38 posts tagged “onlive video conference and collaboraiton tool”
It seems that the £200 ultraportable Asus Eee PC can do no wrong. The size of a paperback, weighing less than a kilogram, with built-in Wi-Fi and using Flash memory instead of a hard drive for storage, the Eee PC has been winning positive comments not just from hyperventilating hardware reviewers, but also from ordinary people who have actually bought it.
According to an (admittedly biased, because it was self-selecting) online survey of 1,000 users on the independent Eee PC site eeeuser.com, around 4% were dissatisfied with their purchase, 33% found the system pretty much what they expected and 62% thought it was even better than they had hoped.
Looking through the thousands of postings in eeeuser.com's user forums, the same comments keep coming up: it's so small, the build quality is high, it boots up quickly, it just works. In fact, it's hard to find many negative points. Most are about the placing of the right-hand shift key, the small size of the keyboard, the limited battery life and the slightly awkward mousepad. One thing that is almost never mentioned as a problem is the fact that the Eee PC is running not Windows, but a variant of GNU/Linux.
Better in store
Until now, the received wisdom has been that GNU/Linux will never take off with general users because it's too complicated. One of the signal achievements of the Asus Eee PC is that it has come up with a front end that hides the richness of the underlying GNU/Linux. It divides programs up into a few basic categories - Internet, Work, Learn, Play - and then provides large, self-explanatory icons for the main programs within each group. The result is that anyone can use the system without training or even handholding.
This combination of good functionality and out-of-the box ease of use with a price so low that it's almost at the impulse-buy level could prove problematic for Microsoft. Until now, there has been no obvious advantage for the average user in choosing GNU/Linux over Windows on the desktop, and plenty of disadvantages.
The price differential has been slight, and there has always been the problem of learning new ways of working. The Asus Eee PC changes all that. Because the form factor is so different, people don't seem to make direct comparisons with the desktop PC, and therefore don't expect the user experience to be identical.
The price differential between the basic Eee PC running GNU/Linux and one running Windows XP is now significant as a proportion of the total cost. One of the main suppliers of the Asus Eee PC, RM, sells the GNU/Linux version with 4Gb of storage and 512Mb of RAM for £199. The cheapest machine running Windows XP costs £259, 30% more, not least because Microsoft's operating system needs more storage and memory - 8GB and 1GB respectively. It is that difference, far more than any cost of licensing Windows, which means that Linux-based machines can remain consistently cheaper.
That disparity seems likely to increase when Microsoft phases out Windows XP at the end of June. Vista costs more than Windows XP and it requires a minimum of 15GB of storage for installation of even the most basic version. In order to run Vista on the Eee PC, users will need to buy models - currently non-existent - with much more Flash memory.
At least Moore's Law should mean that the price of memory chips will continue to plummet. For example, in 2001 $8 (£4)would have bought you around 8MB of Flash memory, whereas in 2011 it will buy you 8GB, according to projections by Gartner. As a result, Alan Brown, Gartner's research director for semiconductors, says the price of ultraportables like the Eee PC "could decline about 15% within three years to between £160 and £170".
The UK company Elonex has already set an even lower price point: it has just announced its own ultraportable, called The One, which offers most of the features of the Eee PC for £100. Other companies that have launched, or announced, similar machines running GNU/Linux include Acer, Everex, and the Australian company Pioneer Computers; even HP seems to have one on the way. At least one manufacturer of traditional portables is worried by the downward trend in prices. According to Cnet, Sony's Mike Abrams commented: "If [the Eee PC from] Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That's just a race to the bottom."
This makes the relative cost of systems running Microsoft's products greater. The argument that its software is "worth more" because it has more features is unlikely to cut much ice as users discover that functionality of the kind offered by Firefox and OpenOffice.org is fine for most everyday uses - the target market for these new small devices. Moreover, the rise of free browser-based online services such as Gmail and the Google Docs office suite means you can get by with just Firefox.
The situation in developing countries is even worse. Not only must Microsoft and its partners compete with new low-cost portable GNU/Linux systems specifically designed for these markets, like the XO-1 from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project or Intel's Classmate PC, but they must also sell against unauthorised copies of Microsoft's products, which are routinely available on the streets for a few dollars. To combat this, Microsoft has started selling copies of Windows for around $3 in these markets.
Size does matter
Although this kind of bargain basement pricing helps make its products competitive with low-cost alternatives like open source or unauthorised copies, Microsoft's profit margin is cut close to zero. That's not necessarily a disaster for a company with huge cash reserves, but it could be dire for one planning to take on billions of dollars of debt - as Microsoft has said it will need to do in order to finance the acquisition of Yahoo. What if it is forced to extend this kind of pricing to western markets in order to match the cheap GNU/Linux systems in this "race to the bottom"?
The first effects may already be being felt. Notably, last week Microsoft cut the cost of retail copies of Vista, apparently because people don't see it as a necessary upgrade at the prices charged. While the vast majority of Windows "upgrades" will still come through people buying new PCs, as corporate customers hold back, the erosion of Microsoft's ability to set prices for its operating system - and perhaps more importantly its hugely profitable Office suite - could spread deep into its product suite.
And if people don't think that the extra features of Vista are worth the price, at least at retail, it makes the argument that Windows is "worth more" than Linux harder to sustain. It's an interesting - and, for Microsoft, critical - question just how low the price of these "basic but good enough" portables can go.
The original target price of the OLPC machine was around $100, but its designer, Mary-Lou Jepsen, already thinks she can do better. She says that a $75 system is "within reach," and she set up a new company, Pixel Qi, to help realise that vision.
In the process, she hopes to spawn an entirely new generation of computers. "We'll have decent, highly portable, rugged, multi-use computers everywhere. That poses constraints on the circumstances of use - the input aspects and the screens, the networking and the software, all will have to evolve." If they're to be cheap enough for many people in developing countries to buy, these systems will almost certainly be using open source, but Jepsen doesn't see the zero price tag as its main advantage: "The true and large value of free [software] is the ability to change and customise it."
In other words, Microsoft could give away its software, and it still couldn't compete with the truly open, customisable nature of free code. It seems that the only way Microsoft can hope to get people using its software on this new class of low-cost, ultraportable machines is by going fully open source itself.
· Glyn Moody writes about open source at opendotdotdot.blogspot.com
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Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, is to start selling wine in the US, entering a business fraught with regulatory complexities and littered with the wreckage of previous failures.
Amazon is looking to recruit a senior wine buyer, whom it says will be responsible for "the acquisition of a massive new product selection" for its site. The wine sales will augment a rapidly expanding non-perishable groceries business that Amazon launched two years ago.
The supposed potential of online wine sales drew millions of dollars in investments during the internet boom but a series of start-ups struggled in the face of strict state-by-state restrictions on wine shipping.
Amazon itself invested $30m in 1999 in a 45 per cent share of Wineshopper.com, a start-up that expired the following year. Wine.com, now the largest US online wine seller, sells food gift baskets via Amazon's site, but not wine.
Wine.com has a long history of financial problems, illustrating the challenges of dealing with state restrictions on shipping wine shaped in the 1930s after the end of Prohibition. The retailer can ship wine to customers in only 26 states and is obliged to operate 10 different warehouses that buy from state-licensed wholesalers, increasing its costs.
A 2005 Supreme Court ruling has led to an easing of restrictions on shipping by vineyards.
But Tom Wark of the Speciality Wine Retailers Association said new legislation required by the ruling has led some states to tighten restrictions on out-of-state online retailers.
Some smaller e-commerce sites have been shipping wine to customers in defiance of state laws, taking advantage of the difficulty state regulators face in identifying unmarked small shipments to individuals.
Amazon declined to comment on its plans. The description of its new senior wine buyer's job includes working to build an "entirely new selection from the ground up" through direct contacts with vendors.
It has also said it will add wine and beer to a pilot fresh grocery delivery service, Amazon Fresh, that it is currently operating only in its home city of Seattle.
Chris Adams, an executive at Sherry-Lehmann, a leading New York wine retailer, welcomed Amazon's interest, saying it lent support to the view that states would ease restrictions. "It is a nod to the fact that the laws of the land are changing and that open markets will win the day," he said.
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Aw snap. It finally, really happened... kind of. Apple has just dropped a nasty refresh on its MacBook and MacBook Pro lines, knocking the processor speeds up, and giving the Pros that tasty multi-touch the MacBook Air has been sporting. Still, they couldn't break off an even slightly new form-factor for us? Both lines are sporting Intel's downsized new Penryn chips, which should make your lap and / or battery quite happy. Right now we're seeing updates to the GPU memory, an LED backlight (option!) for 17-inchers, as well as LEDs on all the rest of the Pros (sorry again MacBookers). New specs on the MBPs include a CPU boost to a base speed of 2.4GHz all the way up to 2.6GHz, that suspiciously new 3MB or 6MB L2 cache on the CPUs, added RAM to the graphics cards (up to 512MB for the higher-end 15-inch, and all 17-inch models), and of course the new trackpad. On the MacBook front, things look even more familiar, with only minor bumps to speed (2.1GHz up to 2.4GHz) and CPUs. Both new lines get hard drive increases, with the MBPs rocking 200GB or 250GB options, while the MBs range from 120GB all the way up to 250GB. Ports, weight, and size all appear to be just the same for both lines, undoubtedly to the chagrin of many readers, and Apple is skimping on the Apple Remote across the line; it's now a $19 add-on. Full SKU rundown after the break.
Update: Just to make it totally clear, Apple confirmed to us that the processors are indeed Penryn, as noted above. As for future updates and notable omissions in this round, they had little to say.
MacBook
- $1,099 - (White) 2.1GHz, 1GB memory, 120GB HDD, Combo drive
- $1,299 - (White) 2.4GHz, 2GB memory, 160GB HDD, Double-layer SuperDrive
- $1,499 - (Black) 2.4GHz, 2GB memory, 250GB HDD, Double-layer SuperDrive
MacBook Pro
- $1,999 - (15-inch) 2.4GHz, 2GB memory, 200GB HDD, Double-layer SuperDrive, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB
- $2,499 - (15-inch) 2.5GHz, 2GB memory, 250GB HDD, Double-layer SuperDrive, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB
- $2,799 - (17-inch) 2.5GHz, 2GB memory, 250GB HDD, Double-layer SuperDrive, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB
Hi-res LED screen for 17-inch is $100 extra, 2.6GHz processor is another $250.
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CUPERTINO, California—February 26, 2008—Apple® today announced that iTunes® (www.itunes.com) is now the number two music retailer in the US, behind only Wal-Mart, based on the latest data from the NPD Group*. Apple also announced that there are now over 50 million iTunes Store customers. iTunes has sold over four billion songs, with an incredible 20 million songs sold on Christmas Day 2007 alone, and offers the world’s largest music catalog of over six million songs from all of the major and thousands of independent labels.
“We’d like to thank the over 50 million music lovers who have helped the iTunes Store reach this incredible milestone,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We continue to add great new features like iTunes Movie Rentals to give our customers even more reason to love iTunes.”
Last month, Apple launched iTunes Movie Rentals featuring movies from all of the major movie studios including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate and New Line Cinema. Users can rent movies and watch them on their PCs or Macs, all current generation iPods**, iPhone™ and on a widescreen TV with Apple TV®. iTunes Movie Rentals will offer over 1,000 titles by the end of this month, including over 100 titles in stunning high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound which users can rent directly from their widescreen TV using Apple TV.
iTunes 7.6 is available as a free download at www.itunes.com. iTunes Movie Rentals are available in the US only and are $2.99 (US) for library titles and $3.99 (US) for new releases, and high definition versions are priced just one dollar more with library titles at $3.99 (US) and new releases at $4.99 (US). Movie rentals from the iTunes Store for Mac® or Windows require iTunes 7.6. iTunes Movie Rentals require a valid credit card with a billing address in the country of purchase.
*Based on data from market research firm the NPD Group’s MusicWatch survey that captures consumer reported past week unit purchases and counts one CD representing 12 tracks, excluding wireless transactions. The iTunes Music Store became the second-largest music retailer in the US after Wal-Mart, based on the amount of music sold during 2007.
**Movie rentals work on iPod® classic, iPod nano with video and iPod touch.
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in
the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the
1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry
in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system
and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the
digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players
and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with
its revolutionary iPhone.
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MTV Networks is adding to its brood. In a series of moves aimed at expanding the Nickelodeon/MTVN kids and family group’s footprint in the parenting category, the company has acquired Babunga, a network of niche Web sites aimed at expectant mothers, including Babynamesworld.com, 3dpregnancy.com and Wikiparenting.com.
Nick plans to use those acquisitions to establish a parents-centric ad network anchored by ParentsConnect.com, a community site the company launched in 2006. As part of the venture, the company will sell ads on a handful of smaller, non-Nick-owned sites, including ParentPreviews.com and Smartmomma.com, mirroring a recent trend wherein traditional media players aim to sell ads across the Web’s long tail.
At the heart of Nick’s parent trap is a revamped
ParentsConnect.com, a site MTVN created as a Facebook-like environment
for moms and dads. The new version of the site retains community
elements but now offers more portal-esque navigation and editorial with
a distinct Nick voice.
The site’s tagline is “We’re not perfect, we’re parents.”
Steve Youngwood, executive vp, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids
& Family Group, said that since ParentsConnect.com went live, the
company found that facilitating community was not enough to keep
parents engaged: “We learned that content is the spark to build
community.”
The site features polls designed to start
a dialogue between parents, with questions ranging from “Were you
raised to respect different races?” to “What would you do if your
partner got you a blender for Valentine’s Day?”
Nickelodeon also integrated GoCityKids, the family-oriented local listings property it acquired in 2005, into ParentsConnect.
Perhaps the greatest enhancement, said Youngwood, is Lifebook, a new tool providing parents a means of creating a virtual scrapbook. “Every site needs its killer app, and we think this could be it,” he said.
As for the Babunga deal, Youngwood said that while his group already has a strong connection with parents of preschoolers through NickJr.com, the new sites will reach parents earlier than ever. “Our relationship with parents really starts at age 2,” he said. “This is a crucial extension.”
With its growing stable of parenting sites, MTVN execs believe they can compete in a crowded category with scale and top-notch edit. “You suddenly have a portfolio you can take to the ad community that would be hard-pressed to match,” said Nada Stirratt, executive vp, MTV Networks Digital Media.
A team of five former Apple software engineers, led by former Apple Exec Jean-Marie Hullot
, have been working on a new stealth desktop/web photography focused startup called Fotonauts since late 2006. Sometime in the next couple of months, they’ll launch publicly. The company is based in Paris, France.
Hullot, who worked with Steve Jobs at Apple in the 1980’s, left with
him to serve as CTO of NeXT Software. Hullot returned to Apple when it
acquired NeXT in late 1996 for $400 million, and served as the CTO of
the software devision, reporting to SVP Sina Tamaddon.
He was a key part of the early thinking on the iPhone - a recent French
television program actually says he came up with the idea in the first
place.
Hullot and much of the Paris engineering office was let go from Apple in 2006 after Hullot reportedly lost an internal political battle over the direction of the iPhone. But under French law, laid off workers can receive 80% pay for up to 18 months after losing their jobs, directly from the government. Hullot kept five of his top engineers to work on fotonauts, while the French government paid their wages.
I don’t know much yet about the product, other than that it is photography related and includes both desktop software and a website component. A private beta should be available in the next month or two.
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http://www.dailymotion.com/us
http://www.dailymotion.com/us
In
the Yahoo-Microsoft takeover battle, Yahoo's 40 percent stake in Yahoo
Japan is treated as an afterthought: Spare goods to be sold off to
boost shareholder returns. But Yahoo Japan, in its home country, is
Google, eBay, and Yahoo rolled into one. It's worth $29 billion
-- more than Yahoo itself was worth before the Microsoft bid. Which
raises the question: Why isn't Yahoo Japan the one buying Yahoo? Before
you dismiss it, consider the precedents.
In the U.S., 7/Eleven is one of many convenience-store chains. In Japan, it's an iconic retailing powerhouse -- and it has owned 7-Eleven in the U.S. for 18 years.
Another model: The Seagate-Veritas deal. Seagate, a hard-drive maker, owned a large chunk of Veritas, a storage-software company it had spun off. In a $20 billion deal, Silver Lake took Seagate private, swapping out Seagate shares for Veritas shares. Similarly, Yahoo Japan could unlock its shares held by Yahoo by swapping them for a large equity stake. Complicated, but not inconceivable, especially if private equity injects some cash -- and money managers might be keener on a direct stake in Yahoo Japan than in the U.S. operation.
The key to such a deal would be Softbank, which owns 41 percent of Yahoo Japan. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son has close ties to both Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who sits on the board of Yahoo Japan.
Softbank also owns 3.9 percent of Yahoo, but it also owns, as does Yahoo, a large stake in Alibaba, the operator of Yahoo China. Alibaba's management is reportedly restive about the prospect of Microsoft getting a say in their affairs. Softbank might throw its Alibaba stake into the combination, which would give Alibaba an exit in the public markets without the risk of an IPO, and the new Yahoo majority control of its Chinese websites.
Making the numbers work, especially when Microsoft could easily raise its bid, is a challenge. In some ways, selling out to Yahoo Japan would be as humbling to Yahoo's management as selling to Microsoft. But while Tokyo is more distant than Redmond, I suspect the cultures are more compatible.
The fundamental logic of Microsoft's bid is that it can do more with the Yahoo brand than Yahoo itself can. Many doubt Microsoft will actually manage that. Yahoo Japan has proven it can.
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