Marten Mickos rings in a New Year of "radical transparency" for MySQL
The Open Road — Marten Mickos, SVP of Sun's database group, could be forgiven for resting on his billion-dollar laurels, having sold MySQL to Sun in early 2008 for $1 billion ( despite an S1 to go public in the works ). But on New Year's Eve, Mickos sent out a missive to "customers, partners, users, colleagues, [and] friends," declaring MySQL's "radical transparency" a commencement and coda for how the open-source database leader does business, pre-Sun and post-Sun. Importantly, as Mickos calls out, it was Sun's acquisition that brought to a furious boil all the somewhat private tensions and passions that had always made MySQL tick, but which had simmered in the background: ...

Google's Microsoft-esque landgrab for IE's market share
The Open Road — Google's Microsoft-esque landgrab for IE's market share

CFOs start to see the benefits of open source
The Open Road — CFO Magazine is running a great story about the cost savings available from open-source software. This is a topic that you'll hear open-source vendors crow about, but it's somewhat rare to actually get a CFO on the record about her benefits from open source, so it's notable....

Vyatta: Beating Cisco with open networks
The Open Road — Vyatta , the open-source networking company, has been turning on the heat lately against Cisco, the networking giant. Even as Cisco expands beyond its networking base with collaboration products, Vyatta's sole focus remains beating Cisco network performance at rock-bottom prices. And yet, as called out in a recent TechTarget article , Vyatta's biggest obstacle may well be Cisco's strong brand: Tony Iams, an analyst with Rye Brook, N.Y.-based Ideas International, said the networking market continues to grow, but Vyatta faces a challenge because Cisco has such a strong brand name, and companies are reluctant to gamble with networks ...

EMC reportedly buys SourceLabs, but for what purpose?
The Open Road — TechFlash is reporting that EMC has purchased SourceLabs for an undisclosed fee. The unanswered question in TechFlash 's report is why EMC would buy SourceLabs, a provider of support tools for Linux and other open-source software. It's not that SourceLabs isn't a good company. I have followed SourceLabs since its inception, meeting with founder and CEO Byron Sebastian back at OSCON (in 2003) before the company was founded in 2004, and spent some time in the SourceLabs office in 2004 getting a demo of its technology. It was cool back in 2004, and has improved since then. In addition, SourceLabs has managed to pull in some big-name customers ...

Israeli news site down, blames cyber attack
Coop's Corner — First real war, now a cyber war? The Jerusalem-based Debkafile said it was temporarily put out of action Saturday evening by a cyber attack. It's not clear whether this was a denial of service attack. Debka, which specializes in military and political analysis, sent out a note to subscribers that both its English and Hebrew sites had been under attack "since 19:00 local time." It did not get more specific and the site's publishers were not immediately available for comment. The announcement took place in the shadow of the week-long conflict between Israel and Hamas. Earlier today, the Israel Defense Force sent its troops into Gaza in a move to smother ...

A last stand for Sony's "Sir Howard?"
Coop's Corner — Sony boss Sir Howard Stringer has to be one of the most charming execs in all of techdom. But as Arthur Miller taught us, a smile and a shoeshine go only so far. Remember this quote ? "You can take iPod and beat us over the head with it, but it's only one product. And we have a thousand products. Apple has two or three." Oh boy. I'm sure Stringer winces whenever that quote gets trotted out. Now Stringer, who has been CEO since 2005, is reportedly mulling what the UK's TimesOnline suggests will include "job cuts and sweeping changes to management and manufacturing processes." The Times' sources say the changes likely will get announced after ...

Steve Jobs discloses 'hormone imbalance'
Coop's Corner — The health of Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been a topic of concern for some months now. On Monday, with the company's Macworld show getting under way, Apple and Jobs issued statements issued Jobs' health . We'll be following this breaking story throughout the day. CUPERTINO, Calif. -- It is widely recognized both inside and outside of Apple that Steve Jobs is one of the most talented and effective CEOs in the world. As we have said before, if there ever comes a day when Steve wants to retire or for other reasons cannot continue to fulfill his duties as Apple's CEO, you will know it. Apple is very lucky to have Steve as its leader and CEO, and he ...

Now Apple's credibility really is in the balance
Coop's Corner — If you're an Apple shareholder or employee, the good news is that Steve Jobs' health is not in any immediate danger. Or so we're supposed to surmise from the cryptic note issued by Jobs early Monday on the state of his health -- and the even more cryptic ...

As VCs remember revenue, open source could benefit
The Open Road — In a not-so-surprising turn of events, The New York Times reports that Silicon Valley venture capitalists actually care about revenue again. After years of investing in Web 2.0 companies that generate eyeballs and weird company names but little revenue , VCs have decided that businesses that actually make money are a priority: For Web sites that do not already have large audiences, "your business model may be just as plausible as it was 18 months ago, but we're all more cautious about giving you a slug of money," [Accel partner Theresia Gouw Ranzetta] said. Instead, investors are looking for sites that make money in ways other than selling ...

Managing my Twitter existence
The Open Road — I've not traditionally been much of a Twitter fan, once deriding it as "Wonder Bread." I've increasingly found, however, that Twitter serves a useful function for me, fitting in between blogs and instant messaging as a "micro-blogging" tool, as Glyn Moody suggests . It's also a way for me to IM multiple people at once, without any near-term expectation of response. I now post to Twitter quite often . Despite these benefits, the only way I've found to make Twitter work for me is by limiting the number of people that I follow. I follow fewer than 20 people. These are people (or companies) that I know well to actually care about what ...

Finding employment safe havens in the recession
The Open Road — TechNewsWorld suggests that the technology industry may be relatively insulated from job losses in the recession . Yes, technology has its share of job cuts , and any cut is painful if you're on the receiving end, but there are bright spots in the economy. Open source is one of them. While the article points to a few different areas of technology that should comparatively thrive in a downturn, as I note in the article, open source is particularly well-suited to a troubled economy: In a recession, headcount looks like a cost center, but open source can turn employees into profit centers -- or, at worst, into less costly cost centers. Why? Because ...

Google to release Picasa beta for Mac
Underexposed — Picasa for the Mac includes the ability to make collages and other core features.(Credit: Google) Google plans to release on Monday a beta version of Picasa for Mac OS X, helping Apple fans catch up to Windows and Linux users already employing the free tool for editing, cataloging, and uploading photos. The Mac version ...

Two big reasons Dell should buy Red Hat
The Open Road — Dell's biggest problem is that its one-time differentiation - low-cost hardware assembly and distribution - is now common industry practice. Indeed, it now routinely gets beaten at its own game, as called out in a recent article by Ashlee Vance in the ...

Firm claims silver bullet for 'vampire loads'
Green Tech — A Spanish company says it has developed a way to kill the vampires lurking in your living room--the numerous appliances that suck electricity even when they are not in use. Good for You, Good for the Planet received a patent for a microprocessor-based design that cuts an electronic machine's electricity use to zero. It is now negotiating with several large manufacturers to incorporate the technology into power strips or into appliances, according to President Jorge Juan García Alonso. Test products are being used at customers, including at a hotel and office building in Spain, according to a report. Commercially ...

Canon issues fix for 5D Mark II 'black dot' glitch
Underexposed — Updated 8:38 p.m. PST with preliminary test results. Canon on Wednesday released new firmware for its EOS 5D Mark II camera that the company said "improves and mitigates" the "black dot" problem that marred some images from the high-profile, high-end SLR. Version 1.0.7 of the 5D Mark II firmware software is downloadable from Canon's Web site. (I encountered some dead ends on the site, but eventually found the 9MB download on the U.S. site at this address.) I've just run some tests. My preliminary opinion is that there's grounds for optimism that the firmware indeed seems to have taken care of the problem. See ...

Green news harvest: Stanford bulks up energy research
Green Tech — Here's a sampling of green-tech news, with quick commentary: Stanford launches $100 million initiative to tackle energy issues - Press release Famed venture capitalist John Doerr and Google CEO Eric Schmidt make the case for more research in clean energy. Stanford's $100M Energy Initiative Event - Greentech Media...

Clay Shirky: The problem is filter failure, not information overload
The Open Road — I didn't attend the Web 2.0 Expo in New York last year, and so I missed Clay Shirky's exceptional keynote "It's not information overload. It's filter failure." It's one of the most insightful explorations of Internet economics, and an intelligent response to Nick Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" argument. If you haven't watched it, you must. It does more to explain the dearth of effective information filters that we wade through today. It has application to open source (180,000-plus projects on Sourceforge, but which are useful?), but far broader implications. You can watch it here: But ...

Green news harvest: Electric-vehicle reality check
Green Tech — Here's a sampling of green-tech news with quick commentary: As fed steps up, states step back on solar funding - The Associated Press Federal tax credits for solar-electric panels have been increased, but states are pulling back in light of budget problems. Electric Cars Are Unlikely to Help Carmakers Cut CO2 Emissions Significantly by 2020, According to The Boston Consulting Group - Press release...

IT spending in 2009: Maintenance down, Web 2.0 up
The Open Road — Even as Forrester predicts a 3 percent drop in global IT revenues, as reported in The Register, Goldman Sachs is piling on the woe it promulgated in an earlier report that CNET covered with a new report entitled "IT Spending Survey: Mapping 2009." As detailed in the report, incumbent vendors are about to see their sacrosanct maintenance revenue streams get pillaged: ...

Nikon's new SLR leads the pack for sensor quality
Underexposed — The top four SLRs in DxO Labs' current rankings.(Credit: DxO Labs) It's not a surprise that the Nikon D3X, the company's brand-new $8,000, 24.9-megapixel SLR, tops DxO Labs' sensor performance test. What is a surprise is the margin by which it leads its rivals from Canon and Sony. When the French firm unveiled its DxOMark ...

Smart grid, broadband appear in $825 billion 'stimulus' plan
Green Tech — House Democrats on Thursday revealed details of a massive legislative effort they said would inject new life into a flagging U.S. economy, thanks to a combination of $825 billion in tax cuts and new government spending. The sprawling, 258-page draft bill includes $32 billion in electric power upgrades, sometimes known as "smart grid" technology, $6 billion for expanded broadband Internet access, and $20 billion for health care information technology. "The economy is in a crisis not seen since the Great Depression," said letter published Thursday by Rep. David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat who heads the House Appropriations Committee. "Credit is frozen, consumer ...

CleanBoard: Recycled drywall from a solar factory
Green Tech — [image] Click on the image to see a gallery of photos from the GreenBuild Expo conference show floor where recycled building materials were featured. (Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)

Turn trash into energy in your office parking lot
Green Tech — When a school or office building thinks about distributed energy, it usually means solar panels propped up on a roof. A small company called IST Energy has another vision: it's developed a shipping container-size contraption that turns your building's trash into electricity and heat. The company is expected ...

Why wireless Internet matters to small wind
Green Tech — If you ask Andy Kruse, the CEO of wind turbine maker Southwest Windpower, about technology, he's more likely to talk about software and WiMax than turbine blades or inverters. Kruse is in Washington this week lobbying to improve the subsidies for installing small wind turbines, one of the fastest ...

Ethanol firms clear deals for non-food feedstocks
Green Tech — Two companies trying to lay claim to having the first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in the U.S. have secured financing to get closer to that goal. Range Fuels on Monday said that it expects to receive an $80 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to build an ethanol plant in Soperton, Georgia ...

Green news harvest: Obama axes midnight regulations
Green Tech — Green news harvest: Obama axes midnight regulations

Adobe tests support for Nikon's top-end D3X
Underexposed — Adobe Systems on Friday issued near-final release candidate versions of Lightroom 2.3 and the Camera Raw 5.3 Photoshop plug-in , software that can support Nikon's new top-end, $8,000, 24.5-megapixel D3X camera and Olympus' mid-range, $1,299, 12.3-megapixel E-30 . According to the release notes , the new Lightroom version also includes fixes a few bugs: a memory leak that could crash the software while people were making local editing adjustments to photos, a processing error handling smaller sRAW photos from the Canon 5D Mark II, a slideshow glitch, and problems uploading and burning files to discs. Lightroom is ...

Tests show ups and downs of Four Thirds cameras
Underexposed — Panasonic's DMC-G1(Credit: Panasonic) DxO Labs on Tuesday released new sensor test results for three cameras--Panasonic's $670 G1 and Olympus' $540 E-520 and $450 E-410--that show both the advantages and disadvantages of the Four Thirds standards the companies use. The Four Thirds system governs ...

Better JPEG standard due in 2009
Underexposed — JPEG XR , an image format created by Microsoft that promises a number of advantages over JPEG, has cleared a key standardization hurdle. The Joint Photographic Experts Group, which standardized the original and still ubiquitous JPEG format, sent JPEG XR to the "final phases of standardization" after a vote at a January meeting, the group said Thursday. That means the standard's future is more certain. "The committee expects the JPEG XR International Standard to be published later this year," the group said. JPEG XR offers a few advantages over JPEG, according to Microsoft. For one thing, as the XR "extended range" abbreviation suggests, it ...

Sensor quality: SLRs erode medium-format lead
Underexposed — It looks like Canon and Nikon weren't blowing smoke when they said their high-end SLRs cameras will compete with medium-format digital cameras used almost exclusively by professionals. Given the image quality advantages that SLRs with larger "full-frame" sensors have over mainstream and much less expensive models with smaller processors, one might have expected another quantum leap from costly high-end medium-format digital cameras with sensors twice the area of top-end SLRs. Not so, according to new DxOMark Sensor ...

Corbis to phase out SnapVillage microstock site
Underexposed — Apparently it wasn't as easy to launch a microstock site for lower-cost photography sales as Corbis thought it would be. Corbis, one of the established powers in licensing stock photography, launched SnapVillage in 2007 , arguing that the microstock market was still young. But on Thursday, Corbis announced it will phase out SnapVillage by the end of the year. Contributing photographers and illustrators, along with customers and existing imagery, will be moved to a new microstock part of Corbis' existing Veer property called Veer Marketplace. Veer offers both royalty-free and rights-managed imagery, and Corbis acquired the stock-art agency in ...

iStock to launch audio-licensing business this week
Underexposed — iStock to launch audio-licensing business this week

Green news harvest: New Jersey utility to go solar
Green Tech — A sampling of green-tech news with quick commentary. PSE&G; Proposes $773 Million Solar Energy Program - Press Release There's a trend forming with utilities investing directly in solar power installations, with New Jersey the latest to jump. Hat tip Earth2Tech....

High-end ideas reshape compact-camera market
Underexposed — Compact camera manufacturers have begun testing the waters with a wealth of high-end features as they search for new ways to gain revenue, market share, and recognition. In earlier digital photography days, a camera with an extra megapixel of resolution, face recognition, or image stabilization could stand apart from the herd. But now that herd has grown larger, most folks who'll buy a digital camera already have done so, the economy has put consumer spending on ice--and camera makers are making some bolder bets with high-end features. Among them: Nikon's built-in GPS support to record where a photo was taken, Casio's high-speed video, and the Micro Four ...

Light at the end of the consumer spending tunnel?
Coop's Corner — Hope you have a strong stomach(Credit: Piper Jaffray) I was paging through the most recent economic report from Piper Jaffray when I came upon the above chart. It graphs the year-to-year change in American household net worth compiled by statisticians at the Federal Reserve. If that chart doesn't ...

GOP tries to rebuild brand with technology
CNET News - Politics and Law — RNC Chairman Michael Steele said at Friday's RNC Tech Summit that the GOP needs to make better use of technology.(Credit: Stephanie Condon/ CNET Networks) WASHINGTON--The GOP doesn't have a technology problem, Republicans insisted Friday--it has an image problem. Since Barack Obama deftly used new media and ...

Red Hat board member trades one mission for another
The Open Road — Steve Albrecht, a longstanding Red Hat board member, has resigned from Red Hat's board effective June 30, 2009 . The reason? Albrecht, originally tapped six years ago by Red Hat chairman Matthew Szulik, will serve as a mission president in Japan for the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), starting in early July. It's a new mission for Albrecht, but will require many of the same attributes that made him a successful board member for Red Hat. My father also serves as a mission president in the LDS Church (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and I've seen first-hand the sort of work that LDS mission presidents do. It's not easy, but ...

How to involve enterprise IT in open source
The Open Road — It may be true that to give is better than to receive, but the opposite principle seems to operate in open source, and it may have serious, negative consequences for the long-term health of the open-source ecosystem. While it used to be fashionable to criticize Google and the Web companies for skimming the cream ...

White House launches Recovery.gov
CNET News - Politics and Law — (Credit: Screenshot by Stephanie Condon/CNET Networks) The White House on Tuesday launched Recovery.gov, the Web site that intends to bring transparency to the government spending authorized in the $787 billion economic package the president signed yesterday. "The size and scale of this plan demand ...

Ease-of-use makes MySQL popular, but money makes it meaningful
The Open Road — There are lots of reasons to love MySQL, the leading open-source database that Sun bought in 2008: it's inexpensive, perfect for Web applications (among other things), and boasts high performance. According to Brian Aker , Sun Microsystems Principal Engineer, however, the real secret to MySQL's success is ease-of-use: The thing that MySQL brought to the table when it came out was the ease of use and the ease of installation. MySQL came out in an era where comparable products were really complex and required a lot of knowledge to be able to use and install. With MySQL the user is able to take the database, download it, install it, understand it, and then apply ...

Microsoft's intent on forcing IP into IT talk
The Open Road — Is Microsoft the last holdout on an outmoded way of doing business, or is it the vanguard for intellectual-property licensing schemes that herald a new age of competitive cooperation? Horacio Gutierrez, a friend and vice president of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft, believes that it's the latter and argues that the best way to ensure true interoperability while simultaneously competing is through patent cross-licensing arrangements ...

Adobe's default-browser advice worked for me
Underexposed — Windows Vista offers multiple ways to set defaults. Windows Vista offers multiple ways to set defaults. I had the best success with the topmost option. (Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

As if Mark Hurd doesn't have enough on his plate
Coop's Corner — "Today, HP announced first quarter results amid one of most difficult economic downturns that any of us has ever faced. I am proud to say that we continue to execute well in this very challenging environment." So began Mark Hurd's recent letter to Hewlett-Packard's employees. Hurd, who has earned a justifiable reputation for straight talk, did not mince words. Like every other tech company these days, he explained, HP is feeling the impact of slowing global demand for IT products. In black and white, here's what happened in HP's first fiscal quarter ...

Facebook gets it. Bummer newspapers didn't
Coop's Corner — Today the Rocky Mountain News publishes its final edition after nearly 150 years. Elsewhere, newspaper publishers everywhere from San Francisco to Philadelphia face equally grim prospects. The reasons have been well chronicled by others like Poynter Online ...

Cloud fever: What will it take for a breakout?
Coop's Corner — MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--George Zachary, a partner with Charles River Ventures, offered an apercu that may wind up getting quoted quite a lot over the coming year. Cloud computing, he said, "is the new dot-com." I have the feeling that he's right. I spent Friday afternoon listening to executives ...

Investigative journalism: First casualty of the Net?
Coop's Corner — Investigative journalism: First casualty of the Net?

Suddenly, Twitter's the rage with D.C. politicos
Coop's Corner — Did Missouri's U.S. senator, Claire McCaskill, just use Twitter to blab the timing of President Barack Obama's choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services? On Saturday afternoon, McCaskill left this post on the microblogging site: "A little anxious about the announcement of HHS Sec. ...

Q&A:Tiversa CEO talks about P2P leak
Coop's Corner — Earlier this weekend, I pointed to a report that a Pittsburgh area Internet security firm had discovered a file containing government blueprints and avionics for President Obama's helicopter on an IP address in Tehran. During a traffic analysis, the company, Tiversa , headquartered in Cranberry Township, found that one particular file was actively being shared via a P2P protocol. On Sunday, I spoke by phone with the company's CEO, Sam Hopkins. Here's what he had to say. Question: What tipped your team off to the possibility of classified information being leaked to outsiders? Hopkins: Let me first back up and offer some perspective. There are ...

HP to execs: Bye-bye to plane perks
Coop's Corner — Add Hewlett-Packard to the list of companies reining in the number of corporate perquisites that once defined the high life in Silicon Valley. In a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it had changed its policy covering personal use of corporate aircraft. Here's the fine print: HP will no longer provide its executive officers with a gross-up to cover the individual income tax incurred when corporate aircraft are used for personal purposes (including spousal travel on business trips). Previously, the policy provided that the chief executive officer would receive a gross-up for the tax associated with the value of ...

Sigma expands image-stabilized lens range
Underexposed — The Sigma 10-20mm F3.5 EX DC HSM (Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News) LAS VEGAS--Offering some higher-end alternatives and expanding image stabilization more broadly, Sigma announced a trio of lenses for digital SLRs Monday at the Photo Marketing Trade show. The three new models, which will work on Canon, Nikon, Pentax, ...

Sony previews supertelephoto, other SLR lenses
Underexposed — Sony showed concept models of six new SLR lenses at the PMA show.(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News) LAS VEGAS--Sony showed off models of a forthcoming supertelephoto and five other lenses Monday at the Photo Marketing Association show, a new sign the electronics giant is holding tight to its ambition to be a major player in the ...

Lensbaby goes ultrawide with lens adapter
Underexposed — The 0.42x wide-angle adapter decreases the focal length of Lensbaby's selective-focus lenses.(Credit: Lensbaby) Lensbaby is bringing a wider look to its line of selective-focus lenses, announcing the 0.42x Super Wide lens that expands its products' 50mm field of view to 21mm. ...

Despite layoffs, Microsoft holding firm on H-1Bs
Coop's Corner — In the 18th century, the epistolary novel was all the rage in France and England. Now, it seems, the tit-for-tat style of opposing letters has become a preferred method of dialogue between Iowa Senator Charles Grassley and Microsoft. In late February, Grassley urged Microsoft ...

Panasonic regroups for new assault on U.S. camera market
Underexposed — LAS VEGAS--Panasonic's camera group isn't happy with its U.S. market share and working on a new marketing plan to improve it, executives said Tuesday at a photography show. "In looking at the U.S., we have not positioned the Lumix brand to our satisfaction," said Panasonic Executive Vice President Robert Perry at a press event at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show here. ...

Olympus high-end compact due by summer
Underexposed — Olympus' concept model of a svelte compact camera using the Micro Four Thirds standard.(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET) LAS VEGAS--Olympus has set a ship date, albeit one with a lot of wiggle room, for its first high-end compact camera using the Micro Four Thirds technology. The camera maker first showed a nonworking ...

ScanCafe now digitizes black-and-white negatives
Underexposed — ScanCafe is showing off a new service in testing to digitize entire photo albums. Below is the original; above ScanCafe's version.(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News) LAS VEGAS--ScanCafe, a start-up that digitizes film images using relatively cheap labor in Bangalore, India, announced a new service on Tuesday to scan ...

Analysts see bright spots in dark photo market
Underexposed — LAS VEGAS--The bad economy has hurt the photography business, but there are a few areas of growth amid the gloom. Among the bright spots are digital SLR cameras, photo books, memory-keeping moms, and Web sites adapted for mobile phone use., concluded InfoTrends analysts sharing research results at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show here Wednesday. Overall, though, the mood is grim. "It sure feels different at this year's PMA. There's not so much booth space, not so much traffic. The energy level is down. This recession feels different from back in '01 (which was) somewhat contained to the tech sector," said InfoTrends President ...

New camera backpack options arrive
Underexposed — Tamrac's new Aero Speed 85 has an improved camera compartment and zippers.(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET) LAS VEGAS--Sure, they don't have 11-point autofocus systems or image stabilization, but a lot of money is spent camera packs as well as cameras, and Tamrac, M-Rock, and Think Tank Photo introduced some new here at the Photo ...

Lexar to boost CompactFlash speed, capacity this year
Underexposed — LAS VEGAS--Lexar plans to introduce faster, higher-capacity CompactFlash cards using a new generation of the flash memory technology, a company executive said Wednesday. Lexar's current top-end 300X-rated CompactFlash cards use a standard called UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) to transfer data at 45MB/sec., and their capacity tops out at 16GB. But using a new generation of the standard, UDMA 6, Lexar will release cards that have significantly faster transfer speeds and larger capacity, said Jeff Cable, director of marketing, in an interview here at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show here. ...

Spotify's latest music dirge: We've been hacked
Coop's Corner — Hackers were able to penetrate Spotify's computer network, potentially exposing the personal information and passwords of some of the music service's users. In a company blog announcement, Spotify did not get specific about the extent of the breach. Here's part of the post ...

Green tech's plea: Show me the money--fast, please
Coop's Corner — Like a lot of green-technology companies, Tendril is waiting for the federal stimulus money to start flowing. "I think it will act like a massive accelerator," said CEO Adrian Tuck, whose company makes sensors that consumers can use to monitor and control their consumption of energy. ...

Even an SaaS conclave is discounting rates
Coop's Corner — So much for finding safe refuge from the storm. Even a conference targeted at the quasi-esoteric world of software-as-a-service is finding it tough to fill up the seats these days. The SaaS Summit 2009 conference, slated to get underway next week in San Francisco, has chopped the price of its "full conference pass" to $495 from $1,195. In a note, the conference sponsor, OpSource said it had reduced the cost because it "believes so strongly in the value and industry energy that will be created by bringing together the SaaS, Web and Cloud communities at SaaS Summit 2009 that we are offering our own On-Demand Stimulus Package." Hardly a shocker, given the ...

From the counter-intutive files: IT demand is... up?
Coop's Corner — The headlines are dreary but parts of the country actually are reporting upticks in demand for IT products and services. I know. Sounds crazy. What with more than a few on Wall Street ready to contemplate ritual hara-kiri as the economy goes from bad to worse, this sounds implausible. But paging through the Federal Reserve's district-by-district review of current economic conditions, a couple of counter-intuitive nuggets suggest that there remain pockets of strength. Consider the following: • IT companies serving the districts around Kansas City and Minneapolis, describe conditions as "stable to up." The Minneapolis region particularly benefited from what was ...

Worst of times is the best of times for IBM?
Coop's Corner — In recent conversations with IBMers, one theme nearly always came up: This is a big company with deeper pockets than any other company in the tech business. The blunt message: Recession or no recession, it's only a matter of time before less well endowed rivals buckle. Marketing spin, to be sure - but also a reflection of the constellation of forces in an increasingly weakened tech industry. And now, CEO Sam Palmisano has made it official. In a letter to shareholders released in conjunction with IBM's annual report, Palmisano says that the company is "positioned to lead in the era that lies on the other side of the present crisis." "We will not simply ride out ...

No Jive: New move to wed social software and the enterprise
Coop's Corner — On the surface, there's not an immediately apparent link between social-networking software and enterprise computing. But in what it describes as its "biggest launch ever," collaboration software company Jive Software will take a stab with a new suite of social-business applications called Jive SBS 3.0. The intent is to offer corporate users more ways to tap the knowledge of social connections inside and outside the enterprise. So it is that SBS 3.0 includes a variety of software modules designed to better bridge departments, partners, and customers in a single online community. Sam Lawrence, the company's chief marketing officer, likened the product ...

Q&A: California lawmaker wants to blur Google Earth
Coop's Corner — OK, it's California. So we are quite used to the rest of the country rolling their eyes in knowing exasperation at our fads. But often, they turn out to be harbingers of national trends. And so the question: Will AB-255 number among them as well? ...

Freedom on the global Internet still a pipe dream
Coop's Corner — "The Internet represents freedom, but not everywhere." So begins the annual "Internet Enemies" report by Reporters Without Borders--and that's probably the cheeriest line in the entire 39-page document. It goes down from there. For the uninitiated, Reporters Without Borders is an anti-censorship watchdog organization. As blogs and news Web sites have grown in popularity, the group's focus has similarly migrated to the Internet. Unfortunately, the report again paints a grim picture of Internet freedoms in parts of the world where it says the authorities regularly chuck bloggers in jail for online posts that displease the regime. Here's the all-star team: •Burma: ...

How IBM's sprucing up its 'social' side
Coop's Corner — The fun thing about looking over the shoulders of computer scientists doing product demos isn't necessarily the technology they're pointing to on their computer screens. So many beta programs wind up on the cutting-room floor that it's impossible to predict with much confidence which ones ultimately will ...

SaaS has a future; just don't call it green
Coop's Corner — OpSource is hosting a very timely conference in San Francisco this week on software-as-a-service. What with the meltdown in the economy and continuing concern about the cost and environmental impact of energy use, there's interest in how cloud computing will impact the IT world. And what better way to cut through the hype over the so-called green aspects of SaaS than to assemble veteran technologists who might share their experiences with the uninitiated? That's the usual format: People ready to impart knowledge to people eager to receive knowledge. Good idea but, well, maybe another day. As I sat in a cavernous ballroom in San Francisco's Westin St. ...

It was 20 years ago today: The Web
Coop's Corner — History in the making: Berners-Lee's original schematic for a client/server model for a distributed hypertext system. Is it already 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee authored "Information Management: A proposal" and set the technology world on fire? Back in 1989, Berners-Lee was a software consultant working at the ...

Cloud computing: How we got here
Coop's Corner — For the last decade, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has promoted his pet idea that traditional application software was destined for obsolescence. He was a few years early, but Benioff understood computer history better than his detractors. Most of the hosted on-demand application vendors, or ASPs as we called them back then, crashed and burned. Not only did they burn through money at a frightful clip, but the technology they used was thin, relying on single-tenant, non-scalable computing architecture models that left a trail of dissatisfied customers. In the post-Internet bubble world, however, the proliferation of cheap hardware combined with an ...

McCain gives first Twitter-based interview
CNET News - Politics and Law — (Credit: Twitter) John McCain has come a long way, technologically, since his days on the 2008 campaign trail. Less than a year ago, the Republican presidential hopeful admitted he needed help logging onto the Internet. Now, the 72-year-old, four-term senator is practically leading Washington's foray into the ...

Sun's new mantra: Call us the 'cloud company'
Coop's Corner — During the Internet bubble era, Sun Microsystems profited as one of the big suppliers of networking computing technology to IT. Now it's hoping to similarly benefit from another tech trend as the computer industry slowly migrates toward cloud computing. On Wednesday, Sun will announce its entry into the cloud-computing business with a public cloud service aimed developers, students, and start-ups. It will also detail its plans for an open cloud-computing infrastructure, for public or private clouds. Sun will be making the announcement at its CommunityOne developer event taking place in New York City. As part of the announcement, Sun plans to release a set of ...

Note to NBC's boss: Dude, try watching your own channel sometime
Coop's Corner — On a day when IBM's reportedly mulling a buyout of Sun Microsystems, Uncle Ben Bernanke decides to print another $300 billion or so and Congress gets a chance to throw spitballs at the weasels at AGI, there are better things to do than mock NBC's Jeff Zucker as ...