Aldrin: Nowak Should Be Admired

HP core LAN switch signals rise of ProCurve (InfoWorld)

The company's ProCurve networking division has made steady progress in SMBs over the past several years and last year started targeting Fortune 100 enterprises. That move has already paid off, according to market research company Dell'Oro Group, which said ProCurve beat Nortel Networks to become the second-biggest enterprise Ethernet switch vendor in the second quarter with 5.5 percent of worldwide revenue. Cisco led with 71.3 percent.

On Monday, the company unveiled the ProCurve Switch 8212zl, which completes its lineup of products from the core to the edge of the LAN, according to Wenceslao Lada, vice president and general manager of ProCurve. The 8212zl is based on HP's ProVision network chip technology. It also introduced the Wireless Edge Services zl Module, a hardware module for the new switch and the 5400zl Series Intelligent Edge switches. That blade could be the first of many such products with a range of added capabilities, such as VoIP, Lada said.

ProCurve has gained converts partly through competitive pricing and partly by appealing to enterprises that want relatively basic features in their LANs, analysts said. While Cisco pitches expanded network tools, such as NAC and deep packet inspection functions, most enterprises don't really want those things, said Burton Group analyst David Passmore. But another advantage the division has is its name, which can make ProCurve's gear an easier sell to top executives who hold the purse strings, he added. Other Cisco rivals, such as Foundry Networks, aren't exactly startups but don't give the same assurance of longevity, he said.

"There are an awful lot of customers who are looking for an alternative to Cisco and yet want to buy from a big name," Passmore said.

ProCurve is run as an independent business within HP. But recently the company has started using its corporate tie more actively, turning to the HP Services consulting business for referrals to customers that want network help, ProCurve's Lada said.

Lada pointed to two other factors he said give ProCurve an edge: It offers a lifetime warranty on products all the way from the core to the edge, including the new switch. Many common parts among a range of ProCurve products, and the same operating system across the board, also make management easier and less expensive, he said. Cisco has different versions of its IOS (Internetwork Operating System) for different devices.

Going up against Cisco's multiprotocol routing expertise, HP partners with Foundry for the technology in the ProCurve 9300 core switch, Lada said. That relationship continues because the 9300 offers more routing capabilities, and HP will keep selling and supporting that product, he said.

The company's sales still come about 75 percent from small and medium-sized customers, with 25 percent larger enterprises, according to Lada.

"ProCurve was predominantly an SMB play, but they have been expanding upward," said Dell'Oro analyst Alan Weckel. He thinks the company has broken away from the pack of also-rans. Its Ethernet switch revenue in the second quarter was nearly $240 million, up from just about $140 million a year earlier, according to Dell'Oro. Number-three Nortel, still recovering from years of financial restatements and reorganization, came in with about $150 million in this year's second quarter. Cisco, meanwhile, had more than $3.1 million in Ethernet switch revenue in the quarter.

Sony shows rolling music player (AP)

The $354, 11-ounce Rolly, set to go on sale in Japan Sept. 29, is small enough to fit in your palm and comes with stereo speakers, 1 gigabyte of internal flash memory and a battery good for about five hours of music.

The smooth, white Rolly also can spin in place so fast it turns into a blur, and its sensors enable a user to control volume by turning the player clockwise or counterclockwise or switch tunes by pushing or pulling the gadget.

The Rolly doesn’t have an American counterpart, but it will go up against Japanese robot maker ZMP Inc.’s Miuro at home. Miuro, which looks like a white ball caught inside an egg, wheels about in time to music when an iPod is locked onto it.

Sony plans to sell packages of moves and tunes online for Rolly. And users will be able to program the Bluetooth-capable product on a PC using software that analyzes music and produces choreography to match and then sends the programs to the Rolly, Sony said.

Not quite a pet, the Rolly won’t take over from the Aibo robot dog, which Sony discontinued last year as part of its restructuring effort, disappointing avid owners. It can be set as an alarm clock, though.

And Sony, which has been struggling to turn around its faltering electronics business, has been building anticipation for the device on its “countdown” Web site as a visual way to enjoy music that takes advantage of its robotics technology.

The Rolly, which plays MP3 files, Sony’s own audio format called ATRAC as well as songs uploaded from CDs, can store more than 600 songs, though its capacity falls to as few as 100 when complex moves are added.

Plans for sales outside Japan are not yet set.

Solar plane flies longer than any other (AP)

The record is currently 30 hours, 24 minutes in a flight on July 23, the company said.

QinetiQ’s trapezoid-shaped, ultra-thin “Zephyr” plane may not hold onto the record because the flight at the White Sands Missile Range in the New Mexico desert was not witnessed by officials from the World Air Sports Federation, which keeps and certifies records, the company said.

Built from carbon fibers, the aircraft is 59 feet long and weighs about 66 pounds — light enough to be launched, by hand, by a team of three. It uses paper-thin silicon panels to draw on the sun’s power and stores the surplus in lithium-sulphur batteries, which power it through the night.

QinetiQ said Britain’s Ministry of Defense had contributed several million pounds to the project, but the company declined to say how much it cost.

Zephyr could be used for surveillance and communications, the company said.

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Vodafone to launch unlimited music service in UK (Reuters)

Mobile handset makers and network operators have been investing heavily in music in recent years to boost revenue.

Nokia, the world's largest cell phone maker, unveiled an online music store last month while Apple's latest "must-have" gadget, the iPhone, is due in Britain by the end of the year.

Analysts had expected Vodafone to secure an exclusive, pan-European deal to sell the iPhone but media reports suggest it is now set to miss out.

"I am sure the iPhone will have appeal but we think what we are offering here with MusicStation is a very good, customer-centric, all-you-can-eat offer," Vodafone Chief Marketing Officer Tim Yates told Reuters.

Vodafone has signed an exclusive deal with British music firm Omnifone that will give customers an unlimited number of tracks from a catalogue of over 1 million to their mobile phones for a weekly fee of 1.99 pounds.

Omnifone's MusicStation will allow consumers to download music while they are on the move and it will be available on new Vodafone UK handsets as well as existing 2.5G and 3G mobiles, meaning most customers would not need to upgrade their phones.

Nokia will roll out its music store later this year with songs selling for 1 euro (68 pence) each and Yates said Vodafone would range the Nokia handsets, the N81 and N95, in its store and allow customers to decide which music service to use.

"Today's announcement … means a fundamental change to the way people experience music on their phones," he said.

In a bid to boost its Christmas sales, the group also unveiled additions to its handset range, offering what it said was its widest choice of Internet-ready mobile phones with high-speed third-generation (3G) broadband access.

Vodafone, which has been developing its 3G network across Europe, will sell multimedia phones from manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson and the majority of devices will support access to Web sites such as eBay, MySpace and YouTube.

Vodafone will also market two BlackBerry handsets from Research in Motion to consumers as well as business customers.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk used in Fossett search (InfoWorld)

Mechanical Turk is a Web service hosted by Amazon that lets anyone combine human intelligence with computer programs. The site aims to make up for a specific failure that persists in computers. "Humans still significantly outperform the most powerful computers at completing such simple tasks as identifying objects in photographs — something children can do even before they learn to speak," the site explains.

Friends of Fossett have set up a on Mechanical Turk that could help identify the location of his airplane. Fossett set out in the plane in Nevada on Sept. 3 and hasn't been heard from since.

Anyone can visit the Mechanical Turk site and lend a hand. Instructions on the page ask participants to view satellite images within Google Earth of the region where Fossett is thought to be. If they see anything that might resemble the airplane, they can mark the satellite image as containing an object that should be looked at more closely.

Participants are asked to mark an image if they are at all suspicious that it contains something of interest. The project also cautions people not to worry that missing a detail will be tragic, because many people will look at the same image. Marked images will be further examined by experts.

Mechanical Turk was also enlisted in the hunt for Jim Gray, a prominent computer scientist who went missing after setting off on his sail boat earlier this year. He has not been found.

The Fossett effort also includes airplane and helicopter searchers.

Fossett is well-known for being the first person to fly a plane solo around the world without refueling and also for making it around the world in a balloon. He has set 115 world records or world firsts, has swum the English Channel and completed the Iditarod, a dog sled race in Alaska, according to his .

While people helping to hunt for Fossett and Gray are volunteers, other Mechanical Turk projects pay participants, usually less than $0.25 per task.

Mechanical Turk isn't the only online service that relies on human intelligence. , a search engine launched last year, uses human "guides" to provide search results. A user inserts a search term and a remote worker searches for the answer, sending links to Web pages back to the user. The guide may be an expert in the subject the user is searching for so may be able to find better results than other search engines, according to ChaCha.

is another search site that uses people to compile results for common search terms. Workers weed out spam sites, pages with overbearing advertising and sites that use information without giving appropriate credit to the source.

IBM throws weight behind OpenOffice.org project (InfoWorld)

IBM has been using code from the project in its development of productivity applications it included in Lotus 8, the latest version of its collaboration suite, but until now had not been an official member of the community, said Doug Heintzman, director of strategy for the Lotus division at IBM. The company now will contribute its own code to the project and be more visible about its work to integrate OpenOffice.org into Lotus, he said.

Heintzman acknowledged that the  was one reason IBM decided to join the effort. OpenOffice.org uses ODF (Open Document Format), a rival file format to Open XML that is already an ISO technology standard. IBM is one of the companies pushing for the use of ODF in companies and government organizations that are creating mandates to only use technology based on open standards in their IT architectures.

"They are certainly related," he said of the ISO vote and IBM's decision to join OpenOffice.org. "We think that it's now time to make sure there is a public code base that implements this spec so we can attract a critical mass to build these new value propositions."

Sun founded OpenOffice.org and offers its own commercial implementation of the suite, called StarOffice. The company, a long-time IBM competitor in the hardware and software markets, also has been the primary contributor to the code, one of the reasons IBM balked for so long before joining the group.

"[The community] has had some challenges in recruiting an awful lot of big names to support the activity, but [now] we think there are some that can provide an example to us all to provide a vibrant place to add value," Heintzman said. "We hope that our voice at the table will help us evolve the community."

Intellectual-property attorney and well-known ODF supporter Andrew Updegrove noted that the ISO's decision and  may have been enough to inspire IBM to set aside any competitive differences with Sun and work with them to promote OpenOffice.org as an alternative to Microsoft Office. Momentum from the ISO's rejection of Open XML is a prime opportunity for OpenOffice.org to become a real alternative to Office, he said.

"Most likely, the setback for [Open XML] … and Google's announcement a month ago that it would include StarOffice 8 in its free Google Pack download figure into IBM's decision," Updegrove wrote in an e-mail to the mailing list for his . "Those events help provide the type of public momentum that … offer the prospect for the type of greater rewards that help displace other considerations and historical impediments. Whatever the reasons may have been that have kept Sun and IBM from working together to support OpenOffice over the past four years more fully, the reality is that a chance to break an industry monopoly that generates $15 billion in revenues a year comes only once in a generation — when it comes at all."

In a press statement, Sun welcomed IBM's addition to the group, which claims it has had 100 million downloads of its software since it launched in 2000.

Take-Two forms new casual games label (Reuters)

As part of the new label, the company also said it struck a licensing agreement with Nickelodeon that includes properties such as Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go!

AMD expects new server chip to boost results (Reuters)

"The mix of products will obviously affect our financial performance positively," Ruiz told Reuters in an interview to mark the launch of AMD's Barcelona chip for server computers.

Ruiz, who did not make specific financial forecasts, also addressed broader concerns about the economy during the interview, saying that so far consumer spending appeared to be weathering the housing and credit market troubles.

As for the new processor, Ruiz said it would strengthen AMD's position by delivering faster performance, being more energy efficient, and making it easier to run multiple kinds of computer operating software at the same time, a feature known as "virtualization."

AMD has been counting on Barcelona to revive its fortunes against rival Intel Corp (INTC.O) and help it regain share in the $40 billion-a-year market for the x86 processors that power most personal computers.

"The value that Barcelona offers is phenomenal and I feel we have a pricing leadership position in terms of value," Ruiz said.

Over the past year, shares in AMD have fallen 50 percent, compared to a rise of 30 percent for those of Intel. AMD stock rose 2.6 percent on Monday to close at $12.94 on the New York Stock Exchange.

"We are not in the business just for the status quo, we have invested and been rewarded with a bigger share as we perform. But we are never satisfied," Ruiz said.

Ruiz also said he expected demand for personal computers to be strong in the second half and that consumer buying did not yet seem to be affected by widening credit problems in the housing industry.

"I don't know to what extent it will have a spillover effect on consumers," Ruiz said of the wave of defaults on high-risk mortgages that has roiled the U.S. economy.

"I think that consumers seem not to be impacted, yet."

Asked about AMD's previous estimates that it could account for 30 percent of processor sales, Ruiz said: "It's true that in a fair and open competitive space, I don't see any reason to limit ourselves to a number. Thirty percent is not only reasonable but we should surpass it."

The phrase "fair and open" is a reference to AMD's lawsuit against Intel, which AMD charges has violated antitrust laws in the United States and elsewhere.

"My opinion is that our case against them is getting stronger and the chance of other countries getting involved is strong," Ruiz said.

Unmanned Solar Plane Breaks Flight Record