Microsoft touts cost savings of Vista over XP (InfoWorld)
According to research conducted by Wipro and GCR Custom Research, total cost of ownership for Windows XP is $4,407 annually, while Vista's cost is $3,802. The $4,407 figure was derived from costs of hardware, software, IT labor, and user costs. Mobile PCs were the focus because these units will outship desktop systems by 2010, said Hiroshi Sakakibara, product manager for Windows Product Management at Microsoft.
Peculiarly, the study actually was based on XP usage and extrapolations based on Vista capabilities because there was not a substantial base of Vista clients in use yet when the study was done early in 2007. Now, the installed base of Vista is 60 million PCs, Microsoft said.
GCR and Wipro calculated that the Vista upgrade itself saves $251 per year. These benefits include enhancements in security, desktop engineering, service desk requirements, user labor, and hardware and software benefits. Among the improvements noted were in such areas as network diagnostics, backup and restore, self-healing functions, and implementation of security policies.
Deploying best practices through Microsoft's model adds another $236 in Vista savings, while utilizing the MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) saves $118 per PC. MDOP features Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization and the Microsoft Asset Inventory Service, while Infrastructure Optimization covers best practices, such as controlling PC configurations. MDOP is available as part of Microsoft's Software Assurance licensing program.
Reducing vulnerabilities and utilizing security policies presents savings, noted Bill Barna, principal consultant at Wipro. Security savings alone were estimated at $55. "If you can reduce the number of core vulnerabilities, you can basically have the savings flow throughout the entire security model," Barna said.
The survey featured 541 phones calls to users at 131 XP user organizations; one IT decision-maker and three end-users were polled at each user site.
While Microsoft is promoting Vista upgrades, a Free Software Foundation project called is pushing free software as an alternative.
"We describe it as a campaign definitely against Vista but chiefly to promote free software over Vista," said John Sullivan, a campaign manager at the foundation.
Users should replace "proprietary" systems with a free system like GNU-Linux, Sullivan said.
Analyst: Open XML's Defeat No Small Setback (NewsFactor)
"I think it's a significant setback and that Microsoft will have to work on the specification itself in order to clear up what some people are saying are its inconsistencies," said research director Jim Murphy at AMR Research.
The comments that accompanied the negative votes against Microsoft's proposal will be discussed next February at an ISO ballot resolution meeting to be held in Geneva, Switzerland.
Simplifying the Spec
To address these concerns, Microsoft will have to find a way to simplify Open XML without handicapping itself, which is no easy task, Murphy noted.
"Until OXML is published, it's not really open because it is so complex," Murphy said. "Microsoft also controls it, which means it is effectively proprietary — whether published or not — and thus inaccessible to your average developer."
But the AMR Research analyst also said he thinks that Microsoft will eventually clear things up sufficiently to be approved. "In the meantime, the delay is going to give some opportunities to other tool providers [and] open-source groups," Murphy added. "Sun and IBM may also be beneficiaries."
A Tactic That Backfired
Ironically, Microsoft's use of questionable tactics, such as prodding its business partners at the last minute to join Sweden's national voting body, might have backfired. Sweden's initial positive vote on Open XML was subsequently nullified after it was discovered that some members had voted twice. The behind-the-scenes maneuvering might also have alienated some members of other national bodies voting on the proposal, critics now say.
"We view ISO and its good-faith-based rules as a victim of these actions, as are the members of ISO, and all of those that rely on consensus-based standards," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. "Notwithstanding all of these many ploys, the right result was still reached, if narrowly,"
Zemlin said he hopes that Microsoft's moves going forward will prove to be more consistent with the good-faith process that normally characterizes the standards approval process. "If not, ISO will need the support of all concerned — members, bloggers, press, and consumer advocates — to confront any inappropriate actions in the short term, and to amend its rules and procedures in the long term, to ensure that abuses such as those we have just seen do not become a permanent fixture of the standard-setting system," Zemlin said.
Neither Surprising, Nor New
The International Standards Organization, however, appears to be unfazed by the contentious atmosphere surrounding the recent vote on Open XML.
"Given the major economic stakes, it is neither surprising, nor new, that political considerations can enter into play," said Roger Frost, ISO Central Secretariat's manager of communication services. "However, the development processes are designed to ensure that all stakeholder views are taken into account."
Achieving consensus can involve national delegations moving from initially competing, or even conflicting positions to an agreement that everyone can live with, Frost said. Overall, the process "provides benefits for all stakeholders," he added.
Putting the Open XML vote into perspective, Frost noted that an all-time record production of 1,386 ISO standards were published over all technical fields last year, compared with 889 in 2002. "This suggests that the standards development process is indeed delivering the standards needed by the market," Frost concluded.
Schwarzenegger appeals ruling on video game law (Reuters)
U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte ruled last month that the law passed in 2005 was unconstitutional, adding there was no evidence that violent video games were any more harmful than depictions of violence in television shows and movies.
Schwarzenegger, who acted in many violent movies, argued that violent video games should be for adults only.
"Many studies show the link between playing ultra-violent video games and violent behavior. We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the effects of games that depict ultra-violent actions," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
"We protect our children from buying inappropriate movies and ought to be able to protect them from buying inappropriate video games as well," he said.
Schwarzenegger's appeal was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
(Reporting by Jim Christie)
A global vision from the new man at EA Sports
Peter Moore wants to push his operation to pay more attention to the PC. (Gus Ruelas/Reuters)
EA Sports is one of the most powerful, lucrative brands in the video game business. That's not enough for Peter Moore.
Two months ago Moore stunned the game world with the announcement that he would step down as head of Microsoft's games operation to be president of the sports division at Electronic Arts, the No. 1 game publisher.
He started his new job on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, in a presentation to journalists at the company's headquarters in Redwood City, California, he shared his vision for moving EA Sports beyond video games to a global sports and entertainment enterprise.
“There is a great opportunity to take EA Sports and turn it into a general sports brand that can compete not only with Take-Two and Konami and the other usual suspects in the video game world,” Moore said by telephone Monday, but also “to look at ourselves in a different way and compete with the likes of Nike and ESPN to win the hearts and minds of a very desirable demographic group, which is the 14-to-34-year-old male worldwide.
“That could mean broadcast sports, sports camps, the ability to license consumer products around the EA Sports brand,” he continued.
“That means technology that brings sports to life for coaches, players and television viewers, and it means services online for sports fans to connect with one another.”
Ben Schachter, an Internet and video game analyst at UBS Securities, agreed that Moore's big challenge was to find different ways to compete for the time and eyeballs of young men.
“They have certainly been successful in areas like football, but the big question going forward is whether they can actually grow the user base and get these young male consumers to buy more EA Sports products,” Schachter said. “They are competing not only against nonsports video games but also the MySpaces and Facebooks of the world, and they need to find new ways to bring in those potential customers.”
The company's cornerstones - “Madden” football, “FIFA” soccer and “Tiger Woods” golf games - continue to sell millions of copies each year, but both Electronic Arts and its sports operation have grown sluggishly, if at all, in recent years.
John Riccitiello, who took over as Electronic Arts' chief executive in spring, has pledged to reinvigorate the company and seems to have brought in Moore as one of his prime agents of change.
“It may sound like heresy, but I'm not here to just sell more 'Maddens' and more 'FIFAs,' ” Moore said. “Protecting our base is very important, but I didn't come here to just maintain the status quo and build the business 5 percent to 7 percent a year.”
In particular, Moore said, there could be an opportunity for Electronic Arts to set up a global news and social networking service for sports fans.
“As a sports fan, for the information I have to collate every morning, I have to go to eight to 10 to 13 different sites just to hit my favorite bookmarks,” he said. “Yahoo has a lot, and ESPN too, but ESPN is very North American. I think we have an opportunity to aggregate information and bring it to life with video technologies.”
In general, he said he would push his operation to develop more online products and to pay more attention to the PC, which is the dominant gaming system in Asia outside of Japan, especially in China and South Korea.
The overall concept, Moore said, is to focus on opportunities to use technology and the EA Sports brand to connect sports fans. As an example of his intended direction, he said he planned to unveil “EA Sports GameShow,” a live online trivia game to be made available free for PCs this fall.
In “GameShow,” which will be supported by advertising, players will log in to compete in live trivia contests, both individually and as part of teams. Moore said if the initial game was a success, it could potentially move to the online services associated with major game consoles like Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3.
“We continue to talk a good game about online, but we as publishers have not taken full advantage of that opportunity,” he said. “In some ways 'GameShow' is a pilot for what we hope to be a much more substantial online presence going forward.”
Moore's background may be particularly suited to the challenge he has set for himself. Before working in the games business at Microsoft and as president of Sega of America, he was a senior marketing executive at Reebok and president of the U.S. operation of Patrick, a French sportswear company.
NBC in digital video deal with Amazon
One of the NBC television programs that will be made available on Amazon.com is “Heroes,” (Dima Gavrysh/The Associated Press)
NBC Universal has significantly deepened its relationship with Amazon's digital video download service after a dispute with Apple over the pricing of its television shows on iTunes.
NBC Universal, which is part of General Electric, said Tuesday that Amazon had agreed to give it something that Apple would not: greater flexibility in the pricing and packaging of video downloads. As a result, NBC Universal said it had agreed to sell a wide variety of television programming on Amazon's fledgling Unbox download service, including a drama, “Heroes,” and two comedies, “The Office” and “30 Rock.” Episodes will be available on Unbox the day after they are shown.
While Amazon is still working to determine pricing, Unbox typically charges more for newer releases than for older ones. Unbox also gives consumers more options, including whether to rent a movie for $3.99 or buy a download for $14.99. Amazon agreed to offer promotions, including a 30 percent discount when buying full seasons of television shows.
Apple sells episodes of television shows for $1.99, with movies priced at $9.99.
Last week, NBC Universal became the first television and movie company to publicly challenge Apple's pricing as too low, saying it would not renew its contract with iTunes without a change. Apple retaliated by saying it would not add new episodes of NBC shows to the iTunes inventory.
NBC Universal's decision to be a partner with an Apple rival could embolden other media companies to do the same. News Corp. in particular has been grumbling about Apple's prices. And Amazon has now shown that it is waiting with open arms.
“Amazon is a company that understands the value we provide as content owners to its business,” said Jean-Briac Perrette, president of NBC Universal Digital Distribution.
Amazon hopes NBC Universal's inventory will give Unbox a much-needed boost. Unveiled in September 2006, the service is a distant competitor to iTunes and has suffered from scattered service problems, including lengthy waits for downloads.
While Amazon has solved many of the problems, Unbox is still limited in one important aspect: it is not compatible with Apple's iPods, which are by far the most popular portable video players.
Unbox allows consumers to rent or buy video for viewing on a personal computer or certain portable video players. Unbox can also deliver video directly to television sets through TiVo devices.
In addition to new episodes of returning series, NBC Universal said it would allow Unbox customers to download free - in advance of their network premieres - the pilot episodes of new series, including a “Bionic Woman” remake and “Journeyman,” which is about a man who travels through time to help people in trouble.
NBC Universal has long offered library movies like “Psycho” and “Animal House” on Unbox and later this year will begin offering newer releases like the comedies “Knocked Up” and “Evan Almighty.”
Tech in Brief: Broadcom suit revived against rival Qualcomm
Broadcom suit revived against rival Qualcomm
SAN DIEGO: A U.S. appeals court has revived part of Broadcom's antitrust lawsuit against Qualcomm.
A U.S. judge in New Jersey had dismissed Broadcom's lawsuit last year, but a 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel reversed part of that decision Tuesday. The three-judge appeals panel ordered the lower court to reconsider two portions of Broadcom's suit.
Broadcom sued Qualcomm in July 2005, saying its rival thwarted competition for high-end cellphones based on WCDMA network technology.
The suit claimed Qualcomm promised to license its patents on “fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms” and used discounts on royalties and other techniques that improperly benefited Qualcomm's chip business.
Both companies welcomed the ruling. Qualcomm noted only two of Broadcom's eight claims remain.
Microsoft takes on Flash
SEATTLE: Microsoft is releasing new online-video software that works on both its Windows operating system and the rival Linux software, stepping up competition with Adobe Systems's Flash.
The Windows version of the software, called Silverlight, is available for download, said Brian Goldfarb, a group product manager at Microsoft. The Linux version, called Moonlight, will be developed with Novell.
Microsoft is giving Silverlight away for free, planning to make money on sales of programs for designing Web sites.
NOKIA has begun working with Intel and Check Point Software Technologies to improve network security. The companies aim to create appliances that inspect network traffic and search for cyberattacks.
PALM has canceled plans to sell the Foleo, a compact computer much maligned by technology blogs, saying that it would focus on developing new software and smartphones. As a result, Palm said it would take a charge of “less than $10 million” to its earnings.
WPP Group, the advertising giant, bought 49 percent of PBN, which is based in Washington and has offices in the former Soviet Union, and a 51 percent stake in Gregg Sedgwick Creative Strategy, a consulting firm in Dubai.
Apple unveils new iPod models
SAN FRANCISCO: Apple announced Wednesday that it would cut the price of its iPhone, introduce a new iPod that looks like the iPhone and unveil a version of its iTunes store that downloads music directly to the player rather than to a computer.
The presentations made by Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive, were a “total refresh” of the iPod line, and also signify a shift toward turning the music player into a hand-held computer.
The company dropped the price of its eight-gigabyte iPhone by $200, to $399. The company did not give an reason for the price cut, which analysts said had been selling very well.
Jobs also displayed a new iPod model, the “Touch,” that looks like an iPhone, though it lacks calling capability. The eight-gigabyte model will sell for $299 and a 16-gigabyte model will sell for $399 later this month.
“Apple has always been aggressive with price cuts to keep the competition at bay,” Shannon Cross, of Cross Research, told Reuters.
The device will be sold overseas, Jobs said.
The new iPod has a built-in Wi-Fi antenna that allows it to make wireless connections to the Internet. It also has an Internet browser, which makes it more of a hand-held computer than any other music player.
User will be able to connect to a new iTunes Wi-Fi store where they can download songs directly to their music players.
Another feature of the iPod software will be the ability to alert a user entering a Starbucks coffee shop to the music being played there. If a person likes the song and wants to buy it on iTunes, they tap an icon on the screen.
Howard Schultz, the chief executive of Starbucks, said stores in the United States are being fitted to manage this process. Stores in Seattle and New York City would have the capability by the end of this month, with stores elsewhere in the country outfitted over the next two years, he said.
Apple is fighting to keep its dominance of the digital media business as it faces renewed attacks from rivals including Microsoft, which also said Wednesday that it was cutting the price of its own wireless music device, the Zune.
Apple's stock price fell sharply on the news after rising 13.5 percent over the past week since the company said it would be making an announcement Wednesday.
Apple shares, which are up about 70 percent this year, fell $7.40, or 5.13 percent, to $137.76 in afternoon trading in New York. Shares of AT&T, the service provider for the iPhone, fell 55 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $39.73 in New York.
Commenting on the decline in the share price, Paul Foster, options strategist at the Web information site theflyonthewall.com, told Reuters: ” I guess investors were anticipating something more positive from Apple.”
Facebook allows limited public searches (AP)
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The company also plans to begin letting Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and other search companies index portions of Facebook profiles to help nonusers more easily find them.
Facebook, which faced a user rebellion a year ago over privacy concerns, stressed that information available through such searches would be less than what someone could find simply by signing up. Users could choose to remain invisible in such searches.
“We think this will help more people connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or data,” Facebook engineer Philip Fung wrote in a company blog entry.
Normally, a search on Facebook would yield a user’s name, photo, list of friends and network — such as that person’s college or work affiliation or hometown. Nonusers would get the name and photo only. They also must sign up to contact the user.
Begun as an online community limited to college campuses, Facebook has grown in usage as membership eligibility gradually expanded to high schools, selected companies and later anyone with an e-mail address.
Unlike the social-networking leader MySpace from News Corp., Facebook has built several walls to limit what people can see about its users. So when Facebook launched a feature to let users easily see changes made to another member’s profile, users rebelled and forced the company to offer additional privacy controls.
But limiting access in the name of privacy can also limit growth, and Facebook has been trying to strike a balance.
Travel site offers weekend-only trips (AP)
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A new feature from the travel search site Kayak lets you price airline tickets for the next five weekends or for weekends in a specific month. Users can choose to leave as early as Thursday and return as late as Monday.
Previously, a Kayak user would have had to search flights for each weekend separately by entering the appropriate dates and jotting down the best prices.
“Travelers all over the world are taking shorter vacations, typically opting for long weekend trips,” Steve Hafner, Kayak’s chief executive, said in a statement.
The weekend search feature, he said, is designed “specifically for the flexible weekend warrior.”
It’s the latest effort by travel sites to help consumers find deals if their travel dates are flexible. Many travel sites already offer the option of automatically checking flights leaving or returning a few days before or after a specified date.
Apple in wireless music deal with Starbucks (Reuters)
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The service will debut at more than 600 Starbucks stores in New York and Seattle on October 2, the companies said, and will be expanded to other markets later this year and next.
"We know a lot of people are going to be very happy with this new combination of coffee and iPods," Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said at an event in San Francisco, adding that he had been working on the deal for more than two years.
Starbucks customers with the new iPod touch, an iPhone, or a computer running iTunes will be able to navigate to the new iTunes Wi-Fi music store without paying a connection fee.
Currently, customers pay to use the Wi-Fi wireless Internet service provided by Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile at Starbucks' U.S. stores.
While they are navigating the iTunes store, Starbucks customers will be able to see what song is playing in the store at that moment and will be given the option to buy it with one click, the companies said.
"We think we will drive incremental traffic into our stores," Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz said of the new service.
Starbucks shares were down 30 cents, or 1.1 percent, at $27.42 in afternoon trade on Nasdaq, and Apple shares were down $4.32 or 3 percent at $139.80.
Reuters
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