louisgray.com: live

There's a headline I didn't ever think I was going to write. Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has always been behind on features - ever since the day it launched in beta in an eventually-successful attempt to crush Netscape Navigator. I hate Internet Explorer and everything it stands for - market monopoly shenanigans, inaccurately designed HTML, and the weakest security on this side of the US/Mexican border, plagued with hacking potential and popups. But now, at least on the Windows platform, the new Internet Explorer 7 is pretty darn good. With their copying of tabs from Mozilla Firefox, and the addition of other new tools, it's definitely giving Firefox a run for its money.

As much as I can, I try to stay on the Apple Mac OS X platform. It just flat out works better, and doesn't try to get in my way. The applications seamlessly work together, and in a secure way. Apple's Safari browser has also grown to the point it doesn't have an equal. But in those rare times (mostly at the office) when I am in front of a Dell Windows PC, there is no Safari, leaving me with two real options: Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft IE.

For the last several years, IE has been a ugly stepchild in the Web browser family, the one you hide in the closet and don't introduce to visitors. Firefox has been first to market with tabbed browsing, browser themes and extensions, enabling Web surfers to "roll their own" experience, and has slowly been taking market share back away from Microsoft - the long-time leader in share, if not in innovation.

But with the recent introduction on Internet Explorer 7, I hate to say it, but I actually like it. Rather than changing the default browser settings on the Windows PC to run Firefox, I've tested the new IE 7 and like some of the settings. The browser's tabbed browsing is good, and a feature called "Quick Tabs" shows all open tabs for simplified navigation. And in contrast to Firefox 2.0, IE loads quickly, renders pages just as accurately (as far as I can tell), and comes with integrated popup blockers, which for years would depend on third-party toolbars from Yahoo!, Google and others. As one installs Firefox extensions and themes, the browser actually gets sluggish, while IE remains light. (See "Is Firefox 2.0 a dud?")

If I want to fight the good fight against Microsoft and avoid all things Redmond, using Firefox is fine, but the gap between the two browsers has been closed in a significant way. If you've sworn off IE forever, give IE 7 a spin and see if Microsoft can change your mind.

Google seems to rapidly waking up to the world of blogs. Although their own official corporate blog is typically bland, and was recently hacked, and their blog search engine has trailed the capabilities of others, including Technorati, the company is taking steps to catch up. Today, Google added the option to search blogs alongside news search, and enhanced their Google Alerts service so you could track keywords across blogs, Google Groups, and news.

Meanwhile, following some very public "unplanned outages" in the company's Blogger engine, some of the techies behind the service have come forward to explain how its happened, and how it won't happen again. The culprit? "Quirky hardware", they say - which isn't too impressive, given Google's cash horde and technical acumen.

Sometimes, you want to root for the underdog. When everybody else jumped to WordPress or TypePad for their online blogging, I tried out a desktop application that would enable a great deal of customization, and the ability to host the site at my pre-existing domain name. Yet, now that I've used RapidWeaver for the better part of ten months, the time it takes for the application to recognize changes and publish new entries has become a serious limitation - sometimes ranging up to 10-20 minutes, dragging the entire computer to a halt, as it grabs every available megabyte of RAM in a violent attempt to get the upload right.

When I first got RapidWeaver, it was very simple to use - type directly into the application, select a category for the post, and hit Submit. The piece would be on the site in a minute or two. But as I continued being active, I noticed that the cursor would be typing letters that I had long since stopped - as the application slowed to catch up. By March, I was typing my entries in Apple's Mail application, much more quickly, and that's how I've done every single post since. The "write in Mail, copy and paste to RapidWeaver" scenario has almost become second nature.

But starting last month, RapidWeaver's need to check every single post for possible edits, to hog memory and cease my desktop from being functional has quite simply gotten out of control. We've posted more than 500 entries to Louisgray.com since the beginning of the year, and don't intend to stop. The benefits of having my own domain name and backed up files aren't exactly winning me over right now, and I've given serious consideration to rebuilding this site again from scratch in TypePad, from first post to last - to enable the near real-time post flexibility I've seen from that Six Apart blogging engine. I'm tired of having to post a timestamp on my stories in the future, to anticipate when the machine will unlock, and through Apple's Dashboard widgets, watch the available RAM trickle down from more than 500 MB to 200 MB and eventually 10 MB, where it stalls, forcing the laptop fan whirring to life.

This isn't meant to be an indictment of RealMacSoftware or their product. For the large part, I've been happy with the application, and not needing to be a MySQL junkie on the back-end as many engines need. But RapidWeaver just isn't scaling for what I need it to. I can't post 3 times a day and have the machine completely useless for the better part of an hour. Something needs to change, and I don't think my solution is to get a new laptop. A full gigabyte of RAM (which this has) should be well enough for any application.

Listening to ''Rabbit in the Moon'', by Sasha (Play Count: 6)

Upon logging in to my Feedblitz account this morning, I noticed something dramatically different. After relying on Feedblitz to deliver blog updates by e-mail for the better part of the year, I found the site had been completely redesigned with a new look (and a lot less orange). Additionally, the Feedblitz team rolled out version 2 of their service, which improves feed diagnostics, tagging, and expanded information on subscribers. (Learn more on their blog)

As a free Feedblitz user (so far), I haven't anted up to try the company's premium options, which would let me customize the update e-mails, offer real-time statistics and additional tagging options, but with Feedblitz 2 here, I'll definitely be looking into it - especially as the blog grows in traffic, content and subscribers. (Sign Up Now)

Since its launch, Feedblitz has become the de facto source for publishing blogs by e-mail, including a significant partnership with Six Apart's TypePad, which debuted in the last few months. It's good to see the company isn't resting on its laurels, but continuing to make significant upgrades for its user base.

Listening to ''Take My Hand'', by Andrea Britton & Jurgen Vries (Play Count: 19)

Earlier this week, a study, carried out by researchers at Stanford University, emerged saying that fully one of every eight US residents suffers from "problematic Internet use", and it suggests that such an "addiction" can be as troubling as full-blown alcoholism. As someone who is tethered to the Internet around the clock, at work, at home, and via Blackberry, I can only shake my head at his overblown fear-mongering. Just because somebody happens to use a tool frequently, and enjoy its benefits, does not mean they are an addict, and even if symptoms common with addiction emerge, it doesn't mean that it can be as debilitating as something as serious as drug or alcohol abuse.

A few months ago, I jokingly posted my "Top Ten Things I'm Addicted To", ranging from Diet Coke to the iPod, the Blackberry and Internet in general. Given society's need to assign such allegiances as medical issues, some have gotten a lot of mileage from people like me who just happen to have found their routine and stuck with it.

To say that a person is "addicted to the Internet" is just as ridiculous as saying a truck driver is addicted to the radio, or couch potatoes are addicted to the television. While I'm sure there's a whole raft of folks who could improve their relationships with friends and family if they cut back on time spent in online chat rooms, online games, e-mail and blogs, myself potentially included, a significant number of us rely on the Internet for the very basis of our jobs, and find the Internet to present an amazing resource for communication with those same people we're assumedly neglecting.

When the Internet boom really started to take off in the mid-1990s, most of the fear and concerns thrown about were that stalkers were out there to find you, and that your credit card data could be stolen if you made online purchases. In fact I wrote a column for the Daily Cal in 1997 titled, "Net Results: Not that Scary", which addressed this very issue. Now, nearly a decade later, so many people have moved their businesses and their lives to the Internet that the concern is they're spending too much time, but those spreading fear are still out there.

Do I turn on the laptop first thing in the morning to check e-mail, catch up on RSS feeds and check Web sites? Yes. Is closing the laptop one of the last things I do before going to bed? Yes. Do I sit in front of an Intenet-connected monitor all day at the office? Usually. Do I wear an e-mail and Web connected Blackberry all day long? Yes. Is that a problem? No.

The number of hours in a day are still 24 - but the way I consume those 24 hours are differently distributed than they were before the Internet played such a role. Now, instead of staying up to see SportsCenter to learn the scores, I have already gotten the scores online as well as photos and recaps. The time taken to get that info is a lot less. Instead of calling home and talking with the family, I've read their blog, they've read mine, or we've shared comments and e-mail. Those calling us "Internet Addicts" akin to drunken louts who have given up their futures for the bottle is irresponsible and silly. We've just reapportioned our time and get more done - via the Web.

Yahoo! and Google both went after YouTube, and Google won. But while many are discussing how Yahoo! could potentially respond, with rumors around a Facebook acquisition being widely discussed, some outliers are suggesting that Yahoo! itself could be in play, given a relatively-low market capitalization, and a wealth of content. Proposed potential suitors range from telecom carriers, including AT&T and Comcast, to the more wacky, including Exxon and Phillip Morris. Really... you could offer gas points or cigarettes for frequent searching, the author writes.

Google's deal for YouTube made sense, according to the New York Times, but would picking up Yahoo! make sense for a carrier like AT&T or Comcast? I can't help but be reminded of the Excite @Home debacle, which at the time of announcement, seemed like the perfect synergy.

It's also interesting to learn about a Google acquisition that didn't happen. According to a new book, Google offered north of $30 million for the social networking site, Friendster, but was turned down. Since then, Friendster has just been destroyed by MySpace, no doubt in part to having a weak technology infrastructure, the book says.

Taking an eye to the more embattled mega-companies, the San Jose Mercury News has a large, in-depth look at the HP pretexting crisis, its origin, and what it means for the once-respected Silicon Valley giant. (How Not to Fix a Leak), while the New York Times speculates that the much-delayed Windows Vista launch may be the end of the road for Windows. What, no blue screens in 2010? I think I'm going to cry.

Listening to ''Enemy'', by Gabriel & Dresden (Play Count: 13)

When it comes to handheld cell phones or PDAs, I fell off the leading edge years ago. After being one of the first to embrace the Handspring Visor platform in the 1999 timeframe, I moved on and ditched the Palm OS altogether a few years ago, in favor of the most rudimentary of Blackberry devices, which simply sent and received corporate e-mail. Of course, this meant I needed a second device, a real cell phone, to act as the yin to its yang. But as time has passed, the Blackberry has taken over for remote e-mail, Web browsing and cell phone calls. Just last week, I managed to get my hands on the 7130e handheld model, and I would likely run out of superlatives for it if I tried to tell you how cool the darn thing is.

Unlike the traditional clamshell Blackberry, the 7130e is slimmer and taller, shaped more like a traditional cell phone, and offering a tall, brightly lit color screen, with all the familiar applications for out of office communication. The largest difference between this device and the others I've tried is its keyboard. Venturing away from the standard QWERTY keyboard, the 7130e doubles down by squishing two letters on each key, and through a sophisticated database, it inherently guesses as to the word you are typing, and learns as you go along. Though this initially made me nervous, it has proven much better than I had anticipated. I can easily type long sentences without making any errors or typos, and the longer the words, the more likely the Blackberry is to get it right. In fact, it's words like "get" which have the same keys as "hey" which are more trouble.

Contrasted to previous models I've used, the 7130e has an excellent screen, regardless of the background lighting, and the device's operating system is sophisticated enough to offer passable Web browsing, and most importantly, real game playing. Within an hour of getting the new Blackberry, I had purchased and installed Blackberry versions of Spades, Hearts, and Cribbage, to go along with the free Klondike and BrickBreaker, which came with the device. Now, instead of your fearing a distracted motorist on a cell phone call, you have to deal with me trying to make 15s and 31s at the steering wheel when I zip through the intersection. Don't think I won't be either...

If you're already using the Blackberry platform, and have been cruising along with an older generation device, it's time to trade up. If you haven't yet switched, there are very few reasons not to anymore. Blackberry is the de facto standard in the workplace, and is making inroads to consumers as well. Given its not some wacky version of Windows Mobile helps too.

Listening to ''Culture Flash'', by Ministry Of Sound (Play Count: 10)

As the reverberations of Google's massive acquisition of YouTube take hold, much of the media's interest has turned to the other big Web giants out there to see their take. It turns out that Yahoo! itself was "this close" to acquiring YouTube, but the company simply moved too slowly, brought down by bureaucracy, while Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, doesn't know if YouTube's hype is sustainable, and the company wasn't part of the chase.

With Google garnering the elephant's share of positive press mentions over the last few years, Yahoo! and Microsoft have turned into also-rans in the search race, and are more frequently looking like technology copycats rather than innovators. While Yahoo! has matched Google pound for pound in acquisitions (such as Flickr), Microsoft has bandied about in 3rd place, or worse, by most rankings, most known for hyped mediocrity on the level of Zune and LiveSpaces, with the company's races to rebrand from MSN to Live being the most recent shakeup - which in the long run probably won't benefit end users - instead being the Web's version of microwaved left-overs.

Yahoo! rose to prominence in the 1990s by developing a unique, familiar, personable directory. Microsoft rose to prominence through developing an operating system that ran on commodity hardware, and strategic partnering. Google rose to prominence through the world's best search engine. Google, though making noise about office productivity, isn't getting in the operating system battle, and hasn't yet opened up a directory service. Yahoo! isn't making desktop applications. So why the need to copy Google over and over and over? Is there just not enough market cap and revenue to go around for three mega-companies? I think each company has their place, and should forge forward to make their services better for customers.

Related Links:

BusinessWeek: The Web According to Ballmer
eWeek: Ballmer: Windows Live is Top Microsoft Priority
New York Times: Yahoo's Growth Being Eroded by New Rivals

Every once in a while, one of those wacky acquisition rumors just happens to be true. In a flashback to the 1999 .com heyday, search giant Google purchased online video outlet YouTube in a deal worth more than $1.6 billion in an all-stock transaction. As with those 1999-era deals, in contrast to most M&A activity, Google's stock rose sharply after-hours. Also similar to that rosy era, Google chose not to disclose how they arrived at such a lofty valuation for the company, whose revenue and profits are so far a mystery.

I wrote earlier that Google would potentially hesitate at the deal due to the tremendous amount of copyrighted material hosted by YouTube. Though the site is the leading platform for amateur video, it also hosts a ridiculous number of materials owned by major media outlets, who have made noise about enforcing their copyrights. Now that Google has acquired YouTube, they've gained more than a superstar Web 2.0 company, they've also acquired the potential for a string of lawsuits unlike anything seen outside of the  litigation-happy pharmaceutical industry.

Clearly, my concerns weren't shared by all in Mountain View. VentureBeat contributor Steve Poland said that while the prospects for litigation were high, that Google "has significant interest in this battle, as it will set a legal precedent and have significant effects on their future plans …" The company already has raised the ire of copyright holders for its far-reaching book archiving and search projects, and Google has said it wants to organize all of the world's information, regardless of its source, and that video is part of that information repository.

On Google's analyst call following the acquisition this afternoon, CEO Eric Schmidt said YouTube's ad network is remarkably similar to that of Google, and that it doesn't threaten the future of Google Video, which has gotten off to a very slow start.

The deal isn't without its detractors. Dallas Mavericks owner and part-time billionaire blogger Mark Cuban sticks to his guns saying that "Google is crazy". Of course, it could be just as easily argued that Yahoo! was crazy when they purchased his Broadcast.com, making him scads of cash. Maybe it's the fact the deal's hit so close to home that has him in a snit.

Google has made several under the radar acquisitions of small companies. Some, like Keyhole, have turned into applications, like Google Earth. Still others have been grabs for intellectual programmers with interesting ideas. As John Battelle writes, this will be Google's first big brand acquisition, and the first challenge to the Google brand, as the two companies try to remain separate but synergistic.

I'm somewhat on the sidelines for this deal. I have never posted a video to YouTube, and don't even own a video camera. However, I really like the ease of use the site offers, especially for framing videos to other blogs. The real-time comment system and related videos are similarly top-notch. I don't know that this is the type of deal that will make Google an even bigger force to be reckoned with, but at the very least it puts them light years ahead of Yahoo! and Microsoft in this battle that is surely just heating up.

Listening to ''Moonface - Futurised Fears'', by Bedrock (Play Count: 7)

Over the last year, it has been well-chronicled that Google has spawned a wide variety of new products, many emerging from their engineers' 20% flex time to work on projects outside of their core focus. But as the new products have gained press attention and passing interest from users, they haven't vaulted to take the #1 spot in market share, as their search platform has. Instead, they've contributed to added confusion over what initially was a very simple company that took a lot of credit for its spartan design and laser-like focus.

Now, it looks like the rumblings of discontent are being heard in the glass house that is Google. The LA Times reports that Co-founder Sergey Brin is promoting an initiative called "Features, not products", where engineers are encouraged to make products that are already released best of breed, rather than introducing an increasing amount of diversity that has already seen the development of more than 50 Google-branded offerings.

For some, this is seen as a sign of maturity, that the company is moving beyond it's dramatic startup phase, and more to being a full-fledged industry leader. But on the flip side, it's not as if Microsoft has reduced its product array and focused on features, and Apple, while initially focusing on a famous quadrant of four hardware products for professional and consumer, laptop and desktop, now has expanded into the consumer gadgets arena. This indicates that established companies do see product creep, but the baseline must first be set, and at least for Google, that time to do so is now.

In other Google news, the biggest rumor of the day is that Google is in talks to purchase online video giant YouTube for the staggering price of $1.6 billion. That unlikely consolidation would be a market shaker, but I don't know that Google wants to acquire a headache - one that would be guaranteed once slighted copyright owners determine they want a piece of Google's massive cash pile. YouTube is a great resource for copyrighted material, and has become the Napster of video. Right now, they don't have enough cash to shake down. Google would change all that.

Listening to ''True (Vocal)'', by John Digweed (Play Count: 5)

In the Web space, the big gorilla may seem insurmountable, but in stark contrast to the brick and mortar world, the supposed category leaders change relatively quickly, meaning companies need to continue their history of innovation to maintain and grow market share.

Even in the micromarket of Web search engines, you can see the progression. It could be argued that Webcrawler was the first big search engine. Entering search terms on Webcrawler in its infancy returned blue hyperlinks on a gray background, without ads, without search summaries or any other detail. In time, challengers emerged. Yahoo! opted to go the route of a mega-directory, ignoring search (at first), while enterprising scientists developed engines like Inktomi, HotBot and AltaVista, each one-upping the other in terms of search engine index span and accuracy. Meanwhile, other engines like Lycos and Excite gained a great deal of traffic, but weren't well known for their technology leadership. Yahoo!, then partners with Inktomi, before acquiring the company, became the far and away leader in the space.

But as we all know, it didn't last. Google, with its spartan interface, its targeted results, and PhD driven algorithms, soon took the title away from Yahoo!, becoming the default for most browsers, and soon aggregating more than 50 percent of the market. Now, you don't search for results, you "Google" them. Now, we see that everybody is competing with Google. Not just Yahoo!, but Microsoft, AOL, etc. And again, Google's lead seems insurmountable. They have tons of cash. They have a rapidly-growing brain trust of employees. They are a Wall Street darling. But, it's hard to be simple forever, and the company has been said to having taken their eye of the ball, on their core business, search, to pursue tangential distractions, including Google Earth, Google Gadgets, and other desktop tools.

Even Google seems to recognize that changes have to be made. In the last few weeks, the company quietly debuted a brand-new search engine as an experimental "sandbox" for new features, called SearchMash. SearchMash does away with contextual advertising, does away with offers to search Google News, or Froogle!, but simply displays Web page results and related images. The site again goes back to a Google-like spartan image, but lacks the Google branding and colors. One wonders why Google couldn't have used "yet another Beta" to play in this arena, or to tuck it away in one of their labs.

Outside of Google's labs and candy-colored Mountain View offices, a wide array of smaller companies are looking to outrun Google and catch the giant while it may be napping. BusinessWeek covers these challengers in a piece called "A Gaggle of Google Wannabes". While Google claims to have more people focused on core search than ever before, market share isn't handed out lightly, and a fickle customer base isn't that reluctant to try new options if the smaller, more nimble, competitors can change the game. 

This move is especially already clear when it comes to blogs. Google's Blog Search engine is woefully poor at filtering away spam blogs (splogs), and in this vacuum, engines like Technorati and Topix have taken the lead. Shopzilla and others have beaten Google at product searches. In the niches of this market, Google is not winning, and it will be a challenge to see how the company can reach these niches without getting ever more complex.

Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion pointed me to a fantastic article on Google's aggressive, often-chaotic approach to business, innovation and out of the box thinking, which has been a primary driver behind the company's continued success. While other, larger and more inflexible, companies are often tied down by quarter to quarter P/L targets and bureaucracy, Google has run at full-speed, spawning a host of products so plentiful that the company's CEO, Eric Schmidt, says even the most ardent of Google fanatics would be unable to name them all. But the main focus is still, as it always has been, on the search engine and its associated advertising platform.

For those interested in the backgrounds of successful companies, or whether you're looking to duplicate Google's so-far unique trajectory, make sure to read it. Google has managed to run as Apple's Macintosh off-shoot did two-plus decades ago, flying a pirate flag - yet they continue to win.

Listening to ''Sex 'n' Money'', by Paul Oakenfold (Play Count: 5)

Apple has famously taunted Microsoft during the company's Worldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC) the last few years, using lines including "Redmond, Start Your Copiers", in the mindset that whatever new features and products Apple was to introduce would soon be absorbed into the Redmond, Washington-based software monolith in short time. This year, Steve Jobs went so far as to withhold some of the newer features of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), in part due to fear of co-optation from competition. But recent developments have shown that Microsoft isn't solely focused on Apple for ideas to borrow - er... steal.

Just a week or two after Microsoft imitated Apple with its announcement of its Zune line of MP3 music players, tomorrow, Microsoft is slated to introduce a service called "SoapBox", which mimics the extremely popular YouTube, in that it will allow users to load videos and share them for the Web. While it's currently in lock-down mode, open only to a select few, the doors will be opened to the general public soon, and I don't expect they'll be all that overwhelmed.

If Microsoft were to focus, they could make some amazing software. They have some of the brightest minds in the business, and more money than God (I checked, he's overdrawn...), but their idea of innovation is imitation - whether it was the Palm PC copying the Palm Pilot, Internet Explorer knocking off Netscape Navigator, MSN aimed at AOL, or most recently, the introduction of Live Search (copying Google), Zune (copying Apple) and now SoapBox. Surely, consumers are smart enough to see right through the smoke screen.

Given how Microsoft stock (MSFT) has been relatively flat for the last twelve months, twenty-four months, or even five years, the idea that this is a growth company has been absolutely shattered. You'd have been better off taking your cash and putting it in a low interest rate savings account than aiming to support the leader in imitation. This story is spread so thin, it's got holes.

Listening to ''Dangerous Power'', by Gabriel & Dresden (Play Count: 1)

From approximately four p.m. this afternoon through near 7:30 this evening, all of louisgray.com was unable to be accessed from the outside world. While I noted the globe did not spin off of its axis, it was a minor issue for those on Athletics Nation who didn't understand why this week's ANtics was a 1x1 grayed-out pixel (that's not very funny...), and others looking to see my commentary on iTunes and Apple from external sites instead were confronted with time-outs.

In a situation like that, at the office, and unable to make calls to check in on it, I was sure it was my fault. Maybe the wrong credit card was the wrong one on the file... maybe some government agency didn't like my questioning of today's voting systems... or maybe somebody had hijacked the system?

Of course - it wasn't any of those things. In a chat with a support rep from Register.com, whose service powers the site, I was told, "We are running an emergency maintenance of our web hosting service," and that a "Lot of our web hosting customers are facing this problem." When asked how long it would be down, the first answer was "It will be done very soon," followed quickly by "We expect it to be done within a few hours."

Yeah... so "very soon" does not compute with "a few hours". And I haven't seen any notes of refunds or anything of that nature. Is 24/7 hosting too much to ask? Are hiccups to be excused? Good thing this site doesn't hold my main line of business or we'd be a little short of cash tonight!

Listening to ''Chasing Cars'', by Snow Patrol (Play Count: 3)

Normally, Tuesdays are the days you can expect a plethora of news releases. Coming off of a longer Labor Day holiday, many companies opted to put their big announcements out on Wednesday instead.

As mentioned previously, many rumor sites had anticipated Apple would introduce new iMacs and iPods alongside an iTunes movie service as part of a special media event this upcoming Tuesday, September 12th. But the Cupertino computer maker surprised the bloggers by debuting the new iMacs a full week earlier. As anticipated, the new iMacs feature the latest in Intel processors, and the top-line version expands to a 24-inch screen, which should dominate just about any desktop. Apple's Mac Mini lineup also received a performance bump with the latest Intel processors. Seems like having a new CPU partner is doing Apple some good. (MacRumors  | Think Secret )

In more Web-focused news, it looks like the Silicon Valley may finally have found a wireless partner to blanket the region with ubiquitous high-speed Internet access. As I've always said, anywhere with air, food, water, a place to sleep and high speed Internet is where I call home. Luckily, it now appears I don't have to move to make that happen, as a consortium led by Cisco and IBM aims to offer wireless internet to the more than 2 million residents in the area. Businesses looking to utilize the network or gain increased bandwidth would have to ante up and buy additional equipment. Matt Marshall at VentureBeat says despite the news, it may be a long time before we can boot up from the park. (Mercury News | New York Times)

If it does indeed take a long time to roll out, then future historians can chronicle the planning on a new service from Google that has organized news articles from the past five-plus years, and is aggressively looking to span the last few centuries or so. The company's new archive search can come in very handy if you are looking to see how a company or product is covered over time. For more-popular items, you can delve into specific years or months to gain more granular data or read specific stories.

Examples: Segway in 2005, iPod in 2001, Bin Laden in 1998-1999

Six years ago, while at 3Cube, we had huge expectations for moving software to the Web. Following some success with our fax over Internet product, FaxCube, and our phone conferencing and Web meeting solution, PhoneCube, we had plans to debut something by the name of "OfficeCube", which in theory, would let customers not only hold real-time chats and full desktop sharing, across OS platforms, but would give you an online vault where you could create, edit and save documents or presentations. This vision of the Web office was but a gleam in our eye in 2000, and for a variety of reasons, we never quite made it. Six years later, we still see the business world tied to software - and most of those are tied to Microsoft Office, despite challenges from Apple, Sun and now, Google.

Google started out as a search company, aiming to gain access to all the world's information, quickly and easily. But the company has branched out into a variety of Web applications, from Gmail for E-mail to Google Talk for instant messaging, Google Desktop for local search, Google Earth for mapping and much, much more. This week, Google takes it all a step further with the debut of enterprise-targeted applications that would be branded by third-party companies, but provided by Google. That way, you could keep your company.com domain but leave all the grunt work to Google's servers and staff. Sounds good, right?

Much of the conversations in the last several years were that in order to unseat Microsoft Office, a competitor needed to build clones of those apps that made Office what it is - Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. But now, people recognize that the new office has a lot more to it - with a very real focus on real-time interactive communication, regardless of location. Google's debut includes the aforementioned Gmail and Google Talk, but also Google Calendar and Google Page Creator - which hopefully bears absolutely zero resemblance to Microsoft's horrid Front Page for WYSIWYG Web design.

As a consumer, we can't help but root for anything that enables more choice, and more variety, especially as it takes advantage of new technologies. I can't say that Google's will be the winner, or that we'll be adopting it soon. Google has no equal as a search engine, without doubt, but for me, GMail is a second-class address, on par with all the other free e-mail addresses I've accrued over the last decade, and the rest of the apps are just for fun. The only one I'm truly waiting with baited breath for is Google Desktop for Mac OS X, if they ever get there. Interestingly, despite Google's failings there, leading blogger Robert Scoble writes that Google is even further ahead in Mac support than Microsoft with some of its tools saying, "They (Microsoft) are gonna get their ass kicked in this space because of their lack of attention to the Macintosh."

As you can expect, anything Google does gains plenty of attention. You can see further discussions of the launch at SiliconBeat, Searchblog, and InformationWeek.

To check out the solutions for yourself, go to https://www.google.com/a/.

Listening to ''Escape Velocity 007", by DJ Irish (Play Count: 1)

I have often made the comment that there are a few essentials to life. Food, water, sleep and high-speed Internet. I don't even want to go see the family or go on trips if I'm out of range of the Blackberry. I even type out e-mails or check sports scores while I'm driving, as anytime instant access to information plays such a key role in what I do - for a living, for my hobbies, and as a consumer. So when I hear that some companies still expect people to spend eight or so hours of the day without access to the Web, or only a minimal subset of it, it's enough to make me want to form a union for these oppressed souls, being stuck by "the man".

Surprisingly, today brought news that Microsoft is advocating employers to release the bonds of Internet inequality, because they're finding young jobseekers especially are turned away from companies that don't get it. As Anne Kirah, Microsoft Senior Design Anthropologist (whatever that is) says, "These kids are saying: forget it! I don’t want to work with you. I don’t want to work at a place where I can’t be freely online during the day."

Now, I'm not advocating that workers of the world should unite behind poorly-designed MySpace pages, streaming MP3s and emoticon-filled chatfests on AOL instant messenger, but as we move more and more of our communications, business and information to the Web, you may as well tell employees not to read or eat while punched in on the clock. Companies will be differentiated through their ability to offer full access to the Internet - not so much as a perk, but as a core element that defines the work experience.

"Okay... so the job pays $9.95 an hour? Does it have benefits? A T-1 line? Cool."

Kirah even went so far as to say that taking a mobile phone away from a teenage girl is tantamount to child abuse. We certainly aren't interested in seeing a new wave of harassment claims from the Net deprived now, do we?

Listening to ''Watching Windows'', by Roni Size (Play Count: 3)

Today, after the conclusion of regular stock-trading hours, Apple announced that it had settled five outstanding lawsuits from Creative Technologies surrounding the company's iPod interface, to the tune of $100 millon. Creative had been awarded a patent for an iPod-like interface last year, and immediately filed suit against Apple, in an obvious attempt to extract money from the high-flying computer and gadget maker. As the iPod has marched along, destroying everything in its path, including Dell and Sony, Creative has seen their market share stagnate, despite a valiant attempt to compete. Now, instead of revenue, the company gets cash the old-fashioned new fashioned way - through the courts.

But don't let that make you think Apple is rolling over, a loser on all counts. While they clearly didn't win this round, it clears the way for continued iPod development and announcements, and sweeps that nasty thing under the rug. Meanwhile, as Apple continues to draw accolades for its upcoming Leopard release, its Redmond foe, Microsoft is taking a beating for what some have called "the buggiest OS I've seen this late in development." And that's not some Mac fanboy or jaded MS developer making noise. That particular comment came from analyst Joe Wilcox of Jupiter Research, a firm which tends to be pretty straight-forward with its analysis.

Windows Vista is hardly seeing feature creep, as many operating systems do as they near shipment. Instead it's seeing feature droop, as highly-anticipated functionality has been eliminated in an effort to ship. But was has shipped is full of  bugs, that even the most ardent of Microsoft veterans won't stand. Analysts say the system is the most bug-ridden of any release from the company in more than a decade, and given Redmond's track record, that's truly saying something indeed.

Listening to ''Mind of the Wonderful'', by Blank & Jones (Play Count: 7)

In the "yet another iPod competitor" category, Sandisk debuted devices that scale all the way through eight gigabytes - double that of the iPod Nano, with a similar style to and price of the Nano, giving Apple what some have termed its most formidable competition in years, since the iPod's having grabbed more than three quarters of the MP3 player market. Oddly, after decades of being trumped by Microsoft's inferior software and hardware, Apple has the shoe on the other foot when it comes to the iPod, as even if they were to be trumped on technology (and there's no indication that's happened here), their immense market share and momentum will make it very difficult for competitors to make inroads. In fact, Wired News says that iTunes has become such a dominant entity in the music business that even the initial holdout bands will have to make their music available.

In fact, in the face of competition from online sales, such as iTunes, Tower Records announced today that it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid declining sales.

Interestingly, some media pundits, including GigaOm, are saying that Apple has such interest in the music and video space that they are suggesting the Cupertino company make a play for online video site YouTube. Although I don't see it happening, Apple is one company who could potentially strike a deal for the $1 billion-valued Web 2.0 giant. However, Apple does not have a history of purchasing content sites. The company's middle of the road .Mac services were all home grown, and acquisitions have tilted more to the software arena.

Lastly, there was considerable fallout at AOL after the company inadvertently leaked thousands of search queries from users in a massive violation of privacy - as discussed earlier in "Privacy On the Web Is Gone". The online services company reacted swiftly by forcing the resignation of AOL's chief technology officer and other minions who had a part in making the breach happen. As Good Morning Silicon Valley writes, imagine how that would look on the resume... "Reason for leaving last job: Violated the privacy of 600,000 company customers". Ouch. (More)

Listening to ''Aphrodesiac'', by Nu Mood Orchestra (Play Count: 7)

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