asides on SWiK

Nails on a Chalkboard: The Google Chat Notification Sound

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:54:39 -0700

There’s a scene in the movie “Dumb and Dumber” in which Jim Carrey asks, “Do you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?” And then he screeches at the top of his lungs. If that movie was made today you could easily substitute Carrey’s screaming for the notification sound Google Chat makes.

You are feverishly working on deadline, concentrating to craft the perfect sent-
Dunk!…
-ence, when that noise cuts through your mind as your-
Dunk!…
mental train goes careening off its rails.
DUNK!DUNK!DUNK!

Arrrgh. Who is it, and what the @*&#$ do you want?!

Om’s talked about Gmail sucking, but this is a bigger threat to productivity, since at some point it will drive me insane and I’ll take everyone with me.

Does it have to be such an unpleasant, angry, sound? Especially since it repeats the noise until you switch windows and read the damn message? A jackhammer would be less obnoxious. And the only option in the settings menu is to turn the sound off, which really isn’t helpful when someone is trying to urgently reach you.

Why not a few options, Google? I don’t need the sound of puppies making rainbows or bunny rabbits blowing kisses, but there has to be a less harsh noise than the one you dumped into such an important communication tool for the modern worker. Heck, you could even slip in the biddy-biddy sound from 411-GOOG.

DUNK!

In Technology Era, Rogue IT Threatens Governments

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:54:42 -0700

Today an employee of the San Francisco Department of Technology awaits his arraignment while information technology workers try valiantly to gain access to the new network of computers that keep the city humming.

Terry Childs, a disgruntled city employee gave himself sole access to the city’s new fiber wide area network, and wouldn’t divulge his password to police even after being threatened with arrest. City officials and other IT administrators are still locked out, and are worried that Childs ordered the destruction of documents on the network as detailed in the San Francisco Chronicle web site.

Childs is being charged with a variety of felonies for tampering with the network, but until he’s appeased or people figure out a way in, the city is stymied. This situation reminds me of the one that developed between Robotics Parking and the city of Hoboken, N.J. in 2006. The city’s parking authority built a robotic parking garage, but when the provider increased the annual license fees for the software operating the robotic garage by 20 percent, the city refused to pay.

So the garage stopped working, trapping the cars of whomever happened to be parked there that day. The cars were eventually returned, but a judge ruled that Hoboken either had to pay the fee or get a new company and software in order to operate the garage.

The point? The city’s network problem is a nice reminder of how the knowledge of a few key people has the potential to grind a city’s (or any entities’) operations to a halt if not properly managed. And as technology influences more and more aspects of municipal life, government officials might find themselves more often at the mercy of technology purveyors.

GigaOM Network Content to be Featured on BusinessWeek.com

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:53:00 -0700

Recently, our company entered its third year. It’s hard to believe that it was just a little over two years ago when Katie, Liz and myself would spend our days sitting in a Starbucks somewhere, trying to figure out what to blog about.

It has been an amazing two years. We have grown as a company: We notched a few wins, survived a few scary moments, found time for some puppy love and had some fun, but most importantly, we’ve focused on the job at hand. My team’s focus — and commitment — manifests itself on a daily basis.

I take a lot of pride in working with talented people who follow the ethics and traditions of journalism and bring them to blogging. We have been able to combine our eclectic mix of news, analysis and point of view into an easy-to-digest format that befits the time-deprived state we all find ourselves in these days. It’s our own brand of immediate media.

Our friends at BusinessWeek seem to like that blend, as they have formed a syndication partnership with us that will see them will feature select content from the GigaOM Network on BusinessWeek.com every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In fact, the first fruits of our collaboration are already online.

Our syndication arrangement with BusinessWeek is our first content partnership, but it won’t be our last. We are going to be very methodical in how we work with our partners, including creating an almost bespoke experience that fits the needs of our editorial and syndication partners. I hope you continue to join us in our journey, for in this third year we plan to expand our horizons — and fulfill some even bigger dreams.

OMG, Women Buy Electronics!

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:52:39 -0700

I’m always insulted by the assumption that woman who care about the features (other than color) on their mobile phones or how much memory their hard drives have are geeks. Maybe they simply recognize — much the same way as those with a Y chromosome — that an electronic device has a job to do, and then educate themselves about what a device needs in order to do that job. Of course if those women are also writing code or modding their PC for fun, then I’m going to offer them membership to the geekerati.

But marketers and the media still can’t buy into the idea of women as intelligent consumers of electronics unless they’re buying for a kitchen or utility room. The latest culprit is the Wall Street Journal, which ran a story this week with the title “The New Gadget Geeks.” With an air of discovery, it points out that women are likely to buy the iPhone, and trots out tired stats that prove women buy household electronics.

Please. Women hold jobs, listen to music, watch TV, build web pages and talk on the phone. It’s insulting to women to say they can’t recognize features that are important to them in a gadget, and diminishes geek credibility to allow women who can do little more than distinguish between an MP3 player and mobile phone into the nerdette club. Besides, everyone knows it’s your love of science fiction that makes you a true geek, right?

Is Facebook Down?

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:53:35 -0700

The best thing that’s happened to Facebook: Apple’s MobileMe outage, the iPhone launch and iPhone activation problems across the board. Why? Because no one seems to be reporting on them being out for most of the morning. I just tried to get in; no luck. There is no update on their blog, either. I got a few responses to my question about Facebook’s status on Twitter, so this is not just a problem for me. Are you having Facebook problems as well?

Update: A Facebook spokeswoman emailed us back. “We did experience some issues with the site for a short time this morning, but it was never completely down. It was stabilized as of 10:10 a.m.” They are still investigating the root cause.

It’s Here - The New 3G iPhone.

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:53:54 -0700

For once, the FedEx guy showed up right on time. Here it is — the unboxed pics of the new iPhone 3G. More thoughts to follow later. I guess I am lucky in a way because I didn’t have to deal with lines or deal with the activation process. The activation servers are down, thanks to an incredible rush to buy this phone. Apparently it is getting sold out across the world. If you are at an Apple store and want to send us photos or stream a Qik video, let me know and we can plug you in. My thoughts on the phone will appear over the weekend after I have actually had some time to play around with it. In the meantime, NewTeeVee has a look at the video-related iPhone apps and Earth2Tech has a round-up of apps that can help to save gas.

I Can’t Find MobileMe

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:51:40 -0700

At $99 a year, I expect my online service to function all the time. So perhaps that is why I am a little upset that Apple hasn’t been able to launch their MobileMe service properly and are experiencing outages. The fact that the service was supposed to launch at a time of Apple’s choosing, leaves no room for excuses on today’s problems.

It is doubly disappointing because this is a for-pay and not some free service, where you get what you pay for. Many free services occassionaly suffer downtime. Apple’s DotMac service, predecessor to MobileMe was as temperamental as John McEnroe in his heyday. (Related Story: dotMac, time for a makeover.) The only saving grace is that my dot.mac email via the desktop client is working properly. Whew!

But I want to see a letter of apology and a refund for time lost to outage. Infact all paying services should be forced to refund the money for the time the services are down. That way the high cost of returning a couple of dollars is going to eat into their profits, making them work harder.

T.Boone.tv — The Green Oil Baron That’s Just Too Hip

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:52:31 -0700

I’m officially a friend of the famed oil baron-turned wind developer T. Boone Pickens…on Facebook and MySpace. I’ve also hopped onto his Twitter feed, joined his Ning-powered social network, and asked for a connection on LinkedIn. Now I’m just waiting to hear his last.fm play list (Johnny Cash meets Dixie Chicks?), follow a life-streaming T.Boone.tv channel (24-7 Pickens!), and read his shared Netflix reviews (”There Will Be Blood” – 4 ½ stars, “LOLmilkshake”).

But seriously, the media blitz of Web 2.0 tools from the 80-year-old corporate raider, who was born before Play-Doh was invented, is unprecedented. Pickens’ PR campaign, estimated at $58 million, pushes his plan to break America’s addiction to oil with a one-two punch of wind power and natural gas-powered vehicles – both commodities from which Pickens stands to significantly gain.

That Pickens will likely make a killing off cleaner power isn’t shocking. This guy runs a $4 billion investment fund, grew oil exploration company Mesa Petroleum into one of the largest independent operators in the U.S. and plans to spend $12 billion on building the world’s largest wind farm. He thinks on a grand scale. Even if natural gas-powered vehicles aren’t necessarily a good long-term bet.

What gives us pause is the fact that despite being older than even McCain he still manages to stay on top of all things hip. His social network site actually looks compelling – I’ve seen many a Ning social network site that doesn’t. And it’s already inspiring people: It has over 11,000 members and counting. We’ve been writing about Pickens on Earth2Tech all week and have had a surge of emails from passionate Pickens supporters looking to help like make Pickens t-shirt lines and contribute to his PR campaign. (To them we say thanks, we love the attention, but please send those offers to the Pickens Plan itself).

So while there’s already a lot of critics of his way too-simple-plan of swapping in wind to power the grid and switching natural gas over to vehicles, his execution has been spot on. Launch a massive media blitz, hire the right people that can connect with a younger demographic and see if you can change U.S. energy policy for the benefit of the nation and your own pocketbook. Now, about the T.Boone.tv. video channel, we were only half-kidding.

MobileBeat 2008: Discounts & Ticket Giveaway

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:06:41 -0700

Our friends at VentureBeat are hosting their first conference, MobileBeat 2008 on July 24 at Plug and Play Tech Center at 440 N. Wolfe Rd., Sunnyvale, CA 94085. The conference is looking at opportunities created by the changing mobile landscape. MobileBeat 2008 speakers include Rich Miner, of Google’s Android project and Matt Murphy, of Kleiner Perkins’ iFund.

They have just released the short list of 30 start-ups making a presenting at their conference, and I am looking forward to talking to them at the even. I am also conducting a panel on Mobile vs the Web, which should be ton of fun. I am doing some homework for it and looking for suggestions on the panel. So go ahead and send me your questions.

If you come-up with the right questions, you could be one of the three people who will get a free entry ticket to the event. So start thinking. And if you think that is all too much - relax VentureBeat is offering GigaOM readers a 10% discount - $45 per ticket - all you have to do is enter the code, GOMB08.

Happy Birthday to Us. Thanks All, for Everything

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:55:56 -0700

Structure 08 is over and folks are already asking us about Structure 09. I’m happy to report that our first official GigaOM conference not only sold out but got a big thumbs-up from attendees. I want to thank a lot of people for making this event a success: The speakers; the sponsors; the attendees; the fine folks at Marketing Alchemist (especially Erin and Stacey); Alistair Croll, our magnificent MC; and of course, the GigaTeam. In particular a big shout out to Surj Patel, Joey Wan, Chancey, Mike & Nick! They worked extremely hard to make my dream into an idea, and then a reality. Here is a list of our live blogging from today.

I have some other good news. We are two years old today (though I got outed by Valleywag a bit earlier than June 25) — so below is a little video that shows how we were then and and how we are now. The lessons I’ve earned in these first two years will turn into a really long post someday.

I am planning to take some time off tomorrow, so no posting! Good night all!

Our Live Coverage of Structure 08 Conference

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:59:39 -0700

We’re live in San Francisco today at Structure 08, GigaOM’s cloud computing conference. GigaOM old-timers Katie Fehrenbacher and Liz Gannes have prime seats to give you photo, video and blog updates throughout the day. If you want to pretend like you’re here with us, check out our live-streaming video, which will feature all the main stage speeches and panels, as well as interviews with attendees, conducted by our favorite GigaOM office personalities, Carolyn Pritchard and Chris Albrecht.

Changing Internet and Privacy Erosion

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:02:29 -0700

God, how I miss Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems co-founder & former CEO, and his off-the-cuff but often prescient quotes. Back in 1999, much to the chagrin of privacy advocates, he quipped, “You have zero privacy anyway… Get over it.” Recent developments only give credence to his flippant observation from almost a decade ago.

There is legislation in front of the Senate that will pretty much require payment systems to report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government. This is going to impact eBay, Amazon and Google, along with credit card companies. The requirement is buried in Senator Christopher Dodd’s 630-page Senate housing legislation
The U.S. Congress has worked out a deal that gives phone companies immunity from participating in warrantless eavesdropping.
Sweden recently passed a new law that allowed the Swedish government to eavesdrop on Internet traffic as it sees fit.
France is banning illegal Internet downloaders, according to Times UK Online, following some other bans.

Also checkout, 10 Ways The Internet (As We Know It) Will Die

Domo Arigato Lady Roboto

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:02:43 -0700

For all those times when smooching a Slave Princess Leia action figure just doesn’t cut it, Sega is rolling out a line of 15-inch robot girlfriends that will kiss on command.

The Eternal Maiden Actualization (EMA) will enter into “love mode” and plant one on your face when you lean in for a tiny plastic kiss. EMA will also dance, hand out business cards, and serve as a battery-operated reminder to everyone who owns one that they are lonely, lonely people.

EMA will go on sale in September, and Sega Toys, which makes the doll robot hopes to sell 10,000 of them in its first year.

I never like to buy the first generation of any tech product, so I’ll wait for EMA 2.0, which replicates the girlfriend experience even more by giving you a kiss, then pausing and looking at you. You ask her what’s wrong, she says, “Nothing.” You ask if it was something you did but she just sits there, crosses her robot arms and says, “It’s fine.” You say obviously she’s not fine, to which she responds with, “I’m fine. Whatever. Nothing’s wrong. Let’s just go.” And you say no, let’s talk about it, and she says, “We’re late, let’s just go this party and we can talk about it later,” ruining your whole evening as you try to figure out what exactly you said and — oh. Wait.

Whoops. Kinda drifted off there for a second.

(Image courtesy of Sega press release via CrunchGear.)

Most Online Videos Are 3-Day Wonders

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:26:01 -0700

The 10 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube could be a problem for Google’s infrastructure. Video files are fat and people don’t want to wait long once they press play, which means keeping them requires a trade-off between fast access and cheap storage. A range of companies are trying to address these sorts of storage problems through compression, caching and even Flash memory in the data center.

But since you can’t cache everything, the recent study from Tubemogul, which shows that online videos get the most views in the first three days (with the peak demand occurring on Day Three), can help set caching policies. Dropping a video from the cache after 11 days would mean only half of the video’s viewers would be tormented with a slightly slower upload time.

Travels With Louis

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:21:46 -0700

It’s awesome when technology invades real life to make it better, like the way email makes letter-writing and photo-sharing easier. Louis Vuitton has manged to do that with a walking tour MP3 download that travelers to Hong Kong, Beijing or Shanghai can purchase for $17. Before gasping at the price, realize that New York tourists pay from $12 to $50 for the pleasures of a tour. The MP3 tours don’t require you to show up on time, and your guides are sexy-sounding Chinese actresses, rather than a bored NYU student. It’s pricey, but well done.

Structure 08 Tickets: Almost Sold Out

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:22:15 -0700

It’s time to exhale: Our first Structure 08 conference, slated to be held on June 25th in San Francisco, is ~~almost~~ sold out. ~~With a week to go we have just 25 tickets left, and~~ I have to tell you that despite the long sleepless nights ahead, I’m pretty jazzed about the event.

Amongst ticket buyers, we’ve seen a lot of venture capitalists that are clearly looking at the infrastructure space with some interest, possibly for investments. Also attending will be a lot of people from large corporations as they try to make sense of this whole evolution. Despite how central this issue has become to my writing lately, the mix of people is surprising even to me.

And yes, I’m totally biased, but the line-up of speakers and panelists for the conference would give anyone a serious IQ turbo boost. I recently spent some one-on-one time with speakers such as Salesforce co-founder Parker Harris and Aster Data Systems’ Mayank Bawa, and was amazed by their depth of knowledge. Here’s a quick rundown of the keynotes, panels and workshops:

Keynotes: Werner Vogels (CTO, Amazon.com), Jim Crowe (CEO & President, Level 3 Communications), Greg Papadopoulous (CTO, Sun Microsystems)

Fireside Chats: Parker Harris (Co-founder, Salesforce.com), Dr. Mendel Rosenblum (Co-founder, VMware)

Mini-Notes: Debra Chrapaty (Microsoft), Dr. Larry Roberts (Founder, Anagran), Jonathan Yarmis (AMR Research), Zach Nelson (NetSuite), & Dr. Jonathan Koomey (Lawrence Berkeley National Labs) Drew Perkins (Co-Founder, Infinera)

Panels:

Working the Clouds: NextGen Infrastructure for New Entrepreneurs

The New New Stack: Re-examining the Internet Platform Chain

The Race to the Next Database: Overclocking and Analytics Augment Your Data Layer

Harnessing Explosive Growth: Infrastructure Strategies and Tactics

Infrastructure On Demand: Should You Build Your Future on Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)?

Eyes Wide Shut: Why is the VC Community Keeping Its Wallet Shut to Infrastructure?

Workshops:

Google App Engine: Learn how to harness the power of Google’s global infrastructure for your idea

Microsoft Data Center Secrets: Get insights from Microsoft’s infrastructure team on building out large deployments.

Fenwick & West Venture Capital and Seed Financing: Interact with entrepreneurs and prominent angels focused on raising money for infrastructure ideas.

I want to take a moment to thank our media partners, who have helped spread the word. And of course, none of this would be possible without the generous support of our sponsors. There are many of them, and we thank them all:

If this story interests you then you should definitely check out our upcoming conference, Structure 08.

Will Vertical Ad Networks Steal Market Share From All Purpose Ad Networks

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 06:22:50 -0700

Earlier today, Kayak, a travel industry search engine, announced that it’s going to launch its own advertising network. I have been skeptical of this company, more so after their merger with SideStep. (How are those revenues growing, fellas? They were $85 million last year on a transaction volume of $3.5 billion…weren’t they? Or did the slowing economy and struggling travel industry force this move of launching an ad network?)

Kayak is not the first company to announce such plans for ad networks that are as wide-ranging as health, glamour and technology. A substantial amount of attention and money has been attracted by startups chasing the ad verticals, and sometimes I feel like everyone has Glam envy.

The big question remains: Are these networks capable of making big money and tasting success? How will they stay relevant when large players such as Google continue to dominate, and at the same time march towards an ad exchange ecosystem that will obviate the need for ad verticals? Share your thoughts with the rest of us.

Breaking: Amazon Down! Anyone Know What’s Up?

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:57:43 -0700

Funnily enough reports are coming in saying that nothing wrong with Amazon Web Services’ S3 service is working just fine for everyone. Hey maybe they should use it sometime… okay just a bad joke on my part. Looks like the https version of the site is working.

A word from Amazon’s spokesperson:

The Amazon retail site was down for approximately 2 hours earlier today (beginning around 10:25) - and we’re bringing the site back up.

Amazon’s systems are very complex and on rare occasions, despite our best efforts, they may experience problems. We work to minimize any disruption and to get the site back as quickly as possible.

Amazon’s web services were not affected nor were our international sites.

18.41% of World Internet Users use Firefox!

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:05:15 -0700

Wow, Firefox has been steadily growing real fast… I remember about 2-3 years ago when Firefox use was at only about 5%.

Go Firefox! Kill IE for good.

The only thing with Internet Explorer is that a lot of foreign countries such as Korea, have adopted to use IE exclusively for internet banking, which you can not use Firefox for.

Still, more than 90% of population in Korea and other parts of the world use IE. Darn…

Net Applications, purveyors of web metrics data, published some interesting asides about Mozilla’s Firefox in this month’s newsletter. Specifically, they’re projecting that users of the world’s favorite alternative browser will account for 20% of all web traffic sometime in July.

via insanely-great

What Do Slide, 23andMe & Chemdex Share?

Fri, 23 May 2008 14:21:03 -0700

Max Levchin, well known for being a co-founder of both Paypal and Slide, as well as for imitating Tom Cruise on “The GigaOM Show,” has just become the first person to get on the cover of magazine Portfolio. The magazine’s editors recently threw a little dinner for him, James Hong (co-founder of HotorNot) and Linda Avey (co-founder of 23andMe), all of whom are featured in this month’s cover story, “Brilliant Then and Now.”

I was seated next to Linda Avey at dinner, and she and I got into a conversation about Internet 1.0 and how things were during the go-go 1990s. She told me she had worked for Chemdex, a chemicals-focused B2B exchange, that I once wrote about for Forbes.com. (I loved this company, mostly because deep down I am a chemistry geek.) Ironically enough, Chemdex was co-founded by David Perry and Jon Callaghan, who happens to be a partner at True Ventures and sits on the board of the parent company of this blog. Small world, ain’t it?

My conversation with Avery then moved to the growing incidence of heart disease among South Asians. Long story short: Above and beyond diet and lifestyle, there is a gene at work, and Avey wants to work with Apollo Hospitals in India to conduct a study aimed at finding out what that gene is. Of course, there are others who are thinking along those lines, including those who helped fix my problems and get me home. So if any of my readers have contacts with Apollo execs and want to help out, please get in touch with me.

23andMe, based in Mountain View, Calif is backed by Google and NEA and is looking to better understand the genetic data that they collect as part of the DNA testing kits they sell. Of course, at $1,000 a test, it’s too expensive to collect large volumes of data; they need to lower the price to what is essentially an iPod-like price point, say $199 for a test that can be given as a casual gift. This would help the company increase its database and find more patterns in the collected genetic codes, which they could perhaps then offer up to big drug companies for research.

Hopefully I will talk more about this when I visit 23andMe later this summer and learn about their plans. Anyway back to my headline: I couldn’t really come up with one that tied it all together.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Santa Cruz Fire & Web 2.0

Fri, 23 May 2008 12:22:01 -0700

Brian Shields, online news manager KRON-TV, got in touch with Liz over on NewTeeVee to point out that they were using web service Cover It Live to do “live blogging” of the big fire in the South Bay. The readers (viewers) have been glued to the updates, he told us. There is a massive fire in the Santa Cruz mountains and some of the smoke from that fire has enveloped parts of Silicon Valley; we can even feel the impact up in San Francisco. There are several Twitter alerts out as well.

Earlier news outlets and citizens had used Twitter and YouTube to cover the fires in Southern California and provide updates when it was difficult for media outlets to do so.

What Is the Future of the Web?

Tue, 20 May 2008 10:22:10 -0700

Is Net Neutrality essential for democracy? What role will AI have in the future of the web? What will Web 4.0 look like? On June 11, in an attempt to answer these and other questions, Tim Berners-Lee and other leading web authorities will gather at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., for an old-fashioned debate with a social media twist: The content of the debate will be collaboratively created by web users, who can submit questions and promote them through a user-based ranking system similar to Digg. The most popular questions will form the basis of the debate, which will be webcast live. Viewers will also be able to interact with the panelists by submitting questions and comments in real time. For more details about this interactive event, plus instructions on how to submit and rank questions, go here.

Kevin Johnson’s Memo on Yahoo & Their Strategy

Sun, 18 May 2008 19:21:34 -0700

Kevin Johnson, the president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division, sent out this memo to company employees in which he outlines the Microsoft’s strategy in online advertising. He also refers to the press statement issued in reference to Yahoo. The company is sending mixed messages, both to the outside world and its employees. You can read the memo (below the fold) and decode it for yourself :-)

We have been executing against the core strategy I first presented at our Financial Analyst Meeting in July 2007 to go after the growing opportunity in online services and advertising. Four pillars have formed the basis of our strategy:

1. Consolidate ad platform and win in display

2. Innovate and disrupt in search

3. Deliver end-to-end user experiences across PC, phone, and web

4. Reinvent portal and social media experiences

We have many options that support acceleration of our strategy. As announced earlier today, we are also considering new alternatives for a transaction with Yahoo! which do not involve a full acquisition. At this time, we have not made a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo!, but we reserve the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo!, shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft, or with other third parties.

Regardless of the outcome of any new discussions, it is important that we continue to move forward to strengthen our online services business. The fact is that we are not where we want to be in this business yet and we’ve been in this position longer than we’d all like. To that end, we will be accelerating elements of our core strategy, and breaking ground in new areas.

On Tuesday, Brian McAndrews is hosting advance08, our annual advertising conference here in Redmond. Over 400 leaders from across the media, technology and advertising landscape will be here for two days to engage in dialogue on industry trends and opportunities. These leaders are some of our closest partners in the digital transformation of the advertising industry, and they recognize the increasingly important role Microsoft plays in this transformation. We are very excited to have these customers and partners on campus.

Brian’s keynote will highlight our unique position in the advertising industry. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come with the aQuantive acquisition in differentiating our advertising platform. This foundation is paying off, with Q3 advertising revenue growth of nearly 40%, a rate that has accelerated over the past two quarters while growth rates at Google, Yahoo and AOL have slowed.

On Wednesday, we will be announcing a major new initiative that our search teams have been driving. We are getting better and better with our core algorithmic search, and at the same time, we are investing to differentiate in vertical experiences and to disrupt the current model. You’ll hear more about our plans Wednesday.

advance08 will underscore our commitment to search and online advertising, and you’ll continue to see announcements demonstrating our progress in this space. Earlier this week, I spoke to leaders across our online services business about our core strategy, the importance of acceleration and a set of actions we are taking, including:

1. Innovate and disrupt in search – We will disclose some elements of our plans with this week’s release of search and sharpen our focus on user experience and business model innovation. The work we have done over the last 4 years on search has established a solid foundation to build upon.

2. Win targeted distribution – With this release of search, we are now ready to throttle up broader distribution initiatives.

3. Reinvent portal and deliver new experiences across PC, phone and web - We are building our new releases of Windows 7, Windows Live wave 3, Windows Mobile 7, Internet Explorer 8, Search and MSN with an eye towards optimizing and unifying experiences and scenarios.

4. Fix our online branding – Our brands are fragmented and confusing today, and we recognize a need to clarify and align our online branding . We are now driving forward to address this opportunity.

5. Win in display advertising - We have an advantage in tools, agency assets/relationships and a team laser-focused on capturing the display ad platform opportunity. As we build from a position of strength, we will increase engineering resources to drive even more innovation.

6. Build on our strengths in Europe – As measured by comScore in March, our online business in Europe is doing well. We have over 3 times the page view volume and nearly 7 times the minutes of usage compared to Yahoo!, and 68% reach to internet users throughout Europe. We will double down on our investments in Europe and expand on this strong position.

7. Expand strategic partnerships – In addition to our organic innovation agenda, we will expand strategic partnerships that increase inventory on our display ad platform, enable new paradigms in search and accelerate growth in key geographies.

8. Pursue small, targeted acquisitions – Looking forward, we will focus on small, targeted acquisitions that support our work in search, complement our value in the ad platform and help us grow scale in key geographies. Recent acquisitions including Rapt and YaData are examples of these types of acquisitions.

The PSD leadership team is actively working on the FY09 budget, including resources and investments to support the actions above. Additional elements of our work will be revealed in the coming weeks, leading to our Financial Analyst Meeting in July where I will share more details on our strategy and business/financial outlook.

As we move forward, I want to remind everyone that we are well positioned to compete. We have some of the industry’s best assets on our side: technical and business talent, global scale, a culture of self-criticism and tenaciousness, a healthy balance sheet and an unparalleled product portfolio. It’s time for us to seize the opportunity.

Thanks again for your continued leadership and focus on our business.

GigaOM Favs: 10 Blogs We Love

Sun, 18 May 2008 11:20:43 -0700

Last week, I asked followers on my Twitter stream if they could recommend some new Web 2.0 writers/bloggers I could follow. This prompted me to ask my editorial team about the blogs they love, including the ones that help them with getting the job done on an ongoing basis. What we have put together is a potpourri of eclectic, lesser-known blogs that are worthy of addition to your feed reader. So here goes (in no particular order):

Sexy Widget: A blog authored by Lawrence Coburn, CEO of a widget company, RateitAll provides a sharp, terse and useful commentary on widgets, social apps and toolbars.

Futuristic Play: Andrew Chen provides thoughtful writing and analysis of online advertising, social games and social networks and monetization strategies.

High Scalability: Written by technically savvy people who know how to scale web applications.

Henry Jenkins: An academic studying the convergence of media online, with great affection for his subject matter.

CodingHorror Jeff Atwood’s CodingHorror: It walks a rarefied line between being very deep knowledge about technology and wit. Recent posts include deep but amusing diatribes against HTML and XML.

ActiveWin: This blog has been doing the deepest, under-the-hood coverage of Microsoft Windows since 1998. It’s very good for demystifying highly technical aspects of the operating system.

Rock, Paper Shotgun: This blog gets the scoop on what’s going on with alpha versions of videogames and gets its hands on game footage well before just about everybody else. Rock, Paper Shotgun is for people who want to the inside track on games.

Kevin Tofel & James Kendrick’s jkOnTheRun: A really great blog about all things mobile tech.

Tesla Founders Blog: Martin Eberhard, who founded Tesla and left the company on bad terms, started the blog and was dishing a lot of dirt on Tesla. The site has a lot of guest posts from Silicon Valley’s smartest alternative vehicle car buffs.

Deep Green Crystals, Martin Tobias blog: Don’t let the name scare you. Tobias is the former CEO of biodiesel company Imperium Renewables and currently invests in small startups like Greenwood Technologies. Check frequently for insights into both clean tech and Internet trends.

In order to make things simpler, we are providing a consolidated RSS feed for all these blogs so you can easily add them to your reader. If you think highly of any other blogs, please drop us a line and we can add them to our feed reader, and if we fall in love with it, then recommend it to others. Meanwhile, sign up for our network feed to get the latest posts from all our sites in this new improved consolidated feed.

Reviews/Recommendations by Om Malik, Katie Fehrenbacher, Stacey Higginbotham, Liz Shannon Miller, Sam Dean & Judi Sohn.

GigaNET: Obama Girl, EQAL & TwitterFone

Fri, 16 May 2008 11:20:26 -0700

NewTeeVee: The men behind Obama Girl are going to the movies.

NewTeeVee: Quincy Smith Q&A: CNET, EQAL and embeds.

WebWorkerDaily: Do apps like TwitterFone signal the future?

OStatic: How to download and save web videos, the Firefox way.

WebWorkerDaily: Putting VoIP to work.

Woman Troubles in Technology

Thu, 15 May 2008 16:18:20 -0700

The New York Times had an article today about the loss of women in the science and technology fields as they hit their 30s and beyond. It cites a report that blames a macho culture intrinsic to those fields. But it’s possible that readers in the tech field missed it as it only ran in the Style section of the paper’s web site rather than the Technology section. Because apparently the loss of female programming and engineering talent has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the latest swimsuits. An article on the Wii Fit however, was deemed worthy of appearing in both sections.

I actually think the “macho culture” inherent to these fields has less to do with the lack of women sticking around than the persistent assumption that’s behind the NYTimes confining the article to the Style pages. The assumption is that work-life balance is a female issue. Aside from tales of overt sexual harassment, the main trends that emerge in the report are that women need to “act like a man” to succeed (code for working a lot and not talking about family), and that the hours are not conducive for working mothers.

Women aren’t less capable of doing math and science, but they do tend to be less available when it comes to working long hours after having a child, unless they have a husband with a 9-5 job. Those all-night programming sessions or the week-long visits to foreign fabs to make sure a chip design is implemented correctly are costly to families. For the type of competitive person who ends up in the technology field, deciding between giving 110 percent to solving a technological problem and giving 90 or even 100 percent when junior is sick, is too frustrating. So they back off, because if the game is rigged so you can’t win, smart people pick a new game.

These women aren’t dumb, but their employers might be. The Silicon Valley startup culture demands a person give 110 percent and can be gruelingly inflexible. Academia and research labs are similar. But after a child –or maybe a heart attack — people tend to look at the rigged game and decline to play. So either the culture in technology will be forced to change, or it will continue to feed on canon fodder in the form of youth and single men. Regardless, it’s not just a female problem.

RailsConf Is Almost Here: Get 15% Off Registration

Wed, 14 May 2008 15:18:54 -0700

RailsConf, the largest gathering of Rails developers, is fast approaching. The conference provides examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies; this year’s session, which will be held in Portland, Ore., from May 29-June 1, will also feature advanced-level topics and sessions, notably those centered around design or coding techniques, testing tools, and deployment techniques. As a media partner, GigaOM readers can get a 15 percent discount off registration; click here and enter discount code “rc08ggo.”

GigaNET PM: Wi-Fi Apps, RSS Feeds, Video Hosts

Tue, 13 May 2008 17:17:36 -0700

WebWorkerDaily — How reading RSS feeds for a week changed one woman’s life.

OStatic – Five free apps to lock down your public Wi-Fi hotspot session.

NewTeeVee — StumbleUpon’s video discovery service has added support for six different content sites.

Online Isn’t the Only Place Privacy is Eroding

Mon, 12 May 2008 15:19:16 -0700

Controversy around RealID is nothing new. When Congress passed an act in 2005 that required a set of machine-readable information on government-issued identity cards, plenty of opposition pointed out the expense, the unnecessary amounts of data and the bureaucratic nightmare of issuing all-new cards to citizens. So far not a single state has actually made the May 2008 deadline to implement the IDs.

But an article from Jim Harper at the CATO Institute points out that L-1, a prominent maker of driver’s licenses and biometric security products, plans to buy the identity card business of DigiMarc, the No. 1 maker of state driver’s licenses. The combined entity will have a lock on the identification market and a reason to push for RealID, argues Harper.

As anyone whose income tax data or social security numbers have been posted to the web can attest, the government isn’t exactly a lockbox for personal information. Having so much data on such an accessible state document is an invitation to privacy violations that would have far more repercussions than your girlfiend realizing you bought her a diamond ring on Overstock.com. Just something to to think about this election year.

Off Topic: Now This Is Good Stuff

Sun, 11 May 2008 14:17:46 -0700