By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff, Betanews
The Bing marketing push has been a short-term success for Microsoft in that it got people to trying out its search engine, including several of the features Windows Live Search actually already had for a year or more and just never tried...because it was Windows Live Search. But in a speech last night, the man at the top of Microsoft presented what looked like a "moral," like at the end of a bedtime story, the message we're all supposed to have learned...as if Bing's success is a fait accompli. Sometimes when Steve Ballmer starts talking like Tom Osborne, you have to start worrying...and not always for Microsoft.
Search mavens: They've just like us!
Evening of June 18, 2009 • Microsoft's in the search game for the long haul with the deep pockets, and Steve Ballmer wants you to know that. In a talk before the Executives' Club of Chicago, as cited by Dow Jones this morning, the Microsoft CEO said that "in our industry, the No. 1 mistake that people make is that they quit too early" -- and that he thinks Microsoft should have gotten serious sooner about search.
Reuters, meanwhile, caught that he's willing to invest 5-10% of the company's operating income in search for up to five years. (Hope you weren't bored with those Bing ads yet!) Meanwhile, The Guardian's Jemima Kiss has a chat with Sergey Brin, who runs some other search site.
Thomas-Rasset over; Tenenbaum trial orthogonal
Evening of Thursday, June 18 • The verdict (and jaw-dropping jury award) in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case are probably not the end of that story, though stalwart observers such as Copyright and Campaigns' Ben Sheffner (writing this time for Billboard) are effectively recapping this portion of the proceedings. Meanwhile, Sony v. Tenenbaum -- the Massachusetts case in which Harvard prof Charles Nesson has taken a very, active active interest -- gets quietly, progressively weirder.
Ars Technica, which did work on the Thomas-Rasset trial that far outstripped any of the more traditional media outlets, has this story in check as well, explaining that Dr. Nesson has taken to recording calls and conversations connected to the case and posting them online in an act of "radical transparency." You could also call it "ticking off the judge," who warns that "the Court's indulgence is at an end" on this situation. It's possible you could also call it "crazy like a fox," sinc eit's accomplished some practical good for the case -- for instance, the possibility of raising fair use as a defense. Copyrights and Campaigns has a few excerpts to give you the flavor of what's happening, and Recording Industry vs The People has housekeeping material such as upcoming court dates 9the trial's now slated for a late-July start).
RIM's Q1 nice, but just you wait
Evening of June 18, 2009 • The market didn't like Research in Motion's outlook for the upcoming quarter, even though the company returned $1.12/share, well over analysts' estimates, for this quarter. And, said co-CEO Jim Balsillie, the company's got some "spectacular" products on tap for the latter half of the year.
No, they're not named iPhone or Pre, but that's fine; the company's report indicates that the company's increased its share of the US smartphone market from 40% to 55% in the last six months. Jamie Sturgeon at the Financial Post does a good job of covering the call, and Andrew Horowitz at Seeking Alpha lays out why amid all that optimism, the stock got spanked in after-hours trading following the release of the numbers.
Google learns another lesson about playing nicely with others
Evening of June 16, 2009 • One of the things Google will experience for itself as Chrome comes into full fruition as a Web browser is how difficult it is to maintain a community of developers for plug-ins that have to cooperate with each other. In the meantime, the company's own Apps Sync plug-in for Microsoft Outlook isn't behaving well with a handful of other prominent plug-ins, including Adobe's PDF Maker Toolbar (which a lot of Acrobat users have), Apple's Outlook Change Notifier (part of its suite of synchronization tools that includes Bonjour for Windows), and Microsoft's Outlook Connector which links users to Hotmail and Windows Live Mail.
Some of the things that make these plug-ins blow up in one another's face has to do with the fact that these others make use of Microsoft's Search services. In a blog post earlier this week, a Google product manager explained exactly what happens (Google turns that service off...I suppose that's a public service from Google, thank you very much) and what users should do about that (leave the service off and not use the other folks' plug-ins).
Or, as he put it directly, "Windows Desktop Search will not properly index Google Apps Sync data files, so in order to stop indexing from running indefinitely, the Google Apps Sync installer disables it. We recommend using the default Outlook search."
Anyone who's ever used the default Outlook search knows that's one of the most ridiculous suggestions anyone can ever make.
Microsoft anti-malware basics coming Tuesday
June 23 > Microsoft will release a limited public beta of Microsoft Security Essentials (a.k.a., Morro), an anti-malware package targeting viruses, spyware, rootkits, and trojans. The first 75,000 visitors to download a copy from this site on Tuesday get to play.
If you try that site now, you won't get much except an ironic little message: "The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred."
The company has played with the idea of presenting a basic anti-virus toolkit, either bundled with Windows or downloadable, ever since 2003 when it acquired a small security company, and then at the very least made a home for "Security Essentials" in the original incarnation of Security Center for Windows XP.
The most recent incarnation of Security Center is Action Center for Windows 7, and it's likely that the final build of that product will contain a link to a page that lets the user download the installer -- the same file that will be directly accessible from the Microsoft site on Tuesday. From there, the user will most likely be able to select options and download the final package.
Meet Collecta, a new real-time search... but not just yet
Give it a few more days > Another day another drama search engine. Collecta, the brainchild of AOL and Reuters alumni, searches fast-twitch sites such as Twitter, Flickr, and so forth in very nearly real time, and it's designed to support multiple searches running continuously, giving the thirsty newshound what amounts to his own news ticker.
That's the theory, anyway; when CNET's Josh Lowensohn dropped by Thursday afternoon, the search was having a bit of a meltdown, searching continuously without actually returning results, and we found it much the same early this morning. Over at The Register, Cade Metz delves into how the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) powers the site. When it's working. Get well soon, Collecta!
AFTER THE JUMP: Friday's tech headlines from around the Net...
Friday's tech headlines
Wired
• Remember the TJX breach? The "hacker" accused of masterminding the thing lived large on the proceeds, but his trusty programmer -- the guy who coded the notorious "blabla" sniffer -- is broke, banned from touching computers, and awaiting sentencing. Poor pookie.
• In other breach-aftermath news, the 11th Circuit has dismissed most of a class-action suit filed by veterans whose data was on a hard drive stolen from the Veterans Administration back in 2007.
• Bruce Schneier has an essay on how science-fiction writers can provide insight on potential security risks to the Department of Homeland Security. Turns out that it's related to how we analyze risk-management data.
Ars Technica
• The city of Bozeman, Montana is requiring that job applicants hand over information on any site for which they have an account -- not just usernames, but passwords.
• The lawsuits may rage around it, but Google Books is still attending to details such as usability. A nice assortment of upgrades makes searching and direct linking much easier.
Guardian (UK)
• A recent ruling by a UK court allowed The Times to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger -- a policeman who'd written an award-winning blog about the travails of the job. The information meant a written reprimand for the officer and the deletion of his blog from the Net. Jean Seaton, who chaired the Orwell Prize committee that gave Detective Constable Richard Horton that award, comments on the distressing implications for blog anonymity. To illustrate the value of anonymous work blogs such as (the late) NightJack, Alexandra Topping compiles a list of six gripping examples; get 'em while you can.
• Twitter and other non-linear, multi-thread content systems are changing our outlook on narrative. In other words, if you think movies like Duplicity and Memento were confusing, you're not going to like where things are headed. Paul Schrader backs that up with further examples.
• Keith Stuart has a nice look at the "virtual community" -- specifically, the folks who flipped out when the keepers of Left 4 Dead announced a swift sequel. Ranting, perspective-impaired people can form a community too. Or, you know, so we've heard.
New York Times
• PC manufacturers say that while China may be backing off the requirement that its citizens use the Green Dam filtering software, they're cutting PC manufacturers no slack on including it on systems sold ther.
• The Flip camera made shooting video easier for anyone capable of pushing one button and lifting their arm; Ashlee Vance looks at a fun new Windows program called Super LoiLoScope MARS that promises to do much the same for the video-editing process.
Wall Street Journal
• Tor for the democracy win! The venerable onion-routing anonymizer lends a hand in Iran.
• The battle over taxing online sales continues. Just two days ago Amazon told affiliates in North Carolina that if their state government didn't drop the idea of having the site collect the state's 4.5% sales tax, they'd drop all the affiliates. Amazon believes the taxation to be unconstitutional.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
• You say you're interested in this Twitter craze but you don't know where to jump into the fray? You'd read it if you could find anything useful in there? A couple of former Microsofties have a new site that might be able to help, called CrowdEye. Nick Eaton has details.
• Speaking of Twitter, users are having way too much fun mocking Congressman Pete Hoekstra's tin-eared comparison of various House political antics with the uproar in Iran. Alejandro Martinez-Cabrera picks some choice examples from Pete Hoekstra Is A Meme.
DaniWeb
• During his campaign, President Obama called on all Americans to volunteer in our communities. If you're ready for "the summer of service" but aren't sure where you might be of assistance, that "CraigsList for service" he was talking about has finally come to pass.
• Online advertisers get their shorts in a bunch over clickthrough, but a new study indicates that clickthrough matters less than engaging content that's related to the rest of the page. Ron Miller has more.
• Ken Hess, who apparently ran into some annoyance with community managers for certain Linux distros, gets a little feisty and suggests a whole new business model.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009