks. On one hand, there has been economic weakness from the credit market fallout, as exemplified Friday by Google's slowing growth and rising joblessness. Yet Microsoft's offer of a 62% premium for Yahoo suggests the stock market may be deeply undervalued, and with the Federal Reserve aggressively slashing interest rates, perhaps better times are not that far off, or at least the worst already priced in. That was the argument that carried the day on Friday. Yahoo shares soared 48% to $28.38, lower than Microsoft's $31 a share offer, as traders wait to see if a deal can be reached. But with Yahoo shares mired in a downtrend and facing another tough year, the company's board will be hard-pressed to argue that Microsoft's offer isn't in the best interest of shareholders. Microsoft's offer was well-timed, both because of Yahoo's troubles and because it came on the heels of a disappointing earnings report from Google. Google's shares plunged 8.5%, or $48.40, to $515.90, well below the stock's 52-week high of $747.24 set in November. But for Google, the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is also a sign of just how much trouble the search giant has given its more established rivals. Microsoft, meanwhile, lost 6.6% on news of its nearly $45 billion bid for Yahoo. Motorola was another big mover on Friday, gaining 10% after saying it could sell its handset business. VeriSign and Altera were up after their results beat analysts' forecasts, while Digital River fell on its earnings report. The Nasdaq climbed 23 to 2413, the S%26P gained 16 to 1395, and the Dow rose 92 to 12,743. Volume fell to 4.65 billion shares on the NYSE, but rose to 3.1 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by a 26-6 margin on the NYSE, and 20-9 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 84% on the NYSE, and 72% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 49-57 on the NYSE, and 62-92 on the Nasdaq.

Open Source OS/2: The Impossible Dream

For nearly three years, a group of OS/2 supporters has been asking IBM to offer up the source to the long-abandoned operating system. For three years, IBM has said no. Is it finally time to relegate the petition to the same retirement patch as OS/2 itself? The latest rejection from IBM's legal department came just two weeks ago. The letter from Yvonne Perkins in IBM's Enterprise Platform Software group read, in part, "We have considered the positioning of OS/2 and open source several times in the past, and for a variety of business, technical, and legal reasons we have decided to not pursue any OS/2 open source projects." As a project abandoned in 1997, OS/2 doesn't seem to have much value left in it, especially when comparing its kernel with Linux and Mac OS X today. But some of the underlying object-oriented (define) (OO) technologies in its desktop could have some value, since other than OS X, there really isn't an OO desktop on the market. With some of the old Workplace Shell technologies, it would be possible to build componentized apps like Lego bricks that inherited capabilities from other apps and shared services. Linux doesn't have this with KDE (define) and GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME) (define), its two competing interfaces. OS/2 has been off the retail market since 1997 and off the market entirely since 2005. Serenity Station handles some sales and support, but IBM itself is trying to migrate customers off the platform. There have been a few snide reactions, but the bulk of open source advocates have an inkling that IBM is simply unable to offer up OS/2 source code. The situation with OS/2 is actually worse than most realized. If the state of OS/2 is any indication, then don't hold your breath for any other older, multipartner projects to ever see the light of day. David Moskowitz, president of the consultancy Productivity Solutions and a contributor of a few lines of code to OS/2 in his own right, said the Free Software Foundation is not new, but the concept of open source is relatively recent. "From 1987 to 1997, the concept of open source as we know it didn't exist," he said. "The code simply wasn't maintained for this kind of release." Moskowitz and others said there's simply no way OS/2 could be released because it was not maintained in a manner compatible with open source development. "Community people seem to think it's a matter of Jonathan Schwartz saying 'it's open source' and magically the next day there's a full copy of the code in a Subversion project ready for download," said Simon Phipps, chief open source office for Sun Microsystems and a former IBM staffer. "It's not like that." Specifically, a company's internal source code is not kept in a state for public consumption. It has to be put into a distributable package, and all of the headers need to be changed -- which means testing to make sure all the files still work together. And that's assuming the code passes all legal checks. Sun started discussing open sourcing Java all the way back in 2001, according to Phipps. From 2001 to 2003, it did some investigative work to find out how hard it was going to be. "Once they decided to go for it, it took us a year to get the code in a state where it could be put under an open source license," Phipps said. And that was Java, a programming language -- not an entire OS. Java is a project under current development at Sun, which created more than 95 percent of the source in house, and the project's leader, James Gosling, is still with the company. In the case of OS/2, development ceased more than a decade ago, and a large amount of the code belongs to Microsoft, which is not known for releasing its code. Even worse, it had been developed in IBM's Boca Raton facility, which closed in 1996. Today, no one knows where all the code actually is: The staff and everything held at Boca has been scattered to the wind, according to Moskowitz. Assuming IBM even had all the code in one place, it would have to go through all of it, line by line, and find out who wrote what -- an IBM staffer, a Microsoft programmer or a third party. "Without having all the code, all the contracts and potentially all the access to people ... it's extraordinarily difficult for IBM to determine what is absolutely releaseable unfettered," Moskowitz said. The code is such a mix of sources that he said he had no idea if something even remotely buildable could be cobbled together. Moskowitz gave an example of how daunting a prospect assessing OS/2 could be: He had once been charged with clearing an application for release. Going through 100,000 lines of code cost $250,000 and took a team of eight nearly four months to track down all of the contracts and people involved. Too often, the team would identify a staffer believed to have written a single line of code -- only to discover that they merely rewrote the code, which had initially been authored by another staffer. Then, the task became chasing down the original coder. In some instances, one line of code ultimately might have been worked on by four or five people. And that was a simple app. OS/2, until version 3, was a complex, joint Microsoft/IBM development. Originally known as OS/2 NT, it was going to be Microsoft's high-end operating system until the two companies had their highly publicized split in 1990. At that time, David Cutler, a programmer extraordinaire, defected from DEC to Microsoft and wrote what would be the kernel of Windows NT 3.1. Prior to that, both companies had programmers working at each other's facilities. Unless every line of code in OS/2 is signed, people vetting the code today will have no way of knowing who wrote a particular bit of code, and when. Sun has also released the Solaris operating system as an open source project, but was only able to do so because it bought an outright perpetual license in 1994 from Novell, which owned the Unix System V source on which Solaris was based. In the case of Solaris, Phipps said Sun needed to do four years of due diligence to prepare it for release. Phipps said such situations often prove just too expensive, because the effort requires nearly as many lawyers as programmers. And without a clear business case, the undertaking may simply prove unjustifiable. "The investment in patent searches, code scrubbing and due diligence is huge," Phipps said. "It involves a great deal of engineering and a great deal of legal work." "I can see IBM looking at that and deciding they don't have any money to waste on OS/2, which they won't make any money from anyway," he added.

Minding the Climate-Change Gap

By Eli Kintisch
ScienceNOW Daily News
1 February 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Officials with NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have decided to add a key climate sensor to a satellite scheduled to launch in 2010, ScienceNOW has learned. Scientists say the move will help ensure a continuous 22-year data set on climate change, which has been threatened by a Pentagon plan to strip six climate sensors from a key Earth-observing satellite (Science, 31 August 2007, p.1167).

The announcement, expected to be made today during a White House conference call with reporters, relates to the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) sensor. That device measures radiation reflected up from Earth to space and is a crucial tool for climate researchers to quantify global warming. But 2 years ago, during a mandatory Pentagon review, a similar Earth radiation-measuring device and five others were pulled from the planned $12.5 billion National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) satellite to make the program less risky and save money, the Pentagon said. The satellite was also delayed 3 years, to 2013, due to difficulties with a weather sensor.

That move threatened to disrupt the ongoing collection of climate-change data by three CERES sensors already in orbit on satellites expected to last only a few more years. The earliest of these sensors has been logging Earth-radiation numbers since 2000. In addition, the new CERES sensors must be calibrated with one another before the older sensors stop working. A disruption in the data stream could make it extremely difficult to track the progress of global warming.

To prevent this from happening, NASA and NOAA will put the new CERES sensor onto a smaller NPOESS pilot satellite. By adding a CERES sensor to the 2010 mission, "you have some additional insurance" that researchers will maintain their data set at least through 2015, says David Ryan of Northrop Grumman, which is building NPOESS.

Scientists are pleased by the move, says NASA climate scientist Bruce Wielicki. But they're not out of the woods yet. The government hasn't decided whether to restore an Earth-radiation sensor to the 2013 NPOESS mission, which would keep data flowing through 2020. The tenuous state of crucial climate measurements, says Wielicki, reflects the low status of the earth sciences. "They never allowed climate requirements to drive the [NPOESS] system," he says.

Related site

The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System

Microsoft Takes CRM 4 International

Microsoft said Wednesday that it has begun shipping the first eight language editions of Dynamics CRM 4.0 on schedule. The company shipped the English edition of the product just before Christmas and said, at that time, it would begin shipping the first batch of other language versions in January. The first delivery totals eight languages %26#150; counting English %26#150; including French, Spanish, and simplified Chinese, the company said in a statement. Also included in this batch are Danish, Dutch, Finnish, and German editions. In addition, the company said it's on track to ship 17 more language versions within 90 days for a total of 25, the statement continued. Dynamics CRM 4.0 is the name of the latest version of Microsoft's customer relationship management software that it sells to partners who then provide it as a hosted-service to customers, or that customers purchase and host themselves internally. Additionally, a Microsoft-hosted version of CRM 4.0 is also currently in beta testing and will be available under the name CRM Live during the first half of the year as part of Microsoft%26#146;s "Live" branded software-plus-services strategy, the company has said. The additional 17 languages scheduled to ship in the next three months include Arabic, Brazilian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Hong Kong Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, traditional Chinese and Turkish. The most notable feature in CRM 4.0 is its so-called "multitenant" architecture, which enables a hosting partner, for instance, to run only one copy of the server but support multiple customers simultaneously and securely. "Multitenancy is the big thing," Laurie McCabe, senior analyst at researcher AMI Partners told InternetNews.com. Combined with the multilingual support, that%26#146;s an indication of Microsoft%26#146;s intent. "It%26#146;s clear that they%26#146;re serious about going after the global market," she added. Not surprisingly, Microsoft agrees. "%26#91;With CRM 4.0%26#93; you have a fully multitenancy, multicurrency, and multilanguage situation," Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, told InternetNews.com. For example, a hosting partner can provide multilingual access to CRM 4.0 running on its server and still be running a single copy of the server, he added. Among other new features, the latest version adds business process automation based on Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation. It also provides new collaboration capabilities with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, such as real-time presence indicators within the CRM application. Dynamics CRM was previously last updated to version 3.0 two years ago. That release supported 22 languages but did not feature multitenancy support. Microsoft said it is also planning a 12-week, 50-city, 20 nation tour to promote Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Google's Earnings Below Consensus; Google Unfazed

What happens when the Internet's cash cow stops giving milk? If investors weren't already spooked about this country's macroeconomic woes creeping into the tech economy, they might be now. The after-hours sell-off has begun, as Google released fourth-quarter earnings that fell below analysts' expectations despite exhibiting substantial growth and a hopeful outlook for the future. "We're optimistic about 2008," Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt told analysts on a conference call following the earnings release. "We have growing revenue streams across a broad range of verticals and markets." Google reported fourth quarter net income of $1.21 billion, or $3.79 per diluted share, up from $1.03 billion, or $3.29 per diluted share, in the same quarter last year. Excluding special items, earnings per share amounted to $4.43, falling below analysts' estimates of $4.47 per share. Total Q4 revenues were $4.83 billion, a 51 percent increase over the same period the previous year, and up 14 percent from the third quarter of 2007. Shares rose $16.03 (2.92 percent) to close at $564.30, but fell more than 7 percent in after-hours trading as investors looked askance at the disappointing earnings and the slowing growth in paid ad clicks. Predictably, the key revenue drivers were Google's core operations of search and advertising, with a growing contribution from the Web-based software applications Google knows simply as "apps." These were the three areas that Chief Financial Officer George Reyes identified as Google's main businesses, for both last quarter and the future, but it was in one of these areas that Google had to report one of its most disappointing metrics. The number of aggregate paid clicks, which includes clicks on ads on Google's sites and the sites of its AdSense affiliates, increased nine percent over the third quarter, disappointing many analysts. The executives on the call offered two explanations. The third quarter was aberrantly successful on that front, they said, suggesting that a sequential comparison makes Google a victim of its own success. The second answer to the mild disappointment of the AdSense clickthroughs could well become an opportunity. "Social networking inventory is not monetizing as well as we had expected," Reyes said. Sergey Brin, one of Google's founders and its current president of technology, echoed Reyes' admission. "We have had a challenge in Q4 with social networking challenges as a whole," he said, repeating the operative word. "It didn't pan out as well as we had hoped." The executives would not answer specific questions about Google's $900 million ad deal with MySpace, noting that the AdSense program serves advertisements to many social networks, and that Google, just like everyone else, is still tinkering with the monetization strategy for the social sites. In a momentary digression from the murky financials of the social Web, Brin touted the November launch of the OpenSocial common developer standard, which he said has been adopted by at least 20 social networks. Schmidt was also buoyantly optimistic about Google's international expansion and the emerging opportunities of the mobile market. "More than half of our search traffic is outside the United States," Schmidt said, but that's just the beginning. "The international market is still nascent." A significant portion of Google's new employees are being hired abroad, as it continues to open in new markets and expand operations in existing ones. YouTube is available in 17 languages, Brin noted. On the mobile front, Schmidt's enthusiasm was unbridled. Though he wouldn't offer any short-term growth projections, he said that down the road %26#150; 10 or 20 years from now %26#150; people would conduct more searches on mobile devices than on PCs. He heralded Apple's iPhone as the "first of its generation," referring to mobile devices that offer a Web experience of comparable quality to a computer. "We hope that this is going to make mobile %26#91;Internet%26#93; as frictionless as it is on your desktop," Brin echoed, taking the opportunity to "give a shout-out to Android." Brin also touted the transformative potential of the Open Handset Alliance, which Google launched last year to encourage interoperability of applications on mobile devices. The executives declined to answer any questions about the ongoing wireless spectrum auction. In response to a question regarding the pending acquisition of DoubleClick, currently under review by the European Commission, Reyes simply said that Google was working with regulators to address their concerns. "We're certainly hopeful that it will get cleared," he said. In response to the question that is inevitably asked at least once on every earnings call this season %26#150; the one about the imminent, sustained economic downturn %26#150; Senior Vice President Jonathan Rosenberg was pointed, explaining that he did "not necessarily agree with the thesis" of the question. "We have not seen any negative impact from the rumors of recession," he said.

Black Duck Opens Code Center

Tracking which software licenses are being used as part of an application development lifecycle is an important activity. Developers need to know where code is being used and whether or not it has been approved for use. Software licensing vendor Black Duck now claims to have both parts of the software licensing issue conundrum in check with its new Code Center application working in concert with Black Duck's protexIP software compliance management platform. "What we have designed is an enterprise class management system that is designed to enable software developers to maximize the use of code components and also maximize re-use scenarios using either open source or third party code," Black Duck CEO Doug Levin told InternetNews.com. Black Duck's Code Center includes search, selection and approval workflow capabilities as well as a whole set of tracking mechanisms for software components. Levin noted that code re-use is becoming increasingly more common with enterprises using open source code components as well as third-party Java source code in the form of .jar files. In addition to identifying what is being used as part of a particular software development project, Code Center also enables users to check to see if a particular piece of code is being used somewhere else. Levin noted that as code components move throughout the application development lifecycle it's good to be able identify the source of where the code the code came from as well whether or not it has already been approved for use. While code management is a very competitive market with big vendors like IBM's Rational holding sway, Levin sees Code Center as being a complementary effort. "IBM is a strategic partner of ours and we'll integrate with the whole range of Rational projects," Levin said. "We don't compete with Rational because the main benefit of Code Center is for dealing with components that are outside of the company and are being licensed in or downloaded. Most rational product deal with software files that are located inside the company and don't have an outside component. So we're very complementary." In addition to IBM Rational, Code Center also has support for Eclipse and will work with Eclipse based IDEs (define). The Black Duck Code Center will be available as a standalone product though Levin noted it makes sense to be used together with Black Duck's current flagship product protexIP. Levin explained that what protexIP does is code analysis to do the final build report for an application identifying all the included licenses and any associated licensing issues. In Levin's view Code Center makes sense at the beginning of the software development lifecycle as a complement to what protexIP can do at the end. That said, there could be a need for protexIP at the beginning of the process as well helping developers to try and determine what a particular component of open source or third party code actually contains from a licensing perspective. One of Levin's success criteria for the roll out of Code Center in fact is that a good number of Black Duck's existing protexIP customers adopt Code Center. There has been increasing emphasis in recent months on managing open source code in order to ensure that it is being used properly. The Software Freedom Law Center bringing legal suits on behalf of developers against a trio of companies including Verizon. Black Duck's protexIP is among the solutions that may help to keep enterprises away from the courtroom. Just last week HP launched its own effort to help enterprises with open source licensing issues. "We think there is a whole group of enterprise customers that are that just starting to adopt open source and they are looking to support it," Levin said. "We hope they will start with Code Center and then back into protexIP"

EU Court: File Sharers Can Remain Unnamed

European Union countries can refuse to disclose names of file sharers on the Internet in civil cases, the EU's top court said on Tuesday in a blow to copyright holders trying to fight digital piracy. The European Court of Justice ruled on a dispute between Spanish music rights holders association Promusicae and Spain's top telecom operator Telefonica. Telefonica argued that under a national law based on EU rules, it only had to disclose the name of an Internet subscriber for criminal actions, not civil ones. "Community law does not require the member states, in order to ensure the effective protection of copyright, to lay down an obligation to disclose personal data in the context of civil proceedings," the court said in a statement. Promusicae wanted names of Telefonica Internet clients who shared copyright material on the Web using the Kazaa file-exchange software, so it could start civil proceedings against them. Civil proceedings are cheaper than criminal proceedings, which typically require a higher burden of proof. "There are several community directives whose purpose is that the member states should ensure, especially in the information society, effective protection of industrial property, in particular copyright," the court said. "Such protection cannot, however, affect the requirements of the protection of personal data," the court added. "The directives on the protection of personal data also allow the member states to provide for exceptions to the obligation to guarantee the confidentiality of traffic data." EU rules do not preclude the possibility for EU countries of laying down an obligation to disclose personal data in the context of civil proceedings, it said. "However, it does not compel the member states to lay down such an obligation," the court said.

Slowdown Fears Can't Stop Market Rally

A warning from EMC that 2008 will be a tough year for IT spending hit EMC and VMware shares on Tuesday, but the rest of the market gained on hopes for another big rate cut from the Federal Reserve. EMC's quarterly results were solid, but comments by CEO Joe Tucci that the IT spending environment is "more challenging and more uncertain" and VMware's sales miss and warning sent EMC shares 6% lower %26#151; and spinoff VMware plunging by 34%. Yahoo continued the trend late Tuesday, combining solid fourth-quarter results with a lukewarm outlook for 2008. Its shares fell 10% in after-hours trading. With earnings season largely over, results have been decidedly mixed, with bellwethers like Intel, Apple and eBay disappointing with their results, while Microsoft, Sun and IBM delivered solid results. Amazon and Google will report Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, and then Cisco, HP and Dell will weigh in next month. But aggressive rate-cutting by the Federal Reserve is raising hopes that the economy %26#151; and IT spending %26#151; won't be in the doldrums for long. Traders have priced in about an 87% chance of another half-point rate cut from the Fed on Wednesday. Hopes for a quick recovery helped stocks rebound from an 18-month low last week. Lexmark was a standout, surging 15% on its results. Clearwire jumped 23% on reports that it was back in talks with Sprint on a WiMax partnership. Sprint shares gained 8% on the news. Baidu fell 7% on a downgrade. The Nasdaq rose 8 to 2358, the S%26P gained 4 to 1362, and the Dow surged 96 to 12,480. Volume rose to 4.23 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.24 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by a 22-10 margin on the NYSE, and 17-12 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 67% on the NYSE, and 64% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 28-63 on the NYSE, and 43-89 on the Nasdaq.

Google CEO Bullish on Mobile Internet Advertising

The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a "huge revolution," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said on Friday. "It's the re-creation of the Internet, it's the re-creation of the PC %26#91;personal computer%26#93; story and it is before us -- and it is very likely it will happen in the next year," he told a panel at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. Current estimates for mobile advertising are cautious, with research firm Forrester predicting revenues of under $1 billion by 2012. But Schmidt said this figure was too low and failed to take into account that the mobile Web was reaching a tipping point. Google aims to be a prime mover by bidding for coveted airwaves to launch an open U.S. wireless network, pitting it against established telecommunications players. The move will take the Silicon Valley-based company well beyond its core Web search and online advertising franchises. Although the high costs worry some analysts, Schmidt said he was confident location-based advertising -- which could, for example, direct hungry travelers to nearby restaurants -- would be "a very, very good business." Content providers, already struggling in the modern world of music and film downloads, are less convinced that the mobile Internet is a gold mine. "It is not going to be easy to hang on the price of content," said Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony.

IDC Sees Handset Growth in Single Digits For '08

Market researcher IDC expects growth in the global market for mobile phones to slow to single digits from this year onward after unit sales rose 11.6 percent last quarter, it reported in a statement on Friday. Despite slowing growth, more than 300 million handsets were sold in the fourth quarter -- which includes the holiday season, when sales are traditionally strong, a record for any single three-month period, IDC said. "Over the last three years, growth in the industry during the holiday quarter has fluctuated from 18 percent to 30 percent, and this past quarter we saw it drop to 11.6 percent," Ryan Reith, an IDS senior analyst, said in the statement. "The expectation that the market would maintain the level of growth it saw over the last three years was unrealistic," Reith explained. "We expect growth to be in the single digits throughout 2008, and most likely for years to follow." During 2007, 1.144 billion mobile phones were sold worldwide, 12.4 percent more than a year earlier. Last year saw Samsung overtake Motorola to become world No. 2 behind Nokia. Samsung grew almost four times as fast as the market, thanks to high-end replacement models for the United States and Europe, IDC said. Motorola spent much of the year addressing inventory issues in Europe and Asia. "Now that Motorola is implementing a new handset strategy, it will be interesting to watch the hotly contested No. 2 position in 2008," IDC said. On Thursday Nokia reported fourth-quarter handset shipments that were higher than the combined total of its closest three competitors -- Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Nokia produced 1.5 million phones per day on average and said it could have manufactured even more had it not been for component shortages. IDC put Nokia's fourth-quarter market share at 40.0 percent, Samsung's at 13.9 percent, Motorola's at 12.2 percent, Sony Ericsson's at 9.2 percent and fifth-placed LG Electronics' at 7.1 percent.

New Real Estate Search Aims to Defy Rivals, Market Woes

The housing market may be in freefall, but, as they say, where there's a problem, there's an opportunity. Real estate search service Roost.com launched publicly today, promising a more comprehensive and targeted approach to house hunting on the Internet. "We are laser-focused on getting search right," Roost CEO Alex Chang told InternetNews.com. The site directs traffic to local agents' Web sites on a cost-per-click basis. Roost debuts in 14 markets around the country, including Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C. Chang said he hopes to bring the service to 30 major metropolitan markets by the end of the year, and complete a nationwide rollout within two years. Chang said the service would not launch in a local market until it can offer an exhaustive set of listings. When setting up shop in a market, Roost forges partnerships with the area's Multiple Listings Services (MLSs) and major real estate brokers. The site enters a niche area of the online search space, competing with more established services like Zillow.com and Trulia.com. With entrenched competitors and an economy teetering on the brink of recession -- driven in large part by the credit squeeze and a sharp downturn in the housing market -- the present might not seem the best moment for Roost to make its first appearance. Yet some analysts have suggested that real estate agents will have to retool their marketing strategies and devote more energy to promoting their businesses online. Amid these conditions, Roost is betting that there's room for one more real estate search service in an already-crowded market. For instance, since realtors are the crux of Roost's business model, there's no ads or other non-search content on the site. Chang said Roost is committed to preserving the sparse look of its service, resisting the temptation to add some of the features that can be found on other sites. There are no community forums, no blogs, no social features on Roost -- only listings. The site's core search and comparison features are both robust and granular. House hunters can filter search results by several criteria, including school district, neighborhood, builder or broker. They can set search parameters by the usual litany of real estate options -- price, housing type, number of bedrooms -- and can also mine listings of planned construction and homes being sold directly by the owner. Listings with photos available appear with thumbnail images that expand when users mouse over them. There is also a feature to compare images from different listings side-by-side. The site also uses the Google Maps API so shoppers can plot their results and see their proximity to transit stops or other points of interest. "Anything that's geo-coded that Google knows about" will show up on Roost, Chang said. "Roost is about really getting the job done right %26#91;with%26#93; a great search engine with a local-market approach."

Tivoli Update Aims to Clarify Network Admin Picture

Managing server farms could become a simpler task -- that's the promise of a new version of IBM's Tivoli Provisioning Manager (TPM), which offers improvements designed to provide a view of servers as they are provisioned and related. The update comes as part of IBM's cloud computing initiative called Blue Cloud, which is designed to enable the building and management of large-scale, distributed, globally accessible datacenters. TPM 5.1.1 includes enhancements to help simplify installation and improve distribution, monitor IT resources across an enterprise and create reusable automation tasks, so a complex task can be used again. Ease of use and installation is something IT managers desperately need, according to Andi Mann, research director for industry analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates. "I've surveyed IT administrators, and almost twice as many respondents wanted ease of use and ease of deployment over cost, specific feature sets and integration capabilities," he told InternetNews.com. "People are looking for ease of use and ease of deployment as the top two decision-makers for purchasing datacenter software, and %26#91;IBM%26#93; addressed both of these," Mann said. TPM is designed to give IT admins a clearer picture of their enterprise. Rather than displaying a datacenter as a row of servers, TPM segments machines by process: e-mail servers, CRM servers, Web servers, and so on. This provides operators a better context before they initiate changes, because it shows the relationships between servers. TPM covers up to 16 different relationships, from application to domain to database layers and everything in between, according to Chris O'Connor, vice president of Tivoli strategy and marketing management. "Most problems in a datacenter occur because a change is misconfigured or happens erroneously," O'Connor said. "This eliminates it because it provides maps and forces a compliance and an audit on the change before it can be made. It will warn you that a server is a database for SAP, or this IP address might be associated with others, and cause networking problem." The product achieved this feature through improved integration with the Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager (TADDM). TADDM provides complete visibility into application complexity by automatically creating and maintaining application infrastructure maps. Often, an enterprise application can stretch a great distance -- from, say, a Windows server to a mainframe -- and makes handling patches sometimes less than elegant. The new cross-platform patch support in TPM 5.1.1 makes it possible to do the entire process in one swoop, covering all platforms at once. Another new feature is what's called Web Replay, which lets users record the steps they take -- similar to recording a macro in Microsoft Office. This allows others who might be less skilled to perform a task simply by running the "macro." TPM 5.1.1 also will allow end users to submit for and receive new services without having to know how they are delivered: Admins can provision, manage and provide access to these services invisibly to the end user. Mann said that even though TPM 5.1.1 is a point release, IBM did some major revisions with it, particularly in the relationship between servers and processes. "It's important from a business service perspective that you can understand the relationship between bits and pieces in the datacenter," he said. "That makes it a lot easier to manage and deliver business relation services rather than its components."

IBM, AMD Not Much Help for Stocks

Better than expected results from IBM, AMD and GE helped for all of about an hour on Friday. The stock market opened sharply higher, peaked about 45 minutes later, and then spent the rest of the day on the defensive to end the worst week for stocks since July 2002, with the S%26P 500 off more than 5%. Three weeks into January, the market is off to its worst start ever, with the S%26P down nearly 10%. The reason for Friday's sell-off was a financial stimulus plan from the Bush administration that was neither as big nor as detailed as traders were hoping for, the latest government response to the credit market meltdown that traders have deemed inadequate. AMD shares rocketed 11.5% after the company posted a narrower than expected loss, and IBM gained 2.3% after raising estimates for the second time this week. But the good news did little to lift the rest of the tech sector, as the Nasdaq ended the day 0.3% lower. Sprint Nextel plunged 25% on subscriber losses and layoffs, and Seagate fell 9% on a weak revenue outlook. Xilinx and Skyworks posted double-digit percentage gains on their results. Next week will see more earnings reports from some of the sector's biggest names, including, Apple, Texas Instruments, eBay, Motorola, Symantec, AT%26T, Nokia and Microsoft. The Nasdaq lost 7 to 2340, the S%26P fell 8 to 1325, and the Dow lost 60 to 12,099. Volume rose to 6 billion shares on the NYSE, and 3 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 21-12 margin on the NYSE, and 19-11 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 59% on the NYSE, and 63% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 13-634 on the NYSE, and 35-559 on the Nasdaq.

Open Source Groups Upbeat, Cautious on Sun-MySQL

Will Sun's acquisition of MySQL darken LAMP? Despite generally positive reviews from the open source community, that remains one concern as Sun moves ahead with its its $1 billion acquisition of MySQL. As part of the deal, Sun has made much of the fact that it is acquiring the "M" part of the critical LAMP -- Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP -- Web stack. Many in the community have lauded Sun's move as validation for the stack, which powers countless Web sites and Web applications. Zend is one of those optimistic about the move. The firm is the principal backer of PHP -- the "P" portion of the stack -- and leads its efforts in the commercial space. Yet Zend also has worries about Sun's acquisition. "What we hope is that it doesn't start off an effort to redefine what the Web stack is, to make it all-Java -- because Java is not the premier solution in the Web space," Zend Chief Marketing Officer Mark de Visser told InternetNews.com. De Visser said he believes one good sign is that Sun intends to make MySQL CEO Marten Mickos one of its executives. Mickos is expected to be reporting to Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software. In De Visser's view, Mickos's position within Sun would send a signal that the company is serious about MySQL -- and isn't simply trying to adopt it into its own technology stack. "We certainly hope that we can go forward on the same footing, as our relationship with MySQL is very tight," De Visser said. "About 70 percent of our installed base runs MySQL, and vice versa. The overlapping customer set is enormous." That concern aside, De Visser said he is sanguine about the deal, which he described as indicating that the space is viable and has a strong ecosystem. Many other commercial open source entities also rely on MySQL as part of their businesses, and are also pleased with the purchase. Among them is open source customer relationship software vendor SugarCRM. "Sun's acquisition of MySQL is another validation of the commercial open source model," SugarCRM CEO John Roberts told InternetNews.com. "Combining MySQL with Sun's open source portfolio and enterprise reach will further accelerate the adoption of open source software while hastening the decline of proprietary software sales." The Sun acquisition of MySQL is also viewed positively by members of MySQL own existing partner ecosystem, including one of its largest partners -- Unisys. "We are excited to see the increased adoption of open source, particularly with our partner MySQL," said Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager for Unisys's open source business, in an e-mail to InternetNews.com. "Sun's acquisition of MySQL shows that enterprises are recognizing the potential competitive advantages of open source solutions in their mission-critical environments." While many cite LAMP and open source as the keys to MySQL's success, at least one open source expert thinks there is far more to it. "MySQL didn't succeed just because it was an open source business," Dominic Sartorio, president of the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) wrote in a blog post. "They succeeded because they mastered how to deliver customer value, and brilliantly executed a strategy that is tried-and-true in the software business: brand, platform, and meeting customer needs." "Open source was a means to an end, not an end unto itself," he wrote. While Zend's De Visser cautioned about the integrity of the LAMP stack following the Sun acquisition, Sartorio argued that the time has come for MySQL to move beyond LAMP. "Now, after dominating the LAMP-based market, I would suggest the next stage of the MySQL business unit's growth would require thinking about interoperability with other technology stacks," Sartorio wrote.

Dell Back to Strong Growth

Dell returned to double-digit percentage growth in global PC shipments in the fourth quarter as its new retail sales strategy began to pay off, while rival Hewlett-Packard's growth slowed, technology research firm IDC said on Wednesday. Overall, global PC sales rose a healthy but less-than-expected 15.5 percent in the fourth quarter, and economic concerns were likely to cut into future demand, IDC said. Dell shipped 17.1 percent more PCs in the fourth quarter than in the same period in 2006, for a total of 11.3 million units and 14.6 percent of the global PC market, IDC said in its quarterly PC market-share survey. The PC maker, based in Round Rock, Texas, remained in the No. 2 spot despite these gains. A year ago, Dell's worldwide shipments shrank 8.4 percent, according to IDC. In the United States, Dell sold 15.2 percent more PCs than a year earlier, well ahead of overall U.S. market growth of 8.8 percent and faster than HP's 9.8 percent. HP kept the No. 1 spot with a market share of 19 percent, but growth slowed to 23.3 percent from 33 percent in the third quarter as demand lessened in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and competition increased in the United States, IDC said. "Having struggled through the past year, Dell is starting to turn around," IDC reported. "The company's rapid expansion in retail also has helped boost volume and address competition from other leading players." Dell lost the top spot in the PC market to Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP in 2006, as consumers bought more laptop computers in stores, where HP had an advantage. Dell last year abandoned its 23-year-old direct-only sales model and started selling PCs at Wal-Mart stores in the United States and Carrefour locations in Europe, among other retailers. Dell has been expanding in retail, cutting costs and making acquisitions since founder Michael Dell returned to take the CEO position a year ago. HP and Dell appeared to feel the impact of Taiwan-based Acer's aggressive expansion, including the October purchase of Gateway in the United States. Acer's PC shipments surged 60.3 percent after the Gateway purchase. Acer held 9.6 percent of the worldwide PC market, up from 6.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006. Investors have been watching for signs of whether the PC market would deteriorate in the face of a possible recession in the United States, fears that were fanned on Tuesday by disappointing results from chipmaker Intel. But fourth-quarter U.S. PC unit sales rose 8.8 percent, topping IDC's 6.9 percent forecast. Researchers said global sales missed the IDC target of 16.7 percent because of relative weakness in Western Europe. But the slowing economy was not to blame for the European deceleration. Rather, consumers slowed purchases from a PC buying frenzy in the third quarter. Japan also recovered from recent declines, growing about 10 percent in the quarter, and notebook computers continued to drive growth worldwide. "Fourth-quarter results show a very healthy PC market," said analyst Loren Loverde in a statement. "Despite fourth-quarter strength, projections for the next couple years anticipate slower growth. Rising concerns about economic growth are likely to reduce expectations further." IDC analyst David Daoud said that the industry had weathered recessions without major impact in the past. But no recession has occurred since the industry had matured, he said. "We projected a 12.2 percent growth for 2008, projections that could be challenged by the potential economic downturn, in the U.S. in particular," he said. Recent U.S. growth was fueled by Dell's and Acer's rapid expansion, he added. Sales of Apple computers surged 30.9 percent in the fourth quarter, giving it 5.7 percent of the U.S. market. Rival researcher Gartner said that fourth-quarter global sales rose 13.1 percent, led by HP. Gartner said that Dell had shown signs of recovery at the end of the year.

Microsoft Looks To Extend Accessibility Push

Last month Microsoft helped form an industry association focused on helping developers make hardware and software more accessible. On Thursday, Microsoft announced more tangible steps to help that effort along. The Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA), formed in December, includes such Microsoft rivals as Adobe, Novell and Oracle. Specifically, Microsoft said it would grant a royalty-free license for any Microsoft patents necessary to implement required portions of the AIA's UI (User Interface) Automation Specification still in development. "We decided to donate the API (define) we developed to make it open source and allow the AIA to take and port it to any platform they wanted to, Windows, Linux or Mac, to get consistency and accessibility," Norm Hodne, Microsoft's Windows accessibility lead, told InternetNews.com. Hodne said Microsoft is already leveraging its alliance with Novell to get the UI Automation Spec over to the Linux platform. "We think it's important this technology gets out there and companies don't see assistive technology as a competitive thing they have to control or do better than another company," said Hodne. Among the AIA's near-term goals is to develop a set of keyboard shortcuts that are consistent to users of assistive technology products in any Web browser. The AIA is also working with companies that make assistive technology, some of whom are members, to improve the interoperability between different software platforms and their products. The idea is to make it possible for applications to work with any, or at least a far broader range, of assistive technology than is possible today. Hodne said Microsoft commissioned a Forrester study a few years ago that showed 57 percent of working adults in the U.S. could benefit from some form of assistive technology whether it was a magnifier for extremely near-sighted users to alternative means of input for users with arthritis. "As the workforce grows older, these kind of advances are going to be increasingly more important," said Hodne. Eventually, Hodne sees the AIA's paying off in other ways, such as a kind of test bed for new applications and input. "We want to get to the point where users can pick how they want to operate their PC and easily change from say a mouse to speech input to a keyboard or a stylus. Farther down the road he thinks a system's UI will be smart enough to adapt to users and expose new functionality once they've shown they've mastered basic functions. Along with Microsoft and many other tech companies, IBM has long been involved in supporting assistive technologies. Last March IBM announced an initiative to give teachers wider access to learning material about assistive technologies. IBM is building a worldwide repository of materials it said would enable student developers to make software more accessible to those with disabilities and the aging population.

Proximic to Syndicate Ads For Yahoo, eBay

When most people think of pairing ads with search queries, one company invariably springs to mind. But don't try telling that to Proximic. Founded in October around a novel contextual-matching technology, the privately funded ad network on Wednesday announced that it has signed ad-syndication deals with Yahoo Shopping Network and eBay's Shopping.com. The two agreements bring Proximic's total ad inventory to nearly 50 million placements. Before the two deals, Proximic's inventory was, approximately, zero. "We're a small company %26#150; so we don't have to replicate what Google has built," said CEO Philipp Pieper, respectfully referring to Google's AdWords, the well-oiled machine for serving up ads based on keyword searches. No, Proximic is taking on Google on a different front, what Pieper refers to as the "long tail" of the Internet. These are the sites that have proven historically difficult to monetize through advertising %26#150; blogs, social networks and other content-driven sites. For advertisers, the Internet's long tail is a vast, undiscovered country, according to IDC analyst Sue Feldman, who said that the major search engines deliver only a portion of the overall Web traffic. "Our own studies show that most of the queries on the Web are not going to the major search engines at all," Feldman said in an interview with InternetNews.com. Most people have a string of favorite sites that they regularly visit, and they don't use a search engine to get there, Feldman said. Google's AdSense is geared for the publishers of these sites, but Pieper believes that Proximic can do it better. Judging from Wednesday's announcements, he's not the only one. "Not only do we use different technology, we do placement differently," Pieper said in an interview with InternetNews.com. "We don't take a look at words %26#150; the things we identify are character sets." Proximic uses a technology called "pattern-proximity," which is designed to transcend the language-based approach of keyword matching, a method that Feldman said is plagued by semantic ambiguities. (Does a search for "Amazon" refer to the rain forest or the company?) Searching for patterns of characters within Web pages means that pattern-proximity can deliver semantic results in any language, Pieper said. Proximic claims that its character-based technique yields a result relevance similar to typing 200 words into a search engine. The architect behind Proximic's contextual-matching engine is Thomas Nitsche, a German mathematician who won the world microcomputer chess title in 1984. Nitsche serves as Proximic's chief technical officer. The computers Nitsche was turning into world-class chess champions in the 1980's had about 5 kilobytes of memory. He applied the same economical method of coding to Proximic's pattern-proximity technology, which boasts the ability to handle tens of millions of ads with only a fraction of the servers required in keyword-based systems with much smaller inventories. Proxomic's approach to ad-pairing is also much less likely to raise concerns over the specter of privacy-invasive behavioral targeting models, Pieper said. Pattern proximity does not rely on aggregating consumer data to match ads with content, but rather is based on intelligent inferences about the content itself. A preemptive answer to the privacy question could be a big advantage in chasing down the long tail of the Internet, particularly the social networks. With Google's AdWords leading the way in search-engine advertising, those endless pages of relatively unstructured data are where Pieper is betting the money is. IDC's Feldman agrees. "The digital marketplace %26#150; this advertising-driven approach to e-commerce, is really just emerging," she said. As for the significance of heavyweights Yahoo and eBay joining with Proximic, she said that "in terms of potential for this market, it's huge." Pieper described the dilemma facing Proximic and any other startup ad network as a chicken-and-egg problem: with no publishers on board the company has little to offer advertisers; without ad inventory the company is unattractive to publishers. "We've solved the first part of the chicken-egg problem," Pieper said. "Now we have an egg problem." Proximic expects to solve its egg problem soon enough, though. The company is in the process of finalizing deals with some major publishers, with announcements expected in the coming weeks.

All That Jazz From IBM

IBM today formally unveiled its Jazz open development community and its first tools, the culmination of an effort designed to accommodate new collaboration technologies in the development process. The site now is open to all developers as the open, transparent environment for building Eclipse-based projects. First announced by IBM in June, Jazz.net had previously been available only to IBM customers, academics and partners. Jazz.net is aimed at giving -- literally -- customers a view into the creation process of applications. There are other open collaboration environments -- CollabNet's SourceForge and Subversion are two of the most prominent -- but IBM feels Jazz represents an even-more open environment. "Anyone can come in and see us developing Jazz products in real time, provide feedback and see us developing it as we're developing it," Kathy Mandelstein, director of the Rational marketing program at IBM told InternetNews.com. The first project to come from Jazz.net will be IBM Rational Team Concert Express, currently in beta 2 and due to ship officially later in the year. The project is intended to help small and mid-sized development teams improve their productivity by using more collaborative technologies to keep in touch. "This transforms the way people can work together," Mendelstein said. "It provides functionality other products don't have, like right-size governance, being able to tell when peer developers are in and making changes in real-time, and just the openness and transparency of the environment." Steve O'Grady, principal analyst with the research firm Redmonk, said Rational Team Concert Express gives development tools a technological overhaul. "Jazz is a lot like what a developer tool would look like if it was developed subsequently to the creation of IM and presence and the like," he said. "They are ingrained in the process. In this day and age, when a lot more development is collaborative and distributed by nature, they need the ability to work effectively together." Rational Team Concert Express adds new features, like a Web 2.0 interface and instant messaging as part of its design. But it's also very reliant on other IBM technologies. The product uses IBM WebSphere and IBM Lotus Sametime, while also tapping Apache Tomcat, Apache Derby and Jabber. Because it is built on IBM's Eclipse technology, it's for Eclipse-based application development. However, it also will support scripting languages like Perl and Python. Rational Team Concert Express beta 2 also includes Web dashboards to help monitor the progress of the project. Managers can set benchmarks and other metrics, while the monitors keep track of how far along the project is and how well it conforms to plans. The system can check a build against established rules ranging from performance to memory footprint, and alert all team members when a build deviates from those guidelines. Members can then respond by adding comments or suggesting fixes. "It's really transparent collaborative development," said Mandelstein. IBM expects that most of the Rational portfolio will evolve over the next few years to incorporate Jazz technology, which will help improve team collaboration and simplify the ability to integrate IBM products.

SAP: 4Q Sales Better Than Expected But Margins Slide

SAP on Monday told shareholders to expect fourth-quarter sales of roughly $4.9 billion, up 10 percent from the year-ago quarter and almost $200 million more than analysts had originally predicted. The German software giant will release its full fourth-quarter and fiscal 2007 results on January 30. Investors responded by pushing SAP shares up $2.02, or 4 percent, to $50.03 a share in Monday trading. The company added that fourth-quarter software and services-related sales rose to more than $3.7 million, up from 14 percent from the same period last year. It did not provide any details on net earnings or earnings per share for the quarter. "SAP turned in another year of very strong gains," the company said in a release. "The strong performance in the fourth quarter represents the 16th-consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in software and software-related service revenues at constant currencies. It resulted from a well-balanced contribution from all regions and solid performances from SAP's traditional as well as its focus industries." This apparent bit of good news comes on the same day that fellow tech bellwether IBM announced stellar preliminary earnings estimates for its fourth quarter. Big Blue said it expects to earn $2.80 a share in the fourth quarter%26#151;well above the $2.60 a share most analysts were expecting%26#151;on sales of $28.9 billion. Analysts were looking for total sales of roughly $27.8 billion in the quarter. IBM will deliver its full fourth-quarter and fiscal 2007 results on Thursday. The company said it decided to release preliminary results to assuage fears among investors that the sluggish U.S. economy was eroded sales and earnings not only in the U.S. but overseas. "Given the economic climate in which there's been a good deal of speculation about market conditions and the performance of technology companies, IBM wanted to deliver this information to investors," an IBM spokesman told Reuters. SAP, which narrowly topped analyst estimates in its third quarter, said it would provide its outlook for 2008 when it releases its full results at month's end. While investor spirits were buoyed, SAP did provide some less-than-stellar news Monday when it confirmed that operating margins for fiscal 2007 will check in around 26.5 percent, down from 27.3 percent in 2006. In its release, SAP said the dip in operating margins was mainly a product of "accelerated investments" in Business ByDesign, the company's first on-demand offering for the SMB market. Peter Goldmacher, an analyst at Cowen %26 Co., issued a research report Monday morning reiterating his "underperform" rating on SAP shares. "Despite growth in revenues, the estimated contraction in %26#91;earnings per share%26#93; indicates that earnings were pressured by the company's investment in the mid-market," he wrote in the research note. "The company reported that its full year fiscal 2007 operating margins were negatively impacted 120 basis points by its investments in Business ByDesign." In October, company reaffirmed its plan to grow its customer base to more than 100,000 clients by 2010 through aggressively targeting the SMB market and invest more than $560 million in the coming year to market and develop Business By Design.

SpringSource's Update to .NET Adds Key Java Features

Developers may now be able to build .NET Framework applications using concepts previously available only on Java, thanks to the release of SpringSource's Spring.Net. Spring is about "making it easy to swap implementations in and out," Spring.Net Project Lead Mark Pollack told InternetNews.com. "We're not tied to languages but to programming ideas. Spring is bringing ideas developed in Java to .NET." SpringSource, formerly known as Interface21, previously released the Spring Framework programming model for Java. The two major Java features of the Spring Framework now available for .NET are dependency injection and an aspect-oriented programming framework, complementing the object-oriented programming (OOP) used in .NET. Dependency injection is an application configuration concept that makes it easier to swap services. In traditional OOP, when Object A asks for Object B, that hard-codes the objects' connection and dependency. If Object B is replaced or removed, all of the code needs to be changed. Dependency injection, on the other hand, doesn't rely on Object A asking for Object B. "Normally, things are hard-coded, making it difficult to test, whereas this approach -- of handing an object what it needs, instead of an object asking for it -- promotes plugability," said Pollack. The aspect-oriented programming framework allows for performing functions when a method gets called. When the method is called, a predefined behavior or action is initiated. That way, when the program is doing one task, a second step or process is also invoked to back up, support or operate in tandem with the first process. This allows for features like caching or exception handling, and is more efficient than starting and stopping a process or having to keep repeating code to perform checks for conditions, Pollack said. Java has this feature in Enterprise JavaBeans, but SpringSource's Spring.Net now makes it available for the .NET programmer. Other key features of Spring.Net 1.1 include ASP.NET AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) integration and portable service abstraction, to export plain .NET objects via .NET Remoting and other technologies. It also includes an Aspect Library of predefined, easy-to-use aspects for transaction management, logging, performance monitoring, caching, method retry, and exception handling. Additionally, the release provides Declarative Transaction Management via XML configuration and attributes and ADO.NET Data Access Framework, which simplifies the use of ADO.NET.

Torvalds Still Keen On GPLv2

Thousands of people are involved in the Linux development community, many of them lending their voices to the project on any given day. But when one voice in particular speaks, people listen: Linus Torvalds, the benevolent creator and dictator of the Linux kernel.org effort, has thrown his weight in favor of the GPL (define) version 2 open source license instead of the new GPL version 3. He did hint, however, that he could change his mind about future versions of GPL v. 3. While Torvalds himself might be the "boss" of Linux from a development sense (is also responsible for releasing Linux kernels), for the last four years he's been supported by The Linux Foundation and its predecessor group the OSDL (open source development labs). In an interview with Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin, Torvalds responded to questions about his role and specifically about his choice of license for the Linux kernel. Torvalds stressed in the interview that he doesn't necessarily care about one license versus another %26#150;- only that he works with one that makes the most sense for his efforts. For Torvalds, that means working with GPLv2. GPLv3, he continued, is about achieving the goals of the Free Software Foundation, which is the organization that manages the GPL and led the effort to create the GPLv3. In Torvalds' view, there has always been a tension between the FSF and Linux. "In some ways, Linux was the project that really made the split clear between what the FSF is pushing which is very different from what open source and Linux has always been about, which is more of a technical superiority instead of a -- this religious belief in freedom," Torvalds told Zemlin. "So, the GPL Version 3 reflects the FSF's goals and the GPL Version 2 pretty closely matches what I think a license should do and so right now, Version 2 is where the kernel is." Since Torvalds first released Linux, it has been licensed under the GPL version 2 open source license. In 2007, however, the GPL was updated to GPL version 3 including new provisions for DRM and patent protections. Torvalds however has been publicly opposed to the GPL version 3 from its earliest days in 2006. In the nearly two years since, Torvalds%26#146; public position has hardly wavered in his opposition to adoption of the new license. But he did open the door just a little, in response to a follow-up question from Zemlin. But it took some caveats to get there. One benefit of GPLv2, he noted, is that a lot of source code is licensed under it. As such, that code is compatible with Linux. "And one of the things Version 3 did was it basically split this source base so that now there are certain projects that are Version 2 only, there are certain projects that are Version 2 or later and there are certain projects that are Version 3 or later," Torvalds said. "And that means that now suddenly you can't maybe share code simply because of license issues and that's not something new; we've always had that." Due to that code-sharing issue, once there is a critical mass of code licensed under GPLv3, there may be a need to re-license Linux to GPLv3 in order to take advantage of other GPLv3 licensed code. If such a situation were to occur, Torvalds noted that kernel developers could well just choose to re-license to GPLv3 -- not because it's a better license but rather because it makes more code available to the kernel. "In fact, one of the few reasons I see why Version 3 might be useful is simply there ends up being tons of external code that we feel is really important and worthwhile that is under the Version 3 license," Torvalds said. It may well then only be a matter of time until Linux moves over to the new GPL. So far adoption of GPLv3 has been active. According to software licensing vendor Palamida, to date over 1,400 projects have migrated from the GPLv2 to GPLv3.