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.

Intel's Penryn Set to Make a Splash at CES

Intel's earlier launch of the Penryn family of 45 nanometer processors was a bit on the modest side, with just a few Xeons and the top of the line in the desktop family. But this week's International CES 2008 show will see a much bigger collection of processors across the desktop, mobile and low-end server line. All told, Intel will introduce 16 new chips, including the first Centrino chips for mobility using the 45nm manufacturing processor. Intel is introducing five new dual core mobile processors, four dual core desktop processors, three quad core desktop processors, three quad-core Xeons and one dual-core Xeon. The new Centrino Penryn laptop chips come with support for 802.11n wireless networks, and later this year, Intel plans to ship its first-generation low-power WiMAX platform chipset for laptop and mobile devices. In addition to the smaller manufacturing process, these new chips use the new hafnium-based metal gate, which reduces electrical leakage and runs cooler. In evaluating the top of the line quad-core Penryn desktop against Intel's previous high-end chip, our sister site SysOpt.com found the new Penryn to be about 8-10 percent faster but considerably cooler. Connie Brown, a spokesperson for Intel, said those kinds of improvements in performance and heat reduction can be expected across the board, "but on some apps where you can take advantage of the new SSE4 instruction sets, you will see a much larger performance gain." The new SSE4 instruction set is specifically for gaming, multimedia and graphics, in particular, HD video playback. In addition to the new manufacturing process and instructions, the Penryn family is getting performance bumps thanks to larger caches and a faster bus. The Penryns will sport L2 caches of 6MB to 12MB, an increase of the 4MB to 8MB caches in previous products. The top-end quad core desktops will have 12MB of cache, same as the previous generation. The bus speed has been increased from 1066Mhz to 1333Mhz. For the mobile chips, the cache has expanded from 2MB or 4MB to 3-6MB, while the bus speed has been pumped up from 667MHz to 800MHz. The new Xeons due this month are in the X33x0 family of low-end chips for single socket servers. All are quad-core with clock speeds of 2.5GHz to 2.83GHz, 6 to 12MB of cache and bus speeds of 1333MHz. Intel plans to keep its current family of processors on the market for now. This means a huge number of processors to choose from, but Brown thinks the market will sort it all out. "There's different processors for different needs," she said. "Eventually people will quit using the older parts but there's a crossover in the marketplace as we ramp it up. How long that is depends on how many customers and what OEMs are designing in." Intel's CEO Paul Otellini will deliver one of the CES keynotes on Monday, January 7, at 4:30 p.m.

IBM Jolts Storage Strategy With XIV Buy

IBM's storage division started the new year off with a bang, purchasing XIV, an Israel-based company with innovative technology designed for enterprise and other high end storage. The deal actually closed Dec. 31, but IBM made the deal public today. Financial details were not disclosed; the Reuters news service quoted Israeli media sources as saying IBM paid between $300 and $350 million for XIV, which was founded in 2002. IBM said the purchase is aimed at addressing the demanding storage requirements of Web 2.0 applications and digital media. "What the XIV architecture does is scale performance with capacity," David Vaughn, IBM's worldwide marketing manager for system storage, told InternetNews.com. "When you're posting things -- video, audio and other media types -- you need to make sure that as your storage capacity grows you have predictable performance." "For example, you can't have users waiting three minutes to start a video," he said. "You have to deliver it quickly." Vaughn said XIV's Nextra architecture is relatively low-cost, since it uses off-the-shelf hardware -- Intel-based servers, standard gigabit switches and serial ATA drives. "Typically, this kind of hardware setup is for smaller capacities," Vaughn said. "But XIV scales to very large configurations with predictable performance, so it offers new opportunities to use low-cost components." Vaughn said XIV has been shipping Nextra for over two years and has 40 customers in Israel and the U.S. with more than four petabytes of storage in use. Illuminata storage analyst John Webster said XIV has been a quiet player in the market, in fact, one he hadn't heard of until IBM's announcement. But Webster said XIV's executive chairman, Moshe Yanai, is a legend in the storage industry. In the late 1980s, Yanai led the team at EMC that developed Symmetrix (today known as the Symmetrix DMX series.) That product line proved the key to making EMC a major storage player, Webster said. Yanai becomes an IBM Fellow through the acquisition. Coming as it does on the heels of IBM's $5 billion purchase of Cognos, Webster said he approves of IBM's new, more aggressive stance on intellectual property ownership. "I think there's a major strategy shift going on at IBM to buy," Webster said. "In the past, the company was more likely to partner and license IP. But I think this is a big positive for IBM to just own the technology." IBM's Vaughn described that technology as complementary to IBM's other storage solutions. "We're acquiring an architecture that's unique in addressing storage like no other product and a really talented group of people," Vaughn said. Chiefly, XIV's Nextra differs from other solutions in some key ways. For example, it spreads the data over multiple physical drives. "There are no spare drives like in other systems that take much longer to recover," Vaughn said. "So when there's a failure, you can rebuild a one-terabyte SATA drive in as fast as twenty minutes, because you're only replacing a piece of the overall storage that could be spread out over 50 different drives." Vaughn also said administering such a setup is also far easier than with typical RAID (define) systems. Vaughn also noted Nextra's advanced ability to take snapshots of a volume to aid in recovery and testing environments -- as many as 20,000 snapshots of a volume, and even snapshots of snapshots. "This gives customers a lot of flexibility," he said. "You can take a snapshot of production data and even write to the snapshot." IBM said it has no plans for layoffs as a result of the acquisition. XIV's fifty employees now become part of IBM's office in Israel, where the company has had research and development facilities for decades.

3Com's Buyout Bid Faces Government Scrutiny

The issue of Chinese ownership could potentially hold up the $2.2 billion buyout of networking vendor 3Com. 3Com announced in September its bid to go private with Bain Capital taking a majority stake. As part of the deal, Chinese networking vendor Huawei Technology would be set to take a minority interest in 3Com. The deal had been originally expected to close in the first quarter of 2008, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals. One of those regulatory approvals would come by way of the Department of Treasury's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which has been reviewing the deal. The committee determines whether there is a national security risk from a foreign investment in a U.S. company. Yet in a move widely believed to signal concerns with the buyout, CFIUS will be extending its review by an additional 45 days beyond the initial 30-day period originally expected, according to a report in the Financial Times. A spokesperson for Department of the Treasury declined to comment on the potential 45-day review, citing legal requirements for confidentiality. Representatives from Bain similarly declined to go into detail on the matter. "The review ... is a confidential process to which we submitted voluntarily," a Bain spokesperson told InternetNews.com in an e-mail. "Bain Capital is working closely with CFIUS to provide U.S. officials with information about the proposed transaction." "As stated previously, we believe CFIUS will conclude that the company will remain firmly in the control of an American firm, has only a small minority foreign shareholder, and that the deal presents no risks to national security," the spokesperson said. "We have and will continue to respect the confidential nature of these proceedings as our constructive dialogue with CFIUS continues." Spokespeople for 3Com were not immediately available for comment. According to a recorded message on its investor relations phone line, the company is also remaining silent for the present. "At this time, 3Com will no longer be fielding questions from the investment community regarding the transaction with Bain Capital on an individual basis," 3Com said in its message. "We intend to only make material statements about this transaction in a public manner." If indeed CFIUS, which is chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury, has delayed approving the deal on concerns about Huawei's ownership, it would mark an unpleasant surprise for the parties involved. In an October regulatory filing, 3Com said it had submitted the deal to CFIUS for review and had a positive outlook on its prospects. "3Com and Bain Capital believe that the transaction will not result in foreign control of the new company and does not pose a threat to U.S. national or homeland security," 3Com stated in its October filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Yet the proposed buyout has drawn criticism from U.S. lawmakers as well as special interest groups such as the China e-Lobby. In late November, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl.), ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for a halt to the deal. Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Thad McCotter (R-Mich.), chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, both raised concerns about the transaction on charges that Huawei has links to the Chinese military. "U.S. regulators ought to reject the proposed buyout of 3Com by one of the least transparent companies operating in China, a firm with shadowy ties to Chinese army and intelligence services," Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement. Activists also blasted Huawei's role in the deal. In a letter to CFIUS, D.J. McGuire, co-founder and president of China e-Lobby, an advocacy group pushing for more aggressive U.S. policies against the country's government, similarly warned about the Huawei's connections. "In 2001, Huawei was exposed as one of the Communist Chinese firms building an Iraqi fiber-optic network that would have enabled Saddam Hussein to integrate his air-defense system," McGuire wrote in his letter. "The firm was also involved in building a telephone network for the Taliban in Afghanistan, while the terrorist group was sheltering and aiding Osama bin Laden." While regulators may have issue with the proposed new relationship between Huawei and 3Com, it won't mark the first time the two have cooperated. The companies in 2003 launched the H3C joint venture as an effort to undercut networking giant Cisco. In 2006, 3Com bought out Huawei's stake for $882 million. In addition to concerns about national security risks, 3Com is facing heat over the proposed acquisition from other quarters. "Several purported class-action lawsuits have been filed since Sept. 28, 2007 by 3Com shareholders against the Company, its current directors, a former director, Bain Capital Partners, and in some cases, Huawei Technologies," 3Com noted in its October SEC filing. According to the filing, some shareholders seek class certification and injunctions to halt the transaction, claiming an "insufficient" sale price. Bain's all-cash deal of $5.30 per share represented a 44 percent premium over the closing price of 3Com's stock on Sept. 27, the day before the buyout was announced. The 3Com filing also said shareholders charge that its board of directors "breached their fiduciary duties, and that Bain Capital Partners, and in some cases, Huawei Technologies, aided and abetted the alleged breaches."

Chip Stocks Stay Under Pressure

Chip stocks stayed under pressure Thursday on worries about rising inventories amid a slowing economy. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index lost 1.4%, following a 3% drop Wednesday on a Bank of America sector downgrade. The index has tumbled 22% since mid-October on slowdown fears. Intel lost 2.7% and AMD another 5%, while Texas Instruments was down 2.2%. Intel has managed to buck the chip sector downtrend for the most part, its stock the Dow's biggest gainer last year, but Bank of America worried that its fundamentals could erode too. Intel shares are down 8% this week after rising more than 30% last year. Intersil was up 3.5% on a UBS upgrade, and Digital River and Ingram Micro also benefited from positive analyst comments. Overstock shed 12% on news that co-founder and COO Jason Lindsey was stepping down, and Shutterfly and NetSuite were other big decliners. Oracle was a big gainer, up 2.8%, while Dell fell by that much. Network Appliance gained 2% on an acquisition. The broader market traded mixed ahead of Friday's monthly jobs report, as early gains evaporated amid slowdown and inflation concerns. Economists believe the job market had another subpar month in December and are expecting jobs growth of 70,000 for the month. The Nasdaq fell 7 to 2602, the S%26P was unchanged at 1447, and the Dow added 12 to 13,056. Volume rose to 3.43 billion shares on the NYSE, and declined to 1.98 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by an 18-15 margin on the NYSE, while decliners held an 18-10 edge on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 60% on the NYSE, and 53% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 61-309 on the NYSE, and 63-266 on the Nasdaq.

PCs Face The Future at CES

Lenovo, which burst on the U.S. computer scene with its blockbuster purchase of IBM's PC business a few years ago, is expanding beyond business customers to consumers with the release of new systems. Lenovo new line, called "Idea", were announced today ahead of next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where a number of major PC makers are expected to show off new consumer-oriented PCs and notebooks. HP also jumped the gun in announcing new PCs today, which are detailed below. IdeaPad and IdeaCentre desktops are the consumer cousins of the Lenovo's well-established ThinkCentre and ThinkPad line for business. But a trio of IdeaPads, starting at $799, will offer some unique features. Perhaps most notable is VeriFace for facial recognition. The VeriFace software and the embedded IdeaPad camera recognizes a user's face and automates the log in to the computer as well as to various applications that require passwords. "Lenovo's a new player in the consumer space, and the facial recognition feature is a nice way for them to break out of the crowd -- no one else has it," IDC analyst Richard Shim told InternetNews.com. "It's a nice convenience to simplify the log in and these are the kinds of things PC companies need to do more of. It's not about speeds and feeds anymore, it's about design and the user experience." Lenovo's latest.
Source: Lenovo Lenovo is the biggest provider of fingerprint recognition offered in its ThinkPad line. But Craig Merrigan, Lenovo's vice president of global consumer marketing, said the company wanted to offer something "clever and cool" and less complicated for a consumer security solution. "You just sit in front of the screen and your face becomes your password, letting you in immediately," he told InternetNews.com. The facial recognition can also be configured to allow multiple users or to lock up when you go away to keep out unauthorized users. Standard password entry can also be enabled as an alternative. The Intel Centrino-based IdeaPads also have a distinctive "frameless" display, Dolby Home Theatre surround sound and dedicated gaming controls. One member of the IdeaPad, the U110, is an "ultraportable" weighing only 2.3 pounds with an 11-inch widescreen display. Not available until April, the U110 also works with an optional solid state flash drive. The other two IdeaPads, the Y710 and Y510, feature 17- and 15-inch widescreens respectively. According to IDC, the consumer market represents about 40 percent of all PCs sold. "We are confident we will grow our consumer business by blending innovative technologies like facial recognition with stylish designs to enhance the way people use technology in their personal lives, said Liu Jun, senior vice president and president of Lenovo's Consumer Business Group, in a statement. HP slims down HP also launched a new line of PCs and notebooks but of course the computer giant is already firmly established as a leading provider in both business and consumer sectors. The new HP Pavilion Slimline s3330f PC is about one-third the size of a conventional tower PC and will likely appeal to media buffs with such features as a Blu-Ray and HD-DVD player and TV tuner. An NVIDIA GeForce 8500 card with HDMI port allows consumers to connect the Slimline s3330f to high-definition TVs or play the latest directX10 games in a system priced at $949. IDC's Shim said small is a big idea for 2008. "When it comes to desktops, smaller is the future," said Shim. "In the past it was bigger equaled more powerful, but now consumers see bigger as meaning louder and an eyesore. The exception is gaming where expansion capability and power continues to be in demand." At the higher end of home entertainment PCs, HP is offering the Pavilion Elite m9100, a powerhouse series that uses Microsoft's 64-bit edition of Vista Home Premium, 4 GB of memory and Intel's Quad Core processor. Pricing starts at $1,159. Leveraging its expertise in digital imaging, HP is also offering a PC designed for photo enthusiasts. The Pavilion a6330f PC includes a 500 GB hard drive that stores up to 218,000 photos and HP's Photosmart Essential to organize, edit, share and protect digital images. The HP Pocket Media Drive bay allows for optional additional storage, and the front-panel 15-in-1 memory card reader is designed to simplify transferring photos and files to and from a digital camera and other devices. HP is also bowing the Pavilion tx2000 Series Entertainment Notebook PC. The tx2000 includes handwriting capture and touch-screen capability with a 12.1-inch diagonal touch-screen display that rotates 180 degrees and folds flat as well as a built-in digitizer. The built-in HP Webcam and integrated microphone can be used, among other applications, for live video chat. The HP Pavilion tx2000 series Notebook PC is available for an estimated U.S. street price of $1,299, depending on configuration. A higher end notebook, HP's Pavilion HDX series (starting at $1,999.99), is designed to provide a portable home theater experience, with 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS video graphics and the latest Intel Core 2 Extreme and Intel Core 2 Duo processors. The HDX also includes Blu-ray and HD DVD support and offers what HP said is the first 20.1-inch diagonal WUXGA XHD Ultra Brightview display.