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BetaNews.Com (6 non lus)

Microsoft Q3 2010 by the numbers: Beats the Street, but Apple closes in

Publié: avril 22, 2010, 11:23pm CEST par Joe Wilcox
By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Recovering IT spending, robust worldwide PC shipments and strong Windows 7 adoption helped Microsoft to beat the Street. The software giant announced fiscal 2010 third quarter earnings, ended March 31, after the Bell, today.
Microsoft revenue rose 6 percent to $14.5 billion, up from $13.65 billion a year earlier. Operating income: $5.17 billion, up 17 percent. Net income: $4.01 billion, or 45 cents a share. Net income rose by 35 percent and earnings per share by 36 percent year over year. If not for a $305 million deferral related to Office 2010, Microsoft would have reported $14.81 billion revenue.
For about a year, Microsoft provided no guidance to Wall Street analysts, so there was none for fiscal Q3. Analysts' average consensus was $14.38 billion revenue and 42 cents earnings per share. Revenue estimates ranged from $13.81 billion to $14.75 billion.
"Business customers are beginning to refresh their desktops and the momentum of Windows 7 continues to be strong," Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, said in a statement. "We are also seeing tremendous interest in our market-leading cloud services for business."
Microsoft closed the quarter with $12.3 billion unearned revenue. Annuity license sales grew in the low single digits. The company reported 40 million paid seats for Azure cloud services. During a conference call late this afternoon, Peter Klein, Microsoft's chief financial officer, predicted "continued strength in hardware shipments," which would be good for operating system and productivity suite sales. He asserted that across divisions annuity revenue would align with OEM revenue. Klein also emphasized that fiscal fourth quarter is the "season high for our enterprise sales."
Coming into the quarter, some analysts and armchair pundits started looking more closely at Apple compared to Microsoft. Unthinkable a year ago, Apple has closed a huge earnings and revenue gap separating it from Microsoft. On Tuesday, Apple announced fiscal 2010 second quarter results: $13.5 billion revenue and net profit of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 a share. In the year ago quarter, Microsoft reported $4.4 billion operating income, $2.98 billion net income or 33 cents a share. Apple: $9.08 billion revenue and $1.62 billion net income or $1.79 earnings per share. Apple made enormous revenue and earnings gains against Microsoft in just one year. The question now isn't so much if Apple might catch or surpass Microsoft but when.
Q2 2010 Revenue by Division
- Windows & Windows Live: $4.2 billion, up 28 percent from $3.5 billion a year earlier.
- Server & Tools: $3.58 billion, up 2 percent from $3.5 billion a year earlier.
- Business: $4.24 billion, down 6 percent from $4.5 billion a year earlier.
- Online Services Business: $56 million, up 12 percent from $50 million a year earlier.
- Entertainment & Devices: $1.66 billion, up 2 percent from $1.62 billion a year earlier.
Still, Office and Windows are cash machines, which are getting a boost from recovering PC sales. The really good news came about a week ago from Gartner and IDC, which reported strong double-digit growth in second-quarter worldwide PC shipments. But that wasn't the big takeaway, particularly for Microsoft. After more than 18 months of sluggish sales, businesses are finally beginning to buy PCs again. For Microsoft, the news likely means an increase in sales of higher-margin professional Windows, which is evident in fiscal Q3 numbers. During the worst of the global economic crisis and the 2008-09 surge in netbook shipments, the sales percentage dramatically shifted to lower-margin consumer Windows.
By Microsoft estimates, worldwide PC shipments grew by 25 percent to 27 percent, which is inline with numbers from both Gartner and IDC. Netbooks, which typically ship with non-Premium Windows, accounted for 10 percent of shipments. according to Microsoft.
"With a relatively positive macroeconomic outlook, business demand was more forthcoming," Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner principal analyst, said in a statement. "Major PC replacement demand driven by Windows 7 will become more apparent in the second half of 2010 and the beginning of 2011." That's exactly the kind of forecast Microsoft executives want to hear.
But that's the future. The business recovery is still modest compared to consumer sales. In the United States, business PC shipments grew by 10 percent year over year compared to 30 percent for consumers, according to Gartner. There Windows 7, along with aggressive pricing, contributed to unseasonably strong shipments. "Although the first quarter is not typically a strong quarter for the consumer market, growth in the consumer segment was strong," Kitagawa said in the statement. "The positive economic outlook and affordable system prices drove US consumers to buy more PCs. These purchases either replaced aging PCs or became additions to buyers' households."
Q2 2010 Income by Division
- Windows & Windows Live: $3.06 billion, up 35 percent from $2.27 billion a year earlier.
- Server & Tools: $1.26 billion, up 3 percent from $1.22 billion a year earlier.
- Business: $2.6 billion, down 6 percent from $2.8 billion a year earlier.
- Online Services Business: Loss of $713 million, up 73 percent from $411 million loss a year earlier.
- Entertainment & Devices: $165 million, flat from a $41 million loss a year earlier.
Segment by Segment Results
Microsoft reports revenue and earnings results for five divisons: Windows & Windows Live, Server & Tools, Business, Online Services and Entertainment & Devices.
Windows & Windows Live. Revenue rose 29 percent year over year, or by $781 million. The division derives about 80 percent of its Windows revenue from license sales to PC OEMs. OEM license sales increased by 30 percent. OEM premium license mix was 72 percent -- 44 percent consumer and 28 percent business. Consumer license sales increased by 35 percent year over year and business licenses by 15 percent.
Server & Tools. The division is most insulated against economic maladies, because about 50 percent of revenues come from contractual volume-licensing agreements. Product revenue grew 2 percent, or $50 million, buoyed by Windows Server and Enterprise Client-Access License sales. Because of corporate layoffs, Microsoft has seen customers renewing license contracts at lower levels. Annuity license sales were flat year over year, which is somewhat surprising with new products in the pipeline. The division's services revenue grew by 5 percent, or $34 million. Microsoft put year-over-year server hardware shipment growth in the high teens.
Business. Microsoft's other cash cow division reported yet another quarter of revenue declined. Two mitigating factors: 1) A 1 percent decline, or $37 million, in Office 2007 licensing. 2) Deferral of $305 million related to Office 2010 upgrade guarantees. Annuity licensing was flat year over year. However, Microsoft is launching Office 2010 this quarter, which should positively affect Office sales. Incidentally, Office consumer revenue rose 11 percent, or $77 million, buoyed by strong PC shipments.
Online Services Business. The division's loss widened, despite ad sales increases. Online advertising revenue rose 19 percent, or by $81 million, to $502 million. Much of the ad sales increases came from search gains.
Entertainment & Devices. Microsoft shipped 1.5 million Xbox consoles during the quarter, down 12 percent from 1.7 million a year earlier. Non-gaming revenue increased by 14 percent, or $77 million, driven by sales of PC hardware and Windows embedded devices.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Canada will keep an eye on Facebook Platform expansion for privacy

Publié: avril 22, 2010, 11:11pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Yesterday's introduction by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of a vastly expanded form of the Facebook Platform -- enabling Web sites to gather information on users' "likes," share them with Facebook, and get traffic as a result -- did not slip past the office of Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart.
In a statement to Betanews this afternoon, Comm. Stoddart acknowledged this expansion will be of special concern to her office, especially in light of existing concerns raised by the service's latest round of privacy policy adjustments. Some say those adjustments actually exposed more information to potential data miners than it was exposing before, leading them to question the company's motives for attaining that data in the first place.
Though Comm. Stoddart concedes she hasn't had time to investigate the technical details of Facebook's service, revealed yesterday at the f8 developers' conference, she's seen press reports including ours, and concerns were raised. "This is an area of long-standing concern for us, and has been the subject of formal investigations by our Office," the Commissioner told us.
As you may recall, we published findings last July into an in-depth investigation into Facebook's privacy policies and practices, some of which related to the disclosure of personal information to advertisers, applications developers, and other third parties. As a result of that investigation, Facebook promised that, within a year, it would take all necessary steps to fully address the issues we raised in our recommendations. They are continuing to work on this undertaking, and we have been monitoring their progress.
In the meantime, last December, the company made significant privacy-related changes to its site. Some of those changes sparked concern among users. A key area of concern was the new "transition tool," which required users to revisit their privacy settings.
Under the privacy law, we are required to investigate complaints from the public, and so we launched a new investigation in January. With this investigation open, we will continue to examine all of Facebook's practices as they affect the privacy of Canadian users.
As incentive to encourage developers to make use of the newly expanded platform -- as well as to make its new "Like" associations functional for developers at all -- the company also announced yesterday it's lifting a previous restriction on developers' use of personal data attained from its API. Previously, developers were only allowed to store data attained through API calls for 24 hours; now, apparently, no such limit exists at all.
The blog Inside Facebook trumpeted the news as positive for developers. Wrote reporter Justin Smith: "The removal of this policy means Facebook is making it easier for developers to build richer applications on top of user data originally sourced from Facebook. Developers will be really happy about this change."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Docs.com: The surest sign yet of Microsoft's defeat

Publié: avril 22, 2010, 7:20pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made some amazing announcements yesterday, during the f8 conference. Docs.com wasn't one of them.
"You can discover, create, and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends," according to the service's Website. What Docs.com really does more is provide Microsoft a lifeline, as the company seeks to maintain the relevance of its Office-Windows-Windows Server applications stack before the rising mobile device-to-cloud applications/services stack. Docs.com is a futile, short-sighted enterprise that acknowledges Microsoft has already lost the new century's platform wars.
Facebook: Windows in the Clouds
For years, I've likened Facebook to Windows, blogging in July 2007 that: "Facebook has the potential to become a kind of operating system in the clouds that developers extend and plug into." At the time, Facebook had 30 million users; the number is closer to 500 million today. In September 2007, I explained further: "Facebook is like Microsoft, only the social networking company's platform is built on the Internet."
More from the September 2007 post:
Windows is widely regarded as a platform, but that's a misnomer. The PC is the platform. Windows is nothing without the PC. Windows is a platform, but secondary to the PC platform. Similarly, the Web is a platform (and, yes, arguably secondary to hundreds of thousands of servers). Web 2.0 platform companies like Google operate on the Internet platform.
But Facebook is different from Google. Facebook is not a Web 2.0 operation; rather it's more like Desktop 1.0 than Web 2.0. Since May [2007], when Facebook opened up to outside developers, the service increasingly has morphed into an Internet operating system. Like Windows, Facebook is an enclosed platform, and one where people can install applications, post and share digital content and communicate with friends, families or others in ways they might do with Windows on PCs.
Facebook is also a lot more like Microsoft than it resembles Google, because it's so-called openness is more of a one-way street. Information goes in, but it doesn't easily come out. Developers write applications for the one platform, which is different from, say, tapping into Google APIs (application programming interfaces) for use elsewhere. Facebook and Google both take platform approaches, but Facebook's way is more like Windows than Web 2.0.
I blogged in December 2009:
Facebook's cloud OS, with zillions of applications and more than 350 million subscribers, is now a vortex sucking in seemingly all Internet traffic. Many people who posted to blogs and photo sharing sites are moving their personal information and content to Facebook -- like they did Windows a computing generation ago. Facebook has huge customer lock-in potential, because the data is so much more personal than that put into Office and Windows a decade ago.
Facebook ushers in Web 4.0
Yesterday, everything changed. Zuckerburg paraded like a young Bill Gates (only with better oration and presence). Facebook's founder is cocky, arrogant, ruthless and visionary. He outlined a development strategy that would intertwine Facebook into the World Wide Web. It's brilliant and frightening. Zuckerburg is making the leap from Desktop 1.0 to Web 4.0 -- perhaps Platform 3.0 (Mainframe and PC being Nos 1 and 2). Nothing will be the same, if Facebook succeeds -- and the company has momentum that's shock waves should leave Google quaking in their wake.
According to IDC, there were 1.6 billion Internet users in 2009, with the number expected to reach 2.2 billion by 2013. Facebook will soon have 500 million active subscribers, or -- assuming there are no duplicates (unlikely) -- nearly one-third the whole population of Internet users. Facebook's growth far exceeds that of Internet users. In less than three years, the number of Facebook users climbed from 30 million to nearly 500 million. By the way, that 500 million is about half the entire PC install base; many of those Facebook users access the service by mobile device, a market where Microsoft dropped the ball in the end zone.
Facebook has enormous momentum. Microsoft is aligning its old applications stack with the new one, trying to keep its aging platform on life support just a little longer. Death is inevitable. Deal with it. Yesterday I tweeted: "Docs.com: Old content stack (Office) meets the new one (Facebook). Dunno. There are reasons nature abhors interbreeding of species." That Microsoft's FUSE Labs developed Docs.com at all is admission there is a new platform in town.
Docs.com represents the old content model. Microsoft has good ideas about collaboration, but wrongly binds them to Office. As I asserted in January: "Office is obsolete, or soon will be." Same can be said about Google Docs. The productivity suite model focuses on how people create content, when along the mobile device-to-cloud applications/services stack the priority is what and where. By aligning Docs.com with Facebook, Microsoft is at least partly dealing with the what and where. But the what still puts too much emphasis on how -- meaning productivity suite. Are hundreds of millions of Facebook subscribers creating Word documents or Excel spreadsheets? Do they need to? No and no. They're sharing photos, videos and messages -- none of which requires Office or Docs.com to create. By contrast, Facebook's Social plugins put the emphasize on the what people create, where they create it and with whom they share it.
The Facebook in the Mirror
Things could have been different. Facebook is doing with platforms what Microsoft should have been able to with its applications stack -- become part of the very fabric of the Web platform. More startling, chunks of Facebook's Open Graph vision come from Microsoft's own HailStorm playbook, such as the single-sign-on concept. Microsoft pitched single-sign-on with Passport a decade ago.
Facebook also is looking to tie quantifiable information to real user identities, something neither Google nor Microsoft dared to do but were accused of trying. Advertising potential is simply staggering should Facebook successfully leap all the privacy hurdles. Zuckerburg is just arrogant and aggressive enough to try and succeed.
Docs.com demonstrates much about what is wrong with Microsoft today. The company focuses too much on preserving existing revenue streams when creating newer ones should be the priority. Microsoft's self-preservation approach compels its developers to bind new technologies to Office or Windows, when they should be set free to embrace standards and help establish others. Microsoft is a follower in a market it once lead.
Three companies are now positioning for computing dominance -- Apple, Facebook and Google. All have a stake in the mobile-to-device applications/services stack. Adobe, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun were the major players during the desktop-to-server stack's heyday. Sun declined and Oracle acquired it. Adobe is in early stages of what I predict will later be a suddenly rapid decline. IBM, Microsoft and Oracle are locked in the enterprise, where their computing and informational relevance will slowly decline over the coming decade.
That Facebook's Open Graph and other f8 announcements come ahead of Windows Live Wave 4 is foreshadowing. You tell me what Microsoft can launch that will trump what Facebook announced yesterday. Microsoft claims on order of 400 million Live users, a number that seemingly rivals Facebook. But Microsoft subscribers are scattered among disparate Web services. Facebook users are consolidated within a single platform framework, like Windows.
A few years back, I stood in the pharmacy line behind an old geezer; he complained about buying medicines for his wife. The clerk joked: "Well, you married her for better or worse." He snarked: "I've had the better, now I've got the worse!" Microsoft has the worse now, too. Perhaps it's time for the company to divorce Office and Windows. Sure Microsoft depends on their income, but that won't last forever.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
A broadband plan of sorts goes forth, with muted net neutrality

Publié: avril 22, 2010, 5:33pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The strategy being employed by the Federal Communications Commission, as put forth yesterday, is to treat its loss to Comcast in DC Circuit Court two weeks ago not as a defeat of its ability to implement the entire Broadband Plan...and then hope that no one puts up any new roadblocks toward deploying at least most of it.
The priorities the FCC put forth during yesterday's open hearing are perhaps the ones that would generate the least friction from possible opponents. One of these priorities is reflected in a major rule change yesterday with respect to what regulators originally thought should be an oxymoron: home roaming.
Specifically, this has to do with whether a wireless carrier that has limited coverage in a given area because it's building out in that area, may be free to roam its service to other, more established carriers in that same area. A 2007 FCC order made a clear exception against this practice, in what seemed at the time to make some sense: A carrier should use its own spectrum in areas where it owns spectrum.
An unintended consequence of this exception was apparently a disincentive for carriers to build out in rural areas, feeling that they would be servicing customers there at a clear disadvantage until they had become completely established.
"With this decision, we continue to strive to adopt policies that balance competing interests, including -- promoting competition among multiple carriers; ensuring that consumers have access to seamless coverage nationwide; and providing incentives for all carriers to invest and innovate by using available spectrum and constructing wireless network facilities on a widespread basis," reads the FCC order published yesterday (PDF available here). "Upon reconsideration, we find that an up-front, categorical exclusion of home roaming from the automatic roaming obligation does not strike the best balance in furthering these goals. As a result of our decision, home roaming will be subject to the automatic roaming requirement and, as a common carrier service, is subject to Sections 201 and 202 of the Act. We will apply the same general presumption of reasonableness to requests for home roaming that we apply to other requests for automatic roaming, and take into account the competing interests when addressing roaming disputes on a case-by-case basis."
That reversal put the Commission's most outspoken Republican, Robert McDowell, in a good mood.
"The good news today is that we agree on a new course," McDowell wrote yesterday (PDF available here). "Specifically, we recognize that the better, simpler path is to eliminate the home market exclusion completely. We also clarify that wireless carriers have statutory rights to complain, even if they seek automatic voice roaming arrangements within a home market. By setting forth factors that the Commission will consider in the event of a complaint, we provide a framework that will provide both sides -- the host and the requesting carriers -- with greater incentives to succeed in negotiating roaming agreements based on reasonable terms and conditions. We allow market forces to drive flexible deals among market players to give consumers the benefit of seamless, nationwide voice services."
But a disparity still remains, and McDowell was not one to take his eye off of it: The wireless service rules to which the 2007 exception originally applied, were written in the days when "wireless" and "telephone" were considered synonymous. Yesterday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski cited the Broadband Plan as one of the driving forces behind removing the exception -- and the broadband plan deals with information service. On April 6, after the DC Circuit handed down the Comcast decision, Commissioner McDowell did nothing to hide his glee, saying, "I hope this decision will provide certainty in the marketplace, and will not lead to the unnecessary classification of broadband service as a monopoly phone service under Title II of the [Telecommunications] Act." That put McDowell's stake firmly in the ground against any attempt at reclassifying Internet service as a way of regulating net neutrality.
The problem is, if the FCC can't really regulate information services under Title I, then it can't also do something that McDowell may very much appreciate: essentially the opposite of the exception, granting a mandate that carriers must negotiate automatic data roaming agreements. So in his commentary on the ruling yesterday, McDowell asked an open-ended question: "With respect to the Further Notice on data roaming, for some time now, I have requested that interested parties submit for our consideration a legal analysis setting forth the means to this end. The question is simple: Given that, in 2007, the Commission classified wireless broadband services as Title I without dissent, is there a legally sustainable path to mandate automatic data roaming? I have sought this analysis well before the DC Circuit's recent ruling in the Comcast case, which casts even more doubt on our jurisdiction in this area. I strongly encourage all commenters to give us their analyses of how the Comcast decision affects our ability to regulate data roaming."
Also yesterday, the FCC took the next step in a strategic move away from its support of CableCARD, the technology that's supposed to enable cable and satellite TV subscribers to fully utilize the capabilities of their digital signal -- for example, to digitally record programs they're permitted to record. In a new Notice of Inquiry yesterday (PDF available here), the Commission conceded its existing stance on the technology -- which consisted mainly of a requirement for service providers (MVPDs) to include it but not really to support it -- was a complete failure.
"The Commission's rules require cable operators to support only one-way plug-and-play capability for retail CableCARD devices. This largely reflects the absence of a proven market for two-way services when negotiations began, and a desire within the industry to achieve consensus on how to assure access to the most basic services first and not await the conclusion of negotiations regarding access to new services that might be introduced later," the NOI reads. "Accordingly, the Commission's rules do not require cable operators to provide access for retail devices to two-way services such as interactive program guides, pay-per-view, or video-on-demand services, which were nascent services in 2003 and would have required complex and lengthy technical consideration. For that reason among others, retail CableCARD devices have not been able to offer all of the cable services available to subscribers who lease their set-top boxes from the cable operator. This is partially responsible for the failure of the CableCARD solution to create a strong retail market for navigation devices."
That move prompted positive response (PDF available here) from the Commission's other Republican, Meredith A. Baker: "As we consider a long-term solution, I hope that we recall valuable lessons from the CableCARD regime. First, our technological mandates come with significant costs. By one estimate, the cost of CableCARD compliance for the cable industry alone -- costs passed on to cable consumers -- has totaled nearly one billion dollars. Second, we should be careful not to mandate particular technological solutions that would freeze into place the current state of technology. We need to craft flexible rules that foster continued investment and innovation both on the network and device level. We should also not inhibit the ability of MVPDs to continue to invest in innovative devices and offerings. There are numerous promising collaborative efforts in home network and industry standard setting bodies to provide consumers with greater flexibility and options in how to view their video content. Hopefully, that spirit of collaboration between MVPD and consumer electronics companies will carry over to our consideration of a post-CableCARD regime."
Not lost on anyone, however, including Baker, was the fact that any new "two-way" technology would involve the invocation of the "I" word. So in her comment yesterday, she suggested that since the subject involved the regulation of program distributors -- which everyone agrees are under the FCC's purview -- then perhaps this should not be framed as part of the Broadband Plan.
"The National Broadband Plan framed this issue as one of broadband adoption. I agree that our set-top box policy does relate to broadband, but I believe that it relates primarily to broadband deployment, not adoption," Baker wrote. "In order to provide higher speeds and more advanced broadband offerings, cable operators need to reclaim spectrum dedicated to video programming without eliminating the hundreds of video channels available to subscribers today. We should be vigilant that our set-top box policy does not unintentionally frustrate the efforts of cable operators investing in their next-generation broadband networks by putting up roadblocks to an affordable transition to all-digital operations or raising uncertainty about investment in more efficient technologies like switched digital video."
The Commission remains aware that it might not be able, under its current mandate, to regulate net neutrality -- a fact that commissioners cannot sweep under the rug. So the question of "how the Internet's openness can best be preserved" will be put to a panel of experts next Wednesday, including the CTO of T-Mobile, a chief researcher for Yahoo, and the chief commercial officer for Clearwire.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Marvell unveils 1 GHz chips that consume just 1 watt of power

Publié: avril 22, 2010, 6:09am CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Chipmaker Marvell today debuted a new processor in its Armada family, designed for plug computing, for home, small business and industrial automation, and applications demanding ultra low power consumption.
The Armada 310 system-on-a-chip is built with an ARMv5 processor between 500 MHz and 1 GHz that consumes less than 1 watt of power. Fixed on a 15 x 15mm FCBGA (Flip Chip Ball Grid Array), the Armada 310 offers tons of I/O options, such as two Gigabit Ethernet MACs, two SATA 2.0 ports, two PCIe ports, USB 2.0, and DDR2/3.
Early last year, Marvell debuted its Plug Computing initiative with the release of its SheevaPlug development platform. The idea behind the initiative is that low-cost, low-power CPUs can be embedded all over the place to help manage and connect devices with each other. Marvell's SheevaPlug wiki describes the plug computer as "a cross between an embedded platform, typically found in smaller devices like mobile phones, and larger notebook computer."
A popular consumer solution that works with Marvell's design is the Pogoplug, a tiny server that connects to any USB storage device and makes their contents available on the Web. The little pink box can do this with just 5 watts of power.
But now, the Armada 310 can do this sort of computing with just a single watt of power, and though it's ideally suited for plug computers, it can be employed in any number of smaller form factors, such as routers, microservers, dongles, PC cards, industrial, and medical systems.
"By integrating extensive connectivity capabilities into a highly scalable ARM-based SoC, the ARMADA 310 offers designers the opportunity to create small-form factor, high-performance, devices that easily link to other systems and outside networks," Tony Massimini, Chief of Technology at Semico Research Corp., said in a statement.
The Armada 310 system on a chip is selling to manufacturers right now for less than $15 when purchased in bulk quantities. Marvell told us that we will begin to see solutions running on the chip in the second half of this year.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
With Microsoft's and Google's help, Facebook assembles, like, a platform

Publié: avril 22, 2010, 1:07am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

At its f8 developers' conference in San Francisco this morning, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented his vision of a cross-site social platform whose developmental state may already be quite far along. Essentially, he sees a kind of online social sphere wherein anything one communicates that he likes, gets channeled to Facebook, where that like becomes a public fact.
"Today, the Web exists mostly as a series of unstructured links between pages. And this has been a powerful model, but it's really just the start," said Zuckerberg. "The Open Graph puts people at the center of the Web. It means that the Web can become a set of personally and semantically meaningful connections between people and things. I am friends with you. I am attending this event. I like this band. These connections aren't just happening on Facebook, they're happening all over the Web. And today, with the Open Graph, we're going to bring all of these together."
The model Zuckerberg is discussing is essentially a published API for users of any service to associate themselves with something -- not just something they like, as he said at first, but also something they're working on, including documents. Those associations then become facts of the Facebook database.
On Monday, Betanews reported on 'Connections,' the types of associations that a Facebook user may establish between himself and something or someone he wishes to be associated with. As demonstrated at the time, Facebook now enables individuals to create Facebook pages that represent things or perhaps celebrities that they and others may like -- not a page by those celebrities as much as about them, similar to what Wikipedia provides now.
As independent Facebook developers were introduced to, for the first time today, existing Web pages outside Facebook can also be enabled to become the center of those associations, by adopting the company's new Open Graph Protocol. The protocol involves the use of special properties in the <META> elements of Web pages, whose collective purpose is to classify those pages for Facebook. In an extremely hypothetical example, a fan site for the movie Manos: The Hands of Fate might include the tags <meta property="og:type" content="movie" />, followed by <meta property="og:title" content="Manos: The Hands of Fate" />.
Surprisingly, a check of the accepted object types for things users may like shows that Open Graph will enable sites to declare themselves the centers of attention for video games, movies, TV shows, and albums (collections of songs gathered together onto a disc, originally reproduced using an analog needle apparatus), software or "apps" is not listed, and neither is "device" such as "iPad" (although it could conceivably be classified as product). If Betanews wanted to be a Facebook "like" site for beta software (I know, it's a stretch, but bear with me), it might be a difficult concept to explain using the current set of Open Graph tags.
"The Open Graph protocol...is currently designed for Web pages representing profiles of real-world things -- things like movies, sports teams, celebrities, and restaurants," reads Facebook's official explanation today. "Once your pages become objects in the graph, users can establish connections to your pages as they do with Facebook Pages. Based on the structured data you provide via the Open Graph protocol, your pages show up richly across Facebook: in user profiles, within search results and in News Feed."
Visibility in Facebook pages about the declared subject is one benefit to the Web site master. Another is the ability to communicate with users, via Facebook, who have declared they like the site's subject matter; and to receive analytics and statistics about how Facebook users are interacting with your pages.
If you think about it, it sounds like a sensible solution to the problem Yahoo faced two decades ago: cataloging commercially-oriented Web sites by subject. This system invites the masters of those pages to do the cataloging, with the payoff being a direct connection to the Internet's center of social activity.
Google's YouTube is already part of the process, with its latest round of changes to its front-end controls. Where the "Favorites" button used to be is now something called "Like" (shown above), which does more than just submit a video you like to your YouTube favorites list. As the settings screen now shows (as depicted below), your likes may be communicated with Facebook (if you have an account there).
That may not happen by default, however, or by accident. First, the user must establish a Google Account (the necessary item for him to join Google Buzz), and then explicitly tie that account to Facebook (Twitter is another option, as shown above). If the user has already established a Google Buzz account, then those associations may already be made, and the videos a user likes may be fused with the Open Graph and tweeted to everyone around the world.
Also joining the service's new Open Graph today is Microsoft, which today launched a basic form of its Office Web Apps for use in creating Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents that can serve as centers of attention, and that reside not in Microsoft's cloud but in users' Facebook news feeds.
"The fact that we've been able to adapt the Office 2010 Web Apps technology to work directly within our Facebook app truly speaks to the flexibility and power not just of the Facebook platform, but also of the Office system's rich 'contextual collaboration' capabilities," reads an actual Facebook-compliant document in Word format, published this afternoon by the leader of Microsoft's FUSE Labs development team, Lili Cheng. "And we'd never have been able to achieve our critical 'simplicity' goals had it not been for our ability to use a new test feature from Facebook that allows us to build an instantly personalized and seamless document authorization & sharing experience directly from our site."
FUSE Labs' Facebook apps are functional versions of the real Office Web Apps, running in the context of Facebook's platform...but on Microsoft's site. Conceivably, they can be created either online using the Web Apps themselves, or uploaded into the Web Apps using Office 2010 applications (which consumers will be able to begin using in earnest on May 12).
As Zuckerberg explained today in a blog post, his goal is to incite all Web users with impetus to share content, including Office docs and Pandora music (another charter Facebook partner), using Facebook as the conduit.
"This next version of Facebook Platform puts people at the center of the Web," he wrote. "It lets you shape your experiences online and make them more social. For example, if you like a band on Pandora, that information can become part of the graph so that later if you visit a concert site, the site can tell you when the band you like is coming to your area. The power of the open graph is that it helps to create a smarter, personalized Web that gets better with every action taken."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010