WIKIS AND COPYRIGHT WORTH A LITTLE USER TRAINING

From the Nobody Can Actually Be Surprised By This department: The Associated Press is reporting this morning that Wikipedia Watch publisher Daniel Brandt, a critic and sometimes personal antagonist of the user-edited encyclopedia, has found 142 examples of plagiarized biographical articles at the site. Wikipedia has pulled down the content in question, and its founder says that while some copyrighted materials [more]

The Blogger Outages (a novel)

<span style="font-style: italic;">It was a dark and stormy night. The air was quiet. Too quiet. Yet stormy. Suddenly, a beep rang out from a bedside pager. The engineer woke up, grabbing a soda to sharpen his senses. Blogger was down. He needed to bring it back up.<br /><br /></span>When I get the chance to write my pulp story of a gritty Blogger engineer struggling to keep the site alive, I may look back on this past week as a prime source of choice dramatic fodder. Until then, I, like many of you, will look upon this past week with irritation, disappointment, and maybe even a bit of anger.<br /><br />You need to look no further than our <a href="http://status.blogger.com/" title="status blog">status blog</a> or perhaps your own experiences to know that <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blogger had a significant number of unplanned outages this last week</span> (forgive me my euphemisms?) and a handful of planned one s to clean up from the unplanned ones. It’s been a Murphyesque cavalcade of power failures, fileserver trouble, and wonky network hardware, and I hope you’ll believe me when I say that the Blogger staff is even more sick of it than you are.<br /><br />First up, <span style="font-weight: bold;">our apologies</span>. We really regret these outages, which were a nuisance (or worse) to you. The past week’s performance was <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> representative of the kind of service we want to provide for you.<br /><br />More importantly, though, what are we doing to prevent this in the future? Some good news:<br /><ul><li> In the short term, <span style="font-weight: bold;">we’re replacing quirky hardware and increasing our monitoring</span> to stop problems before they start (forgive me my clichés?). This afternoon’s planned outage did just such a thing. </li& gt;<li> In the long term, <span style="font-weight: bold;">we’re developing a new version of Blogger</span> with some great new features that is built on technology and hardware that has proven, Google-quality reliability. The current Blogger infrastructure is — albeit in a very <a title="Abe Lincoln’s axe" href="http://desertcraftsmen.com/Abe.shtml">Lincoln’s axe</a> way — the same that Google acquired four years ago. Sure, we’ve built on it and expanded it significantly since then, but the truth is we’ve more than out-grown it. The new version is ground-up more scalable and less error-prone.<br /></li></ul>The news gets better: We foresaw the need for the long-term solution, well, a long time ago. Long enough ago that <span style="font-weight: bold;">it’s almost done, and you can use it</span> as the <a href="http://beta.blogger.com/" title="new version of Blogger in beta">new version of Blogger in beta</a>. If you can switch to it (see <a href="http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=44404&topic=9083" title="requirements">requirements</a>) you really should. The new version of Blogger is better in almost* every way, including reliability. (It’s worth pointing out that none of this past week’s trouble affected the new version of Blogger or its blogs.)<br /><br />It’s been a bad week for Blogger, and, as I hope you can tell, we’re not denying it. Instead, we have taken and will continue to take specific steps that make Blogger a more reliable, overall better service for you to use.<br /><br />Oh, and as a final <a title="dogfoodish" href="http://buzz.blogger.com/2006/10/chowing-down-on-dogfood.html">dogfoodish</a> note, I’m pleased to point out that our <a href="http://status.blogger.com/" title="status blog">status blog</a> is now powered by the new version of Blogger. Thi s means that we will be free of the Catch-22 of problems with the current version of Blogger preventing us from reporting about the problems with the current version of Blogger. (And we’ll fix that bug that makes it look like all the posts came from me. We’re on it.)<br /><br />* The new version of Blogger is available only in English, which we will remedy very shortly. Also FTP publishing isn’t there yet, but that’s coming soon, too. Once these are in place, the new version <span style="font-style: italic;">will</span> be better than the current version in every way. [more]

AUTHENTICATION AUTHORITY CONTROLS NEEDED TO MOVE WEB 20 FORWARD

Everybody&#8217;s favorite tech buzz word, Web 2.0, may have gotten a
bit ahead of itself, which is par for the course for hot trends.
News.com is reporting that participants in the Web 2.0 Summit this
week are discussing why the lack of a usable universal authentication
system for end users of social networking and collaboration sites <a
href='http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/bpi/index.php/2006/11/08/authentication-authority-controls-needed-to-move-web-20-forward/'>[more]</a>

NTP TURNS PATENT LAWSUIT LOOSE ON PALM

What&#8217;s old is new again. NTP, the firm that nearly hobbled
BlackBerry maker RIM &#8212; and its customers &#8212; with a patent
infringement lawsuit is now leveling the same charge against Palm.
The Monday filing claims seven of NTP&#8217;s patents are being
infringed upon by Palm in several of its smartphones and PDAs.
NTP&#8217;s fight with RIM resulted <a
href='http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/bpi/index.php/2006/11/07/ntp-turns-patent-lawsuit-loose-on-palm/'>[more]</a>

WIKIS AND COPYRIGHT WORTH A LITTLE USER TRAINING

From the Nobody Can Actually Be Surprised By This department: The Associated Press is reporting this morning that Wikipedia Watch publisher Daniel Brandt, a critic and sometimes personal antagonist of the user-edited encyclopedia, has found 142 examples of plagiarized biographical articles at the site. Wikipedia has pulled down the content in question, and its founder says that while some copyrighted materials [more]

TECHNOLOGYS WORLD PARTY

We see lots of stories about globalization’s impact on the economy. One that recently caught our eye has to do with its strong — and ultimately lasting — impact on the tech economy. A Fortune senior editor makes the case that countries as disparate as Libya and Spain — hardly traditional bastions of tech — are [more]

LICENSING FLACK OVER WINDOWS VISTA RE INSTALLS FOR ENTHUSIASTS ONLY

It will have little impact on most businesses, but Microsoft is
getting some begrudging credit this morning for backing away from
what we have to say was a pretty strident licensing condition for
consumer Windows Vista users.
In its Vista end user license agreement (EULA), Microsoft had moved
to limit to one the number of times <a
href='http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/bpi/index.php/2006/11/03/licensing-flack-over-windows-vista-re-installs-for-enthusiasts-only/'>[more]</a>

Video Bar - New Features

The <a href="http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/videobar/index.html">Video Bar</a> has become a popular solution, and we really appreciate the great feedback and feature requests. We just implemented two of the most common feature requests: <ul> <li>Option for smaller thumbnails</li> <li>Control over the size of the video player</li> </ul> For more information, take a look at the <a href="http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/videobar/index.html">Video Bar instructions</a> that highlights both of these new features. Requesting small thumbnails is done with an option, while controlling the video player size is done using CSS. (We've also updated the <a href="http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/videosearch/index.html">Video Search solution</a> to support CSS based control over the player size.) <br><br> Based on your feedback, we also updated the <a href="http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/mapsearch/index.html">Map Search solution</a> with new features: <ul> <li>Application control over the icons for the center point, the selected search result, and the unselected search results</li> <li>Control over the zoom level for the idle and active map</li> <li>Ability to request a GMapTypeControl for your maps</li> </ul> You're welcome to use our solutions as-is in your applications. We will maintain them, host them, and continue to improve them based on your feedback. Alternatively, you can always download our solutions and modify them to meet your needs, borrow ideas from them freely, or do whatever makes sense for your applications. <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Google-AJAX-Search-API">Keep the feedback coming</a>! [more]

Custom Search Engine Refinements

On Tuesday we announced our support for Custom Search Engines. We asked you for your input and many of you suggested that we add support for Custom Search Engine Refinements. This evening we launched support for Custom Search Engine Refinements in a way that complements what many of you are trying to build. We extended .setSiteRestriction() so that in addition to passing the Custom Search Engine Id, you can also pass a Custom Search Engine Refinement label. See the code snippet below:

 var cseId = "017576662512468239146:omuauf_lfve"; searcher = new GwebSearch(); searcher.setSiteRestriction(cseId, "Lectures"); 

To demonstrate this new capability, we have produce a new sample. The AJAX Search API based Curriculum Search Sample performs parallel searches over a Curriculum Search Engine as well as the engine with a "Lectures", "Assignments", and "Reference" refinements. This sample is based on the full blown Curriculum Search Engine hosted on code.google.com/edu. As always, please continue to provide feedback.

[more]

Version 4 Shutdown Today

Please take note… per our announcement on August 29, we will shutdown Version 4 of the API today.

Please make sure you have migrated your applications to Version 5 or 6 in order to ensure uninterrupted service. You can find more information about Versions 5 and 6 (including the release notes) at http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/developer/index.html.

-- Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager

[more]

PUTTING A BUSINESS SPIN ON IT METRICS

In an interesting acknowledgment that undue emphasis on the bottom line may not always be a good thing — especially when it comes to fostering better alignment between the business and IT — some hotshot CIOs like HP’s Randy Mott and Global Crossing’s Dan Wagner are supplementing traditional IT metrics like ROI and TCO with more [more]

BPM DEFINITION MAY BE DICEY BUT THE RESULTS ARENT

While interest in business process management is growing, many folks appear to still be struggling with how to define BPM. A recent NewsFactor Network article offered this definition: “a blending of machine-to-machine and human-to-machine connections to improve efficiency.” Frankly, that left us still scratching our heads. Fortunately, well-known process improvement expert Kiran Garimella helped clear things up for [more]

IT TEAM SHOULD BE ALL BUSINESS

Even the savviest general won’t have much luck in battle without the right forces. Maybe that’s why we’ve been seeing an increasing number of articles like this one in Computerworld on finding IT staff with the right skills, most notably a bent for business. Also desired: good communication skills, a predilection for problem solving, and an ability [more]

DOES THE ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD PROJECT POSE A SECURITY RISK

It’s hard to believe, but there is a downside to Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project. Of course, the project’s intent — to distribute millions of $100 laptops to poor kids throughout the world — is beyond reproach. It’s the feel-good project of the year. The problem has nothing to do with the project’s goal. It’s technical: [more]

QUESTIONS RAISED ABOUT WINDOWS MOBILE 5 SECURITY

By all accounts, Microsoft has paid attention to the security concerns of users and made progress during the past year or so. That upward trend is expected to continue through the introduction of Windows Vista, its next PC operating system. The outlook may not be as sanguine when it comes to the vendor’s mobile initiatives, however. [more]

IS IT IGNORING REMOTE ACCESS

It’s no secret that most companies have no idea how much it costs to support their remote employees. As Gartner pointed out recently, too many enterprises support lots of different access devices and, worse, do not have standardized processes in place for doing so. One of the primary reasons behind this expensive lack of standardization, at least according [more]

INDIA WHERE ARE ALL THE TECH WORKERS

With foreign technology companies eager to invest in operations in India, perhaps it’s no surprise that the country’s supply of qualified labor can’t keep up with the booming demand. A shortage of employees with the right kinds of skills — including fluency in English and management experience —  has been a festering problem for India, along with rising [more]

VOTING FOR SARBANES OXLEY REFORM

No matter how strongly you feel about the issues, we’d venture to guess that you’re sick of campaign signs cluttering the landscape and political ads invading your downtime in front of the television. Thankfully, by this time next week it will be almost over. Before we get there, though, consider this: An analysis posted at Financial News this [more]

INDUSTRY BUZZING AGAIN WITH TALK OF ORACLE LINUX

Has it been six months since we last heard Oracle CEO Larry Ellison making noise about jumping into the open source market with an Oracle version of the Linux operating system? The only thing Oracle needs to offer a complete software stack, he told the Financial Times back in April, is an operating system, and [more]

LINUX FROM MICROSOFT

Redmond has managed yet another shocker. Forbes reported late yesterday that Microsoft has inked a deal with Linux distributor Novell — to help promote and support Novell’s SuSE Linux. The goal is to improve interoperability. The story says one open source enthusiast hopes to eventually see a hybrid system: Linux kernel + Windows apps and tools. The Forbes writer likens the announcement [more]

WHATS THE REAL SOA STORY LET THE READER BEWARE

Everyone who reads the IT trade press knows that SOA has moved from the hot trend stage to mainstream adoption. And how do they know? By reading the IT trade press. Granted, there’s a certain circular logic here. But the people who need this knowledge –  like CIOs or developers trying to build the right skill [more]

IS METADATA WORTH IT

The Butler Group, a respected IT consultancy, has produced an interesting statistic.  Enterprises waste 10 percent of their total salary costs because employees can’t find the information they need. Did we really need a survey to tell us this? But seriously, the 10 percent figure and others like it are often used by consultants and vendors to [more]

THE DRIVE TO IMPROVE THE DATA CENTER

Data center issues have been front and center for most enterprises for the past several years. From powering and cooling to backup and recovery, it seems like a lot of investment is being made to ensure that the business stays up and running during an emergency and files and records remain handy in case the [more]

HPC AFFECTS STORAGE TOO

High-powered computing (HPC) begins in the research labs and eventually trickles down to the commercial world. And while much of the attention is given to faster processing, the fact is that HPC is having a real-world effect on the data center. Leading researchers are taking a good, hard look at how ever-increasing computer power is affecting storage [more]

IS THE BROADBAND BUSINESS CHANGING

An interesting post from Om Malik suggests that overall growth in the broadband market appears to be slowing down while high-bandwidth options seem to be weathering the storm a bit better than pokier connections. Broadband, of course, is the key to convergence. The faster the network, the more elegant the possible applications. It’s important not to jump [more]

INVESTMENTS INTROS FILL AN ONGOING NEED

The news that Entuity has released Version 5.0 of its Eye of the Storm network management suite and that Narus has scored a big new investment — $30 million — for its network security and management products isn’t surprising as VoIP continues to mature. The issue is pretty simple: VoIP services are built on base networks [more]

TELCOS KEEP PUSHING VOIP

AT&T, in another example of the legacy telephone companies’ “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” strategy, has landed a contract to provide VoIP services to the architectural firm of Bucher, Willis & Ratliff. The deal, which covers a San Antonio headquarters and six offices across the country, includes networking and data services in addition [more]

IP PBXES ARE DIFFERENT ANIMALS MAKE THAT WORKHORSES THAN LEGACY VOICE BOXES

Research from In-Stat raises an important point, in addition to providing interesting numbers on the growth of Internet protocol-based public branch exchanges (IP PBXes). The firm says that the growth of the devices will be driven, at least to some extent, by the fact that they are called on to perform more tasks than legacy [more]

LIVEOFFICE VS GOOGLE APPS HOW WILL SMALL BUSINESS PAY FOR SOFTWARE

Microsoft’s plans for its Web-based Office Live services for small businesses sound a lot like a me-too Google’s Apps: simplified Web site design and hosting, e-mail sent from the company’s domain and tie-ins to instant messaging. The big difference is that while Microsoft is admittedly hitting the SaaS market a little late, it is coming with [more]

IN THE NEW CENTURY WHAT MAKES A MONOPOLY

More than 116 years after Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, the FTC has embarked on a series of hearings aimed at determining just what a monopoly looks like in the 21st Century. At a hearing held Wednesday in Washington, the commission turned its eye on so-called “tying” arrangements — a practice by which the sale [more]

LOVE CORE 2 DUO CORE 2 EXTREME QX6700 IS HERE TOO

If you liked the Intel Core 2 Duo processor’s benchmark results — and there was a lot to like — wait till you see the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 “Kentsfield” quad-core processor. And it hasn’t been much of a wait, either. Is Kentsfield a real quad-core? Depends on your definition. The Extreme is two side-by-side [more]

LICENSING FLACK OVER WINDOWS VISTA RE INSTALLS FOR ENTHUSIASTS ONLY

It will have little impact on most businesses, but Microsoft is getting some begrudging credit this morning for backing away from what we have to say was a pretty strident licensing condition for consumer Windows Vista users. In its Vista end user license agreement (EULA), Microsoft had moved to limit to one the number of times [more]

AMAZON WANTS TO HELP YOU BUILD THE NEXT AMAZON

Choosing a Web services vendor? Would the process be easier if one of the choices was a company that had come through the dot-com boom, the dot-com bust, and the pooh-poohing by countless analysts and business experts of its business plan to become one of the biggest online success stories around? Not coincidentally, this company also built a massive back-end [more]

WITH MERGER ATT THREATENS TO DETHRONE ITS MOTHER

Ma Bell’s place as one of the most powerful monopolies in U.S. history (the other being Standard Oil) is about to be usurped by her offspring, some analysts are predicting. When AT&T buys BellSouth, a deal that is still pending approval by a sharply divided FTC, it will become more powerful in many key ways than [more]

NTP TURNS PATENT LAWSUIT LOOSE ON PALM

What’s old is new again. NTP, the firm that nearly hobbled BlackBerry maker RIM — and its customers — with a patent infringement lawsuit is now leveling the same charge against Palm. The Monday filing claims seven of NTP’s patents are being infringed upon by Palm in several of its smartphones and PDAs. NTP’s fight with RIM resulted [more]

AUTHENTICATION AUTHORITY CONTROLS NEEDED TO MOVE WEB 20 FORWARD

Everybody’s favorite tech buzz word, Web 2.0, may have gotten a bit ahead of itself, which is par for the course for hot trends. News.com is reporting that participants in the Web 2.0 Summit this week are discussing why the lack of a usable universal authentication system for end users of social networking and collaboration sites [more]

SOME GOOD NEWS ON OFFICE 2007

There is a fair amount of commentary regarding the new Office 2007 suite coming out this fall, most of it positive. John Carroll, blogging on ZDNet, said the ribbon-based GUI takes a little getting used to, but in the end is a very intuitive approach that gets you where you need to be quickly. Mac users, meanwhile, [more]

THE DRIVE TO IMPROVE THE DATA CENTER

Data center issues have been front and center for most enterprises for the past several years. From powering and cooling to backup and recovery, it seems like a lot of investment is being made to ensure that the business stays up and running during an emergency and files and records remain handy in case the [more]

WEB 20 IN FITS AND STARTS

It’s turning out to be the debate of the ages. Are new monikers like Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and SOA 2.0 really new generations of technology that are poised to shake the foundations of the digital world? Or are they just buzz words to get you to buy more stuff that you don’t need? Our guess [more]

MOVING TOWARD REAL DATA MANAGEMENT

There are certainly lots of tools for enterprise data management (EDM). They fall under a number of categories: data governance (DG), master data management (MDM) and customer data integration (CDI), to name a few. But they all perform various flavors of the same function, that is, integrating data sets from a wide diaspora of environments and [more]

DONT LET SHORT TERM THINKING AFFLICT SOA DEPLOYMENTS

One of the main benefits of implementing an SOA strategy is the end of legacy data silos that exist in most enterprises. The thinking is that greater access to data and applications across all organizational units improves efficiency, productivity and competitiveness. But now we’re hearing that a vast number of SOA implementations are being made not [more]

INVESTMENTS INTROS FILL AN ONGOING NEED

The news that Entuity has released Version 5.0 of its Eye of the Storm network management suite and that Narus has scored a big new investment — $30 million — for its network security and management products isn’t surprising as VoIP continues to mature. The issue is pretty simple: VoIP services are built on base networks [more]

TELCOS KEEP PUSHING VOIP

AT&T, in another example of the legacy telephone companies’ “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” strategy, has landed a contract to provide VoIP services to the architectural firm of Bucher, Willis & Ratliff. The deal, which covers a San Antonio headquarters and six offices across the country, includes networking and data services in addition [more]

FIBER NEW CABLE TECH PUSH BROADBAND SPEEDS

The numbers from RVA Market Research are dramatic: The firm, cited in a ComputerWorld story on fiber deployment, estimates that there were more than 1 million fiber users in North America as of September. That’s almost a three-fold increase from the 332,700 subscribers at the end of last year and more than six times the 146,500 [more]

WIRELESS VOIP HANDSETS TAKING OFF

We know a hot market when we see one, and it’s clear that wireless VoIP handsets fit the bill. An announcement from Cicero Networks, an Irish company, says that its product — cleverly named the CiceroPhone — can be hosted by Nokia’s S60 family of handsets. That puts the CiceroPhone in the pockets of a whole [more]

GOOD REVIEWS FOR CINGULAR HSDPA PHONE

New cellular phones are being thrown at consumers at an ever-accelerating rate. This is a review of one such phone, the Cingular 8525. The outstanding thing about the new entry, according to the reviewer, is its support for High Speed Packet Downlink Packet Access (HSPDA), a next-generation 3G cellular technology. The author likes more than she [more]

ARUBAS WIRELESS VOIP PLAY

Aruba Networks plans to mobilize its portfolio of wireless local area network (WLAN) switches to support wireless VoIP. The company is entering the third phase of a five-stage plan. Fixed mobile convergence, the attaching of wireless VoIP functionality to fixed line infrastructure, is an important next step in communications. Many telecommunications players — including traditional carriers, [more]

MYSPACE TO WEED OUT COPYRIGHTED SONGS

Increased pressure from copyright holders in the wake of Google’s planned purchase of YouTube has apparently put the squeeze on other sites, as well. This week, MySpace.com announced it would license software from a third party to ferret out copyrighted music posted by its own users. Last month, Universal accused both MySpace and YouTube of being “copyright [more]

GOOGLE BUYS WIKI TOOLS DEVELOPER JOTSPOT

Google, the company that has made free search engines a multi-billion-dollar behemoth, has turned its attention to developing wiki tools. In a deal announced today, Google is set to acquire JotSpot, a California company that develops tools that enable users to create, change and delete contributions posted by others in a workgroup. Joe Kraus, JotSpot co-founder and [more]

INTERNET GROWTH SPARKS RESEARCH EFFORT TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE

We’ll try to be brief, since by the time you finish reading this, you will have missed the debut of at least 10 other new blogs.  Technorati reports that a new blog lands on the Web every half-second, so you won’t want to miss all those new bits of wisdom. The Web’s growth rate is accelerating [more]

LICENSING FLACK OVER WINDOWS VISTA RE INSTALLS FOR ENTHUSIASTS ONLY

It will have little impact on most businesses, but Microsoft is getting some begrudging credit this morning for backing away from what we have to say was a pretty strident licensing condition for consumer Windows Vista users. In its Vista end user license agreement (EULA), Microsoft had moved to limit to one the number of times [more]

AMAZON WANTS TO HELP YOU BUILD THE NEXT AMAZON

Choosing a Web services vendor? Would the process be easier if one of the choices was a company that had come through the dot-com boom, the dot-com bust, and the pooh-poohing by countless analysts and business experts of its business plan to become one of the biggest online success stories around? Not coincidentally, this company also built a massive back-end [more]

TECHNOLOGY LIKELY TO HAVE MORE IMPACT ON THE ELECTION THAN ELECTION WILL HAVE ON TECHNOLOGY

With forecasts calling for heavy Democratic gains in the House, and with a smaller chance of Dem showers in the Senate, tech industry insiders are already asking, “What’s in it for us?” Answer: Not so much. Tech issues, many argue, rarely split down party lines, making which party is in charge less important than which individual [more]

WINDOWS BUG IS SECOND ZERO DAY FLAW THIS WEEK FROM MICROSOFT

An ActiveX flaw in Microsoft XML Core Services 4.0 is actively being exploited by hackers to take control of computers running Windows 2000, XP SP2 or Server 2003, security firms and Microsoft are reporting. What’s worse, for both Redmond and users, is that the flaw is related to a vulnerability supposedly patched in October’s patch release, [more]

WITH MERGER ATT THREATENS TO DETHRONE ITS MOTHER

Ma Bell’s place as one of the most powerful monopolies in U.S. history (the other being Standard Oil) is about to be usurped by her offspring, some analysts are predicting. When AT&T buys BellSouth, a deal that is still pending approv