Keepin’ it real fake, part XCVI: the true nano fatty

Microsoft hires former Sun, IBM executive to lead sales (InfoWorld)

Robert YoungJohns, who most recently was president and CEO of performance management software vendor Callidus, is now president of North America sales and marketing as well as a corporate vice president at Microsoft. In his new role, which begins Dec. 3, YoungJohns will manage an 8,500-person sales force and report to Microsoft COO Kevin Turner. YoungJohns, 56, has more than 30 years of experience in the technology industry, 10 of which he spent at Sun in various positions, including executive vice president of global sales, and 18 years at IBM, where he held various positions. During his last role as top executive at Callidus, the company saw its business double in two and a half years and achieve 45 percent year-over-year growth. YoungJohns is filling a role vacated by Bill Veghte, who moved to become corporate vice president of the Windows Business Group in February 2007. In the interim, Microsoft Corporate Vice Presidents Michael Park and Jens Winther Moberg have been sharing responsibilities on an interim basis.

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Higher sales drives Ubisoft to first-half profit (Reuters)

The maker of hit games such as "Splinter Cell" and "Prince of Persia" also predicted that fiscal year 2008-09 would be "another year of robust growth for the group." "Early indications for our Christmas games launches have been positive, especially for 'Assassin's Creed;, whose sell-through sales have already topped the record level of one million units," Chief Executive Yves Guillemot said in a statement. Current operating profit for the six months to September 30, 2007 was 9.1 million euros and compared to a loss of 33.6 million euros in the same period of 2006-07. Ubisoft achieved a net profit of 30.6 million euros against a loss of 20.5 million euros. This was notably after a gain of 7.5 million from the positive outcome of a lawsuit and 14.3 million from the sale of shares in Gameloft (), Europe's biggest provider of games for mobile phones. Sales rose an already reported 52 percent to 261 million euros, a performance boosted by games for new-generation consoles, which now make up 75 percent of the group's sales. Ubisoft kept its targets for the year to end-March 2008 of sales of about 825 million euros and for current income before stock options to be at least 9 percent of sales. (Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; editing by Paul Bolding)

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AOL Introduces Video Ticker Ads (NewsFactor)

Developed in conjunction with PointRoll, AOL's video ticker is essentially a graphic banner ad that is integrated within a streaming video but does not obstruct viewing. The ads will run across the AOL Network of video content within the newest version of the AOL Video media player platform. "With these ads, advertisers can target users who are consuming video with a clickable video or an interactive Flash ad, creating a deeper, longer brand dialogue that isn't passive," Curt Viebranz, president of AOL's Platform-A, said in a statement. Unobstructed Viewing Rather than overlaying an ad and obstructing the view of a video, AOL's video ticker ad appears at the bottom of the video player 10 seconds into the video stream. When consumers click on the ticker, it expands to launch a video ad or an interactive Flash ad within the video player window. Meanwhile, the video pauses. If the user does not interact with the ad, it dissolves after 15 seconds, leaving the branded text link. Clicking on the branded text link will relaunch the ticker. "The consensus, based in part on research, is that viewers don't like prerolls. So we may see versions of this format become one of the standards used in video advertising," said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. "This is quite different from prerolls because even though you have a fuller ad that sits behind the ticker, the user has to take action by clicking. So there's a greater burden on the marketer." Power of Video Ads Whatever the format, there is little question that video ads are here to stay. According to a recent survey by TNS Research, 78 percent of respondents agreed that online video ads provide at least as good an opportunity to learn about an advertiser as TV does. And 64 percent said that they have taken some action after seeing an online video ad. In addition, 41 percent of those surveyed stated that after they see a brand featured in an online video ad, they are more likely to think of that brand as having a strong presence on the Internet. "Advertisers want to be in video content. More and more consumers are using the Internet as a TV alternative. There's a lot of people who spend time watching a lot of video online," Sterling said. "Broadcasters or publishers definitely want ads to reach those consumers. But it's unclear whether this form of advertising is going to be appealing." In addition to introducing the new advertising system, AOL announced a revamped media player platform that introduces several new social features and a new development framework that is designed to make adding new features easier.

T-Mobile, Vodafone tussle over iPhone (AP)

The iPhone made its German debut on Nov. 9, and has been available only with a two-year contract from Telekom’s T-Mobile. The German unit of rival Vodafone protested that practice at a state court in Hamburg. T-Mobile said Tuesday it was examining how to comply with a court injunction by Wednesday. The court issued an injunction, dated Nov. 12, barring T-Mobile from offering the iPhone exclusively with a minimum 24-month contract, and also from selling it only with a so-called SIM lock that prevents users from switching the device to any other operator’s network. T-Mobile said sales of the iPhone would continue, but pledged in a statement to abide by the conditions set by the court until the legal situation is resolved. T-Mobile said it would appeal the injunction and defended its marketing practices. It also said it reserves the right to consider seeking damages. The head of Vodafone Deutschland, Friedrich Joussen, was quoted as telling the Bild daily that “it cannot be that our customers can only get the iPhone with a long-term Telekom contract.” “We want fast clarification by the court as to whether the iPhone should be (available) for all or just for the few,” he added. The iPhone is a combined cell phone and iPod media player that also can access the Internet wirelessly.

Interview: On a mission to silence the doubters (FT.com)

It is now used by, among others, the banks Credit Suisse First Boston and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC). The internet retailers Amazon and Ebay both use Linux as does Tivo, the innovative personal video recorder group. Motorola (NYSE:MOT) has used a version in the Razr mobile phone; and IBM is a prominent supporter of Linux, as are Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL). All of which persuades 37-year-old Mr Zemlin that the first, acceptance, stage of the Linux development model is now over. "This is a pervasive operating system," he says. "You no longer hear questions about whether a 'hacker' OS can run mission-critical systems." Mr Zemlin is the first executive director of the Linux Foundation, formed at the beginning of this year through a merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group (of which he was executive director), both of which were promoting the adoption of Linux. Derived from Unix, Linux was and continues to be developed by the Finnish software engineeer, Linus Torvalds, and a worldwide army of independent developers. Mr Torvalds, whose independence is guaranteed by the Foundation, retains his power of veto over the technological developments that define the Linux kernel, the functional heart of the software. Mr Zemlin's job is to act as a combination of standard bearer, evangelist and defender for the operating system. His taste for the last role was tested within a few months of taking office, when Microsoft claimed open source software, including Linux, violated a large number of its patents and could expose users to inherent risks. "It's all hogwash," Mr Zemlin says. "The fact is that Linux does provide better price performance than Windows. There is no greater risk in using open source software than proprietary software from a legal perspective. If you want choice as a consumer of technology, open source and Linux is a far better path than, over time, being locked into a proprietary platform." At the time of Microsoft's complaints, Mr Zemlin suggested the software giant was indulging in old fashioned FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Just looking at the numbers" he told the magazine Computerworld, it is easy to see that if the scare campaign merely delays an average large business's migration from Windows to Linux by a single day, Microsoft is $34m better off. You would expect no less from the man leading the Linux charge, but Mr Zemlin has no illusions about the resilience of the opposition or the need to strengthen Linux's hand in the fight for market share. Windows controls the desktop and has a 40 per cent share of the server market. Linux is in second place on about 25 per cent, with the rest made up of Unix variants. "Linux needs to up its game to compete with its primary competition, which is Windows. To do this, it needs to look at the reasons it was successful in the first place and analyse its weaknesses," he reasons. Its principal strength is the speed and power of its innovation model, the consequence of simultaneous progress by thousands of software developers across the globe. "People use Linux because it provides a rapid innovation model. It provides an incredible time-to-market advantage. "The Linux kernel releases every three months with new functionality. There are 2,000 lines of code added to the kernel every day; 2,900 lines of code are changed every day. There are more than 2,900 core contributors to the Linux kernel. The world has never seen such a sophisticated, broadly spread, rapid development model." He points out that "distributions" of Linux - the Linux kernel together with complementary software to create complete operating systems and which are packaged by commercial companies - are released every six months compared with the seven years it took Microsoft to release Vista, the latest version of Windows. Linux's principal weakness is the fact that, unlike Microsoft Windows, where the symbol on the box is a guarantee that the bits will work together, Linux is not an easy platform for application developers. "This does not really exist in Linux outside some specific distributions such as Red Hat and Novell. To get the whole platform to compete effectively," Mr Zemlin says, "we ne ed to take a federated approach to that kind of interoperability." The approach being taken by the Linux Foundation is to create a standard, the Linux Standard Base, that will allow the companies who create Linux distributions to have a specific set of components that make up what is thought of as Linux. If that is consistent from one version of the operating system to the next, it will provide that reliable development platform. Individual developers would compete on the quality of innovation they add to the standard. "Where files are stored is not a differentiator; a new security module is. Competing on these higher levels of technology is what is going to thrust Linux ahead." Mr Zemlin points out that what motivates open source developers is not just the freedom to do more or less what they want but the desire to win. "These guys have devoted their lives to writing this software. For them, it's a 24-hour-a day job. I get e-mails at 3am from guys who have some new thing they want to talk about for Linux." Before joining the Free Standards Group and the Linux Foundation, Mr Zemlin was a member of the founding management team of Corio, an enterprise application service provider, and vice-president of marketing for Covalent Technologies, which developed products and services for the Apache web server. Educated at the University of Minnesota, Mr Zemlin read political science and Japanese: a long way from information technology, some might think, but his grandfather was a co-founder of the Cray supercomputer company and his father worked for Control Data Corporation, so supercomputing is in his veins. And significantly enough, three quarters of the world's top 500 supercomputers use Linux. So what should the IT director be thinking about Linux? "What you are going to see from the Linux platform is better hardware utilisation, better price performance, better security. These are all things any IT organisation should be considering. "You will also get choice, because Linux is not locked in to any single vendor like Microsoft. This is a great advantage to an IT organisation that wants to drive down cost and purchase competitive components. "New technologies from Linux will include power management. Power is becoming a dominant cost in the data centre. One development is the 'tickless kernel' which cycles down the processor when it is not in use. This was an idea that was accepted and now is being rolled out to everyone," Mr Zemlin says. And has the Foundation a secure future? Mr Zemlin smiles: "We are extremely well funded. We have a diversity of stakeholders. The platform itself represents a multibillion dollar marketplace in hardware and services related to Linux. It would be hard to imagine Linux disappearing any time in the near future - or the Foundation for that matter."

JVC Victor gets official with 4k x 2k DLA-SH4K projector

GameStop disappointing outlook sinks shares (Reuters)

The shares slipped after GameStop said its profit in the fourth quarter, which includes the peak holiday shopping period, would be 95 cents to 97 cents a share. That's higher than the same period a year ago, but short of analysts expectation of $1.01, according to Reuters Estimates. For the third quarter, net income rose to $52 million, or 31 cents a share, from $13.6 million, or 9 cents a share a year earlier. The profit beat Wall Street views of 23 cents a share, powered by sales of games such as Halo 3 and Madden NFL '08, and Guitar Hero II, Revenue in the period rose to $1.61 billion from $1.01 billion. New video game software sales rose 59 percent in the quarter, while new hardware sales jumped 149 percent. GameStop, whose rivals include mainstream retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) and Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N), said it opened 181 new stores in the quarter and operates over 5,000 globally. Shares of GameStop fell early to a low of $47.61 on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock is still up about 90 percent so far this year as the company secured its position as the last remaining major specialty chain in the $30 billion video game industry. (Reporting by Franklin Paul, editing by Dave Zimmerman)